Queer History Repeating (with Christina Cauterucci)

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Intro – 00:00

BLAIR HODGES: Welcome back to Relationscapes, where we're mapping the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other in order to build a more just world. I'm journalist Blair Hodges, introducing our guide in this episode, Christina Cauterucci.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Queer history is my history too, you know? Even though some of it feels hard for me to imagine, it's part of my life. And what I really wanted to do with this podcast is help other people feel that way, too—to make this history feel present and intimate and real in a way that helps us understand the connection with the current moment.

BLAIR HODGES: One of the most consequential moments in American civil rights history has been mostly forgotten. It played out just four years before I was born.

It was 1978. Conservative politicians wanted to ban gays and lesbians from working in California public schools. The outcome of that statewide initiative would have huge repercussions for the rest of the country, and young gay activists knew it. The battle was on.

And although it's been almost fifty years, their victory has surprising and urgent relevance for LGBTQ+ communities today. Journalist Christina Cauterucci tells the incredible story as host of season nine of Slate's podcast, Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs. Christina joins us to talk about it right now.

 

Introducing Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs – 1:52

 

BLAIR HODGES: Christina Cauterucci, welcome to Relationscapes.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Thanks so much for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: I want to kick the episode off by playing the trailer of your podcast, Gays Against Briggs. Then we'll talk about this amazing show you've written, produced, and hosted. Here's the trailer for Slow Burn from Slate Podcasts.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: From Slate Podcasts.

ACTIVIST: “So first it was Dade County.”

REPORTER: “Voters in the Miami area repealed civil rights for gay people by a 2-to-1 margin.”

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: In the late 1970s, cities around the country began rolling back anti-discrimination laws that protected gay people.

ACTIVIST: “And then it was Wichita, St. Paul, and Eugene.”

ACTIVIST: “Successful campaigns against the gay community, which shocked us all.”

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: A state senator from California watched the laws fall and saw an opportunity.

JOHN BRIGGS: “Homosexuality is a most repulsive lifestyle.”

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: His name was John Briggs, and he wanted to deliver the anti-gay movement its biggest prize yet.

ACTIVIST: “California realized that they were coming for us.”

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: I'm Christina Cauterucci. This season on Slow Burn, we'll explore how a nationwide backlash against gays and lesbians led to a massive showdown in California.

REPORTER: “Now it's something called Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative.”

REPORTER: “It would call for firing any teachers in California who practice homosexuality.”

ACTIVIST: “Your life, as you knew it would be destroyed.”

ACTIVIST: “We've got to fight back. We can't let this happen in California.”

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: The Briggs Initiative would be the first statewide vote on gay rights.

PROTESTER CROWD: “Gay rights now. Gay rights now!”

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: With so much at stake, young people became activists.

ACTIVIST: “We were all coming out all day long, every day…”

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: And activists became leaders.

HARVEY MILK: My name is Harvey Milk, and I'm here to recruit you.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Slow Burn Season 9. Gays Against Briggs. Out May 22 wherever you listen.

ACTIVIST: “If we lose here, it'll be fifty years before we ever get back up again.

ACTIVIST TOM AMMIANO: “Like the drag queens say, take out the earrings, sharpen the nails, there ain't no going back.”

 

Why the Briggs Initiative Is Relevant Fifty Years Later – 4:07

 

BLAIR HODGES: All right, so this season focused on the Briggs Initiative. As you know, Christina, there are a lot of powerful stories from gay history, and on the surface, the Briggs Initiative doesn't seem like the most exciting. I wondered how you decided to focus on that for a whole season.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Right now, we are in a moment of a really intense backlash against queer and trans people, led by right-wing politicians. There's been, you know, over the past few decades, a really pretty quick increase in gay rights, gay visibility, also trans visibility, and cultural relevance and power. And this has been really threatening to people on the right.

The same exact thing was happening in the 70s.

Slate felt we could use this history podcast to shed light on something important that happened back then that really doesn't make it into modern day history books, unless you're reading a specific “gay history” book. And it sheds some light on what's going on right now, but also sheds a lot of light on something that happened back then that shaped a lot of the LGBTQ political movement that is fighting the backlash happening right now.

BLAIR HODGES: Describe the Briggs Initiative to us. Give us the mile-high view.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: So the Briggs Initiative was a ballot initiative in 1978 that would have banned openly gay people from teaching or working in California public schools. It was introduced by a state senator, John Briggs, who was a right winger from Orange County, and he really wanted to be governor of California, but he didn't have a lot of name recognition in the state.

He had his ear to the ground and noticed there was this anti-gay backlash sort of rising in response to the growing gay rights movement that really accelerated in 1969 with the Stonewall riots. So there was Anita Bryant with her anti-gay campaign in Florida, which popularized this idea that gay people were a danger to children.

And so we need to rescind these tiny little footholds that gay people had gained in the political space. So there were some towns across the country, small cities, college towns, that had passed nondiscrimination laws against gay people. So there were starting to be right wingers across the country who said, you know, we need to take that away.

There were a lot of repeal votes trying to rescind these advances that gay people had made. John Briggs thought, if I can attach my name to this issue, this is going to be my ticket to the California governor's mansion.

And so he put the initiative on the ballot. And in 1978, it was the first statewide vote on gay rights.

BLAIR HODGES: And you talked to Briggs's son, right, as part of your reporting. How did you get that interview? Because he seemed like a really interesting figure. It was actually kind of hard to pin down exactly what he thought about things.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Ron Briggs was one of my favorite interviews of the season. Early on, I knew I really needed to get some good perspective from the Briggs side, because there were a lot of queer people who wanted to talk to me about what they did to fight the Briggs initiative. They were on the winning side and, you know, the side that history has smiled upon.

But I really wanted to be able to show what was going on inside the Briggs camp, especially because in a lot of histories of the Briggs initiative, that side is really underdeveloped. So I knew Ron Briggs was one of John Briggs’s son. John Briggs is dead, so I couldn't interview him. And Ron Briggs, I knew, had also worked on that campaign. So he would also not just be able to speak to who his dad was, but what the campaign was doing and why.

I found his contact information through a public records database that journalists have access to and I just gave him a call. And he said, “No one ever wants to talk to me about this.

They want to talk about another initiative that my dad had on the ballot,” which was the death penalty. An expansion of the death penalty.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. It's kind of happening at the same time, right?

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Exactly, exactly. It was the same year that one passed, which really transformed California's relationship to the death penalty in what I think is a pretty disturbing way.

And Ron Briggs is somebody who, in years since, has become a man of faith. He's joined the Catholic Church and has come out very strongly against the death penalty. So a lot of people wanted to talk to him about what it is like to turn against your family history on this issue. But no one ever talks to him about what has become known as the Briggs Initiative, the anti-gay ballot initiative. And so he was excited to talk about it.

One of the things he said to me on that first phone call was, “You know, my dad's dead now, so I can kind of say whatever I want. It doesn't matter!”

And I was like, oh, man, that is kind of the dream thing a journalist wants to hear, because you really do want somebody to share the unvarnished memory of what transpired.

 

Creating a Wedge Issue – 9:03

 

BLAIR HODGES: You pointed out that Ron became religious. That's important to point out, because John Briggs himself wasn't a huge Christian crusader, right? I think the stereotype people might have is that he must have been like Anita Bryant—she was a very pro-Christian Christian, that was her driving political motivation.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: But with Briggs, that wasn't the case.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yes. A lot of the people I talked to said he was really more opportunistic. He was raised Christian and his wife was Catholic. And so he, I believe, converted to Catholicism when he married her. But the family never really went to church. He wasn't a religious crusader at all.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, he would have to convert to marry a Catholic.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: It wouldn't be like, “Oh, I had a conversion,” but more like, “Okay, if we're going to be able to get married, I gotta join this church.”

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah. It wasn't because he had some big revelation of faith. He began using religious rhetoric as a cudgel against gay people just because that was sort the vibe going on at the time. Jerry Falwell was becoming really popular. The seeds of the “Moral Majority” were beginning to take root. Ronald Reagan was going to run for president in a couple years.

And so he just kind of jumped on that bandwagon and began using a lot of religious rhetoric. But it wasn't because that was sort of a deeply held belief. He was more out for himself.

BLAIR HODGES: Had you known that before you talked to Ron? Because that seemed important for John’s son Ron to talk about. And I don't know that it seemed like John would have really wanted that part of the story in there.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, I think there had been a couple other people who had worked on the Briggs campaign who had spoken to the press over the years, and also a lot of gay people who sort of speculated, you know, this guy didn't necessarily seem to fully believe what he was saying. A lot of people even said, “I don't even know if he was that ‘anti-gay.’

He just thought this was the best way to make his name in California politics,” right?

Ron did clarify that, yes, his dad was anti-gay. His dad really did believe that the gay rights movement was going too far too fast, and that, in his words, there was a group of people that “needed to be corralled,” and that it was wrong to have openly gay people in schools having contact with children.

But some of the more incendiary rhetoric that was popularized by Anita Bryant about gay people as, you know, molesters, John Briggs was using that rhetoric, but it didn't seem like he was necessarily the biggest true believer on that front.

 

Using Homophobia as a Wedge Issue – 11:29

 

BLAIR HODGES: So Anita Bryant found success in Florida by focusing on “protecting the children” and making it about children. As you looked into that history, did you sense that was something they arrived at later on, or was it a primary concern?

Because from what I've seen in the research, they really had moral problems with “homosexuality,” as they would term it at the time, and then they had to find ways to appeal to the broader public. It's almost like they didn't want to lead with Christianity in attacking gay people. They were Christian. They made that known. But they wanted to find reasons to attack homosexuality in ways that would appeal to “anyone,” quote, unquote.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Right. It was a good way to make the issue, to give it a broad appeal. So they looked at what sort of avenues of criticism against gay people resonated most with the average person. And, you know, people might not have a problem with. So, for instance, the anti-discrimination bill that Anita Bryant works to repeal protected queer people in housing and employment.

And, you know, people might not care whether they have a gay person living next to them in the apartment building or whether there's a gay person working at the hair salon or at the grocery store. But they do care that gay people were teaching their children in schools, or they cared about the idea of the moral decay that might transpire if gay people were teaching the next generation and indoctrinating them into this immoral lifestyle.

So there was a lot less of a sense of, oh, okay, we can kind of live and let live with gay people in schools. And so that's what led Anita Bryan and her allies, including John Briggs, who actually went down to help her in Florida, to adopt that as their main message.

BLAIR HODGES: Maybe take a second to define what a wedge issue is. It might sound surprising—or maybe unsurprising that a politician would just pick one issue and try to run all the way to office on it.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: I mean, there's a lot of voters out there who, you know, maybe don't have a lot of really strong feelings one way or another on a lot of political issues, or maybe they're not super partisan, but there might be an issue out there that evokes a strong emotional response and a lot of fear or a lot of anger.

These are really good wedge issues which force people to choose a side. And John Briggs used gay rights as that issue, because it evoked a lot of fear in people who were watching this community that they knew very little about gay people. You know, they were just starting to. I found these old news reports from the 70s that were basically reporting on gay people almost like a National Geographic safari.

Like, “Here's their neighborhood in San Francisco,” and “This is what a glory hole is; can you believe it?” And, you know, there were people around the country who certainly had gay people in their communities, but there weren't a lot of people out yet necessarily. And so they didn't know they were living among gay people.

The idea that these people were sort of infiltrating the culture, becoming politically powerful—maybe in your schools, was really frightening to people. It was a very effective way for John Briggs, Anita Bryant, and other people around the country to get everyday voters to choose a side and become politically active and animated and passionate in a way that they might not have about any other issue, housing policy or something.

BLAIR HODGES: And if you can get those voters out, they're likely to vote for a particular political party, too. There's a way to use wedge issues to achieve political power, to get not just a ballot initiative which could still matter, but also to elect the kind of politicians who are using that wedge issue.

So I think it's a way to both go after gay people or excite voters for a particular cause, like a ballot initiative, but also to help shore up political power for the party.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: That's using the wedge issue for their whole agenda. They were using gay people to get in office to then enact a really broad right-wing agenda. And John Briggs was really hoping his first challenge in becoming governor was the Republican primary. So he wanted to get the ballot initiative on the ballot for the Republican primary in 1978.

And that really animated conservatives who would come out and vote for the guy who was leading the crusade against gay people.

But Briggs messed up the petitions in a really stupid way, procedurally. He had to throw out all those petitions. So he didn't end up winning the gubernatorial primary and wasn't on the ballot in November when the ballot initiative ran.

But the point still stood that this was going to hopefully bring people out to vote for Republicans, because they were so amped up about the anti-gay issue.

 

The Gay Teacher Who Stood Up – 16:08

 

BLAIR HODGES: So we get to hear from Briggs’s son, and your interviews with him are terrific. We also get to hear from people who were being directly affected by the initiative. I really loved hearing from Tom Ammiano. Tell us a little bit about him.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Oh, man, Tom Ammiano is a real character, and he was so much fun to talk to. Tom was a teacher in the 1970s. He was from New Jersey and has a very beautiful and intense Jersey accent!

BLAIR HODGES: It's awesome. His voice is perfect.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, I actually got a chance to talk to a former preschool student of his. He taught in a school in the Mission District in San Francisco and became a really big advocate for bilingual students or students who were learning English as their second language and just, you know, became a beloved member of the community.

And he, before the Briggs Initiative, had become an activist for his own community of gay teachers. Because the San Francisco school district did not protect teachers who were gay or lesbian. They had anti discrimination protections based on race and gender, but not sexual orientation. And, you know, at the time, sodomy was illegal in California up until 1975 and almost everywhere else in the country.

If you were convicted of sodomy, gay sex, your teaching license could be suspended or revoked because criminals can't teach. And so this was a major threat to gay people, especially gay men who were teachers. Gay people were presumed criminals. So they were sort of forcibly closeted.

In San Francisco, it was a little bit more like “don't ask, don't tell.” Like you shouldn't really be trumpeting it and you're not going to have a problem, versus some other places in the country where really you had to be fully hidden.

Tom led a crusade and started a group of gay teachers. They lobbied the school board, and then when the Briggs initiative came along a few years later, he was ready to fight back against that too.

And for him, you know, it was really personal because he felt like there were these two parts of his life that were finally able to converge into, you know, a single identity and a single person in a single life. And not like being a teacher during the day and a gay man at night and on the weekends. He was just one person who could really be himself at work.

BLAIR HODGES: Still, at any moment it could all be taken away. As you said, there's kind of a don't ask, don't tell, but that's still a really precarious way to live.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Totally.

BLAIR HODGES: People were leaning into the stereotype that it would be dangerous to have gay people in the classroom, either because they could “groom” or “brainwash” the kids into becoming gay, or because gay people themselves were perceived as being predatory. The biggest problem with both of those fears, I think, is that there is absolutely no data or any proof that either of those things is remotely true.

Why didn't that matter at the time?

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: I mean, it didn't matter because it was politically beneficial to pretend that it was true, and there was nothing to prove otherwise. People didn't know very many gay people in their lives. In places like San Francisco, it was different, but there were very few places around the country where there was sort of a robust, thriving, visible gay community.

And it was really easy to pick and choose stereotypes, too, from those visible gay communities of say, “Oh, they're sex-obsessed and they're having public sex all the time, and sort of extrapolate that to create this narrative that gay people are solely defined by the sex that they have and thus a danger to children.

And, you know, when there's stereotype or a fear that proves very powerful in helping a group of politicians and powerful people retain that power, then there is every incentive to promote that narrative. And there also wasn't a lot of research about gay people at the time, so you're not going to be able to come out with facts.

I mean, even now, in all areas of politics, coming out with facts doesn't matter, because it's very easy to—on an issue that creates emotions like this—focus on the emotions rather than what's actually happening.

 

Hopes and Fears in San Francisco – 20:24

 

BLAIR HODGES: You know, as you were talking about that, a person came to mind from the podcast. I don't remember their name, and I don't even remember if they played any kind of central role, but it was a person who was a kid in the Midwest or something, growing up in a religious household, and knew he was gay, but also had been taught that was evil and wrong and that it was criminal, and all he could think about was like, “Oh, no, my life will be ruined.

I'm gonna have to grow up and become this horrible, evil criminal.”

But then in the 1970s, there started to be more and more awareness of San Francisco, especially as a place where there were gay people just living their lives. And he somehow got clued into that, and it just opened up this whole world to him.

I think of the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy opens the door, black and white, and walks out into this world of color where his whole future changed. He went from this person who felt completely isolated and as though he had to be a criminal to someone who had possibilities in his life.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, I think you're speaking of Cleve Jones. His family were Quakers, and they were very progressive. They were involved in the civil rights movement. But, you know, he had this sense and. And, you know, it was later borne out by a conversation he had with them that if they ever found out he was gay, they would have committed him.

And, you know, the only depictions of gay people that he ever saw in the media were, yeah, either people leading these very lonely, sad lives or maybe dying by suicide—which was really a very common trope in depictions of queer people back then and almost up until the present—or that they were these degenerates, they were criminals.

Sodomy was illegal, like I said, and so it really was illegal to be gay in many places. And so he was a junior in high school, and he came across an issue of Life magazine in the school library where he was skipping gym class. He kind of faked a lung issue to get out of gym because that's where he was bullied the most. And he was in the library, found this issue of Life magazine. I think it was 1971, where it was like, “the gay rights movement.” And it was like, “there's this new sort of political movement that's growing in New York and San Francisco and maybe LA and Washington, D.C. where these homosexuals-who are people who love the same gender—like, they're actually demanding rights now.”

And it was totally revelatory for him because he was like, oh, not only are there many other people like that out there in the world, but they're actually leading proud lives. They're not just leading their lives in shame. They're having lovers and friends and activities and they're so proud of themselves and think so highly of themselves that they believe they deserve rights.

And so he came to San Francisco and really, I mean, the way he talked about it, it really was like arriving in Oz, where he feels like for the very first time, he's able to live the life that he really didn't think would ever be possible for him.

And so many people I talk to, women and men who moved to San Francisco in that time—which, by the way, 100,000 gay people moved to San Francisco over a period about seven years in the 70s, which was a seventh of the city's population. It really transformed the city and transformed 100,000 people's lives because they came from all over the country to this one place where they believed they could live as themselves and actually have some approximation of the life heterosexual people were leading all over the country.

I mean, that was some of my favorite parts of reporting the podcast, was talking to people about that moment, because it really was magical for them. And they were able to show affection in public. They were able to experience queer art making and become involved in politics for the first time, even if they didn't think that's what they wanted to do.

When they moved to San Francisco, a lot of people were drawn into politics because of Anita Bryant and John Briggs, who kind of made it impossible to ignore that there was this anti-gay backlash looming and threatening their rights.

BLAIR HODGES: San Francisco is such a fascinating part of the story you tell. And I have to say the podcast does such a good job taking us there because it's a place that represented a sense of growing power and possibility for gay people, but it's also a place where fear and persecution were following close behind.

So there's really a tension, right? It was a wonderful sort of mecca, but there were also difficulties in San Francisco. Talk about that tension there, the potential for the power and growth but also, it wasn't a perfect place either. There was plenty of fear and persecution there as well.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Oh, yeah. I mean, it was because it was a place where gay people could be visible. And there was like thriving gay nightlife in this growing gayborhood.

BLAIR HODGES: A gay club with windows on the outside where you could actually see inside!

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Right. The first one in the country, which still exists today.

BLAIR HODGES: And you went to it.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah. You know, there were people who would come to the Castro, which was the gayborhood in San Francisco every night to try to beat up on gay people. There were dozens of gay bashings happening over a period of a month or two, even during this period of gay rights taking hold in San Francisco and elsewhere.

And so gay people were living in fear still just for being visible and being out. And that's not to mention the legal threats that were looming. And so in Anita Bryant's campaign in Florida, she used in her television ads videos of gay pride in San Francisco or the Castro in San Francisco to show, you know, there's this, like, modern day Sodom and Gomorrah here in our very own United States.

And so they really were being presented to the outside world as this sort of encapsulation of everything that was going wrong with the morals of America and America's sort of moral decay.

And, you know, in addition to the gay bashings, there were plenty of politicians in California who didn't believe gay people deserved rights as well.

But because there was this concentration of people, it also became the birthplace of some of the first political movements where gay and lesbians were working together. And the Briggs Initiative provided this reason for people to kind of come out of the woodwork and join up together on a single issue.

 

Different Queer Coalitions Don’t Always Align – 26:22

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, and there were differences of opinion on this too, right? Like about what exactly they should do, what the tactics should look like. We have the LGBTQ movement now, but that coalition is still trying to figure out how it's a coalition. And back then it was even more just, kind of, everybody all over the place, lots of different options, lots of different perspectives.

Talk about the different coalitions that were starting to form and some of the different negotiations happening about, what should we focus on, how should we do it, what was happening.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Once it became clear that the Briggs Initiative was probably going to end up on the ballot and that it was an imminent threat to gay life in California—and all across the country, by the way, I should mention, because it was going to be the first statewide vote on gay rights, it was really seen as a bellwether for what the gay rights movement could achieve and how far the anti-gay backlash could go.

Because the anti-gay backlash had won not just in Florida, but in several other cities across the country that had repealed their own anti-discrimination laws by popular vote.

BLAIR HODGES: So goes California, so goes the nation.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Exactly. Especially because it was the gayest state in the nation. So at that point, once this all became clear, you know, gay people across the state realized, okay, we're going to have to fight this.

But at first, some people didn't actually think that was even the right thing to do. Some of the more, you know, sort of small “c” conservative gays, mostly white gay men, mostly wealthier, more well connected, thought, “we're never going to win this.” We're going to let John Briggs win and then take it to the Supreme Court and try to get them to strike it down.

Eventually, some activists convinced those people to change their minds, which was important because they had the money that would end up funding a lot of the fight against the Briggs Initiative. But that school of thought became what I like to call “Don't Say Gay” after the Florida education law, because they ended up thinking, “We can't make this about gay rights. We have to talk about human rights and freedom and liberty.” And this is a school of thought that will sound very familiar to people today, because like you said, there are still a lot of differences of opinions.

BLAIR HODGES: Also, privacy was an issue.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Right. It's not just about gay people or even gay teachers. It's about, like, anyone's right to live their own private lives. And those people also thought, you know, gay men who are feminine and flamboyant shouldn't be out front. Certainly no gender non-conforming people.

They didn't actually talk a lot about, you know, trans people at the time because people use different terms. People identified in different ways back then, but they were very much about, you know, only really respectable gay men in suits should be up front on this issue, but preferably straight people, preferably no gay people at all. speaking about this.

Then on the other end of the political spectrum, there were the more grassroots organizers who really thought, we need to confront this issue head on. We need to not only talk about this as an issue of gay rights, but confront the myths that are spreading about gay people as brainwashers and groomers and molesters and, you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Being a danger to children and perverts and sexually deviant, right?

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: And, you know, just saying, “That's not true,” and addressing it, instead of ignoring that the right wing was using that argument. Confronting it and saying, “There's absolutely no data to prove that. And in fact, if you look at”—They pulled data from, you know, the FBI and a couple other sources to say, “Actually the most likely person to molest a child is a heterosexual man, most often a relative of the victim.”

These were people who really wanted to get unions involved because it's also workers issue. The Briggs Initiative would override teachers union contracts, which is a huge deal. And they made some of the very first alliances between the LGBTQ rights movement and the labor movement, which would prove extraordinarily powerful.

BLAIR HODGES: This is how you start to see the alliances, like why a lot of queer people today might align with Democrats, for example, like union movements, like leftist politics. This is where today's political alignments are starting to lock in.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Oh, yeah.

And then there was a group sort of in the middle, and this was a group that would end up being led in part by Harvey Milk, who's, you know, one of the best-known gay rights icons in the US.

BLAIR HODGES: And can I just say, your coverage of Milk is beautiful.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Thank you.

BLAIR HODGES: Really moved me to hear the recordings of Milk. People need to go listen to the show, to hear Harvey Milk. You've got to go hear the recordings. You've got to go hear his voice. You've got to go hear the voices of people that knew him.

You reported this out so well.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Thank you so much. It was definitely one of the most fascinating parts of this project for me because, you know, I consider myself pretty well-versed on gay history, but I don't feel like I fully understood Harvey Milk until I did this project. And talking to so many people about why he was special and why he resonated so deeply with people as a leader.

And he was only in office for a year when the Briggs Initiative was ramping up. He was just running for the third time to be a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which is their City Council. He finally won that election in part because he made himself out to be somebody who could oppose the Briggs Initiative, even though that wasn't a San Francisco specific issue.

He said, “we need a visible, strong leader to oppose John Briggs.” Because the LGBTQ movement was not a movement at the time. There were a few, like, a smattering of organizations around the US but really only a couple national groups that were just getting started. They were just a year or two old, many of them.

And there was no political experience in fighting an anti-gay initiative because it hadn't happened before. There had never been a statewide vote on gay rights. And so Harvey Milk, using the renown he had earned, you know, hard-earned through his own grassroots efforts, registering voters and being a neighborhood advocate in San Francisco to bring people together in a little bit more of a middle of the road way.

And so he was really focused on a traditional campaign strategy of knocking on doors, registering people to vote across the state, and sort of getting out the vote. And so he and his group knocked doors in every single precinct in San Francisco, even the neighborhoods that were hostile to gay people, which there were, if you can believe it, in San Francisco.

BLAIR HODGES: Especially old-timers, people who had been there before this huge influx.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Exactly. And who were probably a little more radicalized against gay people because of the big influx that had really changed their communities or pushed them out of their communities.

And so there were these kind of three strains of thought, and there was some infighting. Definitely people disagreed with each other, and then they kind of ended up not even overcoming their differences, but just kind of agreeing to each go their own way.

And I think history shows that they really each played an essential part of the campaign. So there were, you know, the sort of “don't say gay” gays. They provided the funding that bankrolled this statewide ad campaign that was super powerful and very sophisticated. And, you know, I'm sure their message resonated with some voters.

 

Racism and Sexism Among Activists – 33:43

 

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: The grassroots people brought the unions on board, and they did a lot of outreach to communities of color. In addition to Gwen Craig, who was an ally of Harvey Milks, who was this incredible black lesbian who went out to black churches and black pastors. And, you know, these were communities that historically, gay rights groups had kind of ignored in their campaigns. And, of course, there were plenty of gays of color, but the communities were very segregated at the time.

BLAIR HODGES: And by the way, they're often ignored in gay history, too. Like, your reporting was some of the first that I heard of those particular people, which was a fantastic part of the reporting, too.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah. Because a lot of the big names in gay history, because of racism were white people. Those were the people being elevated to the tops of their organizations. And queer people of color felt really alienated by these mainstream gay rights groups. And so gay rights groups would even, you know, not reach out to straight communities of color because they assumed that those people would be super homophobic and, you know, weren't even worth trying to convince.

The campaign against the Briggs initiative didn't abide by that. They recognized that as potentially one of the reasons why the gay rights movement lost in Miami Dade county in Florida, because they had written off, you know, Latino communities.

This was also one of the first times gay men and lesbians worked together. There was a lot of mistrust between the genders in gay communities in the 70s and earlier because men and women really felt like their interests were not necessarily aligned because they were persecuted in different ways. And so for gay men, there was a lot of raids on gay bars, which women experienced, too, but to a little bit of a lesser extent, there were men being arrested and convicted of sodomy, and they were really concerned with their ability to, you know, be able to have sex without being persecuted for it.

Queer women and lesbians at the time, they were often having their children taken away from them in custody battles. They would have a divorce with their husband, and their husband would go to family court and say, “Look, this woman's a lesbian, and she is not fit to be a mother to these children that we have together.” And she would never be able to see her children again. And that was one of their big issues at the time.

But they all recognized that the Briggs Initiative was going to affect all of them. And so there was a lot of education done by lesbians to try to make gay men understand how some of the things they were doing were sexist. Only featuring men in their brochures or calling women girls or, you know, using the word “bitch” or things like that, where, you know, they had to overcome a lot of barriers to be able to work together.

But they did. And it would really prove to be an important moment in gay rights, not just because of what they did with the Briggs Initiative, but because just a few years later, the AIDS crisis began, and because of some of the bonds that were built in this moment and in other movements around the country, you know, lesbians were really able to step up and help care for gay men in that terrible time.

BLAIR HODGES: Slow Burn does a great job setting up all these different perspectives, the different communities coming together or coming apart, to try to figure out what to do in the face of this political opposition.

That's Christina Cauterucci, she's a journalist at Slate, and we're talking about Gays Against Briggs, a terrific podcast series. You should go listen to it now. I know you're going to want to binge it because you're going to want to find out what happens.

Everything that we just set up, what happens with the Briggs Initiative, who comes together, what happens to Harvey Milk, all the questions you still have. You'll need to go to Slow Burn to hear those, because I want to talk, Christina, to you more about your own personal stakes in this.

 

Christina’s Personal Stakes – 37:16

 

BLAIR HODGES: So as you started to dig into all the different coalitions and different perspectives within gay communities, you're a queer reporter yourself. Did you find yourself feeling more sympathetic to any particular group? I can't help but sorta throw myself into the history and see where my temperament might fit or where my—I'm kind of a pragmatist, and like, where would I fit? Did you find yourself doing that?

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Oh, definitely. I mean, I talked to people from all three of, sort of, the main schools of thought, and I definitely felt myself more drawn to the grassroots activists who were sort of in your face and unapologetic. And, you know, especially at the time, to me, that felt like a necessary corrective to some of the gay activism before Stonewall, which was very important and often underappreciated in history.

But, you know, after Stonewall and as the 70s progressed, I feel like, yeah, facing the issue head on and not being afraid to say, yes, I'm gay, and this is what gay culture is. That appeals to me a lot. And I still think that’s a powerful way to do activism today.

But I can really see where all the groups are coming from. And I think they each played a really important part in the fight against the Briggs Initiative. And honestly, I feel like that's sort of the biggest takeaway for me, was that people don't have to agree to be working as part of the same movement and toward the same goals. Especially because different messages will resonate with different types of people.

And I happen to think that the “respectability politics” way of doing things, where let's make ourselves as small and unoffensive as possible in hopes that people will like us, I don't think that's proven to have worked in any social movement.

I know that's been a big argument within movements for civil rights and racial justice, too, about how much should we sort of try to assimilate or fit ourselves into a mold so that people might think kindly on us. And this was a really fascinating lens into those arguments and how they sort of played out in this particular moment in 1978.

BLAIR HODGES: You said that the six months that you spent really immersed in the story, as you were reporting it out, transformed your relationship to queer history. What was that relationship before you started reporting this, and how did it change?

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: I think I had a little bit of a detached relationship to queer history. You know, I hadn't done a lot of historical research or interviews. It didn't feel present and real. As much as I sort of appreciated, you know, what people went through to allow me to live the life that I do, I didn't feel necessarily emotionally connected to it or like these people's lives were anything like mine.

But it was weird. I mean, as I talked to so many of the incredible people who were involved in this fight against the Briggs Initiative, that history both felt further away and closer to my current life than it did before. And I can explain what I mean.

Harvey Milk would often use Holocaust analogies to explain what was so frightening about this campaign against queer people. You know, pointing out that Hitler went after Jewish teachers, and that was sort of one of the first groups that were persecuted in Nazi Germany.

And so he was trying to say, look, they're coming after gay teachers first, everyone's next, and there's going to be a registry. And, you know, people were really, really, really scared about what this could portend for queer communities. And in part because they were very close in history to Nazi Germany, like, closer to that than we are to them.

And so that made it feel like, “Oh, my gosh, this really was a long, long time ago.” And at a time when it was almost impossible for a queer young person to come up in the world and think that they could lead anything approaching a normal, “normal” in quotes, life, or a fulfilling and full life. That experience was rare to impossible. And I don't think I fully grasped the severity and the sort of homogeneity of that experience for people coming of age at that time, that even if you lived in a progressive family or a city, it was really hard for you to imagine a happy life for yourself, a full life for yourself.

So that made it feel a lot further away and sort of made me appreciate, oh my gosh, things have changed so, so much. And my experience coming of age was so different.

And at the same time, you know, talking to these people—

BLAIR HODGES: Wait, maybe quickly say something about that. Like, did you grow up in a family where, when did you come out, it was it acceptable? What kind of community were you in?

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, so I grew up in or, you know, came of age, spent my teen years in New Hampshire in, you know, a suburb of Manchester, New Hampshire, which certainly there were gay people who I knew. My student council advisor was gay, one of my guidance counselors was gay. But those were kind of the only two gay people I knew.

And their lives didn't necessarily look like what I wanted my life to look like, or I didn't see myself in them.

Also didn't know I was gay at the time and sort of didn't consider that as a possibility for myself. Grew up in a Catholic family. You know, we didn't talk about gay issues much. We certainly weren't a homophobic family. We weren't really a political family at all. And it wasn't until college when I really started to, you know, explore my desires and realize that, like, oh, actually this thing that sort of was happening in the back of my head as, like, something that I didn't need to consider, actually might be who I am and how I want to live my life.

And, you know, I didn't know at all how my family would react. Even at the time, there was actually a very intense moment that I remember where I was like, oh, yeah, that whole future that I had sort of lackadaisically imagined for myself just isn't gonna happen. And I actually don't know what's gonna take its place.

And, you know, there were a lot of gay rights we have now that we didn't have then, even in the 2000s. Like gay marriage and employment protections. And even though that's pretty recent history, queer life looked different then. And I still was very happy and excited, though.

And that's sort of the main difference, is that even though I didn't really know what could happen, and I was like, oh, yeah, I don't know if I'll ever be able to get married or have kids.

Which, you know, soon realized I didn't even want kids. But, like, you know, all of these things that seem more complicated for gay people back then, like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that, but I don't care. And I know I'm going to have a full and happy life because I see gay communities out there and I know more gay people now, and I can envision a future for myself. Like, Will and Grace was on TV. Even though there wasn't necessarily a culture I could very easily plug into, which now I feel like the queer women's cultures that resonates more with me,  actually are in mainstream culture and a lot more visible.

And in fact, we're in a moment of cultural supremacy, I think. But anyway, I was able to feel that sort of excitement and possibility in a way that the people of a generation and a half ago, or maybe two generations ago, who I spoke to for the series, were not able to experience.

And so I feel like if I had grown up in that generation, would I have just continued dating men? I know for some people, that wasn't possible. For me, it felt like maybe that would have been what I chose to do and just sort of consign myself to less of a full and happy existence because it might have been the easier thing to do where I could have sort of convinced myself that that was what I wanted.

And, yeah, talking to them about our different experiences, just a few decades apart, was really, really impactful to me. But at the same time, you know, the way they talked about their lives back then, the conversations they were having in their communities, about politics, what their social lives were like, the things that they wanted, the things they found funny, their protest chants, it felt so, so contemporary to me and so present.

And it just made me feel like there is this queer history and queer legacy that I'm a part of and they're a part of, and there's some sort of continuity there and links between us that are strong and that have lasted. And that was so, so powerful for me to understand at such an intimate level.

And even making connections with some of the people I interviewed that felt like we had this sort of a level of intimacy early on in the interview that would have been hard for me to create with somebody else because we share this queer community together. I feel like they trusted me more and I knew what questions to ask them.

And it made me feel like queer history is my history too, you know? Even though I didn't live it, even though some of it feels hard for me to imagine, it's part of my life. And it was such a gift. And what I really want to do with this podcast is help other people feel that way too, to make this history feel present and intimate and real in a way that helps us understand the connection with the current moment.

BLAIR HODGES: I wanted to ask you about that. Did you ever feel exhausted? For example, because of some of the things they're chanting. You're listening to these old recordings with these chants, and these chants could still be said to at a protest today. And I just wondered if that felt kind of exhausting.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, I mean, some of my favorite audio of the season and the audio I was most excited to find was from these old protests that really brings you into that moment, hearing people in moments of fear and anger and passion speaking what it's like in that moment. And yeah, sometimes hearing what they're saying and the fears they're describing to the reporters made me feel like, oh, wow, we haven't moved very far and we're still fighting the same narratives today.

I felt it also while listening to audio of anti-gay activists at the time and John Briggs and Anita Bryant using some of the same exact language Republican legislators and right-wing activists are using today. Where I'm like, oh my god, we haven't beaten this back. It's still, you know, they believe it's effective still.

BLAIR HODGES: That's what triggered me, by the way, is those recordings, and especially seeing how they've been transferred over onto trans issues. Some of the exact same arguments are being made now about trans folks today being groomers or a threat to people or they shouldn't be accepted in public. They shouldn't be teachers.

You know, now we're seeing bathroom discourse. I'm just like, wow, this is the same stuff.

 

Coming Out to Defeat the Rhetoric – 47:45

 

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah. And, you know, part of the campaign to defeat that rhetoric was the act of coming out. This was another difference of opinion, where older generations really felt like, you know, “Let's not all come out because we're leading our lives quietly, and if there's a spotlight on us, then we're really going to suffer some of the more intense effects of that hate and repression.”

Which, of course, that was a little bit of a privileged position to take. Not everyone could hide themselves in a way that protected them from persecution. But the argument that won out—and this was one really championed by Harvey Milk—was, we have to come out, because if people don't know who we are and they don't know they're interacting with us every single day, not only in schools, but in their churches, in their workplace, in their own family, then they're never going to vote for us. They're never going to believe we're people deserving of rights.

That was so powerful back then. And today. I mean, that argument for visibility I don't think holds as much weight, because people do know that gay people and trans people are everywhere. In fact, that's part of what has spurred this backlash, and it did back then, too.

It was the growing visibility of queer people that caused the sort of fear that Republicans were able to capitalize on. But today it feels like the growing visibility of trans people is the reason why the Right has been able to suggest they're worthy of repression and that they don't deserve to be around your children.

And in fact, if they are your children, if the trans person is your child, and you're supporting them, then you don't deserve to be a parent to them at all, and your rights as a parent should be taken away. That's the just really disturbing part.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you become the abuser, or the groomer.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Exactly. And we're seeing laws to that effect in Texas. And so, yeah, I agree with you that it's disturbing to hear that rhetoric back then because of how present it is and because I think the tactics they used in the campaign to defeat it might not be as effective.

 

Taking the Stance of a Reporter – 49:41

 

BLAIR HODGES: Now, you did such a good job as a journalist, because sometimes you would be wrapping up a point or describing a position as a reporter, straightforwardly, that would make me upset. Or just, “oh, that perspective really bothers me.” Or, “I disagree with that so much because as a journalist, you have to tell the story.

And so there are so many times when you're just describing something that could be traumatic, I think, for queer people to hear. But you're using your reporter's voice, you're saying it straightforwardly. And I wondered what that was like to record those parts where you're like, “All right, I'm just gonna tell the story. I have to do this.” Even if some of the things you were saying could be really hurtful.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, I mean, we definitely determined early on that this wasn't going to be a podcast where people didn't know what side I was on. Like, I think it's a pretty safe position to take as a reporter that like, yeah, gay people shouldn't be banned from public schools. That doesn't feel super controversial. And especially as a person with personal stakes in the issue, I wasn't going to pretend like I cared equally about both of these sides. You're not going to come away from the podcast thinking that I'm a neutral observer.

BLAIR HODGES: Sure, but you still did a good job giving the their best case.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: This is what I'm saying is like, what you didn't do was turn Anita Bryant and John Briggs into these caricatures of evil who were sort of crusading against truth and righteousness. You really gave them their best shot, because you let them make their best case. And sometimes as a reporter, you had to do this. This is what I'm saying is like, sometimes you're letting them give their best shot.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: I appreciate that. And actually it was interesting. So, you know, Ron Briggs is someone who I interviewed who has since decided that, actually decided, you know, not long after the campaign, and we hear about one specific turning point within the campaign where he started to turn against it.

But he now very much believes that they were on the wrong side of history. He supports gay rights, even though he's still a Republican. But there was someone else I interviewed, Lagarde Smith, who was an ally of John Briggs and really sort of a true believer, Christian, right-wing activist. And he still believes they did the right thing, that openly gay people—closeted gay people are a different story. Whatever. A closeted gay. If you don't know they're gay, they can do what they want.

But an openly gay person should not be, you know, speaking about gay issues to children or necessarily if a student knows that they're gay, that alone is sort of indoctrination, and gay people shouldn't be in schools. He thinks the same law should be passed today.

And, you know, that was a little bit of a difficult interview because I wanted him to be able to share his perspective and explain his thinking without feeling like I was going to sort of jump down his throat or say that he was wrong. Because I think it's important to know where people are coming from when they believe that kind of a thing.

BLAIR HODGES: That's right.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: And we had a perfectly fine interview. And then he emailed me after the publication of the podcast, because I sent it to him when it came out, and he was like, you know, “Thank you so much for giving me my fair shot and allowing me to explain my case for your show. And, you know, it just kind of strikes me that my side has never really figured out how to make a good case for this issue.”

You know, I guess having listened to some of the other people like John Briggs, Anita Bryant, and some other clips of pastors who would say things like gay people should be exterminated or something like that, and he's like, we really don't know how to make the right case for this issue, I thought that was really interesting because I think it just goes to show that, yeah, like, when you take a really extreme position that is based on hate and persecution of a specific group, other people who believe that thing are going to take that extreme position even further in ways that really turn off the general public.

Because that whole “gay people should be exterminated” part was a bridge too far for almost everyone else in California who heard that. And so in some ways, allowing these perpetrators of anti-gay sentiment and policy to make their own case is the best way to turn their case against them.

BLAIR HODGES: I agree. And I think the podcast does a good job letting people make their case, presenting multiple sides of the story. And you're also not inflating—I call it the CNN fallacy, which is like, okay, we're going to talk about climate change. We have Dr. Smith here who studied climate for years on this side, and then we have Billy over here and we're going to give them both five minutes to make their case. Like this false equivalency.

So you don't raise it to that level. But you do let people make their case, because like you said, it's really important that we understand the stakes and that we understand the arguments t being made against the rights of ourselves and people that we love so that we can, we can address those points and that we can be prepared, you know, when we're, when we have to make a public case for the rights that we are fighting for.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, definitely.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Christina Cauterucci, journalist at Slate. You can hear her on the podcast Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs. It's a terrific show. She's also a senior writer and a host of Outward, which is Slate's podcast on queer life.

 

Are Things Getting Worse – 54:48

 

BLAIR HODGES: So, Christina, I already mentioned we're seeing a lot of the same arguments happening around trans rights today that we've seen with gay rights in the past. And one of your guests made this point, that they're a little more frightened today than they were back then. We're seeing a big backlash right now, a huge rise in anti-trans bills in legislatures across the country. And I wondered what you're thinking at this moment, the kind of lessons we can take from the work you did in Slow Burn, in how we're thinking about what we're facing at the present.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: It was very striking for me to hear from several of the gay people I interviewed who were essential parts of the movement back then, that what they're seeing today is even worse than what they saw in the 1970s. And it just goes to show that rights are never solid and progress is never permanent.

But as far as actual lessons that we can take from them, I mean, I think the fact that, you know, the coming out campaign they waged, where thousands of people across the state were coming out in public, not just to people they knew, but literally handing out business cards wherever they went, saying, you know, “You just sat on the bus next to a gay person,” “a gay person just served you your coffee.”

Like, this was an argument that tamping yourself down and hiding and being quiet is not a way to win political support and political rights. And I think that's a lesson we can definitely take today that, you know, people who are suggesting that, “oh, you know, trans people are being a little too much in public,” or, you know, “why can't you just, like, gender-conform a little?”

Or like, “why do you have to be so weird all the time?”

Like, these are not arguments that should hold any weight because there's not a large population of voters out there who are just like, “Okay, well, if you're nice enough, and if you're respectable enough, then sure, I'll give you some rights as a treat.” That's not how it works. And it's not a way to build lasting social change. I think that's a major lesson from this movement.

Another one is that different perspectives can all work. They don't even have to really work together, but can work alongside each other toward the same goal. And so, you know, these people didn't spend a ton of time dwelling on the fact that they all had different perspectives.

They just went out and did the work.

BLAIR HODGES: You didn't see them spending a lot of time going after each other? We see a lot of friendly fire happening now, especially on social media, where people can spend a lot of time telling other people who they agree with on a lot of stuff, kind of attacking their method or their approach. You didn't see a lot of that back then in the records?

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: No, I mean, and part of it was because we didn't have social media back then. I actually think it's kind of funny to imagine what these people would have been like on social media.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, that might have been a problem.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah. And, you know, certainly it's fair and right to criticize people when they deserve it, but I do think one of the things they did really well back then was just doing what they believed would work and sort of focusing on their own communities and their own strategies.

BLAIR HODGES: So it's like if your full-time work is critiquing work, maybe find new work, maybe?

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.

But another thing I really took from reporting this season was that people will do anything to gain political power. And the incentive to demonize a minority group for political gain has been very constant across the arc of American politics.

And so it certainly comes as no surprise that one of the most vulnerable minorities in the United States right now, trans children, has become the victim of some of the most virulent attacks on queer people today. A group that doesn't have the right to vote yet and doesn't have a lot of visibility to speak up for themselves.

But what the people did back then to fight the Briggs Initiative, I think has created a climate where a lot more people today feel like they are able to speak up for themselves in some way. And we are seeing incredible bravery and tenacity and resilience among trans youth today. And one thing I've learned from other reporting that I've done on movements for trans rights and the current anti-trans movement that has made it, you know, illegal for trans kids to receive gender affirming care or identify as their own gender in schools or what have you, is that there are certain things that politics can't take away.

So they can make it illegal to access essential, lifesaving, gender-affirming medical care, but they can't take away community support, parental support, which there are so many more parents and teachers and doctors and social workers who are competent and caring and know about and support trans youth today than would have ever been possible back then.

And that's the kind of thing that can't be legislated away. And that can make all the difference in whether somebody is able to live a full and fulfilling life. Which isn't to say that the political stuff is any less important, but the cultural change that the movement against the Briggs initiative really helped kick off, making people work together and building the sort of politically sophisticated movement that we see today, that's still having a beneficial effect on what we're able to do.

And as scary as it can be to see where politics in the US is going, especially for trans people, especially for trans children, I find a little bit of hope in knowing that even when politics look really bleak, there's still a lot of support they can't take away.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Christina Cauterucci. We're talking about the podcast Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 1:00:16

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk regrets, challenges and surprises. Christina, this is an opportunity for you to choose one of these, or all three if you want, but something you would change about the show now that it's all produced, it's out, it's ready for people to listen to front to back. Or what the most challenging part of producing it was. Or something that really surprised you in the course of reporting it out.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Okay, well, I'll say one, I'll say a small regret, but then I want to talk about a surprise. So I started reporting this show last fall, fall of 2023.

BLAIR HODGES: That's super-fast. You listened to tons of tape and like, knowing what it takes to produce a show, I thought it took longer to make. That's awesome.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Thank you. Yeah, I think I started full- time on it in November and we published at the end of May. And you know, I did have a team of people working with me on this.

BLAIR HODGES: Sure, sure.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: But, you know, I started just by doing a lot of reading about what had already been published about the fight against the Briggs Initiative, and I came across a few mentions of this woman, Amber Hollabaugh, who you'll hear about in the show as, you know, just this incredible bleach blonde, working class, high femme lesbian who did some of the bravest and most innovative campaigning against the Briggs Initiative by going out to small rural towns like the ones she was from, to not leave those voters behind and to not believe that they would just automatically vote against gay people.

And to say, like, “Look, here, you want to meet a gay person? Here I am. Ask me literally whatever you want.”

She was amazing. And she has an incredible moment in the last episode, too, during this riot against the cops. But anyway, I read about her. She seemed like such an incredible person.

I put her on the list of people I wanted to interview. And literally just a week or two later, she passed away. And I ended up finding out on social media because of some friends that knew her from activist circles. She continued to be active in queer circles and political circles up until her death.

And I really regret that I never got to talk to her. I love talking to people who knew her because they all just had so many incredible things to say. And they would sort of get like, a dreamy look on their face when they talked about her. Like she was just this mythic figure in addition to being a very real, real figure.

So, anyway, I would have loved to talk to Amber Hollabaugh.

The thing that surprised me, though, was I had no idea, I maybe had never even heard of this gigantic riot that happened in San Francisco after the conviction of Harvey Milk's killer, which I don't want to give too many details about, you know, why they were rioting, but—

BLAIR HODGES: And maybe don't spoil who it was if people don't.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Oh, yeah, no, I definitely won't. I definitely won't.

BLAIR HODGES: That. It shocked me. I didn't know. I didn't know the Milk story. So hearing the whole sweep of that story was, like, mind blowing.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: I had heard, obviously, about the Stonewall riots. I'd heard about the Compton's Cafeteria riot in San Francisco, which was an uprising of trans women. I feel like riots are very powerful moments in queer history because they show queer people really standing up for themselves in ways that they've been told they can't. That queer people are, like, weak and too effeminate to ever show real physical strength.

And whatever you want to say about political violence, you know, obviously I don't want to encourage violence, but I think it can be very, very powerful. Stories of people standing up for themselves. Especially against people who've committed violence against them, like the police, often, who were terrorizing queer people in cities and towns around the country, including in San Francisco.

So this riot that thousands of queer people were involved in outside City Hall in San Francisco in May 1979 was something I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about in queer history. And I actually didn't know how big of a part of the story I could make it when I started reading about it, because, you know, it definitely gets mentioned in queer histories. There were accounts of it in local newspapers. But it happened as a surprise, as riots often do. Something happened that day. People marched down to City Hall, and it turned into a riot against the police, an expression of political anger and disaffection. So I was like, okay, I don't really know how to find a random person who was involved in this.

I knew Cleve Jones had been there, and I was going to interview him, but then there was this other woman, Ruth Mahaney, who I just saw her name in someone's dissertation they had written about the Briggs Initiative, and she had a great quote in that dissertation. So I interviewed her.

It was sort of at the end of the interview, and I was like, okay, you know, kind of the last story we're going to tell in this podcast is about this riot. Did you know, have you heard about it at the time? And she was like, “Oh, yeah, I was there.” And, you know, “I tried to throw a rock, but it didn't go very far. And I tried to burn a cop car, but the matchbook went out.”

And I was like, oh my god, you were right in the middle of everything!

BLAIR HODGES: I can picture her throwing a brick against a window and it just bounces off. [laughter]

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Yeah, basically what had happened, she was a very effectual leader, not an effectual committer of vandalism. But she and Cleave Jones, it ended up that they were both kind of right in the middle of the riot and witnessed this pivotal moment where things kind of turned. Where it goes from police just beating protesters, beating peaceful protesters, to protesters fighting back.

And they both narrate this scene in the podcast from two different perspectives. And it turned into, really, one of my favorite segments of the podcast, because I think this was a part of the story that—I mean, I like to think a lot of this story has never been told quite in this way before, but especially this riot that I literally didn't even know existed, to be able to tell it in an immersive way that helps us understand why it happened, I think was really powerful, especially because, like I said, the idea of queer people being able to stand up for themselves against folks who are committing violence against them makes me feel really powerful today, you know, and gives me a lot of pride in what people were able to do back then.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, maybe, Christina, that segment is a good way to send people off. Maybe we can end the episode with that moment of the podcast as a teaser, because hopefully people will go check the whole thing out. It's called Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs.

Christina, thanks a lot for talking to us about it today.

CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI: Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

 

[Slow Burn, season 9, episode 7, excerpt]

 

BLAIR HODGES: That was the opening segment of the seventh and last episode of Slow Burn’s season nine, Gays Against Briggs, "Turn Around. Fight Back." You can hear the rest of that amazing episode, and the rest of that incredible series, wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Thanks for joining me on Relationscapes, where we're mapping the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other in order to build a more just world.

And there's more to come soon. For Pride Month, I'm releasing four full episodes instead of the customary two. So you've got another two episodes coming your way this month.

If this episode meant something to you, let me know. You can leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts, you can rate the show in Spotify, you can pass the episode along to a friend.

Mates of State provided our theme song. Relationscapes is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm journalist Blair Hodges in Salt Lake City, and I'll see you again soon.