Brad Shreve: 0:00

This is Queer we Are. I'm Brad Shreem and on Queer we Are. There's no pretending the world is all rainbows and unicorns. It can be rough out there, but each week I give you a break from those ugly headlines. Now we may bring those challenges up, but we don't stay there long. We don't dwell on the problems my guests share, what they're doing to make a difference or how they keep hope alive when it's hard to do so. Or maybe they're just here to entertain, which is a gift.

Brad Shreve: 0:37

My guest is Reverend Troy Perry and, based on feedback, I know many of you just cringed because I said the word Reverend. And yes, troy is a Christian and a religious leader, but remember, martin Luther King was a minister too and, like King, reverend Perry has served all people, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack of it, and also regardless of sexual identification. Troy relates to those who, with religious backgrounds that left them scarred. He had the same issue. Now, if that defines you, he gets it and he understands. It may never be for you, but 55 years ago this month, reverend Perry started the Metropolitan Community Church in the living room of his Los Angeles home, with 12 congregants. Now that's a humble beginning, but today there are over 222 congregations in 37 countries.

Brad Shreve: 1:35

Now, many people refer to the MCC as the gay church, but it's much, much more than that, and shh don't tell anyone, but there's actually some straight people there too. So, in addition to succeeding and launching and growing the MCC, he has a history and several rights for all LGBTQ people, including, but not limited to, co-founding the Christopher Street West, which organized the first Pride March in 1970. In 1973, he rushed to New Orleans to support the community after the horrific fire at the upstairs lounge gay bar, the worst incident of his kind until the Pulse nightclub incident in Orlando in 2016. In 1979, he helped organize the March in Washington, which had 100,000 LGBTQ people there. So don't say that we can't join together and work together. I'm going to hold you for a minute for exciting news. Right now, the QueerWeRShotcom is open for business and you can click the link in the show notes now and still listen to this episode. And with me is my graphic designer, denise. Hi Brad.

Brad Shreve: 2:46

Denise has worked with me for years. She designed my websites, several of my logos, my book covers. The list goes on, in fact. Every week, at the bottom of the show notes, you'll see a link to UmiWorks, which is Denise's business, and you can check on her work as well. Now, denise, here's what we know that people are going to find at QueerWeRShotcom. Every podcast has their t-shirts and maybe one or two more, but we actually don't have any. We have many t-shirts, plus, we have sweatshirts and coffee mugs, with more in the way as winter is biting our heels. We also have other exciting products. We're busy designing, and hoping to have soon, many home products. We were lazy, though, and we copied all the designs that we could see from Amazon and Redbubble.

Denise Shiozawa: 3:32

No way, brad. You do have some hot, trendy slogans that you've probably seen before, like Queer AF and Stay Woke, but we also have plenty you won't see anywhere else. I think we've come up for some pretty fun and sometimes thought provoking designs.

Brad Shreve: 3:49

We thought them up, so how could there be anything less? Right right.

Brad Shreve: 3:54

I'd podcast no matter what, but putting on a quality show takes money, so I'll be promoting the shop without beating you over the head with them. This store is bigger than the show, though. This is a career. So I'm not doing Patreon, though it is under consideration because some listeners have asked for it, but I won't bore you with ads for that online therapy company you keep hearing on other shows or that place that delivers actually, there's several of them delivers fresh, expensive foods to your door, so check the shop now QueerRShopcom. So, regarding Troy Perry, denise, don't go anywhere. As I said, I'm Brad Shrieve and my guest is Troy Perry and Queer. We Are Happy 55th anniversary to Metropolitan Community Church. Reverend Troy, thank you so much.

Troy Perry: 4:48

It's been 55 years since that first service in Huntington Park, california. I'm thankful to God I'm still alive here. I am 83 years old. Talking about what transpired and what happened back then.

Brad Shreve: 5:04

So that was back in 1968 and you founded the church in your living room with 12 people attending, and today your church now has 300 congregations in 22 countries. Tell me what you're feeling this month.

Troy Perry: 5:20

I am feeling incredible this month. I'm very thankful that I've lived to be 83 years old. I'm thankful that good things are continuing still in my life. You know that I still have wonderful friends who I knew then and who are alive today. I was just talking to Lynn, one of my friends. Lynn was in the Air Force. I was in the Army. We were near each other's camps during Vietnam. We were both Vietnam era veterans. We met each other there and Lynn ended up back coming to America and I told him I'm going to be speaking there. I want you to come up and hear me. And Lynn came up and heard me and stayed in the church and he just celebrated his 53rd anniversary in MCC. But he's no longer than that. He knew me in the military. So here we are today, Thank God, good things happening every day.

Brad Shreve: 6:25

Well, you were still pretty small fry then, so he saw a lot happen.

Troy Perry: 6:30

Yes, he did. He says that too. He loved going. The church in San Francisco had just started after our church, about nine months later, and they invited me to come up and preach at California Hall and, of course, san Francisco being San Francisco, always laugh. They could be negative or they could be positive. They chose to be negative and saying, well, they only had 800 people there.

Brad Shreve: 7:01

He didn't have Only had 800 for the first service, for the first service.

Troy Perry: 7:06

They'd never had 800 people out in the open with their faces with no makeup on, ever in San Francisco until I spoke there. I think that's amazing. Oh yeah, no, it was amazing and they laughed in the press and they said that they were cutting up. They really meant that it was amazing that I could come into the city. But people were really curious about me.

Troy Perry: 7:31

I spoke in New York City. It was very interesting. I was invited to speak there in about 1973 or four and I was there because we were going to have the first demonstration at the state capitol in Albany and GAA Gay Activist Alliance invited me to come into the city and to speak and I was to speak at a festival of unity at Columbia University. That night we had over 2,500 people who came. The auditorium was packed. So this wasn't a slow growth. This was not slow growth time with MCC or with the larger gay, lesbian, bi-transgender, queer community. It just wasn't that way. It was very fast at first, when I was time for me to speak at Columbia, I go, the place is packed. Oh my God. Female singer she was the singer before I spoke and she was a Broadway star. She was in the musical Gains in New York. Wonderful, wonderful musical and we invited her. Well, after she finished singing, this guy jumped up on the stage, started screaming that how dare we invite a heterosexual to sing at a gay event?

Brad Shreve: 9:05

Those people.

Troy Perry: 9:06

Yeah, I was thrilled to have an ally willing to come and sing. I always have been. I'm one of those strange gay leaders. They always said that I was thrilled to death. My organization everyone calls it a gay organization, but there are heterosexuals who are members of MCC. Well, here this guy. Then the auditorium started booing him. Next thing I know this is the first time I've told this story, but the next thing I know he has pulled out his personal and shook it at the crowd. I couldn't believe it. And then the crowd really did get nasty. And when they did, all of once this lesbian in the crowd said Johnny, or whatever his name was. She used her voice to get his attention. Johnny, you're just like every other fucking man Using your dick as a weapon.

Troy Perry: 10:16

The next thing. I know he's off the stage and here I am. That's my turn to speak, and that's a hard act to follow. This is a hard act to follow, but this is. If I'm going to get the hard acts early, that's good, let's take care of it. So I jumped right up, as always did, when I spoke and I talked about our rights. I did not talk about the young man who was on the stage or the young woman who had called him down off the stage, but I kept it on my subject, and that's we can win this battle. I don't care what's transpiring and happening, we can win. Whenever I was in the process of making a speech, I made this speech. I didn't let anybody cut me off, and once the woman had taken care of the young man and he moved off the stage, then I could really talk about what the issues were for us.

Troy Perry: 11:12

And that's where we had battles to win and we could win them.

Brad Shreve: 11:18

I think it's important to say your hard work over the years has been dedicated to all people and not just Christians, and I love a quote that you have on your website and it says let me find out, I quote we believe we can change the world, so for me, my legacy, I hope, will be inside and outside of my community. He was faithful and he was fearless. I love that quote. Based on your history, I certainly can say you were bold and faithful and fearless and on behalf of myself and I'm going to be so bold as to speak for the LGBTQ people everywhere thank you for all you have done.

Troy Perry: 11:58

Well, thank you, brad, so much. I do not believe Christianity is God's only voice on earth. I take up for every religion. I take up for the religious and I take up for those who are not religious. I don't care. I believe that we all have to be faithful to our call, and that's to make a difference in the world.

Brad Shreve: 12:23

Not destroy other people or always be right, but do the things that are right, I want to get to the story behind the church, but there is something I'd like to address. You experienced a lot of strife just being a minister of the MCC church and you also have been very much in the limelight as far as an activist goes. A lot of struggles that you went through and you made a lot of advances for everyone. We're now seeing things getting pushed back and a lot of people are disillusioned and what I want to find out from you is why, with everything that's going on, should I and everyone else care anymore or have any hope?

Troy Perry: 13:00

You got to have hope. If you don't have hope, you just lost it. And whatever we do, we can't lose it. I'll use a military thing that if the first thing how the military loses is they lose hope and that's true with everybody If we lose hope, we just die and nobody else is going to fight our fights for us. If you think anybody else is going to fight for us, you're wrong. It takes us to have the fight. Then people would join with us, young people. I want you to know. You don't know what it was like once upon a time. This is nothing. We will win this battle. This is nothing. A building burns down, but thank God we're still alive. A church burns down, but we're still alive. They murder bar members, but we're still alive. You think those bar members who had gone in the bar would want us to stop? No, I go to bars. They wouldn't want us to stop. They would say to us continue this struggle and whatever we do, just when you think you can't win, that's when you'll win. So don't give up the fight and the struggle. It would be too easy and we're not going to do that. We're going to continue until we've won the battle.

Troy Perry: 14:23

And I really love music and I love gospel music and I love especially African-Americans, the gospel music they sing. When I hear those gospel songs, they sing in the middle of segregation and yet they kept fighting. And today we have movies like Till that I hope everybody will look at and sing young man who has murdered his mother, going into a church, not letting them bomb the body, but seeing him exactly as he was. And thousands of people over 10,000 people showed up, 3,200 in the building walking by the coffin. Other people white people, black people, politicians all came and saw Emmett Till's body. Did it stop the fight? No, did it stop the persecution? No, we still won, because today we've won that case. 70% of Americans believe we should have all of our rights. Now is not the time to stop.

Brad Shreve: 15:41

I'm an atheist, or at least an agnostic, and I am a Unitarian Universalist. As you know, you came and spoke at my church. It was nearly 15 years ago 15 to 20 years ago but I don't have to tell you many LGBTQ people have had negative or even horrific experiences within the church and that resentment is hard to shape. And I know some who don't understand how a person can be queer and Christian and they sometimes can be pretty antagonistic about it. I don't come from a religious background so it wasn't a thing for me, so I don't carry that baggage. I'm fascinated by religion and respect anyone's beliefs, so it saddens me when I see that happen. Will you address that?

Troy Perry: 16:24

It saddens me too I won't just say number one that the church mistreated me. I like to tell people that I was a young person raised in the South in a very, very conservative Pentecostal group and I was a licensed preacher in the Southern Baptist Church and started preaching when I was 13 years old in the Pentecostal Church and was licensed to preach at age 16 in the Southern Baptist Church. They threw me out of the church at age 19 when they found out that I was gay and I believed all the lies that people tell you. Oh God can't love you, you're a gay man, oh God hates you. Don't you realize that God's not going to hear your prayers? People always talk that way to me. But things happen in my life. I'm always a believer in things just happen in your life and you're going to live a lot of experiences and that's exactly what happened to me and I did everything the church told me to do. They told me that if I would marry a good woman, that would take care of that problem. I married, they said, if I'd have children, that would take care of that problem, that gay problem. I had two sons. If you're a celbut, if you don't have sex with men that'll take care of the problem. No, it'll lead you alive. It was very interesting to me.

Troy Perry: 17:58

I went into the military in 1965. Vietnam was just starting, had met gay people in Los Angeles. After my wife and I had separated, I moved into LA and I met gay people. And now I have gay people who are saying to me when I have tried to receive my draft notice, they said are you going to let them draft you into the military? Are you going to check the magic block? And I said what magic block? And they said right under tuberculosis and cancer is homosexual tendencies and if you check that block, that'll keep you out of the military. And I said what is the question? And they said homosexual tendencies. I said I don't have homosexual tendencies, I am a homosexual. And I went into the military.

Troy Perry: 18:56

Brad, I looked out and didn't go to Vietnam, I went to Germany. I'm in Kaiser Schlot in Germany and, my God, I never met more gay people in my life than I did in the military. Had we all been put out of the military, had all of us been discharged, they couldn't have had an army, and they knew it During wartime. The US military has always taken us in Only later in the war is they're winding down to start looking for gay people and throw us out. So me, I came back and fell deeply, madly in love.

Troy Perry: 19:40

For the first time I met a man. Larry was a school teacher from Montana and just my type and he and I. We didn't do well together. I always felt people. I had six of the best and worst months of my life and we decided he did, that he was going to leave me. Well, I dated Larry, we separated and then I cut both of my wrists, climbed into a bathtub, just hoped I would die. Thank God, as I tell people, my roommate, the person who lived with me, came in when he got in the door and he heard water running and came over the bathroom, knocked on the door and said hey, troy, are you okay? And when I didn't answer, he broke the door down and found me in the tub.

Troy Perry: 20:38

Willie Smith rushed me to County General and when I arrived at County General, I'm sitting there. All at once I thought it was a nurse, looked like a nurse as uniform, but all at once this African American woman walked in and said I don't know why you've done this. But she said Can't you talk to somebody. Can't you look up? She pushed every religious button on me and then she left. And when she did, I broke down crying and I said God, I know you're not going to hear an answer to this prayer. God, I just don't know what to do. Here I am, I'm a gay person, and I don't know what to do. I'm miserable. I attempted and even though it didn't work, here I am.

Troy Perry: 21:32

And about that time the doctor came in. Finally, when he finished, she said Now I want to know something. Are you going to be okay or do I need to keep you here? I said Well, what do you think? And he says it's not important what I think, it's what you think. You make this decision I don't. Now you tell me, will you be all right or do you want me to keep you for 72 hours?

Troy Perry: 21:58

When I got home, I went to bed that night. Next morning woke up and Willie came into my room, woke me up and said Are you going to be okay or should I stay with you? And I said no, I'm going to be okay. And so Willie said Is there anything you need? I said no and he left, and even though he was gone, I really prayed. From the bed, the first thing I thought of was oh God, I've got to go buy some long sleeve shirts. If Sears knew about this, they would fire me. It's so funny how, after you try to kill yourself, the first thing you think about is your job. And you've lived through it. How am I going to do this?

Brad Shreve: 22:43

So I can't do this. I have a deadline.

Troy Perry: 22:46

That's right. And so immediately after that happened, brad, here again I broke down crying and I said God, I know you're not going to hear this prayer, but I said I know the church has taught me that my church has taught me. You can't hear me, you don't care about me, and I always tell people. After I said that, god spoke to me in a still small voice and said to me Troy, don't tell me what I can and can't do. I love you, you're my son and I don't have stepson's and daughters. So with that I knew I could be a Christian and I could be a gay person. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God loved me. I didn't have all the answers yet, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt I was going to get so many of them and I would get them all right up to the time that I died. And 83 years later here I'm still getting answers every day. And how thankful I am that after that, after God spoke to me and said God loved me, then I knew God had to love other people. And right after that I went on a date with a young man to a gay bar in Wimmington, the section of LA down in the dock area. While we were there to make a long story short, the police came in and arrested about 12 people for lewd and lascivious conduct. Well, I was watching the couple because it was my date and a friend of ours and I knew both of them had hilarious sense of humor and one of them, bill Hastings, reached up and slapped my date on the butt and he came back over to me and one of the cops followed him over to me and when he got there he pulled out of bed and said come outside with me. I said who are you talking to? He said not you him. Immediately he spoke up and said what are you charging me with? He said lute and lascivious conduct. They left and they owned the bar got up and said we are all going to the police station. I know there has to be a florist here. I want all the flowers you have. We're gonna take down flowers. And he said we're gonna get our sister's belt out of jail Now. This was my first demonstration, all right and like this, and I thought, oh my God, we're going down to the police station, but here we go and we got down there. And, sure enough, when we got there. When we walked in, lee walked over to it and some of us followed him right over there and he said I'm here to get my sister's belt out of jail. And this cop said watch your sisters his name. And he said ha ha, ha, ha, ha ha. And he said Bill Hastings and Tony Valdiv and with that he called for backup.

Troy Perry: 26:11

And all these cops came to the front room and we would not leave. We continued to joke with the police officers, to talk to them, try to tell them about. Yeah, well, you know, there's lots of gay people, you're gonna see a lot of us just talking, you know what I mean, but not getting nasty. We said don't get nasty, just talk. And so we said we, you know, there, here's the 12 of us and the two in jail. And they kept missing them, kept losing them, kept, you know, there's been sent somewhere else. We would not leave. We said, well, we're waiting here. We know what the law is. You gotta bring them here for us to build them out of jail. And the bellows bondsman was working with them and all at once they said here they are. And we all applauded like mad.

Troy Perry: 27:06

The police still didn't know what to do because we were not afraid of them. And we went. We got in our cars. I went back home with Tony. He broke down crying. I said they're gonna drop the charges. Just wait, that's what the guy said they're gonna drop the charges. And sure enough they dropped the charges on our two people that we got out.

Troy Perry: 27:30

But I kept going back to praying. Okay, god, you said you love me, all right. You said when do you want that? You know, I've tried to go to church and I can't find anywhere to go. You tell me, where do you, if you want a church, started, not a gay church, but a Christian church that's open to everybody, and that means everybody. Just let me know when. And the still, the small voice said now, and with that took out a maddening advocate here at Reverend Troy Perry. The advocate was the large gay newspaper at that time, the only one, and I took it out of mad. Here at Reverend Troy Perry gave me a address in Huntington Park. 12 people came two persons of color, a heterosexual couple. You know, I looked back at it and I think it was the view of things to come for a MCC. All those gay males that were there too. I am so thankful to God and the service was incredible.

Troy Perry: 28:40

I called a funeral home and said well, you loan me 15 chairs for the first service of our church we're having. Oh, yes, we would be happy to, and they did. Then I had a pastor friend who owned me loaned me the 15 choir hymnals you know the hymns. The thing out of Then straight man at work who was a carpenter for the store, he made the cross and the top to go up behind my preaching area and in front of my preaching area was our coffee table, which served as our first communion, and an ash tray, and my boss, who was gay, at in his lover, gave me a cup that I used as a chalice for the first service. And it was very, very interesting.

Troy Perry: 29:33

Four years ago the Smithsonian asked me for a collection that they wanted to put in their collection for gay folk and I was able to put together the collection of things like the Book of Common Prayer that I use in all my marriages and all my funerals and throughout MC's history. They got that. They got my vestments. They received a hymn book that went through the fire. We had another hymn book after that with inclusive language. I had other things that were given in the day as for a large collection and they received it I would have never thought, when I opened the doors of the church to those 12 people, that the Smithsonian, the Museum of American History, would call me one day and say the thing y'all did was historical and we want to make sure that we have them here in the museum.

Troy Perry: 30:39

So I am very thankful when I look back. Most of the people in fact all of the people except me, as far as I know is not alive of the LA group, that where we started the church here first. They are deceased. But we went through everything together and today, how proud I am. I was just. I'd received an email from one of our churches in Brazil I don't read Portuguese, but thank God for translators anymore and they were sending us saying we're dedicating a room to you, reverend Perry, and that's where we feed people who are hungry. So it's the Troy Perry Food Pantry Memorial, and so I was very touched by that.

Brad Shreve: 31:34

And is there something surreal about that, though, there?

Troy Perry: 31:37

is People, don't you know? You gotta go through it, I guess, till it's the way it is. But it is surreal. When I'm invited to the White House, I've been invited by three American presidents to the White.

Brad Shreve: 31:51

House. You've been there five times. Three presidents, that's correct.

Troy Perry: 31:56

And I stop and I look at it and I just shake my head of when I leave. I'm very. What thrills me is they invited Philip the last time. The other two were before Philip, and Philip is my partner of 38 years, Philip de Blic. We talk, he and I both talk about it how unreal it seems some days.

Troy Perry: 32:22

Today, we are members of the World Council of Churches and we go to the World Council of Churches every four years and we celebrate with them and we meet more people from other cultures that have heard about us and know about us. They you know, they have different historians who've interviewed me said Troy, you're one of those church groups. Everybody knows who you are Because quote you're the gay church and we have churches all over the world. We have doctors who go to places like Uganda and we pay to have children's medicine for children and shot for children, and we have our own doc. Go into those cultures and do clinics for children, for HIV, for coronavirus, you name it. We do it. We call it the metropolitan clinics. We've learned how to work in some countries and I continue to hope and pray that God can continue to use me.

Troy Perry: 33:38

Now, this coming year, Philip and I are going to do some of this the last thing on my bucket list that I've wanted to do, and it's not churchy I've been to a general audience for this holiness to Pope, wrote them and asked them could I be in a general audience. They invited me and sent the invitations. I'm one of the only 100 Protestants who are invited to protest in with this holiness. In South Carolina, when Pope John Paul II was the Pope and his assistant became the next Pope of this book. So it was very interesting and I continue to do things. The thing I want to do is I just discovered that there is a cruise that Philip and I are going to take. We like the cruise for 54 days that takes us down the Pacific side of the Americas to Antarctica. I have been on every continent except Antarctica and this cruise will let me get to Antarctica.

Troy Perry: 35:06

Then I'll come back up the other side of the Americas and end the cruise, leaving in LA, ending it in Port Lauderdale, Florida.

Brad Shreve: 35:18

That sounds like an incredible trip. I want to speak to something. In 1970, the year after Stonewall, you co-founded Christopher Street West and we know today as the first Pride Parade in Los Angeles. I'm used to parades as they are today. It's a carnival field. Back in 2008, I joined thousands and marched along the beach when Prop 8 passed. It was a much different feeling. We were angry, we were beyond angry, but it was so powerful. It was a sense of unity and belonging. I have not felt sense, can I tell you something.

Troy Perry: 35:54

I really believe, brad, with all of my heart that young people have heard that we now have two wonderful Pride parades here in LA. I can tell you one of those parades are already changing. Oh, yes, they've got the floats in them, but they're shouting from the floats. They've got all kinds of people who are with us. I loved looking down and seeing the Assistic District Attorney of Los Angeles Association Good point, I love it, thank God, here I'm looking at this and they're straights and gays.

Troy Perry: 36:38

A few years ago, phillip and I invited a heterosexual couple who's a friend of ours One was a police officer, she is an attorney or husband's a member of the Ventura Bottom Squad and they were pro-gay. I got to know the family really, really well. I was being honored by our Pride committee here and I invited them to go with me because I wanted to use them as props. To all the folks out there who say we can't win, I'm saying these are the people we want to win with. We want to meet heterosexual Next year. We want to invite our heterosexual friends and don't invite a homosexual. Invite your heterosexual friends.

Troy Perry: 37:28

I've always been one of those believers. I said early on that if we all came out of the closet. If we'd all come out to our mothers and fathers, that's three right there. If you then came out to your brothers and sisters, for me that would be five more. And then when they start telling their friends which they're going to, how, everybody laughed. I said thousands of people are going to know very quickly that we're gay. And that's exactly what happened. I don't mean that I was the first person, maybe to say that, but that all kinds of people started joining in.

Troy Perry: 38:09

The next thing for me was when I started having demonstrations and I said I had demonstrations before. We had Christopher Street, west pray. My first demonstration was based on a firing of a young man in San Francisco and they called me and said a young man has been fired here, the company headquarters in Los Angeles. Would you, as we demonstrate up here, would y'all demonstrate down there? And I may retalk to Morris Kite, others of our early little group and I said they wonder who to demonstrate. I'm going to, we all do it. And they said yeah, and so immediately we held a demonstration and at that demonstration we ended up three days. First day, people would come and stand and stare at us.

Troy Perry: 39:08

I mean Brad there wasn't nobody applauding, Nobody was saying a word, it was just dead silence. The next day, we all at once started our you know shouts. If you're proud and you're gay, you know, say it. You know what I mean. If you're proud and you're gay, say it you know, and people would say right back to us, you know. Then the third day they started dropping bags of water out of the top of the building trying to wet us, and we never wore wet, but other business people wore it.

Troy Perry: 39:46

Oh my God. But who went running the building became our allies very quickly After it happened. But we didn't go away. We waited for the next event After that. Now we're going to wait for the state theme ship company give them an opportunity to talk back to them up there. And so after that we were back again making sure that we said if they come for us or we need to go to them, we will go to them. We're not going to wait for them to come.

Troy Perry: 40:16

This morning and I said today, this demonstration that we're having is one of the state, the California State Building, and we're going to ask that the California State move the law that's on the books that make us criminals, and we wanted the anti-ecidemy laws off the book. I told our church group you're not going to get hurt, just come and march with me. Well, my God, we had a crowd of about 250 people who showed up and they marched with me from all over the street where the first Catholic church is at to the states pardon me to the California State Building. And we got up and there are movies of that demonstration where I'm talking and we were determined we were going to. Well, everybody went back and tell them. Guess what? We didn't get hurt.

Troy Perry: 41:17

Our next demonstration. I said we need another demonstration. This demonstration is against the police department. We're going to march on the Hollywood police department. You know what? A thousand people showed up at Hollywood High School. And, my lord, here we are there and the police. All at once his police motorcyclist rode his motorcycle up on the the the pardon me high school on and he said who's in charge here? And I said to him you know who's in charge here. What do you want? And he said there's a bunch of Marines around on the Boulevard just waiting for this group. I said oh groovy, we've got men who are into Marines, so they're going to love it. I just, I used my voice, I just would not let them use that with me.

Troy Perry: 42:08

And well, and of course, by the time we marched and we got around there, there were no more Marines on Hollywood Boulevard. They were gone. Well, you scared them away, that's it. I told the crowd that if there's a thousand, I mean there's a bunch of Marines around there waiting. Don't worry, they'll leave the minute they see us. This is too big for a crowd. They're not going to be in a fistfight with us.

Brad Shreve: 42:33

Well, I would think, when the word got out that a thousand Marines were waiting for you, your crowd would have doubled, and that right, you got it.

Troy Perry: 42:40

You got it. It was going to double everything. And you know what? The police were scared of us. And, my God, I told everybody before we get there I don't want to hear any sound, no sound except the bottom of our shoes on the ground as we march in front of the police station, because we had already found out they had guns on top of the police station. I mean, you know, I couldn't believe it. And we got around there, sure enough, standing with their rifles up on top of the police station, and we held our demonstration. And when we got through, I marched them back up to where we had started the demonstration and told everybody thank you. And the next thing we held was Christopher Street West.

Brad Shreve: 43:32

What is something everyone can do right now to make a difference?

Troy Perry: 43:39

What everybody can do right now and make a difference in is join an organization that fights with hope for your freedom If that's what they want.

Brad Shreve: 43:52

they got to get their boots on the ground.

Troy Perry: 43:56

It's really the truth, brad. If I'm 83, I have mobility problems, I'm not well, I know that probably my life isn't long, and yet I tell young people all the time it's not about me, it's about all of you. What are you going to do next? Not Troy Perry, I've done my part. When I meet God, I hope I hear God say well done, my good and faithful servant.

Brad Shreve: 44:30

And that I'm welcome. There's a line in oh God which is one of my favorite movies because Burns played my concept of God and I'm paraphrasing here. But John Denver said something like if you got, why do we have all the trouble in the world? Why don't you do something about it? And God said I did do something about it. I gave you each other. Why aren't you doing something about?

Troy Perry: 44:51

it. Yeah, and it's really the truth. We can never not forget that. That's the thing. But when you join something, also don't let people get away with things Just think because I've joined, whatever it is, that's going to make a difference. No, you got to. If you hear somebody say something that is saying something and your, your group, is not there, you need to learn, if they've said it to a group, how to answer back. No, that's not true.

Brad Shreve: 45:28

Thank you so much for being my guest. It's an honor to see you again Again. I appreciate everything you've done over the years. You've really made a difference and not enough people know how much work you've done.

Troy Perry: 45:39

Well, I so much appreciate the work you do. Because of your work and this podcast, it will help others to see. I hope that we can all make this together.

Brad Shreve: 45:51

I hope so too.

Troy Perry: 45:52

Thank you, Brad.