Jan 27th, 2006
Romaine Patterson and COLAGE on Fresh Fruit
Click here to listen to last night’s “Fresh Fruit” show which will be temporarily archived until February 9th on the KFAI website.
My guests:
Meredith Fenton, Program Director of COLAGE, Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere.
Meredith will be visiting Minneapolis for the Minnesota premere of the teen-created documentary, In My Shoes: Stories of Youth with LGBT Parents. The February 16th event is be co-sponsored by Rainbow Families.
The song following my interview with Meredith is called “Tolerance” from a children’s CD called “Double Daddy,” performed by Molly Bowers aka “Molly Universe.”
Also: Romaine Patterson, author of The Whole World Was Watching: Living in the Light of Matthew Shepard.
Romaine’s book provides background on her own life (three gay brothers!), how she met Matthew Shepard, the personal responsibility she felt to step into the media circus following Shepard’s murder since so few people in Laramie actually knew him, and how she moved through depression and suicidal thoughts to finally come into her own.
The song that follows Romaine’s interview is written and performed by Randi Driscoll. What Matters is a single now used as a fundraiser for the Matthew Shepard Foundation.
(In the interest of full disclosure I am a recurring guest on The Derek and Romaine Show to respond to call-in questions related to LGBT/straight family dynamics.)
Bonus queerspawn sighting: Read the acknowledgments in Romaine’s book, and you will see that her collaborator, Patrick Hinds thanks his family, including his mother and “my mother’s incredible wife, Carol.” We’re everywhere.
I play Romaine Patterson in The Laramie Project, and I have never felt so moved on stage as I do now. I am 17 years old, and my high school drama class faught our entire administration to do “Laramie”. We have both positive and negitive comments coming from everywhere, home, school, and the community, but I can’t think of anything to do but say, “Come see the show, maybe you’ll learn something.” I cant say that I want to change their minds, but I think that if they got the point of view from every side of this issue, maybe they will.
I am a pro-choice person all around. ‘Do what you want”, is what I say. Its just times like this, in a town where the administration doesnt even want us doing this play because its so controversial, that I just want to shout at them “THINK THIS WAY!!!!!!”. You know… I suppose I’m just frustrated, but I wanted to let you know that a big high school in a little college town in the middle of Michigan, much like laramie are trying to help in making a difference.