A blast from the past

Hennepin County Library, 1994

My spouse, Tor Andre, just ran across this video, which was apparently posted on YouTube a couple of months ago. It’s a tape of an interview from the national book tour for the paperback edition of my book A Place at the Table.

Here’s one thing to note: in the interview, there is discussion of two groups I was accused of disparaging, namely drag queens and “leather men” (the latter being a term I haven’t heard in years), but not a word about transgenderism, or, as it was called then, transsexuality. Neither I nor my interviewer uses the term LGBT or any variation thereupon. Because in 1994, transgenderism was never, ever brought up in connection with gay rights. Or gay anything. Not until 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, did professional activists eager to keep their jobs turn gay-rights organizations into groups to promote transgender ideology. To that end, they created a new coinage, LGBT, which obedient gays who should have known better proceeded to use as if it had always been a concept, applying it even to the sort of activism I was up to in this video. No, I was not arguing for “LGBT rights.” I was arguing for gay rights, period.