KS: Do you think that all of your political activism and charity work — which is so centered on lesbians and bisexuals and gays and transexuals ...
JL: ... and the queer and the questioning .... I know, I know. Oh, honey, I just like queer. Let’s just say queer. Queer is so great.
KS: Okay - all of your queer stuff you’re involved in — is that where your own maternalism can be expressed? Why have you chosen the queer community as the focus for your activism?
Light2 JL: Maybe some of it is maternal but it is more about family in a more general sense. And about inspiration. And courage. And justice. I don’t understand why everyone wouldn’t love and accept everyone. Now I hope that doesn’t sound like Pollyanna but I really truly mean that. I don’t get it. I think we are all here to offer each other support with graciousness and generosity to get us all through this life. We are here to give each other as much joy as possible.
From the time I was a little girl when I went to a performing arts camp in New Hope, Pennsylvania, I have been supported by the gay community. The performers who would come down from New York to be our teachers were mostly gay and I knew then that they were there to watch out for me. Then as time went on I developed this whole theatre family which was mostly gay. My managers — who have been together as a couple for 30 years — are gay. And suddenly back during the height of the AIDS crisis, all my friends started dying and two presidents of the United States were not saying anything about it and you better believe if it were a good-ole-boys-white-boy disease it would have all been handled in about five seconds. We talk about this country being a country of compassion and I see how my gay family is being treated! Well, I had to take a stand. I had to speak up. I had to.
Then I see this community — this gay family of mine — come up to a whole other level of dignity in the way that they are dealing with the epidemic. Gay men back then began to come out and stand up in the face of such divisiveness and vitriol and started to rise like the phoenix from the ashes. God! It still makes me tear up.
And I thought, you people are our leaders. You are teaching the straight community how to have courage. My manager Herb says everybody has something to come out about. We straight people just have to figure out what it is for us. Because when you do you have a kind of freedom in your life — a kind of authenticity — you can’t have otherwise. When I look at the gay community I say to them, “Please, please please — know who you are and what you mean to people like me.” That’s what I desperately want this community to understand. It’s not about — oh, let me help you. It’s you who inspire us. It’s you who are are the leaders. It’s you who show us the way. When our friends were dying they were fighting and storming the FDA for drugs and — this is the paradox and the dichotomy — they were at the same time surrendering and filled with grace. They were living like Carlos Castaneda talks about — with death on their shoulders. And they were magnificent. This is so important to me — I want the young people in this community to know their history, to know that they come from a community of heroes.
Read the full interview HERE.
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