"No Way, They Were Gay?" (with Lee Wind)

We are constantly learning new things about our history—from new perspectives on opposing sides, to entire histories that have been excluded from our textbooks and archives.
Our guest today is the incredibly insightful historical mastermind and author Lee Wind. We discuss his personal discovery of Abraham Lincoln's real love, Joshua Speed, and how this discovery launched him into a world of queer erasure of prominent figures around the world. Join us to discuss queer history, the necessity of education, the power of language, and what it's like to have a book banned in several states.

Thanks to our Amazing Guest: Lee Wind
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Read "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill"
Listen to "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill: The Podcast"
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(This episode was recorded in September 2023)

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Transcript

0:31

Hello. Welcome. Sorry for the wait. Thank you for your patience. I was practicing. Chill. We love it. We love it. Glasses. I love your background. You're doing it. Thank you. It is my actual bookcase. Yeah. So I took. Over the dining room. You can sort of just walk through it right now and start walking back. my God. No. No way! What the heck, it’s real?? That AI is getting really good these days. I have a standing desk, and I've never used it since I've got it. So you haven't used it? Maybe I stood once on it, and I'm using. It right now. I mean, I'm sitting, but everything. It’s so good for you. Some people's bodies maybe are good sitting, but mine was like. I felt like my grandfather after, like, 4 hours of sitting. So I stand almost all day. I definitely feel like just when I'm talking, I like to pace or at least stand and stuff and shift. So yeah, standing desk for being on the phone all day. It's nice. Podcast will be nice for a standing desk, maybe. I would say. Yeah. I got tired of standing very quickly, so it's a good reminder to step away and like, you know, like every hour, you know, they say like, take 10 minutes or whatever. So I don't know if that's how it's supposed to work. Sierra, I don't see you. Am I supposed to see you? No. No, not like. Not dressed or anything. I don't always. So sorry, guys. So Grampa is getting a spinning arrow when he's trying to click on the link. NAIRU. Is that the I keep hitting “refresh inbox”. And it keeps going around, but I don't think I need to get a hold of Comcast. Take them forever now. They came up. Okay, good. We'll see you in a sec. Yeah. Thank you. We've only been doing this show for a years and years and years, Lee. And uh, getting Grandpa online never goes away, so. It's 85 episodes. I was impressed. Yeah. Yeah, It's one for each year he's been alive so far, so. I don't even know he. Yeah. 85. That's really good. Yeah. That's so. Ah, your request can. Yes. Can you. Can you pronounce your name? Phines. P-H-I-N-E-S? Yes. How does it pronounced? Fine-ness. Say again? Phines, Phines. It sounds like, if you pronounce it— good looking, basically. Like Phines. Fine-Ass, like Phines. Phines, right. So, like the finest. Yes. Without the. T at the. End of it. Yeah. Lee Wind. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not wind. And I mean honestly, I could I can easily— that can easily happen Absolutely. I just like I want to respect people. I want to get your name right. I appreciate it. Appreciate you asking and not just guessing like a lot of our… guests do. Almost every guest ever. Yeah, yeah, I've got a really good at explaining. Phineas Gage. Phineas gave his life. And Grandpa, I agree with you. There you go. Yeah. I've been having problems with my computer. I don't know what's going on. That's right. Yeah. Tech moves very, very slow and, you know, just all kinds of issues. And also they. I had a problem with somebody in another country getting a hold of my Netflix, and it changed the language in it. So I have to get a hold of company. I'm sorry. Good evening. Everybody. Grandpa, Lee. Lee, Grandpa. Hi, Lee. How you doing? Hi, what? What are people that are not related to you by blood supposed to call you? That are not related? Bart's fine, Barty, I've been called different things. Farton Brank, Barton Frank, whatever. Whatever you like to call. Me, I'll go with Bart. How's that? That's fine. When I call you. When I call you Grandpa. Is that okay? That's fine. Everybody calls him Grandpa on the show by default, it’s pretty crazy. You call me? Yeah, well, I mean, you all are like family, right? Like you've been doing, I think five times. You're all in. But. But I'm going to be more respectful. I'm going to go with Barton. Because my own grandfather, my mom and dad would be pissed off probably. I get kind of offended when someone calls my family member. They're like, if someone was like my mom or like, they call my mom, like, it's not your mom. It's my mom. You can't call her that You are territorial. And that's totally cool. Yeah. Well, I— soft entry. Hi. I'm Lee. I’m an author. I'm gay. And when I was growing up, I didn't know anybody else was gay in the whole world. I thought I was the only guy that, like, like other guys, which was really hard. And I felt very alone. And I kind of my parents were immigrants, so I kind of did what they wanted and what society expected. And I dated girls. And the whole time I dated girls in high school and grad school in college and in grad school, I just kept thinking, God, this is not feeling what I'm supposed to be feeling. But I kind of acted it. And then I finally got honest with everybody else and myself in my twenties and came out at 25. So a lot of what I do now is trying to write the books that would have sort of changed my life back when I was 11, back when I was 13. Back then, I was 15 back when I was that scared gay kid and kind of wanting to empower me. But I don't have a time machine, so I'm paying it forward and I have these books. And actually it all started because I went to a talk that this guy gave, and once I'd been out for like ten years at that point and he was talking about the letters that Abraham Lincoln wrote, Joshua Fry Speed that convinced him that Abraham was in love with this other guy. And I was sitting there and I was thinking, How is that possible? I mean, like, I have a pretty good education in the public schools outside Philadelphia. And I went to an Ivy League college. I have a master's degree in education from Harvard. I've never heard of any of this, but I just could and I just was like Abraham Lincoln, really like the guy on the $5 bill, on Mount Rushmore, on the penny. How how in the world could he have been in love with another guy? But I couldn't get out of my mind like the possibility. So I went to the library and I got out a book of letters. I got a book that had the letters as an appendix in it. And when I was in school, history was taught like medicine. It was like names and dates to memorize. It was super boring. And I never was much of a history person because I just thought that was dull. So I got this book and I'm like, you know, kind of like half heartedly paging through it. And I land on this one letter from 1840s. Abraham Lincoln is writing Joshua by Speed, and he says, Are you, are you now in feeling as well as judgment Sorry you've now then he starts out by saying that Joshua had married this woman named Fanny and it's now eight months later. And Abraham says, Are you now in feeling as well as judgment? Glad that you're married as you are. And I got goosebumps because that's exactly how I felt all that time I was dating girls. I judged it, but I didn't feel it, and I kept hoping the feeling would come. And I kept trying to convince myself that the feeling would come. And in that moment there was this reflection of me in the past. And I know I'm not like, great, like Abraham Lincoln or anything, but the idea that there was somebody in the past that maybe was a guy that loved another guy just completely was empowering and inspiring. And I really dug in and I started to do a lot of research, and I became really convinced that when you look at the letters and you look at the evidence, there is quite a lot of evidence that Abraham was indeed in love with this other man. I think that we go all CSI history when we talk about queer people in history. We're like, well, can you prove that this person had intimate time with that person? And I actually think that's a weird question. We're really obsessed with sex in our culture. And I think a much more interesting question is did these people love each other? And I became convinced. And so I thought, well, that would be a cool novel. So I actually wrote a novel called Queer as a $5 Bill because Lincoln's on the five. And Bart, I don't know if you remember this, but when I was growing up outside Philadelphia in the seventies, there was this expression that when something was really, really weird, it was queer as a $3 bill. Did you ever hear that? Maybe I don't recall. But so the idea was that America never made $3 bills, right? So it was this sort of old timey expression like, that was that's queer as a $3 bill. So the name of the book is Queer as a $5 bill, because I think it's on the five. And it's basically a story about a teen that is closeted, sort of inadvertently dating a girl who's his best friend, and he discovers the same letter about Lincoln I had I did has the same sort of goosebump moment, and he decides he's going to out Abraham Lincoln to change the world. Because if he can convince people that Abraham Lincoln was a guy that loved other another guy, maybe he can change how everyone feels about gay people. And it just blows up in a huge media firestorm, a conservative backlash, which I actually think would happen if that actually happened today. And so I ended up crowdfunding the novel. I couldn't get a publisher to to to take it on. But I teamed up with a nonprofit, and the idea behind the crowdfunding was to help me donate copies to queer teens. So we ended up donating 910 copies through a nonprofit called Brave Trails. And and the book was published in 2018 and won a bunch of awards. And that was really cool. And then when I was writing the novel, there was so much evidence about Abraham Lincoln, and I just kept thinking, maybe there's another book, like, maybe there's not, because I wanted to write like a ten page novel. I didn't want to write like a stuffy history book. So that, well, maybe there's a non stuffy history book, but I didn't want to do it just about Abraham and Joshua. So that's where the idea of “No Way They Were Gay” came about, because history was really taught like there's this false facade, right? Like, it's really it’s taught as— It's the stories of rich, white, straight men from Europe that are able bodied and wealthy. And kind of the the pushback against the stories of anybody else in history continues even today. I mean, you see what's happening in Florida where they're arguing that, you know, they should teach that slavery was actually beneficial for enslaved people, which is horrifying. So the idea that history is this construction of people in power and it's these carefully scripted stories to reinforce the power structures that exist is really liberating for everybody, because as soon as you get one crack in that false facade of history, you kind of realize that history is being presented to you in a way that isn't honest. And then it opens it up, not just the stories of queer people, the stories of men who love men and women, who loved women and people who love without regard to gender and the people that outside gender, the gender binary, but also the stories of black people and indigenous people and women and and other people of color and disabled people and everybody else that actually had very important parts of history that weren't necessarily the victors and didn't actually get to tell their stories, have really important stories as part of history, too. And so I think that that's a really exciting thing to recognize. So that's what No Way They Were Gay is about. That's the book that has like 12 chapters. It has Gandhi on the cover because that was one of my big surprises. It has Lincoln, it has Eleanor Roosevelt, it has We’wha,

who was a member of the A: 12:56

Shiwi Tribe Nation that we call Zuni in an English and and sort of 12 up chapters like William Shakespeare wrote 126 love sonnets to another guy. I didn't study that in school. I certainly had to suffer through“Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet” and all the all the regular ones. And then it turns out like there's been all these tricks that historians have played over the years. Like, in fact, Shakespeare sonnets are a great example that for 150 years, the version that the world knew was this sort of a manipulated version that made it look like all 150 sonnets, 50 plus sonnets were written to a woman. So they just changed the gender and they just changed, you know, lord to mistress, and they just kept manipulating it. And so think about it for over 150 years, everybody's impression of Shakespeare's sonnets was completely wrong. So it's it's exciting to kind of like go back to the primary sources. And that's my big thing is that I'm trying to hold a container whereby we could hear all these voices from the past because it's really exciting to hear them speak. And for so many years they're not being allowed to speak or when they have been when their words have been shared, they've been altered. And so it just kind of became this compilation of all these all these amazing surprises from history. And I just kept saying during the research, no, wait, they were gay. And then ultimately it was like, hey, you know, that would probably be a good title. So that's where the title of. Yeah. Wow. So cool. Yeah. You know what? You're as cool as Abraham Lincoln. All right. Thank you. On the very beginning, you're like, I don't know, I that I was like, I don't know. You're really? Because you know what? I guess I'm really excited about it really got me jazzed about it Is like just thinking about the perspective of which we get to really like, learn about history and school and stuff like that. And it's usually is from like the straight white man's point of view. And that's what we've been able to see everything. That's how we're reading Shakespeare. So I'm taking in history and taking in science and it's so full of it. You're putting the magnifying glass on the whole other history of people out here that have have their, you know, that are also living. They have a history of gay and queer history and black and white history. And actually, it's probably very just as deep as any other, you know, perspective. So I'm that really excites me that, you know, another foothold, a place open to have people, you know, speak and tell their stories. Yeah. Yeah. Really cool. Thanks. Fine. I really I was so amazed that like, those like some of the stories are so intersectional. Also, like one of my heroes that from all the research was Bayard Rustin, who was the guy that actually taught Martin Luther King Jr about nonviolent protest. And he was the guy that organized that famous 1963 march on Washington, where Dr. King gave his I Have a Dream speech. And but nobody really knows about him because he was openly gay. And so he was really sidelined in the civil rights movement. And it was only, you know, years, years later, in the 1980s when he you know, he was very openly gay at that point. And we heard all these amazing stories. And even posthumously, there was, okay, you want to hear this amazing story. So Obama, he presented an award to the the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Bayard, and he told this story in 2013. So Bayard had already passed away, but he presented it to Bayard's basically spouse, his surviving husband. And Obama told this about what happened the morning of the March on Washington. Early the morning of the day of the March on Washington. The National Mall was far from full and some of the press were beginning to wonder if the event would be a failure. But the march’s chief organizer Bayard Rustin, didn't panic. As the story goes, he looked down at a piece of paper, looked back up and reassured reporters that everything was right on schedule. The only thing those reporters didn't know was that the paper he was holding was blank. He didn't know how it was going to work out. But Bayard had an unshakable optimism, nerves of steel, and most importantly, a faith that if a cause is just and people are organized, nothing can stand in our way. So for decades, this great leader, often to Dr. King's side, was denied his rightful place in history because he was openly gay. No medal can change that. But today we honor Bayard Rustin’s memory by taking our place in his march towards true equality, no matter who we are, who we love. Isn't that amazing? It is amazing. Great. Yeah. And yeah. And then I just kept finding all these incredible things about history. So, like, I went to Penn in Philadelphia for college, and while I was there, I was so closeted, I didn't even know they had a queer center, which at the time was not called that. It was probably called the Gay and Lesbian Center. But Bayard actually came and spoke the same time that I was at Penn, and I didn't know it. And doing this book, like decades later, I got to hear what Bayard said. And it was so it was so amazing because it really related. It tells us a lot about what's going on right now. Another quote, 1986 by Rustin. The fact of the matter is there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There's another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudice, white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America legislatively, morally and psychologically such that even though some whites continue to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That's our job today. To control the extent to which people can publicly manifest anti-gay sentiment. Yeah, it was 1986, but he could have said that yesterday, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It speaks so much to what happened during the Trump administration to this sort of like, you know, the emboldening, embolden of jerks to feel like they can be openly prejudice. It's I just was so struck by that. Yeah. The day he took office I think they changed the website completely in regards to gay and trans people. Yeah, that's right. What is that ever is? It's like. You know, you got to get all that right. It's a book that was written by a cousin of mine. I have a cousin. He's not. He passed away and he was in a heterosexual marriage and he and his wife went on the Donahue Show. I don't know if you know who Donahue was. And they both announced that they were bisexual. And he wrote a book called Barry and Alice Portrait of Bisexual Marriage by Barry and Alison, the two. So just a sideline thing. when was that. I think was written? I think I read 1988. Yeah. You reading 1980. But when did he go on the Donahue Show? Like, when did he come out with his wife as by Let me. I can't hear you without the mic, Grampa. I'm sorry. It was it was written let's see. Analysis published in 1980. Say, I'm not sure it was Paul Barry, of course. But even in 1980 coming out, I'm not sure the big deal. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't very welcoming environment. In 1980 I was in high school. I remember. yeah, that's that's really cool. I mean, he was an attorney for the ACLU and so. He wasn't going to get fired. That was good. I write, hopefully that. You'll. Receive. The erasure that you're that you're that you've written about, that we're talking about is just so insane to me. Like, I mean, you always know that, you know, history is written by the you know, the men that that win. But just seeing like we're talking about like, you know, there was a they just changed a whole they just changed the whole recipient of like all of these poems from Shakespeare. And they just I mean, I remember learning like maybe in high school that Abraham Lincoln was like, severely depressed, like for most of his life and that his marriage was a wreck. And then no one ever probed further. They were just like, I don't know, being president is hard, I guess. And I'm thinking that the moment that the big sigh, like the big emotion, no break that Lincoln had, is exactly the same week that Joshua told him he was leaving, living with him and moving back to Kentucky to marry this woman, Fanny. It was the exact same week, the first. And they're just like, We don't know. We just don't know. It's a big mystery. We don't know everything. Life is hard. It's hard to be a man in America, even in the 1860s. It's just that hard. And we don't we don't know why. In 1830, Lincoln was writing a nasty like poem limerick to kind of humiliate an adversary.

Look what he wrote: 22:45

for Ruben and Charles have married two girls, but Billy has married a boy. The girls he had tried on every side, but none he could get to agree. All was in vain. He went home again. And since that he's married to Natty. He was a nickname for Nathaniel. So like, he wrote this like this poem about two guys getting married back in the 1830s. And it's just crazy. Just crazy that you can just you can just I mean, I guess when you write history books, you can just you can just pretend. And now we're in present time and not only are we pretending, are we working? Are we working our hardest to pretend that the gay people don't exist or you know that you know all this crazy demonization we're working on? I don't know. It's just so stressful. Florida stresses me out. Where else is that? Where else is hell? Florida, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi. Always a lot of. Yeah. I mean, and then there are all these online so so “No Way They Were Gay” actually got banned and a bunch of states yeah and it's on some lists online some conservative politically motivated lists. My favorite my favorite I don't like I like it, but like my in a dark way. In a dark humor kind of way. My favorite one is the it was. They said the following books are obscene.

And then in parentheses: 24:05

(probably I haven't read them.) Literally. Literally! That’s hilarious. They said looking at these words. Looking at these words would require me to learn and I don't want to do that, but I'm going to. If I had to take a hard guess, I would say this is this is the devil. Yeah. And don't worry about learning to worry about getting some type of, you know. The spirit– So embarrassing living here, bro. So you know that I also want to really talk about this because this is even what we're talking about now. Why I have always been like crazy, confused, why we care so much about sex here. Like, like it's I know we’re being really nice with the labels and going like, you know, dating men and women. But it's like, why do you care, bro? Like, if you don't want to have sex with them or I'm interested in that or whatever, it just doesn't seem like there's like, there's other things that would be, I don't know, more pressing it when I first meet someone, then their sexual orientation. Well, this is my whole. Thing with gay marriage, right? Like, if you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married. Yeah, it's pretty simple. Get straight married. Okay. It's like, how. Does my marrying my husband affect anybody else's life? And I do think that it's a good opportunity. What you're bringing up I'm trying is the idea of the word homosexual isn't particularly helpful to the queer community. it is. Because it makes I think it makes people that aren't queer hyper focus on the fact that, those people have sex in a way that makes me uncomfortable. And I mean, we can get really uncomfortable thinking about sex. I mean, like if okay, for a moment exercise, imagine your parents having sex look right. Like, nobody even wants to think about that. So, like, we would do better. I think if the focus was on love rather than on sex. And, you know, if the word wasn't homosexual, but the word was homo love-ual, heck, we were talking about homo love-ual rights. And homo love-ual history. I think we'd be having very different conversations in our society. I've never heard it framed that way. That's really. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, I do. I Yeah. No. That's because. And then bisexual too. And, and pansexual like all these words that sort of like distill someone's who they are down to, who they have sex with. It's very medical. It's like a medical term. Yeah. Like we don't, we try to veer away from those. Now, that's a really good point. So, I mean, I don't know that it's going to catch on, but I'm going to try. I'm going to keep doing what. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. I appreciate it. Yeah. I remember when I was in high school, I think it was like sophomore year, there was maybe three pages on the turkey, the Thanksgiving turkey with like Columbus and all that. And then maybe like this much trail of tears. And they were right. And I was the saw. And even then I was like, this is, you know, like, who wrote this book. Right? I mean, so much of it is about selling the fantasy, right? Selling the like that There is nobody here, you know, that you or or that the colonization symbolized. They needed us. We say. Horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Right. They gave them we gave them our religion. So all all good like, you know, these were people that were here and and are still here. And actually that was really cool to try to one of the big challenges with the book was like, how am I going to just choose 12 kind of people to go in-depth on? And actually We’wha was a member

of the A: 27:47

Shiwi tribe from the country. And it was an opportunity for me to talk about like how there are I think it was 170 plus native nations that had people living third gender or fourth gender roles. And just the idea that other organizations of people, other societies interpret gender very differently than we do. I mean, we see it as this really strict binary choice. And that's not how a lot of other cultures view gender and understand gender. So there's a really beautiful quote at the beginning of the We’wha chapter that I'm just going to read real quick from night from 2015, a Native American elder speaking at the Montana Spirit Society's annual gathering said: “The medicine wheel represents men on one side and women on the other, that there's a space in between. That is for the two spirits. We join the men and women and complete the circle that is our place in life. That is the creator's purpose for us.” And and I think that that's so important to keep in mind that it's not it's not this ancient thing. It's not, you know, it's present tense. These nations exist. These identities exist today. And we have to kind of acknowledge that. And yeah, when history books do the whole like, you know, the the the, the Thanksgiving thing, it's really problematic. And like, they just skim over it. And so, yeah, I think that there's so many moments of liberation that we can each have with our histories and kind of digging into it more. And I think that a lot of books that are about history are very prescriptive. They're kind of like, Well, this book is all you ever need, and my book is the opposite of that. It's like this book is the beginning of your journey, hopefully, or part of your journey and go and explore and find all these other stories because there's so many more stories and I want to hear them. I want to read those books too. Yeah, well, this this gets me going to the next question. I was kind of have in the background of like, would you consider your book like science fiction and any at all, like in that realm or are or is it like more just like what would or would you put your way. Of knowing they were gay? It's not. It's where they get I guess I guess, by the way, they're all that you train. queer as a popular girl. Yeah, but this one is just fiction. I mean, with a lot of fact in it. I'm sorry. Yeah. So what I did was I did this cool thing when I self-published this. I mean, I hired a team of people to do the cover and the interior design and edit it. But all the primary sources are are involved in the book, which was really fun. And then when. No, there Gay was published by Lerner, who is a company that they have a really good reputation with schools and libraries. So it became really important to me not to self-publish this book. They did the same thing. So every every page that has primary sources, it's bold. So it's really easy for a reader to understand what's the people from history talking and what's me as a sort of interpreter or translator or I'm, you know, explainer of stuff talking. That's even cooler—sorry. That's really important, right? Like, I want people to know what was the real stuff that people in history said? And then I also tried not to have it be like stuffy footnotes. So we did this one thing where I don't know if you can see it, but instead of putting out these little pop ups with arrows that explain what the text says. So I'm just trying to make it more fun. Like, why shouldn't the history be more like chocolate? Why does it have to be like medicine? Yeah. No, no, no, I don't. I don't know why I wrote this, but for some reason I was talking about, like, how you how you can talk about political structures so well and science fiction books that you can do. And then I like talk about the political temperature of things, but but it might have been made when you're daydreaming about or when a side note about Abraham Lincoln and his stories, like if that was really the truth, I guess I like that retelling. Were you talking about a story in between? Is that the Queer As A $5 Bill? Yeah. This story is what you talking. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's fiction, but it's based on the facts about Abraham Lincoln. So that's where we went. That's where we went off in the fiction prior. All but all the history that the kid finds out in the book is true. And, and there's a big section that explains it because I thought that that was the real that was the real hook of it. Because like, the subtitle is What if you know, a history, a secret from history that could change the world? Because that's really the dilemma that the main character faces. And then the other thing about creative side of the bill that's kind of cool for your listeners is that in response to No Way, no where they were getting banned, a couple of cool things happened. One, I got permission from the publisher to take the chapter with Lincoln and all the evidence of him loving another man and it's free as a download a PDF on my website. So that's pretty cool. And then the other thing is that I took the audiobook of Queer as a $5 bill since I produced it myself and I made it a So Queer is a $5 bill. The podcast is available for everybody to listen to for free forever. It's just there in every chapter of the audiobook is an episode of the podcast, and there are 33 chapters, so there's thirty-three episodes, and then there's a couple of bonus. The three bonus episodes. One is an interview with me and a famous author, Leslie Newman. She famously wrote Heather is Two Mommies, and she interviewed me about Queer As a $5 bill. The next is the Lincoln chapter, but as an audiobook, which was kind of fun, I got some. My husband's an actor, so we got some of his friends and so because I couldn't do bold right? All the primary sources are different actor voices I'm narrating it, but I also wanted listeners to know what's real and what's, you know, me interpreting and explaining. And then the last bonus Episode 36 is actually the opening of my next book. That's for Kids for Readers 11 and Up in the Queer History Project series, which is called The Gender Binary, is a Big Lie. And it sort of goes into this sort of overview of the introduction of of that. So and that comes out next year in spring of 2024. So yeah, so the audio making the audiobook available as a podcast was my sort of like it was what I could do in response to the book banning because it makes you feel really powerless as an author when your book is getting banned. Because it's not just I mean, if you're in the top ten of the books that are most banned in the country and you're on all those lists and like I think that then maybe you see a lot of a big bump in sales. But when you're in the middle of the books that are getting banned, when they're putting out lists of 800 books and you know your number, 712, it's not like you're selling a lot of books. And what happens is the chilling effect. It makes librarians and teachers suddenly hesitate because they're like, okay, I know this book will be helpful for the kids in my class or the kids in my community, but is it worth me risking my job? Am I going to get blowback for bringing this book in? So it creates a chilling effect on all these books with queer characters and themes and history, and not just on queer ones, on black histories and black stories as well. Those are the two groups that are really being targeted right now, specifically in Florida. But we're seeing it elsewhere. We're seeing it spread around the country. So that the podcast was my like, okay, I can do I can do one thing, I can do this. But yeah, podcasts are a lot of work. I tip my hat, y'all. Yeah, I was curious about that, about if the book banning in a way is prideful or cool because it's saying something of importance, right? Like people that ban books are usually very much in the wrong, but if it's hurting book sales that really sucks. I think it's both. I think like, yay, hooray. Like it got noticed. I mean, I wrote an essay about being banned when I found out and I was like on the one hand it's nice to not be ignored, but on the other hand, do you really want the attention of these kind of jerks that want to hold back information from people? Right. And I think it's just really misguided. And this idea that, like, if they can prevent people from knowing about queer people existing, then maybe they'll prevent their own kids from coming out as queer. But I mean, I'm proof like I was raised by straight parents in a very straight environment, and it didn't make me straight. I think, you know, you come pre-baked and, you know, the question is about authenticity. And you know, it's this is another another language thing that makes me crazy is when allies of queer people will use terms like lifestyle choice. Well, Lee, I really respect your lifestyle choice like… The only choice is whether I'm going to be real or I'm going to lie, right? Like having long hair that's like, well, back when I had hair. But like, you know, I have a kid. When my daughter had long hair. Clearly that was a lifestyle choice. That was a lot of work to have long hair. That's a lifestyle choice. Whether you're going to be authentic about who you are and how, how you feel about your gender or who you love. That's not a choice. I mean, the choices again, are you, to be honest, are you going to lie? So it's like a lot about framing language. We get really stuck. We adopt this really toxic language from our opposition and, and then it emboldens them because we're using their language. We have to stop doing that. Wow, thank you. You go. Ahead. I'm sorry, I have a question for you. When while I was growing up, the word queer was kind of a derogatory word. Maybe not so much with the word gay, but queer was. And I'm wondering why you've chosen to use that word very freely. I guess that's my question. Yeah, it's a great question. I remember being having queer used against me as a sort of like slur very vividly. I remember it through junior high school and high school and even college a little bit. In the nineties there was a big movement to kind of defang and reclaim the word queer by people that were gay, lesbian, bi, pan, trans. The idea was that could reclaim the word, and that's when you started to see queer cinema. You started to see Queer Studies programs at different universities around the country. And it was a pretty successful movement. I mean, queer can still be used as a slur, and if it's said in a negative way, there isn't the same thing with the N-word where, you know, people outside of the community can use the word queer if they're using it respectfully. But like as a white person, I would not use the N word to describe black people because I just feel like that's not it's not my word. It hasn't been reclaimed for people outside of the black community as far as I perceive it. I mean, Phines, you tell me, if you see that differently. But definitely in terms of the reclaiming of queer, we're on board with that. Look under your seat. There’s an N-card under that I’m giving. No. no, I'm joking. Yeah, I agree, I agree. No, please don't use it. Okay. So there's there's another slur that that was used against me and other people that starts with the letter F that I don't use for sure. And that has not been reclaimed. That was not reclaimed by the club, by the community. Although I have heard people use it like to tease other people within the community, but nobody outside the community gets a free pass to use that. So there… it is a really good question, Bart, because it's so interesting how language changes over time. And I didn't think of the word queer necessarily being meaning homosexual or gay. I thought of anyone who was kind of different, you know, that that's what I thought it meant. But I'm obviously learning something now. Well, and it's become a kind of an umbrella term. So right now the acronym is LGBTQIA2+. Yeah, that is a lot of letters. So queer, it's sort of become this umbrella term that people are using when they don't want to get tongue tied with the acronym. But on the other hand, like the argument. I definitely heard arguments against like, Well, why do we want to keep adding letters? Isn't it making it hard? And I'm like, Well, just as queer then, because I feel like it doesn't cost us anything to add an “I” for intersex people or “A” for asexual people or a “2+” to recognize 2 spirit people, er, sorry. And the plus is like everybody else. And in Canada sometimes you'll see 2S, which stands for two spirit, which is like We’wha, you know, people that lived a third gender or fourth gender identity in native nations. So but not everybody necessarily claims that, but also that's interesting because if you're not indigenous, you cannot claim Two Spirit as your identity. Like that's also very much it's like a very sacred term for them to use. So it's a lot about learning and we're constantly learning and it's constantly adapting and changing. And I feel like that's, that's cool because we need to be allies to each other. Okay, I got to go back I got to read one more Bayard Rustin quote, because this was like an “a-ha” moment for me when I was… when I was doing all this research. He talked about… he was asked in 1986 if he had any advice for other black gay activists. And he said “The most important thing I have to say is that they should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice, because if you want to do away with the injustice to gays, it will not be done because we get rid of the injustice to gays. It will be done because we are forwarding the effort for the elimination of injustice to all, and we will win the rights for gays or Blacks or Hispanics or women within the context of whether we are fighting for all.” and I'm like, Hallelujah, That is so exactly right on. Yeah. I feel like as a gay man, that's been my whole life. That lesson encapsulates everything I've learned. Like I need to be an ally to every other letter of the queer alphabet soup of LGBTQIA2+. I need to be an ally to women. I need to be an ally to Black people and Indigenous people and Latino people and everybody. That's not kind of getting that opportunity to have a fair shake. And that thing about building coalitions, I think, is critical to our understanding of how we move forward in this very moment. But how we move forward always, right? I mean, I just find it super, super inspiring like, yes, how do we work together to effect change and to make our world a better place and a safer place? Because if we can make it safer for me, then it can be safer for you. Too. Yeah. Absolutely. I think and I want to know, I to know your thought too what do you think people should do or we should do or the government should do about like the book banning and the crazy slew of laws that are like that are clearly targeted to LGBTQ plus people where it's like, well, if you're caught abusing, if you're suspected of abusing a child, you know, you can get life in prison or you can get the death penalty. But now we're also going to change the definition of abusing a child to include, you know, quote, indoctrinating them or, you know, what have you like, do you like not what do you think about it? Because like, we know, but like, what do you think what do you think someone should be doing about it? I guess because yeah. It's cool. All right. So first of all, I think it's really important to recognize that this is not a groundswell of people concerned about the safety of children. This is a very cynical, organized political effort. The Washington Post did an analysis and they found that of like 2600 formal complaints, 60% of them were filed by 11 people. Oh wow. 11 people. I mean, we know well, I know 11 people like that is not a lot of people. So first of all, like we have to understand what is going on. That this is not a whole bunch of people like horrified that their children are in danger. Honestly, it's just a manufactured crisis. Right. to get people to fight each other so we don't notice what they're doing and their efforts to consolidate their power and basically prevent losing their ability to, you know, hold on to that power. I mean, they just proposed changing the voting age to 25, and that's pretty much related to the fact that, you know, when you look at the numbers, the demographic numbers of younger people, it's a majority minority country that we are quickly becoming. And as soon as these people start voting, these jerks are out. So they have a real sort of like, all right, let's gerrymander the hell out of our districts, Let's pass all these laws to prevent people from voting. Let's make it harder to vote. I mean, it's all very calculated. And so we have to get smart. We have to kind of like not just play defense, we have to play some offense and we have to—There are some cool laws that have been passed in a handful of states about, you know, banning book bans, which is really, really interesting and kind of saying in our state, you cannot ban books. I think that we can do work on ourselves and then we can do work in our local communities and then we can vote. And I think voting is both a local and a national thing. Right? Right. Because a lot of these decisions are being made by school boards that have like four people or five people sitting on them, and they're just local yokels that are, you know, fired up. And they want to like, you know, push through their sort of, their values. And it isn't saying that a parent doesn't have the right to have input into what their own child reads. But I think as soon as a parent says, I don't want anybody else's children reading about that, I think that's really like that's where the alarm sirens need to start going off. Yeah. The people that ban books also scream from the mountaintops about free speech. It's like the funniest. You know? Yeah, well, I mean, it's Orwellian, right? Like, they say one thing and they mean the other. And that started years ago back in, you know, when they started doing things like the Clean Water Act actually allowed them to pollute more, right? But they called it clean water because no one's going to vote against something called the Clean Water Act. I mean, again, it goes to language, right? And as soon as we accept their language of calling, you know, the bill that lets people pollute more, the Clean Water Act, we've lost. So it goes back to I'm sorry, I'm words I'm obsessed over words like, do it. Do it. No. Because it's just it's ridiculous. And then, you know, again and again. So I think you just have to talk to people. You know, if you find out about a book that's really cool, like share, share, share it with other people, I mean, that's actually one of the big way that books are successful, right? It's because people tell somebody oh my gosh, I read about this incredible thing and I had no idea. I'm sorry. I do want to know this, though. I don't know if we passed this or not, just want to get in. I know why it got banned. Like, is there like a list they give you? They send something in the mail, or? It don't matter. I mean, it does matter. I want to know, like, to me it does. I mean, it could be anything I want. I mean, the reason. Though, I never saw anything that explained why. I mean, I would posit that it's because Abraham Lincoln is on the cover. They never gave you–they didn't give you a— They didn't say anything? No. What? It just showed up. It just showed up on a list. Who writes the list? Like, is it like a local county person? Is it like. Or. Like a school board? One of them, they had a list that was, you know, it was the books that were… It was included in a list of books that were protested against in that they demanded that the library remove them. And yeah, I mean, sometimes they just do these blanket things like these following books for these reasons. And it's like and then it’s 80 books on the list. That is crazy. It's not. It's not. It's just to sort of hide the information. I really thought it was some type of list. I thought they were going to send you a— They sent you like an email or like some type of notification, like, Hey, sorry you're not getting any bread because you know. No, I wish. I mean, it would it would be great if they were like, on page 12, you lied. I'd be like, okay, show me. Show me what you disagree with. But no, and it's interesting because I really wrote this book for ages 11 and up. I mean, it's really the language is very simple. It doesn't talk about sex. It really only talks about love and about identity and things I think are very appropriate for kids that are 11 and up. I just think it would be a little harder for younger kids to understand all the things, which is why it's 11 and up. But yeah, no, they don't. I mean, I would — I was expecting a letter, right? Like I was expecting like, you know, Hi, welcome to the club. Your book has been banned. Here's why. No, nothing. Nothing. I kind of discovered it by, you know, basically interviewing the universe for pain and searching on Google after I found it on one of the lists. That is mind blowing. I don't know why I’m mindblown about it. I'm like, if you're a writer and you don't, no one is telling you that your main source of income or maybe could be is on a banned book. That just seems so like not I will address that. It is not my main source of income. I do have a day job. I work for a nonprofit. Well, you're right. Well, just in general like, say just in general, just I just think it's like, I don't know. I just thought— That is crazy. It goes back to the idea that you're thinking that these people are reading the books before they're purchasing them and they're not. Yeah, maybe. They're getting lists, they're getting curated lists to protest and then they search to see “Are these books on the list in the library?” And then they purchase them. They never get done because they get them, They don't read them. oop. we're fighting. You okay, Grandpa? We're fighting. Smacking the shit out of his bird. Thunderdome. Philadelphia Thunderdome. Yeah. Grandpa’s in Philly. What were you going to say, Grandpa? And I was just going to say, maybe they feel that your book has too strong an influence on whoever… You’re too far from the mic. Maybe they feel it has too strong an influence on people, that they don't want to have influenced. Yeah, they don't want people to know that there were men who loved men and women who loved women and people who love without regard to gender and people. Lee, is there a difference between someone who is, that you use the word gay and when you use the word queer, is there any, is there a difference there? Generally, people can choose their own label for themselves. So there are some people that identify as gay that are women. You know, “gay” for a long time was the umbrella term. There were a lot of people that I did not identify as gay men that didn't like it because they felt that it privileged gay men— white, cis, gay men like myself— too much. And so in response to that a lot of people have phased out “gay” as the sort of umbrella term. And I've started to use queer, but I know a lot of people in their twenties that are not do not identify as men that use “gay” as the rainbow, as the sort of, as the umbrella term for the community. So it kind of depends. You can always ask. So from what you just told me there, it just the difference in the way they they've changed the terminology basically. Yeah. And you know everybody is going to have their own spin on it in the community probably. And what did you, what you study in college, in graduate school? What was your major? I studied education and technology. So I went to Harvard because I was really interested in Sesame Street and how they used this new technology of television and puppets and it was entertainment, but it was education and there was a technology aspect. So I was really fascinated by that. The intersection of those three things like how to use technology, how do you educate and how do you entertain at the same time? And I mean, in fact, this podcast is a great example of that intersection. It's like, it's the four of you, plus a guest, and you're having these great conversations and they're being shared through technology in a way that is both entertaining and educational. So this is right in that Venn diagram, right? And I started a blog about 15 years ago called “I'm Here, I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?” Because I wanted there to be a safe space online to find out what were the books for kids and teens that had queer characters and themes and history. And there weren't a lot to start with, but now there are a ton, which is very exciting. So yeah, so that's what I studied. And then but so much of my education has been after I left school, and has been just reading and going, I mean, these two of these shelves behind me are just history books about queer people because it's just so fascinating. They write these books and they're not always all about the people being queer, but like, okay, Mahatma Gandhi, right? Like famous guy, right? Like all these amazing breakthroughs, the love of his life was not his wife, Kasturba, that he married, I think at age 13 or 11, I can't remember that he was really, really young. They were both really, really young. It was this guy, Hermann Kallenbach. Kallenbach is German Jewish architect that Gandhi met in South Africa. And they wrote hundreds of letters back and forth between them. And all of Gandhi’s writings are available for free. Everyone, can read them online through the foundation in his name. And I read all the letters back and forth, and there's even a love contract between them. They had nicknames for each other. And Gandhi was trained as a lawyer in England, and he wrote this love contract between him and Hermann, where they pledge “love and more love. Such a love as they hope the world has never seen” to each other. So it kind of, again, blew my mind and I got really excited about it. And that was actually, for me, a big shift point because up until then I had just thought, these are really interesting footnotes in history. Like, this famous person was, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt. She was in love with another woman, Lorena Hickok. That is an interesting footnote on history. But when I read the letters between Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach, I had a shift at my point of view. It was kind of a bit of an epiphany. And it was that, you know, Gandhi was the guy that said,“Let people's religions be different.” He said this In 1911,“You were sort of being a single entity as Olla and another Dorsum as Khuda. I worship as Ishwar. How does anyone stand to lose? You worship facing one way, and I worship facing the other. Why should I become your enemy for that reason? We all belong to the human race. We all wear the same skin. We all hail from the same land.” But that was a huge breakthrough and sort of like humanity, Right? And it occurred to me that the fact that he was in love with this Jewish guy at the time that he wrote this does not feel coincidental. And it made me think that maybe these people in history being queer was not a footnote, but maybe it was part of what made them exceptional. Maybe having that outside perspective empowered them to see things differently. When FDR died and Eleanor Roosevelt became an ambassador to the UN, a special you know, her special task was basically to push for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like, maybe she was so passionate about that in part, because she was in love with this other woman for decades. They had this decades long relationship. You know, Sappho— Okay. Here's the most— one of the most crazy things. So, you know, all the Disney movies end in a kiss of true love? So it turns out that that is actually from this poet, this famous poet who lived thousands of years ago. His name was Sappho. Sappho lived on an island called Lesbos, which is where we get the word lesbian. Right. And Sappho was famous for a bunch of things. She was famous because a lot of her poems talked about her loving other women. She was famous because she was a rock star of the time and poets back then, epic poets were the most famous performers because they didn't write poetry in a notebook and get it published. This was like way before publishing. They would perform their songs, standing up and accompanying themselves on a musical instrument. L-Y-R-E. A lyre, I believe it's pronounced. And anyway, Sappho was a famous, famous poet. And one of her poems that survived nearly intact talks about how everybody else says that the most beautiful thing on the dark Earth is an array of horsemen or soldiers marching off to war or cavalry, you know, going off to battle or a fleet of warships. But Sappho said in this poem that the most beautiful thing on the dark Earth is actually the face of the woman she loved: Anaktoria. For she would rather watch her face flashing radiant than all the force of Lydian chariots and infantry and full display of arms. Something about this idea really captured people's imagination back then, and it resonated with what they felt inside. Yeah. The most important, powerful thing in the world is love. And that ricocheted all the way through the centuries to us today. So the reason that all the Disney movies end with the kiss of True Love, breaking the evil spell is because we all believe that love is the most powerful thing in the universe. And we believe it because Sappho was in love with this other woman named Anaktoria at the time that she wrote that poem. But we've kind of lost the original, the origins of that, and all we know is that, yeah, well if you stop anybody on the street and you ask them about, you know, what's the most powerful thing, a lot of them will say, the kiss of true love. Right. And that— even 800 years ago, when they wrote Sleeping Beauty in France, the thing that broke the spell was the kiss of true love. And to know that that's part of our queer legacy is really, really cool. Yeah. This is cool. I love that. I always heard about, like, jokes about, like, Sappho and her friend. Like, when you're watching, like, sitcoms or reading, like, short stories. I didn't know that was the origin of it. Yeah. And then there is just one more story I want to share is… and I don't know if, Bart, you remember this from when you were like 12, but in 1952, this woman named Christine Jorgensen became world famous for being one of the first people to publicly be outed for changing their physical body to match who they felt they were inside. Do you remember? I do remember that name and you know a little bit about it. I do remember. Yes. Christine became she was She grew up in a male body and was treated as a man that never felt like a man. And was drafted at the end of World War Two, sort of a clerical job. And then after the war, she went to Europe and had an operation to— sort of a series of operations— to sort of make her body match who she was inside. And she had a really beautiful quote in 1950, two years before she became world famous. She wrote a letter to friends and she said,“I think we, the doctors and I, are fighting this the right way. Make the body fit the soul, rather than vice versa.” And she was really glamorous. I don't know if you can see this. This is one of my favorite photos of her. What's her name? Christine Jorgensen. Christine Jorgensen. And she became so famous that it actually was almost a problem because she couldn't do anything. Like, she would leave the house and she would be followed by reporters, like insane paparazzi. She wasn't the first person that had sort changed their body, had had gender affirming surgery. But she was the first one that everyone knew about because actually someone had leaked it to the press, her story. And so they published photos of her as she presented as a man and then as she presented as a woman. And it was really devastating for her at the time, she ended up sort of leveraging her fame and became sort of a nightclub performer and was on a lot of talk shows, probably Donahue was one of them, Bart, and it was kind of amazing how she started. She wrote an autobiography, which was really beautifully written. It's out of print now, but I do have a copy on that shelf behind me. And it's kind of knowing her story is really cool because I think that we get hung up on this narrative, right? This conservative narrative that this is all really new. That, like, in our parents’ time, in our grandparents’ time, there weren't people that lived outside the gender binary or there weren't trans people. It’s like yes, there were. There was a pharaoh whose name was Hatshepsut. Back, you know, thousands of years ago, who basically over the course of 22 years, changed their public presentation of their gender. They went from being the widow of the— well, the daughter of the pharaoh. And, you know, at that time, they married their brother. She married her brother and then the brother died. And so then she became the widow of the pharaoh. And then she became regent. She was 16 years old and convinced the ruling elite to let her rule Egypt as regent for her two year old nephew. And then over the course of 22 years, she declared herself king. Co-King. And then Senior Co-King. And you can see the statues start to change. So they start out and she's presented completely as a woman. And then there's this middle phase where she's sort of like in between, like a male and female presentation. And then at the end, she's completely presented as a man with like squared off shoulders and pecs and a boss beard and a crown. It's wild. And one of the books that was written for adults on this talked about how— by Kara Cooney, it was really fascinating.“The Woman Who Would Be King”, and Kara talked about how, the statues of the time, male statues were painted red because the guys went outside and I guess they got suntanned; and women statues were painted yellow because they stayed inside, the women of means. Right. The women of high society, they stayed inside so their skin was not as tanned, so their statues were all painted in yellow. And you can see in these temples, to Hatshepsut, over time, the statues are yellow, and then they're an in between color, orange. And then they’re red. So it's this fascinating thing of this progression. And the idea that this happened thousands of years ago I think is super exciting and empowering because it does kind of show us that the gender binary as we all understand it, right? Like pink hats for girls and blue caps for boys when they're born is completely a construction. It's completely made up. And that's really cool, I think to recognize that. That is really cool. So it made up that. I'm sorry, Sierra, but I just have to say, it's so made up, the pink and blue thing, that if you go back 100 years, it was reversed. Pink was the color for boys, and blue was the color for girls. Look, I don't want to say nothing about capitalism, but, you know, I'm always ready. I'm always, always ready. Yeah. Now this is great. Well, I guess a really long time ago, they dressed kids in white, right? They dressed babies in white because you could bleach it when it got dirty. But then they kind of 100 years ago, they were like, “Ooh, we can sell things!” So, yes, there was, in New Jersey, there was a Earnshaw’s Infants Department magazine, and they had a publication and they were explaining that Pink is a decidedly stronger color, more appropriate for a boy than blue, which is dainty here, more proper for a girl like, wait, what? What is going on? Words, like you said earlier. This is how important words are. Someone was like, “You know what? I'm going to change history.” I'm going to I'm going. To sell it, sell stuff here. They had all these paintings of, you know, the old English kings, queens and all of them when they're children, up until like a very old age, were wearing the exact same clothes. And you can. Yeah. You know, and yeah, I, I mean I don't know a lot about fashion, but it is interesting, like the whole reason that people wear white at their weddings was because of Queen Victoria's wedding was like her dress was photographed and it was a really big deal and it was all to support like the English lace industry, because the lace industry was suffering at the time. Like history is starting to get really interesting when you dig into it and you don't just accept the sort of the narrative we're being fed. You know? Yeah. Lee, we’re a bit over time, but I did want to go through and do Last Thoughts with everybody, if that’s cool. Yeah, Sierra, what are your last thoughts? My last thoughts. Thank you so much for coming, Lee. This was wonderful to hear you talk about history and education and queer issues and queer history and I just wish that there was I just wish that there was more of it. Like, there's so many things that I learn now that I'm just like, I'm excited to know it and I'm excited to know now. But then I get angry because I'm like, Well, why did you make me learn about, you know, hunters and gatherers like six different years in a row? Yeah. You acted like we didn't have enough room. You acted like we didn't have enough room to talk about, you know, this, this, this and this. But, you know, we decided to cram all these other, you know, repeat lessons, repeat tracks into the curriculum when there's all of this incredibly interesting and incredibly nuanced history that we could have been talking about instead. But I, I love how I love how passionate you are about it. I love how much you know about it so that you can keep telling people about it and keep spreading the word. And to all of our listeners, you got to remember, if any of this was about protecting kids, your kids would feel safer. You know, we haven't banned child marriage. We haven't done gun control. But we got to do this. We got to ban the books. Like, I just want to implore people to think it through a little bit more and try to be, you know. You got to stay active because if you're not active in what's going on around you, what's going on around your kids, then you do end up with 11 fkin’ people making tens of thousands of complaints and reports and just wasting everybody's time. That is my thought. Thank you for coming. Grampa. Well, Lee. My experience and I use the word gay because that's the word that I've always been familiar with. There's just so many people that are gay that seem to excel in the arts intellectually, and you fit into that mold as well. I'll take it as a big compliment. Thank you for that. Phines. Yeah, you know, I'm very excited. I'm so glad you came on the show. Yeah. I don't like to be saying— I don't like to be like griping on like my favorites, but really enjoyed you being here. I appreciate it. I feel like there's so much I want to talk about. Like, I'm also really into storytelling and folklore and like, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and all that bull— um, stuff, and they go into a whole section of like stuff. I think that I would love to hear your mindset about. About, like, just androgyny and in the middle area and all that stuff. So it's really cool. I feel like I can nerd out with you for days about things. And I really appreciate you being on here. Yeah, for me, I think I can say this without a doubt. You're the first person I've ever met and talked to that has a banned book, which I think is horrible, but also at the same time incredibly cool because almost always it's the people with the banned books that are on the right side of history. And the people that are banning and burning the books are very, very much on the wrong side. And I think this has been like a really incredible episode and a really incredible conversation. And I really appreciate you coming on. Yeah. Thanks so much for the opportunity, all of you. I had a great time. And I wanted to just say, from what Sierra shared about that nuance, I think that that's actually a really important thing that people in the past were complex, and I think that it is okay for us to acknowledge that complexity, especially in books for kids, because if they can see that other people are complex, they know that it's okay for them to be complex, too. And we all are many things, and we all are complex. And I think that that's a gift that we can give them by not being fake about history and not saying that, this was a perfect person. Like people had flaws. People did terrible things, but they were fascinating. And let's learn about all of who they were, not just the cherry picked kind of thing. So thank you. Thank you. Where can people find you and the socials and find the book? Everything, all that stuff? Yeah, absolutely. So the main site is Lee Wind.org My name, L-E-E-W-I-N-D dot O-R-G. And everything's there, including the podcast, Queer As A $5 Bill: The Podcast links. It's available everywhere and information on all the books. That's a good place to go. And I'm on Instagram too, but you can get that link there, too. Cool. Awesome, thank you so much, Lee. Thank you as always to the amazing Phines, Sierra. Grandpa, I love you. Love all you guys. Thank you so much. Have a great night. See you next week. Goodnight. Goodnight, everybody. Thanks. Thanks so much for coming on. This is amazing. Really.