Dustin Lance Black | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union

[Music] [Music] thank you III might avoid this if that's okay because I'll get trapped behind it and I'll start holding onto it for dear life so I want to do that if you don't mind if we could just take a moment of silence to send our love and our care to those we lost to their family to their friends and their loved ones in Manchester thank you you know a message was sent who was attempted to be sent last night that that's centered on fear and trying to spread fear and and it's a familiar story it's a story that history has told many many times I kind of want to tell you some of the stories of how I grew up understanding fear coming to know fear seeing fear being used utilized for power the fear of my own and I want to do it through story because that's kind of what I do for a living his story and maybe we'll start to talk a little bit about story in a certain point I know I'm supposed to answer questions but I kind of want to ask you a couple of things as well but my story that I want to share first is a little bit about how afraid I was to even open my mouth as a kid even be seen as a little kid it starts in San Antonio Texas when I was in kindergarten and my mom brought me into school for the very very first time and I'll never forget walking into that classroom it's filled with kids probably twice as many kids are as her here because it was Texas public education and this is a kindergarten classroom they all had these little like drawings of animals that they're being asked the color in with various colors and I saw some kids using quite appropriate colors some using not so appropriate colors so I'm staying in the lines from going outside of the line I had no idea what the rules were that was very upsetting to me I didn't like all the eyes on me and I sat in on the panic attack I was horribly afraid of being in this room with these kids and I was sent to the principal's office now in Texas you go to the principal's office well I met a woman who had giant Texas hair hair sprayed way up she had these giant fingernails and my job for the next two years because I couldn't be around other kids I wouldn't even be able to open my mouth to say a word around other kids what I did was listen for her walkie talkie to go off watch her grab this paddle that was on the wall that had a hole drilled in it and I would follow her from classroom to classroom as she found kids who had broken the rules they walk out look a fear in their eyes she tell him to bend over and classic Texas fashion she would paddle them that paddle screaming louder than they were and I looked at her and I thought my god that is what a leader is right that's right that big hair those fingernails she was scary as hell and I knew I didn't have it in me to ever be anything like her I knew it but all of a sudden I'm learning what fear is fear as leadership fears how you get people to do what you need them to do and then in church I heard a similar message so on top of growing up Texan I also grew up in the Mormon Church anybody know anything about the Mormon Church in here you've seen Book of Mormon incredibly accurate action right I laughed the entire way through it but even the Mormon Church has put an ad in the back which tells you just about how accurate it is and I remember on one certain Sunday it's very special Sunday I was probably only 6 or 7 years old and they beamed in the prophet of the Mormon Church from Salt Lake City Utah his name was Spencer W Kimball he had white hair very very old and I'm sitting there watching him in all being beamed in via satellite and he says these words he says next to the sin of murder comes the sin of sexual impurity homosexuality and I idled it up I mean this was a family of close family we played Scrabble all the time here was this new word it had like six seven syllables it had consonants and vowels and it even had an X in it and we all know how valuable that is in Scrabble right so I was incredibly excited by this new word I just absolutely no clue what it meant until one day it slipped out of my mouth and I was surrounded by these relief society women and the relief society is the women's group in the Mormon Church they all have their dresses hind' right down to the ground and when I said that word you could hear a pin drop and they called over one of the priesthood holders and the priesthood holder came to me and said let me tell you what this word means and he explained it to me in some serious detail and I lit up again inside because I thought boy now I understand why I have a on that boy down that street and not the girl and I had like maybe a little glimmer of hope for half a second before he clarified that if I ever dared go there and I had no idea at the time what that meant now I do but if I ever did go there that I would bring great shame to myself and to my family that I'd be destined for hell and I was afraid I was scared that's not something I wanted to do to myself or to my family and I shrank and I hid and if it wasn't bad enough to be hearing messages of fear from my leaders in school and in church you just had to turn on the TV at the time and listen to the political leaders there was this really gorgeous gal named Anita Bryant who had been a failed beauty pageant queen and she decided she was going to go on a campaign across the United States of America saying save the children from homosexuals right put that campaign from C to C saying that just knowing that there were gay people just allowing gay and lesbian people to have homes and to have jobs somehow just knowing that LGBT people exist threatened children and this idea wasn't some right-wing far-flung ideas this idea got copied in all 50 states in the country in one way or another and people showed up for it from both sides of the aisle progressive and conservative it was hot it was fire people would actually show up for it and we were losing across the country so I'd heard the voice from school from my family from church from my politicians I knew I was less than I knew I was going to hell I knew I'd have no right to have a job or to have a home in the future if anybody ever found out and I shrank and I hid and I ended up you know by my tweens I had one friend and his name was Troy and good old Troy his mom bought him the sort of used corduroys that were often green from the you know from the second-hand shop and if they tore in the knees she'd put a little patch and iron it right onto the knee and and he didn't have many friends he probably just had me but he invited me over to his house and in Texas I went to his house and in Texas he had something quite valuable which was this above-ground pool right filled it up with water in the summer we jumped in I could tell something was bothering Troy though because he wasn't talking much and I started pushing I was like well what is it what is it what's what's on your mind and he finally did something he told me something that he'd never told anybody before he came out to me in a way but he came out to me as Jewish I had never heard of a Jewish before but I knew it wasn't a Christian and I knew we were living in a Christian town in a Christian town that was filled with mostly Southern Baptists that was already different enough as a Mormon that was way too different to be a Jewish whatever that is so I started trying to talk him out of it saying you know I think you can change that I don't think you have to be that tried really hard to convince and that's going to be too different you're going to have all these troubles let's work on that and you know what it didn't work I couldn't convince him but I had become that guy convincing him that his difference was just too different and he ought to be afraid of it and by the end of that day I had zero friends no friends and I did shrink and I did hide and I did stop trying to excel cuz I didn't want to stick out and in that isolation I started to become depressed and I started to consider things dire solutions to my problem and that shouldn't be surprising in the United States today LGBT kids are still four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight brothers and sisters and nine times more likely if they come from unaccepting environments right so lives are at stake when we lead with fear lives are at stake when we fear difference that's not how my story ended because of a turn of luck you see my mom good Mormon mom with her dress him down to the floor on her braces and her crutches because she was paralyzed from polio from a young age but she never broke the rules she followed all of the rules and she'd somehow gotten a job in the US military and was succeeding by following rulz precisely exactly well something happened to her she fell in love at 40 years old with this much younger military army soldier who had orders to ship off to California and she put her three boys in our cat into our Malibu classic which is like this giant tank of a car right filled it up with gas and drove us to California to chase after this 19 20 year old army soldier Apple does not fall far from the tree sorry Tom and my mom I saw her start to open up I saw her in love genuinely in love not love in the service of God not love in the service of salvation or to follow the rules or to do the right thing but in love for the very first time and she started to shine she started to glow and she started to notice in me that I was a bit too quiet that I was becoming isolated that there was something that was probably wrong that I wasn't telling her and she thought I need to break him of this shyness problem and she said well the way to do that most likely to break you the shyness problems to do what let's put him into drama club and so she put me into the theater club in school and not surprisingly I liked it I liked it a lot and I started to see people in there that I thought they might be a little bit like me that person might be a little bit like me too over the course of just a couple of years I went from a little drama club in school all the way to working in the parentheses and some of the professional theaters in the Central Coast in the Bay Area of near San Francisco and one day another little piece of magic happened another little turn of luck I had a director a theater director there who I was apprentice in under and and he was my hero he put me through all the different parts of and pieces of and in areas that that build a show lighting in props he want us to know everything there was to know about the theater everything there was to know about everything and he had a little gaggle of us who were stuttering studying under him and at one point he brought a cassette tape to our little meeting and I don't know if somebody had said something homophobic or if he just saw in some of us that we might needed to hear this or if it was just a moment he thought we could use a little hope because this is a time when everybody around us was dying of AIDS but he put in a cassette into this player and I want to read you what I heard off of that cassette it was a speech the speech that was given ten years prior to that it was a speech given in San Antonio Texas the town I just left and the voice said this if you bear with me somewhere in Des Moines or San Antonio there was a young gay person who all of a sudden realizes that he or she is gay knows that if the parent finds out they'll be tossed out of the house their classmates will taunt them and the Anita Bryant's are doing their bit on TV and that child has several options to stay in the closet suicide and then one day that child might open up the paper and it says homosexual elected in San Francisco and now there are two new options to go to California which is what my mom did or to stay in San Antonio and fight and you've got to elect gay people so they have thousands upon thousands like that child know that there is hope for a better world that there is hope for a better tomorrow and when I heard that speech it was the very first time in my life that I heard someone leading with hope and not fear and his brand of Hope actually included me ten years after his assassination this man Harvey Bernard milk gave me hope and saved my life now it wasn't enough for me to come flying out of the closet and call my good mom and military mom and say hey I'm gay and begged for acceptance but it wasn't to get me going out to what at the time were these sort of vibrant gay ghettos and there was one in Los Angeles has anybody ever been out to Los Angeles here alright there's a place called West Hollywood and I started going out there and it wasn't like the safe haven that it is today you know you still have to go with your friends walk together to your car so you didn't get bashed you sort of heard some things being said from the people driving through West Hollywood but it was safe enough and I was meeting people a lot like me and they didn't have the horns the Mormon prophet had said they were going to have and I got to say they didn't seem all that depressed particularly if there was a good mix and Madonna was a part of it they seemed downright fabulous and I started having a really good time and I started meeting some cute gay guys from like some of the universities around including one who was this older guy much much older he was 22 years old and a graduate student and I fell desperately in love with him he just wouldn't give me the time of day it didn't matter how hard I tried to impress him the things I invited him to the things that I tried to talk about the interest I showed him what he was doing he just had put me permanently in the friend zone and it was very very upsetting to me and it was all I was kind of thinking about as I got on the plane to go visit my mom and my and my stepdad and my brothers in their new home in Virginia for Christmas and I remember being on that plane and thinking holy crap what am I going to what am I going to talk about a Christmas this year more like a good southern family right we talk all the Conine we talk about everything and all of a sudden I have no clue what I can talk about because everything that really matters to me is without me and I wasn't ready to do that I didn't want to do that so I land at the airport and my handsome army soldier stepdad picks me up drives me through the woods to the house there's my mom she opens the door on her braces and crutches and she spreads her she sort of leans forward on them so she can spread her arms wide so that when I get to her she can hold me and she was already upset because I said oh I can only come home for two days this year which is very abnormal I made every excuse and told every lie in the world to my employers talk Bell Target JC Penney's so like a be home for like a week or two here I had two days and that was the plan to say as little as I could to race through it to claim exhaustion and so as my mom held her arms and she she held me at the door already starting to tear up I just wondered what she hold me like that if she knew and so I just raced through our Christmas dinner I raced through opening present and I went upstairs and I said you know I'm tired I got to get back on a plane tomorrow there's been great but I'll see you in the morning and and I'll never forget I was packing and I was and I heard this sound coming this click clack sound coming down the hallway except clack click clack click clack I'd heard it my entire life it is my mom on her braces in her crutches and she's coming towards the door and I hold my breath hoping she's going to veer off to my little brother's room no such luck did not come to the door I don't want to answer it I'm silent she knocks again I know she can see the light coming out from under it so I I let her in and she comes in sits down on the bed she puts her braces down her crutches down how she always did and I'm not saying much I'm just pretending to continually pack what I don't know of folding things like I never have and never will just to sort of cover up the silence but she fills it because we always talked so she filled it with the news of the day at the time in the United States there was this thing in the news called Don't Ask Don't Tell has anybody ever heard of that so Don't Ask Don't Tell for those who haven't said as long as we won't ask you if you're gay if you don't tell us if you're gay and you can actually participate in the military which was supposedly this step forward that didn't make any sense to a single LGBT person anywhere it meant that we had to hide in live in shame and if we were discovered we'd be kicked out but to my mom she was furious about it because it actually created a pathway for LGBT people to be in her military these broken people these these ruined people these evil people these people who are destined for hell we're going to be in the military she'd fought so hard to be a part of she worked so hard and and I'm not saying anything so she keeps escalating and escalating getting more vehement in her arguments that this law was wrong that LGBT people should not be allowed in her military and she takes my silence as agreement but really I'm sitting there and I am praying I don't even know to who but I'm praying for the tears to stay in my eyes I'm praying that that burning sensation goes away because I didn't want to come out I wasn't ready to come out I wasn't ready to lose my family over this and then I felt it you know I felt the water in my eyes I felt that first tear betray me and streak down my face and then I heard nothing then it was silence in that room and I knew she's a good southern mom she knew she didn't need the words she understood and it took some time for me to get the courage to look up into her eyes again and I was confirmation for her and not much was said she asked at one point she said why through her own you know brimming tears and I said why what and she said why would you choose this I could see her heart was breaking for me and I looked at her and I looked at her braces and her crutches all I could say was why did you choose those and we didn't say anything else we didn't fix anything on that trip I went home I went home with both of both of us thinking we were losing each other to our very divided America's and our very divided belief systems that were going further and further apart as we became more and more different and I got lost in a little something that distracted me for a bit I had one teacher he was she was an editing professor who had just come into UCLA film school I was at UCLA's film school at this point feeling incredibly proud of myself and and and she had come in and she decided she was going to teach us this class by having us actually edit on celluloid does anyone do film in here or even for fun like YouTube stuff like you don't edit on actual film anymore and you certainly you didn't do it back then that way either so we were already very curious but it's what she wanted to do and then at the end of this quarter she posted the grades and let me tell you something to get into UCLA film school is probably a little bit like getting in here you've never seen a B right you don't know what that is that's a scary thing a C or D forget about it that's terror well she posted the grades and there were B's and C's lots of them and B's and people started freaking out in our class and that you know some of these people were headed to graduate school they were looking for scholarships this had real ramifications and so they all turned to me the cute sweet like didn't cause any trouble one who sat in the corner and did everything as he was told and said you have to go talk to her she'll listen to you and so I got up the courage after I was peer pressured into it to go see this professor and I set with her and I said made the appointment when n said listen what we need is at least an explanation a review of the film that we did and edited maybe a test or something you created a paper any sort of great any kind of explanation of where this came from and she turned red in the face and she said I am calling you in to be expelled from UCLA film school for grade coercion and I was terrified I mean I'd never been got I'd really never been in trouble in my life I had been so quiet and all of a sudden I'm being called in for Gregerson so a week goes by a week of Terror for me I go in to the dean's office and it's the Dean of the film school a couple of the other professors who I really admired and this professor and she's sitting there she gets to go first the Dean says go ahead she talks about how I came into the office and I demanded explanations that she did not have to get and said that I was coercing grade a grade out of her that she didn't feel she had to give and he said well that is bad the Dean said that's not good glance what is your response to this and I said well I just would say I would like to know what grade it is um that she thinks I wanted and she said with venom you wanted an a I said okay that's probably true now what great is it that you gave me and she was a little stunned and she stopped and she waited for a second and all her preparation to sort of grill me and get me kicked out of film school she'd forgotten to do one thing which is to check the grade and she opened up her little ledger she turned bright red in the face she stood up and said you're all a pack of hungry jackals and she left the room because she had given me the only a and the Dean came over and put his arm around me and started laughing and just said oh my gosh I love you I said why he said because you're a troublemaker I had literally never heard that word use about me in my entire life and it might have been one of the best moments of my life I loved it I was a troublemaker and I was going to own that from then on out and if any of you if I'm ever so lucky as to work with any of you and pay you from my company today or you watch one of my movies at the end you're going to get a check from hungry jackal productions and it's going to say hungry jackal productions at the very end and I was so pleased with all that turned out that I forgot the graduation was coming up or I just tuned out the fact that my mom was coming to visit for graduation and I heard that familiar Click Clack sound coming down the hallway this time of my apartment complex new UCLA and and I I have to admit I I copped out I had not told my friends that my mom was homophobic it was too shameful to me that she had rejected me I was so close to my mom I love my mom this was a difficult thing for me I also have copped out not telling her that so might so many of my friends and my roommate's friends were now gay and lesbian and we were throwing a big dinner party thanks to my college roommate where we were cooking up some pasta and some salad right and so she comes over there's all these gay and lesbian people in the living room I'm a little terrified but I'm not going to address it I'm just going to go focus on the sort of jar of pasta that I'm going to heat up and pretend to have made I'm going to heat up the pasta I'm going to get the salads going I'm going to let whoever needs to talk to her talk to her or not it's none of my business until I realized that because I've said nothing all of these people assume that my mother loves her gay son and this is like before Will & Grace this is before Ellen came out so says my friends she's a goddamn Saint and so they all want their turn talking to the saintly southern mama accepts her gay son about their gay experience right their experience with their families how they were rejected some of them kicked out of their homes we're having to turn to organizations to pay for their college and she's a good southern mom so she's not going to get confrontational she's just going to nod you to death mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah mmm and so they are thinking wow she's really getting into this she's really a good listener so I'll start to talk to them about my personal life and I'll start to talk to them about this this good southern moms about my sex life and I'm watching from afar realizing what's going on and I'm terrified and the room starts to empty out and people start to go home and pretty soon I realize it's just going to be me and her her I'm getting scared again just thinking about it and my roommate dashes to his room and we are left alone and my mom and her good genteel southern way Pat's the edge of the fold-out bed that I'd called my own four years at that point she wants me to come sit down and I go over and I sit down next to her and she says well I met your friends I said yes she's like I liked them they're very interesting said okay mom said well I met one in particular he's a 22 year old graduate student who I think you know said yes I know the one I know him well and she said well I had a good talk with him and I told him that I think he ought to start treating you a little bit better and the next time you two go out maybe he ought to pay and she looked me in the eyes and she started to tear up and she wrapped her arms around me and she held me so incredibly tight and that was the first moment my mom held me knowing who I was fully loving me for who I am with how question and how did it happen it didn't happen because my friends came into that room and they started debating politics or policy or law or the Constitution or science no matter how right it is they came to my mom with story with personal story telling from their hearts and that story those stories were so potent and so powerful that they erased generations of Lies and myths and distortions about being an LGBT person lies and myths them Distortion she'd heard an entire life from the church and from the government and from folks in the south it was gone that quickly and that's the power of personal story in the miracle of that is I look around this room is that every single one of you has one of these and it is equally powerful it has the power to change hearts and that is the quickest Avenue to the mind and you change Minds you can start to change a city and a town and a state and a country and the world starting with personal story and I thought boy if that's the power of personal story that's what I'm going to dedicate my life to and so I graduated and I started if it was a reality TV show boy did I do the gay one if it was a TV movie was about Pedro Zamora who bravely died of AIDS in front of the United States of America on a reality show it was a movie ten years later I had the great honor and opportunity to tell the story of Harvey Milk to the world but in that time the Spanx got turned up and even with that great success I felt like I had to do a bit more because in California something called proposition 8 passed in the same weeks that milk came to the theaters and proposition 8 took way the rights of gay and lesbian people to be married in a state where we already had that right it took him away they said that our relationships run equal our families worthy of less protection and passed how could that pass this was only eight years ago how could it pass in this time and it broke my heart and it made me furious and I not only wanted it gone I wanted to know how I could be free enough to be married but also the people living in Texas and Virginia and other states where they never even dare dream that their relationships would be treated equally how do you do that so I started doing research which is so critical to changing the world and in that research I discovered that the way to full equality in my country and in many countries is to take it to the federal court take it to the federal government take it to the largest power you got not the local one and I thought I want to follow in those fine footsteps and I got this opportunity to get up on one of the biggest stages there is in the world on that stage at the Academy Awards when I accepted that Oscar for writing milk I made a promise in that room that day into the world to bring full federal equality back to the state of California and to the country it was bold it was optimistic it might have been a little foolish like most optimism is it wasn't realistic and I got that stage and I caught hell grief and not from you know a bunch of conservative people I got grief from my own that's one of the big lessons about pushing into the future about creating progress about doing anything new you're probably not going to get a lot of help from the people who you think are going to oppose you it's going to be from your heroes and your teachers and your best friends because we're all feeling our way through the dark when it comes to making progress there is no one way we've never been there before we don't know how to get there and I was scared my heroes were telling me that my arrogance and foolishness was going to set us back and create a backlash so I went to a guy named Julian Bond now Julian Bond had worked with dr. Martin Luther King jr. during the fight for black civil rights in the United States of America and seen much success and had a lot of rocks thrown at him and I told him what I was going through and and he said this to me he said good things do not come to those who wait they come to those who ate ate and I thought good I'm a troublemaker I can agitate but I also want to be prepared so I've done my research I was ready to agitate and now I needed to do something we don't often do in movements and that's that lose my fear of difference to reach out to unexpected allies people who are going to look at this issue very differently than me and with some other folks who are much smarter than I am we reached out to some unexpected allies one of them his name is Theodore Olson the most conservative Supreme Court lawyer in the United States of America the guy who put George W Bush in the White House we went to him because we heard a rumor that he was in favor of marriage equality and we said to him we think you could make the conservative case for marriage equality that we can't make and he had another brilliant idea he's like well let's build a bridge let's go beyond the divide and let me invite the guy whose ass I kicked in Bush v Gore that got George W Bush in the White House let's invite David Boies to fight us alongside me and we built that coalition an unexpected coalition with no fear of difference and then we utilize that other piece of power that I had learned which was storytelling and we found the plaintiffs and the families and the children of these families who had been denied marriage and we told their story to the country and we told it from our heart yes constitutional arguments would need to be made in the Supreme Court but before that we needed to move the numbers and to show that to the Supreme Court justices and if you watch what happened in those years by telling personal story on a national level we moved the numbers from one where the majority said no we don't think gay and lesbian people deserve this to overwhelming support in the United States of America for marriage equality and in that courtroom at the Supreme Court if you've been paying any attention we kicked prop 8 ass we beat it we ended it and case after case that followed us that followed our example that we worked on and with a handful of years back now just to really we won marriage equality from sea to shining sea in the United States of America by talent story by reaching out to people who are different than us by making some trouble we need to make trouble and you know whose happiest about it my agents because now I can get back to work making movies making of money and as irony would have it after putting aside my film career for half a decade to fight for marriage equality United States I had the great honor pleasure and joy as my life come true when I got to get married to the love of my life who's sitting right back there but we did it here in your country who was so far ahead of us so I want to thank you all for helping make that possible here as well well before we were able to achieve it in the United States you know what uh it's a funny thing leadership and how some people lead with fear I actually think there's a different way to look at leadership without fear and it's why I came here today instead of working on the book and the screenplay I'm supposed to besides the fact that it's a great honor and really intimidating which when you look at the list of people who spoke in here before me but I came here because I think that with knowledge what you're going to have an abundance of and the skills you're going to leave here with an abundance of the life experience all of that is great and I think you can run things and manage things keep things running but I'm not sure if you can the lead with just knowledge I think the element that you need to lead is passion and I think when you find that passion you don't even have to be that good at the thing you want to lead in because the passion will help you find that right Harvey Milk lost three times before he ever won he wasn't that good at running but his passion kept him in the fight it kept him going he learned how to become very very good at it right and where does that passion come from I'll tell you what it does not come from it does not come from how you were similar to the person you're sitting next to I think for me my passion comes from how very different I was as a gay kid as a shy kid growing up in a conservative military Mormon home in Texas it came from the Magnificent sometimes frightening ways that I'm different I say if you want to find your passion look to the ways you're unique look to the ways you're different rip off the shame of those difference deny the fear anyone wants to put in your heart about those differences that is where your passion is and I want you to lead with it because that passion in conjunction with the knowledge and experience you're gaining here you can lead humanity into places we've never been yet in the field of your choice in the field that you love you can make this life more livable more exciting more fair more loving and I'm going to ask you one more thing before I let you ask me anything you want and it's a selfish thing it's not for me but it's for all of us you're going to be so busy when you leave here with all the power you have in this knowledge with the power I know you're going to find in your passion but could you please take a little bit of time in your lives to use some of that power in some of that leadership and some of that passion to build a bridge build bridges between yourself and someone else or another people who are very very different than you and not because it's charity and not because it's politically correct but because it will make you more powerful and not because you want to change them to be more like you but that in the combination of your differences you will solve things differently you will see things differently the world will come to life in a different way and perhaps in building those bridges that I hope you'll build you'll be able to lead this world into a place that doesn't listen to fear and to hate and anger but it loves and thrives no matter your gender or your gender identity the color of your skin the God you pray to or who you love please get out there use your stories use your passion and build bridges thank you thank you very much for that we spoke a lot just now about leading with hope and he spoke about that the hope that took you on you know still a young man here in Harvey Milk speech which you read out to us today we're in an increasingly regressive time some people say you know there are their real divisions coming up people are building walls what about building bridges what is it that still gives you hope when you're out there campaigning for the principles of equality justice at a time when lots of other people are far happier to build up walls push others away who aren't you know like them well it's you know it is as much as it's impossible to miss that we are in regressive times that we have people leading with fear they are saying they're trying to fool us into thinking it takes courage and strength to build a wall or to separate it one from the other it also creates opportunity that's to see with clarity all of the people coming out of the woodwork who might have been sitting idle for some time who are starting to resist who are saying this is not okay I do not believe that this is the future I do not believe that the future is us-versus-them I believe in an underlying we that we can fight for that will create real progress and and you see that you know it one example would be there's a there's an old March chance that we always heard particularly gay marches that said gay straight black white same struggle same fight sounds good but you would go to a gay March in the United States and you would see mostly gay people even when you're hearing that chant not a lot of straight folks you go to black lives matter rally in the United States when people are literally fighting for the protection of their lives and you would mostly see black people I have to say in the months following Trump's election now you go to these rallies we went to one in Trafalgar Square walks through that where I see the ones that are taking place in Los Angeles in Washington DC in New York and it truly is starting to look like gay straight black white and more diversity than that and in that there's hope and that there's a signal that we're starting to understand the interconnectedness and the power of the SS I I will say my only warning there and it's it's something I was worried about when I started doing when we rise is we've become so identified with our own minority status in many ways that we've taken ownership of the label who has taken ownership of this Ausmus and kind of pulled away and I worried about it even in our greatest successes with in the LGBT movement as we went up to this the steps of the Supreme Court I thought we're becoming awfully myopic and at the end of the day we're a minority and our rights can be taken away quite easily we have no power if we do not understand our interconnectedness and it's why I wrote when we rise because I said you know if Harvey Milk won his office not by just saying gay people vote for me but he went and he met with the seniors who were having trouble affording to live in San Francisco he went to the Chinese community who were being discriminated against at the ballot box right and he went to the workers to the to the people who drove the shipping trucks and said I know you're struggling to pay for your talented sons or daughters education and he built an alliance and that's how he got elected that's how he pushed right forward well if we lose that if we lose that interconnectedness we have become weak we've become powerless and here's and I worried that that's what we were doing and so I wrote this shows of warning but I think in the meantime these voices of division came out preaching fear and they won because we were divided not out of animus sometimes out of arrogance out of our successes we'd become divided we'd forgotten about one another and I think the real key the message I want to hear today is about the beauty of our differences is about the power of our differences and particularly this that every single person in this room in this country in the world is a minority in one way or another it just depends on how you slice the pie at the end of the day we all have an interest in the we in the us in the coalition building and looking out for our neighbors rights as much as we do our own and it's why I wrote a show called when we rise but I hope one day will scream here and the we being the biggest part of it that is power and the power to protect ourselves but more importantly our neighbors turning to the Supreme Court judgment we mentioned soft over yourself marriage equality is a reality in the US but in states across the u.s. there still aren't protection you know it comes employment right or housing for LGBT people what more needs to be done to catalyze the work there that is happening on a state level to realize parity in these these protections or these rights right well we're starting to see arguments get to the federal level aren't we about about equal access to employment and housing which is surprising to some but people are making gender discrimination arguments that have started to win even among some very conservative judges in the United States so that that promises an era perhaps where through the courts LGBT people can win our right to be protected at home in our jobs through the Constitution which i think is fantastic and I hope that happens I do say you know when we talk about employment and housing non-discrimination I don't think you have to worry about that so much here you worry about it in the United States and some people in the game we would say well why you is are so worried about that you know they're really all these people losing their jobs and their homes and the answer is some but what those laws really do is keep these families and these people closeted because they're afraid to lose their jobs and they're afraid to lose their homes and if they're not able to tell their stories and share who they are what happened the myths and the lies and the stereotypes about gay people in those areas serve and thrive and go on and we're not able to dispel them we're not able to change hearts and change minds we can't tell our stories really those the lack of protection on housing and employment silenced people and and if the power to change is is a part of the power of story that's silencing is death and so that's a problem the United States I would say it's a far bigger problem outside of the United States you know this country is one of the most progressive in the world on LGBT issues and I applaud this country for that it's great to be here and wherever you are politically to see that even conservatives here believe it seems in much of LGBT equality but if you go to places like Indonesia today where young and gay men were came to Iran where men have been hung in public televised for being gay to Uganda where people are murdered and certainly Chechnya at the moment where there are concentration camps the world doesn't seem to care about at the moment filling up with gay men these are people literally fighting for their lives there is no place where the power of story needs to be utilized more than in these places right now and for fear of their own lives many have become silent and I there are a few incredibly brave souls in the countries I just mentioned who are raising their voices it's incredibly inspiring it brings me to tears when I see them locked away and drugged away worrying for their lives and I think it's our responsibility as people living in countries with more freedom and protection whether you're LGBT or not to raise your voices and bring your attention to their plight their lives are at stake and the power we have is to shed light to bring the world's attention to what's happening in these countries so that they can tell their stories and when they can't we will picking up on that do you think that other high-profile individuals like yourself should be doing more to help share these stories and you feel any of them are held that you know by the concerns you mentioned earlier of a backlash on their career or for fear of creating controversy um some but you know I do I think people I think people who have a high profile yes they have a responsibility to their fellow man right we're benefitting massively from having a high profile financially you know the way you're treated in the world is very very different well if you're going to reap all those rewards I hope you can look beyond yourself for just a minute and and and see that other people are not being treated equally or fairly that we have a lot further to go when it comes to equality not just for LGBT people but for a lot of people in the world right now who are not being treated equally and to shed light on those stories I do sometimes and this is my personal view on this think that some celebrities go to anger and verbal violence and and start to utilize the tools of the enemy really when doing combat and I don't find it helpful I grew up in the south I grew up in a conservative world I know how we react when people come at us with anger we just batten down the hatches put up our defenses and we stop listening I would hope that some of these people who are in a position to influence can start speaking more from the heart I think it is the way to create change wonderful well thank you for that I've taken up too much of your time now so let's take a few questions from the audience like to ask a question please wait for a microphone to reach you it's only a recording microphone so it will not amplify your voice okay let's go to the hand over there right by the lamp hi thanks that was the most inspiring talk I've ever heard I was know been so careful in the top four so thank you for that this is my aunt by the way on Commission yeah yeah thank you thank you I'll tell you after yeah so I know I'm not gonna be any LGBT person in here I know I'm not going to be a person interested in writing and the idea of doing what you do for a career is like astronomical dream for me how can we get over that seemingly insurmountable first step because some people don't know the right people we have film reels showing people help me meet people like you and be like hey don't don't disregard our application please notice us what do you think is the best advice for people that trying to get into screenwriting languages yeah I would I will say first and foremost and Tom will applaud me for this right now because he's been trying to get me to do this for a while in a very practical way I just moved to London permanently and I need a staff here including an assistant and proofreaders and researchers and people who could get involved in creating some the stories I like to make so if anybody would like to participate in that insane venture which occasionally pays off I'm taking application that said I'm not alone and you know persistence is is key persistence is important I can only say that every single person who has quote-unquote succeeded in getting something done succeeded in the business has their own really unique story you know and there's not one easy path I will say writing and documentaries are a great way in because you can do them for basically nothing so I started shooting documentaries and writing scripts out of UCLA's Film School where I graduated top of the class and was waiting tables and serving orange juice for two years because that's what the degree gets you and a great deal of knowledge it was only because I was producing my own stuff and these little documentaries that I got noticed by a little company you might have heard about here called the BBC because it doesn't cost much money to make the documentaries it cost very little to enter them in film festivals and people if film festivals are paying attention because they need new talent um it's particularly at the beginning levels and so I started working on a TV show called faking it that the BBC was producing in America on The Learning Channel all of a sudden I'm making a little bit of money on the documentaries I have an agent because they want you know 10% of it and I have a piece of leverage to say if you want me to stay with you and you want to keep collecting that 10% you got to read my script and they didn't want to I promise you they really really didn't and and the good news is that I eventually found my niche and I'll go one step further about that because I feel like the way if you're a writer or a filmmaker to make yourself invaluable is to be undeniably you because there is no one else like you so you can go into every single pitch you do and say I'm the only person in the world to write this and to make this and here's why and if you can make that compelling a pitch they're going to listen they're even going to find it marketable because the most valuable thing in the world is a unique voice a new point of view so that also helps so figuring out ways to get in the door if you don't have the money to self-finance which lord knows I didn't and and then and then I think being so true to your own passion that people find you unique enough that you're marketable that you're undeniable but first and foremost if you're very very smart very very talented particularly if you're smarter than I am which isn't difficult please come and apply for a job at hungry Jacko productions yeah yeah let's go to the the hands at the end of the row in the green No thank you so much for coming uh so we are so lucky to have a film like moonlight come out this year but quite often we see queer films of being incredibly whitewash I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on how we can bring queer films to become more inclusive so you know really have these narratives you brought out yeah it's a great question with a simple answer you don't you have to have writers and directors and producers and filmmakers who are also diverse if you have only white writers and white directors who are just gay and cisgender that's what you're going to get because we write where we know for the most part so for me putting my you know production and and money where my mouth is when we did when we rise the miniseries it's why I hired a team of writers and directors who were you know gay and straight and black and white and men and women and cast that was LGBTQ because I knew it not because it's PC but because I have know that experience I can get to know it as well as I can I could try and ride it but it got even better once I had you know like Dee Reece the second director up in the series who is a black lesbian around the big lunch table one day she was like well this is how lesbians do it and I never quite knew and now I do and she showed me in front of everybody on our cast and crew and you know but it was valuable is very valuable so it's you know encouraging Hollywood to be more diverse putting pressure on the Writers Guild the Directors Guild to push past a catch-22 of only hiring people with experience because that's going to continue to be mostly straight white men and to take those risks and take those chances to to hire more diverse writers rooms producers and directors and you see that evidence at ABC already where for the first time in history there is a black woman running a major u.s. network and she is taking those chances quick another question sure okay firstly have you seen the worth of Russell T Davies things like queer as folk or cucumber yeah yeah yeah I just wanted to show it like that which feature a lot of things like the gay community drugs Grindr hookups and things like that that to other people wouldn't seem like good representations of the gay community but they certainly are real yeah that's a good thing to have in TV shows that do you think it's a good representation of yeah as long as it's honest and authentic I don't mind I don't mind at all I I think it it rings false when we try to sanitize our lives it rings false to straight people when we try and sanitize their lives they know better they know they're happy just as kinky behind doors as we are and so you know I think you know we want to show ourselves in all the ways we are you know and there's certainly our LGBTQ people who are very traditional and and folks who aren't I am NOT about I didn't fight for marriage equality because I thought we needed to become like straight people I fought for marriage equality because there's a lot of families with kids that need equal protection but T I think gay or straight that's a personal decision and if you want to go on Grindr and hook up that's another personal decision I just would worry about getting checked into the clinic constantly if you did but you know he probably explored that on cucumber I did and I watched queer spoke more which I thought was excellent and really innovative in at a really critical time and then they try to copy it in the United States and it was not good sorry I know this is being filmed on a huge amount of trouble now yeah so anyway community reps recognized in film TV series the UK and the US well in every way the UK television is more explicit particularly on what just comes over the airwaves I've seen so many penises and vaginas on television since I moved here in all kinds of situations and states and it's not something you see on US television we're very prudent able networks and they feel like they're being really you know experimental and really pushing the envelope and then you come here and be like that's just on at nine o'clock anyway and and so you know that's gay or straight there just is you know less seemingly more of a comfort with how people really are here when it comes to depictions on television yeah take another question at the back of the way I can't think of a good question but I wanted to say something for the records I'm probably the oldest union member in the room and you've given one of the finest addresses I've ever heard I know nothing about movies I'm not gay I just wanted to say thank you for ah thank you very much great and let's have another question I don't know why we don't just end there yeah and while we're on a high yeah let's go to the other hand there by the land I just wanted to run you mentioned the after terms of this judgment here that Hollywood needs have your diverse view but also only you mentioned you wanted to build coalitions now it my understanding of a lot of the conservative America is that Hollywood is deemed too liberal for being too diverse and so on I'm just wondering where would you throw your compromise written like obviously you don't want to compromise but to form coalition's do and how would you do them and so much of your stuff is at stake when there doesn't seem to be that's a really smart and powerful question I mean I let me let me feel my way through it arm TV and film in the United States has many times are politically come under fire for being progressive I think an understanding of how the US democracy is built for me exposes some of the flaws in the design arm it is not representative one-for-one if you look at the US Senate alone every state gets two senators that all have loud voices to complain about things like television but some of these senators representing states that are very very small in population smaller than little towns here in the UK they have an equal voice to the senator from California which has a population that rivals most other nations or New York which is the same and so what you get is a lot of senators with big voices who represent far fewer people than the folks who are on the coasts so really if you took if you really wanted to measure the outrage you would probably find that there isn't that much that's outrageous to most of the population but if you want to measure the volume you have to see who we're giving the microphone to and often it's not representative of the entire population and in fact the people who live in those unpopulated states most a lot of my family and the people I love so I not being derogatory but they tend to be more conservative more religious and might have more objections to some of the things they see is progressive but that we see living on the coast is just truthful and honest it's hard in California these days to ask a kid to find a kid who hasn't met an openly LGBT person so if we don't depict to them we're being dishonest to them then there is and that leads to the next point which is then there's the finance of it all isn't there what's for sale on television you are know that you're for sale to the advertisers all of your eyeballs that's what's for sale and we sell them to the advertisers right and so we have to create content in the United States on television that's going to attract eyeballs and the most valuable eyeballs are the eyeballs that are setting trends and buying things up and that's the sort of young demographic isn't it and so if we put something on television that doesn't look like their life in their world they'll turn it off forget it they'll go to some paid station or they'll go to something in the movies perhaps but it's done it kills the show the show dies so that leaves a vacuum and the people building television have to fill it with what is going to sell what is going to draw eyes so they can sell to advertisers you know but it is it is true that some of that can be alienating initially to some of the folks in Middle America my argument is to that that we've seen as time has gone on that exposure to people who are different starts to create understanding and acceptance over time I think one of the most important things and revolutionary things that ever happened in the United States was the bravery of a man named John Murray who was working with Sunday Mary Ellis bounnam who created what was the beginning of reality TV in America which was a show called the real world I don't know if you've heard of it here but the real world he sat in thought gosh it's the early 90s people are dying of AIDS you ask people now if they've ever met an LGBT person or a gay person they're going to say I've at least heard of one so I can't build a show called the real world without putting a gay cast member in it that was revolutionary at the time and he did that and as he did that it began to create understanding with young people who then grew up who have become a generation of people who are far more accepting because they've come to understand that part of our real world includes people who are very very different than us so I think you're right it probably turned some people off I've probably lost a lot of viewers in my time by being a bit too confrontational but I think over time as long as you're honest about it as long as what you're you're not coming at them with anger you're trying to create understanding and doing your best to do that talking from the heart I think we can move the culture towards understanding in a positive fashion it's a great question well it's a tough one isn't it great I think we've got time for maybe one or two more questions yeah on the second row here hi I'm you talked a bit about and how difficult it was to sort of talk to peers about what you and what you really film you know if they disagree with you that's obviously a really hard situation being random and recently I found out that actually I'm especially in Britain has sort of been a bit of a regression and people slightly younger than us and I think they're becoming slightly more conservative and they're sort of being polled about it and people seem to be sort of affected by things like breakfast and I'm just wondering what you think is the most effective way to sort of actually speak to your peers about that and really stand up to your friends even you know I think that is the only other thing see at first I thought your question was it's difficult to talk to peers as in Morgan what if it of course it is he's only interested in being right to make himself feel bigger and better I'm not even sure if he cares of what he said was right that's difficult but that's also part of the problem I think it's I think the greatest thing what I try to do and it is a struggle it is very very difficult it's much easier to be right and if you want to change in mind you better not come at it with that goal you better come at it with curiosity because their belief system is built on something and so I try my best and it is difficult to come at these sort of confrontations with curiosity I want to know where that came from and I know I've met people in the UK who voted for brexit and believed in that and it's not my position but I have to come with curiosity I need to understand where they come from and that's number one and if you start to create that space you can start to create some understanding and to also know when I say it the people who are coming out to their parents no it's not going to necessarily go well at first no there's a process and the most important part of that process is keeping the avenues of communication open and it is tough this is tough work so come at it with curiosity keep the avenues of communication open and always always try to talk out of story and personal experience I find when you start to go to law constitutional law or science no matter how right you are people get defensive that would be my advice it doesn't always work but I found it works more often than not I'm final question you had one heck yes so just a question about queer activism in general so there's obviously a tendency among certain activists to portray the decision of being queer as a choice and voluntary choice and in many ways I do think that the case but there's also as constant contests that other activists report read as they're born this way there's no alternative and that's why it's so important so to what extent do you think the queer movement should abandon the born this way narrative and adopt the view and it is an active choice or to extend II think it is important to keep the narrative that we are born this way because ultimately obviously get a mixture of norms in our schools but that's probably true but the way people read or perceive in media is obviously a very bifurcated or by erisa can simplistic way of understanding where activism so how do you think we should reach out to people should we go for a choice or born this way now is it well I think it's different for different people as a simple answer I think we have very strict black and white draft we started with very strict definitions of gay or straight even though we knew that that wasn't true based on the early studies that even let us know that there were so many LGBT people out there but for some people there is no changing you are who you are it doesn't necessarily mean that that's just biology might be a combination of biology and experience we're still discovering all that what we do find to be true is whatever you are on that spectrum is incredibly difficult to change right and for some people who are particularly bisexual there is there are choices to be made more choices to be made and I don't see anything wrong with that as long as it doesn't hurt anyone I don't understand why we all have to feel like in the LGBTQ community which is incredibly diverse very messy we fight with each other like no other minority I'm sure and I love it it's beautiful it's an I get in so many Twitter arguments all the time and I fail at everything I just told you to do every time and I try and try again but that we we need to understand that we are that diverse we are that different that for some people who they are is unchangeable and it does feel very black and white and for other people it feels much more grey and to start to find comfort in that gray area because that gray area is often not just in sexuality or gender identity that gray area is often more truthful than the black and the white and when we can start to have the patience to understand that Piers Morgan included and to not feel insecure because our our labels we thought were rock-solid are coming down when we have that patience to create more understanding I think we're going to be getting closer and closer to the truth without judgement that would be my goal thank you very much unfortunately that is all we've got time for but I think I speak on the Hoff everyone in the audience to say how humbled we are that you came to share the power of your own personal experience and the power of your personal story with us here today hopefully everyone will go and follow your example and continue to try and lead with hope in their communities just please join me in thanking Dustin you

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Length: 71min 56sec (4316 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2017