by Peggy Luhrs

       John Scagliotti has documented our LGBT community from the beginning. His films Before Stonewall (1984) and After Stonewall (1999) are classics of the state of the movement pre- and post-Stonewall Rebellion, the 1969 New York riots sparked by police raids on gay bars. Dangerous Living (2003) expands to tell the stories of coming out in the so-called developing world, and including the backlash as gay and lesbian liberation took off in the U.S.
      Scagliotti, of Guilford, created In The Life, the PBS gay magazine program that has had a good 15-year run. His work has led him to support more independent media. He's found that LOGO and other outlets - while adding to LGBT content on cable TV - still don't cover the hot topics of politics, sex and religion. Ergo GoGayDVD.com, a movie rental service he has set up to support the Independent GLBT Video and Filmmakers Consortium (IGVFC). Gogaydvd.com will use ten percent of its revenues to support the consortium, a loosely organized group of film producers.
      Anxious to get away from censors and aware of the dangers of foundation funding, John has set up this network to make a wide range of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender DVDs available.
      Following is a conversation we had about John's new project.

      PL: Why do we need a GLBT producing consortium?
      JS: My work has been censored … a little self-censorship here, a little cutting there. Pulling punches is safe. I was happy to see LOGO open, but then I realized they couldn't do politics, sex and religion. They bought Queer as Folk and then censored it. We need independent gay media to really see what LOGO and In the Life won't put on such as the politics, sex and religion.
      PL: Why new GLBT producers?
      JS: Because progressive, thoughtful programs such as "why a Republican Governor in Vermont vetoes a Gender Identity Bill" can't be shown now. We need these programs and these dialogues. Big funders won't do this stuff. We need to involve the grassroots in the policy discussion. When was the last time you saw a national LGBT organization with a field office? And we should be showing the kind of panels that do happen at places like Creating Change (the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's yearly conference).
      PL: How will member input work?
      JS: There will be member panels and surveys on our programming page. And there will be reader panels for new programs. We have to be somewhat cautious, no libelous material, and we need some of those readers to have a background in journalism. We want to have journalistic standards and involve the grassroots.
      PL: Are there projects in the hopper?
      JS: The Four Homosexuals, which is about early Christianity and St. Paul, and how things change in the context of Asia and southern Africa. What living from sacred texts means in a post-modern age. If you've read about the Gnostic gospels, or other things by Elaine Pagels, you have an idea. And there is a project called a Bus Tour of the D.C. Scandals, which traces gay scandal in Washington through time. We'll be offering this stuff online and to be downloaded. Something like one dollar a download, or fifty cents if you're a member. We will have G-Span, which will cover the news, maybe by states, and No Censors Here, which will basically be all the pieces we couldn't do on In The Life; all the stories I had to censor.
      PL: Do you think the LGBT community is well informed about increasing media consolidation?
      JS: No, absolutely not. I travel a lot and I am shocked at the lack of historical knowledge, and a little shocked by racism … connections people aren't getting. There is queer theory and there are academics, but that is within the university world, and there isn't an effort to popularize this. Very little intellectual stuff comes through. There used to be a discussion in the community around ideas. And I'm shocked that the concept of accountability has been thrown out. We don't discuss ideas and get responses anymore. There was a time when you might be careful of what you said.
      PL: And then the idea of political correctness came in, which in my memory was a joke stated in the lesbian community, but it became a way to stop all these discussions as if just having a discussion about politics and ethics is a bad thing.
      JS: That's what I mean by accountability and having an intellectual discussion - being able to get these ideas into the community and get a response. Being able to get a tape of a conference on Feminism and War, for example, and having crossover issues discussed.
      PL: What should we be doing around these issues, besides supporting GoGayDVD.com?
      JS: As a political person, I'm aware that the media has all been bought up by huge conglomerates, Fox News, Viacom. We have got to be creating our own media and alternatives. We need to think of our media as important, including our local media. And we have access to the Internet; it's not a wild idea anymore. The more liberal media love gay victim stories, but they don't do many empowerment stories. We need that. We don't need to follow the path of Will and Grace on NBC. We need to take our own media and ourselves seriously, and tell our own empowering stories.

Longtime activist Peggy Luhrs has taught gender variant film at Burlington College.