Arizona Equals Ralph

The Arizona Equals Conversation is a storytelling project featuring interviews with LGBTQ+ people living in Arizona. On today’s episode, listen to a conversation with Ralph Roberts about his experiences coming out during the AIDS crisis, being among the first gay couples to be married in Massachusetts, and working in ministry as an openly gay man. Additional context for the conversation * Ralph’s Marriage Equality Story in the New York Times * Gay & Lesbian Switchboard * The Hetrick-Martin Institute * AZT (HIV/AIDS treatment) * Project 10 * Westside Community Board of Education v. Mergens * Dykes to Watch Out For * Paris is Burning * Leslie Feinberg (Stone Butch Blues) * Leslie Feinberg (Beyond Pink or Blue) * Allen Ginsberg * Day-care sex-abuse hysteria * Section 28 (British Law) Full Transcript 00;00;00;04 - 00;00;25;06 Ralph I'm Ralph Roberts. I was in ministry with young people and as a Unitarian Universalist minister and for years and am a happy would be artist out here in Arizona who really, really cares about gay rights and queer rights and queer young people, and there's so much I want to say. 00;00;26;04 - 00;00;28;18 Jeanne Thank you so much. 00;00;31;13 - 00;01;01;03 Jeanne Thanks for listening to this week's episode of The Arizona Equals Conversation. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the policy and communications director for Equality Arizona, and the host of this podcast. Arizona Equals is a storytelling podcast featuring weekly conversational interviews with LGBTQ+ people living in Arizona. If you'd like to listen to past episodes, or sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the show, you can visit equalityarizona.org/stories. 00;01;02;08 - 00;01;33;09 Jeanne Today's guest, Ralph, signed up to be a guest on the podcast through the form on that page, and I'm really glad that he did. Ralph was present for some really important moments in queer history and is probably the first person I've ever talked to who could share a personal story about Allen Ginsberg. Ralph also has decades of experience working in church ministries, and I felt that the combination of those experiences gave him a really unique and valuable perspective on the history of the gay rights movement and some of the ways he feels that it's failed. 00;01;34;12 - 00;01;58;03 Jeanne We get into some pretty contentious topics, but everything's said here is grounded in real experience and real emotion and real empathy. I think it'll be best just to let the conversation speak for itself. So let's get the episode started. 00;01;58;03 - 00;02;21;26 Ralph And I was, I got teary cause, you know, I hadn't realized that he was out to some people while he was in high school, too, and I was just like, Bryan, it's like, don't you feel like it's wasted? It's like, wasted? He's like, we were surviving, he said. And I said, I know, but I could have just come out. And he was like, you were my lifeline. 00;02;22;04 - 00;02;34;22 Ralph You came out right after college. I was thrown out of my house. You found me, like friends. It was this really heart healing moment. 00;02;34;23 - 00;02;40;01 Jeanne Yeah, absolutely. I — that's such a a moment. 00;02;40;06 - 00;03;04;18 Ralph Yeah, there were, there was a group of us in high school and we never kind of knew it. We never acknowledged it. And, you know, I look at us now; Bryan, the one I mentioned, he and I both adopted. He adopted three kids. We both did it through the state. And he's done community theater. I've been, I've done ministry and education, work with kids and stuff. 00;03;04;18 - 00;03;13;24 Ralph And then we have another friend who is the, well, a doctor's spouse. He went to school to be a doctor, but came out a doctor's spouse. 00;03;13;28 - 00;03;14;08 Jeanne Oh, yeah. 00;03;15;14 - 00;03;31;26 Ralph But he is, you know, they adopted the kid. And then there's our friend Chris, who was always a little scary. He was on the debate club and stuff, but Chris got liberal-ed up and he's done all this stuff on environmental stuff and. 00;03;32;07 - 00;03;34;18 Jeanne Oh wow, like professionally? Oh, that's cool. 00;03;34;19 - 00;03;49;07 Ralph Yeah. And did a lot of advocacy work on that. He had a rough time of it. His parents were not too cool with things. And he he went to I don't know, he just, you know, he had a harder time in some ways. 00;03;50;04 - 00;03;53;11 Jeanne But you're all still able to be in touch after all these years?. 00;03;53;20 - 00;03;58;16 Ralph Yeah, yeah. Not a lot. But we could easily at any point, you know. 00;03;58;18 - 00;03;59;25 Jeanne That's really nice. 00;04;01;12 - 00;04;06;24 Ralph And then there was female friends in our group who, you know, we're still in touch with too. 00;04;07;02 - 00;04;07;24 Jeanne Oh, that's really cool. 00;04;09;14 - 00;04;10;27 Ralph Yeah, it was, it was really neat. 00;04;11;10 - 00;04;23;29 Jeanne I think it's interesting to look back on some of those moments where it's like, Yeah, we had these things in common that we didn't even necessarily know or acknowledge to each other or to ourselves. And then years later, it's like, Oh, well, of course. 00;04;24;16 - 00;04;50;14 Ralph I, I have I hate to — I wanted to be out. I wanted something I would — when I was growing up, I called the Gay and Lesbian switchboard like weekly for, like, do you have a youth group yet? Do you have something? My parents even were considering like, do we send them to Hetrick-Martin? Like, you know, we didn't know much about it, but they were like, you know. The same thing when I was diagnosed with dyslexia. 00;04;50;14 - 00;04;53;24 Ralph But I wasn't up to boarding school. That wasn't going to work for me. 00;04;53;27 - 00;04;55;00 Jeanne That would be a big change. 00;04;55;19 - 00;05;22;12 Ralph But, um, but it finally got to the point, because I came out to my parents at 14, And this is like mid-AIDS crisis, pre-AZT. And so not a lot of folks were doing that at my age. And, um, but there was just nothing. There was nothing. We lived two blocks from a metropolitan community church, who knew. And I went in and I thought, Well, this will be something. 00;05;23;10 - 00;05;43;29 Ralph She was terrified. The minister looked like I was like, a disease or something when I came in. She was just so terrified that — well, as it eventually came out, they had been firebombed. There had been a lesbian bookstore that was firebombed in our city. Jeanne Oh, God. Ralph Just before that. And they'd gotten lots of death threats and, cause I mean, I kept saying, you know, I could come. 00;05;43;29 - 00;06;02;06 Ralph And she's like, no, your parents wouldn't want you to do that. And said, Oh, no, they can come with me maybe. And she was like, Well, you know, there's people who are dying of AIDS and they look at and there's, you know, transvestites, the language of the day. Jeanne Yeah. Ralph And, you know, I really don't think, you know, that you're gonna want that. 00;06;02;06 - 00;06;22;23 Ralph And then she was finally like, look, we can't have a 14 year old kid coming in here. The wrong person hears about that. And those firebombs are going to turn from threats to reality. Jeanne Yeah. Ralph And my church had a gay group, so I went to — the conference, not my church, but the denomination. 00;06;23;01 - 00;06;23;13 Jeanne Right. 00;06;24;01 - 00;06;44;22 Ralph And so I was excited. I thought, well, maybe this. I got to the door of the meeting after following the labyrinth-like directions for how to get there, cause it was so hidden. Jeanne Yeah. Ralph And then I go down this dark hallway and somebody rushes out before I could even see who's in the room to, you know, walk me back to the youth programing. 00;06;44;22 - 00;06;48;10 Ralph And I'm like, my minister knows, could I come, you know. 00;06;48;29 - 00;06;49;12 Jeanne Oh, gosh. 00;06;50;00 - 00;07;17;06 Ralph No. So it wasn't till when I was in college though. They had just started a, in 93. So it was my second half of my first year and they'd started a gay, lesbian, bisexual group for youth and young adults, the first of its kind in the area. And so finally, there was something, you know. I did college a… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit equalityarizona.substack.com