Video Interview, Susan Jordan, January 21, 2013

CREW: OK.

I am rolling, sir.

KEVIN INDOVINO: All right.

So Susan, the first thing I need you to do officially

is give us the correct spelling of your first

and last name as you want it to appear on screen.

SUSAN JORDAN: S-U-S-A-N J-O-R-D-A-N.

KEVIN INDOVINO: And your title for The Empty Closet is--

SUSAN JORDAN: Editor.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Editor?

OK.

I could do one--

SUSAN JORDAN: Hm?

CREW: I'm rolling, sir.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, Susan.

So the first thing I want to do is

I want to get to know a little bit about you

before The Empty Closet.

SUSAN JORDAN: Back in the early Jurassic period.

KEVIN INDOVINO: What were you doing?

What was life like for you before we all came to know you?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, I was born in a little town in the Jersey

Shore called Manasquan.

And I didn't move to Rochester until 1972.

So, actually, I went to library school.

And when I came to Rochester, I often

worked as a substitute librarian.

And I had my MLS.

I was a substitute librarian in city schools,

or actually, a whole area of schools.

But actually, I should have gone to journalism school

as it turned out.

Because, actually, during summer vacations--

there was a little newspaper in Manasquan called The Coast

Star.

And the editor Tom Burkhead had worked

as a reporter for years in New York and northern New Jersey,

and been a beat reporter, and then had heart problems.

So he resigned from that and became

editor of this little weekly newspaper, The Coast Star.

So at age sixteen, he had me out doing feature stories,

covering town council meetings.

And, basically, he taught me to go out and get the story

and bring it back and write it up and put a head on it

and do that by the deadline.

So I found all that much more interesting

than library science.

And when I came to Rochester, I just

basically got hired to do The Empty Closet in June 1989.

And also, I'd done a lot of writing.

I published several chapbooks of poetry.

And I did some poetry readings around different places,

including one in New York City with Audrey Lorde

and various people and so on.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Wow.

SUSAN JORDAN: And again, you can't make money doing that.

And I didn't want to go into the academic world

or be a librarian.

So this job opened up, and I went to the interview

and got the job.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's not go there quite yet.

So you said you came to Rochester's--

CREW: Sorry, sir, I--

Nope.

SUSAN JORDAN: Whatever.

KEVIN INDOVINO: No, it's OK.

CREW: I heard a couple of clicks.

It's more of a preventive action than anything.

Rolling again.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

So you said you came to Rochester in 1972.

What were you finding here in Rochester?

Particularly, now, were you out as a gay woman by this time?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, not exactly.

I was discovering all that.

I moved to Rochester because some

of the friends I knew in college lived in Rochester.

And they were some of the most interesting people I knew.

And I got here, and was hanging out with them,

and discovered and eventually noticed they were all lesbians.

And I thought, hmm, what does that mean about me?

But actually, up until the time I

was hired in 1989 to work for the Gay Alliance,

I was not really involved with the gay community as much.

I was more involved with the women's community

and with feminist organizing.

And I worked on a grassroots women's newspaper

called The New Women's Times, which ran around 1975, 1984.

And I was really involved with, almost entirely with,

the review supplements, the Feminist Review.

And that was started in New York City by the New York Feminist

Writers Guild, or Women's Writers Guild, or whatever.

And eventually, they passed it onto the women in Rochester.

So I learned a lot about editing and about doing

layout and so forth from the women at New Women's Times,

or NWT.

Especially Martha Gever, who was this very brilliant writer,

video taper, and editor.

She taught me a lot about the basics of layout and so forth.

So when I came to The Empty Closet

I was not a professional graduate of journalism school

or anything.

But I had some, pretty much, hands on experience

for a long time.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, it's interesting then.

Because you weren't so actively involved in the gay community

and such.

But The New Women's Times, there was this synergy

between the lesbian movement and the women's movement.

Can you talk to me a little bit about that

and what you remember?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, Karen Hagberg

was one of the founders of The New Women's Times,

along with Martha Brown, the late Martha

Brown, and Maxine Sobel.

And they were all lesbians.

There was always a major lesbian thing.

It wasn't just a newspaper for lesbians.

It was for women.

It was a feminist publication.

And I think to some extent, there was--

especially Karen Hagberg.

She was one of the early founders of the Gay Alliance.

I was completely out of the picture at that point.

I was just working on women's issues.

But I know that a lot of lesbians

who were involved with the Gay Alliance

said, oh, it's all male focused.

And they broke away for a while and founded gay evolution

of women, or grow.

I wasn't involved with any of that.

But I was involved with Women Against Violence Against Women,

who were protesting against male violence against women.

And also objectification of women in art and advertising

and so on.

And so it was pretty much a merging of feminism

and gay liberation in the early years, early 70s, mid 70s.

KEVIN INDOVINO: How did things then

start to evolve for you to the point where, OK, in 1989,

you're applying for the job for the gay newspaper?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, again, it was The New Women's Times

who had been a gay newspaper in a sense, or up to a point.

So it wasn't a huge thing.

But back in 1989, we didn't say LGBT.

Of course, it was gay community, in which

ticked off a lot of lesbians who didn't

think of themselves as gay.

And nowadays, some women say I'm a gay woman and so forth.

But actually, I was hired in June 1989.

And I was thinking, oh, this is great.

My first issue is the August issue.

It's just like sixteen pages.

There won't be any big, complicated news stories.

And I can get used to learning how to do this.

And of course, as soon as I started,

Jackie Nudd leaves AIDS Rochester.

And it was a big complicated story.

And I suddenly realized, this was

going to be a little more difficult than I had thought.

I had to get to know a whole lot of people in the gay community

very quickly, educate myself.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So that leads me to a question regarding, not

on your perspective, but as it sounds to me, almost

like an awakening for you of the significance

that The Empty Closet has in this community.

A source for information, and a source for news and resources.

When did you first start getting that sense of how important

this newspaper really was?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, I think as I started

work it was pretty obvious that it

was very important to the whole gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

And at that point, we had never even heard

the term transgender.

I think by the previous editor, Michelle Springmore,

was a professional journalist.

She'd been to St. John Fisher and graduated

with a degree in journalism.

And she had really upped the quality of the paper.

She wasn't the first paid editor,

but she was one of the early ones.

So I think I was aware that she was

doing a very good job covering the early years of ACT

UP in Rochester, and just doing a really professional job.

And of course, I was very anxious.

And so I didn't have her professional credentials that,

not only would I be able to learn the basic skills,

but would I be able to keep the paper on a more

journalistic level that she had brought it to?

And it was just leaping in, getting to know people,

and trying to educate yourself.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's step back a bit in that first story

with Jackie Nudd leaving AIDS Rochester.

Talk me through what was going on,

not only with the paper, what was going on

with you personally in regards to, oh my god, this

is my first month, my first edition--

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, I don't remember too much about it

except for anxiety attacks.

But it's just a question of talking to Jackie Nudd

and starting to talk to people at AIDS Rochester.

And that's what journalists do.

They talk to people and illicit information.

And sometimes people don't want to give that information.

So that was just the beginning for me

of what turned out to be twenty-four years of learning

the hard way.

But it's been fascinating.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I hope so.

You've been with it a long time.

SUSAN JORDAN: And I'm very grateful to the gay men

and the bi and trans people I've known

who've educated me generously about experiences that were not

my own.

KEVIN INDOVINO: At what point, from your first impressions

of the newspaper, when you took it over in 1989,

what point did you then start getting comfortable enough

of being then able to maybe take it in a new direction,

or to expand on what The Empty Closet was doing at that time?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, one major change that I made, I think,

was maybe in 1992, or even earlier.

Because back in those days, when you did the layout,

you printed out all the stories in long strips.

Then you had these eleven by seventeen pieces

of graph paper called boards.

And you pasted the strips of copy

onto the boards using hot wax.

You had your waxer and you put in that little pellet of wax,

put that on there and everything.

And that was the copy that went to the printer

to be photographed.

And so it had to be immaculate.

And any changes, you had to have special pale blue Magic Markers

to make corrections with and so on.

So about 1992-- and of course, the paper looked--

oh, and then in the next month, if you wanted

to reuse any logos or graphics or anything for the next issue,

you had to cut it out of the boards with your X-Acto knife.

And to soften the hardened wax, you

use benzene, which is carcinogenic.

So it was really fun, and plus, made

the paper look sloppy and homemade,

unless you were a really super gifted graphic designer.

I was a writer, and still am, actually.

So about 1992, I decided to try desktop publishing.

And I fortunately had some great volunteers, Joan Pacino

and Ellen Mahaffey, who were very good photographers

and artists.

And they had some experience with desktop publishing.

And they were eager to do more.

So they saved me.

And they got me started desktop publishing the paper.

And after they moved away, I had other great volunteers.

Victor Cardoso, Brad Peace, people who really

knew what they were doing.

But basically, for over ten years, I, a writer,

had basic responsibility for doing all the layout.

And then we used a program called PageMaker.

And it was a terrible realization

that if you're not careful, desktop publishing

could be sold in just a sloppy and homemade

looking product is the old way, with hot wax method.

But gradually, I kept doing that.

But by 2004, fortunately, we finally

hired our first professional paid

graphic designer, Don Alberich.

And he moved us from PageMaker to InDesign.

We still use InDesign.

But after Don left town a few years later,

we were fortunate to hire Jim Anderson, who's very talented.

And he's still doing graphic design for us today.

And now the paper looks a lot more professional.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I still want to jump back

a little bit, that first year of working on the paper.

Did you get a sense of this big responsibility of what

was now being at your helm of--

the significance, the importance of this paper,

and the responsibility that comes with it?

SUSAN JORDAN: Sure.

And it was not just the responsibility of,

I have to do my job right or I'll lose my job.

It was also that it meant so much to people.

And there were two different areas.

For one thing, it was helpful to educate

the straight community about gay people

in our lives and our humanity and so forth and our issues.

And even more important to me was

to reach out to isolated or closeted gay people

and say being gay is OK.

And back in 1989, as in the 1970s,

I think that those were the main issues.

That you were saying to everyone, but especially

to gay people, that this is a normal part

of human experience.

It's not a sickness.

It's so forth and so on.

And that was very important.

And it's a big responsibility.

And fortunately, the Gay Alliance and all the volunteers

helped me out.

I didn't feel that I was the only person in town who had

responsibility for doing this.

And one thing the paper's always done,

it's been a community building project.

And I think that it's brought so many people together,

volunteers of all different kinds.

And so, as I said before, a lot of people have educated me

and helped me do this.

KEVIN INDOVINO: From your perspective and what

you've known about the Rochester community

as a whole, what does it say about Rochester

and who we are that we could have, what is now,

one of the oldest running gay newspapers in the country?

SUSAN JORDAN: Rochester's community

has always seemed to be pretty well organized and pretty

strong, even back in the 70s.

All this started happening, of course, as you know,

at University of Rochester and so forth.

And it's pretty much kept going since then.

It's just been a community building

project for hundreds of people.

I mean literally hundreds of people

have been involved, not just with the paper,

but the Gay Alliance board and volunteering over the years.

And I think back in 1989, Tim Mains, only four years before,

had been elected to city council as, I think,

the first openly gay elected official in New York state.

Or maybe it was even the country for all I know.

And even then, it was grassroots political organizing.

But it was also pretty well structured

compared to other cities in New York state, at least.

I don't know about all over the country.

But I think it continues to be grassroots.

There's still a lot of just ordinary people getting

involved.

But now it's more in coordination

with the State Pride Agenda and with the Gay Alliance.

So we've had both grassroots and more structured

organizing over the years.

And no matter how structured it gets, it's still grassroots.

Because we're not all being paid to become

activists or something.

It's people who feel committed to equality.

They see injustice.

They want to correct it.

And also, that eventful year of 1989 was our first pride march.

The very month that I was hired is the first pride march.

Of course, in those days, they were very grassroots.

Laurie Matoka, now Laurie Hertelin, Marge Booker,

and other women organized the first prides.

And they were much more political.

But it wasn't hours of boring rhetoric.

It was fun, and dressing up like prom dates

in 1950 or something.

It wasn't this boring, politically correct event.

But it was very politically oriented in a grassroots way.

And since then, pride's all over the country

have been more like corporate sponsored boozing and cruising

parties than political events.

And that's true everywhere.

Not just Rochester.

So that's been a big change.

But I think the Rochester community, even

compared to Buffalo or Albany or smaller towns

like that, we've always really had a lot of committed people.

And they move away, and other committed people

have come to take their place.

I'm not quite sure why that is.

But it's good.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, and that leads me to the next question.

From your vantage point, from your work

with The New Women's Times in the 70s, to then now

you work with The Empty Closet, you've

seen the evolvement of the gay community in Rochester.

You've seen the good, you've seen the bad.

You've seen the different sectors that have broken off.

Just talk to me a little bit about that evolution

of who we are as a community and what

you've been able to witness from your vantage point.

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, I've never really worked it out

as some sort of neat little equation.

It's always been there have been many people

in the gay community, or the LGBT community,

who have not been at all interested in politics.

They have not been active with the Alliance.

And yet, they've benefited in some ways from activism.

Not only by the Alliance, but all the different types

of activism that have been going on.

So I think it's really hard to generalize.

I would like to think that things are getting

a little more political now and a little less assimilationist,

if you like.

There's always been a split between the liberationists

and the assimilationists.

But I don't really hear that much more about it.

I think today the problem is more complacency.

It's like, well, we can get married,

and we have our rights, and nobody's trying

to burn us in the marketplace.

So everything is fine.

We don't have to get involved.

We don't have to work with the Pride Agenda or the Gay

Alliance and so forth.

And I think that's a little dangerous.

I think we're still in a backlash period.

We could still lose everything we had.

So I'm all for people being politically active and aware.

There's always been resistance to that.

You would go into a gay bar with political fliers.

We don't want anything political. and so forth.

But that's not just true of Rochester.

I think it's true of everywhere.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm going to jump ahead,

and then I'm going to go back.

Looking at where we are today, and how we get our news,

and how we socialize with people,

where is the place for a newspaper like The Empty Closet

in today's society?

What are the challenges that you're facing now?

SUSAN JORDAN: Oh, there's always been challenges.

I think a few years ago I researched LGBT papers

across the country, and I was amazed to find out

there are still hundreds of them out there.

And I thought maybe, oh, 30 or 40.

Hundreds of small, gay papers all across the country.

And nowadays, of course, like the Gay Alliance

and The Empty Closet, they have their websites, their Facebook

pages, and their Twitter accounts.

We have all of that.

The social media has been wonderful in many ways.

But there's print media still out there.

People still need something to hold in their hands

and pass around.

And even people who are online all the time

and have 500 handheld devices and so on, well,

if your battery runs out or there's a power outage,

you can still grab the print version.

But no, I think it's still needed and wanted.

And as far as challenges, one challenge

has always been financial.

And of course, the Gay Alliance has always

been able to subsidize the paper.

Sometimes to a greater, or sometimes to a lesser degree,

depending on how many ads we sell.

And we do pretty well with ads.

But people say, oh, The Empty Closet doesn't make money.

Well, guess what, folks?

No publication is a cash cow.

The mainstream media are struggling.

The Gannett empire is struggling to keep going.

It's not just The Empty Closet, or not just small nonprofits.

In today's economy, it's very hard

to keep any publication going.

Even the New Orleans's historic Times-Picayune,

that doesn't exist anymore.

And yet, the little Empty Closet goes on.

And it's partly because of the strength of the gay community

and how this has been a community building

project for forty years now.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about the importance

of being able to walk into a coffee shop,

or a library, or some other business, Parkleigh,

or whatever, and there's a stack of The Empty Closets there.

Tell me of the importance, the significance,

of that aspect of it for this community.

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, I think The Empty Closet has always

been a free publication.

And if you want a subscription, obviously, we

have to charge so we can cover the postage.

But it's always been available for free at all kinds of sites.

We have sixty or seventy sites--

actually, probably over seventy now--

precisely because people could go in and grab their gay paper

and leave without having to go up and confront the cashier

with the gay publication.

I'd like to think that's less necessary these days,

But not always.

Not entirely.

You still need people to be able to grab it, and be

closeted, and not have to reveal their choice of publication.

Because in the old days, that could get you beaten up,

even killed.

And today, in some places, that can still happen.

We were never there to make money in the first place.

We were there for two reasons.

To educate the straight community

about gay people's lives and the fact that we're human beings,

and also, to tell gay people that being gay is OK.

Please don't hate yourself.

Please don't commit suicide.

You have a right to basic human rights.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's expand on that a little bit,

about The Empty Closet as being a resource for people.

It's not just news, information.

It's not stories about what's happening.

But it's a resource.

SUSAN JORDAN: Exactly.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to particularly focus,

if you can in there as well--

and I know you came into it in 1989,

we're well into the AIDS epidemic

by then-- but The Empy Closet became, and still is,

a significant resource for AIDS information and AIDS health

care.

SUSAN JORDAN: Yeah, and I think the Rochester community rallied

very strongly to fight the AIDS epidemic

right from the beginning.

I mean, AIDS Rochester was founded in 1983.

Bill Valenti started CHN, Community Health Network, 1989,

I think.

Paul Scheib and Martin Hiraga and others

started ACT UP in Rochester in 1989, helping people with AIDS,

was out there raising money for both services and treatment.

And then once state and federal funding for treatment

started to come in, they were still

out there raising money for services.

And as far as other kinds of connection,

I'll never forget, I don't know if you knew,

the late Jack Gorman.

But he was this elderly person who once told me

that reading about what was then called

Rainbow Seniors in The Empty Closet

had just transformed his life.

And that he was able to connect with that group.

And also Karen Hagberg recently blogged

about the history of the Gay Alliance

on the Huffington Post.

And one anonymous person commented

that he had been a gay youth in Rochester way back when

and was able to connect with other gay youth

through reading the paper.

And to me, that's what's really important.

People were able to connect with each other

and survive through those connections.

And I think that's maybe more important.

But it's also true that people here

need to know what's happening around the country,

need to know what's happening around the world,

with other gay people in some ways.

Today in Africa, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, people

are going through the same things

we went through in the 1970s.

And I think people need to know that.

Even if they're not interested, I think they should be.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Some of these questions

are going to sound like repeats.

But I just want to make sure we've got it covered.

For you personally, how does it feel

being at the helm of one of the oldest

gay newspapers in the country, and one that's still thriving?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, I don't really

think of it in that terms.

I don't think about the past so much.

Because I'm always living a month ahead of everybody.

I'm thinking about next month.

What are we going to promote?

What events are coming up?

And so forth.

So I'm always living a month ahead.

And I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about it all.

But I think there are, as I said,

hundreds of little gay newspapers around the country.

And the fact that we were created

in '71 at University of Rochester,

that's interesting history.

But to me, it's just a question of, well, it's been forty years

and we're still around, and we're still needed,

and we've been working.

The Gay Alliance essentially works

to put itself out of business.

And some people think everything is solved

and everything is fine now.

But gay and lesbian and trans kids

who get harassed or beaten up every day at school

could tell you, everything is not fine.

Any kind of queer person who gets beaten up on the street

and attacked physically, or families

that can't get national recognition because of DOMA,

the Defensive Marriage Act, which prevents

our families from being recognized,

they could all tell you the work isn't over yet.

Far from it.

Not even close.

So I think it's a question of, yeah, fine, we did forty years.

But what are we going do to keep surviving

and keep meeting these people's needs right now?

I find that more interesting, really.

More of a challenge.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Over the course of the years

that you've been involved with the paper,

is there any significant story that really stands out for you?

A story that says to you, yeah, my work on this paper

is really important.

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, there have been so many.

It's just hard to single out one.

You've got to talk about something about gay elders,

or about gay youth.

I interviewed Jamie Nabozny, who is one of the people who's

been very influential in getting the harassment

and torture that youth go through.

Getting that recognized and addressed.

But I think just from the point of view

of personal satisfaction and interest,

one of the more interesting stories I've worked on

was a few years ago, we did a series of historical looks

back at the Rochester community.

And we did the origins of the Gay Alliance,

or Women Against Violence Against Women

and The New Women's Times.

One of the ones I enjoyed most was

the history of local gay bars.

It was fascinating.

And I talked to so many pioneers,

like Whitey LeBlanc and Paul Scheib and Karen Hagberg.

And I learned a lot about what went on here, certainly

before I was conscious of the gay movement in Rochester.

And I think it's just a question of--

I think the history part was very important.

Because it's just hard to single out a particular story

that meant the most.

But each one can involve people's lives.

There were many interesting ones.

Let's see.

I had another point I was going to make,

but now I forget what it was.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Take a moment.

I'm looking over my questions here.

See if I forgot anything.

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, let's see.

Well, one interesting person I met, or I didn't meet,

but I talked to, was Bob Osborne.

And as far as the history of the Gay Alliance

and how that all changed, he was a grad student at U of R.

He was at Stonewall.

He came back and started the Gay Liberation Front.

And he continued to write for the paper.

He had moved to Toronto.

And I didn't meet him personally,

but we were in contact.

And he kept writing for the paper right up until his death,

until about 2002.

I might be interested in the future of doing something

about Bob Osborne, and looking aback

at some of the articles he wrote shortly before his death

and tracing all the way back to 1971, when he first

got everything started at University of Rochester.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Expand on that a little bit then.

What do you think about people like Bob Osborne and Karen

Hagberg and those people who, in 1971, put their lives at risk

to say, hey, here we are, and we're going to come together?

SUSAN JORDAN: Sure.

Or people like Tim Mains.

He didn't have to come out.

He got death threats for his first campaign

for city council.

So I'm thinking one important factor was Stonewall,

apparently.

And I know Bob Osborne and also Patty Evans were at Stonewall.

And once that happened, that gave permission to people

all over the country to say, hey, this

is a legitimate civil rights issue.

And we're fighting for justice.

And once people get that in their heads,

it's hard to kill an idea.

KEVIN INDOVINO: But that seed was then planted here

in Rochester, and it grew.

SUSAN JORDAN: It sure did.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Quickly.

Why do you think that is?

What is it about Rochester that allowed that to happen?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, a lot of people

say there's a history in Rochester of social justice.

Obviously, Susan B. Anthony and suffrage, Frederick Douglass.

Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, and her parents

were very strong abolitionists and so forth.

So there's a history.

Even though Rochester's seen a smug town

and there's also a history of very conservative people,

George Eastman didn't want his workers

to unionize and so forth.

But there's also been a history of very strong movements

for social justice.

That's part of it.

But why the gay community in Rochester

has always been strong or been able to deal with all this?

I don't know.

I see that as a mystery.

And people have explanations for it.

I don't really.

I think partly a lot of educated people came to U of R.

It had enough education to be at the point

where they understood the history of social justice

movements and so on.

But I don't have an easy explanation.

Because for one thing, there's always

been a mixture of very active political activists,

and also, totally apolitical people who despised all that.

And yet, the apolitical people were

able to see that, yeah, my life would be much better if I

had equal rights, and so on.

And then the activists were able to say, well,

we're having this pride march.

Come and hear people talk about how your life could

be made better and how you can avoid being fired from your job

for being gay or denied housing and so on.

And because it was a legitimate social justice movement, people

who were apolitical were able to see,

well, this is to my advantage to start

getting educated about this, and writing to my congressman,

or marching in the pride parade.

But I don't have an easy, simple equation for you.

KEVIN INDOVINO: You've been at a vantage point

where you've been able to witness a really

diverse group of people.

Gays, lesbians, transgendered people, young, old.

We can categorize some of them as bearers and some of them

as--

There's so many different categories

within the gay community.

SUSAN JORDAN: That's always been a big challenge.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.

But how do you feel when you witness the fact that we all

tend to come together as, really,

a very strong, cohesive unit.

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, it's obviously

encouraging and heartening to feel

that people haven't fragmented, that we stick together.

And when you think about it, what do, say, a middle aged,

wealthy, white banker from Pittsburgh

have in common with a fourteen-year-old black kid who

lives in the inner city?

They're both gay.

Other than that--

And you can see splits within the national gay movements

of gay Republicans.

Some of them are very devoted to working for gay rights.

Others are very devoted to being Republicans

and very much against their own gay rights.

And so it's just never been easy.

And people of different races have been completely left out.

And middle class white people have kind of said, well,

I'm entitled to set the agenda and be in the spotlight.

And it hasn't gone over all that well

with those who are not white or middle class or whatever.

And yet, somehow, when pride day comes,

we're all out there on the street.

Or when election comes, we are going

to be voting for the people that support our rights.

We're not stupid.

KEVIN INDOVINO: How do you want history

to reflect upon you in the work that you've

done for The Empty Closet?

What do you want people in future generations

to know most about who you are and what you've done?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, I don't think

it's important to be remembered, personally.

I think if they have decent lives,

and we get rid of some of this tea party craziness,

and gay people can have their families

and marriage's recognized nationally,

and people are no longer being slaughtered on the street,

and things like that, then I could be happy

being remembered as one of the people that

worked to make that happen.

I don't really see myself as being

remembered at all, personally.

KEVIN INDOVINO: This is going to be a real odd question.

SUSAN JORDAN: Oh, I love odd questions.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So you can give me an odd answer.

SUSAN JORDAN: I always do.

KEVIN INDOVINO: But because you've

been at the helm of The Empty Closet for so long,

you are somewhat of a celebrity in the gay community.

What are your feelings about that?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, I notice sometimes people recognize me.

I tempted to maybe put a picture of Kasha Davis

over my editorial or something.

People like, jeez, Susan's looking better these days.

I don't know.

It doesn't really affect me that much.

If people are going to be nice about it

and say, oh, I read the paper all the time, obviously,

I feel good.

It's not something that I run across a whole lot of,

people thinking of me as well-known.

I'd just as soon not be.

Journalists are not supposed to be the stars.

And I don't think that's good journalism.

KEVIN INDOVINO: True.

But it does harper back to my first question then.

And I'm going to put it out there,

you are a bit of a celebrity in the gay community

because of who you are and what you do.

But again, there comes a great responsibility for what you do.

And I just want you to maybe review that for me

again about what is that responsibility that you have?

How do you best approach that?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, various responsibilities.

I'm an employee of the Gay Alliance board.

So I have a responsibility to the Gay Alliance board

to not publish things that would make the Gay Alliance look bad

or harm the Gay Alliance.

And then on another level, I have a responsibility

to serve the gay community and provide information they need.

Whether they want it or not, I'm going to provide it.

So yeah, it's a lot of responsibility.

I also just enjoy the process of putting together

my little newspaper.

And there's certain things I won't miss at all when

the day comes that I retire.

But I think life will be empty without having

that little task every month.

I'll have to find new tasks and projects.

But I've just thoroughly enjoyed it.

And I don't feel like I've been this suffering

saint or anything.

I've just been doing my job, earning my paycheck,

trying to bring people together in a positive way.

And there's always a tendency for things to fall apart,

or for people to argue, or to have

personality conflicts, or political disagreements,

or just to fragment.

Activists burn out, or they move away,

or they get new jobs that take up all their time and energy.

And there's always the responsible,

how do we keep it going?

Should we keep it going?

Is there still a need?

Well, obviously, there's still a need for the Gay Alliance

and for all kinds of communication, whether print

or on the social media.

And as long as that's the case, people

have to keep doing their job and keep it going.

And it's hard to imagine a world in which gay people will

have absolutely equal rights.

There won't be any more gay bashing going on,

and our families will be just like any other family.

We're not there yet.

KEVIN INDOVINO: This drives to one main question that I really

need to ask you then.

Where does the passion come from for you?

What is it?

Why do you enjoy this so much?

SUSAN JORDAN: Oh, well, I just love writing.

Some people hate it and dread it, but I enjoy it.

And there's parts of the job that are much more

difficult that I don't enjoy.

But I love the writing.

I love putting it all together, of which issues

or what's happening next month?

What events should we emphasize?

And not just Gay Alliance events,

although that's our central focus, but of what's

going on in the community?

What do people need to know?

Or what should they know?

What's going on nationally?

You become an information junkie.

And you're out there checking the blogs

and so forth and so on.

And it becomes, I guess, a bit of an addiction

to process that news and get it out there

where people can use it.

So I suppose it will be difficult adjusting to a world

where I won't have to do that anymore.

Is that all you were asking?

Or is this something more?

KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm just trying to get a sense from you of--

because you've committed a good portion of your life

to this paper.

And I'm just trying to get a sense of you, why?

SUSAN JORDAN: Well, as I said, ever since I

was a teenager, working on The Coast Star,

I've loved doing this.

And I've always loved writing.

I'd like to have more time for my own writing.