00:00:00.000 - 00:00:24.500

Could you tell me a bit about your background, please, your childhood and so on? Well, it's a very, very wonderfully complicated one, like lots of multi-ethnic people in the States. I have a half-Cherokee grandmother who married into a slave-owning southern family and a father who, well, there are different rumours, but his grandfather, I had heard, came from Ellis Island

00:00:24.500 - 00:00:56.960

and changed his name from something European to Gould, G-O-U-L-D, which is my maiden name. And I was brought up for the first five years of my life in Detroit, Michigan, and Sioux City, Iowa, and my mother died when I was six, and this tragedy led to us moving to California, and where my father, who was an ingenious alcoholic, went bankrupt, basically,

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and then my big brother, who's eight years older, my sister, who's three years older, and I, who's the baby, were farmed out and separated to various members of our family, at which stage my brother ran away, joined the Navy, and I don't know which war it would be, Korean or Vietnam. And then we grew up separately, and then I went to uni, and then I went to graduate school,

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and then I met an Englishman and came over here and married him, and he became a vicar in the Church of England, and we had two wonderful children, and then we got divorced because he was a very naughty vicar. I don't mind saying this because I did a television program about it with several other people. It was a BBC series called Adultery, and the reason the marriage ended was not my sexuality,

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it was actually my husband's infidelities, because it was impacting really terribly on the children. So I moved out at that stage here to Shropshire. How long ago was it that you moved out? I bought this house that was sitting in the kitchen.

00:02:26.600 - 00:02:48.460

I bought it in 1981, and it was a post office, but the rest of the house was derelict. It's a Grade II listed building, but it was a derelict house. So I worked in London and fixed the house up over that period of years, and then it wasn't until 1988, seven years later,

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that I, by that stage, had long moved out of my marriage without having a formal divorce, and moved here to Shropshire to devote my time to writing full-time. The previous 20 years I was a teacher at the American School in London, and before that at university in the United States.

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So I've been out here since 1988 full-time. In 1988, I moved here with my partner, Trish, who we became life partners at that stage, and we were together for 20 years. Yes.

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Okay. So yes, I moved out here to Shropshire with my partner, Trish, and we were together for 20 years, most of them very happy, until a fundamental tragedy that every parent will understand.

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In 1998, my daughter, Caitlin, took her own life. She was 19. She was in college. And I will briefly say that, because since I found out the truth about the medication she was taking, she was on a medication called Prozac that millions of people rave about.

00:04:24.540 - 00:04:41.400

And at the time, I knew absolutely nothing about it. She'd seen an ad on television in America for some kind of antidepressant, and the person she was staying with in America said, Oh, Prozac, it's the big thing, you can get it free on the National Health.

00:04:42.460 - 00:04:52.800

And so she did exactly that. She came back, and we had a conversation. She said, Mom, I want to go on Prozac. I said, Well, there's no magic thing, honey, but I didn't know anything about Prozac,

00:04:53.080 - 00:05:06.040

although there have been lots of books out. And my initial reaction to any drug is that it's never that easy. But anyway, she went on this drug, and over the 63 days before her death, she just went absolutely berserk.

00:05:07.040 - 00:05:32.780

She had a locked jaw, she got neural shocks up and down her body, and nightmares like you can't believe. But you don't associate behaviors with medicine, so I certainly didn't. But then it came to the stage where something happened,

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and she just took her life. And it was the way I found since that thousands upon thousands upon thousands of young people on this drug have taken their lives, and they're always hanging, throwing yourself from a parking lot,

00:05:52.540 - 00:06:07.320

jumping under a train. It's always a very violent way of dying. And this just obviously, well, one feels that life has ended, really. But certainly life, I can remember saying to Trish,

00:06:09.300 - 00:06:27.740

Darling, how are the people I love going to live with the person I've become? I can't imagine because I didn't want to live with me. I didn't want to live without this precious child. So that, I think, is the seminal event,

00:06:27.980 - 00:06:50.640

certainly for my son who's suffering now still, 17 years later. So that was a crucial life event. And since then I've tried to find ways to help young people and things that I know Caitlin would love me doing.

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Was Caitlin older or younger than your son? Nine years younger. It was the dad's college education, theological training, came between the two children's births.

00:07:05.740 - 00:07:18.860

They were planned and much-loved babies and still are, really. That's the way it is. I don't know. Since then my partner survived a long time,

00:07:18.860 - 00:07:34.120

but I think so many, well, I wrote a book about it, so many partnerships break up over these kind of tragic life events and certainly the death of a child for any reason. You think of Stephen Lawrence's parents.

00:07:34.540 - 00:07:52.240

You just hope they can find a way to understand the different ways we grieve. And that, you say, well, he's silent, he's a zombie. To be able to say that's okay, but that didn't happen. And my partner Trish had never had her own children,

00:07:53.060 - 00:08:11.520

and I don't for one second believe that that means that you have to have children to understand because I know too many people who haven't experienced birth or adoption who do understand. But on the other hand, I don't really want people to understand what it feels like

00:08:11.520 - 00:08:24.660

because it's just too, why would you want somebody to understand what it feels like? You'd rather protect them from it. And your feelings are individual to you, aren't they? Well, absolutely, and although there are universal things

00:08:24.660 - 00:08:39.420

and there are no kind of stages of grief that you go through in the same way, and bless Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, she was wonderful, but, you know, everybody's different. And, you know, Trish couldn't cope with it.

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She's a paramedic. I helped her because I'm a teacher. I helped her get into paramedic school. Before that, she was a firefighter.

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She's a wonderful Kiwi. But the loss of Trish was the second cataclysmic thing in my life because she really was my soul mate. You said she was a Kiwi.

00:09:02.080 - 00:09:15.900

She's a Kiwi, a New Zealander. Yeah. So what I've been doing since I'm here is just write books. Was that one of your early interests when you grew up?

00:09:16.100 - 00:09:26.600

Oh, I've always written. I wrote a poem when I was six. It's just there. If you're a word person, it's like being an artist or a musician.

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You just can't not do it. Scribble, scribble, scribble. Really, it's interesting because although I've published several books, I don't really care whether that's one of my problems.

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I don't really care if it has a big audience. But it's funny, isn't it? What have your books been about? First was Feminist Theology.

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That was a groundbreaker. That really was an amazing book published in 1981. What caused you to write that? Well, I was married to a vicar in the Church of England,

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and we'd both been confirmed in the Anglican Church. I'd been brought up in a Church of Christ, which is a really right-wing, literalist, legalistic church. So when I go home now,

00:10:11.060 - 00:10:19.940

Honey, come back to God. Come back to the Lord. We love you so much. You just stop your deviant ways. And I just kept saying,

00:10:20.220 - 00:10:29.840

Look, God loves you. God loves me. You don't have to think everybody else is going to hell. Honestly, you'll feel a lot better. So it's a continuing conversation,

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which when I was young was heart-rending. But now I love them so much, and I see how good they are. But they're just blinkered.

00:10:38.400 - 00:10:50.360

And they're racist and homophobic, down to the bones. But they still invite me to the family reunions. And mind you, they didn't invite Trish.

00:10:50.720 - 00:11:02.440

And I said, Well, you don't invite Trish. I'm not coming. Because she was part of your family. Yeah, and Christmas cards, Linda. Not Linda and Trish, ever, ever.

00:11:02.940 - 00:11:14.520

But her family, on the other hand, Catholic, wonderful, welcoming us both into the family. And it wasn't easy, but I'm just saying. Yeah, that was good.

00:11:14.740 - 00:11:20.560

Now that's a digression, I think, is it? No. Okay, yeah. But now I forgot where we were.

00:11:20.560 - 00:11:31.660

You were telling me about your books that you were writing. Oh, right, yes. The first book was really wonderful. I was doing, like you, I was doing a Ph.D.

00:11:32.660 - 00:11:44.240

I was doing a Ph.D. on women in the Bible at Indiana University. It was actually a master's program that I had been invited to turn into a Ph.D. thesis.

00:11:44.780 - 00:11:52.420

And it was women in the Bible, and by then I was getting those real feminist things with the second wave feminist movement. This is the early 70s.

00:11:53.440 - 00:12:04.720

And I just worked on this book, Women in the Bible, and it's a wonderful little piece of sit-up-and-beg, typewritten paper. That was the start of Dispossessed Daughters of Eve.

00:12:05.420 - 00:12:16.820

And in 1975, I met up with this wonderful woman who still is my lifelong friend and lives here in Klan. We were both married to vicars. Her name's Sue Dowell.

00:12:18.440 - 00:12:27.880

And we, I said, we got to write a book, we got to write a book. We need this, we need this thing over here. And it was basically to, it started out being about the ordination of women

00:12:27.880 - 00:12:42.040

in the Church of England. That was the kind of fundament of it. But it just then turned out to a kind of cook's tour. And we had to keep it, SCM said it's got to be small.

00:12:42.600 - 00:12:54.420

So, you know, this sprawling book that's just covering the history of Judeo-Christianity, and we had to focus on feminism. And our audience, which publishers always make you choose,

00:12:54.480 - 00:13:08.160

however difficult, is crossing over, which I love, building bridges between feminists who say you can't be Christian and feminist, and Christians who say you can't be Christian and feminist.

00:13:08.520 - 00:13:21.860

So to persuade, it was a book of persuasion. And it was a wonderful, and then it was put out in a second edition in 1987, which was the same year I published Sex and God,

00:13:22.060 - 00:13:43.000

which was, again, it was varieties of women's religious experience. By 1987, I knew that my, and I'm going to say carefully, my choice of my sexual home was as a lesbian. And I say that because if I had been in a faithful marriage to Tom,

00:13:43.520 - 00:13:56.280

I would have stayed in that marriage. And not out of feeling punished, you know. And I did tell him, Tom, I'm sure I'm a lesbian. And he'd say, it's all right, so just be discreet.

00:13:56.340 - 00:14:03.920

I said, I don't want to do anything. And of course, he was already having affairs, so we didn't have an agreement about that kind of fidelity until it was too late.

00:14:03.920 - 00:14:16.360

He did, neither of us wanted the marriage to end, but it did have to end. Because it wasn't working sexually. Because it, well, not, I went off him

00:14:16.360 - 00:14:29.100

when he was having it off with other women. And when he did, there was a thing with, I went to have this, what do they call them, those coils? I went to have a coil fitted and found I had this,

00:14:30.100 - 00:14:38.680

I'll never forget it, the doctor said, and this is good for history, so I don't mind saying it. He said, what does your regular husband do? I said, what do you mean my regular husband?

00:14:38.780 - 00:14:47.980

I don't have anything but one husband. And he said, well, I need to send you to a specialist. And it turned out to be a clap clinic. He didn't tell me it was a clap clinic.

00:14:48.040 - 00:14:57.820

And I had this STD, so I go back to Tom and I say, what the hell is this about? And he said, oh, I have absolutely no idea. And he said, I said, he said something like,

00:14:57.900 - 00:15:09.840

oh, you can get it on a toilet seat, I guess. And it depends on who you're sitting on the toilet seat with. So I was just, it was really then I thought, I don't want to, I don't want to be married to somebody like that.

00:15:10.120 - 00:15:22.460

And yet he was a wonderful vicar, and he still is, and I wanted to stay friends with him, but it doesn't work, it doesn't work. So then, wow, that's something that shouldn't go in, but never mind.

00:15:23.700 - 00:15:32.540

What shouldn't go in? Well, I don't really mind. Well, the thing about infidelity is within the church, but that's quite important, I think.

00:15:33.040 - 00:15:40.860

It happened for you. Yeah, because it happened. It's part of your history. And because I loved him, and I would have stayed in the marriage

00:15:40.860 - 00:15:55.380

if that had been able to be sorted. Having said that, he did say we went to counseling, and he did say, you know, this is going to stop. And I said, but I can't, something's broken.

00:15:55.700 - 00:16:01.740

I don't know whether I can get back. I did try. I did try. I said I'll stay in the marriage.

00:16:02.800 - 00:16:15.600

And what happened was just totally like a thunderclap. One morning I woke up, and I couldn't get out of bed. And I went to the doctor, and I said, I just can't get out of bed. And she says, oh, I think you're suffering from general malaise.

00:16:15.600 - 00:16:29.020

And I said, oh, could it be sergeant depression or private bipolar disorder? I mean, I made fun. I made a joke of it, but that's what was happening. I had, when I decided to stay in the marriage,

00:16:29.240 - 00:16:40.060

something totally broke, and I couldn't go to work. I had about a month off work. I didn't take medications, but I did get better. I did rest, and I got better.

00:16:40.260 - 00:16:51.700

And I think it was then I made the decision. But when you make those decisions, your children think it's their fault, whatever happens. I can give you a good example.

00:16:53.600 - 00:17:10.740

I said, honey, it was your dad's affair with X, and I won't mention who, that broke it for me. And because Sean was a young lad and had a crush on this woman who was a parish worker, it broke his heart.

00:17:10.740 - 00:17:26.860

So when I left the marriage, he thought it was his fault because I said, when I found out about this affair, this affair, something broke and I had to go. How did you feel about that affecting yourself?

00:17:26.880 - 00:17:35.880

Oh, it was horrible. It's just horrible. And what you always find out, though, is that children blame themselves. And I don't know how you stop it.

00:17:36.080 - 00:17:50.520

When my mother died, I heard my grandmother say, remember, I'm six years old, and it's a big house, and I heard my grandmother say, Rosalie has been sick ever since Linda was born.

00:17:51.460 - 00:18:01.300

My mother's name is Rosalie. That's my mobile phone. Let it go. And I just carried it around for about ten years.

00:18:01.540 - 00:18:14.800

Finally, when I told Mama Morris, I said, it was my fault Mommy died. And she said, no, honey. And I said, well, I heard you say she was sick ever since I was born. And, of course, then I found out the truth, that she had Hodgkin's.

00:18:14.880 - 00:18:19.080

She had cancer. And, you know, then I realized. It had nothing to do with you. Yeah.

00:18:19.560 - 00:18:25.220

But you always feel that. Yeah. I'm going to go just get that. Can you see?

00:18:25.460 - 00:18:44.880

Okay. Why did you decide to become more active and visible in the LGBT community? I think it happened in the late 70s, early 80s, when I met Richard Kirker, which is the church kind of contact.

00:18:45.500 - 00:19:03.180

And then in the early 80s, about 1983, 84, through Greenham Common, because our vicarage became a place of sanctuary for the Greenham women, who at first were Greenham men and women, but very early on Greenham became a woman-only place

00:19:03.180 - 00:19:14.680

because the women felt the men were trying to take over all the decision-making. Can you just say quickly what Greenham Common means? Yes. Greenham Common is kind of a real lovely museum piece now, a piece of history.

00:19:14.940 - 00:19:36.140

It was an attempt to stop the lodging of cruise missiles, which are American nuclear weapons, in Newbury, Berkshire. And it started out as a march by women and men. And it ended up being a woman-only camp.

00:19:37.000 - 00:19:52.220

And it went on for seven years. And I will say that now, probably 30 years later, Greenham Common is nuclear-free. It is an open space and parkland the way it was always intended to be. So that's kind of nice.

00:19:52.380 - 00:20:07.900

But Greenham Common was really formative because there was a strong Christian CND group. In my cellar of this massive rectory in the east end of London, where Tom and I lived,

00:20:08.020 - 00:20:19.440

and it was right around the corner from Richard Kirker at the time who lived there. And LGCM at that stage was GCM. So how did you find out about LGCM? Well, that's interesting.

00:20:19.580 - 00:20:35.940

You know, I can't really, I can't recall, but I just remember it probably came after Dispossessed Daughters of Eve because that was such an important book within Christian people. And then I used to give talks at St. Catharines.

00:20:36.040 - 00:20:51.100

That's why I mentioned St. Catharines, which is this wonderful place in the east end with Christian people who they used to hold retreats. And GCM had talks, and I can remember giving a talk

00:20:51.100 - 00:21:11.600

that I wasn't a very good homosexual, but I was practicing. So by which I meant I was just trying to be clear about where I was, you know, in this muddly world where we live in such a sexualized culture, and yet we, especially as Christians,

00:21:12.080 - 00:21:25.000

seem to know nothing about sex that's any use. I mean, I can remember thinking, but why is there not a father, mother, son, and Holy Spirit? And, you know, why is the Holy Trinity homosexual

00:21:25.000 - 00:21:35.400

in the sense of being same-sex? Yes. Yeah, so those were pretty early questions, and I can remember, you know, going, oh, yes,

00:21:35.500 - 00:21:51.400

and we held this wonderful conference at King's College, and Richard Harries, who is now a bishop and he retired, he was wonderful, he let us take over the King's College rooms, and we had these hundreds of wonderful women

00:21:51.400 - 00:22:03.020

coming from all over the country, and, of course, many of them were clear about their sexuality, but were actually being driven away from the church by rejection. For instance, if they wanted to be deacons,

00:22:03.120 - 00:22:10.680

which you could be in those days, if you wanted to be a deacon. Men could be. No, in the C of E, you could go as far as being a deacon. A woman could.

00:22:10.840 - 00:22:19.860

Yeah. Don't ask me about dates. I mean, I remember names like Lee, Tim, Oi, and my spiritual director was Una Kroll.

00:22:20.440 - 00:22:29.300

She was really great. You know, she helped me work stuff out, even though in that stage in her life, I think she thought homosexuality was an illness,

00:22:29.360 - 00:22:47.300

but she certainly doesn't feel that way anymore. She was a doctor, a GP, and also wanted to be a priest. So we were surrounded by all these incredible women of the most amazing, what do you call it, genealogies,

00:22:47.480 - 00:23:02.140

family trees, and great intellects and great spirits who were just such an inspiration. And, you know, my ex-husband was very much involved with that and very pro all of this too.

00:23:02.620 - 00:23:20.340

But that's where my awakening happened, and Richard Kirker was a feisty young priest then, really lovely. And I met him through, actually the woman who was my first sexual experience with a woman, I met Richard through her.

00:23:21.980 - 00:23:38.860

And I've lost touch with her, but she is an amazing, amazing woman. She worked in the voluntary services, and her vocation to the priesthood was blocked. I think she was in St Albans, one of those dioceses.

00:23:40.300 - 00:23:57.320

You know, and discovering her own sexuality too. Yeah. Is that helpful? Yeah. How has your work impacted on you and others? You mean my work for LGBT people?

00:23:58.100 - 00:24:14.720

Yeah, campaigning. Yeah, it all just goes, it just goes, it blends together with everything. I was a teacher at the American School during this period full time, and there was class 28, and I just, the teachers who were gay,

00:24:14.920 - 00:24:26.220

you know, you couldn't say you're gay. And we thought, we're in the American School, this is a public, i.e. private school. Can you just explain what, why they couldn't say they were gay

00:24:26.220 - 00:24:41.400

because of Section 28? Well, being gay was just, you were forbidden to promote sexuality. Now, how do you, if your very appearance, as with some of us it does, promotes as, I am gay, if you happen to be camp,

00:24:41.500 - 00:24:58.200

if you happen to be butch, you know, how do you hide that? But we just didn't, we just went out, and I'll never forget this, my beloved colleague in the English department, because I taught creative writing, poetry, and all kinds of stuff.

00:24:58.960 - 00:25:12.900

And Don, one day, one of the social workers in the school, it's a very elite school, they have everything, said, Don, are you gay? And he said, Paul, I'm not just gay, I'm hilarious.

00:25:14.140 - 00:25:30.920

And I said, good on you, Don. So there was always that atmosphere of, you know, Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher, get out of our lives. And we actually did, the kids had a, she dedicated the American school,

00:25:31.120 - 00:25:46.380

she dedicated the new building, and the ambassador, Walter Annenberg, he was this kind of Ronald Reaganite type ambassador, they came to the school and they dedicated the school, and we were all told, you know, kids walked out on her,

00:25:47.560 - 00:25:57.700

and they got in trouble. It had nothing to do with the teachers, but they didn't like that she was taking milk away from the state schools where kids, poor kids were going.

00:25:58.460 - 00:26:11.080

So that was all part of it, and Richard Kirker was an inspiration, I mean, he's just, he's so mischievous and funny, and he's very controversial, I mean, not everybody loved him, he was kind of like Marmite, you love him or you hate him,

00:26:11.100 - 00:26:23.900

and of course he was more interested in the guys, and he had to remember, he had to be reminded, hey, wait a minute, and I think that, in fact, I know that formative to the change to lesbian and gay Christian movement

00:26:23.900 - 00:26:37.280

was a good lesbian friend who just said, come on, and he was so, you're right, of course you're right. But I don't know the year that it changed to LGCM, I think in the 80s sometime.

00:26:40.060 - 00:26:56.240

But I'm not really, I'm not very proud of this, but I'm not really a big group person, I'm not a good joiner, and I don't like political parties and stuff because I just don't like guaranteeing I'm going to say something

00:26:57.140 - 00:27:07.700

unless I think it's... You prefer to write. Yeah, or just say, make sure I believe this. It's like a priest having to say the 39 articles.

00:27:08.600 - 00:27:18.820

Well, you can't believe it, but I think if you have to say something, you've got to really think about it. I'll still say the Lord's Prayer, although I don't believe God leads us into temptation,

00:27:19.100 - 00:27:36.900

so I just kind of twirl it around in my little head. Yeah, but having said that I don't like joining, I am a campaigner. Would you like to say more about that? Well, just through, along with Sue and several other people,

00:27:37.100 - 00:27:49.300

much more eminent than we, founded the movement for the ordination of women, and then that became quite big and eloquent, and so we did other things.

00:27:49.580 - 00:27:58.800

Was that grass or watch? Oh, it was grass, it was watch. Monica Furlong, who was a close friend, and she was a broadcaster for the BBC

00:27:58.800 - 00:28:11.640

and a wonderful Christian writer. She was a dear friend, and we used to put on cabarets, and I used to sing, imitating Joan Baez, kind of Jesus Christ, the apple tree kind of songs and stuff,

00:28:11.680 - 00:28:25.200

and we put on stuff at St. James Piccadilly, which was for Mao, but also for sexuality and understanding sexuality. It was very woven together, for me anyway,

00:28:26.680 - 00:28:45.140

and those were really fantastic days. It's just lovely putting on these really, really naughty cabarets, because you can be really mischievous in the theatre, in a good way. Clowns of God.

00:28:45.360 - 00:29:00.440

To make people think. Clowns of God, yep. So it's writing, it was performing, it was campaigning, and I only spoke at one retreat, GCM retreat,

00:29:01.240 - 00:29:09.800

but I do remember what I said. GCM meaning? Gay Christian Movement, with Richard. And then Richard invited me to do some broadcasting on the BBC too,

00:29:10.340 - 00:29:28.060

which was helpful to my thinking, because that's wonderful. I don't know whether you like thought for the day and prayer for the day, but I love doing it because of the way you have to really condense, it's like a poem almost, you have to push it into a ball to get it right.

00:29:28.620 - 00:29:40.120

I love that discipline. Yes, so what's your view on changes that have taken place in the church and society over the last 40 years? That's a really interesting question, and can you put us on pause,

00:29:40.180 - 00:29:54.320

because I've got a cough. So what's your view on the changes that have taken place in the church and society over the last 40 years? I just think it's the most mind-boggling time to be alive.

00:29:54.820 - 00:30:09.860

I can't believe the fact that I marched with Martin Luther King when I was 19, and now there is a black president, who for all of his warts is a wonderful human being. I can't believe that we have had a woman prime minister,

00:30:09.860 - 00:30:22.940

who I didn't vote for, but it's just incredible in this place. I know it's not the church, and I cannot believe that women have been ordained, and now we have bishops, and they're going to challenge the hierarchies

00:30:22.940 - 00:30:33.820

in ways that need challenging, hopefully. Hopefully they won't sell out to the hierarchy, because it must be very tempting, all those pretty clothes. We like wearing frocks.

00:30:34.820 - 00:30:47.220

I guess a lot of guys do too. I mean, I just absolutely can't get over it, both in secular society and certainly in terms of sexuality. The fact that it's finally filtering through,

00:30:47.760 - 00:30:59.740

that the good science about our sexuality, that no, if you think there's a sex center in the brain, take a chill pill. The brain is complicated.

00:31:00.720 - 00:31:13.420

We all have brains and everything. We all have left and right brains, and they all interact. And there's so much known now about the complexity of sexuality. And whether they like it or not, the church,

00:31:15.520 - 00:31:35.780

which has suffered so from this obsession with its male-only hierarchy, has to come to terms with God's good human rainbow, from the hermaphrodite, who, if physically able, could inseminate themselves,

00:31:36.960 - 00:31:49.520

to the intersex person, to the person who is culturally not heterosexual, across the board, that our sexuality really is a rainbow.

00:31:49.640 - 00:32:03.960

I don't think there's any better symbol of our sexuality. The only thing that annoys me, and I'm wrong probably in being annoyed, is this obsession with this is a genetic thing in me.

00:32:04.200 - 00:32:19.820

It's a God-given genetic gift. And I think, fair enough, but the trouble is with genes. It's like predestination. It's like it's pretending that your biological heritage is everything.

00:32:20.780 - 00:32:32.940

So, you know, is it nature, nurture? It's a combination of everything. So in the rainbow spectrum, and I've had many arguments, mainly with my male gay friends,

00:32:33.520 - 00:32:45.140

I say, I chose to be gay. By that I mean I found out what my home was. I didn't have a word for it. And, you know, it's as good as any.

00:32:45.840 - 00:33:10.420

It doesn't determine everything in my life. It determines one aspect of my life that isn't most people's business, actually. But it's a wonderful thing. And there are probably asexual people who don't wish to have sex.

00:33:11.720 - 00:33:26.160

And that's healthy. If they're not made to feel ashamed of it, I don't know. But back to your question. Listen, my kids used to say I should teach the digression as literature.

00:33:27.120 - 00:33:46.400

But back to your question, over the past 40 years, I just think if we didn't have these crazy people killing off people all over the world, everything would be wonderful. I hope that stomach growl doesn't go onto the tape recorder.

00:33:47.360 - 00:34:05.380

But, you know, because I just think, well, is it LGCM? I would like to say that I'm very involved in the peace movement. And I was thrilled when Jeremy Corbyn was actually nominated to the Labor Party. I just couldn't believe it.

00:34:06.160 - 00:34:22.800

And I just thought, and, you know, just an aspect. And all the young, Rufus, my grandson who's 19, loves him. And Rufus has joined the Women's Equality Party because he's not sure that the Labor Party, and he's talked me in.

00:34:22.880 - 00:34:39.140

I've joined my first political party, the Women's Equality Party. But Trident, Jeremy's stand against Trident, which I think, you know, every time they say that Trident should win the Nobel Peace Prize because it's prevented wars, and I'm thinking,

00:34:39.140 - 00:34:51.240

is there a single year since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, since the interim in World War II that we haven't been fighting wars and Americans haven't been going all over the world? I don't know about UK.

00:34:51.800 - 00:35:11.780

So in the last 40 years, politically, it's a much more dangerous world where it comes to waging wars for an ideology and what some people call neoliberal globalization. I would call it capitalist imperialism.

00:35:13.240 - 00:35:28.980

So that really worries me for my children and grandchildren and all of our great-grandchildren. But the military now accepts gay people. It accepts women, and if you're going to go down that road

00:35:28.980 - 00:35:45.260

and accept that the military is, well, necessary, I can't imagine the world that it is without the military, but I just wish it was our politicians who were the soldiers. I wish it was the prime minister who was going out in Afghanistan

00:35:45.260 - 00:35:55.080

instead of your son or mine. So, you know, it should be those guys. They're the ones saying we've got to fight, not our kids. So that's got worse.

00:35:55.640 - 00:36:06.020

But sexuality, everything else seems to have gotten a lot better. Right. So what are your hopes for the future regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans acceptance?

00:36:06.020 - 00:36:15.320

I just think we're going to keep going from strength to strength, and I don't think we're going to get trounced again and have to reinvent the wheel. I don't think our children...

00:36:15.320 - 00:36:29.460

Because we've lived long enough to see the second wave of feminism, post-feminism. By the way, I hate those terms, post-anythings, but it's just the media's way of trying to colonize and get rid of stuff

00:36:29.460 - 00:36:49.620

they don't like. And we live in an era where I think science and art have come together so that nobody in what we call the developed world can deny that sexuality is very, very complicated.

00:36:50.700 - 00:37:05.000

And using the theological terminology, God-loved and God-given for all of us. So I think it's going to get better. Unless we get stupid and use old-fashioned arguments

00:37:05.000 - 00:37:18.120

to split each other off from each other. What are you thinking of when you... Well, I'm thinking of mostly inner-Nissan power stuff where you get a committee together

00:37:18.120 - 00:37:32.080

and how long do they agree about everything? I wish it were Quakerish. I wish it were driven by we have a sense of the meeting. But no, no, there's just all of these...

00:37:32.080 - 00:37:41.740

We all have agendas. And, you know, I've been told that, Linda, you have an agenda. Your agenda is you think that you think better than anybody else.

00:37:41.820 - 00:37:49.460

And I said, well, I hope you're wrong because I don't want to think that. But we all like to think that we've carefully thought through things that might be helpful.

00:37:49.460 - 00:38:00.460

But it's inner-Nissan battles, and very often personality battles. So you're quite optimistic about the next 40 years? I am so optimistic.

00:38:00.880 - 00:38:07.300

I mean, I've talked about it with my kids. I remember Caitlin. I said, honey, we're both three-quarter glasses, three-quarter full people,

00:38:07.400 - 00:38:15.260

because if I thought differently, I'm in control of this thought. If I thought differently, I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning.

00:38:15.960 - 00:38:27.640

I don't think that it... I know that bad things happen. They happen to all of us. And what springs eternal in me is faith, hope, and love.

00:38:28.080 - 00:38:44.020

And that's what guides me. And my nasty bits, I try to just recognize them. And, boy, I've got them. You know, there's a bitch right underneath out there.

00:38:44.220 - 00:38:54.860

Maybe that's human nature. Well, I think it's original sin. I wouldn't baptize babies, but... Right.

00:38:55.200 - 00:39:07.880

So are there any things that I should have asked you about, but didn't? Oh, that's an interesting question. I think I've talked too much about everything you've asked me,

00:39:08.000 - 00:39:19.480

and I think everything you've asked me has been pertinent. I think especially the hope for the future, because there's very good reason for that. And, you know, we're all mortal.

00:39:19.660 - 00:39:28.440

We're all going to fall off our twigs. And, you know, you get older and you think, Wow, this has been an amazing life. I wonder how long it's going to go on.

00:39:28.640 - 00:39:40.800

And in my case, it's been very, very ambivalent because I just want to be with my daughter so often, and my mother, you know, losing these people who I love so much. And I'm not afraid of death at all.

00:39:41.380 - 00:39:54.980

So that's something that... I don't think that's to do with being gay, though. I think it's to do with the teachings of Christ and the older Buddhists and all the people I love

00:39:54.980 - 00:40:07.660

who embrace the language of different faiths, but who understand that underneath it all is this great abiding mystery, and the best word we have for it is agape.

00:40:08.280 - 00:40:16.820

Yeah, yeah. Shall we finish on that note? Yeah, sounds good. I'm good with cutting off lines.

00:40:16.940 - 00:40:20.700

That sounds good. Thank you very much, Linda Hercombe. Thank you, Margaret Evans.