of being very, very small and yet very, very large at once. the navajo has a word for this kind of balance in beauty. we are one with the universe. without a spiritual dimension to our work as conservationists, where only working for ourselves, not the future and certainly not for future generations of all species. >> you can watch this and other programs online booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> i think we better get started. good evening. good evening. welcome to octavia books. i'm tom lowenburg, co-owner of the strain we here tonight to learn about this great book,

"tinderbox: the untold story of the up stairs lounge fire and the rise of gay liberation." so i'm not going to say much about it because her author will do that, but you may probably know this is the 45th anniversary of the fire, june 24 was of the day, so we're just a few days after that. in the last few days i've talked to a few people just to tell them about the event, they said we saw the fire. anybody in here, anybody in the room here was either there or who saw it? 45 years seems like a long time, and it is, but it also is a time that many of us can relate to. much has changed in 4 45 years, and will hear about that. 45 years ago this story was largely off the page.

we have robert fieseler to thank for putting it back on the page for us, and i'm just going to step out of the way and turn over to him. please give him a warm welcome. [applause] >> can you guys should be all right? great. hello. my name is robert fieseler and i'm the author of "tinderbox: the untold story of the up stairs lounge fire and the rise of gay liberation." "tinderbox" is history about an arson fire that took place at agape fire just a few blocks away that direction. a few minutes away on the board of the famous french quarter. "tinderbox" is also a meditation on consequences of closeted life in america, and by closeted i mean homosexuals hiding from public view and a shared conspiracy to turn away. by shared i mean heterosexuals and homosexuals of the times of the 1970s all conspiring to

not address what was really in front of everyone's noses, which set the stage for a lot of what happened here. the fireeye write about which took place at a gay bar called the up stairs lounge claimed 32 lies and injured 1 15 others on the night of june 24, 1973, 45 years ago last weekend. no culprit was ever publicly named were charged for these murders, and yet 43 years later in 2016 when an armed citizen named omar mateen gunned down 49 people and injured 53 others in a gay nightclub in orlando called pulse, and unimaginable field of slaughter consummate a bike on tragedy in new orleans became resurrected in public memory. old photos of the up stairs lounge victims went viral on reddit and other social media platforms, and urgent stories appeared in news outlets. such as the "new york times," the "daily beast" which

altogether cited the fire in new orleans as a kind of antecedent to orlando, right, another class example of lone wolf violence striking the lgbt plus community. the pulse nightclub shooting would be publicly recognized by president obama. federal buildings flew their flags at half mast. it was memorialized nationally by the historic new orleans find that a right about did not receive these dignities in its time and i was obsessed with this. i became consumed with this question. why would one event be so acknowledged and other so swept under the rug? so the forgotten tragedy struck in june 1973, a typical summer sunday at the of upstairs lounge called so because it is secluded, accessible only by a winding twisting stairway and it out of the way street permitted privacy for general seeking

gentlemen. heading at this twisting stairwell cloaked in cloth you have to imagine was a lot like entering a portal in that time. up, up and away from the outside world and into your favorite social club. that particular night, it attracted a larger than usual crowd of 90 blue-collar gay patrons. this was when gay culture was very early, on their nascent homosexuals have not sort themselves out into the archetypes that exist no. silver foxes, leather daddies, all these terms did not exist with any degree of popularity or familiarity in the early 1970s. gaze at this time contained multitudes. they could display a range of hyper masculine type of feminine characteristics that they could almost turn on a tile and if learn to do so, so they could make shift to live without undue

strain in the world with all that had to their straight face on. a lot of these men were veterans who would serve in multiple wars where they could not be out while they were serving, while these men were longshoremen or steelworkers. some of them even work for law enforcement. so anyway, these blue-collar a patrons were all gathered for the biggest drink special of the week called the beer bust. one dollar, two hours of unlimited draft beer. plus a returnable $.50 deposit for the picture. this was new orleans in the '70s, all right? imagine men laughing and singing and bartenders slinging drinks in the crowded space, the piano player who takes requests, pounds on the keys of white baby grand piano. these men had a particular song they would like to sing besides the prototypical broadway show tunes they became something convincing the songs trunk link

to the point of tears and became something of an anthem of the up stairs lounge crowd called united we stand by the brotherhood of man. so the lyrics went, i think this can follow bit more cyber recite them to you. united we stand, divided we fall. and if our backs should ever be against the wall, we will be together, together you and i picked it would lift the classes and toast each other expressing solidarity at the time when the simple act of being who they were could post existential dangers. with also two things that could happen if people found that when you were if they're singing that song. they could be evicted, fired from the job, rejected by the families, et cetera. you can imagine inside the up stairs lounge couples congregating inside the bar something very radical. they may been joined together in some them have been called holy unions. these were early same-sex

marriages, spiritual congregations unrecognized by legal entities of the era authorized by a thin radical gay affirming christian ministry called the metropolitan king of the church which had a branch in new orleans that conducted sometimes religious services and yes, holy union receptions at the up stairs lounge so that particular night at the lounge men are in the bar snugly and holding hands. these expressions together. they are occasionally sneaking kiss although the bar did have rules against more flagrant forms of affection. this was a bathhouse with men prating about and bath towels. there were risky posters on the walls, for example, a vote of mark spitz with his star-spangled speedo and the seven gold medals, for example. burt reynolds, i don't know if anany of you seen this picture online make it onto bearskin. those kinds of images.

it wasn't found upon per se and the was indeed a bathhouse down the street from the up stairs lounge. if so desired for a glory hole in the upstairs bathroom. i'm being real with you guys but all the fun happened fully but carefully inside his oasis to the outside world being dominated by heterosexual prejudice and even inside, this is why get in trouble lgbt rights organizations but it still could say but it is true, even inside been tempered on the fear of snitching meaning gay men in trump ratting out of game and to police, or if romantically rejected by a particular to cued he worked jealous of, to alert employers or family members. this did happen. sadly to paraphrase shakespeare, these violent delights had violent ends. picture the front staircase to the up stairs lounge opening and

you turn expecting to greet a friend and flame suddenly shoot into the room as if launched from a flamethrower, leaving 44 feet in the back draft swallowed the grand piano and mincing attic, chewing up wallpaper and decorations, earning hair, clothes, skin, trapping and eating away almost half of those in front of you. and then visualize having 30 seconds to choose which way to run. as people screamed and bodies stampede and perhaps being separated in the madness from a committed lover or a longtime friend who doesn't yet realize this is an emergency and, therefore, isn't going to make it outside with you. try to fathom 29 friends gone, distinguished, rendered into gruesome carbon mounts in a pile of bodies that some emergency workers described as the worst thing they have ever seen.

and a fire that burned o less tn 20 minutes with three more doomed to agonizing deaths in hospital burn ward. and the mayor remaining out of town more than two weeks, the catholic church refusing the computer to hold up public memorial for the up stairs lounge dead. three of the bodies burned so badly that they could never be identified. and they were buried without markers in a potters field. and then worse than that, one identified victim and world war ii veteran named ferris who'd been embraced by the up stairs lounge card, ma who landed at normandy, beaten back and not see counteroffensive at the battle of the bulge and was named a last-minute par victim by an anonymous caller who was too afraid to say more. and what happened to them, authorities buried at that man in the potters field with the other unnamed bodies. but here, here, we imagine

ourselves passionately, sympathetically into the destruction and devastation of a special brotherhood, right, a cadre of blue-collar men have been enjoying unique kind of fellowship in the secret bar which i do realize and acknowledge as he is stored as of researching this which is not where most new orleans would be 1973. this is what i do understand attempting to reconstruct what happened in a vastly different america, and a vastly different new orleans than this one. i did that want to make this mistake, and it seemed as with a lot of lgbt books. i did not want to start writing a book of history and end up writing a book of activism. by transplanting the valleys of 2010 in the path where the did not necessarily belong. the up stairs lounge patrons were the exception, not the rule with regard openness. for the lid and love and a highly idiosyncratic world that had concocted unique way of

handling the underground gay community thriving in the city in 1973, considerably estimated at 60,000 homosexuals of new orleans than 600,000 residents, like 10% of the population. new orleans had a unique way of handling that age-old phenomenon of sexual difference. judgment who prefer gentlemen, ladies who preferred ladies, gentlemen who preferred ladies and gentlemen,, all that different stuff. these individuals were permitted to do with the wanted to do in an out-of-the-way place just a long essay did not speak the better word that starts with h. they cloak it all in the euphemism of being an eligible bachelor or a stratified class society, and millionaire bachelor because the scene to help more, or to people being spinster roommates, two female roommates or two males longtime companions living and perhaps what was called new orleans and after marriage. and attend marriage would be two

mac gentleman romantically and sexually involved with each other who have wives who are oftentimes best friends and to have children who oftentimes go to the same school, right? the family spend weekends and vacations together. it's an age-old institution that existed and was thriving in the 1970s. or homosexuals at the time would often adopt aliases when he moved to town or use nicknames whenever they went out to help protect themselves against the liability of what would happen if they were arrested for a crime against nature. for example, i up stairs lounge patron was a past of the local church known as reverend bill larson, was born i found william roscoe. he slightly changed the name why? i had to figure this out, white. for for a real practical recenty placed a buffer between himself and the risks of this lifestyle and it would prevent news of an arrest if it ever appeared in the klein blog of the times

picayune from drifting back to his employer or blowing back to his conservative family and ohio so that those people did not attempt to locate him here in new orleans and perhaps even try to retrieve him and do the thing that he feared most, perhaps lock it up, the black sheep of the family often locked up. mental institutions. incidentally, reverend larson burned to death trap at the window bars of the up stairs lounge. with his last breath he screened the words oh, god, no. and then his body was left of their, exposed in its gruesome final repose for at least four hours. he became a spectacle for the media and drunken onlookers. and afterwards his mother did decline to accept his remains. so after the fire, these aliases

and nicknames, bill larson, a deacon of the new orleans church whose legal name was wayne george mitchell. it was mitch mitchell at the up stairs lounge. this would all hamper efforts by the court nor to id the victims but ordinarily these mechanisms, he's convoluted methods of compartmentalization that only did the gays remain safe in new orleans but men the average new orleans in connective knowledge was happening right in front of everybody's noses. they could also appear upstanding when you do choose to violently punish those who did not point out what was happening in the undeveloped lungs all of the other vices the sea had managed in which it thrived in the city for decades if not centuries. prostitution, gambling, drugs, dancing when it is a vice, jazz when it is a vice, and sodomy.

homosexuality in 1973 new orleans was by large still the neo-victorian love that dare not speak its name. meaning that most homosexuals are so private and paranoid about being caught by police who would beat you down if you did not bribe them first, right? host homosexuals were still so discreet tha at the star to prie parties and soirées and would not be so brave as to be seen at the up stairs lounge on your blessed night. so let's deepen our understanding of the up stairs lounge fire by interrogating further the society that created the conditions in which such a tragedy would occur. that means something i did you as a author and something i did want to do, it's a bit painful to lift the mental guard rest of the day and step away from a world really where the majority of citizens believe homosexuality should be legal. call it an acceptable lifestyle. favor same-sex marriage and

would encourage same-sex parents adopting a child. to deepen our understanding we have to rebuild the closet at that existed institution in the past. so let's enter the world of 1973 and not just flip the skill of homosexual tolerance but let's flip that scale and then break it. a majority of people can alter everyone you loved and respected hesitant to speak the word homosexual because it was so alarming and embarrassing to speak the word you would hear crickets oftentimes in a room. to see the work in a newspaper might cause the average reader to cancel their subscription is is on the front page in seen by a child. aids without a word tolerate because they still meant fretful and so have a old time. when the up stairs lounge patron stood up to his father who was a bully personality cannot see my sink, dad, i'm gay. his father responded without any sense of irony, i'm not very gay about it.

gay men happy, right? sort of person that psychiatrists and psychologists most universally agreed at a dangerous sexual deviancy disorder becomes widely believed could not experienced such joy. so the word day to the average american felt like an inappropriate pirated by radicals, sometimes it called an sexual psychopaths. very few newspapers, if any, especially in this time would print the word day outside of condescending quotation marks. so most of the in 1973 still believe a homosexual to be like a social subversive, sort of like a communist agent but in a more private context. rotting the foundations of this great land. more than 60% of respondents in a 1969 times magazine article called homosexuality harmful to the american way of life. almost seven out of ten americans in 1973 believed homosexuality to be always

wrong. they defined it, when polling companies even bother to ask this question. the question so obvious because asking some a felt about homosexuality in 1973 was a lot like asking how do you feel about assault and battery? how do you feel about extortion? how do you feel about bribery? how do you feel about crime? ..

foisted by the wicked on the unsuspecting. and capable of robbing a father, a brother, a son of his manhood. so imagine that in this climate a second-story bar on a forsaken street corner in the french quarter exploded with flames through the window in a way that forced people to pay attention, whistling outward not just through the french quarter but into greater new orleans and into the pages of the new york times in a roy reed report and across theocean,

times london, dublin , the international herald tribune in paris, to australia until they discovered the nature of the bar that bird and the nature of the patrons that dwelled in the bar but the immediacy of the event drew tons of hundreds of onlookers in new orleans, emergency workers, monies trapped in the window bars and the lucky ones that toppled out injured requiring emergency treatment or they tried to escape by running out into the street trailing smoke, sprinting away also from a treacherous situation that would surely out the greatest secret in their lives. visualize the average new orleans in learning with astonishmentabout this bar called the upstairs lounge , it was what was called a gay bar. one of approximately 20 homosexual dance along the french quarter burned down by a sexually conflicted,

disaffected patron. how confusing is that? and was violating the projected minutes before the fire began and consider the humiliation for new orleans in a live and let live culture but beloved by so many, the speakeasy forced to acknowledge a large gay presence. lurking among its population where all vices are kept secret and swept to the corner, these individuals were dwelling in one of the bars where they were supposed to lay down the green that fueledthe city's industry. the shock . unable to muster sympathy many lined up by making jokes on the stoop about the charred corpses of men who they felt disrespected their bodies so profoundly in life and i'll tell you some of the jokes.

did you hear the one about the flaming queens? i hope they burned their dresses off. what's the best way to dispose of native roots? bury them in fruit jars. many applauded the democratic mayor of new orleans who was a forerunner in the era of civil rights and a quiet supporter of his closeted gay friends in the state or his wisdom and staying out of town in europe rather than causing a block by returning to face the fallout of the fire and when mayor landry did return later, the survivors of the wives and children guess this was the time when gay men would marry women inan attempt to alleviate their burden , it was believed that the intercession of the divine could cure you of many of those narratives, obviously ended in a predictable way, this divorce so it would be

of help to the survivors or wives or children of the victims and the mayor landry had a press conference to absorb the city of its behavior by saying in relation to the homosexual angle, he had to be pressed by a journalist to say this, he was pressed by this journalist about the homosexual angle and his comment was i was not aware of any lack of concern in the community. the roman catholic church in a city so catholic the archbishop was called up of new orleans denied several victims who perished, perhaps participating in what were called moral sins, proper burial rights in some cases and decline to permit the upstairs lounge victims to be held at the city's holy basilica. then it was so shocking to find missing research, the archbishop seemingly moved by guilt did speak up weeks later in a column of the archdiocese new catholic newspaper, a tiny, tiny

paragraph attached to one of his columns after a page jump, it's 100 words but in 1973 archbishop hanan did speak about the upstairs lounge and he surprisingly revealed the correct number of day and the fact that the fire seemed intentional. this was a man who'd been following the news closely. reports, a police inquiry to name a culprit for the intentionally set fire dropped off badly, nationally within a matter of days. locally it took a bit longer but those dropped off two. then he didn't even bother to learn the name nunez who had been in violation of probation the night that he drunkenly entered the upstairs lounge only to provoke a fight, have his jaw broken and to the violently dragged down the staircase in what was heard by two people screaming i'm going to burn

you all out. that was 30 minutes before the fire began so the deadliest fire on record in new orleans history, the worst mass murder of homosexuals on a record that would stand for 44 yearsuntil purse pulse , worth little more to the city than a few days of front-page headlines and a proverbial aircraft in the paper, be real. no one wanted to talk about the deadliest and event to strike new orleans in 1973 even six months later and this seemed fitting to the averagecitizen . what were people to make of the trauma of this event, this pressure cooker event that disappeared for years? it was too confusing, too sad, too gruesome. into the aids crisis when

more upstairs lounge victims would die before they could tell their stories, no public memorials would mark the anniversary of this event in that decade and in 1995 the 22nd anniversary, a game minister named dexter was able to make a controversial choice, the minister of the gate affirming church of new orleans but he made a controversial choice even in 1995 to speak about the upstairs lounge fire in a sermon recorded in the times that unit . and many of his own day affirming congregation were upset with him for doing so. and finally 2003, dexter breck after eight years of what was a lonely effort, he had to spend a lot of time gathering allies and eight years is a long time for something to happen in your own personal life, he lost his lover to a heart attack and was almost devastated and had to give up the crusade, yet finally succeeded in 2003

and winning enough local allies and monetary support to raise $5000 and finally lay a bronze plaque on the sidewalk for the fire victims on the 30thanniversary of the fire . i don't know if you guys have seen it. it's 30 inches by 30 inches. it states all the names of the victims and i'm convinced most of those scholarship that occurred surrounding the fire in the 21st century has been due to the fact that that monument is there raising awareness of the upstairs lounge fire every single day. so walk back from 2003 to hear, 15 years in the same century when the upstairs lounge monument, that bronze plaque would be vandalized on numerous occasions, made an ashtray for cigars and cigarettes and into the present day when one brave family of upstairs lounge victims, i don't know if any of you have seen the headlines but i want to

address it, that family is still carrying on the brave fight with new orleans your accuracy to exhume their family member from the neglected potters field where the lies to this day, to bring him home to california for a proper military funeral . time and again what's so strange about this event is the upstairs lounge fire is contemporaneous . with all this context even with the existence of those who prefer to look away from the fire, consider the upstairs lounge now for a last time as old as it is in the past and see what truly happened. be a group of bar patrons living in a society with a characteristic they could not rid of themselves so they were forced to live in visibly. then, those already invisible man were then murdered in an intentional choir and the memory of those murders for

decades was wiped from the slate of history and here's what's most difficult for me being a historian and a gay person but try to see you or i would likely be in such a society at that time and to be honest. be honest about the prospect of you or i would be in a world where less than several hundred men or women lived out in the crowd by contemporary standards. we would likely be, i would likely be among the hundreds of thousands of quote unquote straight residents or the tens of thousands of closeted gay residents wanting their secret lives to return to normal. but with their hands on a powerful social eraser, the closet. which could make at that time a burning building vanish. along with all of its screams. shakespeare once wrote men

are as lightness and that was as true in the 1500s as today. we will adapt it but history reminds us to never be self-satisfied inthe present moment . we must consider the coincidence of our births aligns with our deepest biases especially unexamined ones and a bias i had to get over is a common bias in lgbt storytelling. it's this one. the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice. a beautiful statement from mlk. obama made a wonderful speech about this but there's nothing scientifically valid or proven about it. society follows a signed way. how about this one in relation to the upstairs

lounge because it this is how i ended up trying to understand it. we carry all of human nature with us all of the time . that's why it's important to occasionally take the temperature of a society and the dimensions of our own character and follow a line from our brothers and sisters in recovery and be fearless about that moral inventory . this exercise of history is to shame you or me or denigrate a great city that i've come to love but to hold up a mirror that enables us to look human nature in the face. the upstairs lounge was an ordinary experience, it's important to read the mask away showing human nature in a way doesn't like to be seen. in the act of believing and behavingwithout the ordinary filter of politeness , tradition, routine. what happens when all people have to go by is whatever passes for critical thinking, common sense of the era and their basic instincts and mark i close with this thought in relation to what

we discussed about the society that created the conditions for the upstairs lounge fire.between 1973 and the pulse nightclub shooting, a powerful social institution in america, the closet, that widespread conspiracy to turn away from all things homosexual failed miserably. as a result, millions of homosexuals citizens ventured from the shadowsinto the open . what happened to these folks now in this climate of tribalism and political entrenchment? it's unknown. we are profoundly out of power. living off the kindness and largess temporarily new delete which is really an old elite when you think about it, in spite of the vibrancy of game is, despite game echoes like new orleans on southern decadence weekend but here's the thing, many gay allies that i meet love the parties, continued a the

politics and behave as if keeping their heads down will mean that their fates will not match the fates of other oppressed groups and can we name the. immigrants, transgender americans . is this posture a temporary survival package or is it an ill wind a corrupt and violent past. perhaps from 1973, pinning us back to the closet. one wonders. i wonder about often and presentation with that difficult question because i love pulling straight audiences accountable but seen here in queer allied company, i'm reminded of another powerful certainty. which i think beats in the heart of our national ideals in the heart of this and that is the power of truth and reconciliation. the power of american history

to rejoin brother to brother over the wall, stranger across the iron. >> i think of the letter that the upstairs lounge victim reverend bill larson who brought up in vintage before burning to death in the upstairs bar window his former abusers at the orphanage where he grew up in ohio . i come to you by letter, he wrote to give thanks, honor, praise to those who encouraged me in those things i set out to do no matter how large and how small, who gave me outlook on life that others are envious of. more christian words from someone raised by the state because his mother lived in a shack on the city. . from a clergyman who was once a scared boy punished county officials for a quote unquote sex problem. so let us try to find the strength and the great of bill larson, by looking our

passed squarely in the face and having the courage to acknowledge that place will be a broken for our pastor, joining hands between us and set down pain. and remember the lyrics of fellowship upstairs lounge patrons like bill larson were singing with their friends at a bar seconds before afire claimed that all . they sang, they were singing united we stand, divided we fall. thank you. >>. [applause] did we have time

for any questions? okay, any questions? >> during the time before encountering him i had time to read the introduction and maybe the first chapter and made the point that social progress is often achieved or generally achieved i death, by sacrifices as you say and still others and i wondered exactly on the topic of the fire but i wonder what you think about the proposition that the lgbt acceptance by broader society was greatly accelerated by hiv. >> and the tens of thousands

who died. >> it wasn't a universal gateway to acceptance by think it's become a method where many family members were reconciled with other family members get an actual sympathies that they developed by becoming caretakers or ad hoc or amateur hospice individuals. i think that did come into play. in the midst of the aids crisis. but we are sadly, look at the history of american society. we balance larger freedoms against our securities and we tend to let the freedoms really the priority. and often times in these circumstances like this especially when you think about the aids crisis how long it took for authorities to take that seriously, so many have to die even before they were, the citizen scientists were doing

voluntary trials that enable a lot of really some of the most powerful work and not being done. yes, sometimes it takes unfortunately a for many deaths before an event is treated seriously by authorities and by elected leaders. if there's not, many times i feel like presumption is is there really a problem? >> any other questions? >> how do you feel about the comparison at the upstairs lounge, it was a patrons in was kicked out and it wasn't necessarily targeting the gay community and when pulse is much more seems like it was a targeting of the outside community. >> is not a one-to-one parallel. i was surprised by. he was halfway through writing his, my rifle where i didn't know what to think

when all of a sudden the upstairs lounge voters were going viral and there was a new york times column about the upstairs lounge and they are drawing a one-to-one correlation or connection between those two events . it's, i'm still puzzled. i don't think they match up but i do think in the public understanding of the pulse nightclub shooting and the trauma and the collective overwhelming sense of grief of how do we deal with this unimaginable scope of death, that field of death that was left i omar mateen, we are grasping for context and in that moment the upstairs lounge fire provided a handhold or a certain amount of context for people to understand there is a basis for this in americansociety

and american history . i argue held the reckoning with pulse more immediate. it allowed for republican memorials to be held and or relatives to find out that there relatives were buried in potters field. whereas with pulse you had the mayor of orlando and the conservative governor of florida, it seemed to be everyone in a leadership position was making statements of sympathy. that never happened for the upstairs lounge and innocence that the legacy could provide that degree of context, or provided a hold for those briefings, i think that was strangely enough, not a comfort but it at least provided some traction in that moment where they felt like people were standing on whatever for solid ground again. i'll give you an example.

many upstairs lounge providers or witnesses, i had to spend about a three-year email and text message dance, they were deciding whether or not they wanted to talk to me because they don't know if they want to talk about the thing that never happened in their lives. is going to be ripping off the old bandage and the results of thisinterview might not be cathartic . and after the pulse nightclub shooting, in many cases the next day, some of those individuals who been so upfront with me called me and their reticence was replaced by urgency and it meant a lot because i knew how much it was going to hurt for them to tell me their story and i knew they wanted to tell their story because they thought someone who was hurting works. in a sense, that relationship between upstairs lounge and pulse is almost emotional or a sense of comradeship rather

than your bike, i don't think the event could actually pare side-by-side. does that answer your question? >> i was asked about the racial dynamic of the lounge. >> could you repeat that question? >> the question was about racial dynamics at the upstairs lounge in terms of the culture and also the larger bar culture of gay bar culture in the french quarter, is that what you're asking about? racial dynamics, i mean, in a

sense the gay community wasn't even a community yet in new orleans.individuals were so beaten down many still believe that there was an individual burn and they could even often times relate to people and physically intimate with in some circumstances. though the community itself was highly stratified by class. the upstairs lounge was not a high toned establishment, individuals who drank there were blue-collar gay patrons. these were individuals who work, wage jobs and often times lived paycheck to paycheck as opposed to a place like a exile where tennessee williams drank were the private soiries that these upstairs lounge patrons might not have even known about. for the mardi gras crews which were expensive to join a time. so you had class barriers

where a lot of people who drank at cafi lafitte would not be seen dead in the upstairs lounge. it was too embarrassing. it reached too much of the dirty streets. racial dynamics played it back to where by and large, blasted not drink at white gay bars. the street gave our call the safari lounge which was his story gay bar one block further closer to royal street county coroner from hotel monteleone and the upstairs lounge, was weird. one of the only concrete actions the city took after the burning of the upstairs lounge was the closing of the safari lounge for supposed fire code violations even though they never happen so in essence upshot of the upstairs lounge was the closing of a black gay bar, and in essence, went and

victimized twice because they were homosexual and victimized because they were black. there were a handful of black patrons that would drink there. one was a gentleman named reginald adams who was embraced by the upstairs lounge crowd beloved, he was dating what was now a woman who is now a famous new orleansdrama queen regina adams . they were couple, they were an interracial couple and also a couple that stand race and gender. and she loved him when they met at the upstairs lounge. romance. regina, i don't want to get her birth name the name that was decided upon for her was decided upon by reginald adams who was an upstairs lounge patron who died in the fire. he was alone black victim but he decided they were looking for names for her and he said

his name was reggie, call him reggie. i think we should call you regina because regina is the etymology that means queen and i like to think of you as my queen. she decided she was going to be reaching up forever and eventually change her legal name to regina's . change your last name to adams because it had been reginald adams and he was the love of her life. and that way she can always eat with them. >>. >> i just feel that with vice presidents pants and the fact that he has said people are so against homosexuals that he said people would be reeducated, what can be done about that type of situation? >> i don't know, other than,

what can be done politically? i don't know but what i can say is that i wrote this book and part of the reason no one cares about me, no one cares about me, i'm a first-time author author. this history is compelling and part of the reason people are interested in this book is we are 15 years away from the decriminalization of homosexuality by the supreme court . and i think people are interested in a real truth and reconciliation moment with the closet. this goes your question, the more people look at the institution of the closet and really consider the way that men and women to live, the more they will understand that is not a functional institution in our society and it doesn't strengthen families, doesn't help residents because the closet itself which is the reeducation programs like that, data conversion therapy in essence, really what it does is it produces, this

should be a controversial phrase when itproduces a mentally ill individual . and that's what it does is it further metastasizes the problem. because you have homosexual individual living in a complex hall of mirrors who often times can be, homophobic the greatest enemy of individuals like him or herself. >>. >> there fearful that they may. >> their further in the closet, three glasses of the mirror and sometimes they can't even find a way back from that madness and the argument i make is that the closet is an institution of great corruption and great violence. and i think that's the argument that as a historiani tried to make . i don't think i made

headlines or anything like that but there's a reason the upstairs lounge fire is viewed as a contemporary topic and it has a lot to do with the political climate you're talking about. >>. >> we've come a long way there are people that are never going to leave their >> sure . >> i wrote this book to try, i'm not trying to preach to the choir with this book and i this book for gay allies who are quiet, specifically picture men my relatives, men and women that live in northwest indiana that vote republican know me and love me. i was opening a mic reached thing like this and start to think about what will, what does my ideology permit me to do to others. >> and if i took that

ideology away look at my behavior, look at my words and actions, could i defend them at all? i don't know. i think there's a larger group of people, of lgbt plus allies and i'm convinced have a gay son, have a gaycousin, have a gay brother . >> it breaks my heart. >> of course. i think it's important that also lgbt plus you and lgbt allies look back to 1973 and learn the lessons from people who knew how to fight. a thought very hard against this society and in essence believed in an america that did not believe in them. i think many of us who'd been

complacent especially after the gay marriage of the supreme court decision need to take some lessons from the prior generation and the only way we can becauseso many of them were lost to the aids epidemic is to work through history . >> all we heard was the other people say they deserved it and that's what they get. that wasn't that long ago. >> so your book is wonderful. >>. >>. [inaudible]

>> i have a question about the metropolitan community church . i heard that it was sort of resurrected, what is. [inaudible] >> that was a good thing in new orleans run by a woman named allie, i had coffee with her this morning. she was instrumental in participating in the 45th anniversary the more you for the upstairs lounge fire which took place at st. mark's last sunday. memorial, she, i will say she planned the whole memorial. he deserves probably a bit more credit but she spoke at the memorial, she read a letter from the founding pastor of the metropolitan community church who was a very, really a magnanimous figure named troy perry who was instrumental in upstairs

bar history. the day after the fire, actually hours after the fire radical gay minister in the early 1970s who back then was one of the only homosexuals who would give his real name to the press and allow it published in the newspaper. he heard about the fire and his allies descended on new orleans to try to raise awareness but he wanted to enable, troy perry couldn't make it, he's alive, for the 45th anniversary at st. mark's church but he wanted to have a consistent thread with troy so he read a letter from troy perry about his recollections and what it was like to come to new orleans and a hard time he had trying to bring what was called gay liberation ideology closet community. it was a special thing. that memorial, i was in tears . i remember reverend corey sparks, new orleans mayor

latoya cantrell and she walked down

he's very at the center with bill rushton and that crowd . >> he was a man of many hats,i think . didn't he run -- yes, he hada health clinic . [inaudible] he was in the grand lineageof french quarter characters . he was a well recognized -- >> i think of characters as

maybe not serious. he was astoundingly serious. [inaudible] and started out ministering to the rec center, but anyway, he was -- >> he was tied in with bill rushton. bill rushton was a gay editor of the courier in 1973. bill rushton was one of the few journalists who consistently and doggedly reported the upstairs lounge fire and reported it as a sexual tragedy and i'm sorry but i wanted to introduce you. you worked with? you edited bill rushton? oh my gosh.

you were his editor? i'm so glad you're here. could you stand and let people know your name? it was an alt weekly publication that published out of a place on decatur street and it was some of the most important research i was able to find about the upstairs lounge fire was from the articles in the courier sothank you so much . >> it was bill. he was definitely, bill was dedicated to that story not only then but thereafter and his whole focus in life switched from that time, he became much more active, politically active. he was always politically active. he called himself a theoretician in the student

strikes at tulane. >> he was involved in the anti-and need o'brien protests in the 70s. that was helpful in my storytelling to be able to draw a pretty clear line between an individual who'd been important to the upstairs lounge, an individual who'd been important in efforts to repel anita bryant and her message from the city in the 70s . >> he was a fiery and a great writer. i keep thinking in exile and about how openly human and yet his plays were heterosexual for the most part and so it was quite a time. >> he was out in the quarter somewhat within the

semi-closeted idea of altman and he was closeted in new york city except in the theater, as far as what i've read, a great biography is called the brush but he worried about, and he really got reviews about the moral content of his plays which sometimes glanced up on homosexual issues such as blanche dubois killing herself in a streetcar named desire are engaged in and a half in roof, deals with available homosexual relationship and i think he was worried about the way that his mad pilgrimage of the flesh, he didn't want the moral content of his plays to be affected by his own personal behavior but he felt he would often times be so savage in his reviews by people looking to take shots at him will often times were recognized as the best plays

of the year . yes, he walked a very careful line often times where for most people, he had a sense of who he was but often times he played off that behavior and the eccentricities of a brilliant mind. any other questions? >> we felt like the french quarter, heterosexual people were clean and gaze were all friendly and open and it didn't feel like us. they were closeted in their professional lives but even in the french quarter was very open . it was much more open -- [inaudible] >> you could find your balls there, you could find your people. >> it was open and we felt

like the french quarter was a safe place for gays all over the south. and especially to the quarter because there was a space there. >> they had nowhere else togo sometimes . >> but it wasn't integrated with the power structure. >> certainly not . >> the garden district, uptown. >> you had a closeted friend and then you were the plus one friend, that they are moving lounge i had a closeted friend who was always, you look at the list of invitations to all the mayoral events you would see mary poppel, leon irwin, author +1, married couple.

it was a bit conspicuous but that was the culture then. it was understood that individuals could make shift to live in this society so long as you were not publicly outed or other individuals likethat where your reputations would be destroyed . any other questions? >> so when the upstairs loungebird , it needed to be filled by another bar, how long did it take or did everybody stepback ? >> the building was never reoccupied by another bar. it was left with physical signs of charring, the windows were boarded up for several decades. it was a story no one wanted to talk about even if you walk past it , even in a storytelling culture like new orleans when people walk back with those didn't think to tell the story. the owner did receive

somewhat of an insurance settlement and two months afterwards parted a bar called the post office located now where, i don't know if you know, where the corner pocket is and some of the upstairslounge crowd would go there and drink their . visible marks, scandalously, primary suspect of the upstairs lounge roger nunez went there when he came back to new orleans but he was a brazen individual and he drink there sometimes side-by-side with some of the fire survivors. roger dale nunez of course, i don't know if you did the story, he wasn't internally conflicted man and a con artist. he convinced the woman twice his age to marry him in may 1974 and on his wedding night he confessed he was homosexual but that doesn't matter because he's impotent, i don't know if that makes

any sense. and if he doesn't get an annulment, he convinces her he should move into the back trailer of her home where he lives for a period of months, stealing from her until she can't takeit , and then he dies of suicide by intentional overdose in 1974. that's what complicated many of the investigations is that the system isn't designed to try the accused postmortem but i thought it was so great he would go inside this bar which with his then" boyfriendbefore you broke that man's heart and he would be drinking side-by-side with the upstairs lounge survivors . any other questions? okay, thank you so much. i really appreciate it. [applause]

>> we've got plenty behind the counter. this will be broadcast nationally on c-span so for anybody watching, you can pay for your books, maybe we will have some signed copies around but please get one tonight and we will do a signing up here in the front momentarily. >> thank you all for coming out in the rain, i appreciate it. [applause] >> here's a look at some

authors recently featured on both tvs "after words", our author interview program that includes best-selling nonfiction books and guest interviewers. white house secretary sean spicer reflected on his time in the white house . and comedian and actor dl hughley look at race in america. in the coming weeks on "after words", economist john moria will weigh in on why democracies are failing to produce economic growth. former education secretary arnie duncan will discuss the failures of schools in america and this weekend retired mean marine corps director ray romano offers her thoughts on gender bias in the military. >> i saw this firsthand. what i was seeing when i was on duty the first time was a

hands-off approach like male recruiters did not want to engage with females because of the negative perception, that there would be some sort of inappropriate relationship so i made it clear i have the same expectations from my female recruits at the men and i expected them to perform and we were able to achieve the lowest attrition rates by having high standards for men and women but the problem is that because the marine corps doesn't want to change what happens at that foundational level and because everything is so segregated, those area types percent and the stereotypes as i mentioned earlier the into a perception that women can't because they are women and then they are not respected and the lack of respect between men and women in the marine corps is legendary. male recruits in the squad base all the time, you hear male recruits who happen to be slower told that they are women, that they are the p word, they should be sent to

fourth battalion so it becomes normal to stage things about women so that's the dilemma that women have in the marine corps when they graduate from boot camp, it's that culture they are brought into all previous "after words" are available to watch online at booktv.org. >> robert whaples, we're showing thecover of the book you edited . what are we going to find in here? >> the book is written mainly by economists and we are writing in response to the and cyclical that came out years ago on the care of our common home known as the environmental and cyclical but it's economists were trying to gauge the pope in dialogue, i you word he uses 25 times in dialogue and hopefully