Video Interview, John Noble, August 2, 2012
- CREW: I am rolling, sir.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Alright.
- I am trying to figure out what decade do we start--
- sixties?
- Were you out and about in the sixties?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, I came out in '69.
- Yes.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's begin there then,
- late sixties, early seventies.
- JOHN NOBLE: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What with life--
- were you in Rochester then?
- JOHN NOBLE: Yes, in the summer, but I was in graduate school.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Because, we're trying
- to focus mostly on Rochester.
- JOHN NOBLE: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: But late sixties, early seventies,
- just talk to me generally, what was life for a gay man?
- And a gay man who's really just starting to come out, even.
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, pretty scary because there weren't
- many resources available.
- The incredible thing is the guy that
- brought me out was married to my old girlfriend.
- And they lived in Beacon Hill in Boston.
- So that was kind of an experience.
- And I stayed with them on weekend trips to Boston.
- Or when I was doing research on my masters
- or doctoral dissertation I would sometimes stay with them.
- But really did not have a good understanding
- of what it meant to be a gay man.
- The stereotypes and the issues around it
- were pretty negative and really quite a problem.
- And I have to say I was caused a lot of problems by it.
- By that I mean, the issues that came
- up were one of my own personal self
- respect and dignity that really made it difficult. Eventually,
- I found resources in graduate school
- up in Maine and a lot of supportive people up there.
- But again, that was a very small community and really pretty
- close to the chest in terms of who they were, what they were,
- and where we were all headed.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's talk about Rochester.
- When did you become a permanent resident of Rochester?
- JOHN NOBLE: OK, I came back to Rochester
- after I finished my doctorate.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, what year are we talking?
- JOHN NOBLE: We're talking '75, '76.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, so what was going on here?
- What was going on in Rochester in terms of the gay community?
- There was already, by that time, there
- were some gay activism, gay groups, right?
- JOHN NOBLE: Yes.
- The first gay event I went to in Rochester
- was the famous Fourth of July dance
- that I think you've probably heard many people talk about
- that they were there.
- This was, I think, in 1970 right after Stonewall.
- And that really gave me hope that I
- could come back to Rochester and find a supportive community.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Tell me about the dance.
- Where was it?
- JOHN NOBLE: It was at the U of R in the old Todd Union.
- And there were lots of lesbians, lots of young gay men
- that were mostly students.
- I don't know if they were graduate students
- or undergraduates at the U of R. But I felt a camaraderie
- with them.
- And there were a number of people
- that I've met over the years who were there, or at least
- claimed to have been there.
- But that seemed to have been a turning point in Rochester
- for the community to recognize that they
- could make a go of it.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Did you get the sense
- that this was really a community dance?
- Or was it more just for the U of R students and--
- JOHN NOBLE: Oh, no.
- This was part of the problem that the U of R had,
- that it was community people with some University people.
- And over the next several years, the University
- made an effort to get rid of the group
- because they saw it being invaded by community people.
- So you have to read into that what you want.
- But if you've been involved in a University community,
- they're pretty jealous of their prerogatives
- and don't want people who aren't part
- of that close knit community taking part
- in the benefit to the community without paying
- the price, whatever that might be.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So when you came to Rochester permanently
- in '75, what were you finding there?
- How did you infiltrate yourself into the gay community?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, several things,
- I met Mary Lou Wells and her partner, Paula Smith,
- and got active with the Alliance, Gay Brotherhood,
- and also was involved in the organization
- of Dignity-Integrity, which was a religious group.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, I'm going to stop you just for a second
- because you have this of playing with your beard when you talk.
- So if you can be conscious of putting your hand down--
- JOHN NOBLE: OK.
- Alright, you don't want to watch me play--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: It's cute a couple of times.
- But throughout the whole conversation,
- a little distracting.
- JOHN NOBLE: Alright.
- OK.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's pick it up from meeting Mary Lou Wells
- and getting involved with-- what was
- the Gay Alliance at the time.
- JOHN NOBLE: Yeah, it had just transitioned
- from the Gay Brotherhood and the LRC, the Lesbian Resource
- Center.
- And then the Alliance--
- and in those days, the budget for the whole organization
- was like two thousand dollars a year.
- Now that's less than a couple of weeks of the organization's
- budget now.
- But we had a good time.
- And we built community and really felt
- like we were going to make progress.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, let me pick it up from there then.
- What was driving you intellectually, emotionally
- about-- what was driving you to get involved politically,
- as an activist?
- JOHN NOBLE: Yeah.
- Well, the things that motivated me
- was the fact that I knew we could make some changes.
- It was the fact that we didn't have our basic rights,
- that we did not have full civil rights, that we were constantly
- derided and belittled and diminished
- as individuals and as a group.
- And so we moved in those directions.
- And I worked on projects that I thought
- would move the agenda forward.
- And it apparently did because I wrote the first CETA
- grant, which clearly showed the community that there
- was a need for certain things to happen.
- Even our enemies denounced what we
- were doing because they couldn't understand why we
- needed to have a credit union.
- Well, in those days, unless you were deep in the closet,
- you'd have a hard time getting a mortgage for a house.
- So I said, well, if we have a credit union,
- we can give ourselves mortgages.
- So that was the type of thing-- and that made people
- like lonesome Charlie Schiano and the City Council very
- upset.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: That's Charlie now?
- JOHN NOBLE: Yes.
- Yeah, he's still turning over.
- But those were the kinds of things
- that we had to deal with.
- But I clearly wrote it and put stuff
- in that was going to focus on developing our rights
- and giving us a better community to live in.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, set it up for me as someone
- who doesn't know anything about CETA or what it is.
- JOHN NOBLE: OK.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What is CETA?
- Why was it important for you to apply for this grant?
- JOHN NOBLE: OK.
- CETA was the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.
- There was, as there is now, a lack of jobs.
- But in those days the federal government
- reacted more positively than they have
- recently to economic downturn.
- And they set up this jobs program, much of it
- based on the WPA of the depression era.
- And so we put a grant application
- together for four to six jobs with very clear guidelines
- as to what they were going to accomplish
- and what they were going to do in the course of that year.
- And the city didn't quite know what
- to do when they got the application because they
- couldn't find anything wrong with it.
- And the United Way, which was supposed
- to administer the damn thing, threw up their hands
- and walked away because their base,
- which was pretty much the right wing thugs in Rochester--
- and God knows there were as many then as there are now,
- weren't going to have it.
- And so the next step, the city had to find someone else
- to take up the campaign, to run the CETA
- program for small agencies.
- And so Bill Johnson of the Urban League came forward.
- And he stepped up to the plate and really showed
- what needed to be done and did a excellent job in undoing
- the damage done by the United Way.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Was this a turning point
- for the Gay Alliance in terms of becoming visible
- in the community?
- JOHN NOBLE: Yes.
- Yes, up to that point there were probably
- a lot of people who didn't know what the Gay Alliance was.
- But there was no one in Rochester or Monroe County
- after the big CETA controversy who
- hadn't heard of the Gay Alliance and what they were up to
- and what they were trying to do and what their agenda was.
- So there was a big change.
- And it also forced the Alliance to really professionalize.
- Before that, it was primarily a volunteer organization
- with very limited resources.
- Now, all of a sudden, they had a staff to manage
- and really needed to become much more professional.
- And over the last thirty years, they have continued to do that.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: In this course of time with the CETA
- funding and other things, you kind of took it upon yourself
- to be almost a community watchdog of local government
- and even state government.
- In regards to what was being done
- and what was not being done for gay communities and gay rights,
- talk to me a little bit about what you were noticing out
- there, what you were seeing out there, and more importantly,
- what were you trying to change?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, there were very few
- openly gay elected officials.
- There were a tremendous number of closeted ones,
- I'm not going to mention names today.
- But Rochester, at one point had three successive,
- shall we say, professional bachelor mayors that
- lived downtown in hotels or lived with their mama
- well into their fifties.
- And so we really needed to shake the community by its roots
- and start moving forward.
- The issue was, Rochester had always
- had a reputation of being an open and accessible community,
- but people weren't aware of what that really meant
- and needed to be reminded.
- There had been a number of gay members of the City Council.
- At that point, in the seventies, we had Tim Mains,
- but he was not the first and he has subsequently not
- been the last.
- But he is probably the most well known.
- And the irony of his election was that people, they rate--
- the right wing did a smear campaign on him
- and really tried to defeat him when he ran for the first time.
- And the person who was next to him in line,
- they went to court to try to find eight votes for her,
- and they couldn't find the eight votes, so Tim won the election.
- The irony of it is there's more than idle speculation
- that she was a closet lesbian.
- So they were going to get a gay person one way or the other.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: How did you, over the course of time,
- how have you seen things change in regards to--
- JOHN NOBLE: Oh, yeah.
- I mean, the fact that there's now a openly gay City
- Councilman still, and when he was elected,
- it was a big yawn, the fact that he was gay.
- Back when Tim was running, they talked
- about self-avowed homosexual, whatever
- that was, and really tried to gin up
- the hysteria against him.
- There have been openly gay County Legislators.
- There have been openly gay town officials, town councilman,
- and the ones that are deep in the closet tend
- to be Republicans.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm going to go back
- a little bit about CETA funding because that was under Ryan's
- administration, right?
- JOHN NOBLE: Um-hm.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Can we talk a little bit
- about Mayor Ryan and his whole response to,
- not only the CETA funding, but just really the--
- JOHN NOBLE: --who are the gays and where did they come from?
- Yes.
- Tom Ryan was a good Irish Catholic boy
- from the city, former US marine, and this was all
- foreign to him.
- And he had a wonderful Vice Mayor, Midge Costanza.
- I don't need to say anything more to people who know her.
- She went on to the White House to be Jimmy Carter's liaison
- for Public Affairs.
- So it was Midge who really had to teach
- Tom Ryan who the gays were, where they came from,
- and where they lived.
- And the irony was, at that point,
- Tom didn't realize that most of the gays lived in his district.
- He was only a district councilman.
- He was not an at large councilman.
- Tim was elected city wide, so he had
- no one particular neighborhood to be responsible for.
- He had the whole city.
- And so Midge really educated Tom, and Tom came around.
- It was a little slow at times, Tom also
- had to listen to-- there were crazed Democrats
- on the council then who weren't too
- happy that the gay community was starting
- to be publicly visible, and really made
- it difficult for him.
- But he navigated that minefield very well.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Still, with CETA funding,
- I want to just touch a little bit more
- about Bill Johnson and the Urban League, and then step forward.
- Because we kind of know why he stepped up to the plate,
- because there was money involved.
- JOHN NOBLE: Um-hm.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: But then in the administration of those funds,
- what was the relationship like with the Urban
- League in administering those funds,
- and the relationship between the Gay Alliance and the Urban
- League?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, as far as I remember, it was good.
- And the staff that Bill Johnson had at the Urban League
- were open and accessible to the community,
- so I don't think there were any great problems.
- And I know that, for this history,
- you will be talking to Bill Johnson,
- so his role is pretty clear.
- And granted, an administrator of a agency like the Urban League
- is always going to come up when there's money.
- But they all had to recognize that there was
- nothing wrong with the grant.
- They couldn't criticize the content or the plans
- or what we were proposing to do.
- There was nothing out of the ordinary,
- so they had to give us the money.
- And if he hadn't given us the money,
- we could have gone to court over that.
- And that's the last thing they wanted,
- the city, or the Urban League, or any of these agencies.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's about more political activism
- and involvement.
- JOHN NOBLE: OK.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's move beyond CETA grant.
- What was the next adventures that you started setting
- into-- political caucus--
- JOHN NOBLE: Yeah, the political caucus was a--
- Do you want me to turn that off?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I think so.
- Yeah, if you want to turn it off if it's interrupting
- you, or silence it.
- JOHN NOBLE: Do you know how to silence the damn thing?
- I don't.
- Come on.
- Here, that should--
- OK, I'm going to have a little water.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- So yeah, I just want to kind of move then beyond CETA funding,
- we got through that.
- What next got left on your plate?
- JOHN NOBLE: The next thing was looking
- at candidates for local office.
- We did a survey of candidates for City Council and the County
- Legislature and those types of offices.
- We also started to look at the State Legislature
- and Congressional Candidates.
- Some of them were startled to get surveys
- from an organized gay organization
- and they didn't seem to quite know how to handle it.
- I remember Charlie Rangel wrote us a nice note
- saying it was the most professional survey that he'd
- seen in a long time.
- And he was a new Congressman in those days.
- And we did it for the statewide congressional offices.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What were you hoping to gain?
- JOHN NOBLE: Visibility.
- For me personally, get some experience
- in dealing with the political issues, and also
- to look at ways that we could strengthen
- our own community here.
- We had a number of west side crackpots running
- for local office, there's no other way to describe them.
- And they really, they would write
- the most virulent comments on the survey and return
- it like they were doing just fine.
- And clearly, we knew these people shouldn't be elected
- and we should make it clear.
- And it got to the point that, like today,
- we have this AIDS remembrance garden in Highland Park,
- well I remember lobbying two members of the County
- Legislature, one of them said, "No way because Bob--"
- or not Bob--
- Cook-- the Conservative Party head--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Tom.
- JOHN NOBLE: "Tom Cook won't stand for it."
- And the other one said, "Well, if that's what you guys want,
- that's fine with me."
- And these were not--
- I knew these guys were not gay, but I needed their votes
- to get that AIDS remember garden passed.
- And one of them, I think we got the vote, and the other,
- wouldn't have voted for it if his life depended on it.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What does it say about Rochester
- as a community in it's response to gay rights and the way
- that we respond to the activism that's coming out
- of the gay community?
- JOHN NOBLE: OK.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Are we any different than anyone else?
- Or are we a little bit above board?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, there is a book,
- was written in the fifties, called Smugtown.
- And the son of the author is still with us.
- Curt Gerling was the author, Bill Gerling is the son.
- And Bill has always been supportive of the community.
- That book was written before there
- was an active gay community.
- Kurt knew there were gay people in Rochester
- but didn't want to make much about it.
- But there was an attitude in this town of live and let live.
- And that's something that goes back to the early days.
- I mean, if you look at Susan B, you look at Rauschenbusch,
- you look at Frederick Douglass, these people
- were, in the eyes of many, were troublemakers.
- But they always had great respect in the community.
- You look at stories of Frederick Douglass
- when he came back to Rochester from his days in Washington,
- he was always known as Fred Douglass.
- Today, who calls him Fred?
- But he was well-respected in the town.
- And he had a huge funeral.
- And the newspapers back in the 1890s actually
- ran photographs of the church with the mourners all in there.
- And that was unheard of in the 1890s,
- to have funereal pictures in the newspaper.
- But I would say that these folks, spokesmen and agitators,
- were really alive and really got this community
- thinking about who they were and where they were going.
- People may not have agreed with them,
- but they weren't considered dangerous.
- And so it was the live and let live attitude that prevailed.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Why--
- I'm not sure why or how, I'm not sure how to ask this.
- But why did it become such a passion for you
- to become so involved on the political level,
- on the activism level, as an activist for the gay community?
- Where did that passion come from?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, I've always--
- when I took on an issue, I stuck with it.
- And today, I see the results of a lot of the stuff
- that I did over the years when I wasn't getting
- any support from people in the community,
- and really just kept persevering,
- and now we have Smithsonian Institution coming
- to Rochester to receive our historic records.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So my next question
- is then, what do you think your greatest impact has been
- over the years in regards to the work
- that you have done for the community?
- JOHN NOBLE: I'd say, my consistency,
- if they avoided me this year, they
- were going to hear from me next year.
- And that was something they could be assured of.
- And really I never let it be said
- that I didn't follow through.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: At some point, you completely step away
- from political activism and gay activism.
- But you really became very much an advocate for history.
- This is why this whole project got started.
- JOHN NOBLE: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Why?
- Why is history--
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, I have my PhD in American History.
- And also I have been an archivist.
- And to be an archivist, you have to want
- to preserve the records of the community,
- or whatever group that you want to eventually look at.
- I have no particular interest to write
- the history of the gay community for the last forty years.
- I may be involved in assisting in the writing of that.
- But I need to know that I did my part
- to see that those records are available for those people who
- come along and want to write that history.
- And really that, I think, is the important element for me.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So when history looks back
- at the community of Rochester and the gay community
- of Rochester, what do you want them to know most about us,
- who we are?
- JOHN NOBLE: It's a diverse community.
- It's a community that great care and compassion for those
- that have less fortunate--
- it politically would stand up for the beliefs that we've had,
- individually and collectively.
- And I think those are worthwhile concepts and ideas to stand
- for.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: A similar question,
- when history and people look back at John Noble,
- and his life, what do you want them to know most about who
- you are and what you've been doing?
- JOHN NOBLE: I'd say it's an open book.
- I haven't really been concerned about that.
- It's nice to know that--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, what do you want
- them to know most about you?
- JOHN NOBLE: Bill and I started a project, I stayed with it.
- And I built the city archives up so it has survived without me.
- I trained my successor and seems to be going along
- quite well now.
- It's not the greatest or the hugest part of city government,
- but it is an integral part.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, that brings up
- an interesting question, because I
- know you've done some recent research in the city
- archives, particularly on gay issues and police raids and all
- that stuff, not a lot of information there.
- JOHN NOBLE: No.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What are your thoughts on that?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, I've talked to other people,
- my contemporaries, who I've also showed them
- where this stuff was and told them, look at it,
- and they found the same conclusions,
- that there isn't much.
- And I think it's fairly safe to say
- there weren't a lot of raids.
- The raids we know about were more
- contemporary, contemporary meaning
- within the last fifty years.
- The people who did that, I don't know
- what they thought they were going to survive or really--
- but it clearly was a less than successful--
- they would raid a bar, they'd take down license plates--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Were you ever in a bar that was raided?
- Did you ever witness any of this?
- JOHN NOBLE: No, but I would hear stories.
- And in other cities, I've been in clubs
- where they've been raided.
- But Rochester, generally it's that live and let
- live attitude.
- Now I don't know if the bar owners or club
- owners were paying off the police or the elected
- officials, but I did not see much
- in terms of those kinds of responses.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So, looking forward,
- what do you think our challenges are now?
- What do we still have to fight for?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, two years ago I moved to Massachusetts
- with my spouse.
- And I have come to the conclusion
- that, whether it's Rochester or the Boston area,
- now that marriage has passed--
- the decriminalization passed a long time ago,
- but I think people thought, well if we get marriage,
- there will be nothing else to do.
- But there are a lot of unresolved issues
- that need to be looked at.
- There is a need for education.
- There is a need for developing new tools
- to educate the community, the broader community
- and the gay community.
- And really that, I think, is going
- to be where our greatest need is going to be.
- I don't know what the future looks like.
- Right now, I'd say I'm not happy with what I see,
- that people are just kind of disappearing into the woodwork.
- And that, I don't look on as an optimistic approach.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Explain that.
- What do you mean by that?
- JOHN NOBLE: OK.
- Well, rather than staying involved,
- they're just disappearing back--
- people don't necessarily go to the bars,
- they don't necessarily--
- they may go camping or they may go to a resort somewhere,
- but in terms of, in their own community,
- I don't see much going on, whether it's
- in Rochester or in Eastern Massachusetts.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Could that be one of those,
- be careful of what you wished for, kind of things?
- Here we were fighting for our rights
- to be able to assimilate ourselves into mainstream
- society, and now here we are.
- JOHN NOBLE: Now, here we are.
- Now, what's next?
- Possibly, but I think we have to maintain our vigilance,
- maintain our presence, and remind people we're still here
- and we're not going to take the kind of crap that--
- now this is the liberal part of the country,
- there are many parts of this country where there are still
- passing virulently anti-gay laws or draconian measures that
- are on issues of arrest and entrapment.
- Those communities are going to have
- to work on, at the federal level,
- there's a great deal of progress being done.
- One of the two major parties, I don't
- think I need to spell out which one,
- is going to probably include equal marriage
- rights in their national platform this year.
- That will be a big step forward, but it's not the final step.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Over the course of your activism
- and your work, again, whether it's
- your activism or your work as an historian, whatever,
- what are you most proud of?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, the fact that I
- was elected ten times to the New York State Democratic Committee
- and I was able to, shall we say, short circuit
- some strange things that the Democrats wanted to do over
- the years that would have, I think,
- been detrimental to the community.
- But I would say that the fact that I
- was on the state committee for twenty years
- and was really able to interact with people in New York City
- and other parts of the state.
- I was, for a long time, the senior openly gay state
- committeeman in New York.
- There were others, but in New York City,
- they wouldn't last long.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Over those twenty years,
- talk to me about, again, some of the things that you were
- seeing, some of the things that you were identifying as,
- oh, this is not good.
- And what were you doing to really try and kind of open
- their eyes or change their opinions?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, building coalitions with other state
- committee people really to short circuit these, shall we say--
- I don't want to impugn the motives of the people who
- are proposing these things, but I
- think suffice to say there was a lot of latent
- homophobia in their proposals.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Can you site an example of a proposal that
- may have been shut down?
- What were these people trying to do?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well that's just it, I don't know.
- I'd have to go back and research some of it,
- but it was a number of years ago that they
- would propose this stuff and really we
- needed to speak out against it.
- I mean, it got to the point that after they realized
- there were openly gay state committee members,
- the stuff they were proposing, that they proposed to the state
- legislature to take up, was going to fall on deaf ears.
- And so they backed off.
- But it was a number of small things
- that just were like, where are you guys coming from?
- And as I say, once they realized we were there
- and we weren't going away, then they backed off on this stuff,
- then they found other scapegoats.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: From a historical point of view,
- why is a project like this so important?
- Why should we care?
- JOHN NOBLE: Yep.
- Well, for the last several years I
- have been preaching the gospel of preserve our heritage
- and bring it forward and be proud of who we are
- and what we've accomplished with limited, very
- limited resources.
- And it's hard to pin point it down to one small item,
- but I think those are some of the issues
- that we need to look at, or continue to look at.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: But having a documentary,
- having archives sent to the Smithsonian--
- JOHN NOBLE: --or Cornell.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: --or Cornell, or wherever--
- to be permanently housed somewhere, again,
- what is the significance of that?
- Why are future generations going to really care
- about what we did here in the little town of Rochester?
- JOHN NOBLE: I'll give you a very specific example.
- When we first sent the records to Cornell,
- anytime anyone wanted to use them,
- they initially needed, through the archive staff
- at the Goodstein Archives, contact me
- as the representative for the Alliance.
- I was amazed at the number of graduate students
- doing master's and doctoral research in gay history.
- You don't always know where these people
- are going to come from.
- But once it was explained that they
- were all legitimate graduate students and not
- some crazed shooter going to come and shoot us all,
- there was no problem in approving access.
- That type of issue no longer is of concern,
- the crazy shooters are out there, but that's not a--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You talk a little bit about us
- kind of disappearing off of the face of our community.
- We have this young generation coming up behind us
- who are just interested in connecting to each other
- through their phones.
- And they're not out there.
- What would you be advising these young kids as to what
- they should be looking out for, what they should be doing
- to better their own lives?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, that's an issue
- that I've looked at for probably the last twenty,
- twenty-five years.
- I've been in New York City at some of these clubs.
- I don't even think these guys who are trying
- to hook up realize they're gay.
- They're just looking for the next hookup.
- Unfortunately, that's been an issue.
- I think we just need to have those resources available.
- The time will come when something or someone will shake
- the ground and those folks are going
- to realize they've got to stand up and we've just got to say,
- here's the stuff you've got to look at first before you decide
- to stand up.
- You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Anything that you
- were hoping to talk about that I didn't know enough to ask you?
- JOHN NOBLE: Let me see that list again.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I mean anything about gay bars and bath
- houses and stuff--
- JOHN NOBLE: Well you know, at one time--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: --I don't think we really
- need to get into that.
- JOHN NOBLE: At one time, there were
- three bathhouses in Rochester.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Who cares?
- JOHN NOBLE: And about ten gay bars--
- I have to put my glasses on to read,
- the City Attorney was only following orders
- when he harassed the Alliance on property taxes.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Oh, let's talk about that.
- Let's get rid of that paper.
- Yeah, forget about that.
- Let's talk about the issue about the Gay Alliance
- and their property tax.
- Tell me that story.
- What was that all about and how did it get resolved?
- JOHN NOBLE: Well, it seems that Mayor Ryan was annoyed, pissed
- off, at Councilman Tim Mains.
- And so when the Alliance bought the Elton Street property,
- they denied--
- and this was the first property that the Alliance had bought,
- before we had always rented.
- They said--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Who said?
- JOHN NOBLE: The City Assessor and the City Corporation
- Council, right up to the Mayor, "Well, you guys
- don't fit the criteria for tax exemption."
- And after, there was no negotiating
- with the City on that.
- And we kind of had a suspicion of why they were being such--
- I don't want to say the word, but you get the picture.
- We voted to take the City to court.
- One of our board members was an attorney,
- she went on to become a city court Judge.
- I think she's still on the court.
- But she cleaned the City's clock.
- And the Judge said, "Not only did they meet the criteria,
- this is finally a resolution of the longstanding--
- what is the third pillar of tax exemption.
- They had educational, religious, and the cultural things."
- And we pointed out all the things
- we were doing in terms of community based projects.
- And the Judge, who was a conservative Republican,
- backed us and fined the City for malicious denial of the tax
- exemption.
- And so Lou Cash's position always was, "Oh,
- I was only following orders."
- He looked like Colonel Klink when he would say that.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What was their initial argument?
- JOHN NOBLE: That we didn't meet the criteria for tax exemption,
- we didn't hold classes.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You didn't hold classes?
- JOHN NOBLE: Yeah, we didn't teach people how to be gay.
- I don't know.
- But it was not a very solid argument
- and the Judge saw through it.
- And the decision was so monumental
- that the daily legal paper in New York City
- had a front page story about it.
- This was a landmark decision coming out of Rochester
- involving not for profits and, in this case,
- a gay organization.
- So we cleaned their clocks.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Set it up for me.
- Because this was not only a gay issue for the Gay Alliance,
- but if the city had won, they could
- have taken the exemption away from a number of non-profits.
- JOHN NOBLE: That is correct.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me a little bit about that scenario.
- JOHN NOBLE: We were being very parochial in our interests,
- we weren't caring what happened to others,
- we wanted our tax exemption.
- And really we had our own attorney who took the case
- and she just demolished their argument.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: But did other people in the community,
- particularly other non-profits, have
- any idea what was going on?
- Did they have any idea that this could also impact them?
- JOHN NOBLE: I don't think so.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.
- JOHN NOBLE: I think that was beyond the pale for most
- of them.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yet again, was that yet
- another turning point for the Gay Alliance as far as--
- JOHN NOBLE: Oh, yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: --community.
- And after that, did we ever have any trouble
- with the city anymore?
- JOHN NOBLE: No more.
- No more.
- Ryan realized he had to make peace with Tim.
- And the Mayor was kind of--
- he could be very petty at times, but he was a wonderful man.
- I mean, I have no complaints about him.
- He just, at times--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, you had to work for him.
- JOHN NOBLE: Well I didn't work directly for him,
- but I worked in the City Hall.
- And he was always a good guy, but boy, when
- he'd get on a tear, watch out.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: All right, good--