What We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Outspoken podcast Network. As a gay kid, growing up religious in the South, I thought being gay was the worst thing I could ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn that by seeking out our history, and what I've found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. From My Heart Podcasts, I'm Jordan again Solve and this is What We Loved. In a typical episode, I interview a queer elder and they tell me about
the history they've lived through in vivid detail. But I wanted you to know more about me and how my own search for belonging led me to make this show. So for this starter episode, I'm gonna be the one interviewed by a queer elder. I'm gonna be interviewed by Eric Marcus. He's one of the journalists I look up to the most. He's a fellow gay man and the host of the podcast Making Gay History. He's sixty five now, but when he was my age, he began interviewing his
queer elders. Between his books and his podcast, he's made one of the most important archives of LGBTQ history in existence. In a way, this show is about passing things down from one queer generation to the next, and I felt like Eric was passing down this duty to me to continue the work he's been doing for the last thirty five years preserving and sharing our history. Eric Marcus, thank
you so much for being here. I can't believe you're actually interviewing me for the first episode of the show, but it's so amazing and surreal to do this.
I'm so delighted, I'm so proud of you, and I look forward to asking you lots of questions.
Why don't we start off with you introducing yourself?
Sure, I'm Eric Marcus, founder and host of the Making Gay History podcast, and like you, I am a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. However, i'm class of eighty four, and I know you're a little younger than that.
Yeah, twenty three. What is that? Forty years later? Almost?
Yeah, it's thirty nine years yeah, ten years later. Yeah, So why don't you introduce yourself?
Well, I am a journalist like you, Eric, but my beat is around shame, and shame has a really interesting part in many of our stories as LGBT people, and so I've always been fascinated and drawn toward that.
Shame is such a universal I'm very familiar with it. Being homosexual, I was so ashamed of who I was, and there was no other way of understanding oneself because gay people were not portrayed in any way that would make you feel proud of yourself exactly. Yeah, why don't you tell us what the show is about.
The show is a queer history show, but it's told through the amazing memories and interviews with queer elders, and so even though it's about queer history, it has this really unique intergenerational dialogue aspect, kind of like passing down wisdom to the next generation.
Right, because we don't. We're not born into families where I'm Jewish, and in my family, our Jewish heritage was passed down generation to generations. So I have stories, but as far as I know, I'm the first out gay person in my entire family forever, and nobody had that history. I had to go out and find out about it myself. Before we get to the show. I have more questions about you.
Yes, I'm nervous, don't worry.
So what was it like growing up gay? For you.
Well, basically, I grew up pretty isolated from other queer people. I grew up in the South in Texas and to imm parents from India who were very religious, and so I went to church multiple times a week. And actually, one of my earliest memories that I think really shaped who I am as a gay man was when I
was in the seventh grade. I would go to Bible study every Sunday after Mass, and I remember one Sunday, the youth minister was doing a presentation on heaven and Hell, and there were three columns on this chart that he had projected onto the wall. The first column was how you get into heaven, things like obeying your parents and being kind to the elderly. And then the middle column was how you go to purgatory, so things like drinking
alcohol too much or gossiping. And then the last column was about Hell and that had things like if you cheated on your spouse or if you murder or rape someone, and it also had a little bullet point for engaging in homosexual activity.
And were you aware at that point that you were gay?
You know, at that point I was starting to definitely feel like I was attracted to other guys, that's the age when you sort of figure that stuff out. But I thought, well, surely I can't be gay because I'm not going to hell, you know. I want to go to heaven with my parents and with my grandparents and everything. But even before then, when I really think back, I have another memory that I think shaped me even more.
I was in the second grade and it was recess and we were all playing tag, me and the other kids, and right as we were about to start, there was a boy who tapped me on the shoulder and he said, no gay people allowed. And I remember, you know, in that moment, I immediately said, well, I'm not gay. I didn't know I was gay in the second grade.
But it's just second grade.
But I think kids can always kind of smell that.
Yeah they do.
They do.
They did with me too.
Yeah, But I immediately realized from that moment that there had to be something wrong with gay people. I also now realize as an adult that so much gay violence really starts on the playground. And I knew from that moment that gay people were horrible and repulsive and unlovable, and therefore that's what I thought about myself. And I spent the rest of my adolescence, in my childhood and even my early adulthood, convincing everyone around me and convincing myself that I'm not.
That that you're not that horrible thing exactly. But you knew you were attracted to guys.
Yeah, deep down. I don't think I wanted to admit it to myself, but I knew.
So when did you come out to yourself? And then when did you come out?
More broadly, Well, I think the way that I defined coming out was coming out to my parents.
That's a big one.
That's a big one, and that was probably the biggest one for me. Coming out to myself was probably maybe a year or two before that. And I had actually come out because I had fallen in love accidentally.
I think falling in love is almost always accidental, and it's usually with the wrong person, but that's yeah.
For the first time. Usually it is yeah. And so I was dating someone and we were falling in love, and I was realizing that I was living a double life because I hadn't told my family. Huh, and so about I want to say, nine months into our relationship, I just couldn't take it anymore, and my brother happened to be getting engaged, and he had been living in Hawaii at the time. I was in New York. So he invited all of us down to Hawaii for the engagement. And I hadn't seen my folks in a while because
I was in college and I was traveling. So I thought to myself, I have to do this here. And I waited until the last day because I it was so scary for me. And I remember I was in the hotel room with my parents. My dad had, I think, maybe gone to the bathroom. So it's just me and my mom in the room, and I said, I have something to tell you. I'm gay. And I think for the first few moments she was really perplexed and kind
of taken by surprise. And then my father walked in the room and and she said, your son has something to tell you. And he said, what do you have to tell me? And I said, I'm gay. And I had never seen my parents so emotional before. My father was sobbing, and I had never seen goodness. I had never seen my dad cry before, and I was crying so much. It felt like I was telling them that I had did some of the things on that column about going to hell.
Oh, so in their minds immediately you've told them something that it means you're not going to be with him in heaven.
Those were the steaks, right, Those are the stakes. And I also felt like, being a child of immigrants, your parents have sacrificed so much for you to get where you are, and it's almost like you feel as though you owe them a debt with your life to live out their dreams for your life. And my parents are dreams for my life were for me to get married in the Catholic Church to a wife and have kids and give them grandchildren. And I think that in that moment their dreams were being shattered.
You destroyed their hopes and dreams for their child, having come to this country with the hope that you would have a certain kind of life, and here you were breaking their hearts. Did it take them a long time to come back to themselves and to have a sense that you would be okay?
It did? It? Did? It took work on both ends. I think for them it took understanding that I was the same person and I was going to be perfectly fine. And then I think it took the work on my end to realize that I have to live my life for me. And about a month after I came out to them, I went on this backpacking trip to India, and I had never been as an adult. I'd been a couple of times when I was a kid, but
I hadn't been as an adult. And I remember I got to meet my cousins for the first time in years that I hadn't seen since I was a little kid, and they were just like me. They were, you know, young and excited about going out to party and dance and starting their lives. And so we went out one night and I remember were sitting in a bar, me and my cousin and drinking a beer, and I just felt like I should tell him, and so I leaned over and said, you know, I have something to tell you.
I'm gay. And he said, Jordan, I'm happy for you. I just want you to know that I'm not so sure that India will be happy for you.
Huh oh.
And I think eric in that moment, I realized that the shame was ever mine. It was my family's shame, it was my religion shame, it was the Catholic Church's shame, it was my ancestor's shame. All projected onto me that I carried for my whole life, and in that moment, I finally began to have the awareness that it was never mine to begin with. It didn't belong to me.
That's such an important revelation. It's something I struggled with for have struggled with for much of my life, and I still think I'm hardwired with some of those feelings about shame.
It's a lifelong journey.
It is it is, and it's imposed on us. But then it becomes our work to unburden ourselves of.
That and that relationship, you know, like many first relationships, it failed, but it failed because I think that I didn't know how to love as a gay man. I didn't know how to love myself, and he was the first person that I had come out to. Oftentimes, you know, your first love is kind of the first person who touches the deepest secret you've ever held, and so it can be so electrifying, but at the same time, you're not equipped with the tools to go through that relationship
in a healthy way. And you know, when I look back, I don't think that I was really looking to be loved. I was looking to be validated and that was really because I spent an entire lifetime feeling unlovable, and because I was hiding this secret about myself, I would overcompensate in all these other ways. I was a straight A student. I wanted to have the best job and make the
most money. Once I graduated, I was spending hours in the gym because I wanted to have the best looking body, you know, And I think at that point I needed a role model to kind of show me the ropes.
So we've talked about really all the damage that was done by the larger world in which you grew up, and you're not in that place anymore. I'm looking at you across the table, and I met you while when you were already an out and proud man. What was your healing process like?
Well, after college, I was newly out and I got a job in San Francisco, and I made an amazing group of gay friends when I was their queer friends, and it was really the first time in my life that I was around people that were like me. We had been through the same things together. We had had similar childhoods, we had similar coming out experiences, and it was amazing because we were having really honest conversations about who we were and how lonely we felt at times,
and how we wanted to be loved so badly. And we were also, you know, going out and having amazing fun at the same time. And that point in my life was the first time that I felt like I wasn't alone and like I really had a community. And I think that was really, when I look back, what helped elevate my self esteem and my self confidence.
It sounds like it was a support group, therapy and deep friendship, which is very healing.
Exactly. I think when you get an opportunity to be around people like that and talk about who you are and where you come from, it really can give you a new perception of who you are.
Yeah, you discover you're not a unicorn, You're you're a member of a herd. Yes, And that's that's empowering. It is something else that I have found empowering has been my work in studying LGBTQ history and meeting lots of people from generations past. Uh, how did you become interested in this history?
Well, you know, I have to say it wasn't because I suddenly wanted to become interested in it. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and I was pretty out at that point and proud, and my job was hosting a panel for Pride Month. They were hosting a panel of like queer elders and after one of the panel members and I were chat he must have been I think in his late fifties early sixties, and I remember he asked, me, how are you liking San Francisco. I was your age when I moved to San Francisco
and I had just come out as well. I had told him that, and you know, I told him, I'm having the time of my life and I'm finding my tribe and I'm really feeling like I'm having my coming of age in my early twenties. And I noticed that his face was starting to collapse a bit, and I asked, what's wrong, and he looked at me and he said, I'm jealous of you. He said. You know, when I was your age and I moved here, the AIDS crisis
was exploding. I didn't get to have fun because I was so scared that I would get AIDS and I would die. And I never got to find my friends like you did be because they all died and there was this really strange moment where we were looking at each other and we weren't saying anything, but I felt like we both at the same moment thought I could have been you if I was born at a different time. And I realized that I didn't know much about my queer history. I didn't know about the men and women
that came before me. I knew about the AIDS crisis, but I didn't really understand that the fact that I was able to be so out and so proud and so open was really a direct result of the generations before me and their losses and their sacrifices and their victories. And so that's really when I felt inspired to start learning the history and to start talking to my more often.
And there's no reason you would have known that history. It's not taught, or it's only taught minimally. You don't learn that history unless you go out and seek.
It, exactly. Yeah, And you know, I always thought that queer history was sad. I grew up going to public school in Texas, and I remember very briefly learning about AIDS and it was sort of these really sad images of men with sunken cheekbones and being super gaunt and lonely. And I also had sort of known that before Stonewall, queer life was somewhat abysmal because you could get arrested or beat up for being gay. But as I started kind of having these conversations with queer elders, I began
to come across stories of courage and perseverance and love. Actually, one of the gentlemen that you put me in touch with, Martin Boyce, he's I think in his seventies. He was at Stonewall, and I remember him telling me how he was battling the SWAT team in his crop top. Yes, yes, exactly. And you know, there was another woman that I spoke with who's going to be on the show. Her name
is Jean Carlo Musto. She was a lesbian part of Act Up and she was helping the stage of protests at Wall Street that ended up pushing the pharmaceutical industry to lower the prices of their drugs so that AIDS patients could gain access to life saving medicines. And as I was sort of engaging in the history, I was realizing, these are the role models that I needed when I was a child. And for whatever reason, there's been a
gap between our generations. I was actually wondering for you, do you feel like there was that gap for you too?
Oh? Sure, sure. And you know, one of the words that I also associate with gay life, the life that I've experienced, is joy. So I just think of being on the floor of the dance floor at the Ice Palace on West fifty seventh Street in nineteen seventy eight, and a song would come on that we all loved
and we poured onto the dance floor. And I remember dancing last dance with Don Miller from Texas, who was visiting New York in his cowboy boots and his cowboy hat, and he was a strawberry blonde who looked you didn't look like a Texan. And then I took him home on the f train to Queen's where I lived, in the middle of the night. And so there was a lot of joy. And we don't hear about that. And for me, growing up, absolutely there was a generational a
generation gap. We humans tend to dismiss people who are older than we are as dinosaurs or they don't understand us, and we don't take the time to talk to each other, and there isn't necessarily a natural time where we would come together younger people and older people. You have to ask the questions, you have to seek out those relationships exactly.
And you know, Eric, even though I'm the host, I'm also a listener reclaiming the history and rewriting my own history in the process.
There's there's much to learn from those who came before us. We don't have to invent the wheel. Absolutely. Yeah. So one of the joys for people, well for me listening is I'm going to get to hear your voice. I'm going to get to hear you interview people. I'm going to get to hear someone from a much younger generation doing work that I started in nineteen eighty eight. And that's a great joy for me. What do you hope your listeners will take away from these episodes?
You know, young people, young queer people, young LGBTQ people are struggling. But you know, I think when you're a young queer person, so much of that has to do with the fact that you don't really have the images and the role models and the stories to believe that you're going to live an amazing life. And I think what I want young people to know now more than ever is that you come from a rich lineage of courage and strength. Despite what you've.
Heard, we have found with making gay history, and I hear from a lot of young people that they feel like they now have ancestors, that they have grandparents, that they have a proud and rich heritage.
And we do, we do, We absolutely do know. And I think that we often talk about inheriting generational trauma from our families and from our parents. But I think what's so amazing about this project for me is that there's so much generational strength to inherit. I hope that as people meet the guests and listen to their stories, they feel inspired to claim that generational healing and strength that is really being passed on to them and ready
for them to inherit. You know, Eric, We've talked a lot about this idea of passing down wisdom and passing things down from generation to generation, and so I'm wondering, what is something that you want to pass down to the next generation of young people.
I often think about this, and I'm one kind of gay man, and we are a very rich and broad community, and what I've learned from the people I've interviewed over time, and what I've learned from your generation is there is no one way to be an LGBTQ person. The key is to understanding yourself, learning to love and embrace yourself, and some of the inspirations, some of the support can come from people who no longer live, but from their stories, from listening to their stories.
I've been so blessed to be able to look to you as a blueprint for this work, and I'm so lucky to have our first episode kind of be you almost showing me the ropes.
I know. I started by saying how proud I am of you. I'm so proud of you, and I wish you much luck and joy on this journey as you explore our history with the people who've lived it.
Thank you. But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in to tell your story, email us at but We Loved at gmail dot com, or send us a message on Instagram or TikTok at but We Loved. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. What We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers Areshino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our.
Executive producers are Me, Maya Howard and Katrina Normal. Fact checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.