individual companies can sell their ban that thats without regulates prices. let's return to honest banking and replace it. >> we have been talking with g. edward griffin. he's also the founder and president of freedom force international. and the creators of the reality. >> it is a group and organization and as the word suggested. it's international. a group of people that want to bring about positive change. they have a plan to do it. they are not a bunch of complainers. they a plan to do it . about plan is to kind offers are the process by which we feel we lost our liberty and control over our system. hours.

but next, we want to introduce you to the author of this book. eminent outlaws is the name of the book. help the writers changed america is the subtitle. the author joins us here on our set on the mall, christopher brown is the author. what is a gay writer? >> is writing about gay men and women about their firsthand experience in their fiction and their poetry and in their place. you're not pretending to be some of somebody you're not. you are telling the truth from your own firsthand experience.

the book, i talk about, i wasn't qualified to include women too. but so many gay and lesbians both are writing from their firsthand experiences you might who are some of the early gay american writers a profile? >> i begin with truman capote, who published their first major books within weeks of each other. i follow that with allen ginsberg, james baldwin, christopher isherwood, tennessee williams was also working at this time too, this is like the first wave, and they caught a lot of grief for what they wrote. right after world war ii, homosexuality was illegal in all 48 states. you couldn't talk openly as a gay person. but you could write fiction about it and say i'm not writing about myself, i'm writing about these other people who are

fictional. everybody saw through this white lie and understood what was going on. but they caught a little use from critics about it. the critics couldn't say, oh, you're clearly a homosexual, that would've been liable at this time. they found other ways to kind of complaint and attack and criticize. this first-generation caught a lot of great remark so how explicit are open could a james baldwin be or a christian be? >> they were initially very open. the second novel, giovanni's room, is about -- it's about two white men in paris, one of the great black american writers. before his second novel, he wrote about his own sexuality, but he transposed it to white men. and it is clear what is going on, he could not write graphics on sex scenes, but there was

clear of a bond about this was sexual. they were readers knew that. this would, in his first major book, goodbye to berlin, what later became cabaret, he couldn't write it directly. we know that the main character, the narrator, is a man was fantastic. we don't know his sex life at all. we know about the lives of the people around him, we don't know who he is sleeping with, but years later when we talk about this, we can easily fill in the blanks. they were having to use different strategies and tactics to talk about it at a time when it cannot be talked about. but they found ways to do that. >> who are some were some of the contemporary gay writers for this? >> and then white, tony christner, author of angels in

america, a wonderful poet, mark dougherty, very politically active, a san francisco writer who wrote tales of the city. these are the living writers that i write about. >> are we post the writers yet? >> good question. not quite yet. i think people would like it to be. it is still a subject that makes most readers uncomfortable. all of these gay characters. but people are still uncomfortable about it in books. i'm not sure why. maybe it's a book that's literally in her face. it is a little too unnerving. where it is easier where someone is on the stage or on tv. so it hasn't quite, we are not completely assimilated but maybe

that's a good thing. it's good to be a little different to mix things up. and we are still mixing things up. so we still have the writers and we have african american writers, we still have women authors. which is a good thing. people have to acknowledge that even though it is an african-american writer, anybody can read them. they are telling stories that should interest anyone. they need to escape the idea of leaders that only gays would want to read about days or only african-americans who want to read about african-americans. it shouldn't be so. we should all want to read each other. we live in is very multicultural polyglot world right now. and we want to get as much information as we can. >> are you a gay writer? >> i am a gay writer. i write primarily novels. i have written my novels. one is the novel that became the movie gods and monsters.

the main character, he is a gay man. everybody else around him is perceived that way. it is a gay novel. the gay experience changes things. it changes the balance of things. it is perceived as a gay novel and i really don't mind as long as people will still read it. i think all my novels mixed gay and straight people. they are not writing exclusively for a gay audience. i don't think any gay writer is. we want to get give them as many people as we can. we want readers, we love readers. >> 202 is the area code if you'd like to have a question for our guests. 585335 for those of you in the east and central time zones. those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. i want to ask you about the

subtitle. how did these gay writers changed america? >> well, just because they got people talking about homosexuality. as i said, it was illegal in all 48 states. but once he started talking about it, even if you are attacking it, you could start a conversation going. one of the things i discovered is that over this. of 50 years, things change, people could say different things. it was kind of an indirect change of the culture at large. you couldn't talk about it in the movie, there were a few villains. you couldn't talk about it in tv at all. but you can talk about it in books. once you started talking about it, it began to spill over into movies and television and became part of the dialogue at large. >> at what point, and perhaps, who are some of the first writers who came out and were openly gay rather than just known to be gay.

>> that's a good question. maybe christopher. it is later than we were then. it was in the late 60s, he did a novel called the single man. and he, which is about a gay man was alone, he's grieving for his partner, and it just follows him in one day of his life. there is no sex in it, but this is a gay man. and isherwood would say, this is based on my experience. and he was in it in a way like nobody else. others like tennessee williams cannot later, up i should say, allen ginsberg came out. he asked why are you always writing about homosexuality and he would say because i am a homosexual. he actually, i think, was the first, even to the point of who's who who is who in america, he looked at his partner as this is my lover.

this is my husband. and i think he really was the first. >> wasn't allen ginsberg arrested for some of his poetry? >> his book, when it was published, it was put on trial or obscenities. ginsberg was on a trip. it was his publisher, lauren sterling get a publisher, lauren sterling getty, a straight man who loves good poetry and got behind this book of poems, who went on trial. and he became national news, the late 1955. and it was a book of poetry. because of this trial, because it had gotten major news coverage, newspapers, the book of poetry became a bestseller seller. it was small, but the title point was great. which was, this was just raw and

powerful, words and energy, which included gay sexuality in a very matter-of-fact way. they got all this attention, people were reading it and people could talk about the sexuality in a way that they had them before. >> we are talking up with christopher bram. this is the most recent book. is this your first nonfiction? >> yes, estimate of comedy writers who changed america, the first call comes from randy in salsa, oklahoma. >> how are you all doing? >> i have a question about the doj five group that was established in the 1970s. a group at the federal level and what effect it had on national security are you the fellow that was on turkey mountain?

by the way, you can google this, she is the sister of a whistleblower who has been exposed to some of the activities with janet reno and so forth to when you are talking about the doj project, you are talking about the department of justice, right? >> guest: i'm not sure. >> host: peter, we will move on to you. >> caller: we are now enjoying the coolness in charleston, for a change. >> i just turned the tv on, so i may have missed. you might have covered this already, please excuse the question if it has already been answered. i have always loved walt whitman. i just love his work.

especially in april when lilacs last by the dooryard balloon. and i always loved the canadian writer, i believe her name was katherine. she wrote creation. her writing is beautiful. i understand and he knows and understands. but in a way, who cares. i love her writing. >> let's go to the walt whitman park. >> the book starts covering writers only after world war ii. whitman is a great one who published things in the 1850s, he included the calamus forums, which are between men. it was very exciting and

different and gay men and women would refer to these forums is that somebody was finally writing about me telling my story. i talk about the only briefly in my book because i'm talking about world war ii. but what lynn was a major breakthrough. an interesting thing about whitman as he did not want to be identified as gay. once he became famous, he was insisting that he would get letters from men in same sex relationships. and that would be like oh, no, that's not what i'm talking about. he did not want to give up his celebrity to be a spokesman for a small minority group. he was very nervous about that. it was kind of sad. the same things that we saw happening later with the early generation of american writers. it was hard to come out. it was hard to let your desires we don't.

>> i don't know if this is a topic you all are familiar with, but was walt whitman known to be gay around a wider circle? >> .around a wider circle. he got in trouble for writing about prostitutes, and writing about the human body. and it was like oh, what is this subject he is dealing with. emily dickens said that i've heard he is insane. it wasn't a homosexuality to boddicker, it was the sexuality. >> where did you grow up? >> in norfolk virginia and virginia beach virginia. >> when did you become a gay writer and how did you get into this? >> i always wanted to become a writer early on, and i began by writing a straight novel. that was my first novel, the circle of friends, and i worked on it for seven years, it's not very good, but i learned how to write a novel. afterwards, i couldn't sell it and i thought in the meantime, i discovered that i am a gay man,

i have a boyfriend, i'm living in new york, i should write about that. i might not be able to publish it either, but least at least i will be writing what i really want to write. >> "eminent outlaws" is published. go ahead caller. >> caller: i wanted to know if john is still writing. john reggie. he had a book that got a lot of attention oh, back in the 50s, it was called the city is of night. has he done anything recently? >> he is still writing. he is still working and living in l.a. i cannot remember the last titles that he did. his big book is city of night, which was published in the early 1960s, really important book. he later did, what we got to see, numbers, and he did a number called a sexual outlaw,

which is kind of one of the influxes from my title, "eminent outlaws." it combines the title from the administration and the sexual outlaw by john reggie. the more recent work isn't as strong as his early work. >> christopher, christopher barm, are a lot of gay writer's political? >> guest: i think they are whether they want to be or not. they didn't know that they have no choice. some are more political than others. larry kramer is a case in point. some people say he is one, politics is more important to him in than good prose, but is very committed to politics. tony kushner, great american playwright, very politically committed. with these men being as political as they are, i don't know. but politics is a major part of their identity. >> how close is the father of

frankenstein, your novel, to the movie, gods and monsters? >> this movie is very faithful to my book. it includes my best dialogue, i was so happy with that movie. i could not be happier. >> host: dennis from seattle, good afternoon from washington. >> i was wondering, what a great inventions in your book. i know that you couldn't cover everybody, but james purdy was not included, who wrote for like 50 or 60 years as a gay man. could you speak to him please? >> i didn't speak to him, but i did leave him out. the book is in -- well, it includes like 12 writers. the writers i needed to tell my

story too, in which is kind of weave them together. then i was able to work in other writers that i thought were important. i was never able to find a way to work them in. >> host: thomas from rochester new york, good afternoon to you. >> i want to know -- i know that gore vidal, in 1948, in "the new york times" refused to review it. and i was wondering if you could talk about the problems he had with this book and how important it was an what was the first gay book, either fiction or nonfiction, that "the new york times" did review, and also, it was the first gay writer who actually use the word gay to describe themselves guess macros are good questions. where to begin, gore vidal, he would have published the new

york daily times, which would not review it. it was reviewed in the book review, however, that the daily times reviewing was orval prescott, he hated the book so much that he wouldn't reveal it. however, he did review other books. so it wasn't just a homosexuality to put them off. i'm not sure. but he reviewed chairman capote's other voices, other rooms, which he liked very much even though the gay story element, he said he didn't like. but he loved the writing, he was able to look past the homosexuality and talk about other things. but yeah, gore vidal has very creative options, but it was a national bestseller. it sold extremely well the next two years. and it was very successful. the other part, they describe themselves as the writers. maybe christopher isherwood, but

otherwise, it was alluded to in directly. i think stonewall riots that more and more writers would say that i am a gay writer. tennessee williams who had been gotten major american writers, period him he would kind of avoid that subject until he published his memoir in 1972, and then he had no trouble at all on the gay writer, i admit it, here are my experiences as a gay man, it is an important part of who i am. >> even include truman capote, but did he include that? >> there is a subplot of a gentleman who is in love, and he is pretty upfront and pretty clear about that. but it got some good reviews, and capote avoided the subject. use the christopher isherwood played there is a character

named truman capote, but we wouldn't know his sexuality. he left it blank. later on, readers can go back to it still and fill in the blanks. but after getting kicked in the teeth, he avoided that subject, although, when he appeared on television, anybody listening to him could tell that this is a gay man, and he never had that. he never tried to butcher it up. it was very flamboyant, and he knew he was, and he worked with it. and it kind of had a perverse appeal. who is this strange man with a high-pitched voice, we want to listen to them. >> was anyone surprised when tennessee williams came out? >> one writer had this joke about, hey, we knew that he wasn't father of the year. so yeah, nobody was surprised. >> christopher barm's first nonfiction