untitled

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TRANSCRIPT OF KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Andrew Tobias*

Thank you for the introduction, Walter. This is so much fun for

me. I was so flattered to get this invitation. When I got the invitation, I

said to myself, “Of course, I remember Tom [Stoddard] tremendously

well—I think I have a photograph of twenty years ago when we had a

little cocktail party to raise money for this fellowship and this pro-

gram.” And, sure enough, there it was! [Gestures to photograph.

] It

was framed, no less! Because Tom was a very important guy and way

more visionary than I ever was or ever will be. In 1989, he wrote

about [same-sex marriage].

When I first heard about marriage as

something that we should maybe pursue, I thought, “Are you crazy?

I’ve been to Harvard Business School. I’ve taken marketing courses.

This isn’t how to market us.” So, Tom was way more visionary, but he

had this amazing vitality and energy and just good cheer. If you look

at the picture, you will see his smile is brighter than anybody else’s,

and this was twenty years ago and it has gone like that [snaps fingers].

And, he would be so gratified to see the progress we’ve made.

So, first of all, it’s very meaningful to me to be able to share this

with you. I’m not a lawyer. I am not a deep thinker. All the work is

going to be done after me. You have two panels with amazing peo-

ple—many of whom I know and certainly respect—and that will be

the hard work and the thinking. I’ve never been much for hard work or

deep thinking, but I am one for celebrating. Not that you all don’t

know this, but I’m the oldest person in the room—I’m sorry Norman

couldn’t make it—but now I am allowed to say that I actually have a

little bit more perspective than some of you may. You all know how

far we’ve come. But if you were ten years old in 1957, when your

father walked through the den while you were watching black-and-

white television and he was in mid-conversation with one of his army

buddies, and he said something about homosexuals, with such disgust,

not even dislike but disgust, you instantly turned red and you some-

* Journalist, author of The Best Little Boy in the World, and Treasurer of the

Democratic National Committee.

This photograph is reproduced with permission of Mr. Tobias on page 467.

Thomas B. Stoddard, Why Gay People Should Seek the Right to Marry,

OOK

: N

’

& L

ESBIAN

, Fall 1989, at 9.

459

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460 LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 19:459

how knew—and I don’t know quite how I knew—but you somehow

knew that he was talking about you.

It’s still tough. Even in 2015, if you’re ten years old and you live

in Mississippi, let alone in some other countries, it’s tough. But people

have some role models and it’s changed some. So I knew when I was

ten—that’s a long time to keep a secret—because I knew from that

moment on [after my father’s comment] that no one should ever, ever,

ever know that. I was a normal little kid, just mis-wired. Everything

was minus one multiplied by minus one. Everything that I was inter-

ested in was backwards of what I was supposed to be interested in. So

I went to school up in the Bronx at Horace Mann, and I was the only

one like me in the school. I was on all sorts of teams at school. It’s a

very small school, as you may know, and a Jewish school. (Except for

the teachers’ sons, which is not to say that Jews don’t make great

athletes—we do! Just not me, and none of my classmates.) So I got all

these varsity letters because even though I had no talent, I was very

repressed and I had a lot of energy. And I was always the first one to

swim in the morning before classes and the last one to leave after

wrestling and track and soccer and all of that stuff.

And I remember going to my locker at age sixteen, with almost

nobody left on campus. It was already dark—because that’s what usu-

ally happens here on campus during the winter, which is why I now

spend the winters in Miami—and I remember thinking to myself,

“How is this going to work? I really haven’t done anything wrong. I’m

getting good grades. Even though the teams were terrible and it’s a

small school, I’m getting my little varsity letters and stuff. But how

can I keep this secret?” (Of course, Horace Mann was all boys at the

time, I should mention that; though it isn’t now. When Ren´ee Rich-

ards, as Richard Raskind, went to Horace Mann a few years before

me, and was the captain of the tennis team, Horace Mann was all

boys. When she went on to Yale, it was all young men. And when I

went to the other school, the one in Cambridge, it was all guys, so I

figured I could perhaps get through that.) But I remember going to the

locker—and I had this internal monologue endlessly, but this particu-

lar moment sticks in my head—and I’m thinking, “You know, what I

feel for Neil Landau, there’s nothing wrong with this. He may not

want it. He may not like it. But oh my God, if only. . ..”

And I imagined talking to the whole school and shocking every-

body, because this was the worst, most shocking, horrible thing you

could be. And, of course, you would be an idiot if you told anybody.

And I wasn’t an idiot, so I never would have had the courage to do it.

(And when my book first came out, it was released “surreptitiously”—

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2016] KEYNOTE ADDRESS 461

as Walter put it—because I wrote it under a pen name.

That’s how

brave I am. I mean, you’ve got a lot of courage right here.) Anyway, I

imagined talking to the whole school. Well, cut to 1997 and I was

speaking to the whole student body of Horace Mann—at the second,

no less; not the first, but the second—Annual Gay and Lesbian Stu-

dent Assembly and telling six hundred Horace Mann kids and the

whole faculty my story. This was in 1997, the year, actually, that we

lost Tom. And after that, they made me a trustee of the school; not

before that but after knowing all that, they made me a trustee of Hor-

ace Mann. That’s how much the world had changed.

When I was in college, I was—and this may surprise some of you

who’ve been to college, and I think everyone here has been to col-

lege—the only one in my college of five thousand undergraduates

who was wired the way I was. There was nobody else like me at

Harvard. [Laughter from audience.] There might have, statistically.

Theoretically, there is life on other planets throughout the universe—

and we know that, mathematically—but as a practical matter, it’s

probably not really going to affect our lives. I knew that mathemati-

cally, there were probably other people like me. But they would be—

because they were like me—doing everything they could, including

being a little homophobic and a little dick-ish. This isn’t being re-

corded, is it? [Laughter from audience.] They were doing everything

they could, as I was, to make sure that nobody would ever know, so I

would never meet them. And I even thought of elaborate, ridiculous

things, like Soc. Rel. 10 things,

those anonymous surveys: they’d be

completely anonymous, completely anonymous, but they wouldn’t re-

ally be anonymous. I would have a special way to tell, and if anybody

checked off that they had these same feelings, etc.

There was one person. Around, I guess, sophomore year, I real-

ized that one of the resident tutors in Winthrop House—out of three

hundred guys in the house and four resident tutors—one of them,

enormously popular but old. He was twenty-seven or something; my

view of twenty-seven-year-olds has changed a little bit since then.

[Laughter from audience.] So I was eighteen or nineteen, and there

was this resident tutor who was very popular, very nice, but I noticed,

“Oh my God, he’s looking at the same guys I am. There is somebody

else.” We never talked about it, but there was one other person, not an

3. See

NDREW

OBIAS WRITING AS

OHN

EID

, T

EST

ITTLE

OY IN THE

ORLD

(Random House 25th anniversary ed. 1998) (1973).

4. See

ARRISON

C. W

HITE

, I

DENTITY AND

ONTROL

: A S

TRUCTURAL

HEORY OF

OCIAL

CTION

xv (1992) (referencing Soc. Rel. 10 and its role in the development of

White’s theories).

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462 LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 19:459

undergraduate—he was a teaching assistant or something [similar]

who lived in the dorms—but I always remember that. But other than

that guy, I was the only one.

Cut to July 7, 2012. You probably don’t know what that date

was, but that guy—whom I didn’t talk to at Harvard, but who was

looking at the same people I was—was actually getting married. That

was Barney Frank, my one other person at Harvard, in my dorm,

whom I was friends with from 1966 on. I was in his wedding. He was

getting married to my friend, Jim Ready.

Nancy Pelosi was there.

John Kerry was there. A whole lot of surfers on Jim Ready’s side of

the family were there. This guy was getting married. And the cere-

mony was being presided over by the Governor of the Commonwealth

of Massachusetts.

And it’s hard for me to get that story out without

getting choked up a little bit, because of the arc of his not being able

to talk to anybody—my not being able to talk to anybody—and the arc

of progress in this great country, thanks to many of the people in this

room and those of you who are just students, who will take us the next

step. This is the most amazing thing. It was the worst thing you could

be! It was horrible. People killed themselves. (And, of course, some

still do, which is awful; but there are fewer.)

It was horrible. And

here is Barney Frank getting married to his surfer boyfriend Jim

Ready, presided over by the Governor of the Commonwealth of

Massachusetts.

And now, fast forward another six months, to January 21, 2013.

And the President of the United States in his second inaugural address,

is saying—in his second inaugural address! I mean, this is American

history—that our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and

sisters are afforded equal rights under the law. “[F]or if we are truly

created equal,” he said, in front of all those people around the world,

“if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one

another must be equal as well.”

And later that night—oh I should tell you, on the left [in that

photograph] is Norman Dorsen, who we wish was here. (I know him,

5. See Michael M. Grynbaum, Barney Frank and Jim Ready,

N.Y. T

IMES

July 8,

2012

at A14.

6. See id.

7. See generally Ann P. Haas, Suicide and Suicide Risk in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,

and Transgender Populations: Review and Recommendations, 58

J. H

OMOSEXUALITY

10 (2011).

8. President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address (Jan. 21, 2013), in Press Release,

Office of the White House Press Sec’y, Inaugural Address by President Barack

Obama (Jan. 21, 2013), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/21/inau

gural-address-president-barack-obama.

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2016] KEYNOTE ADDRESS 463

and he’s such a wonderful man.) Then there’s Tom Stoddard. Then

there’s me. And on the other end is Virginia (or Ginny) Apuzzo, who

is one of the pioneering heroes. She’s still with us; she’s great. But in

between me and Ginny was my partner of seventeen years, Charles

Nolan, who is no longer with us. (Sorry, he was not there, because we

had lost him. He was there in the Clinton administration. We got to

dance in the White House! Charles and I got to dance in the White

House in 1999.)

But, after President Obama’s second inaugural, where he said

that—and the inauguration itself was amazing—my friend at the time

and I got to dance at the White House on inauguration night with a

bunch of other gay couples, lots of straight couples, some cabinet sec-

retaries and their spouses, the first family, and a trans friend or two

and their significant others. This progress is unbelievable. It does

make a few people crazy still in this country, but fewer and fewer. In

fact, only four of the nine Supreme Court Justices are made crazy by

this now. [Laughter from audience.] And so we’re making a lot of

progress.

So now, fast forward a little bit further to November of 2013, I

guess eleven months after the inauguration, and I found myself—and

this is how far we’ve come—in a private jet. But this private jet was

owned by Ross Perot, Jr., and it was a 737 with twelve seats in it that

was going to China. I had never been to China; I had never been to

Alaska! (We stopped to refuel in Alaska. I thought, “This is so cool.” I

got to see Alaska; I was there for only about half an hour, but it’s

really nice. It was beautiful. It was just at noon, so there was some

sunshine.) I got to go to China with what was called the High Party,

rather the high-level, party-to-party dialogue. Three Democrats on the

plane, three Republicans on the plane, and we flew over—this was the

sixth time it had been done—to meet with the top Communist party

officials. And I’m thinking, “What am I doing on this plane? Don’t

they know how I know nothing about China? I don’t speak Chinese;

I’ve never been to China; I am so not supposed to be here.” But, they

wanted three Democrats, so it was me, and the former head of the

Foreign Relations Committee, and a wonderful business guy, and

three Republicans: Nixon’s grandson; another business guy, who was

very good; and the third one, who was my counterpart. (For the last

seventeen years, I’ve been treasurer of one of the two national party

committees; and by coincidence, the treasurer of the other national

party committee—that would be the Republican National Commit-

tee—is my classmate, Tony Parker.)

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464 LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 19:459

So, there we are in China, and they had asked me if I would give

the first speech, the first thing, which was, by the way, not relaxed like

this: I wrote every word out, and there was going to be consecutive

translation and the whole thing. And I was supposed to talk about—

they had a fancy title for it, but basically, [the topic was] gridlock in

the American government.

(And there’s a lot to talk about, and out of

respect for NYU’s 501(c)(3) designation, I think I may spare you that.

But I had a good time putting my hand on my friend Tony Parker’s

shoulder and saying, “Well, if all Republicans were like this, it would

be great, but . . . .”) Anyway, I had showed my speech to one of the

people on the plane, one of our real experts who was organizing the

trip, who had done this before. I said, “Well, you asked me to do this.

Here’s what I’m planning to say. I’d like you take a look. Can I do

this?” And he read it, and he said, “Huh, yeah I think you should,” for

reasons you’ll see in a second. He said, “I think you should. I don’t

know how they’re going to react. I don’t think they’ll say anything. I

think they will ignore it, or at least pretend to ignore it, but I think you

should.”

So after I finish the part about gridlock and how it’s not

equivalent and all the reasons, using my friend Tony as a prop, I said,

“And if I might, as a point of personal privilege, as we call it in

America, I’d just like to thank you, and congratulate you, for the re-

markable progress you’re making. In, I think it was 2001, you

decriminalized—I forget the exact numbers and dates—but you

decriminalized homosexuality and took it off the mental illness list,

and just this past summer you had your second conference on LBGT

equality.”

(We should actually say “LGBTQQIAJ.” When I saw the

notes for today—I know about LGBT, of course; and I thought that

“Q” stood for “questioning,” but I see it stands for “queer.” And then

there’s “I” for “intersex,” and “A” for “asexual,” which I hadn’t real-

ized was part of it. So actually, it should be LGBTQQIAJ: the second

“Q” is for “questioning” since the first is for “queer,” and the “J” is for

9. See generally Andrew Tobias, China IV—Thank You for Making My iPhone, by

the Way,

NDREW

OBIAS

: M

ONEY

& O

THER

UBJECTS

(Dec. 6, 2013), http://andrew

tobias.com/column/china-iv-thank-you-for-making-my-iphone-by-the-way/.

10. See Tabitha Speelman, Tiptoeing Out of the Closet: The History and Future of

LGBT Rights in China,

TLANTIC

, Aug. 21, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/china/

archive/2013/08/tiptoeing-out-of-the-closet-the-history-and-future-of-lgbt-rights-in-

china/278869/ (discussing, inter alia, China’s decriminalization of homosexuality in

1997 and the removal of homosexuality from the country’s official list of mental

illnesses in 2001).

11. See Alessia Valenza, Second China National LGBT Community Leader Confer-

ence,

ILGA A

SIA

(Aug. 25, 2013, 4:30 AM), http://ilga.org/second-china-national-

lgbt-community-leader-conference/.

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2016] KEYNOTE ADDRESS 465

me, which is “just not all that good at it,” frankly. [Laughter from

audience.] Anyhow, but I didn’t tell the Chinese that. Ask Charles; if

Charles were still around, he could explain the “J.”)

So I congratulated them on the progress they’re making, and I

said, “You know, actually, it’s interesting: of the nine elected officers

of the Democratic National Committee, three of us are openly gay,

and of the fifty or sixty members of the Executive Committee I think

it’s ten or twelve who are openly LGBT, and one is trans. And here in

China, you know, in a way, you have an easier row to hoe, because

one of the big reasons in America that it’s been so tough to reach

equality and let people just pursue their happiness is religion. And as I

understand it, religion isn’t as big here as it is in the United States.

And also, one of the reasons religion and the Bible and all that [are so

emphasized in America] is probably because of procreation, because

the whole thing is we’ve got to have more kids and more babies and

more people. And as I understand it, that’s not China’s first priority

right now. So actually, for you, this should be a piece of cake, basi-

cally.” (I tried to do it a little bit better than that.)

So, at the end of it I finished—all of this with a consecutive

translation and all that stuff. I waited, and I was prepared for them not

to react. But the Vice Chair of the something-or-another, in this enor-

mously elaborate, astonishing hall with people on both sides and mi-

crophones and folks serving tea—it was amazing—took his time. And

then he basically said, “Well, thank you for your remarks. Here in

China, we believe that people should do whatever they want as long as

they’re not hurting anybody else.” And everyone applauded politely

and . . . it was over. And I said to my American handler, “Wow, that

was OK, right?”

He said, “Yeah, that was great.”

I said, “I should cool it from now on, right? In each of these

successive meetings in the next four days. I’ve done it. Enough,

right?”

“No, no, no,” he said, “First of all, everybody you see from now

on is going to know what you said, including probably President Xi.”

We never met President Xi, but we spent two hours with Vice

President Li and others along the way. So each time I just figured,

“Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.” So, I got to tell Vice President

Li about our transgender person on the Executive Committee and that

12. See, e.g.,

ORUM ON

ELIGION

& P

. L

IFE

, P

ESEARCH

., T

LOBAL

ELIGIOUS

ANDSCAPE

45, 46, 50 tbl. (2012) (providing statistics on relig-

ious affiliations in countries around the globe).

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466 LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 19:459

there was actually a Chairman on the Republican National Committee,

my friend Tony’s committee, who at the time, as Chairman was not

out, but, so on and so forth. I mention this because, as good as things

are getting in the United States, certainly in major parts of the United

States, there’s so much around the world. I asked him, I asked the

Vice President of China, “You have a hundred million LGBT people

in China, roughly.

Right, a billion three people times six percent,

give or take. How many of those one hundred million are in your

leadership and how many of them are in the Communist Party?” They

didn’t know, but it was interesting to try to get them thinking about it

a little bit. There are probably a hundred million, maybe a hundred

forty million LGBTQQIAJ Muslims. And, oh my God, what a

nightmare that must be, or is, for such a high proportion of those

people.

So, first of all, I want to kind of wind down by recommending

two films to you that I have been lucky enough to have a little part in

helping with. One is a film about Barney Frank that some of you may

have seen. It’s on Showtime, I think, this month still. It’s called Com-

pared to What? His famous line about—well you’ll see it in the film,

but he quotes Henny Youngman: “How’s your wife?” “Compared to

what?” But, Compared to What?: The Improbable Journey of Barney

Frank.

It’s really good. And it’s on Showtime, and if you don’t get

Showtime, it’s on all those On Demand, however we get these things

now.

And the other one is called A Sinner in Mecca,

which has just

come out by a wonderful filmmaker named Parvez Sharma, who did a

film called A Jihad for Love,

and about seven years ago won a lot of

awards. I think A Sinner in Mecca was broadcast on Canadian broad-

casting; it’s been at some festivals; it’s won awards and sold out and

all that stuff. But now you can get it on Netflix and on YouTube, so

you can watch it tonight if you’re interested. Parvez lives with his

husband, about six miles north from where we’re sitting, and has a

nice, happy, New York, American, gay life. His husband is an atheist,

but he is a Muslim. And what Parvez did was go to the Kingdom of

Saudi Arabia, to Mecca, to do his Hajj. Because as you know, every

good Muslim must do a Hajj before he or she dies.

13. See Kathy Chu & Calum MacLeod, Gay Life in China Is Legal but Remains

Hidden,

USA T

ODAY

(Feb. 22, 2010, 1:12 PM), http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/

news/world/2010-02-21-gays-China-closeted_N.htm.

14.

OMPARED TO

HAT

?: T

MPROBABLE

OURNEY OF

ARNEY

RANK

(Pack

Creek Productions 2015).

15.

A S

INNER IN

ECCA

(Haram Films 2015).

16.

A J

IHAD FOR

OVE

(Channel Four Films 2007).

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2016] KEYNOTE ADDRESS 467

And Parvez went, even though presumably they knew he was

gay. You can Google him and up comes A Jihad for Love, and so he’s

a rather famous gay Muslim. I said, “What did you think is going to

happen when you get off the plane in Riyadh or wherever you get off

the plane?” He said, “Well, I was hoping there would be so many

people, millions of people, going for the Hajj that I would be ok.” And

so he went, but—maybe worse than that—he filmed it secretly.

You’re not supposed to film this whole very sacred thing. And it’s

pretty amazing footage and it’s a pretty amazing thing. His hope is: he

doesn’t really care how many people see it in the United States, that’s

fine; but maybe some of these hundred million people around the

world—as with A Jihad for Love, in underground ways, in basements,

in living rooms, and quietly—will see it, and it will give them a little

hope. For moderate Muslims, it may give them a little understanding.

So, I don’t know what impact it will make. It’s an interesting film.

And as a beacon for the rest of the world, which we sometimes

are, and always strive to be: whatever you’re working out this after-

noon for our progress in Mississippi and Alabama, keep in mind that

you’re also probably going to be helping to plot some progress in

other parts of this planet that we all share. So my hat is off to all of

you for being involved in this, and I’m so flattered and so happy to be

able—twenty years after that picture was taken—to be back here with

Tom, and with Walter, and with you guys. And have a great afternoon.

Thank you.

From left to right: Norman Dorsen, Tom Stoddard, Andrew Tobias, Charles Nolan, and Virginia Apuzzo.

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