UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #945
YEADON, JAMES

Yeadon, James (1949- )
Undergraduate (1969-71), graduate student (1972-75), Madison City Council Alderperson (1976-79), the fourth openly gay elected official in the country.
						
Interviewed:	April 5,2009 (1 session)	
Length: 	95 minutes 
Interviewer: 	Questions from audience at talk on campus
Index by: 	Scott Seyforth
Series: 	Madison’s LGBT Community, 1960s-present

00:00:00 Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction
Interviewer:	So we're just thrilled to have Jim Yeadon with us today. Jim was part of the founding of the gay liberation movement here in Madison. He was here, and then he was a member of the first out gay group, gay organization, in Madison called The Madison Alliance for Homosexual Equality in 1969. Jim went on-- 
JY:	 What a dumb name that was. 
IN:	 But things got better as we went along. 
JY:	 Yeah, it got better. Things got better. 
Interviewer:	He was involved in their the Gay and Lesbian Grad Student Association. 
JY:	 No, no, no, Gay Law Student Association. 
Interviewer:	Gay Law Student Association, which is one of the first gay student groups on campus. It is through his work-- Sarah, can we shut those doors? 
Sarah: Yeah, sure. 
Interviewer:	 Through his work in law school, he helped lay some of the foundation for the Madison anti-discrimination policies, which were enacted in 1955. 
JY:	 '55? 
Interviewer:	 '75, I am not tracking today at all Jim, sorry. 

JY:	 I was six. You guys weren't even born. Maybe you were. 
Interviewer:	 You were a babysitter. 
JY:	 So they had the first anti-discrimination ordinance in Madison, which gave protection for gays and lesbians in public accommodations and employment in 1975, a bill that wasn't passed in New York-- well it wasn't passed in San Francisco until '78-- in New York City until '86, in Chicago until '87. And we passed it in '75. Jim was a member of the City Council, appointed to the City Council in 1976, and came out after he was appointed. I'll let him tell the story, but then ran and was elected for City Council as an out gay City Council member in 1977. The fourth openly gay elected official in the country, the fifth was Harvey Milk. And then continued to ride out the decade of the '70s on the City Council. And again, then Wisconsin went on to become the state that had the first statewide gay rights ordinance in 1982. So we don't tell this history very much. We don't tell the history of gay liberation as what was happening in the Midwest. We tend to tell it as a coastal phenonema, but clearly in the Midwest, there was a lot that was happening that was preceding what was happening in the coasts. And Jim was a really integral part of that for over a decade, and we're thrilled to have him with us. Won't you please help welcome to [UNINTELLIGIBLE], Jim Yeadon. : Sarah says I'm supposed to inspire you, you young people. Not you, you're already inspired. 
Interviewer:	 I'm already inspired. 
JY:	 To get out there and get active and things, and hopefully some of the things I say can help you do that, if you're not already doing it. I can't really tell you what-- I have no idea what's going on with people your age. I just don't have a clue. I didn't have a clue what I was your age so it's harder for me to think what's going on your lives. 
00:03:23 
JY:	Things have really changed. To the extent that I've had any part of that change, I'm very proud of myself. And I'm very proud of the Elders, who have been beacons in the gay community for years, because their son is gay. They have been active in everything. And it's people like them that I look up to. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys. I see you at all the parades every year. Not every year, but you are there almost every year, aren't you, in the gay right parades. I think I should take a step back and tell you what it was like when I grew up, because that'll give you an idea of how far we've come. I was born in 1949 in a little town called Ontonagon, Michigan, which is the middle of nowhere. I don't know anyone from upper Michigan ever been there, beautiful country, very backwards, like about 20 years behind everything. I don't think there's any gay rights ordinances in upper Michigan right now, probably won't be for another 20 years. But when I was growing up, we moved around a lot. I never lived in the same house more than three years in my entire life. We'd always move in the middle of a semester, like middle of third grade, we'd move to some other town or city. Middle of ninth grade, we moved to Wisconsin. Just kept going around, I never had a chance to make many friends. I lived in this little town called Albert, which Henry Ford built in the middle of the woods. Henry Ford was very active in the UP. He went up there, and that's where he recreated. Made all his money down in Detroit, went up there, and he bought a lot of land. He built this little model town. Then he donated it to the university. And my father was working for the university so I lived there for years, but it was really kind of depressing and lonely. And I don't know how many times I thought of just committing suicide, because I knew I was different. I knew I didn't fit in. I didn't know why, didn't quite know why. There was no literature to tell me-- there was no one to tell me what's going on. I guess we're going to let somebody in. 
Interviewer:	 While you're waiting, was your dad changing jobs or what was-- 
JY:	 Well he was an inventor. And when I was in kindergarten, we were living on the Michigan Tech campus in Houghton. And he had invented a machine to take the bark off of logs, because his father was a logger and spent 60 years logging in the woods. And my father used to work for him in the summers, cutting logs and hauling them around and stuff. And the way they used to debark logs is that they'd take this long pole with a little hook on the end, and they'd just scrape it off basically. And he thought there should be a better way of doing that, so he invented a machine called the Debarker, which used pneumatic arms and stuff. And you throw the log in and it shaves all the bark off. And poof, it's ready for making into Charmin toilet paper. Because you gotta take the bark off, or you have very scratchy toilet paper. So anyway he moved around a lot, and we ended up moving to Manitowoc, because that's where they started building the machines. But that's a later story. Anyway, I was trying to tell you about growing up in Upper Michigan in the '50s, very, very lonely for a gay guy. There were probably other people. I'm sure there were but I didn't know who they are. I remember reading one of the early books. Was it the Bond book maybe in the early 60s, one of the James Bond books. And there was some reference to one of their other spies who was a homosexual, and you could tell because he had a third nipple. I sat there looking to see if I had another nipple. This is the first reference I ever heard that there was other gay people out there. So I was sure we all had three nipples, and that's how you told us apart. 
Interviewer:	 How old were you? 
JY:	 Oh I don't know, 12. But the kind of literature you'd read that had anything to do with gays was father comes home, finds son in bed with sailor, shoots sailor, shoots son, shoots self, end of story, real happy, up things, you know. It doesn't make you feel very good about yourself when that's the only kind of crap you hear. And I think I seriously thought about suicide so many times because I was just all alone. And I didn't think I'd ever be happy. I didn't have any friends. The little town I lived in, there was no one my age even. So it was just a very sad lonely time. I think that's what made be vow to be open and honest about myself when I finally came out. I'm going to be myself. I don't want other kids to go through that loneliness, where they think they're the only gay person in the entire world. And that's just so wrong, because so many people didn't make it through that. Or they figured they had to grow up and get married, and then they'd be cheating on their wives and having sex in the weigh stations, and the bus stops, and that sort of thing. And that's their life. They got their sex on the side. And then they pretended to be a happily married couple and raised kids and stuff. I have a friend now who's 78. He's still married and his kids are all grown up. And his wife pretends she doesn't know he's gay. But when he's with me, we talk about cute-looking guys and stuff so. But that's the kind of life that was going on. It wasn't very friendly to the gay people, especially to someone in the middle of nowhere. We moved to Manitowoc when I was in middle of ninth grade. And of course, moving into a new school in a new state in the middle of ninth grade is not something I'd recommend. It's not great. Because everyone, by that time, in the middle of ninth grade, they're all got their clicks going. And here's this new person showing up, and just not a very-- 
Interviewer:	 Gay or straight, it's bad. 
JY:	 Pardon. 
Interviewer:	 Gay or straight-- 
JY:	 Gay or straight, yes, but if you think you're the only oddball, then I think it's kind of worse. I think, but what do I know. Everyone feels lonely, I think when they're a teenager. People always feel they're the only one of who they are, which is kind of interesting nowadays if I could jump ahead to present day. No matter how strange you think you are, you can find someone just like you on the internet. You can join a group of people like you with like interests. It's just such a fascinating phenomenon, something that should be studied in social school, but I'm not going to worry about it. Anyway, then growing up in Manitowoc I graduated from Lincoln High School in 1967, still a virgin, still thinking I was the only gay person in the entire world. Although, you know, in high school, there were always these rumors about the French teacher, Messieur Le Budd. People [UNINTELLIGIBLE] called Pinky Le Budd. Turns out later he was gay, but there's always those that sort of like, is he or isn't he, kind of stuff. But still, there's an underground gay community in Manatawoc, but I didn't know who they were. Eventually, I ran across some of them and made some friends. But anyway, in 1969, I came out, what I call, the hard way. I finally made my first real true friend. His name was Steve, and I just fell in love with him. I just wanted to be with him. I didn't want to have sex with him. I wanted to be with him. I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I was hoping we'd go out in the woods and be loggers or something. And if the sex came, that'd be great. But I just wanted to be with Steve. 1969, I went to two years of the extension in Manatawoc, the UW extension there. One year it was UW Green Bay Manitowoc County campus, which is easy to say. And the other year, it something else, I don't know. We called it stench. So I stuck in Manitowoc for an extra two years after graduating and that was until 1969. 
 00:11:47 
JY:	In 1969, I wrote my friend Steve a letter explaining how I felt about him. He had gone off to school at Michigan Tech, of all places, campus I went to kindergarten in, and explained how I felt about him. And he freaked out, and sent that to his girlfriend, who sent it to her girlfriend, who gave it to my girlfriend at the time. So everybody had read this letter, knew my feelings about Steve, but nobody told me. So here I was coming out to the entire little community I lived in, but I didn't know it. Anyway, then I got to move to-- I drove to Madison once, drove a friend down to Madison-- 
Interviewer: You didn't get a response-- 
Interviewer: Did Steve-- 
Interviewer: --from him by the way? 
JY:	 No, he never really responded very well to it. He was scared, I don't know. Last I heard, he was married and living on the east coast somewhere, so that was a long time ago. Anyway, drove to Madison, drove halfway around the square, was just so in awe with the place. I'd never been here before. I got two tickets. I went through two red lights driving around the square going, wow. Cops stopped me, gave two tickets for two red lights. I was like, wow really, there were red lights. I didn't see it. I still fell in love with Madison because it's just, this place, this city is just such a special place. It really is. There was some pretty tense times in the '60s, in the late 60s and early 70s with the anti-war movement, and the riots, and the cops, and nasty things going on. But I just fell in love with the city. I know this is a place I can be. So I moved here. I had been going to be an architect, so I was taking classes at the extension of Manatawoc, 18 credits of calculus, 18 credits of physics, 6 credits of engineering mechanics. God, engineers are boring. Sorry, no offense to any engineers here. The engineering class I was with was like, oh my god, what's wrong with these people. Anyway, the only school for architecture at the time was in Minnesota, and they had reciprocity. So I figured I'd be moving to Minnesota and going to college there. But I fell in love with Madison, said no, this is where I'm coming. I'm coming here. So I came here as a junior and had to switch majors because there was no architecture school and found out all these requirements for letters and science. And the point at the time was you were supposed to graduate within four years. If you can't do that, there's something wrong with you. That's kind of the idea of college. Do your four years here and then you go somewhere, off to your life. You don't really stay in Madison. That was the atmosphere of it all. So I figured I had two years to finish, to get a degree in something. And I was looking through the letters and science books. And I realized I had all these credits of language, which I had never [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. I was going to be architect. I didn't need language. And I ran across Hindi, seven credits a semester. And that's how I ended up with a degree in Indian Studies. And that's where I know Joe Elder from. And I'm so surprised to see him walk in the door today, because I was expecting a bunch of young people. And now it's nice to see someone who was a mentor to me. 
Interviewer:	 That's right. 
JY:	 So that's cool Anyway, all that's aside. When I got done, I met Randy. I met Randy at a-- it's one of those cute meets. I met him at a VD clinic. Meet your lover at a VD clinic. Anyway, we were both working there. And we met one day. It was called the Blue Bus. And at the time, it was on State Street. They had moved out of the bus. There actually was a blue bus, moved out of the bus. They moved on to State Street above Oriental Specialty. I don't even know if that's still there anymore. I think it might be. But they moved up there. I was volunteering. I went there one night, and Randy showed up. Randy had just moved here from Colorado, and he was also volunteering. And there's a huge snowstorm, and there weren't any customers, any people coming in because of the snowstorm. So there was the only four of us working, and we decided to play cards. And we're sitting there playing hearts. And I kept trying to make him win. And he kept trying to make me win, it turns out. And we realized we were like this. He moved back to Colorado because he couldn't stand Wisconsin. He didn't like it. It was so gray here. Colorado is sunny all the time. Sorry if all this is boring you. I'm telling you where I'm coming from on this. He moved back to Colorado, and we corresponded while I was finishing up law school. I moved out there to live with him. 
00:17:02 
JY:	And while I was in law school-- this is after I'd done law school , but while I was in law school, I met some great people, who I was going to school with. We formed the Gay Law Students Association. And he likes to give me credit for passing the ordinance, but that was some other people feel in the Gay Law Student Association, some wonderful women whose names I'm just blocking on right now. But they were the main people who worked on it, and they got the city to adopt it. And we did some other things. There was a lot of backlash going on as ordinances were getting passed in various cities. Miami passed an anti-discrimination ordinance. And then the opposition started coming out of the woodwork. Anita Bryant, I don't know if you know who she is. But she was the orange juice queen, a religious singer. She sings, beautiful voice. She had a great voice. She sang Christian music, as it were. And then she decided that this was wrong. It was against the Bible. And homosexuality is wrong. So she started a campaign. And in Miami, they reversed the ordinance and got enough people to vote to get the ordinance repealed. So that was going on. We had our own version of that here, and I'll tell you about that later. But the Gay Law Student Association worked to make sure that our ordinance couldn't get repealed. So we did a lot of legal research. And it turns out you can enact legislation via referendum in Wisconsin. But you can't repeal legislation by referendum. So they couldn't repeal our ordinance by vote. But we did the groundwork for that to make sure that that couldn't happen. So that was excellent. Anyway, I got done with law school. 
Interviewer:	 What was the climate like in the law school [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] and did you get much out of it? 
JY:	 I stayed away from the law school as much as I could. Because it was a bunch of lawyers. Sorry to diss your law students, bunch of people I didn't want to spend a lot of time with. I worked my way through law school in the Rathskeller. I worked there for four years, one year before law school, and then three years during law school. And that's where I spent all my time. 

Interviewer:	 What led you to decide to go to law school, if you didn't like lawyers? 
JY:	 Well, I had this degree in Indian Studies. 
Interviewer:	 Yeah, which is great. 
JY:	 It's a great degree, and I really appreciate it. And I was actually all set to go in the Peace Corps to India, because that was a way of getting to India, if I wanted to go to India. They sent me to a dentist because they want to make sure you're healthy because there's no dentists out there, for one thing, no dentists in the middle of places they send you. And it turned out I had some gum problems. They had me all set up to go to India, and then they said you can't go, because you're going to have to have some gum surgery so we can't send you to India. And actually that turned out to be really good. 
Interviewer:	 They do have dentists in India. 
JY:	 Well I would have been on the border Bangladesh during the war. 
Interviewer:	 Oh, not cool. 
JY:	 So I was really glad I didn't go. Look up Bangladesh some time, nasty business that. Anyway-- 
Interviewer:	 Yeah, the Peace Corps was terminated as a result of that war. 
JY:	 Was it? 
Interviewer:	 Yeah, you would not have stayed out there. 
JY:	 Oh OK, but I was within like ten miles of the border. They had the place all picked out where I was going, so was glad I didn't go. Anyway I ended up going to law school-- well, now, what do I do, took a year off, graduated in '71, what do I do? So I thought, well, I could try and get into law school. So I tried, and I got in. I never wanted to be a lawyer but I figured there's lots of directions you can go from, get that law degree. You can do anything you want basically. So politics, which I never really thought of either, fell into that by accident which I was going to explain in a minute. But all kinds of opportunities open if you have a law degree. So I applied, got in. I took the LSATs. If anyone is thinking about going to law school, there's a practice book. Probably there's classes now. I'm sure there's different ways to do it. I took the practice LSATs three times, and every time, I did about 100 points better. I think they're not even on the hundreds scales anymore. They're on some other scale. But I got better and better at it, taking the test, because that's really what they're testing. Can you take the test? And so eventually, when I took it, I got a 605 out of 700. And that was enough to get in because I was in-state. And my wonderful degree in Indian Studies wasn't probably going to pay off very well unless I wanted to replace Joe Elder as a professor here at the university. So anyway, that's why I went to law school, met some people, Gay Law Students Association. We worked on the ordinance. We worked out keeping Anita Bryant's type from repealing our ordinance, got done with law school, moved to Colorado to live with Randy. And it turns out we couldn't live together. I love the man dearly. I still email him like two or three times a week. We're still really close. But we know we can't live together. This was the person-- you ever get this thing in your life. You're going to meet someone that's going to be the love of your life. And you're gonna be happy the rest of your life with this one person. Well I met that person. Guess what, we can't live together. We can still be friends, and we can still love each other. We can't live together. 
00:22:53 
JY:	So I moved back to Madison after six months. So that was 1975. And I moved in-- I had a group of friends I knew from the Rathskeller. And Lisa Wennenburg's mother had a house on Gilman Street, and I moved in there with Lisa and some other friends. And Lisa's mother was on the City Council for the next district over, District 4. And an opening came up for District 8, which is where I lived on Gilman Street. And at that time, it was Langdon Street, State Street, and the dorms up to Kronshage, I think, so those dorms over there but not these, Elizabeth Waters, the ones around Tripp Commons. Those ones over there. They were all in the 8th District. And the person who had been on the City Council that retired-- he retired so he could go to law school, but he was going to go to law school in Milwaukee. So there were six months left on the term, and the City Council was taking applications. And anyone who lived in the district could apply. So Lisa's mother talked me into applying. And I filled out the form. And she, of course, knew I was gay, and a handful of people on the Council knew I was gay. How they did it, and this is the last time they ever did that. They voted. They had to elect someone. Everyone got to present. It was one night, one very long night. Everyone got up to do their presentation of themselves and why they should have been-- oh I forgot, there was a step. After I came back, I had gotten appointed to the Equal Opportunities Commission because they had this gay rights ordinance, and they wanted a gay person on the Commission. And I was available. I was just done with law school, didn't really have a lot going on, I thought I'd open my private practice. So I got appointed to that. So I was on the EOC when the Council thing came up. 
Interviewer:	 Who was the Governor at that time? 
JY:	 Governor? 
Interviewer:	 Was it Tony Earl? 
JY:	 Lucy? Before Earl, or was it Earl? 
Interviewer:	 Lucy probably. 
JY:	 Lucy, or was it Knowles? No, I don't know. I don't know It all blurs together. But I remember that night because I had also been in the middle of a two day federal trial. I was defending Ben Masel. I don't know if you ever heard of him. He's a local radical. He had been charged with a federal offense of assaulting a member of Congress. Because during the election, '72 I think, was it '76, must have been '76, Scoop Jackson was running for President, the Republican Party, and he showed up at the airport to shake hands. And Ben spit on him. And there's this award-winning photograph of Ben spitting and the Senator with spit all over his face. And some guy from the State Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for that picture. And that was the end of Scoop Jackson's career too. Once you're spit on, things go from bad to worse. So I was defending Ben. I had Ben's lawyer right up to the trial. But I hadn't done a federal trial, much less a federal criminal trial before. So Mark Frankel, who ended up being a circuit court judge, who had been my legal writing professor at law school. He was my way writing teacher, wasn't really a full professor. But anyway, he did the trial, and I was second chair of the trial. So we do this trial all day. And that night we went to the City Council meeting. And the thing took like six hours because everyone got to speak. And then they had the first vote. There were like 13 people applied. And then they'd have another vote. And then they knocked off the bottom two. Then they had another one. They kept voting until it was down to like two people. And I was one of the last two there. And the City Council there was-- I'm trying to remember the exact number but I would say four or five of them knew I was gay and the rest had no idea who I was really. But I was sort of the compromise character, because there was this guy lots of the right-wingers on the City Council thought was too far left. And then there was a bunch of other people, some people, who were just just plain crazy. One guy applied. He gets up. It's wonderful. It was just wonderful. He gets up there. this old codger, always at the City Council meetings. And he points at Michael Langer, who was a landlord in town and kind of a sleazeball. And he calls him. There's Michael Langer, points right at him. He says he shoots pigeons in the backyard. He strangles squirrels. He rapes women. That was his speech for getting on to City Council so. 
Interviewer:	 Should be a Law and Order guy. 
JY:	That's all he did is rant about Michael Langer. I'm laughing my ass off because I know half of it's probably true. This guy's really kind of creepy. There were women who rented from him that said they thought he was peeking in their windows of their bedrooms and stuff. Sorry, Michael. He's out there somewhere still. But anyway, they finally came down to two people, and I won it on the last ballot, and my sort of back end way of getting in politics. And the next day, I wanted to be honest. I did an interview with the Daily Cardinal. I said two things are important to me. I'm gay and I'm a vegetarian. And I'm not trying to proselytize. I don't want everybody to be gay or be a vegetarian, just telling you who I am. And then everybody knew. 
00:29:14
JY:	And then I had to run for election six months later. And that was the fun part. There were four or five people running, and there was a runoff. You have to narrow it down to two after the primary. And I was running against this guy named Rob Eska, who was a male cheerleader for the UW. And at that time, male cheerleaders were kind of looked at suspiciously. Because there weren't make cheerleaders really. There was like two or three of them. So people were kind of suspicious of him. But they knew I was gay. And I had to go to all the dorms and all the frat houses. And I got good receptions at the co-ops because I was living in the co-op at the time. I had good reception from them. 
Interviewer:	 Which co-op? 
JY:	 I lived in Nottingham then. But I had been living in Stone Manor before that, which is named something else now. Anyway, one of my favorite stories, and I told that to the person who just interviewed me for the paper. I go into this one frat. And they're having dinner, and everyone's sitting around, and the person who had invited me was the head of the fraternity. What do they call them? I don't know. Anyway, the head honcho of the fraternity. So he takes his spoon and hits it up against the glass. "All right, listen up everybody, listen up." And then he introduced me and I gave a little spiel about what I was running, and what I stood for, and what I believed in. And I didn't mention being gay. It's not a secret. And then one of the guys stands up and goes, uh Jim, yeah, I have a question, OK, there's a rumor going around that you're gay. I go, yeah, that's not a secret. The secret is I'm a Packers fan because the Packers were terrible then. I mean nobody watched them. The Packers were just terrible. And they all laughed at that so I broke the ice with them. But going to the rest of the dorms was a very interesting experience. This district, there's one really good thing about representing it. No matter how many people you make angry, they change. Every year, everybody changes. They all move away. They tell you this about politics. No matter what decisions you make. And you always have to come down, and you have to vote yes or no on something. You have to make a decision. And every decision you make, a third of the people are going yay. The other third are going, ahh, what are you doing, you stupid jerk. The other third don't give a crap. Now you make a new decision, and you've got a different third of the people upset, and a different third happy, and a different third not caring. And so it's really hard to stay in politics and not piss people off at some point. Unless you're really just vanilla and don't do anything, which is useless, as far politics goes. Anyway, I filled out most of my term. I got elected. It was a close vote. I actually lost the districts in thirds, and I lost this third by a couple hundred votes. And that's because I, well, at the time, it was a lot of students like you who never met a gay person in their entire life. I gotta tell you. I had some wonderful people who ended up-- straight people worked on my campaign and lived in these dorms, who had never actually met a gay person. They had no idea that there were such a thing. And they met me. They liked me. They helped me on my campaign. And every once in awhile, I still see one of them, and they'll go, Jeff, thank you very much. That was really eye-opening. I really enjoyed working for you. And I'd go talk to people, and they'd go but he's gay. And I'd go I don't care. You're electing him for what he votes for, not who he sleeps with, that kind of attitude. So I was really grateful for that. But I won my two years, and there wasn't a quota. I never had a gay agenda. I just wanted to be me and be honest. And really there's so many things going on in politics. You just do. You do what comes up. My big fight was over muskrat hunting, Arby's, when they tried to move on to State Street. There were all kinds of things to fight about. You know, the ordinance was there. And Anita Bryant and her friends couldn't touch it. 

00:34:10 
JY:	I gotta tell you about our local Reverend Dillenbaugh, probably never heard of him. Maybe you do. You probably recognize the name from the papers. He was this sleazeball preacher who moved up from Illinois or Indiana, opened up a little church on the north side. And he was trying to make a name for himself. So he was starting this whole movement to get the gay ordinance repealed. And that was his schtick. And he's right out of central casting. It was just so beautiful. It's like, you couldn't come up with a better creepy person to be a preacher and doing this crap. I remember, he got a petition that he sent to the City Council saying that we should withdraw the ordinance, the City Council. And the first time something like that comes in, you refer it to the Equal Opportunities Commission. And then it comes back to the Council with a recommendation from the Commission. And of course their recommendation was, get out of here. This ordinance is working fine. Stop it. But that night, when the City Council was going to talk about it, Dillenbaugh shows up. And the Council chambers, I don't if anyone's ever been there, maybe for a traffic ticket, or something. But that's where you go. And there's the big thing where the mayor sits. There's a wall behind him, and there's a little vestibule behind that where the front doors are. And I was going out to get a drink water, or the bathroom, or something. And I walk into the vestibule, and there's Dillenbaugh with two goons, a goon on either side of him, big guys in suits. And I go up to him. I go, "Hi, Reverend Dillenbaugh. I'm Jim Yeadon." And I stuck my hand out. And the guys on either side of him went like this at the same into their coats. And I'm going these guys are armed, jeez. It was right out of a movie. And he goes "I know who you are." I went "OK, well, good to have you here." That was kind of freaky. It was something that should have been captured on film. I just loved it. But when something's in front of the City Council, people talk about it. And then you do a vote basically. So there was a public hearing. And Dillenbaugh spoke. And a lot of people spoke. That took a couple hours. At the end of it, they were going to call for a roll call. And I just looked around, and I said to the mayor, I said "move to place on file," which means thank you very much. We'll just put it in a file. And the mayor said "Second?" If somebody seconds, he said "all in favor?" "Ay, opposed, one no, OK, done." Paul Soglin was the mayor. He was so wonderful. He handled it so well. He was just like OK, done. And there was never a roll call on it. Then the one person who was more conservative on the Council hadn't been there the night got it brought back up the next time because he hadn't been there. We revoted on it. But it was not a problem, the ordinance. 
Interviewer:	 Was Dillenbaugh there the second time? 
Interviewer:	 Dillenbaugh was not there the second time. And the move to file means that it doesn't have-- 
JY:	 Yeah, thank you very much. We'll put it in the file. But the whole City Council is like, oh sure, OK, let's not even vote on this. Let's just put it on file. I was so high that night just by the way they-- it was like hey, these are my cronies. There was another real conservative person on the Council. Her name was Jean something. I'm trying to remember it now. It's been a long time . And her pastor was another pastor who sort of had Dillenbaugh's agenda but wasn't an evil person. He just truly believed in the Bible. And there shouldn't be gays. They shouldn't be doing what they're-- 
Interviewer:	 Was it Richard Pritchard? 
JY:	 Pritchard, Richard Pritchard, Richard Pritchard, I had respect for Pritchard because he wasn't-- 
Sarah:	 I have none. 
JY:	 Well I had some. 
Sarah:	 I've been fighting with all these years. 
JY:	 Oh OK, yeah Richard Pritchard-- 
Interviewer:	 He still had racial issues. 
JY:	 Yes, yes, yes, but at least I felt he was coming honestly, where Dillenbaugh was just doing it to get publicity. I'm going to follow up on Dillenbaugh in a second. Anyway, Jean arranged a meeting when this is going on between me, and Pritchard, and her, and just the three of us in a room. And we talked about the whole ordinance and stuff like that. And at the end it, Pritchard was of course not changed at all. And Jean just looked and said "I can't stand with you on this one, no, sorry." That also felt really good. Here's a one of the most conservative people in the city of Madison on the City Council, and she was like that's bullshit. I'm not going with that. Anyway, Dillenbaugh eventually oh, what did he do? He beat a kid, something. He spanked a kid, wasn't his kid. It was some kid that was in his congregation. And that trial made papers. Here's a picture that got in the paper of a kid crying on the stand, this little eight-year old boy just balling on the stand. That was the end of Dillenbaugh. He sort of got run out of the town on a rail after that. That was a good thing that happened. So that was our own version of Anita Bryant. 
00:40:34 
JY:	See, what else happened? I made some notes, and I want to make sure I mentioned everything that happened. Oh yeah, I got in the paper in various places because I was openly gay. I was the first one in Wisconsin that was openly gay, first elected official. So that made the papers. And it got really-- pardon. 
Sarah:	 What about Dick Wagner? 
JY:	 Dick Wagner was long after me. 
Sarah:	 Long after you. 
JY:	 Yes, although he was a more prominent person because he was the head of the County Board for a while and stuff like that. Anyway, I used to get some strange mail from people, some really lonely, lonely people thinking they were the only gay person in Iowa or wherever, would write me letters. I get those really heartbreaking kind of things, along with death threats. I kept a file in the City Council for a while. It just said threats on life. When one came in, I'd just say oh stick that in there, in case anything ever happens to me. 
Interviewer:	 How many of them were identifiable, addresses, names? 
JY:	 The ones that were identifiable were not direct threats, more like indirect threats. Like the head of the CC Riders sent me a postcard saying he had donated blood in my name in case I ever needed it. That was a horrible motorcycle group. That was more about political differences than gay things. That one I actually went to the police with just in case something did happen to me. I wanted a record that that was out there. This guy donated blood in my name in case I ever needed it. And then as you all know Harvey Milk got shot. That was, I think, on a Monday and the Tuesday night was the City Council. Maybe he got shot Monday, and Tuesday, it was on the news. That was kind of disturbing. Well I kept thinking that could have been me. I didn't have the notoriety he did, maybe. It was a bigger city. But it certainly could have been me. There are enough-- nowadays I'd take those death threats a little more seriously. But back then I didn't really take them very seriously. I said, oh I'll stick them in a file. But when Harvey got shot, that was kind of devastating. And how many have seen the movie Milk? How many here? I have not seen it yet. I've been waiting until it came out on DVD, so I could watch it in the privacy of my home, because I think it's going to be very personal for me. So I don't want to be in a public place when I see it. I just ordered it yesterday along with Slumdog Millionaire. I figured that those were the two big movies to get. So I'll let you know. Is it in the movie? Did they talk about the gay riots after Dan White was acquitted? Dan White was a guy, for those who haven't seen the movie. Dan White was a former police officer who shot Harvey Milk and hit Mayor Moscone. People forget that Moscone was murdered. The mayor was murdered too. The night Milk was killed, there was just this outpouring. And there were candlelight vigils. And the whole city was in mourning. And when Dan White was acquitted on the Twinkie defense-- I don't know if that came out in the movie. That was his defense. That he had too much sugar. What kind of defense is that? So when that verdict came down, there were the gay riots. And people were mad at the cops. The cops were really model coddling him because he was an ex-cop. So there was a lot of animosity towards the San Francisco Police Department. And they burned a lot of cop cars that night and stuff like that. But I know that they probably didn't include what happened after that. The next night, or a couple of nights later, the cops rioted. And they went down to San Francisco, and they went to the gay bar section. And they smashed all the windows in the bars. And they went and they beat the crap out of anybody who was in the bars that night. Just beat the crap out of them. That was their revenge for their cop cars getting burned. I don't know if that made-- did that make the movie? That's part of history people need to know about. 
Interviewer:	 What was your response when Harvey was assassinated? 
JY:	 We had this fight on the City Council. The first five minutes, when I first got on the Council, was an opening prayer. And we rotated who got to do the prayer. And we all said, a bunch of us said hey, separation of church and state. Let's not do a prayer. Let's do something else. Let's get rid of it, have a moment of silence or whatever. But anyway the compromise was that we could each say what we wanted to say when it was our turn. And it was not my turn that night. It was somebody else's turn. But I begged him to let me do the opening, and just a very poignant night for me. I said "Yesterday, there were five openly gay elected officials in the country. Today there are four. And I don't know how many good mayors we have but I know we have one, and the world is one the less." And then I asked people to bow their heads in thought for the people of San Francisco. That was a very moving moment for me. 
00:47:03
JY:	 Anyway, I'm so glad I didn't commit suicide when I was a kid, really, really glad. I have had some fantastic lovers in my life, wonderful people that I would have never had the chance to meet, much less be lovers with. A couple of them were women, not lesbians.  I have made some great friends. By living across the street from what was Mother's Pub on Williamson Street, I stumbled into a group of guys who had grown up together in Madison, a group of straight guys, who had been friends since they were in grade school. And I didn't have any friends in grade school, much less high school. I just really [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. And they adopted me. And I adopted them. And we have been the best of friends since then. It is so cool to have friends. Because friends will get you through the time of no lovers a lot better that the lovers will get you through the time with no friends. Friends are so important. And that's one of the things I want to say to young people. Make friends. Make lovers too. And you might not find the person who's going to be the person in your life. But so what. There's more. Things didn't work out with Randy and I. So what, we're still friends. I've met some great people since then, had some great lovers. My present situation, I'm actually living with a straight guy. We've been sharing a house for 12 years and raising dogs together. And I have my friends on the side. And he has his friends. And it turns out it's just a comfortable relationship. And he's been married and had kids, so he doesn't need to go through all that. It's kind of odd, and people think-- we don't care what people think. It's kind of neat. Try and explain it to somebody though. People always say well you guys must be lovers. Well no, sorry, it's not how it works. And the friends that I made. This little group of friends that I was talking about, grew up in Madison. I've been going camping with them the first week of June every year for the last 27 years. We played broomball together for 25 years. We started the first fantasy football league in Madison. The very first one, we started that here in Madison. Of course that's now a big thing. Did that for years, I'm retired from that too. I retired from broomball. Anyone know about broomball, played it? You play on the ice. It's like hockey, except you get shoes, and you got a broom, and you got ball. 
Interviewer:	 Your nose looks pretty straight. You survived it. 
JY:	 Yeah. I broke a finger once, but that was all. It's not like hockey where you get hit with a puck, ball. It hurts if you get hit with it. I retired from broomball the same week Brett Favre retired from football. But he got all the press. I don't know why. 
Interviewer:	 And he came back. 
JY:	 Yeah he came back. I'm not going back. So like I said, I don't really know what's going on in politics, I mean, in the gay politics right now. I don't know what kind of situation you people are facing. I know things are different. It's so wonderful to see gay characters on TV. There's role models, good and bad, out there. And the thing that really I found so devastating as a kid just being all alone, there's a lot more opportunity now for people to express themselves, be themselves, be who they there. And that's so fantastic. I was walking the dogs the other day on Jennifer Street, and there were two guys walking towards me holding hands, and I was going great, just great. I love Madison. I love that things have changed so much. But the thing I do want to say is that it can change back. We do have enemies. They're out there. They're working right now to try and undermine a lot of the stuff that has changed. They'd rather see all the gay people back in the closet. They want abortion illegal. They don't want to give anybody any information about birth control. They want to teach abstinence. And they're out there. And the thing they have been doing lately is they've been stacking on the Supreme Court, or trying to. They put Annette Ziegler on the court, who is just the Anita Bryant of today, basically, as far as I'm concerned. Our Wisconsin Supreme Court [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Everyone heard about Iowa? You heard about Iowa? The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously said that their Constitution does not allow discrimination against gay marriage, and therefore gay marriage shall be legal by April 25th, end of story, Iowa. 
Sarah:	 Are the students going to vote on Tuesday? 
JY:	 I'm going to mention that. I'm going to mention that. Tuesday, there is an election. That's something you can do right now, right here, in this world. On Tuesday, you can vote. If you weren't planning on voting, go do it, because there's some friends and there are enemies out there. 
Sarah:	 If she doesn't win, you're in trouble. 
JY:	 Who? 
Sarah:	 Shirley Abrahamson. 
JY:	 Shirley Abrahamson, I said it wrong. She's on the Supreme Court. She is the Chief Justice. She's a wonderful, wonderful person. She's a friend. The person the right wing is trying to put on to replace her, and that would be three of them on there, is not our friend. Trust me he's not our friend. Get out there and vote for Shirley Abrahamson. And when it comes down to-- 
Sarah:	 Make sure your whole dorm does. 
JY:	 Yes go get your friends. Make them vote. It's real easy. I don't know exactly what you'd have to do to register if you haven't registered. But I know you can do it on the day of the polls. You've got to take in identification or something to prove where you're living. Go do it. It's so important. That's something that we gay people and friends of gay people need to do is make sure we're aware of who our friends and who our enemies are. You gotta help your friends. You gotta stick up for women's rights and the rights of minorities because this is not just a gay struggle. This has been a struggle for everybody being equal and being able to do what they need to do. So stick up your friends. Know who your friends and your enemies are. Linda [? Mistele ?] is running for County Executive against Kathleen Falk. And Kathleen has her problems, but she's a friend. Linda [? Mistele ?] is not a friend. She was on the School Board for years. And she was like one of those people. Let's not teach birth control. Let's not teach anything about sex education in school. Let's just teach abstinence. And we all know how well that worked. Just ask Sarah Palin's daughter. But know who your friends. Know who your enemies are, and get out there and vote. That's the one thing you can do right now. It's very positive. Get your friends to vote. Seriously. 
Interviewer:	 Seriously. 
Interviewer:	 As you're talking about the Wisconsin Supreme Court, can you jump then to the United State Supreme Court and make some comments. 
JY:	 Yeah well, they've been trying to do that. There have been some appointments to the Supreme Court I'm really worried about, the Chief Justice, Roberts, Robertson. 
Interviewer:	 Yeah, John Roberts, yeah. 
JY:	 Roberts, I can't think of him a friend of ours, but there's something about-- Gordon Baldwin, we were talking him earlier. Gordon Baldwin was my Constitutional Law teacher at law school, real right-wing guy. He said something I will always remember. He said "there's nothing like a life appointment to a court to make you liberal." And I think that does change people's perspective. All of a sudden, you've got a life appointment on the Supreme Court, you don't have to kowtow to any special interest. You can think of the country and think what's best for the country. 
Sarah:	 And before Gordon died, he had mellowed out a lot with the gay issues. 
JY:	 Got a lot of what? 
Sarah:	 He had mellowed out a lot on gay-- his wife was much more liberal. But he came a long way before he died. 
Interviewer:	 And the Constitutional reasoning in Connecticut, and [? Mass, and ?] Iowa are all the same. 

JY:	 Yeah. 
Interviewer:	 I mean, they're going to the Constitution. 
JY:	 Yes, but you know, we wouldn't have a unanimous vote like that in Wisconsin right now, because we got Annette Ziegler. And who's that other guy, starts with a g, just got on. 
Interviewer:	 Gableman. 
JY:	 Gableman, he beat a friend of mine and a friend of ours, Louis Butler, who was just this fantastic man, who I worked with when I first started working with patient rights. It's what I do now. He, just a terrific guy, and I can't believe he got replaced by that creep. The Supreme Court's always been kind of evenly balanced, a little more liberal than right wing. But now we got two staunch people who will never ever be our friends. And if they put this other guy on, who's running against Shirley Abrahamson, that'll be time to move to Iowa. At least, they got a Supreme Court where it hasn't been stacked yet. 
00:56:55 
JY:	So vote. That's one thing. The other thing you should do is be able to take care of your health. And in a moment of honesty, I want to say that in my generation of gay men growing up, ones I knew from law school, and people who were my age growing up, every one of them who liked to be on the receiving end of anal sex is dead, D-E-A-D, dead, every one of them, some of the most beautiful people I've ever met in my entire life, terrific people. [? Grid Hall ?] comes to mind. He was a terrific lawyer, and bilingual, and dead. Roommates I had, dead. And that was because people didn't know that this nasty disease, AIDS, was going around. Now that they know it, you have to be careful, very careful with your health. You don't want to end up dead. The only reason I'm alive today and sitting here is because I wasn't into it. And I just thank my lucky stars because I would be dead too. I mean that very seriously. Take care of your health. If you're going to be into anal sex, use a condom. Whatever, be careful, or do something with someone you've known for a long time who's been tested. But even then, you don't know. I know barebacking is coming back in style in some places and that really disturbs me. Barebacking is not using a condom. I find that trend disturbing. I work for the state Wisconsin half time right now, and I've done that for years. And my other job is real estate law, which I do on the side. But I work for patients in the Mental Health Institute, so if you go to Mendota Mental Health Institute or whatever, I'm your rights person basically for that. That's just [UNINTELLIGIBLE] as to what I'm doing now. So I do that. I do my law practice, which, real estate law is kind of weak right now. I have a lot of free time. I've been playing a lot of games on the computer and stuff. But that'll pick up as the economy, hopefully, gets better. Thank you all if you voted for the current president. 
Interviewer:	 Can we do some Q&A. 

JY:	 Sure I've run out of things to talk about. I think I covered all the topics I wanted to. Anyone have questions? No? First of all, do you people know who this is. This is Joe Elder and his wife Joan, starts with a J. Little Jo. You're both Joe. 
JoAnn Elder: 	Joann, my nickname is Jo. 
JY:	 They have been, not only wonderful professors here-- I don't know exactly what you do. But I know him from Indian Studies. 
JoAnn  Elder:	 I was the Academic Adviser in Sociology. 
JY:	 OK, they have a gay son. And they have been active in the gay community, in PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. They have been active in the community for years and years and years, and I'm just so proud of them. 
JoAnn Elder: 	But we do span the same generation that you grew up in. 
JY:	 Yeah. 
JoAnn Elder:	 You said you were 47? 
JY:	 I will be sixty in October. 
JoAnn Elder:	 OK, you're 60. Our son turns 50 this year. Now at least when he came out, the AIDS epidemic has started and so-- 
JY:	 People were aware. 
JoAnn Elder:	 People were more aware. But he was absolutely-- we didn't know he was gay, because he was rather shy, and tall, handsome, good-looking. 
JY: 	You say he's married? 
JoAnn Elder:	 Yeah, girls asked him out but he never reciprocated. He went to both dances and so forth. But in any case, he made us very aware of how much prejudice there was. We were pretty stupid to begin with. 
JY:	 Not stupid, ignorant. 
Interviewer:	 Sounds nicer. 
JY:	 Unaware. 
JoAnn Elder:	 Unaware, definitely unaware. But I'm worried that this generation isn't more aggressively fighting for gay rights. Somehow or other, I feel that if you're too comfortable, and that you're letting the world roll on. You're comfortable, but there's three quarters of the world that's not comfortable. And I wish you were more activists. 
Interviewer:	 Part of it is-- 
JY:	 Called activism. 
Interviewer:	 --you can't be passive about it. And by the way, [UNINTELLIGIBLE] is very well spoken and therefore can go ahead and make his self well-known to everybody else too. The whole ROTC [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] son is involved with. 
JoAnn Elder:	 Oh no, Ed was very shy. 
Interviewer:	 No, he wasn't. 
JoAnn Elder:	 He was not at all. 
Interviewer:	 OK, he wasn't. 
JoAnn Elder:	 He was quiet and had a way with-- he was firm about I'm gay. That's it. 
Interviewer:	 That's it. 
JoAnn Elder:	 But he was no activist. 
Interviewer:	 But sometimes the comment is that for the older generation, there's far more prejudice. But because of the younger students today, there's more people simply knowing [UNINTELLIGIBLE], there's more comfort there, less of a big issue. Sometimes we'll just say, oh when the old people die off, it'll be much better. Other than the Supreme Court, when they appoint them young and then they last until they're 85 or 90. And that lasts much longer. So part of it is [UNINTELLIGIBLE] these days works a little bit more easily than it would have in the past. But you're quite right. If people don't, there can be big steps back. Or it won't be progressing-- 
JY:	 Yes, there will be big steps back. Like I said, you have to know who your friends are. And work on their campaigns, whatever. That's the one thing you can do. And say, go to Shirley Abrahamson or something, and say I wanna work on your campaign, and I'm gay. I just think you're terrific, and I want to support you. You've got to do that kind of thing. Tell people you're out there and help your friends, because you want to keep your friends around. Yes. 
Interviewer:	 Jim, in terms of where Madison was, I know, initially the lesbians and the gay men had very little to do with each other. Was that your experience? 
JY:	 Yes. 
01:03:55 
Interviewer:	 And at what point did they begin to say, we have to put ourselves in the same wheel. 
JY:	 Well, that's a tough one because I had some great lesbian friends. Judy Greenspan, I don't know if you ever know her. She was the first openly gay person running for School Board, wonderful woman. And she and I were good friends. And I liked Judy a lot. And I remember she invited me to a party, and I was the only gay man there. The rest were lesbians. And some people were really nice. Other people were so openly hostile to me because I was a man, even though I was on the same side with them. It felt kind of weird. It was like, wait a second, I'm trying to be your friend. I'm not the enemy. They're out there. They're over there. I don't know. The whole gay movement went through changes, as it grew from Madison Alliance for Homosexual Equality. Then it became the Ten Percent Society. It's another name I always hated. Because first of all, it implies that only 10% of the people are gay or whatever. But that came from the Kinsey Report or something like that. But the Kinsey Report actually said a third of the people are heterosexual all the time, and 10% people are gay all the time, and the rest are in between. That was what the Kinsey Report said. That was their take on it, on sexuality. And this was in the '40s that they wrote this stuff. Or maybe it was Masters and Johnson. It was one of those, but that's where the 10-- 
Interviewer:	 Kinsey though is the one that came out with that figure. He said something like, about 40% of men at some point have had sex with a man. And of those, 10% have only had sex with a man. So you get the 10% of the 40% [UNINTELLIGIBLE], but the 10% stuck. 
JY:	 Yeah, 10% stuck. You know, we're all bisexual is my take on life. 
Interviewer:	 Did the AIDS epidemic bring unity between the women and the men or was that- 
JY:	 I couldn't tell you because after the City Council, I retired from politics. Instead I went and hung out with these friends, and had a good time, and didn't go to meetings. Oh, not going to meetings was such a luxury. When I was on the Council, I was getting paid 200 bucks a month to do it. And I figured it worked out to $1.11 an hour or something like that because all the time, all the meeting, all the crap I put up with it. So you're not in it for the money. Plus there's a time in politics where you figure, if you go on beyond there, beyond where you are, you have to make some compromises. To run for president, I can't imagine the compromises you have to make. But I didn't want to do that. So that's when I retired. I'm not going any farther with this. I don't want to continue with the City Council for that, so. And I couldn't tell you what happened with the gay community because I sort of withdrew from that and lived my own life, hung out on the East Side. But I kept all the clippings. And I gave them all to him, just recently, boxes and boxes of them. Have you gone through them all yet? 
Interviewer:	 I have gone through a bunch of them. Amazing archive. 
Interviewer:	 Wow. Jim has the greatest clip file on the Madison gay movement. It's amazing. 
JY:	 And I really was thinking that some day when I was 60, I'd be retired, and I could write a book or something about the whole thing. And then I realized, hey, I'm living, still having a great time. I'm not about to sit down and do all that. I'll give it to somebody who really wants to. 
Interviewer:	 Some hungry PhD candidate. 
JY:	 Yeah, yeah exactly. Exactly. 
01:07:56
Interviewer:	 Some foolish PhD candidate. Can you tell us about going to the first MAHE meeting? How did you find out about it? Where was it? What was it like to go? 
JY:	 There were posters put up on campus. And it was in the basement of a church on-- the church is still there-- St. Francis House, yes on University Avenue. And the pastor was very friendly to us but basically gave us the space. The first time I walked around the block three times before I went in. 
Interviewer:	 Was it Art Wooley? 
JY:	 I don't recall. I never met him, but I walked around the block three times before I went in. Then I got the nerve to go in. And realized it was just people like me who had their own stories. I still know people who've been in Madison all that time, who were part of that original group. And then it evolved, of course, into the Ten Percent Society. And then the Madison Gay Liberation Front and then blah, blah, blah. You keep asking me if I know what happened with the split in the men and the women. And they're definitely was a split, a fracturing, as it were. And that fracturing was going on in the whole left community. Everyone had a different idea of what needed to be done. Something had to be done. The war was going on. That was kind of radicalizing lot of people. Everyone had their own take on how radical they should be. But you know there was a split between the men and the women. Hopefully, that's healed. And it should. It's not like we're enemies, quite the opposite. Other questions? 
Interviewer:	 Do you remember the early dances or 10 Langdon Street or any of that. 
Interviewer:	 10 Langdon Street, that's another story. That's what we're here for. 
JY:	 I gotta tell you about 1976. When was it? I was working in the Rathskeller, so '72. When were the Stonewall riots? 

Interviewer:	 '69. 
JY:	 '69, so this must have been '70, '71. Madison sponsored a nationwide gay meeting. So we just sent information out to everybody in the entire country and said come to Madison. And a lot of people showed up. Thousands of people came here. And it was during semester break, I think, spring break. 
Interviewer:	 Thanksgiving. 
JY:	 Thanksgiving, you're right. It was Thanksgiving. Did you read that in the Star Stories. It all blurs together. It was Thanksgiving. There was hardly anybody-- the Rathskeller was open, but most of the students were gone. So it got taken over by gay people. There were so many gay people there. It was just so awesome. It was like, wow. We had a meeting in Great Hall, which we filled. Filled with Great Hall, full of people. The best part of it though was and it was a feeling of camaraderie. It was like, oh, we're all in this together, fighting this all over the entire nation. And the best part was-- anyone familiar with the Rathskeller? There's this sort of round thing in the middle of it. Someone played a song that everybody liked. And all of a sudden, everybody just got up and held hands. And went all the way around the circle and did a circle dance and kick. So it's just these hundreds of people in this big dance around the Rathskeller. And it was like, wow, that was so cool. So yeah, and then that we would sponsor dances. And 10 Langdon Street was a dilapidated frat, abandoned frat that we took over for a little while, trying to make some kind of community center. And it didn't last long. It takes a lot of energy to keep something like that up. But the dances were the best part. 
01:12:11
JY:	When I first came here, there was a gay bar, sort of, when I first came here in 1969. It was on the square. It was little wedge of thing-- Chuck E. Cheese was there for a while. I'm not sure what's-- Ron Hamilton and the square. There's that little building that looks like a piece of pie, like the Flatiron Building or something, sitting there on the corner on the South Side. And that was the first gay bar I was in. I wasn't old enough to drink because it was 21 then. 
Interviewer:	 Was that the Clinique, the '70's? 
JY:	 Was it the Clinique? I think so, long time ago. And then the Pirate Ship opened. The Pirate Ship was-- you know where Madison Public Library is now? It was down the block on the road that goes around the square. I forget what it is. I never got those streets remembered correctly. It's so confusing down there. But there was a gay bar at night. In the afternoon, it was a deaf bar. So they sort of switch crowds at night. And it was a gay bar. And that's where the Gay Law Students Association used to hang out. They had a liquor license. They didn't have a cabaret license so we weren't allowed to dance. 

Interviewer:	 C'mon. 
JY:	 So every once in a while, a good song would come on. We'd start dancing and they'd have to tell us to stop it, or they'll lose their liquor license. 
Interviewer:	 I didn't know [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 
JY:	 Yeah, and then Rod's opened. The Back Door, he opened the Back Door, which was on Park Street, right across from one of the nastier student ghetto bars. 
Interviewer: Hotel Washington? 
JY:	 No, no that was long before the Hotel Washington. He opened the Hotel Washington too when that place closed. 
Interviewer:	 The Stone Hearth? 
JY:	 The Stone Hearth was right across the street. That's what it was. And a lot of punk kids used to go-- by punk I meant brutal, vicious people would go to the Stone Hearth. And then there was always a conflict. You had to be careful going out. We went in and out the back door of this bar. It was downstairs and you had to go out and be careful of the Stone Hearth when you went out. You didn't know if there was gangs of people hanging out there, ready to beat you up or something so. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 
01:14:38 
Interviewer:	 You mentioned the Memorial Union several times. Can you say more about your experiences there? 
JY:	 I worked there for four years in the Rathskeller. 
Interviewer:	 And were you out at that point? 
JY:	 Oh yeah, absolutely. 
Interviewer:	 And what was the climate like at that point? 
JY:	 I don't know. We had a good time there. We were student employees. So it was all camaraderie, student employees versus the management. That was kind of fun. I helped form MULO, Memorial Union Labor Organization. I didn't start it, but they had just started, and I helped them recruit people. 
Interviewer:	 And were there a fair amount of dances? You were saying-- 
JY:	 Yeah, there were dances there, not so often there. Well, they started out there but yeah, there were dances there maybe once a month or something like that, for a while. But usually I was working catering or something, and I didn't go and meet people. 
Interviewer:	 So MULO in '73 tries to add sexual orientation to the contract with the Union. 
JY:	 Yes, we tried to-- 
Interviewer :	 Tell that story. 
JY:	 Oh god, it went nowhere. 
Interviewer:	 But what happened? Do you remember the chronology of the events? How did it start? 
JY:	 God, I had totally forgotten about that until now, so it's been a long time, 30 years or something. It's hard to remember that crap. But that was part of MULO's bargaining position, is we want to add sexual orientation to anti-discrimination for the contract.  Yeah, in the contract. And we were fought tooth and nail by the lawyers for the University. They were a law firm or something. I forget who they were. They represented the University. And they just stonewalled us. We went on strike. MULO went on strike, not on that issue but a lot of other issues. And I was actually kind of a radical. The resident hall workers started a union too, RSLO, Resident Student Hall Labor Association. And I was trying to start a group of all the students being part of a big union called the Campus Labor Federation, and that didn't go very far. But it was an idea. ] The TAs went on strike. We had the TAs on our help. And they went on strike, and their union basically got busted during that strike. Everything kind of fell apart. So yeah. 
Interviwer:	 Regrets? 
JY:	 You know, there are things I regret, mostly things I didn't do, and maybe some things I did. But I tell you right now, if I walked out of this building, and a car came along and ran me down and killed me. You know, I'm going to be 60. I would die with a smile on my face. I would because all the wonderful things, all the wonderful people, all the wonderful things I've done. Now I feel like I've done something with my life. And I helped change the world just a tiny little bit, and that's fine with me. And I had some great lovers and some great friends, and opportunities like this to talk to people. And I'd die with a smile on my face. I have more to go, hopefully. But I hope that's one of the things I hope everyone of you can say that when you're 60, everyone of you. Because if you can, then it's worth it. Everything you done is worth it. 
01:18:18
JoAnn Elder:	 Did the young people here have the same feeling, "I'm the only one in the world." 

JY:	 I have no idea. That's [UNINTELLIGIBLE], I have no idea . Tell us. Tell us about your lives. Mark, right? 
Mark:	 Yeah, right well I went to Catholic high school. 
JY:	 Oh god help you. 
Mark:	 So not necessarily I'm the only person in the world, but definitely I'm the only person in my high school, or at least so I thought. So that was rather difficult. And it was just like, in that kind of like family sense like I don't know parents being Catholic background, stuff like that. It was kind of a little bit 
JY:	 Yeah, lot of things going against you. 
Mark:	 Yeah, it was very lonely. And I do remember points in high school, freshman and sophomore year, where I just really didn't seem to fit in with-- well like, there were two separate lunches. And the first two years, I was in the first lunch, which was more of like the football, sporty players type-- 
JY:	 They're very, very friendly, I hear. So I just never really felt like -- it felt really long, those couple of years. But then, I'd say as I moved into the second lunch, which was more of theatre geeks, and the band nerds, and choir nerds. That's when I really started to-- But I knew there were other people out there. But once I came into Madison, that's when I really felt open, and both all my gay friends and straight friends, I felt there was just a solid group of support, so I'm thankful for that. 
Interviewer:	 Absolutely. 
JY:	 Anyone else want to talk? How about you in the back with the red hat. Tell us about yourself. 
Kat:	 Um, well, I mean-- 
JY:	 What's your name? 
Kat:	 I'm Kat. 
JY:	 Kat? Oh, awesome. 
Kat: 	As for my family, my parents had always been GLBT friendly, I mean-- 
JY:	 Where did you grow up? 
Kat:	 I grew up in the Twin Cities. My parents would always support me, whatever or whoever I ended up being. 
JY:	 That's great. 
01:20:48 
JoAnn Elder: 	Did you parents ever know you were gay or admit it? 
JY:	 Well, well yes. I have to start out by saying my father was a Marine Corps Drill Sergeant. 
Interviewer:	 Wow, bad start. 
JY:	 Yeah, when we were young, we all had the crew cuts and said yes sir to everything he said, that kind of thing. He mellowed out after years. He had four boys four years apart of which I'm the second one. 
Interviewer:	 Three between each or four total? 
JY:	 Four total, four years apart, so there's one, then four years, me, and then my little brother's four years, and the one is eight years younger than I am. And by the time we got to the fourth one, my brother Tom said "I really want to thank you. You guys put our parents through hell, and they were so nice to me." They were just like whatever. My older brother, when he was 18, had to get married two his 16-year old girlfriend because she was pregnant. And my mother was always saying, you should be like your older brother. You should be a jock. You should be fixing up cars now. And then when he got Lucy pregnant, my mother goes, "You know, don't be like your older brother. Put a padlock on that zipper." OK, I won't get a girl pregnant, I promise. But eventually, I told my parents. I waited until I was done with college because I didn't know how they were going to react. And I didn't want them to not let me hang out with my little brother, as maybe being a bad influence to him, my brother Tom, who was the one that's eight years younger. I was afraid they would be like that. My dad said, "Well, I always knew something was wrong with you. You had bad genes and they came from your mother's side of the family." That's what he said. You had bad genes and they came from your mother's side of the family. But he mellowed out later. And I would go home for like holidays and stuff. They moved back to Upper Michigan, and I'd go back. And I'd bring friends. And I'd never explained who my friends were, or what relationship they were. Sometimes they were men. Sometimes they were women. I would just bring them home and say this is my friend so and so, just didn't bother to explain the relationship at all. I guess I had them really confused at a while. 
Interviewer:	 Did you sleep by yourself in your old bedroom? 
JY:	 No, we'd sleep together on the couch in the living room that folded out. I didn't have a bedroom there. They have moved to a house I'd never been in so I didn't have an old bedroom. So the couch folded out and we'd sleep out there. 

01:23:29
Interviewer:	 Can we hear a little bit more for what it's like living in the dorms now? 
JY:	 Yeah, what is it like ? You all live in the dorms? What's the atmosphere like? 
Interviewer:	 Yeah, what's the atmosphere like? How positive are people [UNINTELLIGIBLE] problems associated with being gay, a lesbian, bisexual, transgender-- 
Interviewer:	 I think that there are still derogatory terms used. 
JY:	 I'm sorry, what? 
Interviewer:	 Like derogatory terms used [UNINTELLIGIBLE] against you. As many times as you say, don't use the word gay equals stupid. Don't use the word gay for whatever. It's unfortunate people still use it. 
JY:	 Yeah that's really something that's hard to change. 
Interviewer:	 It is. 
JY:	 That's so gay. 
Interviewer: 	Yeah, exactly. You're so used to hearing your friends say it. Hopefully, it's something that people will grow out of eventually after hearing why you shouldn't do it so many times. 
Interviewer:	 [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] 
Mark:	 Yeah. 
Interviewer:	 Other things? 
Interviewer:	 I think a majority of people that I've encountered in the dorms have been pretty gay-friendly. I think that there's still people who come from maybe smaller towns who maybe don't really talk about these issues, come to Madison and are a little uncomfortable. Or don't really know how to react. But I think the one thing I've found is there are always cases of discrimination that take place in the dorms [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. They're getting rarer and rarer, at least from my encounter. And I don't know. It seems like of all the issues that I encounter with my residents, all the different discussions I have among people's identities that I talk about, one of the most accepted and supported is gay rights. 

JY:	 Oh, all right, good. 
Interviewer:	 And there are few ones that based on religious, oh I don't agree with this because this is my religious, what the Bible says. But they at least that they still respect. They're not discriminatory. They're not rude at all. They're just, to me, this is wrong. That's what my religion says. 
Interviewer:	 Most cases I find myself encountering people who are very accepting or at least respecting. I find myself putting up my guard a little bit though on weekend nights. 
Interviewer:	 What's different on weekend nights? 
Interviewer:	 Alcohol. 
JY:	 Only on weekends, what's wrong with the students nowadays? Just kidding. 
Interviewer:	 You encounter people and they're fine with it in their sober states. But then, under the influence, things get a little bit-- I don't know how to describe it-- just a little bit more-- 
JY:	 Their true feelings start coming out a little bit more? 
Interviewer:	 Well not true feelings, their irrational side starts coming out a little bit more. But otherwise, I would say, it's generally a very accepting atmosphere. If they don't really like it that night, I just don't really interact with them very much. I find very few people that that's the case with. 
Interviewer:	 So when you say rational side of themselves, [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]? 
Interviewer:	 Well for irrational? 
Interviewer:	 Yeah. 
Interviewer:	 It's just hard to think. Like when you're out walking on a Friday night and-- I can't quite think of an example. It's just that it seems like the homophobia might be a little bit higher, like the homophobic remarks or whatever. There was one point earlier the year when I had a boyfriend. I think there was one night we were holding hands in public or whatever. Actually what it was, I was holding hands with him, and then he was holding hands with-- it was kind of just like a chain, a link of hands or whatever. And he was holding hands with this other girl. But still you just get these remarks that were like, I don't really know what it was like. Just kind of like, ooh, what's going on there? It's interesting. 

Sarah:	 Alcohol reduces inhibitions. 
JY:	 Oh really. 
Interviewer:	 Well what can be nice with that is sometimes I wonder in the respect that's given in the University that people will do that politely, but then they won't necessarily have deeper conversations. Sometimes when their inhibitions have been loosened up a little bit more, their irrational side might come out. But then that might allow for a little bit more good discussion. So that, the next day, when they say, oh yeah, well we talked about so and so. There might just be more opportunity for them to become more knowledgeable about different people because they don't have [UNINTELLIGIBLE] rational. And show them surface respect when there's underlying thoughts and feeling that they haven't gotten through [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. So anyway, it's great that you're able to be out just simply because there's that much more introduction to all these people at very formative ages where it's so much easier for the rest of us [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 
Interviewer:	 Any other comments [UNINTELLIGIBLE] what's it like dorm living, dorm issues. 
Interviewer : 	Well, I can say one thing. I know that I was living in the dorms in 2006 when they passed the gay marriage ban. Madison as a city was strongly against it, strongly against it. And I think there was one other, I think LaCrosse wasn't. LaCrosse did as well. And then the rest of the state, even Milwaukee, which I'm from Milwaukee, voted in favor of the ban. 
Sarah:	 But not by a very large percentage, they only lost by 5%. 
01:29:22 
JY:	 Now I have real mixed feelings about the whole marriage thing. For one thing, I've been a divorce lawyer. A lot of the stuff I did when I was first [UNINTELLIGIBLE] practice, I ended up being divorce law, and I hated it. And I thought the whole marriage thing was a bad model. And one part of me says that gays shouldn't follow that model, create our own model, something better. 
Sarah:	 What about the legal benefits? 
JY:	 Yeah, but you know those things can be taken care of. You can draft wills. You can have power of health care attorneys. 
Sarah:	 How about income tax? 
JY:	 Income taxes, no, you get screwed on that. But maybe you do, maybe you don't. But there are some credits that you can get. I just spent the morning doing my income taxes. So it's a little fresh in my mind, but there are credits that married couples get. And you won't get those as a gay couple. But there's a lot of things. It's not so bad. It's not terrible that you're not allowed to have this. 
Sarah:	 It's not true at all. 
JY:	 So I'm telling you, I have mixed feelings about it. On the other hand, when Iowa Supreme Court said that, I just was floored. It was like awesome. It's like hey, here's people who finally got the message. And Iowa helped elect a black president. And all of sudden, they're a gay rights state, gay marriage state. It's like who'd a thunk? And it's happened in the heartland, just like you were saying. People think it's a coastal phenomenon that this stuff happens. It's happening right here. 
Interviewer:	 Yeah, especially with Wisconsin passing the non-gay discrimination employment policy credit. Accomodations in 1982, being the first state in the nation. 
JY:	 The person who was the architect of that was David Clarenbach , who I can now say publicly was my lover. I wasn't allowed to say it at the time because his mother was still alive, Kate Clarenbach. 
Sarah:	 She was accepting that he was gay. 
JY:	 Well, I don't know. I've been around when she showed up and the looks she would give me. She was not a very good mother-in-law. I'll tell you that, not a very friendly mother-in-law. I didn't say anything. It was his political career and his choice not to be open about it. 
Interviewer:	 And he tried very hard to appear heterosexual. He got married. 
JY:	 Yeah, he got married in the end. But David, I think, is bisexual in the truest sense of the word. And he got married because he wanted to get married but this woman he got married to, kind of boyish, I thought. It was just my opinion. But they did it through a coalition. 
Interviewer:	 Religious support. 
JY:	 Religious support, they got strong support from all churches. They built a coalition that convinced the Legislature and the governor. And this was a good thing to do. 
Interviewer:	 Lee Dreyfus, Republican governor. 
JY:	 Lee Dreyfus, yeah, Lee Dreyfus, big Republican governor. That's what I'm talking about, friends. You've got to cultivate your friends. And you help them. They help you. Because there are enemies out there. And don't forget they're real. And they're out there. I wish the Anita Bryants and the Reverend Dillenbaughs of the world weren't out there, but there they are. And they could come back real easy. And they're trying. Subtly stacking the Supreme Court is a very smart move on their part. So Wisconsin Supreme Court would never have a unanimous decision that-- actually it was passed as a constitutional amendment. But when that election happened that you were talking about earlier, I was not that disappointed because it was like if that happened in 1969. when I first came out, it would have been 0.1% to 99.9% The fact that it was so close, really, was amazing to me. It's awesome. Things have changed. They'll change more. 
Interviewer:	 It's still that their constitutional amendment-- 
JY:	 It's still in the Constitution. And that's a bad thing. 
Interviewer:	 --much harder to reverse. So it might last much longer than what society would be-- 
JY:	 Yes, yes, and that was their strategy. 
Interviewer:	 Yeah, it's very smart. [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] 
JY:	 And now they're trying to stack the Supreme Court to make sure it stays that way. 
Mark:	 I just remember in the dorm that night when the polls started coming in. I think a lot of us were under the assumption that it would pass. I think from talking to people. And you get some of the polling figures coming in, and then when it finally was decided that the ban had passed, you could just feel the entire building sort of sagging. We were just walking around. We were just sitting in the lounge. We were just silenced. 
Interviewer:	 Because silence is too golden. 
Mark:	 Yeah. 
Interviewer:	 [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] 
Mark:	 Yeah, yeah, and a lot of people worked really hard on it. Fair Wisconsin, which was this organization that really took charge on this, took the lead on this, was really out there getting people to vote, even to a point of being a nuisance because it would call you everyday and tell you to get out. 
JY:	 But a lot of that same structure and those same people worked on electing our current president. So I think that was not a bad thing to have those coalitions out there. 
Interviewer:	 And if anything for the United States Supreme Court, this president makes a huge difference. 
JY:	 Oh god, if they put another one on there, I was like oh fuck. 

Interviewer:	 Obama didn't he say that he wasn't necessarily in favor of gay marriage? 
JY:	 Yeah but beats the hell out of George Bush, excuse me. 
Interviewer:	 No, that's true. 
JY:	 Anything beats the hell out of George Bush. I'd beat the hell out of George Bush. I could, but Secret Service [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. All right, about time to wrap this up, I think. Anyone else have any other burning questions they gotta ask or want to talk about? 
Interviewer:	 Jim, thank you so much. 
JY:	 And I want to thank you to again. I've said it several times tonight. But really, seriously--