This week I talked to Emmy-winning filmmaker & fierce LGBTQ ally Joe Gantz about his new book “A Secret I Can’t Tell” available on Carpenter Hill Publishing. Originally published in 1983 the nonfiction book records American gay & lesbian headed household family life during the heyday of the homophobic Moral Majority. In republishing the book Gantz revisits the families 40 years later with new interviews & a new foreword by Scott Gatz founder & CEO of Q.Digital providing an unparalleled look at how far we’ve come & underscores how easily we could return to a dark past. In 1977 Florida a county ordinance was passed which banned discrimination in housing, employment & public accommodation based on sexual orientation. After Anita Bryant’s successful campaign which demonized gays & lesbians the law was overturned & it launched a wave of repeals of civil rights for gays & lesbians across the country. Though in 2020 the United States Supreme Court finally ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ employees from discrimination based on sex, our LGBTQ community is still dealing with over 300 discriminatory bills this year alone including Florida’s recent “Don’t Say Gay/Trans” law that has made 2022 the worst year ever for legislative attacks on LGBTQ people. The updated book also revisits some of the children who are now adults in their 50s with children of their own as well as addressing the closet both the parents & their kids had to endured & how this has affected their lives. I talked to Joe about his inspiration for republishing “A Secret I Can’t Tell” and his spin on our LGBTQ issues.
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