Oral History with Andy Reed, Part 1

Tina White:Zoom recording. Okay. Well, let's get this show started. Today's date is September 4th, 2020. My name is Tina Madison White, and I am talking with Andy Reed, who was born ... Andy, you were born in Asheville right?

Andy Reed:Right. Mission Hospital.

Tina White:Mission Hospital. Andy's preferred pronouns are he, him, and his. He has been living in Asheville ... When did you move back?

Andy Reed:'93.

Tina White:'93. Okay. We'll get into that more. Let's begin. Andy, let me just start with a basic question. How do you like to describe yourself when you're telling your story? Where do you start?

Andy Reed:Well, I don't ever tell me story or start by describing myself as a gay man. I've been out for, gosh, almost 50 years this year. But I have been an 00:01:00Asheville person in general involved in public life for most of my life. Being gay has never been the defining feature of who I am or what I do. That started early on. I don't know if you want that background, backstory for that?

Tina White:Sure. This is your story. Sure.

Andy Reed:Okay. Well, then I'm going to give you a brief overview of my life. Left Asheville in 1970 when I finished high school. I was just 16 when I graduated. I went to New York to go to Columbia University where my brother went, my cousins went. I moved to New York City right after my 17th birthday. It 00:02:00was 1970, a year after Stonewall. My freshman year at college, I was fairly low key and just doing freshman stuff, but at the beginning of sophomore year, I came out and it was a very, surprisingly easy process because New York at the time, I guess it was January of '72 when that happened. I had a close friend who was from New Orleans, and she attended Barnard College, part of Columbia.

I decided to come out to her when I was still fairly, I thought, in the closet. 00:03:00We spent several hours just chatting, and drinking Southern Comfort, and talking about life, and finally I said after a lot of hemming and hawing, "I have a big secret to tell you," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. "I'm gay." Her response was the last thing I expected. I thought she'd say, "Oh, gosh. I'm so glad you told me." She laughed and she said, "Well, Andy, everybody knew that. We've been talking about you and Andrew Bittern, and your secret dating for the last year." I was like, "What? It doesn't bother you?" She said, "Heck no. Everybody knows you're gay. Nobody cares." That was my coming out. So I never had the repercussions that a lot of people underwent, thrown out by your family, disowned by your siblings, any of that crap.

After college, when I went to work, I was openly gay from the outset. I just 00:04:00figured they have to know, and I'm not going to make a secret of it. After a few years in different jobs, starting off a career, I ended up at NBC Television and was in the marketing area of advertising sales. I put a picture of my boyfriend on my desk. My boss, Ron, who was a retired Navy guy from Newport News, Virginia. He was hetero and a half. He was screwing around with every female he could find, and he was about 50 at the time, and married, and had grown kids. He was a randy guy. He came over to my desk one day and saw the picture of my boyfriend, and said, "Who's that?" I said, "That's my boyfriend, Jimmy." He 00:05:00said, "Oh. Oh, hell. Well, shit. All right. Whatever." That was that as far as NBC was concerned.

So that part of life became such an unimportant norm for me. It was not something that I had to go around parading. It was just, "This is my boyfriend. This is your girlfriend. Nice to meet you." And so forth. After 22 years in New York, I came back to Asheville in '93. I brought the same attitude with me, that there was nothing shameful, or a secret, or embarrassing, or super important about it. I was just coming back because my mom was ill, and she was dying, and I was going to resettle back home. So when I did, again, it was just something 00:06:00like I've got blue eyes, and I'm right handed, and my hair is thinning, and I have a boyfriend, and I live in my old family home, and I'm a writer and editor. It was just part of who I was without any big deal about it. So that is how I approached it, as a very integrated part of my life.

Then Asheville, at the time, was going through the very beginnings of pride. I mean, the first pride parade, I think had been in the late '80s. My mom marched in it, as a matter of fact. She called me and said, "Oh, I'm going to march in the pride parade in Asheville because you won't be here." In those days, there was a pride parade ... North Carolina Pride held a parade every year, in June, I 00:07:00think, in commemoration of Stonewall, but they did it in a different city every year. It would be Greensboro one year, and Wilmington, and Raleigh, and Asheville, and Charlotte, and Winston-Salem. Every year a different city. So the year it was in Asheville, my mom, who was about 72 or 73 at the time, proudly marched in it.

That became the tenor of how I lived here. But I will say that because in New York I had a very wide circle of friends, I always have. I'm a fairly sociable person, and I get my fingers in a lot of pies. Most of what I was involved in had nothing to do with GLBT stuff. It was voter rights. It was equal rights. It 00:08:00was civil rights. Medical care rights. Things like that. Political in a lot of cases, and cultural in a lot of cases, but not necessarily focused on the GLBTQ community. In fact, I was probably much more involved in the black community as an activist for equal rights there than I was for the gay community. I think in part, it was because the gay community had all these people like Jerry Connor and Jim [Cavener], other leaders who were taking care of things. My value was greater in other communities that didn't have lots of leaders already, or that needed allies.

But I remember my first Christmas here. At Christmas of '93, after I had 00:09:00formally moved down. I had been here since January of that year. My first Christmas, I sent Christmas cards to all my friends back in New York. Again, it was probably 50 or 60 cards back there. At the time, I remember telling them all that I had met more gay and lesbian people in Asheville than I had known in New York City! It was because in this smaller community, that sub-community was more visible. My life in New York had been so involved with other stuff, and my job, career, television, all of that, that there wasn't a lot of room in my life for a big circle of gay and lesbian friends. But here, what I discovered very 00:10:00quickly was that there were four very distinct sub-cultures of gay people in Asheville. I learned that right away.

There were people like me, who were white, upper-middle class, well-educated, sophisticated, people involved in their mainstream progressive movements or congregations, like the Unitarian Universalist Church, which was my home church, and All Souls, and First United Congregational. They were people who had access, who could pick up the phone and call a city councilman, who could walk into the mayor's office, and the mayor greeted them by name, people who were part of 00:11:00Asheville's, not elite, but certainly part of Asheville's structure. There were both men and women in that situation.

But then, there were also the mostly white boys who had come to Asheville--"the big city"--from Graham County, and Cherokee, and Rutherfordton because they were thrown out of their homes by their families, or they were effeminate and lived out there, and were beaten up in high school. They came to Asheville as a place of refuge. They were often homeless. They were often working the streets, walking around the Grove Arcade to pick up tricks, and stuff like that. They 00:12:00didn't have access to city council. They didn't have any connections, or money, or nice homes. It was a whole subset or stratum of country boys who were just struggling to find their way and find a place for themselves.

Then among the women, I noticed that there were, again, the elite. The people like [Gerry Goldberg], and people like that, and what used to be called lipstick lesbians. Lesbian couples at the churches, UU Church, and elsewhere who had good careers, and jobs, and income, and homes. Outside of that group, there were the country girls, and the women who worked on farms, or ... for example, I had a 00:13:00landscaper, a woman who took care of my garden and my yard work. She was bulky, and strong, and showed up with all her tools, and everything. She was more of a guy than I was. Again, she too had no connections with the movers and shakers of the community. And in fact she referred to herself--at least within the gay community--as "a yardman."

I noticed that very early on, that Asheville already, even as early as the early 1990s, had at least four distinct groups of GLBTQ residents who almost never interacted. I thought that was astounding for a place like this. But Asheville 00:14:00at the time was a Mecca for all the surrounding counties because it was much bigger than any other town in Western North Carolina, so it had opportunities, or at least a place where people from the outer counties and the rural areas could come and feel safe, or at least hidden.

So that's my take on Asheville circa 1993.

Tina White:So you've really seen our history unfold since then. I'd be curious, I'm a relative newcomer, so I only know the modern prides. How would you compare prides to the ages in Asheville or North Carolina?

Andy Reed:Well, I only attended pride festivals and the march, I would guess, no 00:15:00more than three times during the late '90s and into the 2000s. When I did, I often was with not a GLBT group per se, but say the congregation of UU Asheville, the Unitarian Universalist Church, at the time. Now it's the UU Congregation. That brings in that I was very involved with that church. I grew up in the church. I was one of those born UUs in Asheville. The Asheville church was established in 1950, and I was born into it in '53, so it was my natural religious background. In the mid-'90s, we participated in the National Unitarian 00:16:00Universalist Association's welcoming congregation program, which was specifically designed to get congregations to be welcoming and open to the GLBT community, and not shame people, and not have bars or hindrances, but to say, "We welcome everybody."

The minister, at the time, was very positive and progressive, and almost pushy about it, which was great. She tapped me to coach that program at the time. We would have 50 people from the UU church, 45 of whom were heterosexuals, marching in the pride parade when it was held in Asheville. I think '97, or '98, around then, and maybe 2000. So it would be a contingent of people from that church 00:17:00being allies, and some members of the congregation who were GLBT would be part of that, but it would not be "the gay contingent" from the church. It would be the church standing with the gay community. That became a very important part of certainly some aspects of Asheville religious life because there were only a few other churches that would even consider being welcoming that way. First Congregational did, and All Souls had a very active program for GLBT youth, particularly.

Joan and Dan ... I'm going blank on their last name. Joan was, whatever it's 00:18:00called, a deacon at the church. I think she might have been the first female deacon. Her husband, Dan, was a lay member of the congregation. But they led a program that was generally for the entire gay community, but it also was specifically designed to give the runaways, and the homeless, and the people who were thrown out of their family homes, the same ones who had come to Asheville for a haven, it was designed to give them a shelter, and a haven, and opportunities to get a little bit more stabilized, and settled, and centered.

I got involved with that pretty early on, about '94, '95 because I started 00:19:00singing with what was then the Asheville Gay Men's Chorus, and it was housed at All Souls. I think around '94 or '95, I joined the chorus as a tenor and sang with them for a number of years. We rehearsed at All Souls and met there. So, that got me involved in their gay outreach program. I can't remember what it was called (could it have been Youth OutRight?). But All Souls became a community center in fact if not in name for a lot of different gay groups that wanted to have a home, or a place to meet. They made their campus available. At the same 00:20:00time, the Unitarian church on Charlotte Street in North Asheville had been hosting the Metropolitan Community Church starting in the '90s because it was the gay Christian congregation. We were the only congregation that was either willing or had space for them to come in and hold their services on Wednesday evenings. So we rented our church to them in the same way All Souls made its community building available for different groups to participate in.

Both those congregations did a lot to not just to welcome but to ensure that the gay communities in Asheville could find a home, and were not exiled, were not 00:21:00banished, were not constantly disparaged, and particularly for people who had particular faiths, or who had theistic beliefs, and who would have been thrown out of their Baptist, or Methodist, or Presbyterian churches in Rutherford County or in Haywood County, or Marshall. They could come here and find that community they were looking for here as well. If it was something to do with non-faith issues, like just wanting to be safe, or wanting to go back to school and get a GED, but not having any money, they could go to All Souls, and Dan and 00:22:00Joan would probably be able to find them some job that could bring in some money so that they could afford to share an apartment, and then sign up for a GED program. So a lot of that was going on in the early '90s.

Tina White:Again, you talked about back in the '90s, both men and women, there were groups that were, you didn't use the word underclass, but that were not privileged, that were struggling. We have that probably today, and I was just curious, is it just the same issue that's still repeating itself, or do you see any differences for people under 30, in terms of the issues that they're facing?

Andy Reed:I'm not involved in all in those issues or in those activities 00:23:00nowadays. I don't know what the situation is for people with that background nowadays. My suspicious is that it's likely that nothing has changed. In the same way that black families still have to teach their boys, give them the talk. They used to give them the talk when they were 11 or 12. My black friends who have kids now give them the talk at seven. That has been an ongoing issue for 50 years or more in that community, and I suspect the underclass or the less privileged people who come here to Asheville still are coming from outlying counties were they're facing the same discrimination and the same negative reaction.

From time to time, you read a story about how X, Y, Z school in Haywood County has a gay and gay friendly student group, and "Oh, even a couple of football players are members of it," but some of those same football players, if they're out with their buddies drinking on a Friday night are going to "beat up a fag." So I suspect that the same dynamic is still at work. But I don't know what's going on in Asheville in terms of the homeless, or homeless gay kids, or youth prostitution, or anything like that the way it was 25 years ago.

Tina White:The way you described your life, it sounds more comfortable. Your transition and your ability to navigate the world was more comfortable than many 00:25:00other people's experiences. Do you ever feel fear when you go out into the community, or engage in certain activities, or travel? Or do you generally just feel very at ease?

Andy Reed:No. I am the embodiment of white male privilege. I mean, I grew up with parents who encouraged me, and my brother and sister, to make our own choices in life, and decide what major we wanted in college, and what career we want to have. We were taught to be independent thinkers from the time we were small. We were given the tools to do that because our parents had educations. So 00:26:00if we asked what a word meant, they'd say, "Look it up," and we had a dictionary at hand. In a lot of families, probably in 50% of the households in Buncombe County, there is no dictionary in the house. Even that simple tool, "Look it up. Look it up for yourself. Find out for yourself. Make your decision for yourself." Those are all little tools that children get or don't get, or they have the desire but don't have the tools or the opportunity.

We didn't have a lot of money. My parents were not wealthy. We weren't from Beaver Lake or Biltmore Forest, but we had education and an attitude similar to theirs: that the world was what we made of it. I was very fortunate that way. In 00:27:00my choice of friends and people that I would spend time with, that was a choice I made, but it also was part of my personality that I would attract people who had open minds, and intelligence, and progressive attitudes.

One time I was attacked in Washington Square Park in New York. I was about, I guess, 28 at the time. This would have been in 1981. There were roving bands of Irish-Catholic, white, New Jersey, teenage assholes who would come to New York and look for fags to beat up. I was walking through Washington Square with my boyfriend, holding hands, and this group of them started attacking us, in the 00:28:00middle of the afternoon. I fought back like hell and landed some punches. My boyfriend was able to get away and find a cop. He came and arrested the kids. I didn't have any fear of them, or of being attacked that way. What I had was a reaction of outrage and great satisfaction when they were hauled off to jail for the weekend. When the case came up for a first hearing, I guess it was the following Wednesday, and I showed up at court, the judge, who was this fairly conservative, crusty, old guy from Brooklyn said that he was so disgusted by the 00:29:00behavior of these kids, and so glad that their attack had happened on, I think, a Friday afternoon, that they had to spend the whole weekend in jail, and there wasn't even a hearing to give them bail until after the weekend.

So they had to call their parents and explain why they were in jail in New York City, and possibly headed for The Tombs. He turned to them and their families, who were like Archie Bunker, and he turned to them and pointed at me, and said, "This young man has more courage and more strength of character than all your four boys combined. He has agreed to not press charges, but they will be on probation," I guess, or parole for a full year. They were age 17 and 18, or 00:30:00something. "And you, parents, are responsible for them, but Mister Reed thinks they might have learned enough by spending four days and four nights in jail. Maybe it will count as a good kick in the butt, and they will straighten up their lives, because frankly, Mister Joe and Mrs. Eileen so-and-so (whatever their last names were) "your kids are a mess, and it's your fault."

That was the only bad incident I had in terms of a repercussion for being openly gay, for being public about it. Even that, it was like, "I'm not going to let this screw up my life." So here in Asheville, I don't feel any of those fears or concerns. On the other hand, I think that if I had a different persona, if I 00:31:00were very flamboyant, if I were in drag, if I were transsexual, if I were just more effeminate as a gay man, there might be more response even if it was whispered from a cashier at Ingles, or what have you, but that's something I've never had to deal with. So I don't know if that would be true or not.

Tina White:In your years in Asheville, were there any LGBTQ institutions, and I use that whether it's places of business, or bars, or you mentioned the chorus 00:32:00already, but were there any other things you thought of as cultural touchstones in our history that you were involved in?

Andy Reed:Oh, yeah. The only other one was the development of a gay community center, which ended up not coming into reality. There was a group of about a dozen or 15 people, men and women, beginning in the mid-'90s, who wanted to create a space where gay groups could meet, could have business meetings, could strategize together, could have social events, could rehearse a gay play. After 00:33:00Matthew Shepard was killed, there was talk about doing a production of the play about his murder, which later came to fruition.

A group started meeting to talk about these needs, and what resources we had, and what support we would get from different institutions, like the congregations that were supportive, and other allied groups. Monroe Gilmour, who at the time was a friend of mine, had been running a nonprofit called WNCCEIB for 15 years or more--it was called Western North Carolina Citizens for an End to Institutional Bigotry. It was an umbrella group for any organization that 00:34:00needed support for women's rights, or Hispanic rights, or black rights, or women's abortion rights, and certainly GLBT rights. I think somebody from there also got involved. [Gerry Solomon] was very active with it. She is now, I think, the spokesperson for the police department or the sheriff's department, but at the time, she was working at a for-profit private company. I think Jim Cavener was involved, at least in the beginning. I don't remember who else was part of it. We meet every month for well over a year, year and a half, to try to create 00:35:00a skeleton structure whereby we could make a community center come into being, have a place of its own, develop a budget so that we could afford to pay rent, have activities, promote the organization. At the time, we were concerned that we'd also have to pay for security for any space we had--against vandalism and so forth.

We really got a good way along the path of developing the plan, and architecting the design for it. When we decided to file for non-profit status as a 501(c)(3), 00:36:00we agreed to do that, I think, under Monroe Gilmour's WNCCEIB group, and get our own 501(c)(3) number. Of course, at that point, we needed a board of directors and founding incorporating officers with the state. I had been the convener, I suppose you'd call it, or the leader of this ongoing committee meeting for a year and a half, and somebody, maybe Cavener said, "Well, we need to elect a board, and elect officers, and I think that the first person who should be on the board and should be our chairman is Andy Reed." I was like, "Nope. I've done my work. I have brought you all together. I brought diverse groups together to 00:37:00discuss it." I think Jerry Connor was involved as well. "We've seen what people have brought to the table, and so you're a fledgling group now, you don't need me. You've got your own leadership."

I nominated Gerry Solomon to be the chairperson of the board, or the founding president, or whatever the term was we were using. Somebody seconded, and she was chosen. I said, "Great. I'm going home now because I've done my work." So I left. The organization did continue to meet for a couple more years, but they ultimately did not find the funding or the resources to be able to build a community center. Then I think there was a ... thinking of it, this was probably 00:38:00about '99 or so. There was a rethinking of it, and the decision that because there were other organizations like All Souls, and like UU, and even the old O.Henry's when it was still on Haywood Street downtown near where Malaprop's is now, before it moved to where it is now, there were places where people could meet, and supportive organizations that would open their doors. Was it worth spending a lot of money trying to create a self-sustaining, narrowly defined, dedicated center just for GLBTQ issues, and programs, and so forth? So they decided not to.

Other than that, no. I didn't stay involved in many of the queer issues after a 00:39:00certain time. I think it's because in the same way my parents ... I learned this years and years ago. The day I turned 18, my parents cashed in their life insurance policy because I was the youngest of three, and they said, "Well, once he's 18, he can make it on his own, so we don't need to have a life insurance policy to take care of him." So they cashed it in. I was pushed out of the nest like a fledgling. I think I view movements in the same way. It was essential in 1969 to have a riot at the Stonewall Inn. By 1975, it was essential that I walk 00:40:00into a job and put my boyfriend's picture on the desk, and be done with it. By 1993 in Asheville, it was essential to shout out loud, "I'm here. I'm queer, and pay attention. I'm not going away, and I'm going to get in your face until you get over it."

After you do that, and they get over it, you don't have to shout anymore. So my view was after 10 years of being involved in these things in Asheville in various ways, they didn't need me. I didn't need to be a leader. There were other leaders who were perfectly capable of doing what needed to be done. And in fact, there was much less that needed to be done. So I wanted to just step away 00:41:00and say, "Go. Do your thing. I'm just going to enjoy singing with the chorus, and getting back to my work. I work as an editor and publisher, so I'm going to get back to my work editing books, and so forth, and doing theater." I did a lot of theater. "And step away from any GLBTQ activism." So that's what I did over probably 15 years ago or more.

Tina White:With the festival, when Blue Ridge Pride runs the festival, the identity debate we have every year between us is, Is the purpose of the festival to be a celebration or is it a protest? I think throughout the history, there have been swings in different cities. Just you personally, do you think, where 00:42:00on the spectrum should we be now?

Andy Reed:I think in terms of Asheville itself, and in Buncombe County to a lesser degree, it is more a celebration of prideful life, but as long as there are negative repercussions--particularly for young people in schools, in high schools, even middle schools--as long as there are negative repercussions for them, for being gay, or being perceived as gay, or appearing gay, or what have 00:43:00you, then there has to be a protest against that. But it seems to me ... I've been involved with the Martin Luther King prayer breakfast for over 20 years, and it is the largest event in Asheville that is biracial or multiracial. When we do the breakfast, now at the Crown Plaza. It was at the Grove Park Inn before that, and the Civic Center before that. It's the only event in Asheville at which the audience is pretty close to 50% black, 50% white. That means that a huge proportion of the black community has come out, and a very small proportion of the white community, but it is a very mixed crowd. It is generally celebratory. It is the largest event in the South for Martin Luther King's 00:44:00birthday celebration, other than the Atlanta Martin Luther King Center dinner, which attracts 3,000. We attract over 1,000.

It is celebratory, but it also is hortatory. The speaker always emphasizes the importance of being engaged in the community, and focusing on issues where there is still a lot of inequality or what have you. Overall, the breakfast is a time to celebrate, and cheer, and enjoy. On that same weekend, on the Monday, we hold the March for Peace and Justice, we have speakers at City County Plaza. They focus on all the problems that still have to be dealt with. They will focus on 00:45:00Rodney King, or Johnnie Rush, who was beaten up, tazed. They will focus on Breonna Taylor, and all the deaths that Black Lives Matter has brought to our attention. That is the part of it that is essential for raising awareness, whereas the breakfast is celebratory.

It seems to me that if the pride festival, or celebration, or march, or whatever you call it, if it can be maybe 75% celebratory. Look at all the organizations. "Hey, there's All Souls. There's First Baptist Church with their booth. Hooray." Even Hominy Baptist Church has been involved because they're a very progressive 00:46:00Baptist congregation. "Here are all these other groups," and so forth, "and services being offered, and goods being sold, and opportunities to get involved." All of this is positive stuff, but we've got to take 30 minutes or 40 minutes during the morning of pride to gather people at City County Plaza and speak to the incidents of hate, the incidents of cloak shut doors, the incidents of bigotry, the incidents of not just maltreatment, but unequal treatment by the courts, or in the jails, or in school programs, and so forth. But at the same time to remember, "Look how far we've come. Look at who's here. Look at these 00:47:00grandmothers with their grandchildren, and it's the grandmother who's gay." And, "Oh, that grandmother with her grandson, her son is a 13 year old who's gay."

That kind of thing. Look at how far we've come. Looking at how we have made this world a better place is something to celebrate. We love diversity. We celebrate it, and we even have the black drag queen in roller skates, or what have you, as well as the stodgy little white lady from First Baptist Church, who never in her wildest dreams 50 years ago, when she was a newlywed 22-year-old, would imagine that she would have a friend who was a black drag queen on roller skates. But here they are, and they have become friends. That's something to celebrate. At 00:48:00the same time, the gathering has to remember, look at all these kids who come here from Rutherford County, or Haywood County, or Cherokee, or Graham because their father beat them up and kicked them out of the house because they weren't masculine enough, or the girl was too butch, and they've been thrown out of their house. They need a place to live. They need an opportunity to live their lives safely. There has to be that component of it, but I'm wondering if it might be structurally designed so that it is a celebration with a serious moment, or serious core, a serious element.

Tina White:That's helpful. Before we close it out, are there any final thoughts you have? Things you'd-

Andy Reed:There is only one because back in the '90s, or maybe around 2000, I 00:49:00had ... I'll tell you a funny story. I was working at Asheville Community Theater as marketing director in '98, '99. I had bought a new car, and it was a sporty little convertible. My friend Carroll Ensley, since deceased, who was the partner of Ted Ahl--they were both involved with Gay Men's Chorus--I went to visit them and show off my new little red convertible. I was single at the time and hated it. Carroll sang bass in the chorus, and I sang tenor, and Ted was the accompanist. Carroll said to me, "Honey, if you can't get a man with that, you might as well hang it up." So I said, "Okay, well, if it takes a car to get a man, maybe I should hang it up." But it happened that the next pride parade was 00:50:00coming up. I found the perfect cap ... I'm a Leo. I was born in August. So the lion is my thing. I found a cap to wear for pride. That very summer, I got a boyfriend, which was rather nice. I don't know if the cap had anything to do with it, but I still have this cap 20-some years later, and it's my very favorite one. I'm going to put it on. It's got the little thing helicopter blades, and the beads are in pride colors like the six sections of the cap, and if you look, that thing at the top is a lion--for my Leo identity!

Tina White:Oh my God.

Andy Reed:That is my favorite little pride cap, which is about the extent of Andy being a flamboyant queen. I'll put my cap like that because otherwise I am 00:51:00so stodgy, and boring, and normal, and white-bread hetero-seeming person. What I believe is this, and I believed this at NBC 35 years ago, that the ultimate goal of all movements is to be completely normalized and accepted, to be part of the fabric of the community, not to be tolerated, not to be welcomed but with whispers, but to be so boringly part of the community that nobody even thinks about it anymore. That's the purpose of the gay rights movement. We want to be 00:52:00treated like everybody else. We want to be accepted for who we are. I mean, I remember this from the '60s. We want to be accepted for who we are with no judgements attached.

As that evolved, it meant we want to be able to marry whom we will. We want to live our lives with exactly the same lack of extra layers of concern as anyone else in the society, as white heterosexual couples do. We should not have to worry about a question like, "Have you ever felt fear in going out in public because you're gay, or you're identified as gay, or you're perceived as gay?" We 00:53:00should not have to be concerned with saying, "This is my husband, or this is my spouse, or this is my wife, or I'm married to Joe." That becomes so normal that even bureaucratic forms that you feel out spouse's name do not assume that you have the same name. It took feminists 40 years to get the right to use their own name on a government form. I remember when my sister was moving from Alaska to Alberta in Canada, and she was married. The Canadian immigrant officer would not allow her into the country, even though she had been working in Canada as 00:54:00Claudette Reed for 15 years. She had gotten married, and she and her husband had decided to move full-time to Alberta. The immigration officer said, "You may not immigrate into Canada unless you take your husband's name." She was 43 at the time. She had to become Claudette Upton in order to immigrate.

That kind of hurdle. She was known across Canada as Claudette Reed, and suddenly Claudette Reed no longer existed. The same thing with same sex couples. It should be axiomatic if there's a form that is for a couple, two people in a couple, like a mortgage loan, or a government ID form, that it should have space 00:55:00for each individual's name, and not simply a shared last name, and then maybe the wife's "maiden" name. That should be so much part of the system, and the culture, that it's not even questioned any more. People look back at the old forms and laugh because they were so stupid.

The purpose of the gay rights movement is that the gay rights movement is no longer needed. If we accomplish our goals, we stop existing, and that is the ultimate goal as far as I'm concerned. Certainly for somebody like me, I spent my 20s and my 30s making sure that for myself, and for people I knew, and for the communities I was part of, and NBC, and here and there, that nobody could question my right to be there, my right to participate, my equality and so 00:56:00forth. Once that was established, it became a nonissue and has been ever since. Once I moved home to Asheville in the '90s, there was still some of that same background work and catch-up work to be done, but once I had contributed what I could, then I was no longer needed for that.

There are still issues. There's another generation that needs to make sure that those same doors are open, but I have noticed that among high school and middle school students, it's much less of an issue. Just like racial prejudice seems to be much less of an issue in high schools and middle schools than it was even 20 years ago or 25 years ago.

So I'm very optimistic that generation will shed a whole new light on what is normal in America, like the kids from Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida with the anti-gun movement. What I hope is that we're getting closer to a point at which you and I are relics of a historical fact that future people will look back on and say, "I can't believe they had to go through that." Or that we'll just die out and be buried for 100 years, and then somebody say, "What? There was a gay rights program? Haven't gay people always been accepted?" That would be the ultimate ideal.

From my viewpoint, the African American community faces 100 times worse hurdles 00:58:00than we do as a primarily white GLBTQ community. So for the last 10 years or so, that's been much more my focus because I can be of more value as a white ally, or participant, or member of that community, member by invitation of that community. I edit The Urban News, which is the African American newspaper in town.

Tina White:I love that.

Andy Reed:I've been the editor of it since its inception. The publisher, Johnnie Grant, is a local Asheville woman, and she founded it, gosh, I guess in 2007, and hired me to be the copy editor. So I'm very involved with that, and with the 00:59:00Martin Luther King Prayer Breakfast. I've been involved since '94. Those are things where, whatever privileges I have, and whatever benefits have accrued to me, whether it's my time, or my insight, or my connections, or my background, and my knowledge can be of use, I can be a foot soldier in the black civil rights movement to much more effect than I can in the GLBT movement at this point.

That's where I've got my focus, but I think that what pride is doing for Western North Carolina, there is still so much to be done, especially in the outer counties. I'm canvasing for Jasmine Beach for her seat. I guess, it's not 01:00:00re-election, but it's election to a new seat now the district's changed. But just the fact that we have a lesbian county commissioner, and a black sheriff, and two African Americans on City Council, and a good likelihood of a third [there are three as of the 2020 election, and no men, all women], that we have an incredibly progressive district attorney, and finally, an African American county commissioner, I think locally so much has improved and change in terms of accomplishing that goal of you're seen for what you bring to the table, not who you sleep with, or who you fall in love with, because what matters is what you 01:01:00bring to the table on this issue. All the rest of it ...

The Rabbi Hillel in Judeo's history was quoting as saying, from Leviticus, "Do not do that to someone else that would be hateful if done to you. Love thy neighbor as thy self. That is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary." Bringing something to the table, whoever you happen to be, if you bring something to the table that's of value, that's what matters. Whether you go home and you're an elderly bald guy, or a younger middle aged-ish woman with long 01:02:00hair, or part of a biracial couple, gay couple, or what have you, that's irrelevant. What did you bring to the table?

Asheville's getting closer to that, where people bring to the table a variety of perspectives, and viewpoints, and ideas, and challenges, and insights, whether it's Jasmine or Al Whitesides ... Oh, sorry. I covered up my camera. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara or Al Whitesides, or if Kim Roney gets appointed to council [Antannette Mosley, an African American lawyer, was appointed to the open seat]. But that is where we want to get to, and so that should always be kept in the forefront. "How far have we come toward that goal, and what is still missing?" And then focus the energy on fixing the parts that are missing, celebrate how 01:03:00far we've come, and then try to figure out, "Will there be a way, ultimately, that we're not needed anymore as a movement?"

Tina White:Right. That would be nice.

Andy Reed:That's how I look at it.

Tina White:This has been ... I'm going to hit the stop button. This is fantastic. Let me just make sure. Do you want to stop cloud recording?