Fighting for Freedom of Identity before Stonewall - Garrett Glaser
They Called Him “Fairyboy.” He Refused to Disappear. Gay Journalist Garrett Glaser on choosing freedom over fear.
Here’s a question for LGBTQ+ people who don’t remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. How would you live the final few hours of your life counting down to a deadline that would trigger an ideological holy war with terrorist attacks and nuclear bombs? If you’re still in the closet, would you come out for the fresh air of freedom or would you remain enslaved to your hidden secret?
Millions of people around the world held their breath Tuesday, April 7 after the petulant President of the United States “reveled in threats to commit war crimes” - bombing Iran back to the Stone Age. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” unhinged Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
On Easter weekend, Christian National savior Donald Trump wrote online that “all Hell will reign down” on Iran unless the new leaders open up the Strait of Hormuz, adding “Glory be to GOD!” He followed up with an emphatic: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.”
Mocking God or God’s messenger is blasphemy in Islam. In 2015, 12 people were murdered and 11 injured in an attack on Charlie Hebdo, a Paris weekly that published cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
Two hours before Iran’s existential deadline, the former Reality TV star announced a two-week extension for diplomacy as if real war on TV is a video game. More deeply at play: no matter what the cost, Trump doesn’t want to be a “loser” in the eyes of his cruel dead father.
“Loser. That’s a word that Donald Trump fears being called more than any other,” famed CBS News journalist Dan Rather suggested in 2017. “An isolated president in an isolated administration looking at public losses and dropping popularity will react in ways no one can predict.”
Millions exhaled, grateful for temporarily relief from the legacy of Trump’s unscrupulous upbringing. But for thousands of LGBTQ+ people among those millions, the retreat was not a reprieve from constant societal and religious oppression. They still fight a secret war within over choosing freedom or the “safety” of the closet.
Gay journalist Garrett Glaser’s childhood was different. He was a 12-year old in eighth grade when his first intense boy-crush called him “fairboy” on the school bus.
“What’s weird is that, despite my crush on Jon, I felt no emotional pain or humiliation when he called me ‘fairboy.’ I realized he was reacting the way any adolescent boy would if he felt his masculinity had been questioned,” Garrett writes in his memoir FAIRYBOY: Growing Up Gay and Out in Pre-Stonewall New York and Beyond. “In any case, it was rare that Jon took part in the jock rituals on the bus, and I certainly didn’t take his remark personally. With hindsight, I realize that I almost felt a strange satisfaction in being called ‘fairboy.’ Despite the slur, my beloved had acknowledged me; he had seen me for what I secretly – but not ashamedly - was.”
Two years later, in 1967, Garrett came out to his mother. “You are going to a psychiatrist right now, young man! We are going to nip this in the bud,” his mother said.
Garrett’s memoir details his curious relationship with his parents and stepmother and how he maneuvered in the counterculture world of the late 1960s/1970s.
Garrett Glaser, TV reporter 1986 (Photo via Facebook)
He then began a long career in journalism. After his family’s acceptance, Garrett developed a healthy self-confidence - unlike the amoral, empty vessel who became the most powerful person in the world.
Angelinos came to know Garrett as the cute TV reporter at KNBC4 who might be gay. At the time, local mainstream journalism largely devalued minority and gay and lesbian journalists as being inherently biased in a world where supposed “objectivity” was the standard.
Coverage of the 1992 LA Riots, for instance, was assigned by white news producers who’d never been to South Central. Black reporters who wanted to cover the growing tension around the “Rodney King trial” were denied until all hell broke loose. Black reporters were called in from their beats in the suburbs, to which they’d retuafter the riots were quelled.
White helicopter team Bob Tur and Marika Gerrard later exposed the shocking newsroom attitude.
“When I told my contacts at the KCOP assignment desk that we were getting ready to take off to cover the impending violence, they told me, ‘Don’t bother going until 10 o’clock and tell the city that everything is calm.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had a two-way radio in my hand, and I threw it across the floor. They were so out of touch with the community. And that really underscores one of the contributing factors to the LA riots: political correctness blinded a lot of people. It’s almost like a malignancy that white people suffer from. So, I was told not to fly, but I ignored it, and we took off and flew the helicopter to South Central,” Tur told Huffington Post for the 20th anniversary in 2012.
Their live coverage of white truck driver Reginald Denny being beaten wound up saving Denny’s life and countless others warned to stay away from 83rd Street and Normandie. The coverage also showed the LAPD was nowhere in sight, which led to millions lost in looting.
Tur, father of MS NOW anchor Katy Tur, transitioned into a woman in 2013 and joined Inside Edition as a helicopter reporter.
Though Garrett was out to friends and colleagues, he was not out to the general public. That changed with a Sept. 3, 1994 LA Times story: “Out of the TV Newsroom Closet : KNBC’s Garrett Glaser Breaks Ground as an Openly Gay On-Air Reporter.”
“The most prominent fixture in Garrett Glaser’s cubicle at KNBC-TV Channel 4 in Burbank is a 3-by-4-foot ACT UP poster proclaiming, ‘Hollywood, Quit Censoring Our Queer Lives!’ Beneath are photos of him with celebrities he has interviewed, intermingled with photos of him with various (non-celebrity) boyfriends,” Joseph Hanania reported.
“Glaser, 41, Channel 4’s media/ entertainment reporter,” Hanania continued, “sits on the board of directors of the National Lesbian/Gay Journalists Assn. and, in his free time, hosts gay-themed shows for KCET-TV Channel 28, including its recent commemoration of the gay liberation movement’s birth with the Stonewall riots 25 years ago….Glaser’s openness about his orientation and his willingness to fight for gay causes set him apart among on-air personnel.”
One “gay cause” was AIDS. Garrett came out on-air Dec. 5, 1994 during a live report about the death of Elizabeth Glaser, who founded the Pediatric AIDS Foundation and made history speaking at the 1992 Democratic National Convention about being infected with HIV through a blood transfusion and unknowingly passing it to her daughter Ariel and son Jake.
“As a gay man who’s lost more than a few friends to the virus, I am grateful to Ms. Glaser for helping to heighten awareness of AIDS outside the gay and lesbian community,” Glaser told his television audience. Afterwards, he told the LA Times that he hoped that “other gay and lesbian reporters in this market will see you can be out and still keep your job and do good stories.”
“I don’t care if a reporter is covering city politics or sports. He’s a role model. And it’s important that the 10-year-old watching at home knows that some of the reporters he sees are gay. He needs to see the reporter doing his job well, and to know that the stereotype for gays and lesbians is most often false,” Glaser told Hanania in 1994. “Gays are still an invisible minority. The sooner we stand up and are counted, the faster the fight will go in our favor.”
Authentic visibility. “I remember, even in high school, saying that I would not go into the closet. I saw the toll that took on people, the self-torture, the frequent resort to alcohol and drug abuse,” Garrett said in 1994. “I saw gay people get married and have kids because they thought they had to. I saw others who didn’t live up to their potential because they thought they didn’t deserve it. I wanted no part of that; I wanted to be proud of myself.”
Thirty-two years later, Trump pledged to end the Culture Wars, which includes the Project 2025 mandate to erase any policy, rule or law impacting LGBTQ+ people. And despite the popularity of “Heated Rivalry,” public opinion of LGBTQ+ people is declining. And recently, the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to overturn laws protecting minors from so-called “conversion therapy.”
“This ruling is a profound failure of both logic and moral responsibility that confuses ‘free speech’ with ‘false speech,’” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen.
Garrett, now retired, agrees. “It turns out in study after study that many of these [so-called “counselors”] are quacks retained by fringe religious groups for the purpose of teaching young children to hate themselves. It’s emotional child abuse, plain and simple. Who says so? Our nation’s leading medical organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association,” he told me after the ruling.
“I view my success as an example of the power of having loving parents and a supportive home life in childhood. Simply put, in my case, love and acceptance worked. It helped me to accept and love myself early on. Any parent who loves their child should stay away from the dangerous charlatans who want to de-stabilize their kids and fill their heads with lies that the experts will tell you are dangerous and without any scientific basis.”
If grownup straight kids like Trump and his religious zealots decide to commit genocide against “a whole civilization,” fairyboy Garrett Glaser can spend his final hours before the bombs drop embracing an open, principled and fulfilled life with the man he’s cherished for 25 years.
Please watch my interview with Garrett about his book, his life and the world as he sees it now: