I Woke Up This Gay

If I was going to be successful as a liberal lobbyist in America's most conservative state asking Mormons for money to save the lives of a bunch of people with AIDS. I needed to do a serious anthropological study of how Utah's bizarre, freakishly repressed society thinks and more importantly how they communicate. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my...

to live in Utah in my 40s was, well differnt. Trying to be true to myself in the ultra-conformist, freakishly bizarre pseudo reality of Utah was as challenging as it was lonely.   I began working as a lobbyist, asking the Utah State Legislature for money to pay for HIV medication. I studied FOX news and BYUTV to learn how to effectively communicate in America's most conservative state, oh yeah...

HE IS TALKING ABOUT YOU Trump says he will use the military and get rough with Americans who disagree with him. What will it take to get your attention? What will it take for you to understand he is talking about you. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion. Please go to my GoFundMe page to help...

In this episode I compare Mormonism to Communism and it's the most fun I've ever had writing. I explain everything you always wanted to know about Mormonism, including a few secrets the Mormons would rather you didn't know. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion. Please go to my GoFu...

Once I finally escaped Utah my life just blossomed. For the next 20 years one amazing opportunity after another just fell in my lap.   I was a double agent spying on the KGB for the Americans in Munich, Berlin and Moscow. Then I then moved to NYC and found my dream job in the news industry, traveling throughout Europe, Africa and Austral-Asia, but while living in Sydney it all came to an abrupt en...

We, the majority of decent Americans, must stand together as one once again. We are literally on the cusp of losing everything old LGBTQ+ activists like me worked our entire lives to create for you, the younger generations.  If you only ever listen to one of my podcasts, please listen to this one. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital wor...

I this episode I recall how my family earned the nickname "The Heathens on the Lake." We were the only no practicing Mormons on Salem Lake in Utah Valley, the sanctimonious sanctum sanctorum of Mormon religiosity. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion. Please go to my GoFundMe page to h...

I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion. Please go to my GoFundMe page to help out: https://gofund.me/2cc2aa948 In this episode I remember my painful and at times rather humorous psychological journey surviving child abuse. I started life as a happy and very flamboyant little boy who enjoyed play...

In this episode I recall the memorable and exceedingly enjoyable months I shared an apartment with the splendid, the singularly spectacular legendary superstar Candis Cayne. The Princess Diana of drag.  I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion. Please go to my GoFundMe page to help out: https://go...

As you may have noticed I rewrote and recorded this episode about my mum, but now its twice as long as it was before. I've divided it into two episodes, 10.1 and 10.2. I put a great deal of love into rewriting these two episodes about my mum and intentionally recorded them on my birthday.  I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work pr...

As you may have noticed I rewrote and recorded this episode about my mum, but now its twice as long as it was before. I've divided it into two episodes, 10.1 and 10.2. I put a great deal of love into rewriting these two episodes about my mum and intentionally recorded them on my birthday.  When the Mormons in Utah saw the way my Russian Mother was raising me they rolled their eyes and called h...

The age of death and AIDS was finally over. I had always imagined a huge celebration, like when we won World War II, but there wasn't so much as a whimper. After all It Was Just Fags, So Who Cares? In the first six years of the AIDS crisis not one single dollar was spent for research, or a cure in America because It Was Just Fags, So Who Cares? I need help raising money to purchase a badly nee...

At the age of 12 I was an effeminate spoiled child born into a prominent Mormon family. Using the voice of the terrified, confused child I was, I describe what it felt like when my Mormon Bishop commanded my Scout Master and older brother to "beat the queer out of me." Grown men were suddenly beating me and calling me a "faggot," but I still had no idea what that was. After 5 years...

Until Americans of all races are able to admit our inner most insidious racist thoughts and sit down and openly discuss them with each other we're stuck. I'm an old white man, who happens to be gay, but I've come to realize I'm an insidious racist against old white men. Imagine the existential conundrum I find myself in, I'm an insidious racist against myself. I need help raisi...

Recently I was asked to give an address to some middle school students in Oregon City about the importance of embracing diversity. I shared with them our nation's history of hate speech, turning into discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ+ and against all marginalized communities in our society. I also told them my own personal experiences as the victim, the focus of America's hatre...

Nils was a symphony in gravitas. Of all my departed friends I will always miss Nils the most. In this episode I recall our last week together on Fire Island and the discussion of our favorite novel "Damian," by Herman Hess. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion. Please go to my GoFundMe...

As you may have noticed I rewrote and recorded this episode about my mum, but now its twice as long as it was before. I've divided it into two episodes, 10.1 and 10.2. I put a great deal of love into rewriting these two episodes about my mum and intentionally recorded them on my birthday.  I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work pr...

Early Mormon history of my polygamist Mormon Family who first settled Cache Valley in Northern Utah and southern Idaho. I recall some of my fondest childhood memories in the lovely little Norman Rockwell community of Preston, Idaho, the town of Napolean Dynamite fame, which is literally built over the mass grave of the worst Native American Massacre in our nation's history, the Bear River Mass...

How do you make privileged, heterosexual, white Americans understand what it feels like to watch a man beaten to death and know there was no place to go for prevention, protection, justice, or even to report the crime, because the armed policeman who stood beside me, he saw it too, but refused to stop it because gay lives didn't matter? I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed comp...

I had to reluctantly leave my wonderful gay life in Berlin Germany and return to America at the same time I discovered I was HIV+. I remember the joys and sorrows of gay life in America during the AIDS crisis. I was Princess Diana's personal waiter for her dress auction at Christie's in New York and remember how the "People's Princess' changed America's view of AIDS. I need...

While working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, (RFE/RL,) I accidentally kidney punched my political hero, President Jimmy Carter, at a symposium in Kazakhstan. Upon returning to the RFE/RL offices in Munich, Germany I discovered our newly appointed Director, Kevin Klose (who would go on to run National Public Radio,) was conducting a witch hunt to "thin the radios out of all the fags."...

We, America's gay children of the 70s and 80s, had started off with such promise and so much hope. We honestly convinced ourselves we would be the generation who gave the world gay rights. Instead, we became the generation obliterated by AIDS. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion. Please g...

Growing up in a prominent Mormon family, this episode chronicles my journey from being the victim of church ordered child abuse, to cure my homosexuality, to gay rights activist taking on the Mormon Church and my family. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion. Please go to my GoFundMe page to he...

Working with the KGB on the behest of U.S. intelligence agencies, I became the FIRST OUT GAY American allowed to keep my TOP SECRET security clearance after coming out, only to be ultimately betrayed by the intensely homophobic U.S. intelligence agencies. I need help raising money to purchase a badly needed computer to continue my podcast and my vital work promoting love, diversity and inclusion....

As a child my beloved aunt asked me to decide what kind of life I wanted to create for myself. I wanted an interesting life and became a gay rights activist and lobbyist. "Interesting lives are hard, hard and lonely." She explained. Fifty years later she asked "So, how was it? Do you regret your choice? Its been hard and lonely. I know. I've been watching, but I've been so prou...