James Croft Interview by Elliot Sherrill

Transcript -- James Croft

Narrator: James Croft

Interviewer: Elliot Sherrill

Interview Date: April 26, 2022

Location: St. Louis, MO, conducted via Zoom

Length: 01:31:52

ES: Alright, hello. My name is Elliot Sherrill. My pronouns are he/him/his and I am with James Croft of the Ethical Society of St. Louis. The date is April 26th, 2022. The purpose of this interview is to provide oral histories for the Gateway to Pride collection at the Missouri Historical Society, and I wanted to remind you as well that you are being recorded. I wanted to ask if you could state your first and last name and spell it.

JC: Absolutely. James Croft. That's J-A-M-E-S C-R-O-F-T.

ES: Oh, fantastic. So, I'm going to start off with a couple of opening reflections here. My first question that I wanted to start off with is "How do you think things have changed for queer people over the course of your life?"

JC: Over the course of my life?!

ES: Yes.

JC: Wow. That feels like a long period of time. I think it's probably fair to say that things have changed enormously if we're talking about countries like the United Kingdom where I'm from and the United States where we currently are. I think that when I was a kid in high school, I didn't know anyone who was out and gay. I certainly didn't know anyone who was trans. I think that while, so this was you know in the mid-nineties, while there was increasing representation in the media and things had certainly liberalized a lot from previous decades, there was still a lot of social stigma, it was still something you didn't speak about a lot openly. It was a brave, young person who came out in their teenage years back in the mid-nineties, and it was happening more and more, but it was 00:02:00certainly not in the environment where I grew up, particularly the school environment I grew up. And I think that that's different now, I know my high school is explicitly welcoming of queer kids now and they have a whole group to support them and it's a totally different environment from which I grew up with those people. I think politically too, there have been enormous advances. I don't know that I could have imagined being able to marry my husband when I was a teenager. There was still a law on the books in the United Kingdom when I was growing up that made it illegal to "promote homosexuality" in schools, in public schools. To go from that to being able to marry your partner, and in Britain it was the conservative government that introduced the legislation to allow you to 00:03:00marry same-sex partners. That's a major cultural change in a short period of time. Obviously, there's still a lot more work to do. We're not fully equal yet in lots of different ways, we still don't have full equalities, protection in Missouri. The situation for trans people, I fear, is getting worse rather than getting better. I think there is, in a lot of areas, a cultural backlash which is pushing back against the liberalization of culture in many different ways, and I think that LGBTQ+ rights and equality is one of those areas being pushed back on. So, I'm very conscious that only yesterday I think a bill was passed out of the Missouri House that stops trans kids from playing sports, and that's 00:04:00really obscene, and those sorts of thing have become a big political wedge to use to kinda get the conservative base really excited. So, we're not there yet and we still have a huge amount of work to do, but it is true that the environment is dramatically different from even when I grew up.

ES: That surprised me when you mentioned that the conservative party of the United Kingdom proposed that piece of legislation. I would not have expected that, but I will be upfront I don't exactly, I'm not as proficient in British political history as I am in the United States. That's surprising to me.

JC: It's a sign of how much things have liberalized in the United Kingdom. Our political parties are both a lot to the left of where yours are. Our 00:05:00conservatives are more like your moderate democrats, but nonetheless, it is striking that that was a thing that would be a vote-winner for them that they brought forward. It's amazing that there is basically unanimous consensus in the United Kingdom now that same-sex couples should be allowed to get married, and I don't think I could've imagined that as a kid. So, we have made significant progress and it really makes a difference. I know that there are some activists who think that shouldn't have been a fight that we focused on so much and there were questions on whether that was the right way to pursue the movement's direction, but honestly it makes a huge difference to people if they can access the legal benefits of marriage, so it has improved many people's lives immeasurably. So, it is a sign that you can achieve something if you work for it.

ES: That actually kind of leads me to a question I had for a little bit later, 00:06:00but something I had learned from doing research was I was not aware you were from England before I started my research, and I wanted to see how, if at all, did moving from England to the United States change how you viewed your place in the world?

JC: Yeah, great question. So firstly, I wasn't out of the closet until I moved to the United States, it took me until I was twenty-seven years old to come out. So, I didn't have much experience of like gay life in the United Kingdom when I was growing up. Well obviously, I knew gay people at college, right, I was in the theatre program, so basically all my friends were gay at college. But like, I didn't go to the bars or anything. I don't have a huge amount of experience with that, but I'll tell you one thing that really changed coming to the United 00:07:00States. There's no equivalent to the religious right in the United Kingdom! Not really. There's no powerful religious voting bloc which attempts to use the government to enforce its religious perspective on everybody in the same way there is in the United States, so when I first moved to the United States, I moved to Massachusetts. I was a grad student at Harvard and so, Massachusetts, obviously a much more liberal state than Missouri is, where we are right now. But still, I was shocked by the influence that conservative Christianity had on American culture and politics, and the amount of power that community was able to exert over particular issues, abortion and gay rights, are basically two of the major issues that they are able to exert a huge amount of influence over, it really stunned me and I mean it's awful. It's a huge weight dragging American 00:08:00society backwards and preventing it from being more progressive and moving faster on a lot of issues. The influence of politicized religion is so befouled in the United States and it's unlike really any other wealthy democracy.

ES: I, honestly, it just dawned on me as you were talking about that, I don't think I've ever really seen in European news anything of equivalence to the United States in terms of a religious right, again that's so fascinating to me. I really like European history and everything like that, and it's just, I don't know, something that I'm always really excited, or interested, in learning about it.

JC: You're right, it doesn't exist. There's no equivalent in UK politics, French 00:09:00politics, German politics, it just doesn't exist in the same extent, and it really warps the political landscape of the USA. It makes a big, big difference, particularly in some of the issues that they decide that they really care about a lot, and unfortunately our lives are one of those issues.

ES: In terms of moving to St. Louis, what drove you here?

JC: (chuckles) I came to St. Louis to finish my training as clergy for the Ethical Society of St. Louis. So, I serve as clergy for a very unusual type of congregation, it's a humanist congregation, so we don't do God or traditional religion, but we do basically everything else that a church does, like we gather on Sundays, we have music, we have talks, we have educational programs and 00:10:00activism and community building programs and things like that. I came to St. Louis initially on a year long apprenticeship essentially, the end of the process of learning to do that job. So, if you imagine as sort of becoming ordained as a Christian minister or as a rabbi, you know I was at the end of that process. It turns out that the Ethical Society of St. Louis is the biggest ethical society in the world, and I got asked to come here to finish my training, and I thought it would be a fun change from Boston, see a different part of the United States, be able to see what a flourishing community looks like and learn from a good model of a healthy ethical society, how to do this work. I moved here in June of 2014; Mike Brown was killed in August of 2014. I got quite heavily involved in the protest movement that erupted after that killing, and that really embedded me in the community, and I've been here ever since.

ES: On the topic of being in that specific protest, were you involved in any protests when Jason Stockley was declared not guilty?

JC: Yes.

ES: My partner lives here and he was involved in one that was done that went through his charter school so I figured I would ask because again, it's so interesting to me because I'm also not from St. Louis, I'm from Texas. So, I'm learning a lot about St. Louis history and St. Louis politics and activism in St. Louis through things like this so, I am learning a lot and soaking it all in, my next question is "how do you define yourself in terms of your sexuality 00:12:00and gender?"

JC: I would say I am a gay cis male. That's probably the easiest way of putting it. I think sexuality and gender is complicated and that we use terminology to communicate with each other easily, as a shorthand for a complicated reality, but I'm comfortable with all those terms.

ES: Your pronouns are he/him/his, is that correct?

JC: Yes.

ES: Okay. Well, I guess going back, in terms of childhood and education, I'm moving into that sort of territory. What were probably your most formative experiences in your childhood that shaped who you are today?

JC: Wow! That's a difficult question! So, thinking about my whole childhood. Okay, so, I'm going to break it into big buckets. My schooling is a very big formative influence on who I am. I went to one of the famous private high schools in the England. If you think Eton, it's not that. It's not too dissimilar, but it's sort of that level of private, all-boys school with a long, long history and lots of tradition and things like that. That influenced me in a lot of ways. Firstly, it trained me to do the academic work that I later did at Harvard. It got me to a very high intellectual level, it's a school that really values achievement in every area of life. Everyone was expected to be exceptional, and I think that affected me in lots of ways, both good and bad. It 00:14:00also enabled me to do a lot of theatre. I was the theatre kid and that was a huge part of my life in high school. I was in tons and tons of productions and all sorts of different roles while I was in school, and ultimately went to study drama as what you would call one of my majors if I was in America. My schooling was a very major influence on who I am as a person, it kind of subsumed my life. I didn't really have much of a social life outside school except through extracurricular activities that the school put on, like theatre and stuff like that. Another big influence in my life, I'm a singer. I sang in the school choir, but also in choirs outside school, like our local youth choir, and that was a huge formative influence on me. I've sung all my life, it's a very important part of who I am; I love to sing. I guess another bucket would be, I 00:15:00mean obviously my family, my home life. My house was the one where all the weird kids always came because it was the place where they could come and just be themselves. So, we always had tons of my friends and my brother's friends hanging out doing whatever, like all the goth kids, the soon-to-be queer kids, and the weird nerds and loads of people hanging around our house all the time! It was a very welcoming, open environment. Not a lot of structure, not a lot of rules. That, I think influenced me a lot of who I am and my outlook on things. But I really think, in terms of this conversation, I had no interface growing up with some sort of organized queer community. No youth club didn't go to any bars 00:16:00or anything. I buried that whole aspect of my life, I didn't do anything like that.

ES: There was something that resonated with me a little bit. I was only in high school two years ago and I remember while I was in high school, I didn't particularly had a social life and had a difficult time connecting with people outside of just going to high school. I guess I wanted to see if you could touch upon that aspect a little bit more or if you had any more information on that.

JC: Yeah. I wasn't an unsocial kid. I was the sort of person who knew everybody. 00:17:00I feel like I was never really part of any specific social group. I kind of floated between all kinds of different ones. I like people, I'm very outgoing. I didn't have any problem speaking to people or making relationships with people, but what I didn't do, I'm the kind of person that has a lot of acquaintances and very few close friends. But also you know, at least this is my experience and it's shared by a lot of queer people, one of things growing up and being closeted, one's romantic life can be a very big part of your identity when you're like a teenager. And if you just don't participate in that part of your life, it wasn't even conscious of me, I wasn't even thinking "I'm not going to date anyone because I'm gay." It was just so deeply buried that it never came to 00:18:00my mind that that was something I was missing out on and in a way, that means that the whole persona that you're presenting to people is incomplete. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's fake, but it's not a complete, full representation of who you actually are, particularly because at that part of your life, you know crushes and first dates and first dances and all that sort of stuff, that can be a very big part of what makes high school the experience that it is and I just never had any of that. It's funny, a few years ago, I went back to England for a high school reunion, and I really felt like many of my friends were meeting me for the first time, like post- coming out of the closet. 00:19:00I felt like I wasn't the same person anymore. And in a way, that's true of everyone who's ten years out of high school, right? Obviously, you're not the same person. But, I felt like it was much more profound in my case because I just had a whole area of my life that I didn't show to anyone, including myself. So, really, it can affect you. I'd like that time back! I'd like to do it again, you know? Sometimes, I get angry about it, not anyone in particular, but that was taken from me, you know? That part of my life was stolen by a society that is prejudicial and I want to have experienced that, and obviously given that I am a humanist and an atheist, I think this is my one go! It's my one whole life. I only got to be sixteen one time and I never kissed a boy. That sucks! Right, I resent that. I don't like carrying it around with me all the time, but it hurts 00:20:00people. This really harms people. It takes away experiences that I'll never have the opportunity to do again. That was a much broader conversation than your question was, but you triggered me!

ES: I'm sorry!

JC: No, no, it's good. It's a good question! You're very good at this! You shouldn't be nervous at all!

ES: Thank you! I guess, I really resonate with that as well, but I'm curious in terms of expressing yourself through queer joy, that's a lens I haven't looked at my identity through until recently, being proud of who I am, even though people in the gay community have told me I don't belong here because I'm trans, 00:21:00so how do you approach things like queer joy in terms of that?

JC: There's a lot in your question there.

ES: Do you need me to repeat it?

JC: There was a lot in that question, and it was a good question. So firstly, I think joy and pride in our identities as sexual and gender minorities is incredibly important, particularly because the main way that culture has tried to stigmatize and diminish queer people across history is through shame and stigma, right? It's weaponized the idea that we are somehow disgusting or shameful to make us cut parts out of ourselves so they don't even have to put us in jail, obviously they've done that as well, but they don't even have to put us in jail or whatever else, sanction us in any other way, but as we are doing it 00:22:00to ourselves, psychologically, we are pretending to be someone we're not in order to avoid their stigmatization of us. That's why I think pride as a concept, as a word for the movement that has arisen to promote our rights and dignity is so appropriate because it is the opposite of what they have done to us, like the heteronormative, cis-hetero patriarchy, let's just go with that. What that society has done is try to stigmatize a group of people who basically transgress traditional notions of gender. And that's why, by the way, just in case anyone's who's listening doesn't get this, trans people are totally part of 00:23:00the queer community. It makes absolutely no sense to think of these as separate struggles because they come down to the same root, which is trying to police gender. That's what it's about, you have countries where this is true, and some countries where it is totally unacceptable to be a bottom, but you can be a top, and that's less stigmatized. Why is that? Because it's seen as men taking on the woman's role, it's a subversion of masculinity. That's what homophobia is, right? It's a fear about subversion of gender categories, and trans people get the worst assault of all queer people because they most obviously transgress gender categories, right? They're most explicit in doing that, and so it's the same fight, right? At root, it's the same fight. I just had a little rant about that. So, queer pride and queer joy, an assertion of our identity in the face of 00:24:00social stigma is critically important, because it is the direct antidote to everything they're trying to do to us. They're saying you should be ashamed of yourself, you're disgusting, you're perverted, you're abnormal, right? And then we turn it on our heads and say we're fabulous, we're amazing, we are abnormal and that's good! The norm is shit and we shouldn't be normal because the norm is limiting, and we are much more beautiful and exciting than your crappy norm. The great thing about queer liberation and it's true actually of all movements of liberation, is that it ultimately liberates everybody. These categories are not 00:25:00good for anyone. They're not good for straight, cis men! They're awful. Sexism and patriarchy are awful for straight, cis men. Obviously, worse for queer people and women, etc. But, it's still bad for straight cis men, it puts them in a straight jacket of what sort of identities they're allowed to inhabit and how they're allowed to use their bodies and how they're allowed to look, which is just limiting to everybody. I remember feeling this really powerfully once when I was in a club, I think it was JJ's actually, you may be too young to have ever been to JJ's, I don't know if you know what it is, but it's like the leather bar in town here in St. Louis, it's closed down sadly. I was there one night and there was, you know, straight people there as well. There was a guy there with his girlfriend and at a certain point in the night, he was dancing on the dance 00:26:00floor like taking his shirt off and being sexy and all that stuff. I was thinking to myself, 'straight men rarely actually get to revel in their own sexuality in a provocative way. The way they're allowed to within the confines of masculinity to be sexy is actually quite limiting. But, within this queer space, he can be sexy in a whole different type of way. So, he is being freed from these gender constraints and norms just as we are, and we are doing that for him! So, I think queer joy, queer pride, it's so important because it pushes back all these stories that have been told about us that are false and are meant 00:27:00to keep us in boxes. By breaking the box, we challenge everything about assumptions that underlie that. I could talk that for days. I'll just stop there now. That's enough!

ES: That's a fantastic way to put it honestly. I really appreciate you being so open about that. Going a little bit back to childhood and education, you've mentioned that you went to Harvard, how did your choice to go to Harvard influence who you are now?

JC: Golly, oh wow, in so many ways! So, quick trajectory of my life, I graduated high school. I went to Cambridge University, the original Cambridge in England. I joined the teacher training program, very much like Teach for America, but in 00:28:00England. I did two years as a high school teacher. I was broadly atrocious at it and made me very miserable, so I retreated back to the classroom and that's what made me take graduate studies in education. So, I came to the US to do a one year master's program in arts education at Harvard Graduate School of Education partly because I thought I was going to be a high school teacher and it didn't work out and I didn't know what to do honestly. I said, well I'm good at school, so I'll get a fellowship and go to Harvard. It totally changed my life. It's a wonderful school with so many brilliant professors and I managed to choose courses that really challenged me and opened my mind to lots of different things. I knew after the first semester I wanted to stay there to keep learning 00:29:00because it was like a firehose of new ideas, and I just wanted to keep drinking from it as long as I could. So, I applied for the doctoral program, and to everyone's surprise I was admitted. They don't usually like to admit people straight from the master's program, and I was there for seven more years. Yeah, it totally changed my life. I mean, I came out of the closet during that time. I found a student group, the Humanists Community at Harvard, which was incredibly welcoming and enabled me to explore myself and come out. I had been dating a girl for two years at that point, and we were starting to talk about marriage and having kids. I knew it wasn't right for me, but I was too scared to admit that to myself. I didn't really want to tell her because I loved her and think that she's an amazing person. I thought, oh no, I'm going to ruin her whole life! Eventually, I realized I had to come to terms with this, and it wasn't 00:30:00fair to marry someone when you know you're gay! That's a really bad thing to do to them! I eventually ended up coming out and she was incredibly supportive, my family was incredibly supportive, my sister said "Oh my god, at last!" I was like, thanks sis! Honestly, I don't know if you've ever experienced the same thing, but there was a period of total euphoria after I came out. It was just extraordinary; I wish I could feel like that again. I was totally fearless. I had a rather lot of jaded gay graduate student friends at the time who were like "Oh James, enjoy it. It'll be about 2 months and then you'll be miserable like 00:31:00the rest of us." You know? It lasted for me about 2 years, and I really had the time of my life! I mean, it was fantastic! I did so many cool things because, I don't know, some switch in my brain just went off and I just said, "I'm going to say yes to everything, every opportunity that comes my way." I had so much sex! I did so many ridiculous things that I'm not sure I would do again, but I literally said, look my first answer to everything is going to be yes. Every proposition, I could still say no, but the assumption is going to be yes. I did so many things! It was amazing. It was totally life-changing, and it just happened to be around that time that I was taking a class on public narrative, which is a part of community organizing basically. It's a tool that's used in 00:32:00community organizing with a professor called Marshall Ganz, who is a legendary community organizer who worked on the Obama campaign and all sorts of other campaigns. I came out of the closet during his class and at that time, it was around the time when all that news started being reported across the country about gay kids committing suicide and the It Gets Better project started and all that stuff. So, I decided I was going to start a campaign to get Harvard to make It Gets Better videos for the schools, and I made a campaign to get my Harvard graduate school to do one and they did one. The whole experience, all that coming together made me realize I wanted to work in community to make people's lives better, to use the skills that I had learned to try and change people's lives in a positive way. That meant I actually didn't want to go into academia, 00:33:00at least not right away, that I wanted to do something more like what I'm doing now. I didn't know that this had existed then. I wanted to help people more directly. That really lead to my whole career, I mean going to Harvard and coming out of the closet at the same time totally changed the trajectory of my career. I'm not sure I would be doing what I'm doing now if I didn't have the good fortune to be a gay homosexual.

ES: Firstly, I wanted to say that yes, the euphoria, I think I have experienced that. I'm still experiencing it right now because I finally came out as gay. It took me a long time for me to come out as gay because I was very scared of cis gay men because of how I've been treated before by them. So, I was nervous to 00:34:00start identifying as gay, but after I came out as gay, I felt like my identity is now complete! So yeah, I still feel that euphoria to this day; I only came out as gay a couple months ago.

JC: Congratulations!

ES: Thank you. So yes, to your euphoria point, yes. But also, that campaign, was that the 6.12 seconds?

JC: Yeah!

ES: Because I actually had a question about that in the script, and I wanted to say, this was about 12 years ago when the speech was given, right? I'm guessing.

JC: Bloody hell, yeah! You're right. I'm thirty-nine now, so it was about twelve years ago.

ES: I was going to ask, reflecting twelve years after the speech was given, how do you think your activism as a role model has had an impact on people in our community?

JC: Well, I certainly don't think of myself as a role model. I think that's a horrifying idea. I don't know, a lot of times I don't think I am a very good activist. I'm good at some parts of being an activist. I give very good speeches. I'm good at finding what a community needs to hear in a moment and speaking it back to them. I think I'm proud of specific moments when I was able to do that so that was one moment, that talk at Harvard that I gave. Another moment was after the Pulse shooting when we had a vigil in the Trans Memorial Garden here in St. Louis. I feel like I was able to articulate something that people needed to hear. I was proud of that. I give very good testimony, usually 00:36:00against some bullshit that they're trying to do in Jefferson City, it's very rare that I get to testify in favor of something in this state. I'm good at that. Organizing requires you to actually be quite organized and to follow through what you say you're going to do and to manage other people and all these things that I find more difficult than helping people find the emotional language to talk about what they're experiencing, but we all do a piece, and so, you know, I'm pretty clear about what my skills are and what they're not. I think one thing I'm proud of is I'm pretty sure that the Ethical Society is better known in the city and it's clearer to people on what we stand for than before I got here. We've gotten involved in a lot of activism that I'm not sure 00:37:00we would've gotten involved in to the extent that we had if I hadn't come to do this work in that community. I think particularly, I'm proud of what we did after Mike Brown was shot. It was difficult and we lost members of our community who didn't want to get on board with a very activist approach to antiracism, and there's so many things that we could've done that we haven't done yet. You know, we're still on a journey. But I'm proud of what we did do. I'm proud of the events that we hosted and the statements that we made and I'm proud of going to probably to 200 protests over the years, and you know, I spent fifteen hours in jail during that movement, I'm proud of that as well. So, I think one of the neat things is that movement enabled people to demonstrate a lot of solidarity 00:38:00across lines of difference. I was working alongside clergy from lots of different religious traditions who don't share my fundamental beliefs about the nature of the universe or God or anything like that, but we share a commitment to the idea that Black lives matter. That, I think, sent a symbol to people that you can work together, and in many communities where that sort of interfaith activism has been happening, they don't have humanist representatives at all. There just isn't anyone to play that role. So, I'm proud that we showed that we can part of those sorts of coalitions. I think that we, the Ethical Society itself, it's always been an LGBTQ affirming community, at least for the last few decades. I mean, we're right ahead on that issue, but I think we've become more explicitly so and more public about that. I'm really, really proud of the kids 00:39:00in our youth group who come out as gay, trans, queer in some way because they feel like it's a safe space to do that. That makes me incredibly proud every time that happens. I feel like we're doing something good in the world. That's down to a lot of people, it's not just down to me. But it does help to have an out, queer leader of the community. It does make a difference to people.

ES: Thank you for being really open about that. I appreciate that. It kind of segues into the next section, which is all about religion and specifically humanist questions. I have a couple of general religion questions and a couple of specific questions about humanism. But my first question is, what does your 00:40:00faith mean to you?

JC: Well, so first, I don't call it a faith. Although I know that the word has a broad set of meanings, it doesn't offend me in any way, but I don't use that term simply because one of the meanings it can have is you know, believing in things when you don't have enough evidence that they're true or whatever, or you have evidence that is not true but you're still going to believe it because you just have faith. So, for me, part of the whole package of humanism is to try and be careful about what we believe and to try not to believe in things that we don't have evidence for if they're true. That semantic quibble aside, my religious perspectives, speaking broadly, is incredibly important to me, I mean, it's my whole career. It's what I do for a living, you know, in a way my whole is to be an embodiment of that perspective in a similar way that a rabbi would 00:41:00be an embodiment of Judaism within the community. I try to be an embodiment of humanism in my community. That's a difficult thing to be because humanism is a very broad tradition; we don't have dogmas or creeds or scripture or a single individual we look to for guidance and wisdom. Humanists love disagreeing with each other! It's one of our favorite things to do! So, it's impossible for any one person to symbolize the whole tradition. But, at the same time, you know, it's the set of values that I try to lead my personal life by, it's the bedrock of my career. My career is to create a community which is welcoming for those who hold those values and also represents those values in public. I often sort of speak of us as a beacon for our values in the world, we're supposed to be a 00:42:00place that calls people to us who have our values and who makes them shine in the world and light it up. I don't know what else I would do if I didn't do this. I mean, it's just, I'm someone who is lucky enough to have a job that reflects my calling and that's really, I feel incredibly privileged, so it's a very important part of my life. It really affects everything. It affects how I think about my personal relationships. I'm not saying I live up to these values all the time, I totally don't! I'm really a terrible person by my own standards. But I try to live up to them as much as I possibly can and it really does influence how I think about almost everything.

ES: I personally don't think I would call you a terrible person in my standards.

JC: Ha! I may have been a little hyperbolic there, but you know, I got issues.

ES: Don't worry, I do too. But anyways, I guess another question, have you always grown up in atheist or agnostic family?

JC: Yeah! Neither of my parents are religious. Never went to church really, not had any sort of significant role of religion in their lives. So, yes, my family's not religious. None of my siblings are religious. You know, my husband is not religious. My sister's husband is not religious. So, yeah, we're pretty much a secular bunch!

ES: Reminds me a lot of my family, the sect of my family, my intermediate family 00:44:00is secular. But they're not good people. The rest of my family is Southern Baptist. So, I relate to that wholeheartedly in terms of having a completely secular family. That actually kind of goes into a question I guess specifically about humanism that I had. I've always felt, I am sure there are other people that have this same experience, but I wanted to touch on it. I've been very lost in trying to figure out in defining myself as someone who is not religious, and I wanted to see if you had any messages or a message to people who felt lost in 00:45:00terms of defining themselves.

JC: Wow. I guess I do. I mean, we live in a culture which is suffused with religious privilege. That's one of the forms of privilege that doesn't get talked about enough. But there's an assumption in American culture that, to be religious is the norm and particularly to believe in God is the norm, and that if you don't have a religion or a belief in God, that you lack something. There's something missing in your life, and that assumption is embedded in all the language that we use to talk about religion. So, people lose their faith, it's a loss. People are nonreligious, so religion is the norm and you're not that. People are atheists, right? They're without God. So the religious and 00:46:00theistic assumptions are right in the heart of our language, and yet we don't have much language for what people are moving into. What I always like to remind people is when people choose to give up their religion, they're not just moving out of something, they're moving towards something else. In fact most of the time, in my experience particularly in the United States, you know, people grow up, most people in a religious family, and then they decide for whatever reason that doesn't reflect their own values, their intuitions about right and wrong, their beliefs about what's true. It's their attempt to get closer to those things, which is moving them away from religion. So, I kind of want to reframe the conversation towards "what are you moving towards?" What if, instead of losing our faith, we spoke about finding their reason. People, particularly 00:47:00young people, who may leave, for instance, conservative Christianity, because of what it says about gay and trans people. Maybe that's why they're leaving. That's not a loss, that's a gain. They're finding their moral integrity, and they're giving up something that was important to their family and may be important to them in order to get something that is more important than that even, which is a sense that they're doing the right thing in the world, that they are holding positive values. So, I think don't let people say that you're missing something if you're not religious, think about what is important in your life. One of the trends in sociological research and demographical research that I hate the most, I understand it but I hate it the most, is referring to nonreligious people as the "nones." N-o-n-e-s. You always have these articles 00:48:00about the "Rise of the Nones!" I just want to ask, these people are not nonbelievers, we just don't believe in God, or we don't believe in traditional religion. But, we believe in other things and it's often our belief in other things that make us not want to believe in traditional religion. So, I would think about what you are moving towards, what are you leaping into, rather than what you are leaving behind.

ES: That's a very powerful message and I appreciate it a lot.

JC: You're hitting me with all these hard questions!

ES: I like, oops I just dropped my pencil, I like asking questions like this because I've been told the proper practices of oral histories are to ask 00:49:00open-ended questions, and I love provoking discussion! So, I'm glad that these questions, they get you thinking. I'm glad that you've felt comfortable enough to answer them with as raw of vulnerability as you have.

JC: Well, that's another thing that happened to me when I came out of the closet. Some fuse like burnt out in my mind, and I kind of decided that I was going to be radically open about everything in my life from that point on. So, I don't have a filter anymore, like I hardly have one at all! So, it's one of those funny things, I just decided "look I lived twenty-seven years of my life hiding major parts of who I am, I refuse to spend another day hiding any of it!"

ES: Well, I have another question that has come to my mind. As I was doing 00:50:00research, I understood that some of your work included the Lifefulness Podcast, the Sunday Assembly, you advocate as from what I'm seeing for filling your life with life. Could you possibly touch on what that means?

JC: So, the Lifefulness Podcast is based on this idea of lifefulness, it's not my idea. It's my co-host of the podcast's idea, Sanderson Jones, he started this thing called the Sunday Assembly, which is basically a nonreligious church experience that happens all across the world in lots of different cities on Sundays. Now, it's kind of like a super high energy church service but with secular music and speakers who speak from a secular perspective. Developing from 00:51:00that, he's kind of come up with this idea of secularizing spiritual and religious practices in such a way that everybody could get the benefits of what would traditionally be associated with religion without the pieces that they don't want to believe in, and that's essentially what lifefulness is. It's the idea of committing one's life to living one's life fully and unapologetically and richly. And if you ever met Sanderson, he is a force of nature. He certainly embodies that, much more than I do. He is completely committed and engaged in absolutely everything that he does, and so I think it's kind of a framework for helping people understand, a framework for finding positive values that give you the benefits of what a religion might give you, but not religious. I think 00:52:00that's the best I can do it.

ES: Well, I guess that segues into the next section, which is more about in terms of like career and your volunteer work and political activism. So, I've already asked the first question about the 6.12 seconds speech, but the next question to that was how do you think, at least in St. Louis and United States politics, have impacted your religious community?

JC: Enormously. I mean, oh wow! I feel like the whole of my time serving the Ethical Society of St. Louis can be kind of divided up into a series of cultural and political crises that we've had to respond to as a community. So, as I said, 00:53:00right after I moved to the city, Mike Brown was killed, and that was honestly a huge local crisis and there were protests all over the city. Were you living in St. Louis at that point or were you still in Texas?

ES: I was still in Texas.

JC: You were like twelve or something, oh my god!

ES: Yes, I was born in 2001, just for context.

JC: Oh Elliot, don't tell me these things.

ES: I'm sorry.

JC: Post-millennial children who are in college or who are graduating college, what am I going to do?

ES: I'm so sorry.

JC: Okay, so you wouldn't have known, but it was very intense. There were essentially running battles in the street night after, there were these huge, armored cars that were driving through communities firing tear gas and all this stuff, it was very, very intense for a long period of time. I was a trainee at 00:54:00that point, but I'm not someone to not step forward. I had a point of view and I wanted to get involved and trying to explain to the Ethical Society's community what this new form of activism was and why we say Black Lives Matter, because if you wanted to sum up what the Ethical Society believes, all lives matter is actually not a bad slogan to sum up our fundamental, kind of principle. So, kind of explaining to people how that's not a term you want to use in this particular context you know and why you have to say Black Lives Matter and all that stuff, you have to do a lot of internal education and lot of street protesting and a lot of working on jail support. I spent a lot of time volunteering for jail support, which was the volunteers who followed people who were arrested through the jail system and found out where they were and got bail and stuff like that. I did hours and hours of work for them. So that was a major impact on our 00:55:00community, very intense, big political and cultural crisis. Obviously, that issue kept being raised by you mentioned the Stockley verdict but there were also other shootings, other instances that happened around the country and in St. Louis that kept reigniting those issues. And then Trump was elected, and that was another massive crisis. I still remember the Sunday morning after the election occurred, we had hundreds of people. I don't think I've seen since then so many people with us on Sunday morning. It was clear that people needed somewhere to go that represented their highest values at a time in America where we had just elected someone as president who undermined every single one of them, who was just basically a terrible human being and whose politics were 00:56:00grotesque. I think people needed to be around folks who they could trust who would not stand for that and didn't find that acceptable. The feeling of shock in rooms were just palpable. People were devastated and that brought with it a whole series of kind of sub-crises, like he did all sorts of outrageous things, like the Muslim ban was one of the ones I remember. We had a huge protest at the Lambert Airport, and you know, March for Science and all these other things. So, that was just a series of crises on and on and on. And then COVID. And not just COVID, but watching our city and our state's response to COVID, how profoundly inadequate that was and all the rhetoric, particularly in the state of Missouri 00:57:00and around the country, denying the science. I think that was particularly shocking to our community because we're a very pro-science community, a very rational community. We like science a lot and to see so many Americans succumb to conspiracy theories and just reject the idea that even this virus is real, you know, or that the vaccines work or anything like that. Just incredibly shocking, the series of events that bring out the worst in many Americans and to be a community that explicitly is trying to bring out the best in people when the culture around you is constantly bringing out the worst in a lot of people can be very depressing. I found it very depressing, at some points I am like "What the fuck are we doing here? Like, how can we continue to do what we say we want to do in a world that is completely going to shit? Like, how can you be a 00:58:00humanist if you think human beings are fundamentally awful?" Right? Which seems to be the message from so many people voting for Trump and continuing to support him after he did all his shit that he did! It's not just the initial vote, you can constantly get your head around that, but then he's like "storm the capitol!" and it actually happens and then people still support him like when are you going to get it through your head that this is a bad idea and that time never seems to come. It's the same with COVID, right? Thousands and thousands and thousands of people have died, and then there are still people that are like "nope! it's not real, it's just the flu, it's all fake, let me do what I want!" And at a certain point it's hammers away at your faith in humanity, you know? It kind of chips away at it. It's been a very difficult time to lead a community 00:59:00like ours. I think a lot of clergy, particularly progressive religious clergy and leaders of these communities, have found this an exhausting and bewildering time. So, yeah, I mean we've been affected by a lot of political stuff. It's just basically been all, it's just been cascades of shit. It's awful.

ES: It reminds me a lot of activist burnout. I'm curious because I actually recently went through a bout of activist burnout once everything happened with trans kids in Texas with the brief hearing. How do you cope with activist burnout?

JC: Very poorly. I'm not a model that anyone wants to use for burnout. I just keep going and going and going until I can't physically go anymore. That's my honest answer to that. I do not do self-care really, I don't take breaks, I just 01:00:00do as much as I can until I physically or psychologically can't continue. I spent much of the period directly after Mike Brown's shooting when I was being involved in these protests and seeing how the police were acting and see a lot of my fellow, well I say my fellow citizens, I'm not an American citizen, but a lot of American people were acting and just feeling furious all the time, just walk around feeling furious and angry at everybody else all the time. I mean, I don't handle it well. I've never been able to, I've got things I would tell other people to do, you know, like I would tell you, Elliot, that you are not responsible for stopping every trans bill in the whole world and none of the 01:01:00movements you're involved in are going to be served if you run yourself ragged and you have no energy and you're done, so you have to take care of yourself, and in a way, that itself is an act of an assertion of your dignity and it's a way of saying "I matter. I matter as an individual. I matter as an individual beyond what identity group I am or represent." You're not here on the planet simply to be an activist for trans people. You are here to live your own damn life and that's exactly what you're fighting for and you've got to find some time to do that. I am great at telling other people to do that. I am terrible at doing it myself. So, I am not a model anyone else should follow in terms with dealing with things like burnout. I just get burned out.

ES: I'm sorry, that was just far too relatable. I felt called out as you said that.

JC: (laughs) I'm in this picture and I don't like it!

ES: Well, I guess my last question to that point, how do you, in terms of working with other organizations. I understand at UMSL there is a Secular Student Alliance. I'm in the Secular Student Alliance on campus and I'm curious how you've worked with organizations at the college level or at high schools or anything like that, how you collaborate with those organizations?

JC: As much as we can! I know that Malik has just won an award for his activism on campus and this whole group won an award, didn't they, the Secular Student Alliance?

ES: Yes!

JC: So, congratulations to him! I've done events for them! I don't know if you were at the discussion about God that they put on. I was the "No God" side of 01:03:00that discussion and they had a Catholic priest giving the "Pro God" side. I've tried to support Malik with his work with the UMSL Secular Student Alliance since I knew he was starting it. I really want to support more student activism in the kind of secular, humanistic area because it is very, very important. It's important in a conservative, religious state like ours for students to have groups which reflect their values. One of the other things I do is Washington University has a campus ministry group sort of thing, and I am the humanist representative on that group. I have to admit that there has never really been a critical mass of students there to start a group, but I would love it to happen, and I am ready to help them if they can! We're always really happy to help other organizations.

ES: That's awesome! I will make sure to give Malik your congratulations.

JC: Yes! He's done so good. He's a force of nature.

ES: The next section is more about like culture, any sorts of traditions or any sort of hobbies you may have. My first question, this may be very obscure, but when I watched the 6.12 seconds speech, I had heard that you said you ballet growing up.

JC: I did!

ES: I was wanting to see how taking that up helped you expressed yourself?

JC: That's a really interesting question. I would love to be able to say that doing ballet was a big assertion of my identity or something, but honestly, I 01:05:00did it because my parents decided I would do it. Right? I started when I was very, very young. We used to have movement classes, I went to a Montessori nursery school, and we had movement classes and they were taught by a ballet teacher who had ended up being my ballet teacher. So, I only did ballet between the ages of three when these movement classes started and like ten, when I quit. I wish I had not quit. I love to dance! I was terrible at it, oh my god I was terrible at it. I did not have the figure for it, I do not have any, I'm not a graceful person I don't think. There are other forms of dance that I would be better at, but I didn't take to it as a kid for whatever reason, I really wish I 01:06:00had continued to do it. I find sort of my aesthetic expression mainly in singing. I love to sing; I think I told you that. I love to sing in choirs, particularly. I sang in the Gateway Men's Chorus for a few years when I first moved here, and I sang in the Boston Gay Men's Chorus. In fact, the first thing I did when I came out was call the Boston Gay Men's Chorus and asked how to join. It was one of the first things I did! I'm really glad I did that, it was hugely formative. The sense of singing with other human beings is incredibly powerful on any context. The coordination or your voice and breathing with other human beings, there's just something about that just brings you into sync and makes you feel part of one community. When you're doing all that on top of it, it's just a bunch of gay guys who you are singing with in order to express your own dignity and solidarity as members of the queer community. That is fucking 01:07:00fantastic, there's no better feeling than that. I love, particularly the Boston Gay Men's Chorus, I love those people. I'll love them until I die. It was some of the best times of my life.

ES: Oh I'm so sorry for interrupting.

JC: No, no, it's fine!

ES: Do you have any memorable experiences from when you did sing or also when you did theatre? I had wanted to ask that before, but it had left my memory.

JC: Millions! Like millions! So many, I mean I could talk all day about memorable experiences from theatre and singing. I got a funny one that came to mind recently. In my middle school, I had a walk-on part in a production of Guys and Dolls. I was a nun and I walked in to sightsee some of New York, was it New York? Was it Chicago? I can't remember where it's set, but wherever it's set, 01:08:00sightsee that city. At the end, I kind of came on the sing the big number. It was all I did. But, I was thinking about it because in that play there were two people who would subsequently become massively famous, one of them being Eddie Redmayne, who obviously won an Oscar for his role, what was it, was it the Stephen Hawking one? The Stephen Hawking film? But also, he was in Fantastic Beasts and all other sorts of things, and Max Webster, who's a friend of mine from middle school, high school, went to Cambridge together. We did tons of theatre together and he was recently nominated for an Olivier award, which are the British Tony's basically, for directly Life of Pi on the West End. A production that was made out of extremely successful books. I was thinking about that piece of theatre because it had those two people in it who were incredibly 01:09:00successful. I've got tons, I mean I've got so many memories. I could go on, I sang in St. Peter's Basilica in my youth choir, which was a wholly amazing experience to go to Rome and sing in the cathedral Basilica of St. Peter. There's so many. I couldn't possibly say them all. I will say that I find a lot of the aesthetics satisfaction in my writing and public speaking. Because obviously I write the equivalent of sermons and I give them as part of my job. That is my form of acting in a way. I mean, it's not acting because I'm myself and the stories are true, except when they're pieces of fiction or whatever, but 01:10:00I like the ability to try and craft something that expresses something important, some important part of people's values and connects them to it emotionally. It's a form of art in my mind as well, an underappreciated one, and I really love that, I love that part of my work.

ES: That's so awesome. I was also wanting to ask. My memory is terrible as you may come to realize, but the question I wanted to ask is, because you had mentioned your husband in this recording, I was going to ask how you came to meet him?

JC: Yeah! I met him here in St. Louis, actually. We first met, I think he came 01:11:00to that, I mentioned the Pulse nightclub shooting vigil that we did in the Trans Memorial Garden that I spoke at, and he was there and he saw me speak and he remembers it like "oh I want to get to know that guy." I was cute then, if you can imagine me being cute, I was back then. Then later on, we met at a Fourth of July party where I always like to wear my Union Jack British flag clothing to every Fourth of July party! So, I didn't drink at all when I was a kid. I only started drinking alcohol when I was thirty-five-ish. So, most of my life, I was totally T-total, but by this time when we met, when I met Kolton, my husband at 01:12:00this party, I had started. But I do not really have much of an alcohol tolerance because of that. So, I was almost certainly totally wasted by the time he was speaking to me at that point! Blimey! Because it didn't take that much at the time. He apparently enjoyed the conversation. I only remember it vaguely! But, don't tell him I said that. Then, a few months later, we found each other on Scruff and went for a date. We went on a date to Café Osage, which is not there anymore. It's now Bowood by Niche, so if you know where that is, that was little bit down from my condo, where I used to live in Central West End. It was close to where I lived, it was lovely little restaurant, very pretty. So, my husband is shorter than I am. I'm 5'8", he's probably about 5'6". A teeny tiny little 01:13:00body and he had this humongous black beard, like down to his chest, like huge bushy beard and piercing blue eyes. He has amazingly, piercing blue eyes. So, here's this tiny little guy with this huge beard and he has gorgeous eyes, and I was like, this is interesting. There is a decision that has been made here to grow out this huge beard, this tiny little guy. I want to know more about that. That is a choice to present yourself to the world in that way and I like that, I don't know what it's about, but I want to know what it's about. So, we had our little date and we wandered around a little garden center there and then he came back to my condo, and we had a seven-hour date or something basically. You know, 01:14:00the whole day. I find my husband totally fascinating. He is incredibly different to me in lots and lots of ways. He has a totally different educational background; he didn't go to incredibly expensive private schools and then Cambridge and Harvard and all that. He had a different background in that way. He has a different cultural upbringing, his family's quite Catholic and obviously to be a gay kid in a Catholic family can be a challenge sometimes. Also from rural Illinois, so that adds an element of complexity, small town in rural Illinois. I grew up in London! I mean, one of the largest cities in the world. One of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. So, he just has a totally different background to me. We're different in terms of our economic statuses. I grew up economically comfortable and we never really had any worries 01:15:00about money and that wasn't the case for my husband. He didn't grow up with a ton of money in his family. So, we have so many differences. It's difficult for me to talk about all of the things, some of the attraction and power in our relationship, the differences, we complement each other very well. He is an incredible organizer of space and time, particularly space. The way he stacks dishwashers or dressers, I can't even understand how he gets everything in there, I just can't imagine it! That sounds like a small thing, but that's a whole reflection about how his mind works and everything. He's able to bring 01:16:00order and beauty to anything that he does. I am a chaos agent, like I'm a mess. I'm a complete mess. I don't know how I manage to get anything done sometimes because I am just totally driven by impulse. I'm just kind of passion personified, I'll go wherever my heart takes me, that's how I ended up in St. Louis in the first place. I never thought I'd end up here. I was just asked to come and I said that sounds fun and then I fell in love with it and said I'll do that. So, I'm totally different in a lot of my outlook on life and my approach to life. But, we both have integrity in that we believe in our way of living so fervently and I think when we're at our best, we help each other see the value 01:17:00in the other way. I've become much more able to responsibly segment my time and sleep better and take care of myself better because he's shown me his own commitment to those things in his own life. I'm never going to be him, he gets up at like four in the morning, he does his hour on the treadmill, he can eat two slices of a pizza and then leave the rest in a box. I'll eat the whole pizza and then his pizza! I don't have that sort of self-control, right? But, I'm getting closer to him and seeing how helpful that way of living is, and I hope that what he's getting from me is a sense of adventure and possibility and the fact that everything doesn't have to be stacked perfectly in the dishwasher before you can go out and just decide that you're going to go see a movie, 01:18:00you're just going to do something crazy, and a sense that he doesn't have to apologize for who he is, that he can just be exactly who he is and that's enough. I think the world of my husband, my husband is a much better person than I am, and so I feel very lucky to have him in my life, even when he drives me absolutely crazy. Which he does sometimes, and I do to him.

ES: That just makes me so happy, that makes me very happy to hear.

JC: I'm very lucky.

ES: Oh no! Are you crying?

JC: No! Never! He also got me to be a dog lover. You probably can't see our chihuahua behind me because I've blurred it, but Ella is our puppy, and she is 01:19:00an absolute sweetheart and I never thought I would have a dog. She heard herself being spoken of, she came over to say hello.

ES: Hello! She's very cute.

JC: She is cute. Okay Ella. You can sit here. We have ten minutes left and then I have to go to this event.

ES: I gue ss we'll move into closing reflections then.

JC: Because I'm such an eminent person!

ES: Looking back on your life, do you have anything you're most proud of?

JC: I'm only laughing because I'm like thirty-nine, okay? I know that you may 01:20:00think that's incredibly old.

ES: No, no!

JC: I've got ages to go! Looking back on my life, what was the question?

ES: What are you most proud of?

JC: Oh, wow! I'm proud of that video, that 6.12 seconds video that I made. People may not know what it is if they're just hearing this, but it was a piece of activism I did on Harvard's campus at the time of It Gets Better being a big thing. I wrote the talk initially for a class on organizing I was taking, but it was a real project, and I actually gave this talk at a rally and someone filmed it. Now, the film of that talk, they liked it so much in the class that they decided to use it to teach the class. Now, they've used it literally all over the world to teach activists how to share their story with other people. I get 01:21:00every month messages from people, Twitter messages, LinkedIn messages, Facebook messages, who've seen that video somewhere, like in Jordan or in Saudi Arabia. They did a documentary about community organizing in China and it's still something that doesn't happen enormously in China because it's quite a repressive country, but my professor had gone there and run some workshops and they made a documentary about it, and the documentary was on Chinese state television. They included my video. Someone told me they thought it was the first time ever that a pro-LGBT message had been broadcast on Chinese state television. That's astonishing to me. If I don't do anything else except making that, which has helped other people learn how to make a difference in their own 01:22:00communities. I sometimes work with activists or see the work of other students who took the class after me because I still teach this stuff. I'm actually helping teach a class at Harvard online right now about this stuff. I get to watch a lot of videos of people doing this sort of work, try and turn their personal story into a narrative that will move others into action, and I see other people's video and I hear in their video echoes of my video, right? They've clearly taken it and tried and used it as a model for their own work, which is obviously what they're supposed to do, but instead of working on LGBT stuff, they're working on the rights of children to an education in Bhutan or the rights of domestic workers in Lebanon to form a union and have 01:23:00representation. That's incredible to me. I'm very, very proud of that. I'm really proud of that. I think I'm proud, too, I'm not proud that it took me so long to come out, I wish I found the courage to do that when I was in high school or when I was a high school teacher. I think I would've been able to affect a lot of people positively that way, and I regret that I didn't have the courage or self-understanding to be able to do that then, but I'm really proud that since I've came out, I have been out in every space, I'm always out! I have it in my bio that I am married to a husband, right, or that I'm gay. It explicitly says it in that. Every time I am invited to talk anywhere, including 01:24:00on conservative, religious campuses or for some interfaith event at a mosque or wherever it is, I don't go on stage until they say the bit in my bio about me being gay, right? So, people are seeing, to whatever extent I am a community leader, right, whatever. I'm a leader of an organization in a community that has a history and in some measure of respect is openly gay, I don't remember seeing anyone like that when I was a kid. I've always wanted to try and be the sort of people that would've helped me as a kid. That's one of the things I really want to try and do, is to be the sort of person that I needed when I was young. I don't know if I achieve that for other people, but I really try. I would be incredibly proud to think that I have helped some people come to terms with 01:25:00their own sexuality or their gender identity. You are making me cry Elliot! You're doing very good. This is going to be great footage. A good surprise!

ES: I'm sorry for making you cry.

JC: No, it's great. It's wonderful. A wonderful conversation.

ES: I appreciate that. Is there anything else you'd like to say or anything you wanted me to ask?

JC: I guess the only thing that I would like to say is that a couple of things. I think the queer community faces a couple of threats right now, that are quite dangerous, and I think we need to be aware of, both kind of broadly, nationally, internationally even, and then more locally. The big picture I don't think is looking too good. I really am very scared about this massive raft of anti-trans 01:26:00legislation happening across the country, including in Missouri. I think that cultural conservatives have decided that trans people are the people they can beat on, politically speaking, and get votes for it. They're always trying to find a minority that they can demonize and get votes for it, it's popular to demonize, and trans folk are it right now. That is really, really worrying, partly speaking because there are not very many trans people, and the community of individuals who understand and know and love trans people enough to fight for them isn't that big yet. We've got a lot of work to do until we even get even progressive political spaces to understand trans identities and trans people so we can fight effectively for their dignity. So, I really want to push back on 01:27:00this idea that trans folk are not part of our community. I really think they are the heart of the queer community. Trans people are, I've said why, but it is the most pure expression of queerness. I'm not sure if that is a thing that will stand up to scholarly scrutiny, but it feels like the right thing to say. The local thing is there are a lot of demographic changes happening within the queer community that feel like they could be quite worrying. We're losing our bars and our gay-borhoods. All across the US, the UK, these haven spaces within cities are going, mainly because of economic pressures, partly because some people 01:28:00don't feel the need for them anymore. They feel like they've kind of successfully integrated. I think that's a shame. I know that there's kind of a debate within the community where "well maybe that's a good thing, why can't we just go to any bar?" and I totally get that! I understand their perspective, but at the same time, I want transgressive spaces. I want the leather bars and I want the places, you know, I want the bathhouses, frankly. I want places to push the boundaries of what's acceptable in society because it's those places, which expand what's acceptable for everybody, and enhance human freedom. So, I worry that those places are going away. I think it's linked to a change in how the community sees itself. I haven't really thought it through, but my worry is that a lot of particularly cis White gay men feel sufficiently integrated into normal 01:29:00society that they kind of feel like they're not really part of a queer movement anymore, that they're done, that they can just live their live or they can live their life with other cis White gay men. That's their integration within the community. But, we don't have this cross-identity solidarity that was much more visibly required when a bunch of lesbians were caring for gay men who were dying of AIDS or when trans people were throwing stones at police at Stonewall or whatever, there's this less of a sense where we're all in it together because I think that many White cis gay men feel like they've kind of made it. I want to 01:30:00be really clear, I'm not saying we aren't still oppressed. We are and there is a narrative in some activist communities where they're like "White cis gay men are actually not oppressed anymore," and I'm like "that's bullshit." That's total nonsense, but there is a sense that the community is kind of pulling itself apart along economic and other identity lines and that feeling of solidarity and shared purpose risks being lost and I worry about that if only because I've never felt happier and more fully myself than in these kind of rainbow spaces, which include everybody, where everybody can be fully themselves, and I don't want to lose them. So that is my final thought for the day!

ES: Well, I appreciate you for taking the time out of your day to participate in this oral history. It means the world to me and it means the world to the people in my class and the people at MHS who will be using this for their exhibit.

JC: What happens with it now? Firstly, it was really a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it. What happens with it?

ES: I'm going to be upfront, I don't exactly know all the ins and outs of it, but I believe the physical exhibit in either next year or the year after, but this oral history will now be put in their database and people can use this oral history for their research or just in general just looking to different perspectives of the queer community in St. Louis.

JC: That's great! Well thank you so much, I really appreciate it. We're going to be in research Ella! We're going to be in research! Do you hear that?