Gabby: Over the years -- this was like in '79 and 1980 when it kind of started -- it's become incredibly, fabulously successful on so many levels. The biggest reflection of that is the fact that all these people have moved here. It was really the impetus for other communities starting, people buying IDA because there was no more room up at The Mountain (and maybe they didn't like everyone who lived there), and then Pumpkin Hollow, and then the Marbar Land, Neal bought land and then divided it up. So there was just this gigantic neighborhood now.
Meryl: Of mostly men.
G: Mostly men.
M: Mostly white.
G: Mostly white.
M: Mostly gay.
G: Right, right. So that's what happened, and here we are.
Meryl: The climate in the 50's and the 60's was a horribly oppressive and dangerous climate, and if you were queer, you were scum, you were subject to being arrested and incarcerated or put in a mental hospital, signed in against your will. Anybody could do that, because it was a sickness, it was a disease; it threatened our children. It was something people did not want known about them, and there was a lot of guilt carried around about it, because of the public attitudes towards being gay: it was filthy, it was nasty, it was depraved, it was degenerate. And so when you get stuff like that thrown at you all the time, after awhile, some of it comes home. I think that we were relatively fortunate, because there was a good solid community where we grew up, we weren't alone the way a lot of gay people are, when they come out, especially in small towns. We had a very active community.
Gabby: I remember in Miami beach, it was that kind of place.
M: Where there was a gay beach, there were gay bars, there were gay clubs, but you still could be arrested.
G: Oh yeah.
M: And a lot of people were. And then at the end of the 50's, the Johns Investigation, the Charlie Johns Investigation. Charlie Johns was a politician, he was a Senator from Star County, Florida. What had happened, actually, was that in 1954, a gay man was murdered in Miami by a couple of hustlers, and it got into the paper, and it was scandalous, and it was spread all over the paper that this diseased faggot was murdered by these poor kids that he was hitting on. The newspaper started a whole campaign, and it was also right about that time that the civil rights movement was starting to spark.
G: And there was also McCarthyism.
M: And McCarthyism, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed; it was all right around that time.
And there was a committee that was set up under a Senator named Henry Handen. In Florida, the Legislative Committee [was] set up to keep an eye on civil rights organizations, to try and squelch violence before it got started, kind of spy on them. If they thought something ugly was going to happen, then they would arrest everybody. That committee was taken over by Charlie Johns, who was this Senator who fancied himself a Joe McCarthy Jr., and he was going to take the NAACP to task, because he figured that they were a communist front organization, and that all of this civil rights activity was really a front for anarchist and communist activity, and he was going to expose them and blow them apart. What happened was, the NAACP folks took him to court and won the suit, and he freaked out, because he couldn't get anywhere with the race issue, so he then decided that he would purge the state of the helpless ones, who were the gays who had no protections, and no police respect, and were victimized anyway. So this was yet another victim to add to his list. He put out a witch hunt in the state universities, University of Florida and Florida State University, he was going to rid them of queer faculty preaching all of this sedition to the students, and was going to get the students. He did it by, first of all, he had plain clothes police in the men's room where the gay guys hung out, and they would provoke them, and if somebody made a pass at them, they would arrest them. Then they would take them down and put them in jail, and terrorize them into naming other people. Then they would put microphones in the sorority and fraternity houses, and in the motels, and they would do a lot of phone tapping.
G: It was really weird.
M: It was really atrocious, and no protections of any kinds, and this was being done for the health of our children.
G: Isn't that why you left the school?
M: Yeah.
G: You left University of Florida.
M: You bet.
G: And went to Miami.
M: You bet.
G: So you wouldn't have to deal with it.
M: You bet, because the detective called me in to question me, and found out that I had been hanging out with homosexuals in Tampa, and thought I had a boyfriend. He wanted me to "inform", since I could get along with the queers so well, then surely they would let me know who they are on campus, and surely, I would be able to do this for him, because after all, these were very sick people that needed the help of the people that were trying to ruin their lives. So, I got the hell out of there, and went to University of Miami, which was a private school which did not allow... people on campus, and didn't have to, but state schools were very much in collaboration with them over this. And a lotof the best professors were either fired, or committed suicide, or resigned in protest over what was going on. The students were given a choice, they weren't necessarily kicked out of school, they were given a choice of either leaving school or going to a psychiatrist to be cured. That went on for quite some time. Then they went into the elementary schools, and they started on the elementary school teachers, and it was a really bad time. A lot of people killed themselves over that, a lot of families were demolished, and lot of people's careers were demolished.
M: Well to begin with, gay and lesbian has been co-opted by the money-making industries in America. Corporate America has taken us over now, are putting us out as these beautiful, desirable people to emulate and dress like and act like. And in every picture of a lesbian that I've seen in the media that I have ever seen doesn't look like any lesbians I know. Maybe a few of them, but not most of them. It was the same thing with the psychedelic scene, psychdelia was fabulous in New York in the '60's, and then corporate America got a hold of it and decided to capitalize on it and make money off it, so the whole thing turned sour.
So I guess it'll be the same thing with the collectives, the back-to-the-land collectives; all the wonderful green places that queer people are creating now to live in the country and do things in a more healthy fashion, and in a more holistic fashion, in a more self-respecting, and respecting of other people, and the Earth, fashion. And pretty soon corporate America will get a hold of it, misuse it, and make money off it, and turn it ugly. We can have little signs to lure the tourists like we did at the Expo, in Forest Hills: "Come See the REAL Queers On the Land! Come Watch Me Shit In My Bucket! Admission tickets at the gate. We'll give you a free T-shirt."
G: You have the right person.
M: Alright, I'm done, you go.
G: Well, I think politically, on the surface, things have changed a lot, which I'm very happy about. There's a much greater acceptance, a much greater "live and let live" kind of thing everywhere, but that's only on the surface. Underneath, there's still all those Baptists and people who hate us. God forbid that they should find some sort of a gene, because that means they are going to know how to get rid of us; if there's a gene, let's get rid of that gene, so I think that there is still that element that is going on; that exists in the country, not only for us, but for Black people as well.
The reason that the sanctuary was created for gay and lesbian people was because there weren't any. There really weren't any gay and lesbian spaces, or queer communities, and if there were somewhere hidden where nobody knew about them. We thought it was important to have a space that belonged to us in a sense; where we could set the rules, and create the environment, and that kind of thing. That was a big part of it, why it didn't just become a community, but a gay and lesbian community.
