The Radio Series
Three, Hour-long audio documentaries for public radio
“Every lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender person hears the deafening whisper of a society that says, ‘You are not welcome here.’”
- Stephen GrantLesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have more public visibility than at any other time in American history. Despite shifting perceptions and attitudes about homosexuality, LGBT people are still an invisible minority. Homophobia and antigay prejudice can hide behind the veils of progress. Being open and "out” in America is still dangerous and deadly.
Antigay hate violence cannot occur without the passivity, silence, and permission of a society. This three-hour radio series explores some of the underlying forces that drive antigay violence.
Society spends a lot of time putting sexuality under the microscope. For years, gays, lesbians, and transgender people were, and are, “problems to be solved;” a minority to be silenced, kept hidden, or extinguished. What if the tables were turned? What if we examine heterosexuality and the gender roles society assigns to men and women? What will we find? What is heterosexism, and how does it lead to antigay hate and violence?
Part II | The Bible and the Bully
Middle-school kids are much too young to be filing law suits. But in 2011, six teenagers sued the Anoka-Hennepin school district 11, in Minnesota. These kids had one thing in common and a singular complaint: they were victims of religion-fueled antigay bullying and harassment.
Ten years after Matthew Shepard’s murder, the playwrights of The Laramie Project decided to return to the small university town in Wyoming. They wanted to see how Laramie had changed in the wake of the nation’s most-publicized antigay murder. Their intention was to write a short epilogue to tack onto the end of the original play. After they arrived, they soon realized that they needed to write an entirely new play.