Thomas Duane, February 17, 2022 (Part 1)

Thomas Duane, February 17, 2022 (Part 1)

Thomas Duane recounts the early years of his life, his relationship with sexuality and time at Lehigh University, as well as his early interactions with activism and politics.

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

2022-02-17

Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.

video

LGBT-22

Mary Foltz

Thomas Duane

01:52:56

5.4 February 17, 2022 Thomas Duane, February 17, 2022 (Part 1) LGBT-22 1:52:55 LVLGBT-2022 Stories of Lehigh Valley LGBTQ+ Community Members (2022 - ) Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository Support for the collection of this interview was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Thomas Duane Mary Foltz video/mp4 DuaneThomas_20220217_video_trimmed.mp4 1.0:|27(15)|46(10)|79(14)|106(3)|123(2)|140(5)|159(5)|176(2)|197(2)|218(17)|239(7)|262(5)|279(15)|292(13)|311(10)|330(11)|351(14)|372(12)|391(14)|416(7)|439(16)|460(4)|489(13)|506(5)|527(4)|546(11)|565(10)|586(11)|611(7)|630(16)|651(8)|670(9)|691(10)|710(7)|727(13)|752(13)|773(16)|790(14)|811(16)|834(8)|859(10)|876(3)|891(15)|908(16)|933(4)|956(14)|971(3)|988(9)|1003(14)|1022(10)|1043(4)|1064(9)|1087(12)|1104(9)|1119(6)|1142(14)|1165(7)|1190(11)|1207(11)|1232(10)|1251(12)|1272(15)|1295(7)|1318(15)|1335(6)|1352(13)|1369(16)|1388(2)|1405(11)|1428(5)|1449(8)|1462(4)|1485(12)|1500(9)|1521(3)|1540(6)|1557(13)|1580(10)|1603(7)|1626(7)|1645(18)|1666(10)|1685(16)|1708(13)|1727(11)|1746(13)|1769(9)|1790(5)|1807(9)|1824(8)|1841(14)|1860(4)|1875(10)|1896(13)|1921(16)|1940(14)|1969(3)|1990(3)|2011(9)|2028(10)|2055(5)|2074(8)|2093(2)|2114(9)|2133(5)|2154(12)|2177(13)|2208(11)|2225(14)|2256(16)|2279(16)|2306(12)|2325(12) 0 https://youtu.be/zRHi6rmXYA0 YouTube video English 0 Interview Introductions MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz, and I’m here with Senator Thomas K. Duane to talk about his life and experiences in the Lehigh Valley and beyond -- including New York, importantly -- as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This year our project has funding from ACLS and we are meeting today at the Senator’s office in Manhattan on February 17th, 2022. So, thank you so much for your willingness to speak to me today.&#13 ; &#13 ; THOMAS DUANE: It’s a pleasure and I’m glad that -- I think I’m the more difficult person to tie down but I’m glad we were all able to get tied down together. I’m very happy to be here and talk. 0 221 Early Years of Life / Catholic School Days TD: I was actually born in a hospital in Chelsea, a French hospital. It’s now affordable housing, so I’m happy about that. But it was a hospital, and it had the maternity wing. I only say that because when I ran for office, I could truthfully say I was born in Chelsea. But my parents at the time lived in Queens, in an apartment that my aunt had formerly lived in. But I was the cause of them moving to Flushing. 0 1261 High School / Early Explorations with Sexuality TD: So, I went to an all-gay high school -- no, it was an all-boys high school. Actually, my freshman year, there was a student, Richard Sullivan, who I think he was more sophisticated and more worldly than I was. I think he had a girlfriend, like a real girlfriend, in his freshman year. But he knew there was something different about me, and I knew there was something different about me. 0 1638 College Prospects / Early Experiences with Politics TD: I remember one of the reasons I came home from having had left home when I was an adolescent was that I was like, “If I can just make it to going away to college, then I’ll get out of here, and so I better go back so I can leave.” And I applied to a bunch of different schools. Some, I think, were reaches. One, I applied to Dartmouth. I didn’t go up to the school to have an interview but I was interviewed by the alumni in an office building in Midtown Manhattan and I got on the elevator to go to the interview and the elevator started to go, and it dropped 30 floors right before the interview. 0 2012 Attending Lehigh University TD: Anyway. So, I knew that if I started to smoke cigarettes, I would be smoking cigarettes. If I started to drink, I would drink. If I started to smoke pot, I would smoke pot. And if I started to have sex, I would have sex. And 17, that’s when the dam broke. And I don’t think this is the reason I went to Lehigh, but Lehigh was not known as a druggie school. It wasn’t. It was not, not a druggie school, let’s just say that. But it was more well-known for its consumption of alcohol. It was a big frat school. And I guess, honestly, I think I was trying to please my father by going there. 0 2518 Relationships at Lehigh TD: So, that was all wonderful. But at the age of 17, I came out sexually and politically, started to. Politically slowly, sexually pretty, in a way, slowly, also. But I’m actually a little bit bisexual, and I actually was out at one time as a bisexual in the Columbia Spectator, which is the Columbia University newspaper because I went to a pro-bi rally and so, they said, “Openly bisexual councilmember.” And I think bisexuals have it really hard. So, I always identified gay, but I don’t have a perfect Kinsey score. And I knew I would end up with a man, but I have to be -- anyway. So, I was sleeping with men and women then. 0 2964 Joining Social Justice Organizations / Getting Politically Educated&#13 ; TD: So, I started to go to Gay Activist Alliance meetings in New York City. I would take the bus into the city. I both went for the politics and to meet boys, truth be told. There’s nothing wrong with combining that. I think that’s one of the reasons ACT UP was so very successful. And I met these two, Rick and Ron, I think, and they were librarians and they had an organization they founded called Le-Hi-Ho, which is both a great name and an unfortunate name, all at the same time. 0 3279 Coming Out to Parents / Being Out at Lehigh TD: &#13 ; Oh, I told my parents I was gay -- oh, I can’t remember now, was it freshman or sophomore year? I will remember this but can’t remember now. I think it was after my sophomore year. And they were very upset about it. And actually, my younger brother also said he was gay, but I was the older, I was probably the bad influence on him or something. The brother a year older than me at one time thought he wanted to be a Maryknoll missionary. 0 3678 Staring an LGBTQIA+ Group at Lehigh TD: As I recall, I think Phil might have been, or he was threatened one time, pretty much. We got threatening phone calls. I wrote letters to the Brown and White, “How dare you presume that everyone is heterosexual,” these lines that I picked up from all these political books that I had read. And I asked to create, I think it was Lehigh Homophile. Homophile, what kind of word is that? I guess it was just a word that I just -- actually, Le-Hi-Ho, which was Ron and Rick’s group, it’s both a great name and kind of a funny name, homophile is just not a great name at all. What are we, in Greece? They wouldn’t even say it there. I don’t even know where it came from. 0 4608 Organizing at a Young Age TD: Anyway, you know what? In my life, now, people have said to me, “How do you organize?” Because I was, from a very early age, organizing. And I said, “Well, you just start doing stuff and you try to get others to do it with you. That’s basically how it’s done.” In addition to joining every club in my high school, I was thinking back on this, I also was very active in my parish team clubs, not because I was so into the parish, but it was just another way to not be home and my brother, John, of course, was the head of it but I was the program director, so I was in charge of putting together dances. And I did things like that. 0 4837 Graduating from Lehigh / Returning to Be a Speaker TD: But I wanted to leave. And so, I really tried. The first summer, I didn’t want to go home and I wanted to be with my then-boyfriend for that first year so I took classes. And then, after my sophomore year I took classes that summer, also. And I was thinking about the various jobs. I worked at a luncheon in New York when I was 17, which I actually loved. I have to be around people when I work. &#13 ; &#13 ; So, I took six courses or something. I tried to take additional courses so I could get out sooner. I took courses, summer courses. And I just needed to take two more classes. It took me two years, but I did. So, I left at the time of the students in the class of ’75 were graduating, but I’m actually class of ’76, and I got my degree in 1977, and my parents were very happy I got that. 0 5300 Leaving for New York / Political Beginnings TD: I had to leave Lehigh. I needed to get out. And I came to New York. But I continued on a path of working during the day and doing community and LGBT. I think it was miracle we started to say lesbian and gay, which was a step up from saying gay and lesbian, but anyway. I continued being active in the queer community and non-queer community and my life went on. &#13 ; &#13 ; There’s something that happened a little while ago and I think it started with when I was telling you about acting gayer than -- maybe I’m ashamed to say that I was acting gayer than I would normally act. I feel in a way that’s a terrible thing to say, because another thing that, from my childhood or my adolescence that I remember is to be very, very careful about how I walked. 0 5767 Choosing Battles TD: Because as a gay person -- and this was big when I was in elected office -- you have to choose your battles because I was always the only one. If there’s two queers, well, then they can take turns and then other people start to do it. When you’re the only one, I would talk to everybody. When I talked with people, “We’re the only people. We have to decide every day whether or not to come out.” And I mean that. 0 6056 Being Out Unapologetically&#13 ; TD: I do want to talk about all the rest but it’s amazing to me that at Lehigh now, that there would be an affirmative effort to get queer people into fraternities and sororities, like unbelievable to me. Even when they started having the lounge for the LGBTQ community, I can’t imagine the people were joining fraternities and sororities up until very recently, being open about who they were with their sexual orientation. 0 6277 Impact on LGBTQ+ Community at Lehigh University MF: I just want to say, listening to you talk about it, you were compelled at Lehigh, to be an out student, it felt like a calling to you. And I just wrote a brief history of LGBTQIA-plus activism on campus and I went through the Brown and White and I went through the yearbooks. &#13 ; &#13 ; To my mind from what I’ve been able to find, Rick Balmer, James Hopkinson were involved with that early Le-Hi-Ho, but what I’ve been able to find, you were the first out person on campus that was advocating for a public group, not a support group, public group for gay students at that time, at Lehigh. 0 6611 Closing Remarks TD: I think that’s great. I’m thrilled. Really, the world is changing, and I tell students, “You’ve got to hang on to what it is and build on it because it could slip away. It could slip away and don’t let that happen.” What I say about Lehigh, even though it wasn’t a real recognized group, “Never give up the franchise,” but I did give up the franchise. But if I could have, I would have, even if there was one member, just to keep it alive. Maybe there’s no need -- there is still an ACT UP, but there’s a lot of organizations that I’ve been a part of, Queers for Economic Justice is one. 0 MovingImage Thomas Duane recounts the early years of his life, his relationship with sexuality and time at Lehigh University, as well as his early interactions with activism and politics. MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz, and I'm here with Senator Thomas K. Duane to talk about his life and experiences in the Lehigh Valley and beyond -- including New York, importantly -- as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This year our project has funding from ACLS, and we are meeting today at the Senator's office in Manhattan on February 17th, 2022. So, thank you so much for your willingness to speak to me today. THOMAS DUANE: It's a pleasure, and I'm glad that -- I think I'm the more difficult person to tie down, but I'm glad we were all able to get tied down together. I'm very happy to be here and talk. MF: Me, too. Thank you so much. And just a few -- TD: Talk about me. Me, me, me, me. MF: That's what we're here to do. TD: Who doesn't want to talk about...? MF: To start, would it be possible for you just to state your full name? TD: Sure. Thomas K. Duane, D-U-A-N-E. The K stands for Keen. And I was born January 30th, 1955. My mother was born January 31st, 1925. And when she had me the woman in the next bed said, "Couldn't you have waited another day?" And she said, "Oh, no. I couldn't." But anyway, so I'm very much like my mother in many ways. So, I am 67 which I cannot believe. That I'm even alive is completely miraculous but I love Ariana Grande, and Taylor Swift. I don't act my -- in my head, I'm younger. But I'm on Medicare, I'm firmly ensconced in Medicare at the age of 67 now, which I am very much in favor of. Which, when I saw some people who supported a former president, they said, "What do you think about the government running Medicare?" And they said, "That's terrible. The government will mess up Medicare. That's an awful idea." Here I thought to myself, "Why don't they teach civics in school anymore?" Okay. MF: I want to hear more about that. But first, I just want to go back over consent. Before we started the interview, you signed a consent form. TD: Yes, absolutely. MF: I just want to confirm, do you consent to this interview today? TD: Yes. MF: Do you consent to having this interview transcribed and digitized, made publicly available online? TD: Yes. MF: And do you consent to our LGBTQ Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats such as articles, websites, publications, et cetera? TD: Yes. I was going to make a joke, but I'll just say yes, absolutely. It would be my pleasure. MF: And I do want to remind you that after we transcribe the interview, you'll have 30 days after I deliver it to you electronically to review it. And you can identify things you want to delete, or you could withdraw the whole interview from the project, if you wanted to. TD: Let's hope we don't go down that road. [laughs] MF: We won't put it online until we get your final approval. TD: If I don't say a name and then I think, "Oh, I'm just going to go and use the name," maybe you could flash that name up? [laughter] Okay. MF: Well, I think we're ready to start. Since oral history is a life arc, I'm going to ask you if you'd be willing to tell me a little bit about the early years of your life. TD: I was actually born in a hospital in Chelsea, a French hospital. It's now affordable housing, so I'm happy about that. But it was a hospital, and it had the maternity wing. I only say that because when I ran for office, I could truthfully say I was born in Chelsea. But my parents at the time lived in Queens, in an apartment that my aunt had formerly lived in. But I was the cause of them moving to Flushing. I was raised a Roman Catholic. And for various reasons, I've had to say that I may not be the poster boy for Roman Catholicism, but I'm infused with it, let's say. Actually, one of the classes that I teach, I talk about whether religion belongs in politics and government and public policy. And everyone says, "No, no, no," I said, "So, no giving money to churches that have pantries? No programs run by religious institutions for formerly incarcerated people?" So, it's a very complicated issue. Anyway, and so I think my Roman Catholicism did, and continues to inform my worldview because I moved from masses being said in Latin. I have two older brothers, I had one younger brother who has passed away, who's also gay. He died of a brain tumor in his mid-thirties. So, we were four boys. My two older brothers were kind of perfect. Great grades, lots of friends, very good at athletics. And then, there was me. Maybe this is telling about my personality, my brother who's an Irish twin, he's a year-and-a-half older than I am, when he was moving from first to second grade, I was really only eligible to go to kindergarten, but I was born in January of 1955 and I did go to kindergarten in a public school -- Catholic schools didn't have kindergarten -- for a few days. But I demanded to go to first grade and somehow, I don't know how I convinced my parents to do this, but my local parish, which is St. Andrews, did not have any room, so I went to a neighboring parish called St. Michael's to their first grade. And it was incredibly traumatic. It was -- the nuns there -- I was in the first grade. I remember the uniforms we wore. But every day, there were children crying, and children being hit, and having their hands hit. It was just a nightmare. And fortunately, my local school had an opening so I went to St. Andrews. I don't know whether you can tell, I got all tense talking about that, like I remember that so clearly how sad it is for the kids that were stuck there. But I got out and I went to St. Andrew's where, not that no one ever got hit, but I think my parents made it clear that none of us were ever to be struck or anything. The classes were huge. There were 53 children in my class and there were three first grade classes. And I think it was ranked in smart, medium, not so, which is horrendous. But fortunately, I was at least in the smart class. Both my brothers were really high achievers, and I was above average, but I was not a rockstar. And I'm an ADHD, which will become clear as this interview goes on. [laughs] Of course, I didn't know that. I actually did know until I was in my forties, but it explained an awful lot about my life. I'll tell one story of something that happened. It was maybe the fifth grade, I believe. And we were supposed to do an art project over weekend of making a clown face and we were supposed to -- and I missed the instructions, I think -- it was supposed to be tiny little pieces of construction paper glued down so it was made a mosaic clown face. But mine, I tore big pieces of paper. And I do love contemporary and modern art, so maybe I was a little bit ahead of the rest of my class. That's what my clown was made of, big, torn pieces of construction paper. But I was called in front of the class, shown to everybody this is wrong and terrible. And then, this particular nun said in a voice that kids who went to Catholic school will recognize, in a very loud whisper, allegedly only so I would hear it, but such that the entire class heard it, she said, "You come from such a nice family, and none of us know what's wrong with you." And that has stuck with me. It's one of the things I have in my head. I had it in my head, even though I loved doing art and drawing and crayons and paint, after that, I didn't, until I was in a therapy group and the co-director was an art therapist. I guess I recounted this story and she said, "There's no such thing as doing art wrong." I was in my forties or my fifties. And so, then, I went to see her a few times, not because -- I mean, I love art therapy, but I was already in therapy, I had plenty of therapy my whole life -- but if I could sit there and make art while I talked with her, so I could speak with her. And so, it was, "Oh, no such thing as making art wrong." And of course, I kind of knew that because I love museums. And in fact, at Lehigh, they had a borrowing program where you could borrow paintings from the library, I guess? I don't know, I guess they were from the library, and you could hang them up in your dorm room. And I did. It was a Degas, I believe I had, in my freshman year. I guess I was a little non-binary as it came to my approach to art. Anyway. Of course, I also tried out to be an altar boy and you had to memorize everything in Latin and I failed the first time. I didn't make the cut. So, it took two tries for me to pass the altar boy test. Which is true of a lot of things. It takes me a while to get things, but once I get it, I've really got it, because I think I learn a little bit differently. Of course, it was kind of a disgrace that I didn't make it right away. And then they got rid of Latin anyway, so seriously. I'm not going to go through the whole thing of what altar boys would say in Latin. I could, but I'm not going to. But the place I'm going to is, just packed with children in Flushing, Catholic, Catholic, Catholic. Actually, the closest Catholic high school where I lived is a school called Holy Cross, where I ended up going. But I actually didn't want to go there. I wanted to go to Fordham Preparatory School, which was in the Bronx, which was a subway and two busses away, and my parents, they did not want me to go. It was a good school, and so, I got in, but they wouldn't let me go there. My home life, my family looked really good on the outside. We were one of our parish's first families, in a way. We were really well put-together when we went to mass on Sundays and other things. I mean, except for me. I probably wasn't in lockstep with everyone else. But anyway, my home life internally was not particularly happy. My parents had a very difficult marriage, and this is one of those things in therapy where I now have to get over talking about some of the things in my childhood is not telling secrets or telling on my family. So, they liked to drink, my parents. And they caused problems in our household. And my parents were also very controlling and I was very hard to control. I actually tried to run away when I was little, on more than one occasion. I actually did run away from home, if that's what it's called when I only stayed away for a few weeks, when I was maybe a junior in high school, I think. And I did finally come home, and I made amends to my parents because I realized how horrible it must have been for them, no matter what was going on at home, awful it must have been for them to not know where I was and what was happening to me. So, as an adult, I realized that. But my home life was not that happy. And the other thing is, my father was a coach of all things athletic. And the Catholic church was so virulently in the lives of families and children who went to Catholic school, that we had our own sports league, the Catholic Youth Organization leagues, and my father coached baseball and we all played -- my brothers and I -- every Saturday, sometimes Sundays, we'd play in season, baseball, basketball, football. It was like another day of school for me. I mean, sports, it's one of those things it took me a while to get good at it. I never really got really good at it, but I got okay at all of them. It just took me awhile, like with everything else to get good at it. But it was difficult. There wasn't much freedom and being in organized sports leagues. And I actually was not bad at all, but when my father was around, for some reason, I kind of know in retrospect what the reason was, but I would be really terrible at sports when he was there. It had to do with some shame stuff that was happening with me, which I'm sure was compounded by my, though I didn't know it, being gay and different than everyone else. So, I was pretty good when he wasn't around, when he was around, I was terrible. But it was sort of valuable that I learned how not to be afraid of the ball as a boy, and not to throw like a girl, and all these things. And I also learned to make sure that I walked in a way that was like the way the other boys walked, as well. And in elementary school, and in high school, it took me a couple of years, always, to get comfortable and to make friends. I really had to get the lay of the land first, before I could step out and be myself. I was just going to say, "shine," so I'll say shine. Did I shine? I don't know whether I shined. There were eight or nine classes of each class, so there'd be eight or nine freshman sophomore classes, and there was an honors class which both of my brothers had been in. And yes, you guessed it, I was not in the honors class. I was in the second honors class, such a disgrace. But I manipulated my way around that one, too, because I decided to take Latin for four years. And so, that separated me from my class in some ways. And so, I took some classes with the boys in the honors class. I'm pretty good at -- I should say, how do you think I got elected? That's how I got elected, doing things like that. But I actually strongly believe that my grades improved when I was with the more higher achieving, more expected to be high-achieving students. And so, I strongly believe that it's important that there be a diversity of students in every way, including how quickly they pick things up. The thing is, Catholic school, now that I think about probably impacted my experience at Lehigh and how I learn is that for instance, the clown story, remaking the art, if the nun -- I'm pretty sure her name was Sister Mary-Margaret, God rest her soul, or Sister Margaret-Mary. I can't remember which. But anyway, she may have given the instructions of the tearing of little paper, but I may not have gotten it. And I didn't know that you could ask to have an assignment, or directions repeated. But even if I did, in Catholic school, you couldn't ask anyway. But often, I would come into class having had done the wrong pages in the math book because I didn't always catch the assignment. I broke my leg in the fourth grade -- I'm telling too much about my life story, you'll never get out of here. This interview is going to go on forever. Anyway, I broke my leg in the fourth grade, and I had a near public elementary school teacher come to my house every day for an hour, and when I went back to school, I had finished all the books of that grade within that one fall month. It was probably October, maybe September or something, because I broke my leg at the end of the summer, early fall. So, I was already done with everything. So, the fourth grade was a breeze because I'd already done everything. But because I was with -- that's the other thing I strongly believe, because everyone learns differently, and lots of students, including myself, it would have been helpful if I always knew that I could count on being able to sit with someone one-on-one, just for a little bit of time to catch onto things. And I'm not sure, I try to make sure that to do that because I do some teaching. And I always say, "There is no stupid question. The only stupid question is the one you don't ask. But really, you can ask anything and I'll repeat anything. It's fine. It's fine." And I really do feel that way. Anyway. And it can be done without holding back the class, but I digress. So, I went to an all-gay high school -- no, it was an all-boys high school. Actually, my freshman year, there was a student, Richard Sullivan, who I think he was more sophisticated and more worldly than I was. I think he had a girlfriend, like a real girlfriend, in his freshman year. But he knew there was something different about me, and I knew there was something different about me. I don't think I was really fully aware that it was that I was gay. But anyway, he caught on to it and he started to pick at me a little bit. And this was something I had learned at a much younger age, I challenged him to a fight. And so, out we went one day after school to the Carvel, right by Utopia Parkway, only Queens would have Utopia Parkway, and we had a fistfight. And I feel like, I don't know whether it was the whole school there, but there was a big crowd watching this fight. And we fought and fought and punched and wrestled and whatever until we were just too tired to do it anymore. And he had a bloody lip, and I had a black eye, and that was it. We became sort of friendly after that. But nobody ever picked on me either, because -- and I know this is wrong and I would never advise this to children, I would never say -- sometimes it's just better to have the fight, even if you're going to lose because nobody wants to fight. So, if you fight with one person even if you lose, no one else wants to fight with you because no one really wants to fight. That's not true in every case, and I know there are better ways to diffuse problems. But anyway, that's what worked for me. And it worked for me when I was in elementary school, too. But one of the things -- and this is from when I was very young in elementary school because I was a big kid and I learned how to stand up and fight for myself in the play streets or wherever it was, but I was a little kid. I felt terrible for the children. It wasn't necessarily that they were gay, but overweight, or, I don't know, didn't dress -- when they got made fun of or pushed around, I was a little kid, I was kind of helpless to do anything about it and it just really stuck with me about how horrible and unfair it was for them. So, I would try to be friendly, but I couldn't really protect them. Or, I didn't know how to, I guess. But I felt some kinship with them. But I was able to pass and hang out with the normal boys. Four years of high school. When I was a freshman -- okay, we're going into an R-rated territory, here. Maybe it's only [PG]. There was a football player who, to this day, I can remember that I had a crush on him, and I think he had a crush on me because one time we were alone in the locker room after having showered, and he started chasing me around the locker room with a towel and fooling around. He was running after me and I think, oh, I should have let him catch me. What was I thinking? But from then on, at a school dance, he would bring his childhood sweetheart -- he actually married her and they had many children and he worked with the New York City Uniformed Services. My older brother John was an assembly member from the part of Queens we grew up in and I know where this person lives. I always hoped that my brother would send me door knocking on his block so I could knock on his door. [laughs] But when I would see him at the school dances, he would introduce me to his girlfriend who has become his wife, and I'm not going to say her name, but let's just say her name was Mary. It wasn't Mary. "This is my girlfriend, Mary, it's nice to see you." But he would turn beet-red. And I think he continued to a combination of both like me and was has a little embarrassed that he had maybe shown his cards, if you will, that we liked each other. The things I remember from high school. He was very popular, too, in the school. Very popular. Academically, he did well, but he also was a good football player. So, I was playing sports on Saturdays all the time still through high school, but I also joined a lot of different clubs and organizations in the school because I didn't really want to go home that much. And as I say, I also picked up swimming. So, in the CYO, Catholic Youth Organization, I was on the swimming team and my best thing was distance swimming. I loved it. I loved the water. But when I think about it, sometimes I say I was really great and everything my parents didn't like, so I was best at the sport that my father was not that involved with. I'm always a little rebellious, that Tom Duane. I'm sure there's more to say about high school. I remember one of the reasons I came home from having had left home when I was an adolescent was that I was like, "If I can just make it to going away to college, then I'll get out of here, and so I better go back so I can leave." And I applied to a bunch of different schools. Some, I think, were reaches. One, I applied to Dartmouth. I didn't go up to the school to have an interview but I was interviewed by the alumni in an office building in Midtown Manhattan and I got on the elevator to go to the interview and the elevator started to go, and it dropped 30 floors right before the interview. So, I went into the interview in not really peak condition, but I didn't say anything about the elevator. I probably should have. But they said to me, "Well, if you got into Dartmouth, would you go?" And I'm like, "I'm not sure." Well, I wasn't sure because the goddamn elevator -- it had nothing to do with Dartmouth. [laughs] It was a near-death experience. Anyway, But Lehigh was on the list, and Colgate, and Oberlin, and Middlebury, although I also really kind of wanted to go to Hunter, but it was more important that I should leave home. And so, I got into these schools, but I decided to go to Lehigh. And I don't know I decided to go there because I knew what it was like. Oh, the thing I was going to say, I was fortunate enough to live from Latin mass, and then folk masses, and revolutionary theology, the missionaries that would be in Latin America that were politically organizing, as well, and they really -- so, now there was something in my Catholicism that I really could hold on to. And I guess I didn't really have a political point of view. My father was Republican. He was an Independent who voted Republican, and my mother was -- Kennedy was a saint on that side of the family, and the Kennedys, they also for a long time -- many of them still do it for me. I admire them. Every family has terrible stuff, I guess. I guess even then, I was interested in political -- where was I going with this? I just got sidetracked. Oh, liberation theology. The thing that changed me dramatically, and I wish I could say it was a raid on the Black Panther Party or something, but what it was, was the shooting of the students at Kent State had a huge impact on me. I thought, "Oh my gosh, soldiers will shoot students?" My whole worldview changed. And that was, I think, the biggest thing. I also loved Bobby Kennedy. I said I was born in 1955. I would listen to a transistor radio under my pillow, and not just pop music, which to this day, I like, still. I like other kinds of music, too. Look at me defensively saying that. I like pop music, what can I say? I still like pop music. I sometimes still listen to American Top 40. I want to keep up and I like that music. Anyway, but I was huge for Bobby Kennedy Jr., and I was listening under my pillow with the transistor radio when he won the California primary, and I was listening when he got shot, and all alone in my room -- well, I shared a room with one of my brothers -- but with the transistor radio, and again, that had a huge impact on me. And then, Martin Luther King's assassination, Bobby Kennedy, and JFK was huge. When he was assassinated... My grandmother, my mother's mother, who was the adult in my life who saved me, but for her I don't know what would have happened, but she was the one with completely, totally, unconditional love. And I would say I could do no wrong with her but that's not accurate. I did do things wrong. But the way she corrected me was to say, "Well, maybe this would be a better way to do it." She was so gentle with it. And my mother's mother lived pretty close to us. There'd be lots of times when my grandmother would say to my mother, "Why don't I take Tom to my house for a few days?" And that was like, I was on my way to heaven then. It was really great. They say one adult -- I really believe this -- can make all the difference in a kid's life. She was the one. Anyway, she passed away right after JFK died, of cancer. She had breast cancer, but we were told it was throat cancer, just because that's how it was done. I didn't realize for years and years later, no, she didn't have throat cancer, she had breast cancer. And it was terrible. I remember, it was awful. Because the way they treated breast cancer then was just horrendously -- just awful. Of course, because it was women -- I now know if it had been a man, they never would have treated someone the way they treated women who had breast cancer. It was just awful. Anyway. So, I knew that if I started to smoke cigarettes, I would be smoking cigarettes. If I started to drink, I would drink. If I started to smoke pot, I would smoke pot. And if I started to have sex, I would have sex. And 17, that's when the dam broke. And I don't think this is the reason I went to Lehigh, but Lehigh was not known as a druggie school. It wasn't. It was not, not a druggie school, let's just say that. But it was more well-known for its consumption of alcohol. It was a big frat school. And I guess, honestly, I think I was trying to please my father by going there. As one therapist said to me, "You should stop worshipping at the altar of your father." And so, I guess I was worshipping at his altar. So, off I went to Lehigh. I requested to live in a dorm that was mixed classes and that was co-ed. That meant that the girls, the second year that women were admitted to Lehigh. So, there were maybe 300 women and 3,000 men on campus. But I lived in a dorm where some of the women lived. There were other dorms that were women only. But anyway, they lived in one half. M&amp ; M was the name of the dorm. And the men were on the other side. It was mixed classes. I kind of thought, "No one here is going to smoke pot or anything." The first day, literally, as I was going into my first dorm room, I was walking by a door two doors away from mine and walked by someone who you just knew he was a football player and he said to me, "You want to come in and smoke a joint with me?" I wasn't even there an hour. So, first of all, he was someone I should be terrified of, right? But of course, I was down to smoke a joint. It was unbelievable. I was like, "I didn't think there was any marijuana in all of Lehigh." That's not true. In fact, one time later on, I was sitting in the room and there was an article in the Brown and White that said, "There are no drugs in the Engineering School," and I was sitting in the room, and everybody was an engineering student except for me and they were all smoking pot. So, that stereotype didn't really work. It was not that true. I was from the get-go a problem drinker, although you couldn't tell. I had, I guess what you would call a wooden leg, and just much later on in my life I did go into recovery which I've been in now for almost 40 years, 30 something years. It saved my life. But I was just getting started then. And generally, in college, I did well. Some things I did really well in and some things not so much. And as I now know, it's that ADHD thing, if I was interested, I did great. If I wasn't interested, I got by. And I was an American Studies and an Urban Studies major. I had a double major. I don't know how, but I didn't have to take statistics. I don't know how I made it that I didn't have to take statistics as an Urban Studies major, but I did not. I would love to take statistics now as an adult, but I think I knew it wasn't going to be a match made in heaven then. But anyway, I didn't have to take it. And my oldest brother, Jimmy, my father is Jim, my brother is Jimmy, and he has a son named James who went to Lehigh, was a Griffin, which people at Lehigh know the Griffins are residence halls counselors, I was a Griffin, which was so much easier. I was a Griffin. And I made it. I got in. Now, my brother was head of the Griffins but I don't think he got involved in my -- of course, I had the same last name but I mean, I think, as I said, drugs were -- you could be thrown out for smoking a joint, I think. But as I say, I was pretty good at -- I mean, look at me. Do I look like someone who would smoke a lot of pot and drink too much and maybe experiment with -- no, I have an angelic face. So, maybe that got me. Anyway, I was chosen to be a Griffin and I chose the floor, it was the dorm at the very top of the hill. This is something that I hope someone will flash the name of this dorm, it was the dorm at the very highest, it was above Richards, and not near M&amp ; M, it was as you're facing the mountain to the left. I have great calves as a result. I had pretty good calves to begin with, but they really got great there. Anyway, there were two smaller floors. And so, my brother suggested that, if I was going to get that floor, that I ask that this other guy, Bruce, be a Griffin on the floor above me. He was a year older than I was. And I actually loved being a resident hall counselor, a Griffin. And at the time, freshman had to write themes. All their freshman year, every semester, they had to take an English class where they had to write a theme every week, I want to say. It didn't matter what school they were in. And they would come to me to help with their grammar and their spelling, because I took Latin, I was pretty good at that stuff then. Maybe I'm still okay at it. But I was pretty good. And so, I helped them with their writing. I think back on that, because I wanted to be a teacher, which I didn't become for a very long time, but maybe that started to show then. And they really liked me and trusted me. This is going to make me start crying, because I didn't know whether they were going to, because I'm different. And something that I know now that I'm kind of proud of is that kids and adolescents and young people and animals feel safe around me. And I could have not been that way at all, but it is that way. And I think they felt really safe around me. And in fact, a couple of them wanted to experiment with pot, and they asked if they could smoke pot with me because they felt safe doing that, which was another -- I mean, if Dean Quay is -- oh, he doesn't care anymore. But in a way, it's a huge compliment that they wanted to smoke pot, but they wanted to do it safely, and they asked if they could smoke pot with me. So, I helped them with their themes. I don't know. And I also participated in a dance marathon, which I came in third or fourth place. But I lasted the whole time. I came back, and they were the most amazing cheering support group ever for me in that. So, that was all wonderful. But at the age of 17, I came out sexually and politically, started to. Politically slowly, sexually pretty, in a way, slowly, also. But I'm actually a little bit bisexual, and I actually was out at one time as a bisexual in the Columbia Spectator, which is the Columbia University newspaper because I went to a pro-bi rally and so, they said, "Openly bisexual councilmember." And I think bisexuals have it really hard. So, I always identified gay, but I don't have a perfect Kinsey score. And I knew I would end up with a man, but I have to be -- anyway. So, I was sleeping with men and women then. But I'm going to go back to freshman year because there was something huge happening. So, also on my floor there was someone who had transferred in as a junior from another school. And he lived in the Valley, but he stayed in the dorm. And he'd been to another college, and he had had a girlfriend there. But we hung out together. There was a little group of us, freshmen, and people of all classes, we hung out together. And at some point, I realized that I was falling in love with him, and as far as I knew, he was straight. And I remember walking on campus with him the first semester and I said -- I don't know what to call him, let's say his name is Larry. That wasn't his name. I don't know how I got the courage to do this but maybe this is just how I am. I said, "You know, Larry, I think I've started to develop some feelings for you." I knew it was risky. And then he said to me, "Oh, well, I'm starting to have feelings for you, too." And we went on to have an affair. So, it was my first relationship. And I was really in love with him. I was, unfortunately, incapable of sustaining a relationship. That was on me. But he really loved me. And I really loved him. I just, for reasons that had to do with why I've been in therapy since the age of 21, was just unable to sustain the relationship. And we had to hide it. So, if my roommate was not there, then we would, you know, and if his roommate was not there, if someone went home for the weekend, one of our roommates, who knows whether we were -- actually, one time, I thought I saw -- I did see his roommate when I was campaigning for the city council, and walking along right by Manhattan Plaza, which is where a lot of people in the Performing Arts live. I don't think he lived there, and I'm forgetting his name right now, which is just as well. And he was walking down the block and I said "will you sign the petition" and I realized I know this guy and I think he might have been gay, but it didn't occur to me then. My gaydar is pretty good. My lesbian-dar is pretty good. My bi-dar is all pretty good. Not the best in the world, but I can compete. But I just never gave it any thought. We were so afraid. And he was kind of shy. Anyway, it's just how ironic. And who knows, maybe he did -- he probably did -- I'm sure people knew. Dorm room doors were not that thick anyway. So, I fell in love. But I never went home during the summer. I took courses at Lehigh. I didn't want to go home. And my goal was to try to graduate in three years, which I almost made it, but not quite. And I guess it must have been the summer after my sophomore year, but it was during -- let's see, I got there in '72-'73, so '74-'75 was when I met Phil, and Bruce, and Craig. So, the other Griffin who was upstairs and had a small floor, but we treated him like we were just one happy family, was gay, and I helped him come out. I actually do recruit. I do. Or at least I invite. So, he actually is gay, and actually, there was girl at Lehigh that I said something about, that maybe it was too much for people, and I remember her saying, "No, I don't think so." And of course, later on, after I left school and I had kept in touch with her, and she came out as a lesbian, so maybe I -- I was able to be out. I always think about this. Not everybody was able to be out, and I was able to be out there. It was a gift. I'm never critical of people's struggles about coming out, but for me, it was almost like I had no choice. Anyway, after my sophomore year, our relationship didn't last past that first summer, unfortunately. And again, it was on me. Have I said that enough, that it was my fault that we didn't last? But it was that summer that I started to become gay, politically, way more than I had been. And I did a lot of things. There was a gay bar in Allentown, go figure, which I went to when I was in what turned out to be in my final year at Lehigh. I went there with Craig, and Bruce, and Phil, and maybe Cindy, who was the only woman in our group. We were lucky to have any women since there was so women there in our little queer group. So, I guess I need to separate a few things, even though they were happening at the same time. So, I started to go to Gay Activist Alliance meetings in New York City. I would take the bus into the city. I both went for the politics and to meet boys, truth be told. There's nothing wrong with combining that. I think that's one of the reasons ACT UP was so very successful. And I met these two, Rick and Ron, I think, and they were librarians and they had an organization they founded called Le-Hi-Ho, which is both a great name and an unfortunate name, all at the same time. But because they were librarians, they had every gay book imaginable, and they had lots of contemporary political books that had been written by gay activists. And I read them voraciously. Actually, these books were actually the -- I'd like to think of myself as a feminist, I like to think of myself as someone who's tried to both fight against racism, though I know I made mistakes, but my intentions I think have been good. I started to read. I read every feminist book I could get my hands on. One of them was Jill Johnson who is very funny, and she had a column in the Village Voice, and she wrote, she never capitalized any letters, and I don't know, she was not that great with sentences, but she was so funny, both her column and the books that she wrote. And many years later, I met her at a literary agent's house because she was Jill Johnson's agent and I was in the city council at the time. And she was with her partner, who was from Denmark, and I was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I'm meeting you," because I get kind of gushy with people. I was like, "I love you," whatever. And she said, "And the most important thing to me is that we can get married," and I was like, "Oh my God, Jill Johnson wants to get married?" She was totally opposed, are you kidding? I was shocked. But of course, it was so they could be together. But I was like, "I can't believe this, I thought we were post-marriage." But anyway, it was still a thrill to meet her. And she just stands out. I read Kate Millett books, and I want to say Audre Lorde, yes, I did, but there was a white woman, I can't remember her name. And I listened to records that were produced by Redwood Records, which was a lesbian record label. I hope I'm ascending towards becoming a lesbian, that I haven't peaked and I'm on my way down now, because I'm a girl boy, I call myself. You know some women are more comfortable around men, and some men are more comfortable around men, I am a man who is most comfortable when there's lots of women around. In fact, my first job in New York City was working for six creative people at an ad agency, six women. It was all women copywriters and art directors, and I was their administrative assistant and I loved that. Of course, they loved it, too. I don't think I caused that to happen, but it was a happy coincidence. I read the autobiography of Malcolm X, that just really stands out. Manchild in the Promised Land, many other books having to do with Black liberation. I was aware of the Young Lords, which was a Puerto Rican, it was like the Black Panthers, but they were for people who were Puerto Rican in New York. So, all of this liberation literature, I just devoured it. And then, who knew there was a whole treasure trove of gay stuff, too. And so, because of Rick and Ron, I got to read a ton of those books, too. And it all informed my point of view in the world. Very important to me, all those books. Anyway, so that was happening the summer before -- this will be my third year at Lehigh. Oh, I told my parents I was gay -- oh, I can't remember now, was it freshman or sophomore year? I will remember this but can't remember now. I think it was after my sophomore year. And they were very upset about it. And actually, my younger brother also said he was gay, but I was the older, I was probably the bad influence on him or something. The brother a year older than me at one time thought he wanted to be a Maryknoll missionary. So, the Maryknoll priest used to send someone to visit our house on a pretty regular basis, and as my mother tells the story and this is true, it became very clear that my brother John did not want to be a Maryknoll missionary, that I wanted to be a missionary. I have met priests from that order who are gay, but they're not very gay positive. There are other Catholic priest orders who are more positive. I digress. But it maybe just tells you something about my character -- not character, but where my interests -- because again, it was liberation theology. [Inaudible] So, I told my parents that I was gay and they said, "Well, if you continue to be gay then we're not going to pay for you to go back to school," and I said, "Okay." And I went out and I got a cab driver's license and I rented an apartment in Jackson Heights, and all of a sudden, they realized that I really wasn't going to go back. So, then they went, "Well, wait a second, okay, we'll pay for you to go back. [laughs] But under three conditions." And the three conditions were, I had to speak with the chaplain at Lehigh, I had to go see a psychiatrist, and there was a professor at Lehigh who was sort of a liaison to students who thought they might be gay. And so, I agreed to that. I went to psychiatrist and he was like, "There's nothing wrong with you." I mean, there was, but gay was not the thing. And then, the chaplain at Lehigh... MF: [Duke Lusher?], I think it was. TD: Yes. Not a big deal to him, either, so I passed that test. And then, I went to see the professor who was the liaison to the gay students and I seduced him. I wasn't really interested in having -- it was just a one-night stand or a two-night stand, but it wasn't a match that was going to be made in heaven. Again, that's something else that all of us would have been thrown out of the school for. But anyway, I'm not sure, maybe he had sex once when he was much younger until I came along. But a few months after that, he met another professor from another school, and as far as I knew, they lived happily ever after since then so you're welcome, Professor. So, I passed that test, too, a little bit too much. I got an A-plus there. [laughs)] But in my senior year, I was out, out, at Lehigh. And I cannot say it was particularly well received at any level, administration, faculty, or students. And ironically, there were two associate deans of student affairs both of whom were gay. One was African American, one was white, and they were both gay. In the closet, but gay. And I'm not saying that they couldn't have, they would have lost their jobs. And I'm pretty sure that my freshman English teacher was a lesbian. I am absolutely sure that she was a lesbian, actually. So, no one go back and look at my transcripts to see who all these people are who was in the administration. Or maybe they don't care, but I don't want to out them. And I know that this woman, she was, of course, a woman not tenured. She taught writing and English. Her favorite book was Moby Dick. She loved Moby Dick. I think I took another English course with her besides the course where we had to write themes. But I lived off campus with Bruce and Craig and Phil and a couple of other people, women, who were friends of ours. I'm jumping ahead, but we used to have great parties with disco music, and everybody wanted to come party. The same people who might have wanted to beat us up under other circumstances wanted to come to the party and they would be doing the Bump with whoever would bump with them. And she came to a couple of those parties. I made sure to invite her and she came. She was a very serious woman, but she still came to the disco parties that we had. But the reason Craig and Bruce and Phil and I lived together was -- I don't know why I didn't continue as a Griffin, because I did love it. I left, probably, while people still liked me. So, it's best to leave when people are sorry to see you go than pushing me out the door. So, I lived off campus with them because Bruce and Craig were thrown out of their fraternity, Theta Chi, which was half ROTC and half hippies. It was a very non-binary fraternity. But they threw them out. And Phil was being a fraternity brother where you don't live there but you socialize there, so you go to parties and you take your meals there, you just don't live there. And he was banned, also, from that fraternity. And we hung out with each other openly but it was the first time that I experienced a bias crime, I guess you could say. I was never physically assaulted. As I recall, I think Phil might have been, or he was threatened one time, pretty much. We got threatening phone calls. I wrote letters to the Brown and White, "How dare you presume that everyone is heterosexual," these lines that I picked up from all these political books that I had read. And I asked to create, I think it was Lehigh Homophile. Homophile, what kind of word is that? I guess it was just a word that I just -- actually, Le-Hi-Ho, which was Ron and Rick's group, it's both a great name and kind of a funny name, homophile is just not a great name at all. What are we, in Greece? They wouldn't even say it there. I don't even know where it came from. Anyway, the name was not the reason they turned it down. The mission was the reason they turned it down. There was one lesbian member, Cindy, and another person who's gay, but at the time he was saying he was bisexual. Meanwhile, I was a little bi boy who was saying he was gay. But really, I am gay. I'm gay with just little bi overlays. We wouldn't get to have an organization. We weren't allowed to. And I can't even remember all the ways, but there were lots of ways that I tried to make the point that I was gay, like bringing it up in class when it wasn't really -- oh, and one time, Margaret Mead came to Lehigh and spoke in that hall where the wrestling takes place, that wooden -- it's a beautiful old building. It was the athletics center and they had wrestling in it. I think, in retrospect, why wasn't I going to wrestling matches? I mean, that would be like soft porn for me. But I rarely went to them. Lehigh was known as a great wrestling school. Who knew? Who knew? It's a good thing I didn't know. [laughs] Where was I going with that? Oh, Margaret Mead came. So, she was speaking and it was packed. And it must have been around an alumni weekend, or lots of parents there also. And then, she was taking questions from the audience, and of course, I threw my hand up, and I said something like, "What do you think about the way gay communities are growing around the country?" And something, whatever it was, she had gay in it, right? And she was a little flustered by this question and there was [gasps] from the audience. But me, I just put it right out there. And of course, in retrospect, she was a lesbian and she came out. You're welcome, Margaret. You're welcome. [laughs] MF: So, this is Mary Foltz, and I'm back with Senator Duane and he was just telling us a little bit about trying to organize a group for gay students at Lehigh, Dean Quay shot that down, that group didn't come to be supported by the university and sharing some stories about his friends at Lehigh, and I'm going to turn that back over to you. Are there other Lehigh memories that have come to mind? TD: Lehigh, the community of women was very small, still, compared to men, and for parties, women had to be imported. It's a terrible way to say it, but basically, there just weren't enough women to go to the fraternity parties, that sort of thing. But Phil in particular and I, not so much Craig and Bruce, they were African American and so there's a whole other layer of, I want to say discrimination is not really quite the -- it is appropriate but there's probably a more appropriate word to use, which maybe I will later. But Phil and I, we did things that were gayer. We did more stereotypical gay things to make the point than we were, just to make the point that we were gay. And we had a lot of fun doing that. [laughs] There was a certain kind of jeans that gay guys wore that had this yellow stitching. I got my hair cut in New York with this feather cut. There were also these cork shoes, they were sandals with a heel, but they were made out of cork with straps. We would wear those, or we'd take turns. Someone had a pair ; I think maybe Craig did. Anyway, we would wear gay clothes. I know that sounds weird, what's gay clothes? But I don't know. As I say, whenever I had the chance, I brought up something gay, especially in that last year when I was at Lehigh. And when I was a freshman, there was some other freshmen that I was kind of friends with and I think they wanted to be friends with me. I hadn't sought them out, but I knew that they wanted to be my friend. But what happened by being open about being gay is that there were some students who would continue to hang out with me or with us but then there were other students who would not. And the ones that would continue to hang out were both gay and not gay, and the ones who -- it's funny, I don't know what's happening, because now my face, I feel like it's having a shame attack, for some reason. I didn't say anything shameful, so thanks, Dad. But I can just feel all of a sudden it goes like this and my face turns red. You know what I think? I think it was I had a shame attack about dressing up and acting gay, which is just such a historic thing. So, it's hard to be gayer than I am, but I still have stuff around it. Anyway, where was I going with that? And so, there were students who would not be seen with us because they were gay and they thought by being near us they were -- and there were straight people that thought that people might think they were gay if they hung out with us. But then, there were gay people who may not have been out, but they hung out with us, came to our parties, or whatever. And heterosexuals, too. Maybe there were lots of questioning people, too, I don't know. But that is something I've noticed in my entire life, like when I was first elected to city council and I put together -- I'm always making groups. I tried making a group of city council employees who were gay and we didn't get many people to come. And I remember saying to them, "Has it been your experience that you sometimes don't want to be seen with me because people will think you're gay?" And they were like, "Yes, it's crossed our minds." And this is in 1992 in New York City working, and I'd been openly gay since, what, '74, whatever it is. Anyway, maybe schools that have gay-straight alliances maybe have helped with that, but I'm pretty sure it continues to happen. And I've also been thinking, even when I talk about any opportunity to bring up gay -- and I say "gay" because that's what we said then. When I move into the future, I say -- I actually prefer to say, "queer," which when I learned to say queer, I was so good with that because it's so inclusive. But because of gay-straight alliances, and I would have younger staff members at the newspaper and they're like, "That's an awful thing." So, then it was back to LGBTQIA-plus, which I always thought meant HIV-positive for years, but it doesn't, it just means et cetera, et cetera. So, sometimes I say LGBTQIA-plus-plus, because I'm living for a very, very long time with HIV, probably since 1982. Anyway, but I say gay, which I would never say now, contemporarily, but then, yes. We were sexist and I'm sorry about that. But that's just the way -- I'm educatable, let's say that. But I do know some of these students that I was acquainted with who were a little more reticent about being my friend. And when I think back on it, it didn't really hurt my feelings. I think I instinctively understood that they just weren't there yet. And there would be students that, for whatever reason, we might bump into each other on campus or something, and I'd know if a student asked me questions -- and this is something later on, in the '70s, actually, when I was in New York, I was a member of this organization called The Chelsea Gay Association, which I may or may not get up to, but we used to have rap sessions with police officers in the '70s. Saturday morning, we would get up and go to the precinct and we would talk with the police officers about what it was like to be gay, to try to make sense of it because the cops were not so great with the gays, you know what I mean? They were not our best friends. But we did that. And I would say, "If someone asks you, 'How did you tell your parents?' they're asking that question because they're wondering how are they going to tell their parents?" So, chances are -- maybe a person can say, "I have this friend who wants to tell their parents," or something. But it's a tell, I guess. And so, I was militantly, avowedly, determinedly gay in so many ways, but I was also not always that way. And I was approachable. But our group never really got bigger. We were tops, maybe five people. And we had meetings. Even though we weren't recognized we had meetings, we just created them ourselves. One time, we invited a group of lesbians from Reading to come and all of us be together. And I remember this so clearly, because I had read all this feminist and queer literature -- we didn't call it that -- well, actually, some people did say "queer," I guess. But anyway, I remember asking, "What do you read?" And they said, "Well, we meet and we read Ms., and we discuss it." And that's what lesbians in Reading, Pennsylvania, could do at that time. And they were, God bless them, hedging my bets, or Goddess bless them, that they were out enough to see us. I don't know how out they were in Reading, but they found each other. There were five or six, maybe. And we were all kind of desperate to find kindred spirits. And Lafayette started a little gay group, and we met with them, and it also was mostly men, male. Thank heavens, because we all got to sleep with someone different. [laughs] We'd all been through each other so we had to move out to new territory. It was a lonely existence. Oh, there was that bar in Allentown. We didn't go there that often. No one had a car. Anyway. The gay bar in Allentown. There was no Uber. I'm not saying that there was some romantic liaisons between Lehigh and Lafayette queers, I'm not saying that. There might have been some, let's say that. Perhaps there was some interaction. Anyway, there was Moravian, Muhlenberg, there was the Cedar Crest, and the unfortunately named Beaver College, which eventually, thank someone that they changed their name. I mean, you can only imagine at Lehigh -- the testosterone. But anyway, I know that we met students from all of those schools who were gay, but I can't remember whether they had any organized or sub culturally organized, or under the radar organizations. I kind of think they don't but maybe they did. I hope they did. But if they didn't, I hope they found each other. Anyway, you know what? In my life, now, people have said to me, "How do you organize?" Because I was, from a very early age, organizing. And I said, "Well, you just start doing stuff and you try to get others to do it with you. That's basically how it's done." In addition to joining every club in my high school, I was thinking back on this, I also was very active in my parish team clubs, not because I was so into the parish, but it was just another way to not be home and my brother, John, of course, was the head of it but I was the program director, so I was in charge of putting together dances. And I did things like that. From the age of 15, 16, put together ski trips to Vermont with two busloads of teenagers, and I'd arranged for the rooms and the ski lift ticket. How was I doing that? I don't know. I was just doing it. I don't even know whether I could do that now, but I did that then. So, I would create organizations and I did that later on in life, too. And I did that in high school with some people, we founded an organization called "Students for a Christian Society." We couldn't have it SDS, so we made it SCS. It's just liberation theology, that's what we were using as our blueprint for how the organization and what we were going to be for. But we used to do a reading and recreation program at a Catholic school in Harlem on Saturdays. We would go when we were in high school and we'd work with these elementary school kids and help them with reading. I put that together. And I worked. I worked for my father some of the time when I was younger. He was a stockbroker. But I also worked at a camp for developmentally disabled children, so it was mentally retarded children, who were called emotionally disturbed children, who I now know were autistic, but at the time, they were referred to as emotionally disturbed, which seems like it was their parents' fault, if you said that. But anyway, it was these two populations of kids and I was a counselor at that camp. They didn't really belong together, there was no reason to put them together. But anyway, we all had one, and I liked that. That was, again, under the auspices of the Catholic diocese and I met some people there. And I combined those people with the people from my Catholic team club and my high school friends, and that would be these groups that would be going and doing things. That's just what I did. And so, at Lehigh, I was a Griffin, I was a DJ, and I'm sure that I talked about gay stuff on my show. I played, obviously, records, too, it was a big thing. But I had to get a license. I don't even think you need a license to do it anymore, I had a radio license. One night a week I had a radio show. And I also joined an organization that went out and volunteered all over the place. I was a very active person. And as I say, I got some really good grades, and I got some really not so great grades. But I wanted to leave. And so, I really tried. The first summer, I didn't want to go home and I wanted to be with my then-boyfriend for that first year so I took classes. And then, after my sophomore year I took classes that summer, also. And I was thinking about the various jobs. I worked at a luncheon in New York when I was 17, which I actually loved. I have to be around people when I work. So, I took six courses or something. I tried to take additional courses so I could get out sooner. I took courses, summer courses. And I just needed to take two more classes. It took me two years, but I did. So, I left at the time of the students in the class of '75 were graduating, but I'm actually class of '76, and I got my degree in 1977, and my parents were very happy I got that. I believe Henry Kissinger spoke at the commencement when I actually graduated, which fortunately there was no Q&amp ; A. Fortunately for everyone there, there was no Q&amp ; A with Henry Kissinger at that graduation. And I was happy that I graduated also. I took a psychology course at NYU and I can't remember what the other two courses at NYU were -- anyway, I got my degree. I'm privileged. My parents paid for my college education and they paid for my books. But in terms of spending money, my parents were very strange. I also worked. I worked at the Lehigh University Bookstore. And I think I owe them an amends because I may possibly have taken a few things without paying for it from there. Oh, Julie Brinker. So, I went back to Lehigh around 1985 because my brother, my parents were going to a Lehigh-Lafayette game and I was like, "I want to go," and they were shocked. Like, "You never want to go to Lehigh," because I heard about this guy there who was trying to start a gay organization. So, they all went to the game and I sought him out. I just don't remember his name, now. Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I'll think of it at some point. Anyway, same thing happened with him. There was a little group and then he graduated and there was nothing. That was the '80s. I don't really know. It wasn't until I was contacted by this woman in the alumni office, Julie Brinker, who is a lesbian, and she reached out to me, and I think one time before, I was invited to speak at a class at Lehigh, which is a very interesting experience. But shout out to Julie Brinker. She's left. She works, I think, for the public television stationed there, now. But she reached out to me so I have signed a thing, Lehigh is going to get at least 15,000 dollars when I die, no rush. But I'll add whatever was it that I may have taken from the bookstore. I just know I did. I don't even remember, maybe was a few albums, I can't remember. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But I worked there to make money to, I guess, smoke and drink pot and party. I was very busy. It's really hard to drink and use drugs and organize at the same time, which is one of the reasons I gave up. I just didn't have time for it. When I spoke at Lehigh, maybe it was two times before I went with Julie Brinker, maybe when I was first elected or something to the council, I don't remember the circumstances, but Lehigh was the first place I ever went and spoke at. It was the early '90s where if it's a queer audience, I would sometimes say, "How many of you have been the victim of a hate crime, a homophobic hate crime, or had someone yell epithets and you were afraid that you might be physically," and everyone raised their hand. I don't think I've ever experienced someone who didn't raise their hand that that didn't happen to them. And I asked the same question at Lehigh, but I said, "How many have done that?" And several students raised their hands. And that was the first time I had ever experienced that, these students actually acknowledged that they had beaten up gay people or had verbally threatened gay people. And I don't really know how I handled it. I think just by them doing it and me being there maybe made them think again about not doing that, but I don't exactly remember. It was a little hazy. I was sober and everything by then, it's just it was a while ago, so I don't remember. But anyway, Julie Brinker, many times she would come to New York, we would have breakfast together, we would talk and talk about Lehigh and what was going on. And no one from Lehigh ever reached out to me with the exception of when my father, my brother. I have stuff with my father, but I love my father. I've forgiven him for all this stuff and I love him and he taught me many great things. And I love my brother, Jimmy, but I don't think he's ever smoked pot in his life. I know he's never smoked pot in his life. He doesn't have the same kind of history as I have, let's say that. Until you all reached out to me to do this, since Julie left, I haven't heard a word from Lehigh. And I'm not sure, I don't want to speak on her behalf, but she was good. She got me. If she'd stayed on, we still had plans to try to put together a bigger people that had come out after they left Lehigh to try to get us all together, but I think they didn't know, in that office, how valuable she was. And I'm not surprised. So, Lehigh, they have a lounge where everyone if they're not he/him, or she/her, and his, and hers, or they/them, which is just mind-blowing from the way it was when I was there. Which, of course, interestingly -- I shouldn't say -- it's a heterosexual student body, administrative people, many of them, I think, were heterosexual [inaudible] the ones that I was there that wouldn't let us have a gay group. It wasn't they wouldn't let us have a gay group, but two of them were gay guys. Ironic. I had to leave Lehigh. I needed to get out. And I came to New York. But I continued on a path of working during the day and doing community and LGBT. I think it was miracle we started to say lesbian and gay, which was a step up from saying gay and lesbian, but anyway. I continued being active in the queer community and non-queer community and my life went on. There's something that happened a little while ago and I think it started with when I was telling you about acting gayer than -- maybe I'm ashamed to say that I was acting gayer than I would normally act. I feel in a way that's a terrible thing to say, because another thing that, from my childhood or my adolescence that I remember is to be very, very careful about how I walked. And I'm a very stiff walker because I was terrified to walk gay. And I came out as a relatively young age for a time, but sometimes, I think that people who, they couldn't or wouldn't hide that they were too fem or too butch, if they were gay, or lesbian, or nonbinary, that they just were who they were, are, have an easier time later on in life because they get the bad stuff over with when they're younger. As I say, dancing, it's hard to dance when you're trying not to dance gay. And I didn't want to dance gay in front of the football player and his girlfriend. And that's true. It is absolutely true that I really did everything I could to minimize that. And I'm sure that lasted through my early days in college, even as I was coming out, there was some shame in the community, I think, while there's such horrible discrimination against, particularly people of transgender experience or expression, and non-binary people. So, I'm feeling a little ashamed of myself both because, thanks Dad, because I dressed and acted gay, more gay, more stereotypically gay, for a while. Not every day, every once in a while. I'm not saying that defensively, just sometimes you just had fun with it, but we didn't live to do it or anything. But the way I explained it, I feel there's that, "Oh, my father wouldn't approve of that," but it's also that I think I feel terribly that I was disrespectful towards people who were able to be who they were and didn't -- so, I'm sorry about that. And I've noticed since I said that that it's been hard for me to make eye contact, which is something I do. So, I'm a 67-year-old queer, I've been gay since I was 17, and militantly gay since I was 18-and-a-half or something, and yet, I still have stuff. My life went on. I became active in politics and I became the Democratic leader for the area that I lived in, it was an elected position, I had to run in a primary, an actual election in. And I ran and lost for public office. And I ran for the city council and I disclosed my HIV status. It was really sort of the first thing I sent out to people in the district, and there's a much longer story that goes with that. So, I hope I get a second chance to keep going because there's a big part of my life with that. And I went on. I think the same thing holds true for when I was at Lehigh, people went, "Why did you do that? Why did you try to start a homophile, why did you do that?" Because I had no choice. It was my calling. I don't think I really understood this until I have a friend who was a police officer and openly gay, which is tough. I also have one of the first female firefighters who is part of the lawsuit, and these are very, very brave people to be out in uniform services many years ago. But anyway, my friend Don said to me -- because, politically, you would think that I would be someone who didn't like the police at all, but I'm not. I'm like, "Listen, most police, they want to get the guy, they want to help people. I want to help people. And most elected officials are good and some are terrible. Most cops are good and some are terrible. And some ditch diggers are good and some are terrible. Some doctors are good and some are terrible. It's just the way it is." And he has a very interesting story because -- I can't remember whether his mother or his father had a blood transfusion and passed it to his other parent, and they died of AIDS. So, he was gay but his parents died of AIDS as a result of a blood transfusion. I was explaining to the students in a class that I teach how people divided the world between innocent victims and non-innocent, so they were innocent victims. He wasn't like that. We weren't like that at all, at all. But that would be it, they were innocent. Anyway, he said, "I became a police officer because it was a calling. It was like a vocation," like a person wanted to become a priest or a rabbi. It was a calling. And I think it was my calling, too, where I was able to do it so I did. But I had no choice. [inaudible] well, maybe, yes, but it doesn't feel that way to me. It's just, I can't imagine not doing it and I regret any of the times when I had an opportunity and I let it go by for whatever reason. Because as a gay person -- and this was big when I was in elected office -- you have to choose your battles because I was always the only one. If there's two queers, well, then they can take turns and then other people start to do it. When you're the only one, I would talk to everybody. When I talked with people, "We're the only people. We have to decide every day whether or not to come out." And I mean that. Even when you're out, you have to decide to come out. If you say something at work, "I have a date tonight with," or, "I went to see my partner's family," or, "I went to see whatever play it was," and say something to indicate -- but you have to think about whether or not we should say -- and I hope that's not the way it is for younger people, that they don't have to think of it that way. But people in my generation, I think we do think about it. And I when I was younger, I was, absolutely, like, "Is this the moment that I choose?" And Lehigh, I sought them out, but I let some go by, too. I couldn't do it all the time. But I would have to be like, "Is this that important?" And I also would have to make the decision when I was -- and this is particularly true -- in the city council and in the Senate, when I was in the minority for most of the time, the Democrats were in the minority. So, for instance, I represented the Trade Center at 9/11, and bills were getting passed for the spouses of people who were killed. And I voted for those bills but I went -- there was a particular Republican senator who, as much as I'm against the death penalty, it's as much as he's for, but he was a real gentleman. And these kinds of laws would go through his committee. And so, I went to him and I said, "Next year, could you add domestic partners to this list?" And he said, "Yes, but let's do it quietly." And I just wanted to get it done. I didn't have to make a big thing. I knew he was gettable. I don't mean that in a good way, that he would understand. Even if he'd never vote for gay marriage, but he thought that was fair. I knew he would think that was fair. So, there were times when I did things like that, just to get it done. But then, there were other times when I had to make a scene. And I'm an anger, not a fear. There was a time when there was this thing where people would choose the colors that they were, "I'm a fall," or "I'm a spring," "I'm a winter," there's certain colors of clothing that people would wear? We went through amazing times. Maybe that still happens. Anyway, some people are a fear, some people are -- I'm an anger. I'm not a fear. I'm an anger. I'm an anger and I'm a sad. Those are my two predominate -- behind my anger is a lot of sadness, I would have to say. I can't even get to fear because the other stuff is so big. So, I am pretty fearless. I just am. Oh my God, I'm about to say something good about myself, but I used it. I was able to, so I did. Not everybody was and I did even at Lehigh. And I tried to stop, sometimes. I'm never going to stop. I can't help myself. I think I ran for the student government at Lehigh, by the way. I lost, but I ran. And I lost. What was it called? Was it senate? Was it the Student Senate? Which was one of the demands when my brother, who was three years -- when everybody else was demonstrating against the Vietnam War they were demonstrating that freshmen didn't have to wear this little cap called dinks and they were demonstrating to be allowed to have a student government. That's what their thing was. So, yeah, I ran for the senate but I was overreaching. But I did lose the first time I ran for public office. So, maybe if I had run again, I would have won the second time around. But I was openly gay at the time that I ran. Anyway, I don't know. I must have run a very bad campaign. I do want to talk about all the rest but it's amazing to me that at Lehigh now, that there would be an affirmative effort to get queer people into fraternities and sororities, like unbelievable to me. Even when they started having the lounge for the LGBTQ community, I can't imagine the people were joining fraternities and sororities up until very recently, being open about who they were with their sexual orientation. I may be completely wrong about that, but I don't think so. People came out once they were there but I think even that would be hard to come out in some fraternities. Because there's a fear. And sororities, too, there's, "Oh my God, we let a queer person in. Now everyone's going to think all of us are." I'm sure that goes on to this day. I live in New York City and there is discrimination and there is stigma attached to being queer here, and certainly HIV, which is a whole other thing. So, it happens here. And Lehigh is a little behind New York City, I think, politically, in many ways. So, people say that what I did was brave and how did I? But people that are doing what they're doing at Lehigh now that are going to join a fraternity or sorority being open about who they are, good for them. That's brave. And I think, New York, if I really was going to really continue to be active? I'm a left-wing, they barely let me stay in the Democratic party. I'm very, very, very progressive and I always got endorsed by the socialists, even though it's not as large as it is now, the group that AOC -- where am I going? So, I would go to Alabama or Mississippi where it's much harder to be gay, that's where you can get married and the next day get fired. I'm not even sure Pennsylvania has a Civil Rights bill. I don't know. So, people, they take risks. Sometimes before I go to bed, I might watch this TV show called "House Hunters," and once in a while, they have a gay couple. But they're living in Texas. I think, "Oh, are they out to everybody in Texas?" You know what I mean? Maybe they work in places where it's no big deal, but still, it's braver to be gay in Texas -- I've been to Texas -- than it is to be in New York City. I love New York, what can I tell you? And I have an affordable apartment, so I don't think I'm going to go to Mississippi. But those are the brave people. And a young person who will still come out, it's a political act. It's a big deal. And yeah, I came out sexually, yes, but the bigger thing was to come out politically. MF: I just want to say, listening to you talk about it, you were compelled at Lehigh, to be an out student, it felt like a calling to you. And I just wrote a brief history of LGBTQIA-plus activism on campus and I went through the Brown and White and I went through the yearbooks. To my mind from what I've been able to find, Rick Balmer, James Hopkinson were involved with that early Le-Hi-Ho, but what I've been able to find, you were the first out person on campus that was advocating for a public group, not a support group, public group for gay students at that time, at Lehigh. And for me, you and others in your friend group, Rick Balmer, and Hopkinson before you, you laid the foundation for that inclusivity that comes into our present twenty-first century at Lehigh. We have the Pride Center, we have Spectrum. I see a direct line from what you did at Lehigh to what my life as an out professor has been like at Lehigh. And I'm so grateful to actually be sitting with you today, face-to-face, and hearing you talk about what it was like for you to be there. I just want to say thank you at the end of the interview, today. And I hope I get to do a second interview because I want to hear about politics in New York City. TD: Absolutely. You're welcome. And thank you for saying it. And one of the reasons it's so important, I knew when I left there wasn't going to be anything anymore. And I was sad about that. And that's why I went in the '80s to see that guy, and when he left, there was nothing. But I couldn't stay there forever. I couldn't stay in office ; you have to leave it to someone else. But you're saying that, I don't -- not that I let people down by leaving, because that's what you're supposed to do, but thank you for saying that. I didn't really ever think of it in those terms. MF: People remember you. In other oral histories, "Oh, have you talked to Tom Duane?" "There was a student that was trying to get this group going, you might know him. He was a New York City Senator." Your name keeps coming up, for Bob Wittman, for Frank Whelan, for Rick Balmer, certainly, they've mentioned you. And the students that came after that started the Human Diversity League, I think that was [Jonathan Glennon?], maybe Ethan Felson. TD: Yes, yes. MF: It was Ethan Felson? That group was around, then it got resurrected. And then, in the '90s, there was a Les-Bi-Gay group that was there in the '90s. TD: Vaguely remember that. MF: So, people kept trying. And they really were building, whether they knew your name in terms of your Lehigh history -- I'm sure everyone knew your name because you were a New York State Senator -- but whether they knew your history at Lehigh, they were building on that. You were pushing the administrators at that time to sanction a group, to support a group on campus, and that did eventually happen by the time it was the twenty-first century and other students came building on what you did to make a reality. And Lehigh is absolutely transformed and changed, today, because of your efforts and other students' efforts that came after. TD: I want to say thank you. Thank you. It was also -- I want to say it was my privilege. But I'm happy to hear that and it makes me happy that I did what I did. So, thank you for saying that. You're going to come up in therapy next week. [laughter] And it's so thrilling -- are you tenured? Oh my God, that's -- because women at CUNY -- that's a whole other story. I have to be observed because I'm not a tenured professor and the woman who was going to observe me, I was like, "I'm so thrilled, a tenured woman professor from the school," and she said, "I don't have tenure." And I said, "Oh." I hope she's on the tenured track. I'm not going to get to vote on it. But actually, when I disclosed my HIV status -- which we'll talk about -- it was one of the things that we tested about coming out was whether a professor should tell the head of the department they had HIV when they were being considered for tenure. That's for another day. MF: Oh, yes. I can't wait to hear more about it. TD: It's a big thing. When did people start telling the head of the department that they were queer? When did that start? MF: I put it right on my resume. TD: Good. MF: Like, "I did a lesbian organizing project, and here I am." TD: I'm sure you thought about it, because you were coming out, but you were going to do it no matter what, right? There was no stopping you. But it still was a decision that not everybody makes. MF: Yeah. TD: I think that's great. I'm thrilled. Really, the world is changing, and I tell students, "You've got to hang on to what it is and build on it because it could slip away. It could slip away and don't let that happen." What I say about Lehigh, even though it wasn't a real recognized group, "Never give up the franchise," but I did give up the franchise. But if I could have, I would have, even if there was one member, just to keep it alive. Maybe there's no need -- there is still an ACT UP, but there's a lot of organizations that I've been a part of, Queers for Economic Justice is one. They went out of business. I'm like, "No. Don't do that. Even if you're going bankrupt, just reorganize and don't give it up." It was something I started when I was in office, which if you read the history of it, my name is not mentioned because I'm an establishment -- am I bitter and angry about it? [laughs] There were three of us who did it, someone else in my office, and suddenly, he's the only one, the one who wasn't working for government -- the three of us created it and then we sent it on its way and it went, but if you read about its founding, we're not in there. That's why I have to write that... MF: You have to write that book. TD: I have to write that book. I have to write that book. MF: Well, I'm going to be in touch with Bruce, and maybe we can schedule a follow-up. I know you have a busy schedule, but I loved that. TD: And how is that possible? I'm the busiest, retired, unemployed mostly person that I know. I don't know how. I think I just can't help myself. I remember Gloria Steinem saying this one time, she was speaking at some event, I can't remember what it was, and her thank you for whatever award, and then she started giving us phone numbers to call about this and that, and then she said, "I just," and I thought, "I know exactly what that's like." [laughs] She couldn't help herself. Good for people like us. MF: Yes. We need people like you. TD: Like us. MF: Like us. Like us. I will be in touch and I just want to close the interview by saying, once again, thank you so much. TD: It's been a pleasure. It was great speaking with you. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=