01x02 - Television as a Tool

[bunniefuu]

In most parts of this country,

h*m* is still a liability

for those who want to run

for political office.

But in San Francisco, the scale

is being tipped the other direction.

In 1977, Harvey Milk was elected

to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors,

becoming the first

out g*y elected official in California.

As soon as we found out that Harvey

had won and could declare victory

my girlfriend took my motorcycle

down to city hall

and brought him back to his camera store.

It was great. He was just encircled

as soon as he got there.

He knows his audience.

He already has a big g*y bloc there.

But he's like, "Who else in this city

can I address using that camera?"

I will fight to represent my constituents.

I will fight to represent

the city and county of San Francisco.

I will fight to give those people

who had once walked away hope

so that those people will walk back in.

Thank you very much.

He's building bridges

all over San Francisco using local news.

When Harvey got elected,

I was covering city hall.

The TV news cameras loved him.

And I loved him too.

Because you would get a, you know

a great story, no matter what it was.

If you're gonna utilize television,

you have to entertain.

You have to keep people's attention.

Here's Harvey.

This is Thursday Night Live.

So other candidates might have had

this opportunity of this new audience

and just failed 'cause they're so boring,

but not Harvey.

And one of the great moments was when he

invited the cameras down to Duboce Park,

which is right near the Castro,

and he said, "What is an idea

that everyone can get behind?"

It may be the day before San Francisco's

dog litter ordinance goes into effect,

but for the city's dogs,

it was business as usual.

Just before the news conference,

Harvey went out with his dog

and planted dog poop in the park.

He "accidentally" stepped in the dog poop.

He lifted his foot up,

he looks at the bottom of it, and he says,

"I'm gonna make it a fine and a crime

to leave your dog's poo behind."

He was a showman.

He had the audience,

and he knew how to use it.

Being at Stonewall

the night that this went down

My memories of that night

are so clouded with the pain.

We were fighting for our f*cking lives.

And the fact that this went on

for six days

is a testament to what we had to do

to survive.

In the aftermath

of the Stonewall uprising,

LGBTQ activists formed resistance groups,

including the g*y Liberation Front,

g*y Activists Alliance,

Street tr*nsv*stite

Action Revolutionaries

and l*sbian Feminist Liberation.

Television was a way

to get our message across.

And because there weren't too many

out g*y men and lesbians,

we were invited on to talk shows.

I don't know

what's new about h*m*.

I guess it's been around for centuries

and thousands of years.

But they call it

the newest sexual revolution.

And maybe it is.

Maybe you can explain that to us.

- First, welcome to Pittsburgh.

- Glad to be here.

Welcome to Hotline, Randy.

Back in the '60s,

when g*y people had been on television,

often they stood in the shadows.

It was considered a disgrace to be

a h*m*. That wasn't my reaction.

It was important for me

to show that h*m* could be

just as well-adjusted as heterosexuals.

You say that

h*m* is not a sickness.

- And

- And it's not contagious.

- And it's not contagious.

- I mean, it isn't

You are or are not a h*m*.

It isn't something you become by choice.

So we had the opportunity

to talk about who we were

and what it is to be a g*y person.

But we were also a curiosity to people.

I was invited to appear

on a live talk show in Boston.

And when I got to the talk show,

I realized backstage

that I was going to be on the show

whose theme was disability.

There was a person on the show

who was deaf.

There was a man

who had multiple sclerosis.

And there was me, the l*sbian.

And I thought,

"Okay, here we are, the trifecta."

It's hard to talk about

this kinda stuff without stressing

just how invisible g*y people were.

Invisibility led

to the h*m* being standard.

And so everything was played for a joke.

I watched late-night TV from the moment

that I can remember watching TV.

And it was Carson.

It was Carson, Carson, Carson.

And many times,

g*y people were the butt of the joke.

Could I do it a couple minutes?

- No, no!

- No!

- That's no fun.

- Give me a break. I'm so lonely.

It was such cheap humor.

And for some reason, people just loved it.

I don't know whether you know this,

but Don didn't get married

until late in life

because he felt that marriage would

jeopardize his career working g*y bars.

Whenever you needed to

take somebody down a peg,

you would just infer that they were g*y.

Because that was the lower-class citizen.

Terms of abuse were order of the day.

JACK PAAR:

The word fairy is the most objectionable?

BRUCE VOELLER:

There are many objectionable terms

PAAR: Surely not f*g and queen.

Are they objectionable?

VOELLER:

Yes, they are.

ARNIE KANTROWITZ:

I'm a real human being.

PAAR: But we have a right to be a little

uptight when you people go too far.

We weren't getting anything

when people were speaking softly.

We had to demand it

and force television to respond.

NBC would do guided tours of 30 Rock.

So we arranged to take

the last tour of the night.

Television was live back then.

And because you have

millions of people watching,

airtime is worth a lot of money.

So any disruption can be

extremely expensive.

We snuck away from the group.

And we literally hid in a closet

till 6:00 in the morning.

And thanks to the tour,

we knew where the studio was.

So we all of a sudden

appeared on The Today Show.

US District Judge John

- g*y people are tired of NBC's bigotry!

- Oh, Christ.

NBC went quiet for two or three minutes.

They were going to turn me over

to the police.

But a woman came up to me and said,

"Who are you, what are you doing

and why did you do it?"

And she's taking notes as I'm telling her.

And a guy comes out and says to her,

"Get in there! Get in there! You're on!"

She says, "Not until I have the story."

That was Barbara Walters.

She said the word "g*y"

on national network TV.

People had to hear that.

But we hadn't completed

what needed to be done,

which is to make

the television networks realize

that they had to cover our story,

our people and our struggle.

The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

I grew up watching Walter Cronkite.

He was this kind of all-knowing,

all-seeing legend in news.

He was the man that America trusted.

So much so, 60 million people watched him

every evening.

You don't get that kind of ratings today

unless it's the Super Bowl.

So we realized that

if we're going to make a splash

and if the networks are

going to take us seriously,

we had to go after their big baby.

And their biggest baby was

the live broadcast of CBS Evening News.

I went in as a student

from Temple University

who was in the radio,

film and television department.

And I was going to write a thesis

on how the evening news was done

with Walter Cronkite.

So the producers invited me

into the studio.

With security precautions heavier

than those provided President Nixon,

- Secretary of State Kissinger

- g*y people are protesting CBS' policies!

And the CBS television network

went totally black.

At which point

some people in the room came over to me,

slammed me to the ground,

started wrapping me in cables.

We'll go on with the news, at any rate.

With security precautions heavier

than those provided President Nixon,

and perhaps with some

we could use around here

I was arrested.

And while I was still in jail,

every paper in America reported on it.

I was charged with disrupting

the Federal Communications Act,

which carried with it a $10,000 fine

and ten years' imprisonment.

So our defense was

that we weren't trespassing.

And to do that

we had to subpoena Walter Cronkite.

The prosecution did its bit,

saying how horrible and bad I was

and how I was a militant and a radical

and had to be put away.

And in the hall, Al,

my lawyer was talking to me.

And all of a sudden,

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I turned around, and the gentleman said,

"You must be Mark Segal."

I said, "You must be Walter Cronkite."

And he said,

"Why did you do what you did?"

And I said, "Your show discriminates.

It's censored. It's biased."

Walter Cronkite didn't know everything

about what was going on in the world.

He was a legend.

I'm not taking anything away from him.

At CBS News it wasn't a very diverse group

of people who were reporting the news.

It didn't really reflect

the width and the breadth of America.

When we got back into the courtroom,

he was called to testify.

And the first question

that the prosecution asked,

"When these people trespassed

into your studio"

And he said,

"They didn't trespass. We invited them."

We were found guilty but fined $200.

Mark Segal was incredibly brave.

So subversive and so smart. He was

getting himself in there like a spy.

And then at the exact moment,

he'd pop in front of the camera.

It was the only way

we could get that message out there.

Well, that interruption of our broadcast

a moment ago

was by a member

of something called g*y Raiders,

an organization protesting, he said,

CBS' alleged defamation of h*m*

on entertainment programming.

To be able to reach 60 million people

and have them say,

"Hey, did you see this fairy

disrupted Cronkite last night?"

That's how mass communication works.

It brings dialogue.

And dialogue brings a desire

to want to know more.

After that zap,

Walter started covering LGBT issues.

He would do different things

for the g*y rights struggle.

And we became friends.

Over the years I've kept in touch

with one of those young men.

His name's Mark Segal.

Brilliant young fellow.

He operates a g*y newspaper

in Philadelphia. Very successful.

g*y people watching would say,

"Hey, wow. There's other people like me.

Maybe we can band together

and make a positive change."

So those are really heroic acts

of almost, like, guerrilla warfare

and using the media as your tool.

As g*y activists were

forcing themselves onto the airwaves,

screenwriters Richard Levinson

and William Link were pitching

the first g*y-themed television movie

to network executives.

We took it to NBC.

And they said, "We wouldn't touch that

with a ten-foot pole. Get outta here."

Not that long after,

an assistant of Barry Diller's

came into our office and said,

"You know, Barry's the head of ABC Movies.

He's really looking

for good stuff, offbeat."

And we said, "Well, we've got this idea."

In ABC's TV movie, That Certain Summer,

a boy visits his father and finds out that

he's in a relationship with another man.

We couldn't get actors to play that role

of Doug Salter.

Cliff Robertson said, "I'd rather

play Hitler than play that man."

There weren't a lot of out g*y actors

at the time, in the '70s.

So those stories, when they were told,

were going to be played

by straight actors.

This was the decade when they did some

extraordinary movies for television.

And I was doing one all the time.

My second wife, Carol Rossen, said,

"What about that script you were reading?"

I said, "I turned it down."

But then I start to describe

the story to my wife.

And about halfway through that,

I remember this wonderful scene.

It takes some of us a while sometimes

to come all the way out.

I am out.

Okay.

I'm thinking "This is not so bad."

And then she said,

"Holbrook, are you nuts?"

I said, "Yeah."

She said, "When we get to the house,

you go to the phone,

you call Monty Johnson and see

if he hasn't cast the role, and say yes!"

The network was nervous as hell about it.

And I got this wonderful memo

from a top executive.

It said, "Lamont,

there must be no physical contact

between the two men in the story.

Not even lingering eye contact."

Standards and Practices

were running for the hills.

They made us put this speech at the end

where Hal Holbrook says to his son

If I had a choice

it's not something I'd pick for myself.

But it's the only way I can live.

The scene's implication that h*m*

was an undesirable affliction

offended g*y activists.

But because of the film's

relatively sensitive nature,

GAA president Rich Wandel

ultimately praised the film

as a significant if tentative step

in the right direction.

The fact that we were allowed

on the screen at all was a breakthrough.

That Certain Summer was

a critical and ratings success

and became the first TV movie to depict

h*m* in a sympathetic light.

That Certain Summer offered the hope

of a rosier vision of g*y life

because it celebrated the fact

that these two guys

had made their love that important.

The point of the movie was

we happened to be g*y,

but we were just people having a life.

That's who we are.

Walking down Fifth Avenue in New York,

I remember a man

in a beautiful business suit stopped me

and said, "I just wanna thank you

for that"

It's very moving.

When I think of that, I get moved.

"I just wanna thank you

for that show you did with Marty Sheen.

I just want you to know

how much it meant to me, and thank you."

And I said, "Thank you."

While TV movies were beginning

to push the envelope in the 1970s,

sitcoms also began to experiment

with g*y and l*sbian characters

in recurring roles.

But the characters

weren't always authentic.

I'm not?

Are you crazy, moving in with two girls?

Not in my building.

- Wait. It'll be strictly platonic.

- I don't care what it is.

On Three's Company,

John Ritter's character had to say

he was a g*y man

in order to live with these two women.

It was the first time I remember thinking

that I was ahead of the joke.

I think I wasn't old enough

or g*y enough

to understand

what I was actually watching.

I feel like it was really ambiguous. Was

John Ritter's character g*y? I don't know.

It played on this fantasy

of one man having two women to himself.

Jack, thank you.

- It's just what we needed.

- It's just what we needed.

But it was a lot of bait and switch.

It also played on the other fantasy

that the women were together

and the man really was g*y.

My being in bed with you,

and you being a

Tinker Bell?

Yeah. People are liable

to get the wrong idea.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

Obviously Jack Tripper was

a very stereotypical g*y guy.

Yes?

He wasn't even really g*y.

It was part of the ruse of the show.

But when he was overly effeminate

and "acting" g*y,

that's when my parents were laughing.

Like, they were loving him.

Larry, poopkins!

Where have you been?

I told you I flew to San Francisco.

I know, you silly goose.

I've just missed my roomie so much.

They were mocking it, certainly.

But it was also a kind of power

that he had.

Tinker Bell.

Mr. Roper was mainly afraid of him

when he was playing that persona.

No, actually,

not all of us are interior decorators.

Some of us are boxers.

You mean you'd actually hit another guy?

No. Only if he made fun of us.

Funny show sometimes,

but ultimately very insulting.

'Cause they got to make g*y jokes

about somebody who wasn't even g*y.

There's something funny about it

and grotesque.

I remember hating it so much.

I mean, it's great. Great show.

Lovely performances, blah, blah, blah.

I watched it all the time, and I laughed.

But no.

Bullshit.

Don't worry, Mr. R.

It'll be our own little secret.

While Three's Company was featuring

a fake g*y character in 1977,

Soap, a new sitcom that premiered

the same year on ABC,

became the first hit series

to feature a g*y regular character.

Soap was on, like, at 10:00

or something that was past curfew.

But I remember they had an out character

which was played by Billy Crystal.

Jodie Dallas pretty much was the first

g*y character on TV that I remember.

- Hi, big brother.

- Hiya, little brother.

Why don't you offer him some Froot Loops?

It'd be very appropriate.

Soap was an over-the-top parody

of a soap opera, so they were just like,

"What funny situation

can we put Billy Crystal in?"

The second episode had this scene

where I'm at home alone.

I'm in my mother's clothes,

and she comes in.

Jodie, how many times do I have to

tell you to leave my things alone?

- Mother

- Look at that.

My wig, my necklace, my best dress.

- You wear that belted!

- Oh, yeah.

The first few episodes I wasn't happy with

'cause I thought we weren't right.

I'm sure if I go back and watch

some episodes of Soap,

I would probably cringe, like,

"Oh, my God. What?"

But back then, that was progress.

At least we were there, we were included.

- Dad!

- Peter!

Peter!

Peter.

Some g*y groups were

uncomfortable with it.

"Who is he? Why is he cross-dressing?"

But then,

by show six or seven,

something like that

I have a scene with my brother.

And I tell him that I'm g*y.

Hey, I'm still the Jodie

who plays tennis with you.

I'm still the Jodie who bowls with you.

I'm still the Jodie who laughs with you,

and I'm still the Jodie who counts on you.

I just loved everything about it.

He was g*y, but he was

That was everybody else's problem.

You're probably not g*y.

I am!

And it shouldn't make any difference.

And if it does and you don't love me now,

then you've never loved me at all.

That was, to me, the breakthrough

where it was honest.

There was no camping.

Now Jodie was becoming a real guy.

And then over time, the character

got involved with the pro football player.

You can laugh at me and tell me

to get lost, but I've gotta say it.

I love you, and I want you back.

There was that nervous laugh

that got under my skin

where I wanted to stop and go,

"What is your problem?"

It made me very defensive

and uncomfortable

with their laughter in the studio

'cause it was the wrong kind of laughter.

Carol, there's not gonna be

any romance here.

- Why?

- I'm a h*m*, remember?

The character of Jodie

first identified as g*y,

but in later episodes,

fell in love with a woman.

Maggie and I are an item.

My son is normal.

That was all about shock and big laughs.

But the problem is is that what they

were laughing about was our lives.

And they never quite knew

what to do with his character.

Although Jodie dated both men and women,

Soap never overtly identified him

as bisexual.

Maggie, don't you understand?

I don't know what I am.

What if in two years

I fall in love with another man?

In 1981, ABC canceled Soap

and green-lit Dynasty,

a prime-time soap featuring

character Steven Carrington,

who identified as g*y.

I'm a h*m*, Dad.

Dynasty started great

because you had Steven Carrington,

who was g*y and super cute

with these supple lips.

Just my type.

But the problematic part was

a few years into the show

when he started dating Claudia.

And I'm at home like, "What are you doing?

You're f*cking up this amazing story line

you have going on.

This is impossible. He's not straight.

I'm in St. Louis and I'm 15,

but I know this for sure."

Sometimes I think it might've been better

had Steven gone on living the g*y life.

At least that would've been honest.

LGBTQ activists criticized Dynasty

for only featuring intimate scenes

in Steven's relationships with women.

In a lot of these g*y-themed stories,

touching was the crime.

And unlike Steven's female partners,

multiple male partners were k*lled.

They weren't ready

to legitimize such a thing.

So it's been a problematic journey

through television.

'Cause I always feel like

there's something we had to give up

in the way of our humanity

in order to get the story told at all.

In the '70s, television really moved

LGBT equality along.

But it's a double-edged sword because

the other side knows how to use it too.

Singer Anita Bryant's

well-publicized emotional crusade

to repeal Dade County's g*y rights law

ended at the voting booth today.

She says no h*m* should have

the right to teach her four children.

The overwhelming majority

of the constituents of Dade County

are against this moral issue.

And the organization which we've formed

says it all: Save Our Children.

To see what Anita Bryant was doing

was so disgusting.

So disgusting, and people were buying it.

Anita Bryant helped coalesce this idea

which eventually becomes

the religious right,

a massive backlash

against g*y and l*sbian people.

The Bryant forces had won the election,

and a composed

and visibly pleased Anita Bryant

told her supporters

Miami voters had spoken.

With God's continued help,

we will prevail in our fight

to repeal similar laws

throughout the nation.

The issue that came to California

was Prop 6, the Briggs initiative.

Senator John Briggs

put forward a piece of legislation

in California

that would have outlawed g*y men and women

to teach in our schools.

Somebody's got to draw

the moral line in this country

and say enough is enough,

and that's what Anita Bryant did,

and that's what I'm attempting to do.

To highlight what gays and lesbians

were up against,

Norman Lear's All in the Family

featured a l*sbian schoolteacher.

Do you think

that we would have been allowed

to continue to work as schoolteachers?

Well, why not?

I mean, that don't affect the brain,

does it?

It was a scary time for g*y people.

If it came out that she was a l*sbian,

she'd lose her job.

John Briggs was saying that g*y men

and g*y women were pedophiles,

and they were gonna go after our kids,

they were gonna recruit our children

and get a whole new army

of l*sbian and g*y men.

John Briggs had a big following,

and early polls

showed that he was going to win.

Because Proposition 6

was a statewide ballot initiative,

Harvey made sure he got on television

that was across the state,

public television.

Sally Gearhart and Harvey

were co-chairs

of the Stop Briggs initiative,

and they together were going to debate

John Briggs on television.

Both Sally and Harvey were

rather colorful in their day-to-day lives.

Harvey called Sally and said to her,

"We have the big debate tomorrow

on statewide TV against John Briggs.

Honey, whatever do I wear?"

Sally, of course, is like,

"Oh, God, what are we gonna do?"

Harvey said, "Sally, you're gonna be

the mom, I'm gonna be the dad.

We're gonna be like

wholesome middle America here."

It was like the one-two punch.

If child molestation is not an issue,

if it is not an issue, why do you put out

literature that hammers it home?

We are not talking about h*m*

about child molestation.

The fact is at least 95% of the people

are heterosexual.

We cannot prevent child molestation,

so let's cut our odds down

and take out the h*m* group

and keep in the heterosexual group.

Why take out the h*m* group

if it is more than

Overwhelmingly it is true

that it's the heterosexual men,

I might add, who are the child molesters.

I believe that's a myth.

I've never seen these figures.

The FBI, the National Council

on Family Relations,

the Santa Clara County Child

Sexual Abuse Treatment Center

and on and on and on.

A month after the televised debate,

public opinion had shifted,

and the Briggs initiative

was defeated 58% to 42%.

We all went down

to the No on 6 headquarters.

And the atmosphere on Market Street

was euphoric.

We had done it. We had defeated bigotry.

No more Briggs! No more Briggs!

I believe that

more than ever before that

there are evil forces round about us

even perhaps disguised as something good.

That bright light of TV

eventually is going to expose you,

and that's what it did to Anita Bryant.

It became clear

that this was an idea rooted in hate

and that people didn't want to be hurting

g*y people the way Anita Bryant did.

And so once you expose

that you've been lying,

you're gonna become a punch line.

Thank you, late-night TV.

Anita Bryant, former mediocre actress

and orange juice promoter,

performed coitus in public yesterday

as part of her campaign

to promote heterosexuality.

She and her husband assumed

the missionary position for two minutes,

then announced she is a citrosexual.

We were getting to the point

where people didn't want to be perceived

as a bigot.

It was losing the nods of approval.

And talk show hosts like Johnny Carson

wanted to be on the right side of history.

Did you see this in the paper today?

This was interesting.

They held a poll of teenagers.

One of the questions

they asked the youngsters was,

"What man and woman

have done the most damage in the world?"

Would you believe whom they picked?

They picked Adolf Hitler and Anita Bryant.

On television at the time,

American audiences

could accept certain things

as long as they weren't explicitly told

that this was g*y.

Every now and then, I have given a thought

to marriage and having children.

After all,

I have so many marvelous qualities.

I should pass them on to someone.

The g*y-seeming comics

never actually came out and said it.

They just alluded to it,

and it was a shared secret, I suppose.

It's like the only way they could be out

was to speak in code.

I dig my tinkle.

I dig any tinkle.

The innuendo, the double entendre.

It felt like they were talking directly

to us g*y people.

But for straight people, it could do this.

My father didn't think

a g*y person even existed.

There were no g*y people in the world.

And I'd say to him, I said,

"Dad, look at Paul Lynde."

On Bewitched, Paul Lynde played

the kind of uncle in everybody's family.

The confirmed bachelor.

Gotcha now, Uncle Arthur.

Well, the confirmed bachelor warlock

in that family.

Excuse me for not getting up,

but my feet are k*lling me.

Paul Lynde was so irreverent.

He was the exotic flavor on the show.

And then he ended up being

the center square on Hollywood Squares.

Hollywood Squares

was the perfect venue for him.

Whoever is in the center

has gotta have jokes

to keep the thing moving along.

Paul was great for the one-liner joke.

When a man falls out of your boat

and into the water, you should yell,

"Man overboard."

Now, what should you yell

if a woman falls overboard?

Full speed ahead.

He was so sassy and salty.

And he was beloved.

I remember my mom being like,

"He's so funny. I love that Paul Lynde."

He was so popular that he got a sitcom

where he was the harassed suburban father

with a family that was crazy,

and he was dealing with it.

Martha, sex is not for housewives.

I've noticed that lately.

He wanted to be a leading man,

but Paul didn't do much else

that wasn't just Paul doing his character.

Who wants babies?

To be the anchor of a sitcom,

you have to be a little bit more diverse.

The audience watched like crazy

the first week,

and then it dropped precipitously.

And so they canceled it.

I love Paul Lynde, but it's not like

he was really the leading character.

He was always secondary.

He would get some funny one-liner.

Paul, you've got a secret

according to psychologists.

If you're average, will you probably

tell it to a man or to a woman?

If I tell it to a man, he might hit me.

Let's see now.

I loved him.

But I didn't know whether people

were laughing with him or at him,

and I don't like that.

There was a punching bag element to it,

his acceptance.

I remember being sad that

he had to twist himself into that figure.

I've asked you to do this show before,

and I know you're busy.

We kept coming to you. I said, "Come on,

Paul. Drop on the show some night."

I really don't know, other than

I'm just absolutely scared to death

of coming out and being myself.

Any of these people

that we knew were obviously g*y,

we never got to really know.

Because we only accepted them so far.

Where did you develop

the things that you're known for?

And I won't even attempt to do them.

Your mannerisms.

Have you always done those?

Are they natural to you, or did you

I I

He never actually came out

and said he was g*y.

He felt trapped in this caricature

that he had become,

and he wanted much more,

but I don't think he knew how to do that.

So, he was miserable.

On one drink, he was hysterical.

On two drinks,

he was the n*zi high command.

I mean, he was hated everybody.

That's the inherent quality

of show business, isn't it?

And it's part of television: insecurity.

You're never quite sure

if you have arrived.

The anxiety that never lets up,

and it seems, instead of, you know

As you become more successful,

you would think it would ease up.

Instead, it just becomes more and more.

In 1979, Paul Lynde's 13-year run

on Hollywood Squares

came to an end,

and his acting career dwindled.

Somebody called me up.

I was at home working on a script,

and the phone started ringing.

And it was all these people calling,

"Have you heard about Paul?"

Comedian Paul Lynde

was found dead last night at his home.

He apparently had a heart attack.

He was 55.

Though his career spanned 30 years,

Lynde was probably best known

It was a breaking news story,

so that was how I found out.

Paul died in 1982.

If he knew that in 2018, people were

having conversations about him,

he would die all over.

He would not believe it,

because he thought he was such a footnote.

But if you really want his impact, watch

American Dad. The alien is Paul Lynde.

I can't hide it anymore. In fact,

I want to shout it from the rooftops.

Klaus and I are in love.

I'm sure, if he were alive, would say,

"I want a piece of that.

That alien is me!"

I have so much compassion for people who,

like Paul Lynde,

had to live an open secret

and had to really hide who they were.

And I am also very grateful for them

for living as loud as they possibly could

under the constraints

of their lives at that moment.

It's very important to know that

NATHALIE ROCKHILL:

Half of us g*y people are women.

And that women

when g*y people are talked about,

usually only men are talked about,

and we're here too.

In 1973

one hardly saw a l*sbian on TV.

We are invisible.

And nobody can see us, apparently.

That, we could work to our advantage.

The thing that television stations forgot

is that lesbians worked in their offices.

Lesbians were on the crew.

Lesbians were answering the phone,

and lesbians were xeroxing

the script for them.

Those lesbians that they never saw

took copies of these scripts

and passed them on to l*sbian groups

who would do something about them.

So, then there was a Police Woman episode

about some l*sbian women

who were running a care facility

for elderly people.

It has come, hasn't it?

My bank statement?

And they would rob these people

of all their money and k*ll them.

Okay, so you finally put lesbians on TV.

But you gonna make them K*llers?

They're murdering old people?

I mean, come on.

That was unacceptable.

So l*sbian Feminist Liberation

organized a zap of NBC.

l*sbian Feminist Liberation

will not tolerate

the misrepresentation of our lives

any longer.

That's the most absurd, ridiculous

What's going on upstairs?

So these activists storm 30 Rock,

and they demanded for the executives

to hear them out.

And they sat in overnight.

Eventually, we had a meeting

with the president of NBC

and quite a few people from programming.

And that was very helpful.

It was very helpful,

because we had some time

to really educate those folks.

And I had just read in The New York Times

an article about a l*sbian mother

in Texas.

I mentioned that story

to the programming people, and they said,

"Well, we'll look into that."

The activists continued to pitch the story

in meetings with television executives,

and in 1978, A Question of Love

premiered on ABC.

A Question of Love

was the story of two women,

both of whom had been married

and had children.

My character had already been divorced.

And Gena Rowlands played my lover,

who was in the midst of getting a divorce.

You had Jane Alexander and Gena Rowlands.

They're playing lesbians, which was huge.

And I know now we look at it and we say,

"Well, how come they couldn't

cast lesbians to play lesbians?"

Well, there weren't many out lesbians

back then. You know?

So, to have these straight actors

take on these roles to tell our story,

that was pretty risky and big

on their parts.

ABC told us

we had only three touches allowed

and no kissing.

So we thought, "What is

the best kind of touch you can have?"

- Wanna give me a hand?

- Sure.

Gena said, "I'm gonna brush your hair

in a way that your hair

has never been brushed before."

And at the time, I had long brown hair.

I mean, she's just stroking it

and stroking it.

It's very sensual.

The real woman that Gena played

had a terrible custody battle.

When the ex of Gena Rowlands' character

files for custody

because he's saying

that she's an unfit mom

because she's in this relationship.

Do you find there's been

a substantial and material change

in the conditions affecting Billy Guettner

and that his best interests are served

by transferring

managing conservatorship

to Michael Guettner?

Jury votes yes, ten to two.

She's denied custody.

Solely because

she was in a l*sbian relationship.

Even though it was a sad ending

millions of people saw this on TV.

And audiences felt like this woman

was a real victim of prejudice.

Forty years ago when we did the movie,

g*y people had to fight

very hard to prove

that they were going to be nurturing

and responsible parents.

And it continues to this day.

But what that story did

was humanize these lesbians.

Just like, "Hey, these are real people,"

and to have her child

be removed from this loving home,

that resonated with the audience.

A Question of Love

aired on NBC on November 26, 1978,

giving lesbians visibility

in an unprecedented way.

The next morning,

audiences across the country

turned on their televisions

to breaking news from San Francisco.

The streets of the city

have taken on a different pall today

as San Franciscans

grope for understanding

and attempt to come to terms with

the shocking and tragic events

of the past day.

It was a Monday morning,

and we got word

that there was a sh**ting at city hall.

I called San Francisco General Hospital

'cause there was a nurse in the ER

who owed me some favors.

And I said, "What do you hear?"

And she said, "I think

they must be dead,

because otherwise

they would be here by now."

So we reported that,

and that was the first from my TV station

to report that there had been

murders committed at city hall.

But we didn't know

who had been shot and k*lled.

And then Dianne Feinstein

came out and announced

As president of the board of supervisors,

it's my duty to make this announcement.

Both Mayor Moscone

and Supervisor Harvey Milk

have been shot and k*lled.

- Oh!

- Jesus Christ!

Hold it.

Let her talk.

- Quiet.

- Quiet!

The suspect is Supervisor Dan White.

The word was out that the assassinations

had happened at city hall.

And we came to the conclusion

that we wanted nothing more

than to be with each other.

Throughout the city, people got the word

that we were gonna meet at Castro Street.

We were gonna do a candlelight march.

I was in the beginning of the march,

and the only sound you heard

was people sobbing.

It was a big, human, powerful moment.

And we were all grieving, not just Harvey,

but something, probably, in our own lives

that had made it so sad

that we had come to this point.

I turned around when we got near city hall

and looked back,

and it was just a sea of light.

All the way back up to the Castro.

Mothers and fathers

and people with their babies.

It was San Franciscans

marching for Harvey and George.

And for the travesty that had happened.

Every single person in this country

with a television set

could see the heartbreak in the Castro.

And I think the power in seeing that

on your television

is pretty transformational.

We've seen him work and struggle

for this community,

and we were so pleased and thought,

"Now his work will pay off,

and he can continue

and get the credit he deserves."

And now it's all gone.

Everyone covered the assassination.

It was huge news.

Dan White turned himself in,

admitted the killings.

He'd shot each man five times.

He's pleaded not guilty

to first-degree m*rder.

I was certain that Dan White

was gonna get the electric chair.

And then I had to come out live

and announce the verdict.

I was in total shock.

The jury has found Dan White

guilty of voluntary manslaughter

in the killings of both George Moscone

and Harvey Milk.

The prosecution wanted White

found guilty of first-degree m*rder,

a judgment that could have sent him

to the gas chamber.

But yesterday's verdict means

Dan White ended up getting out

in five years.

I still can't wrap my head around that.

What's critical there

in how television played a part

is we looked in the eyes

the world, the city,

the state, the country

had looked in the eyes

of the people involved in this case,

and we knew that jury was wrong.

We all went to Castro Street.

I was not mentally prepared for that.

All of us were angry.

We want justice! We want justice!

We want justice! We want justice!

He got away with m*rder!

He got away with m*rder!

I've found a lot of understanding

why people were angry.

And I think that Harvey's death

was nothing new.

We've had violence against us

before this happened.

Stonewall wasn't covered by television.

And so the first time

that America did see this community

rise up in anger

was the White Night riots.

It had to do with the horror of injustice,

you know?

If Dan White had not k*lled a h*m*,

he would have gone to the gas chamber.

But because he k*lled a h*m*,

the jury, I believe,

did not find him guilty.

They essentially said

it's all right to k*ll a h*m*.

And that's why there was a riot.

- Hey, leave 'em alone.

- Stay back, stay back.

I'm not condoning last night,

but I had two people inside me fighting.

One of them said, "Let's be a monitor.

Let's stop this violence.

Let's stop the window breaking."

And then I'd turn around

and I'd see police brutality.

I'd see three or four policemen

brutally beat innocent people

that were trying to stop the violence.

And that other part of me says,

"I've got to stand up and fight."

I remember that very clearly.

Because the televisions

were resounding in every room

around my parents' apartment.

It was this thing

that just tore everybody apart.

And yet it made everybody realize

that it couldn't end with that.

Milk started something,

and it's gonna keep going

whether he's here or not.