a&e features
Newsom pardons LGBTQ and Black icon Rustin, stained by ‘historic homophobia’
‘Laws have been used as legal tools of oppression’
It was a patch of blue in the dark storm stalled over the divided states of America. On Feb. 5, California Gov. Gavin Newsom parted the pall and pardoned Bayard Rustin, mentor to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Though President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom in 2013, the gay civil rights icon still had the stain of a 1953 “morals charge” arrest in Pasadena on his lifetime of achievement.
“In California and across the country, many laws have been used as legal tools of oppression, and to stigmatize and punish LGBTQ people and communities and warn others what harm could await them for living authentically,” Newsom said in a statement. “I thank those who advocated for Bayard Rustin’s pardon, and I want to encourage others in similar situations to seek a pardon to right this egregious wrong.”
Excerpt of the pardon certificate
Rustin’s pardon launches a new clemency initiative for people who were prosecuted in California for being gay. In 1970, after the Stonewall riots and the movement for Gay Liberation, Assemblymember Willie Brown introduced the Consenting Adult Sex Bill to repeal the sodomy law and decriminalize gay sex. Five years later, with help from San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, the bill was finally passed and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on May 12, 1975. But those convicted of engaging in consensual adult sexual conduct remained on the Sex Offender Registry until 1997, when a new law established a process enabling individuals to request removal. However, the original criminal conviction remained.
Newsom’s announcement acknowledges the systemic persecution of LGBTQ people and offers legal reparation.
“In California and across the country, charges like vagrancy, loitering, and sodomy have been used to unjustly target [LGBTQ] people. Law enforcement and prosecutors specifically targeted LGBTQ individuals, communities and community spaces for criminal prosecution. Now, as a proudly LGBTQ-allied state, California is turning the page on historic wrongs,” says the press release.
“There’s a cloud hanging over him because of this unfair, discriminatory conviction, a conviction that never should have happened, a conviction that happened only because he was a gay man,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, chair of California’s legislative LGBTQ caucus said Jan. 21 at a news conference with Assemblymember Shirley Weber, chair of the state’s Legislative Black Caucus, formally asking for a pardon.
“I’m thrilled that Governor Newsom is pardoning Bayard Rustin and that he acted so quickly and decisively in response to our request. I also applaud the Governor for broadening this work to provide other criminalized LGBT people with a path to clear their records of wrongful convictions on homophobic charges. These actions are consistent with the Governor’s deep and longstanding support for the LGBT community,” Wiener said in a statement. “Generations of LGBT people – including countless gay men – were branded criminals and sex offenders simply because they had consensual sex. This was often life-ruining, and many languished on the sex offender registry for decades. The Governor’s actions today are a huge step forward in our community’s ongoing quest for full acceptance and justice.”
“On behalf of the Black Caucus, I want to thank the Governor for granting this posthumous pardon. The Arc of Justice is long, but it took nearly 70 years for Bayard Rustin to have his legacy in the Civil Rights movement uncompromised by this incident. Rustin was a great American who was both gay and black at a time when the sheer fact of being either or both could land you in jail,” said Weber. “This pardon assures his place in history and the Governor’s ongoing commitment to addressing similar convictions shows that California is finally addressing a great injustice.”
“Civil rights champion Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘The time is always right to do what is right.’ For our friend Governor Newsom, that time is today. We are grateful to the governor for demonstrating our California values by pardoning civil rights hero, Bayard Rustin — a trusted aide to Dr. King — and for creating a system for other LGBTQ+ people to seek pardon from unjust convictions, said Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur. “Today, Governor Newsom, and indeed the entire Golden State, did the right thing.”
That the pardon comes at the beginning of Black History Month is notable. On the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote on The Root: “I ask that if you teach your children one new name from the heroes of black history, please let it be Bayard Rustin.”
“For decades, this great leader, often at Dr. King’s side, was denied his rightful place in history because he was openly gay,” said President Obama, presenting Rustin’s medal to his longtime partner, Walter Naegle on Aug. 8, 2013. “No medal can change that, but today, we honor Bayard Rustin’s memory by taking our place in his march towards true equality, no matter who we are or who we love.”
Born in 1912, Rustin learned about racism early on learned from his a Quaker grandmother in his West Chester, Pennsylvania hometown. She was also a member of the NAACP and intellectual civil rights leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were house guests.
In high school, Rustin challenged the racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws by defying the rules to sit in the segregated balcony of a movie theater — for which he was arrested, as he recalled in the documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin.
“I once went into the little restaurant next to the Warner Theatre, and—can you believe it?—there was absolute consternation. That was the first occasion in which I knew West Chester had three police cars. They surrounded the place as if we were going to destroy motherhood. I purposely got arrested, and then I made an appeal that all the black people and white people who were decent-minded should give 10 cents to get me out of jail. And I got out, because they took up a collection.”
Rustin knew he was gay in high school, he told Washington Blade reporter Peg Byron on Feb. 5, 1986. But he remained closeted until 1947 after an encounter with a child on a bus trip in the South:
“One of the reasons that I decided that I should no longer remain in the closet came from an experience I had as a black. One day, in 19…, way back as far as 1947, I walked into a bus in the South, all prepared to do what I had always done in the South. Take a seat in the rear.
As I was going by the second seat to go to the rear, a white child reached out for the red necktie I was wearing and pulled it. Whereupon its mother said, “Don’t touch a nigger.”
Something happened, and I said to myself, If I go and sit quietly in the back of that bus now, that child who was so innocent of race relations that it was going to play with me, will have seen so many blacks go in the back and sit down quietly that it’s going to end up saying, “They like it back there, I’ve never seen anybody protest against it.” That’s what people in the South would say.
So I said, I owe it to that child, not only to my own dignity, but I owe it to that child that it should be educated to know that blacks do not want to sit in the back, and therefore I should get arrested letting all these white people in the bus know that I do not accept that.
Now, it occurred to me shortly after that that it was an absolute necessity for me to declare homosexuality, because if I didn’t I was a part of the prejudice. I was aiding and abetting…
Peggy Byron: Sitting in the back, yeah…
BR: … the prejudice that was a part of the effort to destroy me. And that in the long run the only way I could be a free whole person was to face the shit.
But from my own experience I know how long it can take till you free yourself. Thirty-four years is a long time to free yourself.”
During those closeted years, he organized strikes in college, advocated to free the Scottsboro Boys, in 1936 joined the Young Communist League which fought segregation but left disillusioned when they dropped fighting Jim Crow to fight to get the US into World War II. Rustin then found two other pacifists – A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and A. J. Muste, leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), who both became mentors.
By now Rustin was on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s radar. Muste hired him to handle race relations. In 1941, the three pacifist socialists proposed a march on Washinton to protest segregation in the military and employment. After a meeting with President Roosevelt in the White House, FDR issued Executive Order 8802 (the Fair Employment Act) banning discrimination in defense industries and federal agencies. As an act of good faith in response, Randolph cancelled the march over Rustin’s objections. The military was finally desegregated in 1948 by President Truman, meaning black Americans fought racism and the Nazis and fascism, only to come home to Jim Crow.
Meanwhile, Rustin came to California to try to help Japanese Americans who were losing their property and their rights as the federal government imprisoned them in internment camps. He also foreshadowed the Freedom Rides by trying to desegregate interstate bus travel in 1942, for which he was arrested outside Nashville, beaten but never charged.
By 1948, the year after he came out, Rustin was well-known enough to be invited to India for an international pacifist conference.
“Mahatma Gandhi had been assassinated earlier that year, but his teachings touched Rustin in profound ways. ‘We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers,’ he wrote after returning to the States. ‘The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn,’” Prof. Gates writes.
The incident for which Rustin was pardoned happened in 1953. By now a respected organizer, Rustin traveled around the country giving speeches. After a speech one January night in Pasadena, police officers found him having sex with two white men in a parked car. Rustin was arrested, sentenced to jail for 60 days and was forced to register as a sex offender for the “morals charge.”
The arrest severely damaged his career in a country terrified by McCarthyism. He was forced to cancel speaking engagements and resigned from his leadership position with Muste’s Fellowship for Reconciliation.
He struggled to find work, resorting to manual labor as a furniture mover, Naegle said later.
“I know now that for me sex must be sublimated if I am to live with myself and in this world longer,” he wrote in a March 1953 letter.
In 1955, Rustin secretly wrote “Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.“In 1956, he found his way back into the civil rights movement, traveling to Alabama to advise Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on how to organize his Montgomery Bus Boycott using Gandhi’s principles of non-violence. The two were introduced by Rustin’s friend Coretta Scott.
“King really had a very, very limited idea about nonviolence,” Julian Bond, who helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. “It is Bayard Rustin who really tutored him, who said, ‘This is what you have to do.’ Rustin was horrified to see these pistols in King’s home, you know, and these armed guards around King’s home, because it just went against everything he believed in about nonviolence. If it hadn’t been for Bayard Rustin, Dr. King wouldn’t have had any understanding, I don’t think, of nonviolence. And Rustin tutored him and made him into the person we know he became.”
But that arrest record and the “open secret” of his homosexuality haunted him. Rustin was forced to resign from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he co-founded after the powerful New York Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. threatened to tell the press that he and King were lovers.
Gay historian, John D’Emilio author of “Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin,” told Amy Goodman:
“Bayard himself was very aware that given social attitudes towards homosexuality and gay men and lesbians, he couldn’t wear it on his sleeve. He couldn’t, you know, be out there with the rainbow flag. This was before gay liberation. So Bayard himself was perfectly happy to keep this in the background and to move out of the way, if that was going to be good for the movement.
What made him unhappy and what made him feel like he had been done wrong was when people disavowed him. And there was a point, in 1960, when Rustin and Mr. Randolph and Dr. King were part of organizing major demonstrations at the presidential conventions, Republicans and Democrats, and at that point Representative Adam Clayton Powell from Harlem didn’t like the fact that these radicals, someone like Bayard Rustin, was getting so much attention and moving into his sphere in the Democratic Party.
And he put out the word to Dr. King that if you don’t distance yourself from Bayard Rustin, I am going to claim that there is something going on between the two of you. And that scared Dr. King, and Bayard made the decision to resign from his position. But he also expected at that point that he would be defended. And when he wasn’t defended, it was—it was painful. It was very painful. And he spent a couple of years, mostly—in the early ’60s, mostly involved in the peace movement rather than in the civil rights movement because of that rupture. And it’s the March on Washington that brought him back into the center of things.”
“That was around 1962,” Rustin told the Washington Blade via the special Making Gay History podcast. “And, naturally, I took the position that if people feel that I am a danger to some important movement, I would leave. But the thing which distressed me was that if… if Martin had taken the strong stand then that he took a year later, in ’63, vis-à-vis Strom Thurmond, he could have overcome it and kept me. But I understand his doing it, and I hold no grief with him about having done it. I just wish that he had shown the strength in ’62 that he showed when he backed me completely in ’63. But he was a year older and had another year’s experience.”
A. Philip Randolph brought Rustin back into the fold to organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom but NAACP’s Roy Wilkins saw Rustin as a liability and forced him to take a deputy position.
But then FBI Director J. Edger Hoover slipped Rustin’s arrest record to rabidly anti-gay South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond – who had secretly fathered a child with his African-America maid. Three weeks before the march, Thurmond went public, trying to destroy the unprecedented event by denouncing Rustin as a gay communist and placing his arrest record in the congressional record.
Rustin told the Washington Blade:
“Now this became very clear to me in 1963, when I was organizing the March on Washington. And Strom Thurmond stood up in the Senate of the United States and for three-quarters of an hour, attacked me as a draft dodger, which was untrue, because I was a conscientious objector and well known as being a Quaker opposed to all violence. He attacked me as a former member of the Young Communist League, which was true. I had been. He attacked me as a homosexual. Which of course I was.
PB: You were the original commie-pinko-fag of the day, I suppose.”
BR: Yeah, exactly. Now, there were 10 leaders of that march. One of the most important Jews, the most important Catholic, the most important Protestant, Walter Reuther representing the trade union movement, and six black civil rights leaders.
When he attacked me, I had absolutely no basic apprehension and for a very good reason, because I had spent a great deal of my life defending prejudice against Catholics, against trade unions, against Jews, against blacks, against Protestants, and therefore I inwardly knew that those leaders, knowing of my history, had to come to my defense. And they did. And the important thing was that they voted that only one person should speak, and that was the founder of the march, Mr. A. Philip Randolph.”
For what spans five pages in the Congressional Record, Thurmond not only submitted the arrest record but the news articles about the arrest and conviction.
“The article states that he was convicted in 1953 in Pasadena, California, of a morals charge. The words ‘morals charge’ are true. But this is a clear-cut case of toning down the charge. The conviction was sex perversion,” says Thurmond.
“The senator is not interested in me if I were a murderer, a thief, a liar or a pervert. The senator is interested in attacking me because he is interested in destroying the movement. He will not get away with this,” Rustin said.
King and the other Big Six backed Rustin up this time because the attacks came from one of the worst Southern white supremacists. But after the march, Rustin was quietly denied his role as the seventh in the Bix Six group of civil rights leaders who called for the march: A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Jim Farmer, Whitney Young when the chief organizer of the march was disinvited to the White House to celebrate with President John F. Kennedy.
And yet, according to an extensive CNN report commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march, it was Rustin who saved the march for the organizers – from a Kennedy take over.
“The Kennedys were almost morbidly afraid of this march. They understood there’d been nothing like it,” Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia, who helped plan the march, told CNN.
“The Kennedy administration was afraid that if there was violence on the march, it would mean that the Civil Rights Act, which John F. Kennedy had just introduced, would never get passed,” said march planner Rachelle Horowitz. “When we first began planning the march, there was a concerted effort by the Kennedy administration to get it called off and to not let it take place.”
“They kept a watchful eye on the planning of the march,” said John Lewis, the 23-year-old elected to lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. “They stayed in touch with the (march) leadership,” which had been broadened to include four white leaders, representatives of the Protestant, Jewish and Catholic faiths, and civil rights advocate and United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther.
Reuther was recruited by the White House “to infiltrate the march and steer it away from radical rhetoric and direct action,” wrote Charles Euchner in his book “Nobody Turn Me Around,” about the historic march. “And so he did.”
Though JFK had come around to the idea of the march, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s office inside the Justice Department’s room 5110 “was the command center,” Jack Rosenthal, who was the department’s assistant press officer at the time, told CNN.
“There was a proposal on the table that Kennedy speak to the March on Washington,” march planner Courtland Cox told CNN. “And Bayard knew this would have been a disaster because it would’ve been taken over by (Kennedy) just because he’s president. It would’ve been Kennedy’s march.”
From CNN:
“So, Cox said Rustin and he excused themselves from that particular meeting and took a walk to the bathroom. Clearly flummoxed about the problem, Rustin took a sip from his back-pocket flask and came up with an idea on the fly.
“And Bayard got back into the meeting and he literally made this up,” Cox recalled. “He said that he heard … if the president spoke the Negroes were going to stone him.”
After that, the idea of Kennedy speaking at the march was never considered.”
None of the feared outbreaks of violence occurred.
“After the March on Washington was over, President Kennedy had invited us back down to the White House,” Lewis said. “He stood in the door of the Oval Office and he greeted each one of us. He was like a beaming, proud father. He was so pleased. So happy that everything had gone so well.”
Kennedy told King: “And you had a dream,” added Lewis.
Rustin’s role was overshadowed – as were his remarks at the march that August 28, 1963:
“We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation—no compromise, no filibuster—and that include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote. What do you say? We demand the withholding of federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists. What do you say?”
Rustin died of a perforated appendix on August 24, 1987, survived by Walter Naegle, his partner of 10 years.
One last thing, Julian Bond told Amy Goodman:
“I could not think of anybody else who at the time would have stepped forward, taken hold of this March on Washington, pull together all these hundreds of thousands of peoples, the buses, the trains. You know, I saw something just recently: They made 800,000 sandwiches. Imagine that. And it was all done at Bayard Rustin’s desire.
One thing I think we’re not hearing about Bayard Rustin is his sense of humor. He once said that Dr. King couldn’t bring vampires to a bloodbath. That was the kind of organizer Dr. King was not. But Bayard Rustin knew he was an organizer and was just wonderful at getting people to do things that they didn’t think they could do or didn’t know they wanted to do. He was just a great, great person….
I think those of us who were there in 1963 didn’t immediately realize how significant this was. As you said during the program, we didn’t see many people there early in the morning. The crowd grew and grew and grew. But even when they were all there, you had no idea how many there were. You know, you can’t look out at this mass of people and say, “This is 250,000 people.” You just have no idea who they are. And I think, for me, driving back to Atlanta later that day and then reading newspapers the next day in Atlanta and hearing what other people had to say about it, only then would we began to understand the significance of this thing—the largest gathering ever at a civil rights protest.
People came together to demand civil rights in America, and that was tremendously significant. But, as you say, if you compare these demands that Bayard read at the march with where we are today, you can see that clearly most of these things have not been achieved, and we still have a long, long way to go.”
While Rustin didn’t attend the White House meeting, he and A. Philip Randolph did make the cover of LIFE magazine.
“Rustin was one of the most important social justice activists in the U.S. in the 20th century,” says historian John D’Emilio.
That 1953 arrest record hung like an invisible chain around Rustin’s neck. Now he is really, finally free.
If you think you are eligible and would like to seek clemency, you can apply for a pardon and receive updates and information on the clemency initiative at www.gov.ca.gov/clemency
a&e features
The mastery of love
The world knows Eric Anderson as Billy Porter’s partner, but in Rehoboth Beach, he has a story entirely his own
The world knows Eric Anderson as Billy Porter’s partner. In Rehoboth Beach, Del., he has a life — and a story — entirely his own.
My first time with Eric Anderson was hot — very hot. Before he arrived, I sat waiting, overthinking everything. When he finally appeared in a loose-fitting T-shirt and purple shorts, I understood why he attracts attention. Eric is the kind of man who changes the energy of a room simply by entering it.
After a quick hello, we got right to it. Techno pulsed through the room as Eric told me how to move, where to place my hands, when to breathe. My heart pounded. My muscles ached. I bent, twisted, and stretched while sweat ran down my back and burned my eyes. I didn’t bother wiping it away.
To be clear, Eric and I were not alone. Five other people were with us — and the yoga studio at SoulFire Collective in Rehoboth Beach was heated to 87 degrees.
“If you are always racing toward the next moment, what happens to the one you’re in?” Eric asked, opening his power yoga class and inviting us to leave whatever had followed us through the door and surrender to the present. Surrender did not come easily. At 58, I’ve done enough yoga to know the difference between discomfort and imminent death. Halfway through Eric’s relentless flow, the distinction began to blur.
A playlist of techno and remixed pop — including “Live Like You Were Dying” — carried us from one demanding pose to the next. Eric moved among the mats with the energy of a nightclub DJ and the calm of someone who trusted our bodies to go further than our minds believed possible. Nearly an hour later, when the music softened and I collapsed onto my back in savasana, he laid a cool cloth across my forehead. I exhaled — relieved, and maybe a little disappointed, that my first time with Eric was over.
At the end of my mat, a handwritten note congratulated me on my first class and invited me back — a small benediction after the storm. Then Eric closed the class by repeating the question with which he’d opened. For a man whose relationship with actor and singer Billy Porter has drawn him unexpectedly into the public eye, it sounded less like a yoga mantra than a personal creed.
The next time I meet Eric, there is air conditioning and caffeine. We are at Starbucks, where I deliberately order the largest drinks available, as though volume alone might buy me more time. He chooses a matcha, and I order herbal tea. My heart is pounding again, faster than the soft rock drifting from the speakers above us. Although I’ve already spent more than an hour with Eric, I know almost nothing about the man I’m about to interview.
Neither, it seems, does anyone else.
Celebrity outlets offer a handful of biographical details: a Rehoboth Beach teacher and yoga instructor with a master’s degree from Columbia University. Gay publications have been less restrained. One introduced him as Billy Porter’s “total hot stud,” called him “a snacc,” and praised his ability to “rock a Speedo.” Queerty distilled Eric’s identity to five words: “Porter is dating a teacher.”
All of it tells me how the world sees him. None of it tells me who he is.
I know from our text exchanges that Eric is slammed for time. He is scheduled to travel to New York later that day and fly to WorldPride Amsterdam the following afternoon. Billy is among the headliners for the opening-night Unity Concert and is also slated to perform at the Wedding Party XXL alongside KI/KI, Bimini, and the Vengaboys. Eric still has to pack. This, I’m beginning to understand, is part of loving someone famous: there is almost always an itinerary, another city, and a specific time and place Billy needs to be. Even here, with two untouched drinks between us, the clock is ticking.
As soon as we sit down, I open my laptop, ready to get to work. My mind is focused on the list of questions I’ve prepared, and I’ve already anticipated the shape of most of his responses. Then I look up and see Eric sitting perfectly still, smiling, and taking in the moment. He hasn’t even taken a sip of his matcha yet.
I quietly close my laptop and breathe.
Within minutes, the interview softens into a conversation.
Eric earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Delaware and a master’s in public school leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University. He began his career teaching mathematics before moving into school administration, eventually serving as vice president of the Charter School of Wilmington and head of school at Sussex Academy. Today, he teaches mathematics and social studies in the Cape Henlopen School District. He also coaches soccer and leads yoga classes at SoulFire Collective in Rehoboth Beach.
His return to the classroom was deliberate. Eric knows some people assumed there must be a story behind his leaving administration—that he had done something wrong or that teaching represented a demotion.
“I want to make it clear that I went back to teaching by choice,” he says.
As a child, Eric played school. Teaching has always felt natural to him, less like an occupation than an expression of who he is. Administration was different.
“It felt like work,” he says. “It wasn’t where my passion was, and it didn’t bring me joy. Going back into the classroom was simply me choosing joy.”
The more Eric talks, the clearer it becomes that teaching is not merely a job but a vocation. His mother is white and his father is Black, and growing up biracial was not always easy. “I saw the best and the worst of both,” he tells me. Those experiences helped shape his desire to become a teacher — to be the kind of person who could make a meaningful difference in a young person’s life.
Just then, Eric glances over his shoulder and locks eyes with someone across the room. He waves and flashes what is quickly becoming his signature smile. My first thought is that someone has recognized him as Billy Porter’s partner.
I’m wrong. It’s one of his former students.
Inevitably, our conversation turns to love — and to Billy. I’ve made it clear that I’m here to write about Eric, not Billy Porter. But separating the two entirely would be as artificial as defining Eric only by their relationship. Billy is now an essential part of his story.
Eric met Billy at a Christmas party hosted by mutual friends who had been trying to introduce them all night. It wasn’t easy — the party was crowded, and the two men never quite crossed paths. Eric stayed for the afterparty, where a friend nudged him and nodded toward the room: Billy was looking his way. Romance never crossed his mind.
Eventually, they started talking. Eric has never had much patience for small talk, and he wasn’t interested in cataloging which celebrities Billy knew. He skipped it entirely and went straight for the deeper questions — what Billy believed, how he saw the world, what mattered to him. They ended up at the kitchen table, trading life philosophies until 5 a.m.
What struck Eric most wasn’t the conversation’s length. It was its depth. Billy wasn’t who he expected. Neither was the conversation. By the time the sun was coming up, Eric was less surprised that they’d talked all night than by how much, it turned out, they had in common.
They had dinner the following evening, and Billy invited Eric to spend the weekend with him in New York. There, Billy took him to see Nicole Scherzinger in “Sunset Boulevard.” Right before the show started, he casually introduced Eric to a friend named Katy. Back in their seats, Eric asked how Billy knew her.
“BITCH,” Billy replied, “that is Miss K-A-T-Y P-E-R-R-Y!”
For all the glamour surrounding their courtship, Eric describes the foundation of their relationship in decidedly spiritual terms. His favorite book is don Miguel Ruiz’s The Mastery of Love, which explores how fear, expectation, and the need for approval can distort relationships. Its philosophy closely resembles Eric’s own.
On the surface, Eric and Billy inhabit different worlds. Eric is a deeply spiritual teacher rooted in a small coastal Delaware town. Billy is a celebrated actor and performer whose larger-than-life persona commands stages around the world. But when I ask Eric how the relationship works, he doesn’t hesitate.
“I know that I can be my authentic self with him, and he can be his with me,” he says. “We love each other unconditionally.”
The words could sound rehearsed. Coming from Eric, they don’t.
The red carpets, famous faces, and international travel are not what matter most.
“It’s all about the people,” he explains. “I love Billy’s family and friends, and he loves mine.”
Authenticity surfaces repeatedly in our conversation — not as an abstract ideal, but as Eric’s determination to trust what feels right for him, even when other people may not understand it. I tell him about growing up in Pittsburgh and spending much of my life trying to fit the person I was into the person the world expected me to be. Eric listens intently, then pauses before responding.
“Fuck the system.”
It is blunt, funny, and entirely consistent with the man sitting across from me. Dating Billy may have dramatically increased the number of strangers who have opinions about Eric, but it hasn’t increased the number whose opinions matter to him. He is remarkably unconcerned with what people he doesn’t know think — or say — about him. The attention is new. His response to it is not.
For Eric, authenticity isn’t about asking the world for permission to be yourself. It’s about deciding that permission was never the world’s to give.
That instinct—to look inward rather than outward for permission — predates Billy.
Eric initially turned to yoga for a practical reason: he wanted to improve his physical performance on the soccer field. It didn’t take long for him to realize that something else was happening. Yoga was strengthening his body, but it was also grounding him.
Over time, the physical practice became inseparable from the mental one. The poses, the heat, even the strength required to hold his body in place became less important than learning how to quiet the noise around him, stay present, and listen to himself. The man who had pushed me through an hour of sweat and discomfort wasn’t simply teaching people how to move their bodies. He was asking them to practice something he had learned to do himself.
That sense of being grounded has become particularly important in a relationship that often requires two people to live very different lives. Eric is quick to point out that he and Billy have separate careers, separate ambitions, and goals entirely their own. Neither expects the other to abandon an individual life simply because they have chosen to build a relationship together.
When Billy left for London to star in “Cabaret,” distance became part of their routine. They FaceTimed every day, a practice they continue whenever they are apart.
“I tell Billy everything,” Eric says.
Being authentic with Billy doesn’t require the two men to become more alike. If anything, the opposite seems true. They are comfortable following their own career paths, living separate lives when circumstances require it, and giving each other the freedom to pursue what matters individually. Then they come back together — not because either has put his own life on hold, but because they have chosen to share those lives with each other.
When we finally look at the time, nearly 90 minutes have passed. Eric still needs to pack. New York is waiting, Amsterdam after that, and somewhere there is undoubtedly an itinerary telling Billy exactly where he needs to be and when.
But for a while, neither of us was racing toward the next moment.
We were fully inside the one we were in.
a&e features
What ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ can still teach us
Producer David Collins on lasting impact of hit series
It’s hard to imagine where LGBTQ+ television would be without “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” the trailblazing reality series that premiered in 2003.
Each episode of this Emmy-winning show saw a group of gays converge on a struggling man — the titular straight guy — and offer nonstop wit while organizing his endlessly messy life. This program about a group of homosexual helpers took the world by storm, furthering the love of gay television begun by shows like “Will and Grace” but bringing it into the growing medium of reality TV. Of course, it wasn’t perfect; “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” often cast its experts less as multi-faceted queer folks and more as sources of early 2000s gay jokes. But despite these pitfalls, it’s undeniable that the original program explored the realities of being gay in a way audiences had never seen before. It was a monumental piece of LGBTQ+ representation, and its success is largely owed to the man who fought to get this show made: producer David Collins.
Collins spoke with the Blade from his Los Angeles home, where he’s spent the past few years living with his husband and his two daughters. David spoke fondly of his many years in the industry, detailing how it feels to be such a huge part of LGBTQ+ history. He explained, however, that he didn’t initially set out to alter how queer people were seen on television. “I never went out to make gay television,” said the producer. “I went out to tell great stories.”
“I’m a hillbilly from Ohio, and I thought I was going to be an editor,” David laughed, looking back on his career. “I interned at the Cincinnati Film Office, and I showed up to work my very first day, and the film commissioner was like, ‘Get to the airport right now and pick [someone] up. Don’t talk to them.’ Well, I ended up picking up Jodie Foster.” Collins raved about this car ride that changed his life, with the pair becoming friends and Foster pushing him to become a producer who puts their own media out into the world. Eventually, he did just that, and after learning about the wild new genre that was reality TV, he pitched a series to Bravo: “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”
“I was obsessed with Esquire magazine, and they had five categories: fashion, grooming, interior design, culture, food, and wine. So I gave them each a gay, and the Fab Five were born!” Collins said, describing how viewers quickly fell in love with the concept and earned the program four seasons and an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program. He spoke about how proud he felt creating a show that centered real gay people, not characters in a story, remembering, “To stand in the middle of Times Square and look up and see this massive billboard with the original Queer Eye guys…it wasn’t even a dream come true, because it wasn’t a dream I had even fathomed.”
With his series, people were watching actual gay men and learning the realities of a queer culture that had always been portrayed as a danger to society. Collins tearfully recounted hearing about queer people using the show as a way to connect with their family, saying, “What I’m most proud of that’s come out of Queer Eye [are] the conversations that that series has allowed to have people around their kitchen tables with little boys in Ohio like me who were scared to death that they were going to burn in hell because their pastor was telling them that they were a sinner.”
Now, for all of its trailblazing, the program wasn’t wholly positive; the show’s focus on the central ‘straight guy’ meant it rarely delved into the lives of its Fab Five. Collins regretted that lack of depth but understood that earlier audiences weren’t accustomed to such a nuanced look into queerness — that would have to wait for the reboot.
When “Queer Eye” came out in 2018, audiences were introduced to not only a new Fab Five, but a whole new format (that didn’t rely on a straight person). Now, the series would assist queer folks and allies alike, spotlighting these individuals as well as the queer experts helping them improve their lives. The show has been applauded for its amazing makeovers, but where it truly stands out is its representation, offering a look into individuals across the country and the struggles — along with the immense joys — of being queer in America today.
Fans were disappointed to hear that “Queer Eye” would be ending after its 10th season, but David stressed that they wouldn’t have to be sad for long. “What I will say to you is this: hang tight,” he teased. “There’s yet another version of ‘Queer Eye’ to come, and we’re working on that now.” In the meantime, Collins is continuing his work with new shows like the “House of Stassi,” a series centered on “Vanderpump Rules’”prolific waitress. He’s excited about these new projects, but emphasized that his heart will always belong to “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and all that it continues to do for viewers 19 years after its finale.
“It’s not about your new outfit or your new couch or your new whatever. It’s about your humanity,” said Collins, speaking about the core lesson he hopes people take away from the Queer Eye franchise. “It’s about seeing yourself. It’s about dignity. It’s about how confidence breeds success.”
A valuable message that queer folks can benefit from even more now than they did in 2003. And, while it’s unclear just what lies ahead for this franchise, one thing is for sure: “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” helped people everywhere understand the power that exists within our queerness. It’s a truth that has impacted countless pieces of LGBTQ+ television today, and it’s one that Collins promises to keep alive through whatever hit show he creates next.
a&e features
Jason DePuy on coping with homophobia in ‘Big Brother’ house
First drag queen contestant on CBS show fought to stay positive
One week after Jason DePuy (known as Salina EsTitties on “RuPaul’s Drag Race”) was bullied and eventually evicted from CBS’s “Big Brother” house, the queer drag performer is still emotionally processing his feelings.
During his 24 days in the reality TV competition, DePuy often had a rough time, with fellow cast member Kamuela “Kamu” Kirk making homophobic comments and feeling isolated.
In a conversation with Head of Household Rick Devens, Kirk left viewers upset when he said, “Bro, miss me with the drag stuff. Miss me. I’m still an MMA guy, and I have an image to uphold.”
Former “Big Brother” contestant Frankie Grande called his words ‘homophobic’ and ‘gross.’ Another comment, where Kirk said he wanted to end DePuy’s career, also received strong backlash online.
Now that he is out of the house, DePuy has been shocked and deeply touched by the love from “Big Brother” fans and former contestants. We chatted with DePuy for this Blade exclusive.
“To know that my community was rallying for me outside the house was the most wonderful thing. Seeing how much people were just wanting to shower me with love was incredible. Even my friends, I went to say hi and give them a hug, and they’re like, ‘Uh, uh, come here.’ They had to hold me and let me know America was feeling for me in a way that I had no idea.”
He added: “To see that reality was just overwhelming, and I couldn’t ask for more.”
Known as a messy player in the house, DePuy often had to fight to stay positive and stand up for himself.
“No one was coming to my rescue. In real life, it’s easy to block people, but in the house, I didn’t have that luxury, so I had to find it within myself to learn how to speak up for myself in a way that wasn’t nasty or biting. I didn’t attack anyone personally, which is what I was the most proud of.”
DePuy acknowledged he has had a history of putting his foot in his mouth when it came to certain “Drag Race”moments, being in the public eye, and making a fool of himself. “I’ve learned my lessons; to see how I handled myself in the ‘Big Brother’ house was amazing.”
While DePuy has been sober for 14 and a half years and has a strong spiritual foundation, in the Big Brother house, he often felt like he couldn’t communicate what he was feeling.
“As a queer person, a person of color, a drag queen, I have to be very careful about how I move. I don’t have the luxury or privilege to just act a certain way or say a certain thing. I have to be very careful; I’m representing me. But who I am is a Latino, a person of recovery, a drag queen, a queer person in the community. I know that there’s a lot of pressure that comes with that. I felt it was safer for me to sit there and just breathe than try to do anything crazy.”
He continued: “I couldn’t speak to the personal attack that was happening in the house, because in my mind I was like, ‘no, this is a game, and I have to play it, put that aside.’”
Not only can viewers watch the episodes, but they can also watch the live feeds of what’s happening. Seeing the fans’ social media posts from people who had watched the episodes and the live feeds also contributed to DePuy realizing that his feelings of discomfort were valid.
“To know that I wasn’t delusional in those moments, that others could see what was happening, has been a lot to take in. Fans and friends let me know the comments made went beyond the game…I’m like, ‘Oh, so my instincts were correct.”
One of the most poignant moments on the live feeds occurred when DePuy was crying, alone in his room, and said how he missed his gay community.
“I really missed my friends. I missed my queer community. We’re so colorful. We’re so loud. We’re so vibrant. We speak off the cuff, and we’re very truthful and honest with how we speak, and it’s fun. We have fun lingo.”
DePuy had to censor his expressions in the house. “Because I can say one thing, but it can mean something different to straight people than it does with my queer brothers and sisters. So, there was a sense of code-switching that I had to do. I had to even put aside some of my queerness in a way sometimes to fit in.”
DePuy was thrilled to be the very first drag queen to ever be cast on the show.
“I’m honored to have been chosen. There’s a million drag queens out there, and to know that I was a contender to come in the house and not even be in drag was like a wow for me. I’m over here in Hollywood, running around these streets with a wig and heels just to make a dollar to survive, and I have to rely on drag to do that. And then to be offered this opportunity and be given the privilege to say, ‘hey, you don’t have to put on the wig for you to be valuable here,’ is just insane to me.”
Prior to his shows, DePuy has been hustling for 15 years, flipping burgers and doing drag at night.
“That has been my life these past since I was 17. So it’s been a long journey; the opportunity to do this out of drag is a very big blessing. I’m honored and grateful to be the representation of my community.”
If you missed Jason on “Big Brother: Unlocked,” the episode can be seen on CBS.com. He will be back on the show for the finale.
The mastery of love
Trans people need a politics of ordinary life
Enlarging the Supreme Court keeps making more sense
Markey’s primary win deemed success for LGBTQ activists
Top Bulgarian court rules government must legally recognize trans people
New book examines Trump cuts to LGBTQ healthcare
Immersive ‘Nation-State’ imagines a society free of authoritarianism
Poland begins to legally recognize same-sex marriages from other countries
HRC president campaigns for Chris Pappas in NH
We’re getting married but our parents object
-
Books5 days agoNew book examines Trump cuts to LGBTQ healthcare
-
Theater4 days ago
Immersive ‘Nation-State’ imagines a society free of authoritarianism
-
Poland3 days ago
Poland begins to legally recognize same-sex marriages from other countries
-
Congress3 days ago
HRC president campaigns for Chris Pappas in NH
