UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1110
HORNING, KATHLEEN T. (K.T.)

Narrator:	Horning, Kathleen
Interviewer:	Rupp, Kelly
Date:		2009
Location:	Madison, Wisconsin
Oral History#:	1110
Series: 		Madison’s LGBT Community, 1960s to present

00:00:00	Start of Interview Session
KR: 	This is Kelly Rupp with the Oral History Project. Today is Monday, November 8th, 2010. I'm at the Cooperative Children's Books Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with Kathleen T. Horning. Now, we're going to talk about the, for the Oral History Series, Madison's LGBT Community: 1960s to the Present. K.T., if you would just say your full name and spell the last name. 
KH: 	Kathleen T. Horning. H-O-R-N-I-N-G. 
KR: 	Great, thank you. 
00:00:33
KR:	So, I think we'll just get started. What I'd like to do is just start at the beginning and talk about growing up, and then we'll kind of work our way to the present and your role here with the library, and also the public library, and the first efforts that you've done on behalf of the LGBT community. So why don't you just give us a background growing up and how you felt towards same sex people during your preteen or teen years? 
KH: 	OK. Well, it actually started earlier than that for me. I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and I was born in 1956, so the era that I was born into still had very proscribed roles for boys and for girls. I would say that from the time I was about three, I felt different from people in my family, and I wasn't sure what that meant. And most gay and lesbian kids grow up in families with straight people who might or might not recognize any signs that their kid is different. And I grew up in a very liberal, progressive family and had a relatively happy childhood, I would say. But when I was little, I remember that I thought that there must be a third gender. That's what I figured. But I wasn't sure, because no one ever talked about it. I felt some things in common with boys and some things in common with girls, and I knew I didn't want to marry a boy. I think a lot of kids feel like that when they're little, but for me, it just never changed. But I did look for early evidence of a third gender, actually, in books. And I remember in particular being very fascinated with the character Christopher Robin in Winnie The Pooh, which my mother used to read aloud to me when I was little. And I would always ask her if Christoper Robin was a boy or a girl, because they used to "him" and "he" pronoun, but he always looked like a little girl in the illustrations. He was wearing a dress and he had long hair, which in those years boys didn't have long hair at all. And so I would just ask my mother. Every time she read a story about Christopher Robin, I would ask, is Christopher Robin a boy or a girl? And she would say, he's a boy. And I would ask, well, why does he look like a girl, then? And she'd say, because he's English. That was always her response. And I asked the question every time. I knew in my head what I wanted her to answer is that he was both a boy and a girl at the same time. I even had an imaginary friend who was both a boy and a girl. And I looked for other evidence of people who were living outside of proscribed gender roles. For example, I remember when I was still in preschool, my parents had a friend come over. It was a woman from Germany, and she was a very feminine appearing woman, but she smoked a pipe, which just fascinated me. Because I'd only ever seen men smoke pipes, and it was a very masculine thing. So just little things like that I would look for, and they would give me some degree of hope. And I always wanted to wear pants from the time I was really young, but when I started school, girls were still forced to wear dresses every day, which was something that was for me very uncomfortable. And they didn't change that rule until I was in elementary school. But I still wasn't really sure what that meant. I was growing up in a time where there was really kind of a blackout about the existence of gays and lesbians, and I just never even heard those words. I didn't know about those possibilities. But I knew that I did not want to grow up and get married to a man. I knew that I wasn't, even when I was a young teenager, I knew that there was no attraction for me to boys. But I did like a lot of girls. 
00:05:09
KH:	In fact, I went through a whole period when I was about 10 and 11 where I experimented with cross dressing, and went into other neighborhoods dressed as a boy and passed as a boy. And that was actually very thrilling for me. And that idea also came out of a book. A book that really changed my life when I was about 10 that I read, was Harriet The Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. And Harriet was a character who I identified with immediately. And girls today wouldn't see this at all when they read the book, but Harriet was quite the cross dresser. In my book, when I was looking at the illustrations, her spy uniform were really boys clothes, including high top tennis shoes, which my brothers wore and my parents would never buy for me. Even though they were very indulgent and progressive, those were not things girls wore. So that book really spoke to me. And the secondary characters, there's a nurturing boy, and there's a very masculine, scientific girl. So I did what Harriet did and experimented with the cross dressing. And it worked really well. And the only time I ever got caught at it-- because I realized, as I kept pushing the envelope with the cross dressing, I realized that the best way to cross dress when you're about 10 is to go without a shirt, because no one would suspect you were a girl. And I remember there was one time when I was coming back from my adventures out in the next neighborhood over, where I had took on a persona of a boy named Rodney, and I hadn't yet put my shirt back on, and I ran into a girl I knew from school. And I just remember the look of shock on her face when she saw me out there without a shirt on. 
00:07:05
KH:	So, that was what my childhood was like, and I don't think I was really exposed to even the vocabulary or terminology about gays and lesbians, even in a positive or a negative way, really, until I came to school here at U.W., Madison. And that broadened my world a lot. I actually chose U.W., Madison for two reasons. One is that my original major was Spanish, and they had a really good Spanish department. And the second reason was that a woman who worked with my father who-- my dad was a newspaperman and she was a columnist on the newspaper, and she was a U.W., Madison alum. And she was a role model for me all the time I was growing up, because she was an independent, single woman. Never married. And a very successful career woman. And I knew that she had attended U.W., Madison. So that was one of the reasons that I decided to go here. I later learned, years and years later, learned that she too was a lesbian. But she wasn't out to me, obviously, but certainly there was something in her demeanor that I identified with. And certainly identified with her independence and the fact that she could make a career for herself really early on in a time when most women got married and had children. 
00:08:42
KR: 	I want to talk more about your undergraduate career, but let's go back for a minute to dressing as Rodney. That's interesting. I mean, what did you do when you went to other towns? 
KH:	 I didn't go to other towns. It was the next neighborhood over. 
KR:	 I'm sorry, other neighborhoods. 
KH:	 Actually, what happened was I used to be really, really active in community theater when I was a child, and the community playhouse was in the next neighborhood over. And it was in a different school district, and it was also right across the street from a Catholic school. I went to regular public school. And I was once at a drama class, and there were two boys and then all the rest were girls, and I often hung out with the two boys. And so the three of us were hanging out together, and one of the other kids in drama class had brought a friend along. And I overheard these girls talking, and I realize they were talking about the three boys that were over talking. And I realized that this girl thought I was a boy. That she thought I was one of these two boys. And that's what gives me the idea. Well, if I can fool this girl, I could fool a lot of people. And that's what I tried to do. And I would actually go into this neighborhood across from the Catholic school under the persona of Rodney, and I would flirt with the girls. And they were at an age where most boys weren't really paying any attention to girls, and you'd have girls, usually they were a year or two ahead of boys, and they really, really-- all a boy had to do to get the attention of a girl was just be nice to them, call them by their first name. Rodney did that. Rodney bought them Cokes at the soda fountain and just, you know, flirted. And it was actually really exciting for me. Because if they had known I was a girl, there was no way they would have even paid any attention to me, let alone let me put my arm around them and things like that. And I never saw these girls after I stopped doing the Rodney thing, but it was fun to experiment with. And actually, I kind of thought-- I was worried that I was going to have to do that all my wife. And I know that there are lesbians in past generations who did do that, who passed as men, and that was the only way they knew to be themselves and survive. And I'm glad I didn't grow up in an era where I didn't have any other options. But I do think if I'd grown up a generation earlier, that probably would have been what I had to do in order to just be myself. And so, Rodney was an interesting experiment for me. And I got the whole idea from Harriet The Spy from the drama club. It was sort of like extending the creative dramatics and playing a persona beyond the things we were assigned to do in drama class. 
KR:	 I have two thoughts about Rodney. First, did your parents know you were dressing as Rodney, and what brought Rodney to an end? 
KH: 	Developing. It became clear after a while that I wasn't. And I never would have figured anything out at that age about binding my breasts or anything like that. And it also really scared me a little bit when I got recognized. While it was working, it was really fun. But the thought of being found out. And I just remember the look of shock on this girl's face when she saw me. And she was someone I didn't know well. She went to my school and was in a different classroom. But if it had been somebody I had known really well or who was in my class, I'm sure that she would have told other people, and I might have been teased, or whatever. So I just thought, OK, this it getting a little too dangerous to do this now. And as I entered middle school, it just didn't seem like such a possibility. Girls weren't so easy in middle school. And my parents didn't know. And actually, it's really kind of funny, because I had an extensive wardrobe of boy's clothes that I bought with my own babysitting money and hid at the back of my closet. And I'm sure my mother must have known about my stash of boy's clothes, but if she did, she never said anything about it. She was really good about that, about just kind of letting me be myself. I never talked to my parents about my life as Rodney. It was completely secret for them, far as I know. 
00:13:53
KR: 	Do you think your parents had an inkling that you felt different? I mean, you said even when you are three years old, you were starting to feel different. 
KH:	 Yes. In fact, when I came out to my mother, I was probably about 17, and she said, I wondered when you were going to realize it. And she never said anything to me other than, in retrospect, I would look back and realize she was saying things to me, but without using-- because she didn't really know anything about being gay. But she would say things to me when I was a teenager like, I noticed that most of your closest friendships have been with girls and you don't have a boyfriend. And I would think, oh God, here we go. And then she said, I just want you to know that that's OK. That it's really important have close friendships with other women and with girls, and I think you'll find that your closest friends will always be women. And just I thought, OK. But she could have either said nothing, or gone the opposite way and really pushed me to go out on dates with boys I had no interest in. And she didn't. So that was really good. And once I came out, both my parents were very accepting. And I was really lucky in that regard. And they both confessed that they didn't really know very much about it and they were curious. And so they did ask questions, and they read things, and up until he died at age 81, my dad was still sending me newspaper clippings about gay and lesbian things he saw in the paper. And of course, it just gets to be funny, because you have something about your life or an interest you develop at some point in your life. With my parents, you would get newspaper clippings about that for the rest of your life, even if you moved on and changed interest. I would still be getting clippings about things that I had liked when I was 14. But the gay and lesbian clippings were always really funny from my parents. But it was nice, because I know a lot of people who don't have accepting parents or who aren't even able to be out to their parents. So I was very lucky in that regard. 
00:16:18
KR: 	Let's talk a little bit more about your coming on experience and how you realized to yourself that this was the path that you were going to go down. 
KH:	 Well, for me it was more like finding there were other people who were lesbian. That it wasn't just like I was one of maybe a hundred people in the world, which is what it feels like when everyone is so invisible. It's finding a community and finding other people. Not necessarily even other people to have as partners, but other people who are part of the community. And finding the gay and lesbian community, I think probably for any person who's coming out, is a really key thing. Finding that such a community exists, that if you live in a place like Madison, it coexists with the main population. And you see people every day that are part of it. You may or may not know it. It's funny. In the early years, there was a certain degree of the gay and lesbian community being underground. We didn't have an LGBT campus center. If there was any kind of social service agency, it was more of a crisis hotline type of thing. There weren't 10% society dances or anything like that. And it's very interesting, because I made a number of really close friendships. In my freshman year, I lived at the dorms, and all of those people that I keep in touch with still, two of the-- there were, I think five or six of us and me have come out. Three of them never talk. They've remained unmarried. They never talk about their sexuality. And it's just kind of interesting. I just always assumed they're gay or lesbian or bisexual, but they never talk about it. But it's interesting that we all found each other in the same freshman dorm, in the Lakeshore dorms, the actual same building, and became friends, and then we didn't even talk about things we had in common. Didn't talk about gay and lesbian issues back then.  We had similar interests, and-- yeah, actually make it seven. There were one, two, three-- three men and four women, I believe. And, yeah. It's just been very interesting. And in some ways, I wish we could all get together now and just talk candidly about things, but everyone's kind of busy with their lives, and we all live in different places. I'm the only one who's still in Madison. 
00:19:46
KR:	 Was it being part of that community there that helped you to come out, or did you come out before then? 
KH: 	I can out to myself and my family before then. It was a different time, and you didn't just-- at least I didn't-- just come out to friends. Even close friends. And we didn't really have-- and I don't remember anyone in my undergraduate years that I met or knew being openly gay or lesbian. Everything was so much more underground. I remember one of the places that was a real center of lesbian life in Madison at that time was A Room Of One's Own bookstore. Just seeing books on the shelves about lesbianism and having lesbians, open lesbians, who worked in store was a really key thing. And it was a place that a lot of people went, both gay men and lesbians, to kind of find just a kindred spirit sort of feeling. I took women's studies when I was a sophomore in college, and I think it was either the first or second year women's studies was offered as a of course on campus. And I'm pretty sure that my TA for that course was a lesbian, but I'm not sure. I mean, that's what I have in my head, so she must have told us at one point, but I just don't remember for sure. And I'm sure that the professor must've talked about lesbianism, but again, in those years, lesbianism and feminism really did go hand in hand. You always talked about being a lesbian feminist. You hardly ever just said the word "lesbian." You said "lesbian feminist." And I think a lot of people assumed in those years that all feminists were lesbian. So it seems like a lot of feminists who weren't spent their time reassuring people that they had a husband or that they weren't a lesbian. So it was just a different time. 
00:22:15
KR: 	When did things change for you, that you could be open and not secretive? 
KH: 	I think that when I was in graduate school, here-- actually in library school-- and I had a relationship with a woman who was extremely out there. And she introduced me to just a lot of things that were going on in Madison. There were women's dances at the YMCA, I think. I don't know why they were in the YMCA. And they were really almost kind of depressing little events. But just a lot of things going on. Women's music concerts and things like that. So it was really in library school that that all started to happen. And then I did a lot of reading at that time. And times were changing by then. It was like the early 80s, and people were starting to be more open. Although I remember I used to work on a project for the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York city, and one of the things they asked people to do was to send them clippings. Any time that you saw lesbians or gay people mentioned in the press, to cut out the article and send it. And you would like to keep the articles for, I don't know, six months and then send them in. It wasn't often. We hardly ever saw anything in the mainstream press about gay or lesbian issues. And then when the AIDS crisis hit, that's when we first started to see gays and lesbians, gay men in particular, mentioned the press. And when some of the celebrities who were HIV positive either were outed or coming out. Oh, what a surprise. Liberace's gay. Or Rock Hudson, I remember, being one of the first. And I just remember it was really kind of a time where so much of the consciousness of straight people was raised through finding out that people that they just always assumed were-- even Liberace-- were heterosexual, weren't. And so it really challenged the heterosexual norms and mindset. And things really started to change, then, in society at large. Not just in Madison, but everywhere in the US. 
00:25:16
KR: 	Before we leave this topic of your coming out experiences, you said that your parents were pretty much OK with this. Do you have other family or friends? 
KH: 	I don't have a really large extended family. So my grandparents weren't around. My father didn't really have any family. So I don't remember. I remember my parent's friends all being very, well, open. I don't remember having any problem. And with friends, I just don't remember there ever being a person who changed toward me or a negative thing. And it goes back to something I think was Harvey Milk, who said that you shouldn't assume that when you come out, people are going to think less of you. You should assume that they're going to think more of gay people. And I think that that really is true. It's been my experience that especially as an adult, if you can be out there and people see. A lot of straight people don't think they know any gays and lesbians, and they do. They just don't know they do. So I didn't have any other-- I don't just ever remember having any negative experiences. 
KR: 	You've been very lucky. 
KH: 	I guess. 
KR: 	That's great. 
KH: 	But you know, I suppose part of it is probably living in Madison. And it's been interesting, because I went on to a field, children's literature, and for a while worked directly with children, and that's something that people need to use common sense about. Because in Wisconsin, we're protected. We were the first state that offered protections. You couldn't be fired for being gay or lesbian. But elsewhere, I know that's not the case, and people have to probably be more careful. It's interesting, because people sometimes think that gays and lesbians shouldn't work around children, because we'll convert them or molest them, or whatever they think gays and lesbians are going to do. And they don't have the same worries about straight people molesting them. But it just has never been an issue for me. And I don't take that for granted, because I know if I were working in Indiana-- I mean, I don't know what the situation is in Indiana. Or somewhere in the deep south. It's funny, because the only place I ever experienced any form of gay baiting was in San Francisco. But in the Midwest, I've never felt like someone is out to get me. 
00:28:40
KR: 	Do you think that the Madison community played a part of your decision to stay in Madison? 
KH: 	Not really. Actually, this is unrelated to LGBT things, but when I was in college, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that is very, very expensive health care-wise. And I had health care. It was all health care insurance that kept me here. And recently-- or after I bought a couch, let's just say, and decided I was settling here in Madison-- it has been officially named a disability, so you're not supposed to be able to be fired or not given a job because of having it. But until recently, I was very dependent on health insurance, and if I had moved somewhere else and they had required a physical examination, as they frequently do, they might not have hired me because of my condition. Very expensive condition. So I think, actually, health insurance probably helps people make career decisions more than has been accounted for. 
00:30:05
KR: 	Do think that there is a LGBT community in Madison, even if it's maybe not the reason that you decided to stay here? Is that a strong community? 
KH: 	Definitely. There is a community in Madison. And it's interesting. I mostly know the lesbian community in Madison. I know a little bit the gay community in Madison, because I used to work on the board of Be United, and I in Iraq did a lot with both lesbians and gay men. And one of the things that fascinates me is that lesbians and gay men have some things in common, but other things not at all in common, and we really don't understand each other very well.  And I used to be part of a book group made up of both gay men and lesbians, where one month we would read a gay male book and discuss it, and the next month, we would read a lesbian book and discuss it. And it's just interesting to find out what kinds of questions gay men have about lesbians, what kinds of questions lesbians have about gay men. And just to have a dialogue. And I found as a result of doing that I actually really prefer gay male literature than lesbian literature. So we don't have the book club anymore, but I still like to read gay male fiction, in particular. 
KR: 	Why do you prefer that over? 
KH: 	I just think the writing is edgier, and the lesbian fiction, a lot of it is really kind of boring. 
KR: 	What were some of the questions at the group that the people had about each other? 
KH: 	One of the questions, gay men didn't understand, how lesbians-- what was attractive to lesbians in another woman. That was one of the questions that came up one time. And one of the women said, you know, this is what you need to understand. Women don't view each other as body parts. It isn't such a physical thing, as it sounds like it is with men. And that was just a revelation. It's just interesting to hear that that's a question. Because what's attractive to gay men, in a woman-- not even just like a sexual attraction-- doesn't meet the same standards for what they're seeing with what lesbians find attractive. 
KR: 	What were some of the questions that the lesbians had about the gay men? 
KH: 	Questions about what camp is. I think that lesbians don't always understand or appreciate the role that camp plays in gay culture, and how that intersects with stereotyping. When is it a stereotype, when is it part of game male campy culture? What's the thing with Judy Garland, again? Why are gay man so fascinated with Cher? And not all of them are, but I've never understood. So it was just helpful to have gay men say why they really, traditionally have identified with the underdog, with someone who is very resilient, keeps trying, isn't appreciated. Judy Garland is kind of the epitome of that, in terms of someone who just kind of always has struggled in her personal life and kept trying. And there's actually one of the books we read that I found very interesting. It's called Culture Clash, by Michael Bronski. And it talks about gay male culture, and all the different parts of it, and how it became what it is. It's interesting to me, though, to see-- and I'm sure there are people who have studied this-- but the universality of gay and lesbian culture. Like, I can meet a gay man or a lesbian from some other place in the world, and I can tell that they're gay or lesbian. Not everybody, but there are certain distinctive characteristics that transcend national cultures and boundaries. And we tend to have a real-- there's a really strong sense of culture internationally, so that if I got a phone call from someone who told me that there was a Brazilian lesbian who needed a place to stay, I'd be much more likely to be open to that than if someone just called me and said, there's this Brazilian woman I know who-- it's just an odd kind of thing how gays and lesbians, in a kind of worldwide thing, will watch out for each other. And there are certain things we just immediately know we have in common, even if we don't have any obvious things in common. It's just very odd. And I don't know what that is. I can't quite put my finger on it. 
00:36:09
KH:	To bring it around to the work I do today with children's literature, I think gays and lesbians, just as I was doing with Winnie the Pooh as a three year old, we learned to read between the lines when we're really little, and we read between the lines in books, obviously, finding sort of a queer subtext in a lot of things we read, but also just in life in general. And just in terms of, you've probably heard about the concept "gaydar," and things like that. It really is just learning to read between the lines. And when I used to work at Madison Public Library, there were some children who stood out to me as probably gay or lesbian. And they were not teenagers yet. They would be kids who would be like 9, 10, 11. I would see them, if they were in a group of their peers, oftentimes they were kind of standing off to the side. Not excluded, but I would see them watching the kids in a way. Like they're trying to figure out-- it looked to me like they if they were obvious outsiders, but they were watching what people are doing to try to figure out what is it these kids are doing? How am I supposed to behave? How am I supposed to fit in? What are they doing? They just they just seem to know how to do all this stuff. And so, from that kind of observation, I think that a lot of children who recognize from an early age, before they start feeling a lot of sexual attraction, they feel different. And they watch things. And they are very observant. They notice nuance, and they are literally reading between the lines in everything they're doing. And that's such an important element of gay culture. There's so much symbolism. Things you know in old lesbian culture, and you still see it a little bit. When you first meet someone, there's a certain kind of eye contact that's sometimes called the long look, that is a way to identify, self-identify, find each other. Or I've heard gay men-- I don't know if they still do this-- but in the olden days in social settings, you would brush your hand against another man's hand, and if he didn't move his hand right away, that was a sign. And if he just jumped back, then, you know, oh, excuse me, excuse me. Then you knew. But anyway, I would see these kids at the library who I could identify with, because they just seemed like they were that's the way I felt when I was little. Just kind of on the outside, watching. Not necessarily wanting to be inside, but wanting to be able to blend in if I needed to. And Harriet The Spy, the book I mentioned earlier, there's a line in it that her governess tells her after her notebook's been discovered, secret notebook's been discovered by her friends, and she's been ostracized. Her governess tells her, sometimes you have to lie, but to yourself, you must always tell the truth. And I think that really is a survival lesson that gay kids have to learn. 
00:39:46
KH: 	Anyway, literature. I think I read a very strong queer subtext into Harry Potter. If you look at particularly the first volume of it where you've got a boy who's just 11 years old. Feels different. He doesn't belong within the family he lives in. And sure enough, he does find out when he's 11 there's this whole subculture coexisting. He's shown the ropes by this older man, Hagrid, who comes to pick him up. He finds this whole group of people who are like him, that aren't at all like the family, his birth family or family he came from. Literally he's living in a closet under the stairs. I mean, a come on. So I think this is a book that resonates with a lot of gay and lesbian readers. And I would think a lot of children who are feeling that way themselves immediately will identify with Harry Potter in that way. And thinking of the muggles that they're growing up with who just don't get it, and this sense of community that Harry finds when he goes to Hogwarts. I wonder if, for straight kids also, this will translate. If a gay kid can say to them, it's sort of like with Harry Potter, what it feels like when you just feel different, and then you find out there's this whole group of people like you, and that's where you belong. 
KR: 	It seems like that could be a topic for a lot of kids. Not just gay kids, but I think it's a common thing for many kids to feel like they don't fit in. 
KH: 	Right, right. And then, I think with gay kids, oftentimes, they feel like they don't fit in, but then at that same time, they're perhaps starting to get the message that there's something wrong with them. And that there's even maybe something bad with them, when they have other kids who are making fun, when they hear kids saying things like, that's so gay, or the kids start being called fag. I never had that experience in school, and I think girls have it a little bit easier than boys who stand out or are perceived as gay. But I've heard from someone who's done interviews with kids in school who are perceived as gay, that many of them say it starts as early as second grade that they get marked as different and teased. And particularly boys, who are viewed as effeminate. And they might not even be gay, but they're just effeminate. And that's something that kids pick up on early on and then ostracize them or bully them as a result. 
00:42:55 
KR: 	It's no surprise that we've been talking about books a lot. In your role as a librarian, and here as the director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center, let's talk a little bit about the role that the library does play for LGBT kids or adults. What's the role of the librarian and maybe how has that changed? 
KH: 	Well, here at the CCBC, we don't work directly with children or teens, but we work with librarians and teachers, and we're a resource for the state of Wisconsin. So it's not just Madison, but we go all around the state. And we receive pretty much everything published for children and teens in the US, and that allows us to observe trends. One of the trends we've been keeping track of is the publishing of books particularly about gay and lesbian teens, when it started in 1969. And then I remember I was on the staff here, I think in 1981, when Annie On My Mind was published. And it is widely regarded as the first young adult novel with gay or lesbian characters where the gay and lesbian characters weren't somehow punished for being gay or lesbian for that. There was always a car accident, or someone got raped, or someone got killed, or someone died. But in Annie On My Mind, it had a happy ending with these two girls who feel in love in high school and stayed together. And that was really quite a groundbreaking book. We also noted that we began to see-- and around that same time-- the development of picture books for children who are growing up in families where they had two dads or two moms. And that part of publishing has grown much more slowly. We know that there is a demand for both kinds of books, and we've always made an effort to try to find the best in the LGBT literature for children and teens so we can recommend them for library purchases. And one of the first nonfiction books about gays and lesbians was this book called A Different Drummer, by Elaine Landau, that we had in CCBC Choices in the mid-1980s. And I remember we were talking about to a group of librarians, and my colleague, Ginny Moore Kruse, who was the former director of CCBC, was talking about the book, and a woman in the audience got so angry that she jumped out of her chair and ran up the aisle saying, not for children, not for children! And Jenny just stood her ground and said, yes, this is for children. Children are hearing negative terms on the playground, and whether they are from gay or lesbian families, or from straight families, straight themselves, growing up to be gay or lesbian themselves, children need to be exposed to all kinds of information, all kinds of people, et cetera, et cetera. So today, I don't think anyone would jump up out of their chair and yell that, but I still see sometimes the same sort of resistance. For example, we had a book two years ago by David Walliams called The Boy In the Dress. And it was a really funny novel for kids and upper elementary school, sort of Roald Dahl-like, about a little boy in England who had a father who was a truck driver, and an older brother. A kind of rough and tumble family, and his mother had died. But this boy really loved to wear dresses. And he did it secretly. He loved Vogue magazine. He developed this friendship with an older girl who used to let him try on her dresses, and then she convinced him he should try to pass as a girl. And you kind of see the opposite of Rodney. So he does go out in public in a dress, and everyone thinks he's a girl. Then he goes to school in a dress, and she introduces him as a French exchange student, and nobody notices that it's this boy. And when I talk about this book, I can see people in audience. Some of them are kind of laughing, smiling. Others of them tense up, until I mentioned that this boy also, at school, he's a very, very good soccer player and he's on the soccer team. And then they relax. OK. Well, he can wear a dress, as long as he's still playing soccer. And so, it's more subtle, but you'll still see sometimes people have some discomfort with LGBT literature. But for the most part, I think people are beginning to be aware that there are people in their communities, or maybe even in their own families, who want these sorts of books, and they really are eager to have recommendations. Books that we think, especially for small public libraries-- they have very limited budgets-- which books of, now, you might have 50 LGBT titles a year, which are there 5 books of those 50 that are most highly recommended. So that's what we do here. And then, I've also been really active in ALA. The American Library Association, I should say. They have a relatively new list of best books by and about LGBT kids and teens and families called the Rainbow List. And I've served on that committee. And that's been an interesting process, to see the growth and development of the literature, and to see what's out there. And I always like doing work in ALA and having a chance to talk about books with people from other parts of the country. 
00:49:38
KH:	And then when I worked at Madison Public Library as a [UNINTELLIGIBLE] services librarian, I worked there for about 10 years, starting about 1989. And at that time, there weren't a lot picture books that featured two dads or two moms. This was just at the very beginning of what we call the lesbian baby boom, when a lot of lesbian couples were using artificial insemination, and having babies, and making new kinds of families. But there really weren't any books that showed two moms or two dads, or even one mom and one dad. There was always like a heterosexual mother, father in most picture books. So one of the things that we did at Madison Public was to create a list of books, the way I described it is from which gay and lesbian families wouldn't feel excluded. So they might be a story that is about a dad and his children. No mention of a mom. The father's very nurturing and doing all the things like giving the children their baths, and giving them dinner, and reading them a story, and all those kinds of things that are kind of rare, believe it or not, in the picture books, to see nurturing fathers. Or a book like Three Days On A River In A Red Canoe, by Vera Williams, which is about two women taking a camping trip with their two children. And although the narrator refers to one of the women as his Aunt Rosie, it's clear that the two women share a house, and the book had-- has, actually, still in print-- what I refer to as lesbian family values. And so of all of the picture books that have been published to date, this one is the most lesbian that I know of. And one that the lesbian families I worked with at Madison Public, it really resonated with them above all others. And then kind of going along with that, we would see sometimes there are challenges to books for LGBT material. There was a famous case against Daddy's Roommate years ago in-- oh, I'm not going to remember where it was. Should have looked that up. But one of my friends through ALA was the library director at the time where that occurred, and it was not a pretty fight. And then more recently, the Penguin book by Justin Richardson, And Tango Makes Three, has been, I think, the last few years the top of the most challenged books from the ALA. 
KR: 	Challenged by the community or-- 
KH: 	Parents. I mean, it's all around the country. I think sometimes there are organized groups that make less of books that they tell people should go and see if their public or school library has this book, and if so, to complain, because there shouldn't be gay penguins in a picture book for children. And the irony is it's based on a true story. There was really this male couple of penguins in the Central Park Zoo that were committed to each other, and paired, and I don't know. Penguins probably don't commit, but they were a pair. And when the zookeeper noticed that they were trying to hatch a rock, he took an egg. There was one other penguin pair that always laid two eggs, and they only ever could care for one, and so the other egg would always never hatch. So he just made the decision, well, let's see what happens if I give them an egg. And they in fact did hatch it and rear this baby chick that was called Tango. And it really shows it's really not a book about gay penguins. It really shows that either gender can parent, at least in the penguin world, and you don't have to have a male and a female to nurture a chick. You do have to have two, but you don't have to have a male and a female. So there's just been and uproar. I think probably because it came out at the same time as March Of The Penguins, and a lot of very conservative groups read all kinds of family values into that. And so, you didn't want people messing with their penguins. If they'd been ostriches, I'm not sure they would have cared so much. But for some reason, penguins became symbolic of Christian family values. It's kind of funny, because I don't think penguins care much either way. But having worked in a public library, I could see how a child would pull the book off the shelf. Oh, it's a cute little book about penguins. And then when they got it home, the parents may get a little surprise, because they had no idea what it was they were getting. And then, I think that is something that that situation can be really upsetting to a parent. I don't think they like feeling embarrassed or out of control, and the world is out of their control when they're in front of their own child. So it's one of the reasons we always recommend to parents that they take a look at, if they really care about what their child is reading, that they pre-screen the books and make sure that it's in keeping with the values they want to pass on to their child. 
00:56:03
KR: 	I want to ask you more about your work at the public library, but I want to follow up on something first. You mentioned that some books have lesbian family values. What do you mean by that? What are lesbian family values? 
KH: 	Well, just things I have I noticed over the years from working with lesbian families. And these are just kind of broad things. Not every lesbian family is going to fit into these values, but just what I've noticed. There is a real respect for cultural diversity. It's just a value, having things be multicultural. The second is a recognition that there are different kinds of families, and that families are made in different ways. Some through adoption. Some through alternative insemination. Some through two formerly married couples coming together. So that you have all kinds of joint custody and all of this type of thing. And another thing is-- sorry I'm stumbling on these-- Oh. That the child is allowed to be an individual and also very much encouraged to be independent. And as an example, in Three Days On A River In A Red Canoe, one of the characteristics that more than one lesbian mom pointed out to me how much they appreciated that the children were taking an active part in the work involved in camping. So you saw them actually helping to haul the canoe. You saw them contributing to the cooking of their vegetarian meals. And just the children being involved in that way and being expected to play a role in what they were doing. And that the children are raised to be independent and self-sufficient. And I think, actually, there was a recent study of children raised in lesbian families, and they found that they actually-- because sometimes you hear the argument that having a mother and father is the best for the child being raised, but they found that the children being raised by lesbian couples were doing just fine. And in fact, in some cases, were surpassing in terms of things like independence and self-sufficiency. And I think one other thing I would mention, anyone working with gay or lesbian families is to realize that nothing is really accidental in a gay or lesbian family. They take an incredible amount of planning just to create the family. There are no surprise babies, and the children are just very, very greatly loved and cherished. And I think because they're being raised by lesbian moms or gay dads that the parents are very aware that the child is their own little person, and they're not trying to make the child be a mini-me or push the child into roles that he or she doesn't want, because perhaps they experienced that themselves as children. So that's why I say there's a real value with the child being an individual person. 
01:00:10
KR: 	Thank you. If we could just go back, then, to when you were at the public library. Did you have any experiences of recommending the LGBT literature to kids or families? 
KH:	 I did. It was interesting, because some of the families that I worked with who had two moms or two dads, they would approach-- I was out and I was known in the community, so sometimes people would call me specifically, or they would come to the library when I was on duty, and they would approach me quietly. Ask about new books. And I knew that oftentimes that's what they were looking for. I would put things into their hands when I saw them come in. One of the complaints I frequently heard from gay and lesbian parents is they never saw their families in books or in any kind of public space. The assumption was always that every family had a mom and a dad, and-- sorry, my voice is starting to go. [COUGH] So there was a time when we were doing a special program at Madison Public for family reading month, and we wanted to do a bulletin board with photos of different Madison families reading together. They're reading the picture books aloud, or reading chapter books, or whatever kind of reading they did. So we had like the mayor and his family, and the fire chief and his family, and the police chief. It was just all these different notable Madison families in addition to a lot of the library regulars we knew. We just asked people to give us pictures of their family reading. Anybody could contribute a photo. So we just had this great, wonderful bulletin board up of Madison families reading. And I specifically asked two- it's one family with lesbian moms and one with gay dads who had been very, very vocal in their need for seeing themselves in books. Here's the opportunity. Give us a picture of yourself reading to your child. And they wouldn't They wouldn't. They wanted to see themselves in books, and families like them represented, but when it came down to actually putting their family up on display, they would not do that. So I kept having to call different families I know. And I did finally find a family, a really wonderful picture that we got from two moms who had two teenage kids. And they were all sitting around in their jammies, reading the New York Times on a Sunday morning. So we did have. Although one of the moms in this picture was so butch that I think most people thought she was a dad. But the gay and lesbian families in town who knew the family knew that this was a family with two moms. So it's not always easy. And then there was also a case where one of the mothers who was very, very, very intentional parenting on the part of these two lesbian moms, and she'd bring her daughter to the story hour I did, but she would always call me the night before to ask me if I was going to read any stories that had dads in them, because she wouldn't bring her daughter to a story hour where there was a story with the a dad in it. She just didn't want to break the news yet to her child that there was such a thing as fathers. It as kind of odd, but it was her choice, so I would tell her whether or not, and usually I didn't have a dad in the story, or I just didn't always have one. And so she would bring her daughter in those instances. And then, actually, it's very funny, because her daughter was in day care. And one of the day care teachers, with the best of intentions-- it's when Heather Has Two Mommies first came out-- decided to read Heather Has Two Mommies aloud to the kids. Because there was this little girl there who had two moms, and she's like a perfect story. I don't know if you've ever read the book, but the early edition of it, I don't know a three year old alive who would sit through that book, because it was too wordy and too adult centered. And I'm not sure who it was for. But it was the first of its kind. So she read it. Oh, my God. This lesbian mom was so angry, because her daughter had never realized her family was unusual until the day care worker read this book. So then she got obsessed with the concept of some kids have dads, so why don't I have a dad? And where's my dad? And just started asking all these questions. So I could totally see why the day care worker would think she was doing a good thing, but it really-- well, it probably shows how little she knew about these two moms who wanted to, at that point, really have an input on everything their daughter was seeing or hearing about. They wanted to be the ones who introduce things at certain times. And actually, this little girl, she grew up to be just an amazing adult. And you know, so they did something right. And she wasn't permanently scarred by Heather Has Two Mommies. But it was a little touch and go there for a while. So I think it's just really important whether a children's librarian is gay or lesbian, himself or herself, to talk to the people in your community and find out what their needs are, what works best for their families, and to be open and be approachable. I always felt it was really important to be visible as a lesbian to the families I worked with, because they would come to me with specific questions and help in locating books. And then, I don't know if I made a difference to kids or not. I didn't have any situation where I had a gay teen approach me, that I know of. I mean, I'm sure I had gay kids, gay teenagers, but none that just came up and said, I'm a gay kid. Usually it would be children of lesbians who would want LGBT literature of some sort, and felt very open about asking for it. So that's pretty much what I remember from my time at Madison Public. It's been a while. 
KR: 	I think on that note, we'll let your voice rest a little bit. But is there anything else before we end that you wanted to make sure that we talked about? 
KH: 	I think that's pretty much it. Did we cover everything on your list? 
KR: 	We have not. Not yet. OK. There was one more thing that we wanted to talk about it. 
01:08:17
KH: 	Yes. We have seen a great flowering of LGBT literature for children and teens in the last couple of decades, and particularly the last five years. This is 2010 right now. One area that there has been a huge gap is books featuring transgender characters. And there are a couple of ways it could be approached. In some cases, A child has a trans-parent, but oftentimes young children feel like they were born into the wrong body when they're really little. And if they have understanding parents, they can get through those first five years before they enter school usually pretty well. But once they enter school and they start to interact with institutions, there could be difficulties, and they can be sent to psychologists, and labeled as having gender dysfunction, whatever. And we used to frequently get questions from parents who had children that were in this situation. Young children. There is hardly anything for kids in that situation, and that's an area where it's such a common thing. And some kids change over time and some don't. Sometimes they change literally as they get older. But transgender literature for both young children and for teens is an area that really, really needs development and exploration. And one of the funniest and most wonderful reference interactions I ever had at Madison Public Library was back when we still had a card catalog, and you would learn to listen for the sounds of drawers being opened and closed very quickly, because you knew that meant someone was frustrated, especially a kid. And so I was there one evening, and no one else was in the library, and I saw this boy come into the library. He was probably about 11, and he was opening the drawers of the card catalog and then slamming them shut. And opening them and slamming them shut. So I went over to him, and I said, you know, do you need some help finding something? And he said no! I'm just looking for books about Hell and death and war and neat stuff like that. And I said-- oh no, first he said, do you have any books about Hell? That's how he said it. And I said, Hell. Well, boy, I don't know if anyone has written a book about Hell for kids. I don't think it'll be the subject term, "Hell," but we can look it up and see. And so I went through the whole reference patter thing. Tried alternative subject headings. And I said, you know, it doesn't look like we have a complete book about Hell, but is there some aspect of Hell that especially interests you? Because maybe we could find something in an adult book or find something in another book, a little piece of something about Hell. And I said, what aspect of Hell are you especially interested in? And he said, I'm just looking for anything on Hell, death war, neat stuff like that. And I said, well, war and death, yeah, we have a lot of books on that in the children's area. Is there any aspect of death or war that you're interested in? And he said, well, let's take war. And I said OK. General war? Do you want books about weapons? Do you want books about a specific war? And he said, well, I'm interested in Scottish warfare. And I said, OK. Any particular era? And he said, well, particularly 16th century Scottish warfare, or it could be up to the 18th century. But it has to be nonfiction. And so I looked in the card catalog. We had one book on Scottish warfare. And so I took him over to the nonfiction and pulled it off the shelf. He said, I've already read that one. And I said, well, that's the only thing we have here, and it's really too bad that you will only read nonfiction, because I can think of a fiction book about Scottish warfare from the 17th century that I think you would like. But, you know, it's fiction. And he said, well, if it's over 300 pages, I'll take it. And so I knew that it wasn't over 300 pages. I had a specific in mind by British author named Rosemary Sutcliff, but I knew that it was probably only like 190 pages. But I went over to shelf. Sure enough, it was there. It was a book called Bonnie Dundee. And I said, oh well, you know, it doesn't have 300 pages, but this is a British book and the print is really small. And if they'd made it as big as it is in American books, this would be over 300 pages. And he said, I love small print, I love small print. And when I pulled it off the shelf and as soon as he saw it, he wanted that book. And it showed a picture of-- you probably are guessing this-- a man in a kilt. And it turned out that what he was interested in was cross dressing, not Scottish warfare. But he had found the socially acceptable form of men wearing skirts. And he told me he had a kilt his grandmother had bought him because he started playing bagpipes and he was in a bag pipe band, I guess. I don't know, brigade. Whatever bag pipers are in. And he started telling me how he wished he could wear a skirt every day, wished he could wear his kilt to school, and how much freer he felt in a kilt. And so here is this little boy who had come in kind of barking out about wanting books about Hell. What he was really interested in was cross dressing. And when he was leaving a library, he said to me my brother makes fun of me because of my kilt, but I could tell you something about my brother that would embarrass him if he knew that you knew it. And I said, well, you better not tell me. But before I could stop him, he said, he sings with the Madison boy choir. So I knew a secret about his brother and a secret about him, apparently. And I never saw that boy again. But I think, because I had said, I never really have any interaction with LGBT kids. Actually, I think this boy, I would love to know what became of him. It's one of the frustrations with working in a public library that you don't always know where kids end up or what happens to them. But I would love to know what became this boy. And maybe he's a world class bag piper. Maybe he's wearing skirts somewhere. I wasn't sure if he's a cross dresser or transgender, but he certainly had already, at age 11, gotten the message that he wasn't going to find a book about cross dressing. And when he came in, he was angry. That's why he was asking for a book about Hell. He was trying to be this little tough guy, and he was angry. And I hope that he was able to find, as he got older, to find the information that he was looking for. I'm sorry. My voice is totally going now, so I think that's got end it for this time. But I had thought about it when your question that had spurred it, working with kids at the library, and I'd forgotten about him until just now, when thinking about transgender literature 
KR: 	OK, thanks. We'll end right there. 
KH: OK.