Brad Shreve: This is Queer we Are.
Brad Shreve: I'm Brad Shreem and on Queer we Are.
Brad Shreve: There's no pretending the world is all rainbows and unicorns.
Brad Shreve: It can be rough out there, but each week I give you a break from those ugly headlines.
Brad Shreve: Now we may bring those challenges up, but we don't stay there long.
Brad Shreve: We don't dwell on the problems my guests share, what they're doing to make a difference or how they keep hope alive when it's hard to do so.
Brad Shreve: Or maybe they're just here to entertain, which is a gift.
Brad Shreve: My guest is Reverend Troy Perry and, based on feedback, I know many of you just cringed because I said the word Reverend.
Brad Shreve: And yes, troy is a Christian and a religious leader, but remember, martin Luther King was a minister too and, like King, reverend Perry has served all people, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack of it, and also regardless of sexual identification.
Brad Shreve: Troy relates to those who, with religious backgrounds that left them scarred.
Brad Shreve: He had the same issue.
Brad Shreve: Now, if that defines you, he gets it and he understands.
Brad Shreve: It may never be for you, but 55 years ago this month, reverend Perry started the Metropolitan Community Church in the living room of his Los Angeles home, with 12 congregants.
Brad Shreve: Now that's a humble beginning, but today there are over 222 congregations in 37 countries.
Brad Shreve: Now, many people refer to the MCC as the gay church, but it's much, much more than that, and shh don't tell anyone, but there's actually some straight people there too.
Brad Shreve: So, in addition to succeeding and launching and growing the MCC, he has a history and several rights for all LGBTQ people, including, but not limited to, co-founding the Christopher Street West, which organized the first Pride March in 1970.
Brad Shreve: In 1973, he rushed to New Orleans to support the community after the horrific fire at the upstairs lounge gay bar, the worst incident of his kind until the Pulse nightclub incident in Orlando in 2016.
Brad Shreve: In 1979, he helped organize the March in Washington, which had 100,000 LGBTQ people there.
Brad Shreve: So don't say that we can't join together and work together.
Brad Shreve: I'm going to hold you for a minute for exciting news.
Brad Shreve: Right now, the QueerWeRShotcom is open for business and you can click the link in the show notes now and still listen to this episode.
Brad Shreve: And with me is my graphic designer, denise.
Brad Shreve: Hi Brad.
Brad Shreve: Denise has worked with me for years.
Brad Shreve: She designed my websites, several of my logos, my book covers.
Brad Shreve: The list goes on, in fact.
Brad Shreve: Every week, at the bottom of the show notes, you'll see a link to UmiWorks, which is Denise's business, and you can check on her work as well.
Brad Shreve: Now, denise, here's what we know that people are going to find at QueerWeRShotcom.
Brad Shreve: Every podcast has their t-shirts and maybe one or two more, but we actually don't have any.
Brad Shreve: We have many t-shirts, plus, we have sweatshirts and coffee mugs, with more in the way as winter is biting our heels.
Brad Shreve: We also have other exciting products.
Brad Shreve: We're busy designing, and hoping to have soon, many home products.
Brad Shreve: We were lazy, though, and we copied all the designs that we could see from Amazon and Redbubble.
Denise Shiozawa: No way, brad.
Denise Shiozawa: You do have some hot, trendy slogans that you've probably seen before, like Queer AF and Stay Woke, but we also have plenty you won't see anywhere else.
Denise Shiozawa: I think we've come up for some pretty fun and sometimes thought provoking designs.
Brad Shreve: We thought them up, so how could there be anything less?
Brad Shreve: Right right.
Brad Shreve: I'd podcast no matter what, but putting on a quality show takes money, so I'll be promoting the shop without beating you over the head with them.
Brad Shreve: This store is bigger than the show, though.
Brad Shreve: This is a career.
Brad Shreve: So I'm not doing Patreon, though it is under consideration because some listeners have asked for it, but I won't bore you with ads for that online therapy company you keep hearing on other shows or that place that delivers actually, there's several of them delivers fresh, expensive foods to your door, so check the shop now QueerRShopcom.
Brad Shreve: So, regarding Troy Perry, denise, don't go anywhere.
Brad Shreve: As I said, I'm Brad Shrieve and my guest is Troy Perry and Queer.
Brad Shreve: We Are Happy 55th anniversary to Metropolitan Community Church.
Brad Shreve: Reverend Troy, thank you so much.
Troy Perry: It's been 55 years since that first service in Huntington Park, california.
Troy Perry: I'm thankful to God I'm still alive here.
Troy Perry: I am 83 years old.
Troy Perry: Talking about what transpired and what happened back then.
Brad Shreve: So that was back in 1968 and you founded the church in your living room with 12 people attending, and today your church now has 300 congregations in 22 countries.
Brad Shreve: Tell me what you're feeling this month.
Troy Perry: I am feeling incredible this month.
Troy Perry: I'm very thankful that I've lived to be 83 years old.
Troy Perry: I'm thankful that good things are continuing still in my life.
Troy Perry: You know that I still have wonderful friends who I knew then and who are alive today.
Troy Perry: I was just talking to Lynn, one of my friends.
Troy Perry: Lynn was in the Air Force.
Troy Perry: I was in the Army.
Troy Perry: We were near each other's camps during Vietnam.
Troy Perry: We were both Vietnam era veterans.
Troy Perry: We met each other there and Lynn ended up back coming to America and I told him I'm going to be speaking there.
Troy Perry: I want you to come up and hear me.
Troy Perry: And Lynn came up and heard me and stayed in the church and he just celebrated his 53rd anniversary in MCC.
Troy Perry: But he's no longer than that.
Troy Perry: He knew me in the military.
Troy Perry: So here we are today, Thank God, good things happening every day.
Brad Shreve: Well, you were still pretty small fry then, so he saw a lot happen.
Troy Perry: Yes, he did.
Troy Perry: He says that too.
Troy Perry: He loved going.
Troy Perry: The church in San Francisco had just started after our church, about nine months later, and they invited me to come up and preach at California Hall and, of course, san Francisco being San Francisco, always laugh.
Troy Perry: They could be negative or they could be positive.
Troy Perry: They chose to be negative and saying, well, they only had 800 people there.
Brad Shreve: He didn't have Only had 800 for the first service, for the first service.
Troy Perry: They'd never had 800 people out in the open with their faces with no makeup on, ever in San Francisco until I spoke there.
Troy Perry: I think that's amazing.
Troy Perry: Oh yeah, no, it was amazing and they laughed in the press and they said that they were cutting up.
Troy Perry: They really meant that it was amazing that I could come into the city.
Troy Perry: But people were really curious about me.
Troy Perry: I spoke in New York City.
Troy Perry: It was very interesting.
Troy Perry: I was invited to speak there in about 1973 or four and I was there because we were going to have the first demonstration at the state capitol in Albany and GAA Gay Activist Alliance invited me to come into the city and to speak and I was to speak at a festival of unity at Columbia University.
Troy Perry: That night we had over 2,500 people who came.
Troy Perry: The auditorium was packed.
Troy Perry: So this wasn't a slow growth.
Troy Perry: This was not slow growth time with MCC or with the larger gay, lesbian, bi-transgender, queer community.
Troy Perry: It just wasn't that way.
Troy Perry: It was very fast at first, when I was time for me to speak at Columbia, I go, the place is packed.
Troy Perry: Oh my God.
Troy Perry: Female singer she was the singer before I spoke and she was a Broadway star.
Troy Perry: She was in the musical Gains in New York.
Troy Perry: Wonderful, wonderful musical and we invited her.
Troy Perry: Well, after she finished singing, this guy jumped up on the stage, started screaming that how dare we invite a heterosexual to sing at a gay event?
Brad Shreve: Those people.
Troy Perry: Yeah, I was thrilled to have an ally willing to come and sing.
Troy Perry: I always have been.
Troy Perry: I'm one of those strange gay leaders.
Troy Perry: They always said that I was thrilled to death.
Troy Perry: My organization everyone calls it a gay organization, but there are heterosexuals who are members of MCC.
Troy Perry: Well, here this guy.
Troy Perry: Then the auditorium started booing him.
Troy Perry: Next thing I know this is the first time I've told this story, but the next thing I know he has pulled out his personal and shook it at the crowd.
Troy Perry: I couldn't believe it.
Troy Perry: And then the crowd really did get nasty.
Troy Perry: And when they did, all of once this lesbian in the crowd said Johnny, or whatever his name was.
Troy Perry: She used her voice to get his attention.
Troy Perry: Johnny, you're just like every other fucking man Using your dick as a weapon.
Troy Perry: The next thing.
Troy Perry: I know he's off the stage and here I am.
Troy Perry: That's my turn to speak, and that's a hard act to follow.
Troy Perry: This is a hard act to follow, but this is.
Troy Perry: If I'm going to get the hard acts early, that's good, let's take care of it.
Troy Perry: So I jumped right up, as always did, when I spoke and I talked about our rights.
Troy Perry: I did not talk about the young man who was on the stage or the young woman who had called him down off the stage, but I kept it on my subject, and that's we can win this battle.
Troy Perry: I don't care what's transpiring and happening, we can win.
Troy Perry: Whenever I was in the process of making a speech, I made this speech.
Troy Perry: I didn't let anybody cut me off, and once the woman had taken care of the young man and he moved off the stage, then I could really talk about what the issues were for us.
Troy Perry: And that's where we had battles to win and we could win them.
Brad Shreve: I think it's important to say your hard work over the years has been dedicated to all people and not just Christians, and I love a quote that you have on your website and it says let me find out, I quote we believe we can change the world, so for me, my legacy, I hope, will be inside and outside of my community.
Brad Shreve: He was faithful and he was fearless.
Brad Shreve: I love that quote.
Brad Shreve: Based on your history, I certainly can say you were bold and faithful and fearless and on behalf of myself and I'm going to be so bold as to speak for the LGBTQ people everywhere thank you for all you have done.
Troy Perry: Well, thank you, brad, so much.
Troy Perry: I do not believe Christianity is God's only voice on earth.
Troy Perry: I take up for every religion.
Troy Perry: I take up for the religious and I take up for those who are not religious.
Troy Perry: I don't care.
Troy Perry: I believe that we all have to be faithful to our call, and that's to make a difference in the world.
Brad Shreve: Not destroy other people or always be right, but do the things that are right, I want to get to the story behind the church, but there is something I'd like to address.
Brad Shreve: You experienced a lot of strife just being a minister of the MCC church and you also have been very much in the limelight as far as an activist goes.
Brad Shreve: A lot of struggles that you went through and you made a lot of advances for everyone.
Brad Shreve: We're now seeing things getting pushed back and a lot of people are disillusioned and what I want to find out from you is why, with everything that's going on, should I and everyone else care anymore or have any hope?
Troy Perry: You got to have hope.
Troy Perry: If you don't have hope, you just lost it.
Troy Perry: And whatever we do, we can't lose it.
Troy Perry: I'll use a military thing that if the first thing how the military loses is they lose hope and that's true with everybody If we lose hope, we just die and nobody else is going to fight our fights for us.
Troy Perry: If you think anybody else is going to fight for us, you're wrong.
Troy Perry: It takes us to have the fight.
Troy Perry: Then people would join with us, young people.
Troy Perry: I want you to know.
Troy Perry: You don't know what it was like once upon a time.
Troy Perry: This is nothing.
Troy Perry: We will win this battle.
Troy Perry: This is nothing.
Troy Perry: A building burns down, but thank God we're still alive.
Troy Perry: A church burns down, but we're still alive.
Troy Perry: They murder bar members, but we're still alive.
Troy Perry: You think those bar members who had gone in the bar would want us to stop?
Troy Perry: No, I go to bars.
Troy Perry: They wouldn't want us to stop.
Troy Perry: They would say to us continue this struggle and whatever we do, just when you think you can't win, that's when you'll win.
Troy Perry: So don't give up the fight and the struggle.
Troy Perry: It would be too easy and we're not going to do that.
Troy Perry: We're going to continue until we've won the battle.
Troy Perry: And I really love music and I love gospel music and I love especially African-Americans, the gospel music they sing.
Troy Perry: When I hear those gospel songs, they sing in the middle of segregation and yet they kept fighting.
Troy Perry: And today we have movies like Till that I hope everybody will look at and sing young man who has murdered his mother, going into a church, not letting them bomb the body, but seeing him exactly as he was.
Troy Perry: And thousands of people over 10,000 people showed up, 3,200 in the building walking by the coffin.
Troy Perry: Other people white people, black people, politicians all came and saw Emmett Till's body.
Troy Perry: Did it stop the fight?
Troy Perry: No, did it stop the persecution?
Troy Perry: No, we still won, because today we've won that case.
Troy Perry: 70% of Americans believe we should have all of our rights.
Troy Perry: Now is not the time to stop.
Brad Shreve: I'm an atheist, or at least an agnostic, and I am a Unitarian Universalist.
Brad Shreve: As you know, you came and spoke at my church.
Brad Shreve: It was nearly 15 years ago 15 to 20 years ago but I don't have to tell you many LGBTQ people have had negative or even horrific experiences within the church and that resentment is hard to shape.
Brad Shreve: And I know some who don't understand how a person can be queer and Christian and they sometimes can be pretty antagonistic about it.
Brad Shreve: I don't come from a religious background so it wasn't a thing for me, so I don't carry that baggage.
Brad Shreve: I'm fascinated by religion and respect anyone's beliefs, so it saddens me when I see that happen.
Brad Shreve: Will you address that?
Troy Perry: It saddens me too I won't just say number one that the church mistreated me.
Troy Perry: I like to tell people that I was a young person raised in the South in a very, very conservative Pentecostal group and I was a licensed preacher in the Southern Baptist Church and started preaching when I was 13 years old in the Pentecostal Church and was licensed to preach at age 16 in the Southern Baptist Church.
Troy Perry: They threw me out of the church at age 19 when they found out that I was gay and I believed all the lies that people tell you.
Troy Perry: Oh God can't love you, you're a gay man, oh God hates you.
Troy Perry: Don't you realize that God's not going to hear your prayers?
Troy Perry: People always talk that way to me.
Troy Perry: But things happen in my life.
Troy Perry: I'm always a believer in things just happen in your life and you're going to live a lot of experiences and that's exactly what happened to me and I did everything the church told me to do.
Troy Perry: They told me that if I would marry a good woman, that would take care of that problem.
Troy Perry: I married, they said, if I'd have children, that would take care of that problem, that gay problem.
Troy Perry: I had two sons.
Troy Perry: If you're a celbut, if you don't have sex with men that'll take care of the problem.
Troy Perry: No, it'll lead you alive.
Troy Perry: It was very interesting to me.
Troy Perry: I went into the military in 1965.
Troy Perry: Vietnam was just starting, had met gay people in Los Angeles.
Troy Perry: After my wife and I had separated, I moved into LA and I met gay people.
Troy Perry: And now I have gay people who are saying to me when I have tried to receive my draft notice, they said are you going to let them draft you into the military?
Troy Perry: Are you going to check the magic block?
Troy Perry: And I said what magic block?
Troy Perry: And they said right under tuberculosis and cancer is homosexual tendencies and if you check that block, that'll keep you out of the military.
Troy Perry: And I said what is the question?
Troy Perry: And they said homosexual tendencies.
Troy Perry: I said I don't have homosexual tendencies, I am a homosexual.
Troy Perry: And I went into the military.
Troy Perry: Brad, I looked out and didn't go to Vietnam, I went to Germany.
Troy Perry: I'm in Kaiser Schlot in Germany and, my God, I never met more gay people in my life than I did in the military.
Troy Perry: Had we all been put out of the military, had all of us been discharged, they couldn't have had an army, and they knew it During wartime.
Troy Perry: The US military has always taken us in Only later in the war is they're winding down to start looking for gay people and throw us out.
Troy Perry: So me, I came back and fell deeply, madly in love.
Troy Perry: For the first time I met a man.
Troy Perry: Larry was a school teacher from Montana and just my type and he and I.
Troy Perry: We didn't do well together.
Troy Perry: I always felt people.
Troy Perry: I had six of the best and worst months of my life and we decided he did, that he was going to leave me.
Troy Perry: Well, I dated Larry, we separated and then I cut both of my wrists, climbed into a bathtub, just hoped I would die.
Troy Perry: Thank God, as I tell people, my roommate, the person who lived with me, came in when he got in the door and he heard water running and came over the bathroom, knocked on the door and said hey, troy, are you okay?
Troy Perry: And when I didn't answer, he broke the door down and found me in the tub.
Troy Perry: Willie Smith rushed me to County General and when I arrived at County General, I'm sitting there.
Troy Perry: All at once I thought it was a nurse, looked like a nurse as uniform, but all at once this African American woman walked in and said I don't know why you've done this.
Troy Perry: But she said Can't you talk to somebody.
Troy Perry: Can't you look up?
Troy Perry: She pushed every religious button on me and then she left.
Troy Perry: And when she did, I broke down crying and I said God, I know you're not going to hear an answer to this prayer.
Troy Perry: God, I just don't know what to do.
Troy Perry: Here I am, I'm a gay person, and I don't know what to do.
Troy Perry: I'm miserable.
Troy Perry: I attempted and even though it didn't work, here I am.
Troy Perry: And about that time the doctor came in.
Troy Perry: Finally, when he finished, she said Now I want to know something.
Troy Perry: Are you going to be okay or do I need to keep you here?
Troy Perry: I said Well, what do you think?
Troy Perry: And he says it's not important what I think, it's what you think.
Troy Perry: You make this decision I don't.
Troy Perry: Now you tell me, will you be all right or do you want me to keep you for 72 hours?
Troy Perry: When I got home, I went to bed that night.
Troy Perry: Next morning woke up and Willie came into my room, woke me up and said Are you going to be okay or should I stay with you?
Troy Perry: And I said no, I'm going to be okay.
Troy Perry: And so Willie said Is there anything you need?
Troy Perry: I said no and he left, and even though he was gone, I really prayed.
Troy Perry: From the bed, the first thing I thought of was oh God, I've got to go buy some long sleeve shirts.
Troy Perry: If Sears knew about this, they would fire me.
Troy Perry: It's so funny how, after you try to kill yourself, the first thing you think about is your job.
Troy Perry: And you've lived through it.
Troy Perry: How am I going to do this?
Brad Shreve: So I can't do this.
Brad Shreve: I have a deadline.
Troy Perry: That's right.
Troy Perry: And so immediately after that happened, brad, here again I broke down crying and I said God, I know you're not going to hear this prayer, but I said I know the church has taught me that my church has taught me.
Troy Perry: You can't hear me, you don't care about me, and I always tell people.
Troy Perry: After I said that, god spoke to me in a still small voice and said to me Troy, don't tell me what I can and can't do.
Troy Perry: I love you, you're my son and I don't have stepson's and daughters.
Troy Perry: So with that I knew I could be a Christian and I could be a gay person.
Troy Perry: I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God loved me.
Troy Perry: I didn't have all the answers yet, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt I was going to get so many of them and I would get them all right up to the time that I died.
Troy Perry: And 83 years later here I'm still getting answers every day.
Troy Perry: And how thankful I am that after that, after God spoke to me and said God loved me, then I knew God had to love other people.
Troy Perry: And right after that I went on a date with a young man to a gay bar in Wimmington, the section of LA down in the dock area.
Troy Perry: While we were there to make a long story short, the police came in and arrested about 12 people for lewd and lascivious conduct.
Troy Perry: Well, I was watching the couple because it was my date and a friend of ours and I knew both of them had hilarious sense of humor and one of them, bill Hastings, reached up and slapped my date on the butt and he came back over to me and one of the cops followed him over to me and when he got there he pulled out of bed and said come outside with me.
Troy Perry: I said who are you talking to?
Troy Perry: He said not you him.
Troy Perry: Immediately he spoke up and said what are you charging me with?
Troy Perry: He said lute and lascivious conduct.
Troy Perry: They left and they owned the bar got up and said we are all going to the police station.
Troy Perry: I know there has to be a florist here.
Troy Perry: I want all the flowers you have.
Troy Perry: We're gonna take down flowers.
Troy Perry: And he said we're gonna get our sister's belt out of jail Now.
Troy Perry: This was my first demonstration, all right and like this, and I thought, oh my God, we're going down to the police station, but here we go and we got down there.
Troy Perry: And, sure enough, when we got there.
Troy Perry: When we walked in, lee walked over to it and some of us followed him right over there and he said I'm here to get my sister's belt out of jail.
Troy Perry: And this cop said watch your sisters his name.
Troy Perry: And he said ha ha, ha, ha, ha ha.
Troy Perry: And he said Bill Hastings and Tony Valdiv and with that he called for backup.
Troy Perry: And all these cops came to the front room and we would not leave.
Troy Perry: We continued to joke with the police officers, to talk to them, try to tell them about.
Troy Perry: Yeah, well, you know, there's lots of gay people, you're gonna see a lot of us just talking, you know what I mean, but not getting nasty.
Troy Perry: We said don't get nasty, just talk.
Troy Perry: And so we said we, you know, there, here's the 12 of us and the two in jail.
Troy Perry: And they kept missing them, kept losing them, kept, you know, there's been sent somewhere else.
Troy Perry: We would not leave.
Troy Perry: We said, well, we're waiting here.
Troy Perry: We know what the law is.
Troy Perry: You gotta bring them here for us to build them out of jail.
Troy Perry: And the bellows bondsman was working with them and all at once they said here they are.
Troy Perry: And we all applauded like mad.
Troy Perry: The police still didn't know what to do because we were not afraid of them.
Troy Perry: And we went.
Troy Perry: We got in our cars.
Troy Perry: I went back home with Tony.
Troy Perry: He broke down crying.
Troy Perry: I said they're gonna drop the charges.
Troy Perry: Just wait, that's what the guy said they're gonna drop the charges.
Troy Perry: And sure enough they dropped the charges on our two people that we got out.
Troy Perry: But I kept going back to praying.
Troy Perry: Okay, god, you said you love me, all right.
Troy Perry: You said when do you want that?
Troy Perry: You know, I've tried to go to church and I can't find anywhere to go.
Troy Perry: You tell me, where do you, if you want a church, started, not a gay church, but a Christian church that's open to everybody, and that means everybody.
Troy Perry: Just let me know when.
Troy Perry: And the still, the small voice said now, and with that took out a maddening advocate here at Reverend Troy Perry.
Troy Perry: The advocate was the large gay newspaper at that time, the only one, and I took it out of mad.
Troy Perry: Here at Reverend Troy Perry gave me a address in Huntington Park.
Troy Perry: 12 people came two persons of color, a heterosexual couple.
Troy Perry: You know, I looked back at it and I think it was the view of things to come for a MCC.
Troy Perry: All those gay males that were there too.
Troy Perry: I am so thankful to God and the service was incredible.
Troy Perry: I called a funeral home and said well, you loan me 15 chairs for the first service of our church we're having.
Troy Perry: Oh, yes, we would be happy to, and they did.
Troy Perry: Then I had a pastor friend who owned me loaned me the 15 choir hymnals you know the hymns.
Troy Perry: The thing out of Then straight man at work who was a carpenter for the store, he made the cross and the top to go up behind my preaching area and in front of my preaching area was our coffee table, which served as our first communion, and an ash tray, and my boss, who was gay, at in his lover, gave me a cup that I used as a chalice for the first service.
Troy Perry: And it was very, very interesting.
Troy Perry: Four years ago the Smithsonian asked me for a collection that they wanted to put in their collection for gay folk and I was able to put together the collection of things like the Book of Common Prayer that I use in all my marriages and all my funerals and throughout MC's history.
Troy Perry: They got that.
Troy Perry: They got my vestments.
Troy Perry: They received a hymn book that went through the fire.
Troy Perry: We had another hymn book after that with inclusive language.
Troy Perry: I had other things that were given in the day as for a large collection and they received it I would have never thought, when I opened the doors of the church to those 12 people, that the Smithsonian, the Museum of American History, would call me one day and say the thing y'all did was historical and we want to make sure that we have them here in the museum.
Troy Perry: So I am very thankful when I look back.
Troy Perry: Most of the people in fact all of the people except me, as far as I know is not alive of the LA group, that where we started the church here first.
Troy Perry: They are deceased.
Troy Perry: But we went through everything together and today, how proud I am.
Troy Perry: I was just.
Troy Perry: I'd received an email from one of our churches in Brazil I don't read Portuguese, but thank God for translators anymore and they were sending us saying we're dedicating a room to you, reverend Perry, and that's where we feed people who are hungry.
Troy Perry: So it's the Troy Perry Food Pantry Memorial, and so I was very touched by that.
Brad Shreve: And is there something surreal about that, though, there?
Troy Perry: is People, don't you know?
Troy Perry: You gotta go through it, I guess, till it's the way it is.
Troy Perry: But it is surreal.
Troy Perry: When I'm invited to the White House, I've been invited by three American presidents to the White.
Brad Shreve: House.
Brad Shreve: You've been there five times.
Brad Shreve: Three presidents, that's correct.
Troy Perry: And I stop and I look at it and I just shake my head of when I leave.
Troy Perry: I'm very.
Troy Perry: What thrills me is they invited Philip the last time.
Troy Perry: The other two were before Philip, and Philip is my partner of 38 years, Philip de Blic.
Troy Perry: We talk, he and I both talk about it how unreal it seems some days.
Troy Perry: Today, we are members of the World Council of Churches and we go to the World Council of Churches every four years and we celebrate with them and we meet more people from other cultures that have heard about us and know about us.
Troy Perry: They you know, they have different historians who've interviewed me said Troy, you're one of those church groups.
Troy Perry: Everybody knows who you are Because quote you're the gay church and we have churches all over the world.
Troy Perry: We have doctors who go to places like Uganda and we pay to have children's medicine for children and shot for children, and we have our own doc.
Troy Perry: Go into those cultures and do clinics for children, for HIV, for coronavirus, you name it.
Troy Perry: We do it.
Troy Perry: We call it the metropolitan clinics.
Troy Perry: We've learned how to work in some countries and I continue to hope and pray that God can continue to use me.
Troy Perry: Now, this coming year, Philip and I are going to do some of this the last thing on my bucket list that I've wanted to do, and it's not churchy I've been to a general audience for this holiness to Pope, wrote them and asked them could I be in a general audience.
Troy Perry: They invited me and sent the invitations.
Troy Perry: I'm one of the only 100 Protestants who are invited to protest in with this holiness.
Troy Perry: In South Carolina, when Pope John Paul II was the Pope and his assistant became the next Pope of this book.
Troy Perry: So it was very interesting and I continue to do things.
Troy Perry: The thing I want to do is I just discovered that there is a cruise that Philip and I are going to take.
Troy Perry: We like the cruise for 54 days that takes us down the Pacific side of the Americas to Antarctica.
Troy Perry: I have been on every continent except Antarctica and this cruise will let me get to Antarctica.
Troy Perry: Then I'll come back up the other side of the Americas and end the cruise, leaving in LA, ending it in Port Lauderdale, Florida.
Brad Shreve: That sounds like an incredible trip.
Brad Shreve: I want to speak to something.
Brad Shreve: In 1970, the year after Stonewall, you co-founded Christopher Street West and we know today as the first Pride Parade in Los Angeles.
Brad Shreve: I'm used to parades as they are today.
Brad Shreve: It's a carnival field.
Brad Shreve: Back in 2008, I joined thousands and marched along the beach when Prop 8 passed.
Brad Shreve: It was a much different feeling.
Brad Shreve: We were angry, we were beyond angry, but it was so powerful.
Brad Shreve: It was a sense of unity and belonging.
Brad Shreve: I have not felt sense, can I tell you something.
Troy Perry: I really believe, brad, with all of my heart that young people have heard that we now have two wonderful Pride parades here in LA.
Troy Perry: I can tell you one of those parades are already changing.
Troy Perry: Oh, yes, they've got the floats in them, but they're shouting from the floats.
Troy Perry: They've got all kinds of people who are with us.
Troy Perry: I loved looking down and seeing the Assistic District Attorney of Los Angeles Association Good point, I love it, thank God, here I'm looking at this and they're straights and gays.
Troy Perry: A few years ago, phillip and I invited a heterosexual couple who's a friend of ours One was a police officer, she is an attorney or husband's a member of the Ventura Bottom Squad and they were pro-gay.
Troy Perry: I got to know the family really, really well.
Troy Perry: I was being honored by our Pride committee here and I invited them to go with me because I wanted to use them as props.
Troy Perry: To all the folks out there who say we can't win, I'm saying these are the people we want to win with.
Troy Perry: We want to meet heterosexual Next year.
Troy Perry: We want to invite our heterosexual friends and don't invite a homosexual.
Troy Perry: Invite your heterosexual friends.
Troy Perry: I've always been one of those believers.
Troy Perry: I said early on that if we all came out of the closet.
Troy Perry: If we'd all come out to our mothers and fathers, that's three right there.
Troy Perry: If you then came out to your brothers and sisters, for me that would be five more.
Troy Perry: And then when they start telling their friends which they're going to, how, everybody laughed.
Troy Perry: I said thousands of people are going to know very quickly that we're gay.
Troy Perry: And that's exactly what happened.
Troy Perry: I don't mean that I was the first person, maybe to say that, but that all kinds of people started joining in.
Troy Perry: The next thing for me was when I started having demonstrations and I said I had demonstrations before.
Troy Perry: We had Christopher Street, west pray.
Troy Perry: My first demonstration was based on a firing of a young man in San Francisco and they called me and said a young man has been fired here, the company headquarters in Los Angeles.
Troy Perry: Would you, as we demonstrate up here, would y'all demonstrate down there?
Troy Perry: And I may retalk to Morris Kite, others of our early little group and I said they wonder who to demonstrate.
Troy Perry: I'm going to, we all do it.
Troy Perry: And they said yeah, and so immediately we held a demonstration and at that demonstration we ended up three days.
Troy Perry: First day, people would come and stand and stare at us.
Troy Perry: I mean Brad there wasn't nobody applauding, Nobody was saying a word, it was just dead silence.
Troy Perry: The next day, we all at once started our you know shouts.
Troy Perry: If you're proud and you're gay, you know, say it.
Troy Perry: You know what I mean.
Troy Perry: If you're proud and you're gay, say it you know, and people would say right back to us, you know.
Troy Perry: Then the third day they started dropping bags of water out of the top of the building trying to wet us, and we never wore wet, but other business people wore it.
Troy Perry: Oh my God.
Troy Perry: But who went running the building became our allies very quickly After it happened.
Troy Perry: But we didn't go away.
Troy Perry: We waited for the next event After that.
Troy Perry: Now we're going to wait for the state theme ship company give them an opportunity to talk back to them up there.
Troy Perry: And so after that we were back again making sure that we said if they come for us or we need to go to them, we will go to them.
Troy Perry: We're not going to wait for them to come.
Troy Perry: This morning and I said today, this demonstration that we're having is one of the state, the California State Building, and we're going to ask that the California State move the law that's on the books that make us criminals, and we wanted the anti-ecidemy laws off the book.
Troy Perry: I told our church group you're not going to get hurt, just come and march with me.
Troy Perry: Well, my God, we had a crowd of about 250 people who showed up and they marched with me from all over the street where the first Catholic church is at to the states pardon me to the California State Building.
Troy Perry: And we got up and there are movies of that demonstration where I'm talking and we were determined we were going to.
Troy Perry: Well, everybody went back and tell them.
Troy Perry: Guess what?
Troy Perry: We didn't get hurt.
Troy Perry: Our next demonstration.
Troy Perry: I said we need another demonstration.
Troy Perry: This demonstration is against the police department.
Troy Perry: We're going to march on the Hollywood police department.
Troy Perry: You know what?
Troy Perry: A thousand people showed up at Hollywood High School.
Troy Perry: And, my lord, here we are there and the police.
Troy Perry: All at once his police motorcyclist rode his motorcycle up on the the the pardon me high school on and he said who's in charge here?
Troy Perry: And I said to him you know who's in charge here.
Troy Perry: What do you want?
Troy Perry: And he said there's a bunch of Marines around on the Boulevard just waiting for this group.
Troy Perry: I said oh groovy, we've got men who are into Marines, so they're going to love it.
Troy Perry: I just, I used my voice, I just would not let them use that with me.
Troy Perry: And well, and of course, by the time we marched and we got around there, there were no more Marines on Hollywood Boulevard.
Troy Perry: They were gone.
Troy Perry: Well, you scared them away, that's it.
Troy Perry: I told the crowd that if there's a thousand, I mean there's a bunch of Marines around there waiting.
Troy Perry: Don't worry, they'll leave the minute they see us.
Troy Perry: This is too big for a crowd.
Troy Perry: They're not going to be in a fistfight with us.
Brad Shreve: Well, I would think, when the word got out that a thousand Marines were waiting for you, your crowd would have doubled, and that right, you got it.
Troy Perry: You got it.
Troy Perry: It was going to double everything.
Troy Perry: And you know what?
Troy Perry: The police were scared of us.
Troy Perry: And, my God, I told everybody before we get there I don't want to hear any sound, no sound except the bottom of our shoes on the ground as we march in front of the police station, because we had already found out they had guns on top of the police station.
Troy Perry: I mean, you know, I couldn't believe it.
Troy Perry: And we got around there, sure enough, standing with their rifles up on top of the police station, and we held our demonstration.
Troy Perry: And when we got through, I marched them back up to where we had started the demonstration and told everybody thank you.
Troy Perry: And the next thing we held was Christopher Street West.
Brad Shreve: What is something everyone can do right now to make a difference?
Troy Perry: What everybody can do right now and make a difference in is join an organization that fights with hope for your freedom If that's what they want.
Brad Shreve: they got to get their boots on the ground.
Troy Perry: It's really the truth, brad.
Troy Perry: If I'm 83, I have mobility problems, I'm not well, I know that probably my life isn't long, and yet I tell young people all the time it's not about me, it's about all of you.
Troy Perry: What are you going to do next?
Troy Perry: Not Troy Perry, I've done my part.
Troy Perry: When I meet God, I hope I hear God say well done, my good and faithful servant.
Brad Shreve: And that I'm welcome.
Brad Shreve: There's a line in oh God which is one of my favorite movies because Burns played my concept of God and I'm paraphrasing here.
Brad Shreve: But John Denver said something like if you got, why do we have all the trouble in the world?
Brad Shreve: Why don't you do something about it?
Brad Shreve: And God said I did do something about it.
Brad Shreve: I gave you each other.
Brad Shreve: Why aren't you doing something about?
Troy Perry: it.
Troy Perry: Yeah, and it's really the truth.
Troy Perry: We can never not forget that.
Troy Perry: That's the thing.
Troy Perry: But when you join something, also don't let people get away with things Just think because I've joined, whatever it is, that's going to make a difference.
Troy Perry: No, you got to.
Troy Perry: If you hear somebody say something that is saying something and your, your group, is not there, you need to learn, if they've said it to a group, how to answer back.
Troy Perry: No, that's not true.
Brad Shreve: Thank you so much for being my guest.
Brad Shreve: It's an honor to see you again Again.
Brad Shreve: I appreciate everything you've done over the years.
Brad Shreve: You've really made a difference and not enough people know how much work you've done.
Troy Perry: Well, I so much appreciate the work you do.
Troy Perry: Because of your work and this podcast, it will help others to see.
Troy Perry: I hope that we can all make this together.
Brad Shreve: I hope so too.
Troy Perry: Thank you, Brad.