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Interview with WJZD After finding my web site on the Internet while doing a search, a radio talk show based in Gulfport, Mississippi asked me to speak about gay parenting on December 1, 2000. You can listen to the station on the web at any time by going to www.wjzd.com, but they do not have archives on their site, but they are sending me a cassette recording of the show. I will be putting the recording here on this web site for everyone to be able to listen to as soon as I can, so be sure to check back! Meanwhile, the show I was on is hosted by Rip Daniels and is called “It’s a New Day”. It airs weekdays from 9-11am CENTRAL. I am happy with how the show went. I got to speak as much as I wanted and even got in a few "Al Gore" debate sighs when I heard ignorant things being said now and then. I am sure that this kind of subject matter produces a lot of ratings and callers for them, so I made sure to stay on my toes and be quick to jump in when I could, yet still being as polite as possible. I believe I gave some of the more narrow-minded people some insight, although I won’t hold my breath. The show was not just about gay parenting, but about gay people who come out as children or parents, and why it is important that we be accepted and not just tolerated. The subject matter of the show's segment I was involved with was prompted by a mother who wrote Rip a letter. In it, she said she was surprised at herself for not having a more intense reaction when her daughter -- during Thanksgiving dinner -- disclosed her sexuality to the whole family. I told the mother that she should be proud that her daughter felt comfortable to come out in this way and that the most common reason parents are shocked is that they feel they will never be grandparents though their gay children (which obviously is not necessarily true). Fortunately I was able to stay on the entire segment, despite some technical problems I had with the phones at first. The audience and hosts were pretty much all African-American, and the callers (presumably all from the Gulfport, MS area) were pretty conservative, but no one was rude. A few people were a little naïve, including this one minister who was unable to tell me when he CHOSE to become het, but I let him make fool out of himself and then proceeded to tell him that I did not believe that God created junk.
While giving a bit of my
bio, which of course is on my web site, the host
brought up the fact that I was married to an African-American woman (not
specifying that I was white, but implying it). This, of course, had nothing to do with the
show's subject matter, but when Rip asked about community identification,
I told him that there is an analogy that can be made to the lack of tolerance that society had for interracial couples
(particularly in the past) which now parallels what happens when one brings a same-sex partner to an
office party or family dinner, for example.
Rip tried to say that it should not require disclosure of one's
sexuality if one goes out to a ball game with his partner, but I made sure
to dismiss the comparison to bringing a loved one to a family dinner. Rip
is very nice, but was a little off base with this
complaint. I hope I gave him and the audience a little insight, with
the help of a couple of callers who were also progressive in their
thinking, as one caller helped me point out teenage suicide rates, which are exponentially higher among gay
people. I got to plug www.FamilyPride.org, the organization with which I have been a board member for almost five years. The show implied I was still a current board member ( because that’s what they saw on the web site), but that hardly made a difference. I am still involved and intend to be indefinitely. To my delight, I was even encouraged to give my web site's address, although I was surprised that my web site did not produce a lot of emails as a result of spelling out my domain name. Please let me know what you think of the show when you get to hear it on here. |
