WEBVTT 00:00:00.239 --> 00:00:09.439 A month ago, we lost Dolly Parton, a treasured global icon who held an especially tender place in the hearts of the LGBTQ community. 00:00:10.400 --> 00:00:19.039 Today is September 25th, and I could think of no better way to honor her than to make this from now on nine to five day. 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:25.120 So we're celebrating Dolly with this special bonus episode of The Secret Is Out. 00:00:25.519 --> 00:00:32.000 Her music, her wit, her contradictions, and the enormous heart beneath all that rhinestone. 00:00:32.399 --> 00:01:00.240 I hope you enjoyed the heard Dolly Parton before I knew who Dolly Parton was. 00:01:00.479 --> 00:01:05.760 When I was little, we'd listened to country music in the car on the way to kindergarten. 00:01:06.079 --> 00:01:10.560 Whenever Here You Come Again came on, I wanted to hear it again. 00:01:10.799 --> 00:01:12.799 I wanted the volume turned up. 00:01:12.959 --> 00:01:16.560 I didn't know her name, I just knew I liked that voice. 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:22.719 Then when I was eight, 9 to 5 came out, and this time I knew exactly who she was. 00:01:22.959 --> 00:01:25.120 I memorized the opening verse. 00:01:25.359 --> 00:01:29.040 Then I stood in front of the mirror and lip-synced it like I was Dolly. 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:33.280 I was eight, so workplace inequality wasn't a major concern of mine. 00:01:33.439 --> 00:01:35.519 I just thought it was a great song. 00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:42.799 And yes, the eight-year-old boy performing Dolly Parton songs Into a Mirror probably should have told me something. 00:01:43.359 --> 00:01:46.400 She was there before I knew I was gay. 00:01:46.640 --> 00:01:55.840 Before I knew there was anything about me I might someday feel required to hide, which is probably why her death hurt me more than I expected. 00:01:56.079 --> 00:02:02.799 Somewhere between that little boy in the car and the man I am now, Dolly became something besides a singer. 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:07.519 There was something safe about her, something almost maternal. 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:09.360 She felt like a mom. 00:02:10.400 --> 00:02:14.240 My own mother and I have been estranged for a while. 00:02:14.639 --> 00:02:18.319 I love her and I'm not interested in making her a villain. 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:20.240 She's deeply Christian. 00:02:20.479 --> 00:02:26.719 She comes from a rural conservative world where faith shapes how you understand nearly everything. 00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:29.360 Dolly came from that world too. 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:32.400 She grew up poor in rural Tennessee. 00:02:32.719 --> 00:02:34.400 Church was part of her life. 00:02:34.639 --> 00:02:35.919 God was part of her life. 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:41.360 But when it came to people like me, Dolly seemed to arrive at a very different place. 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:47.120 In 1984, during the AIDS crisis, Andy Warhol asked her about her gay following. 00:02:47.360 --> 00:02:52.960 Dolly talked about her gay friends and said very simply, to me, people are people. 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:58.800 No sermon, no carefully worded qualification, just people are people. 00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:02.879 She carried that ease into one of my favorite Dolly stories. 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:09.280 She once entered a Dolly Parton look-alike contest at a gay bar surrounded by drag queens and lost. 00:03:09.759 --> 00:03:10.879 Not nearly either. 00:03:11.120 --> 00:03:13.919 Dolly said she got the least applause. 00:03:14.719 --> 00:03:18.479 She exaggerated the hair, the eyes, the beauty mark, all of it. 00:03:18.639 --> 00:03:20.400 And nobody recognized her. 00:03:20.639 --> 00:03:26.560 Apparently, the room thought she was some short gay man who wasn't especially good at being Dolly Parton. 00:03:27.199 --> 00:03:32.960 Somewhere, a drag queen got to spend the rest of her life knowing she did Dolly better than Dolly. 00:03:33.439 --> 00:03:37.039 But I think those performers understood her. 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:41.280 Dolly knew that appearance could be an act of imagination. 00:03:41.520 --> 00:03:45.120 People had told her the woman who inspired her look was trashy. 00:03:45.680 --> 00:03:48.719 Little Dolly thought she was beautiful. 00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:56.080 So when she got to decide what Dolly Parton would look like, she chose the hair, the heels, the rhinestones. 00:03:56.319 --> 00:03:59.360 Then she added a few more rhinestones. 00:03:59.599 --> 00:04:02.960 And gay people know the other message pretty well. 00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:04.400 Don't act like that. 00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:05.599 Don't wear that. 00:04:05.759 --> 00:04:07.360 Could you tone it down? 00:04:07.759 --> 00:04:09.840 Dolly did not tone it down. 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:15.919 In 2005, she wrote Traveling Through for Trans America, a film about a transgender woman. 00:04:16.079 --> 00:04:19.439 The song was nominated for an Academy Award. 00:04:19.759 --> 00:04:27.759 When Larry King later asked her about gay and transgender people, she talked about everyone being God's children and having the right to be who they are. 00:04:28.319 --> 00:04:34.560 Dolly never behaved as though she had to choose between her faith and loving LGBTQ people. 00:04:35.199 --> 00:04:36.079 She prayed. 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:37.600 She sang gospel music. 00:04:37.759 --> 00:04:40.160 She believed her gift came from God. 00:04:40.319 --> 00:04:44.720 She simply didn't seem to believe God needed her to reject anybody. 00:04:45.040 --> 00:04:48.879 For those of us raised around Christianity, that can be enormous. 00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:54.000 We know the sentence, I love you, but there's always a but. 00:04:54.480 --> 00:04:57.040 Dolly seemed to have very little use for it. 00:04:57.199 --> 00:05:00.079 She even put that welcome into a song. 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:03.199 Family was released in 1991. 00:05:03.519 --> 00:05:06.480 And it isn't about relatives behaving beautifully. 00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:12.079 It is about the people you inherit with all their differences, trouble, tenderness, and history. 00:05:12.399 --> 00:05:17.120 Dolly explicitly included gay family members among the people who still belonged. 00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:35.360 Because when you come out to the people closest to you, the question underneath all the other questions is painfully simple. 00:05:35.839 --> 00:05:39.519 When you know the truth about me, will I still belong here? 00:05:40.480 --> 00:05:42.720 Dolly's answer was yes. 00:05:44.079 --> 00:05:48.399 My mom and I were already estranged when Troy and I got married. 00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:55.439 Afterward, I reached out and told her, and her response was, Well, I'll pray for him too. 00:05:56.720 --> 00:05:57.920 That hurt. 00:05:58.319 --> 00:06:03.920 And I understand that her faith is real, and I understand the world she comes from. 00:06:04.399 --> 00:06:11.040 I wasn't asking permission, and I wasn't asking for her to rebuild her beliefs in one conversation. 00:06:11.279 --> 00:06:19.680 I just wanted my mom to hear that her son had gotten married and say, I'm happy for you, or simply I love you. 00:06:20.959 --> 00:06:24.319 Maybe that's why Dolly reached me in such a personal place. 00:06:25.519 --> 00:06:30.720 She spoke with the accent of the world that had wounded me, but without the wound attached. 00:06:30.959 --> 00:06:36.079 You could show up as yourself, and she wasn't gonna ask you to explain yourself first. 00:06:37.199 --> 00:06:41.279 I've learned that permission and acceptance are different things. 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:47.199 I don't need permission to be gay, to love Troy, or to call our life a marriage. 00:06:47.439 --> 00:06:49.199 That part is settled. 00:06:49.839 --> 00:06:51.360 Acceptance is quieter. 00:06:51.519 --> 00:06:53.920 It says, I know who you are. 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:55.199 We're good. 00:06:56.800 --> 00:07:01.040 That's what I heard in Dolly's voice, even though she never knew me. 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:06.480 When she died, people tried to describe what had gone out of the world. 00:07:07.519 --> 00:07:12.879 Casey Musgraves wrote, The world feels a lot less sparkly all of a sudden. 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:16.560 And she said she was glad Dolly was with Carl again. 00:07:17.199 --> 00:07:25.279 Sally Field, who worked with her in Steel Magnolias, called her genuine, humble, supportive, and blisteringly funny. 00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:34.000 Reba McIntyre sang Appalachian memories for her at the Emerys, then said through tears, I love you, Dolly, so much. 00:07:35.040 --> 00:07:40.560 Dolly's family wrote that her warmth and kindness made people feel like family. 00:07:41.439 --> 00:07:42.720 That was it. 00:07:43.519 --> 00:07:45.120 That was the thing. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:48.560 She made people feel like family. 00:07:49.839 --> 00:07:55.120 Miley Cyrus, Dolly's goddaughter, wrote something that felt especially true. 00:07:55.519 --> 00:08:02.319 She said Dolly would want her to feel the lost, write a song about it, and then keep going. 00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:07.120 One of their last conversations had been about music and metamorphosis. 00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:08.639 Of course it had. 00:08:09.199 --> 00:08:16.560 A butterfly doesn't deny what it used to be, it carries that history into whatever comes next. 00:08:18.399 --> 00:08:22.160 I don't know what happens between my mother and me from here. 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:29.279 I still hope something changes, but I can't wait for somebody else to tell me my life is acceptable before I live it. 00:08:30.079 --> 00:08:39.360 Dolly never knew there was a gay man in Atlanta listening to her talk about God and family and thinking, I wish more Christians could sound like her. 00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:47.919 She never knew that the little boy singing into the mirror would grow up, finally tell the truth about himself, and marry a man he loved. 00:08:48.799 --> 00:08:53.360 And maybe that's why Dolly's hope never felt flimsy to me. 00:08:53.600 --> 00:08:57.919 She knew poverty, she knew ridicule, she knew grief. 00:08:58.639 --> 00:09:02.480 Her hope did not depend on pretending those things were painless. 00:09:02.639 --> 00:09:06.879 It came from believing that pain was not the only thing waiting for us. 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:16.080 But somehow, across all those years, she made this boy and a lot of boys and a lot of girls feel safe. 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:20.559 And she made a lot of us feel loved. 00:09:21.279 --> 00:09:40.720 So thank you, Dolly, for the music, for the laughter, for losing your own look-alike contest to a room full of drag queens, and for reminding those of us who were told to become somebody else that we were already somebody worth loving. 00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:47.440 The world may feel less sparkly without her, but she left us the rhinestones. 00:09:49.120 --> 00:09:50.799 I'm Stan Statigan. 00:09:57.840 --> 00:10:02.559 Ideally, I wanted to play a song here that was one of my favorite dollars.