Slow Burn Podcast Excavates Bay Area LGBTQ History with ‘Gays Against Briggs’

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Forty six years ago, California held its first statewide vote on gay rights. Prop 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, sought to ban gay teachers from the classroom. The battle to stop that proposition is the subject of Slate’s current “Slow Burn” podcast season, chronicling an explosive moment in both Bay Area and gay liberation history. It follows the political trajectory of Harvey Milk, as well as a wave of anti-gay backlash from conservative politicians across the country. We speak with Slow Burn host Christina Cauterucci and early gay rights advocates Cleve Jones, Gwenn Craig and Ruth Mahaney, about lasting lessons from the Briggs Initiative and those who opposed it. Guests: Christina Cauterucci, host of Slate's "Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs" podcast Cleve Jones, author, "When We Rise," organizer with UNITE HERE, a hospitality workers' union. Also co-founder of the AIDS Foundation and founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt Ruth Mahaney, former professor of gender and LGBTQ studies Gwenn Craig, queer elder who has worked on several electoral candidate and issues campaigns in San Francisco, including the supervisorial campaign of Harvey Milk and San Franciscans Against Proposition 6 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:15.7	Greetings, Boomtown.
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0:32.3	From KQMD.
0:44.3	From KKMedia in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:49.0	A wave of right-wing legislation, a backlash against LGBT rights, a targeting of teachers to incite
0:57.0	a moral panic about the children and what they're learning in school.
1:01.0	Yes, this describes today, but it also describes 1970 when an Orange County legislator
1:09.0	pushed a statewide proposition to ban gay teachers from the classroom.
1:13.3	Prop 6, or the Briggs Initiative, and the successful battle to stop it are the subject of a new season of Slate's slow burn podcast.
1:21.9	We'll talk with the show's host, Local Gay Rights Legends, and hear your stories about that time.
1:26.4	It's all coming up next right after this news.
1:35.4	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. I'm a huge fan of Slate's podcast Slow Burn. History gets
1:43.0	packed down over time and and in the process,
1:45.7	so much of what it was like to be alive in 1920 or 1990 just gets lost.
	...

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