- [Thea] Young people today think that these rights are permanent.

We did not have them.

We saw them come, and we are watching them go.

- [Reporter] The US Supreme Court is being asked to overturn the 10-year-old decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

- The LGBTQ+ specialized suicide and crisis hotline will end.

- [Reporter] ...Trump administration plans to cut funds for HIV prevention at the CDC.

- [Reporter] An executive order requires the country only acknowledge sex, not gender.

- [Gretchen] We have people who have been courageously out their whole lives, and there are people that have not lived openly until they came to our building and haven't experienced this backlash before.

It's terrifying.

- [Reporter] Banners around the construction site for The Pryde were vandalized with slurs against the LGBTQ community and threats of violence.

- [Gretchen] I don't know where it ends up, but I do know that we can be together, and our doors open so that LGBTQ groups that are feeling not welcome in the rest of the world are welcome with us.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) - Hi, my name is Eddie, and I'm 67 years old.

I've always liked elephants.

They're extremely bright.

They live in a very structured family group, and they're protective of the whole herd.

(gentle bright music) Seven years ago, I was forced out of the Fenway, even though I had a Section 8 voucher.

The rents were going up.

Almost 40 years in the same building, and I was very close to being homeless.

A year ago, I put my name in for the lottery at Pryde.

I wasn't sure that I was gonna meet the criteria.

All I knew was that I had a chance.

Regular senior housing, there's a lot of hate.

There's a lot of bias.

Older LGBT people, seniors, a lot of 'em have to go back in the closet.

This is a safe environment to be who you are.

(door squeaking) It was literally like hitting the lottery.

- [Neighbor] Thank you.

Appreciate it.

- [Eddie] We have to take pride in our neighborhood.

- [Neighbor] Hey, you're a good man.

- Every Thursday after the trash trucks come, it takes me about a half an hour.

- Yeah.

- That's all, simple thing.

- You know who started me on this?

- Who?

- Former Governor Michael Dukakis.

I'd see him stoop and pick up trash.

- Yeah.

- And I said to myself, "A three-time governor, presidential candidate, if he can stop and pick up trash."

- Yep, anybody can.

- [Eddie] Anybody can.

I'm a long-term HIV/AIDS survivor, and by the time I was not quite 40, I had to stop working.

So I never had the opportunity to save for retirement.

I didn't think I'd ever live to see retirement.

From my generation, we lost so many people.

I don't know why I'm still here.

My mother used to say that God had plans for me.

Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't.

(lively classical music) (performers speaking faintly) - Oh, I went too slow, I'm sorry.

(humming) I came out as transgender in, it was either '22 or '23.

It's only been a couple years.

That's the point at which I announced to my family that I was trans.

There was a lot of unhappiness and anxiety.

(lively violin music) I needed to find another place to live.

And what I was trying to do was to find a place that wouldn't repeat my experience of living with people who were not compatible with who I was becoming.

(lively violin music continues) I was like the second or third person that moved into this building.

The place was so empty.

The halls reverberate.

They're so echoey.

This is like a big social experiment.

We have the opportunity to figure out how to create a little community, because we are doing it from scratch.

I really, really, really crave the idea of developing queer community.

That's a good reason for living here since this is, yeah, LGBTQ senior housing.

It's where I live, (laughs) you know, with other people like me.

(residents chattering) - Good morning.

Wonderful to see everyone here.

We have a lot of new residents, and we'll have a chance after announcements to talk amongst ourselves.

This is a generation that grew up before there were any legal protections of our community, when you could lose your job.

You could lose your home.

You could be harassed because you were openly gay, and there was nothing you could do about it.

- At the time I decided to come out, it was still kind of an oppressive era.

- Coming out to my family was horrific.

They were very homophobic and continued to be for years.

- If my father was alive to hear that I turned out gay, God knows what he would've done.

- It was a difficult time.

Folks were able to discriminate indiscriminately.

- Never in my lifetime did I ever think I would see a pride flag hanging out front of my window unless I put it there.

(gentle music) - Everyone is welcome at The Pryde, members of the LGBTQ community and folks who are not members of the LGBTQ community.

They just have to be over 62 years old, and they have to qualify by income.

I think we're about 80% full now, which is fantastic.

We have this lovely public community center.

So looking at the calendar, there's like a million things going on.

(laughs) I feel enormous personal responsibility for whether we succeed in doing what we've promised our residents we would do.

(intriguing upbeat music) - [Thea] We are married.

We've been married for 17 years?

- I think it's more than that, but- - I don't know.

- We have to do the math all the time.

(laughs) - [Crowd] No more hate!

- We got married in California.

I was working against Prop 8, which was trying to amend the California Constitution to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

We realized that if it passed, we would not be able to get married.

It was like three days before the election in 2008.

She asked me.

(laughs) You did.

- Oh, I asked you?

Oh, I was gonna say, "What did I ask you?"

Oh, to marry me, yeah.

Well, it was really clear that we were happy together, so let's make it official.

- [Thea] Look at that smile!

- Yep.

And I have dog leashes in my hand with bags on 'em.

- Oh, (laughs) 'cause the three dogs were the witnesses.

- [Shirley] Yep.

- And when I was in college, I had had a dream once of marrying my girlfriend.

I still remember waking up, you know, in 1968, '69, and it's like, no, you can't marry your girlfriend.

And it was so painful, that awareness that it was a fantasy.

And all those years later to actually be marrying a woman, It just felt incredible.

We were living in Dedham.

We had everything we wanted there.

It was very convenient.

- We were in a two-family house, but we didn't have any community around us.

And that's one of the big things that we were wanting as we age.

- So you hold this like this, and you press it, and now you- - Press what?

- You press the A button.

I love it.

I love living here.

I love all the resources that we have.

We started a Wii tournament- - [Thea and Shirley] In the fitness center.

- Oh my God.

- Bullseye!

- [Shirley] I'm gonna have to smack you.

- [Thea] You know, I'm not gonna just be passive and wait for somebody else to go build what I want and complain that it's not being built.

- There, you got on it.

- Yeah, yeah, pretty good.

- Six.

- Six!

So I do things that I enjoy for myself, but I include people around.

- [Shirley] Yeah, proactive.

- Right in the pocket.

- Oh my God.

Unbelievable, unbelievable.

Thea's the extrovert.

I'm the introvert.

So it's been more of an adjustment for me.

I can't say yet, "I love it here," like she can, but I'm learning how to take care of myself in community.

That's a strike.

- Yes!

- It's a strike.

- [Shirley] Yay!

Well done.

(applauding) - [Official] All right, three, two, one!

(participants cheering) (somber music) - [Gretchen] Turning a school building into housing is enormously complicated.

- So I'm just so grateful to every elder, every early architect in this movement who knew in real time that they were writing the blueprint for someone else's survival.

(crowd applauds and cheers) - [Gretchen] The support in Boston in particular for the work that we're doing is critical.

- All right, to The Pryde.

- [All] The Pryde!

- We got state funding, city of Boston funding, federal funding, and then all of the private funders who helped make this happen.

But we still have a target on us.

We need to stand together to say that this is hate.

This is cowardice.

And we are gonna build a different community together.

A month after our groundbreaking, vandals attacked the building with anti-gay rhetoric, a threat to burn our building down, and luckily didn't do any damage, but it was devastating to this community.

- Someone asked me once, "Well, what if there's trouble out front of here?"

I said, "I'd be the first one out there."

This is not new to us.

- I don't need excitement here.

I just want safe.

And if there weren't all of this stuff going on on the outside, I would be much happier.

- There's a feeling of safety in numbers, perhaps, but there's also that possibility that you become more of a target because everybody knows you're there.

I grew up in Massachusetts.

My father was an engineer, and my mother was a piano teacher.

Two, three, four.

This is the new arrangement that we're gonna use for the reverie.

(violin music) Oops.

That's not what I wanted.

Oh crap.

(ethereal upbeat music) A lovely man came to our school and demonstrated violin for us, and I went home to Mommy and said, "I have to play the violin."

She said, "You'll have to wait two more years.

Play piano some more."

(plaintive violin music) How do you fall in love with an instrument?

You just do.

When you hear the sound of a particular instrument, you feel it in different parts of your body and your soul and your mind, your heart.

That's why violin was the thing.

I think some of my things might still be in the attic in my wife's condominium.

And knowing that I had limited space, I didn't bring every darn thing that I own.

This is my New England Conservatory grade transcript from my bachelor's degree.

I've had pretty good employment.

I had good success.

I played in a lot of symphony orchestras, but then my jobs didn't always last that long, and I questioned whether it was something about my own performance, or maybe it was something else.

There was always a discomfort, and it contributed, I think, to some extent, to my failures in life.

Okay, this is not what I look like now.

(Bunny chuckles) Beard.

It's like the thing I'm constantly trying to get rid of with electrolysis and everything.

I have a grown daughter.

She's now 23 years old, and she's stayed in Easton, and my wife is still there.

It was 25 years that we were married before we parted ways.

And we were compatible except that one problem of the fact that I didn't realize that my sexuality and my gender and everything were different than what I thought it was and that that was a big factor.

- (speaks faintly).

I ended up marrying my high school sweetheart, man, and having a daughter.

And two years later, I had another daughter, and she was born terminally ill with a pediatric liver disease.

And that kind of blew up this family unit that I was in.

I did end up meeting a woman who I was with for almost 14 years before she was killed in a car accident.

A lot of the changes that I experienced shook me right to the core.

I started a process of trying to understand what would make me happy.

I remember resolving to myself that if the powers that be, the universe, whatever, wanted me to live this life, I won't do it alone and that I need a companion, however that looks.

I'm making what's called an abundance hen garland, and they're supposed to bring good luck or abundance to people who hang them in their homes.

Yeah, what's that, all this stuff?

- (laughs) Yeah, yeah, it got... I'm not so good at this.

It wound up with a big knot in it.

- [Shirley] Yeah, Thea's not a real crafter.

- [Thea] I'm a crafter.

- [Shirley] You are?

- I was so confused in the beginning.

I was so afraid to talk about being gay.

I think when I moved to Los Angeles, I was in my 40s, and I really came out at that point, went through my public coming out.

So it was a process.

Coming out is a process.

I have to prove I'm a crafter.

- [Shirley] Why?

'Cause I said that?

- Yeah.

- I used to put model airplanes together when I was a kid.

2006, I was getting a master's degree in writing at USC, so I started working on this one-woman show.

And that year when I came out to Massachusetts, I asked my friend if they'd gather a nice, friendly audience for me to try out this material.

(audience applauding) Words.

It's about relationships and about the problems that I've had.

And so I'm describing all of this, and I'm talking about lovesickness.

And all of a sudden, there's a thud.

Somebody falls off of one of the couches.

- All right, this is where I'm gonna cut in then.

- Okay.

(laughs) - 'Cause, see, I'm an energy worker, so I feel energy, and it was like this ball of energy just hit me right in the chest, literally, and jolted me, and I slid off the couch and landed on the floor.

No lie.

It was so embarrassing.

(Thea laughs) So that's how we met.

When we got together for lunch, I could feel this pulsing in my body, boom, boom.

I could feel it.

- I remember taking her two hands in mine.

It just felt like this circuit completed.

And in Judaism, they have the word "bashert", and I feel like she's my bashert, my destiny.

(gentle upbeat music) - I grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts in a big Catholic family.

I am the sixth of eight children.

I'm the only one they planned on though.

You can cut that out.

(Eddie and interviewer laugh) Here's a picture of me when I was probably 15.

Look at the hair.

I always knew I was gay.

I didn't know what the terminology was.

I knew I was different.

I think this was the year I graduated high school.

I would've been 18.

Look how thin I was, and handsome, and handsome.

And this is about 20 'cause I had just moved to the city with my friend Mark.

That would've been 1978.

(truck clattering) The Fenway was really a decrepit neighborhood, (engine droning) but it was affordable.

It was a known gay neighborhood, so I felt relatively safe.

And there was two of the biggest gay clubs in Boston, the 1270 and the Ramrod Room.

The 1270 was the best disco in Boston, and that was the only socially acceptable place because we weren't really welcomed anywhere else.

My apartment was near all the bars, so everybody came to my apartment to party.

Moving that coffee table, turning that music up, and dancing away.

(laughs) I worked hard.

I paid my rent.

And they were wonderful years.

There was an energy in the air that nothing was going to stop us, and then we hit speed bumps.

'82 is when we first started getting an idea that something was wrong.

By '84, it was apparent that this was gonna be real bad.

- [Reporter] The number of cases has increased dramatically, as has the cost of caring for the AIDS victims.

Insurance companies were cut- - [Crowd] Silence equals death.

Silence equals death.

- [Eddie] Someone would get sick.

- [Crowd] How much longer must we wait?

- [Eddie] Then they would die.

And before you even had time to mourn them, somebody else was sick.

This plant here, I call her the B-word.

If I wasn't in mixed company, I'd use her full name.

I was in New York for Thanksgiving weekend.

My friend Michael G. asked if we could stop in Connecticut at his parents' house on the way home.

And we squeezed it into the back of that little Toyota Tercel car.

And that thing was in my face from Connecticut to Cambridge.

And when my friend Michael passed away a couple years after that, he left me it in his will.

(laughs) I had to be 27, 28 when we lost Michael.

He was very young.

Long time ago.

- [Reporter] The Trump administration is considering a new plan to cut out the CDC's division focused on HIV prevention.

- [Reporter] Supreme Court has ruled that parents should be able to opt their children out from LGBTQ-themed books in public schools.

- [Reporter] Ten years after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex-marriage across the United States, it could now be overturned.

- I rescinded federal funds to, and this is so important, to any program that promotes transgender ideology using taxpayer dollars.

We're not gonna do it.

We're not gonna do it.

(audience applauds) - I see what's going on in society now, and I have flashbacks to what it was like in the early part of the AIDS epidemic.

- I'd like to put a substantial amount to cure homosexuality.

- It wasn't just people getting sick and dying.

It was the hatred that came along with it.

(crowd chanting) So I'm here to protest.

- [Crowd] Hands off.

- [Protestor] Hands off!

- [Crowd] Hands off.

- [Eddie] I'm here to raise my voice for those who don't have a voice.

- [Leader] Whose streets?

- [Crowd] Our streets.

- [Leader] Whose streets?

- [Crowd] Our streets.

- [Leader] Whose streets?

- [Crowd] Our streets!

- [Leader] Whose streets?

- [Crowd] Our streets!

- [Leader] Whose streets?

- What's going on in this country?

That wasn't the America that I grew up.

- Fascism I'm really afraid of.

I don't like how that's being validated, and it really, really scares me.

- Medicare, Social Security, I mean, that's all I make.

- All the rights that we fought hard and long for are in jeopardy and at risk.

There's always a reason for us to be vigilant, but it's time for us to kind of get back into the streets again.

- Especially trans people are scared and have reason to be.

- If you've been around for 50, 60, 70, 80 years, you know what can happen.

(pensive music) A lot of the people that live here, you know, people have been activists that have been on the ground when there's been violence against queer folk.

I wanted to be queer, but I never thought I could.

I never thought that I was that brave, I guess.

I denied myself involvement with the queer community for so many years that embracing it fully is such a relief for me.

So I'm not gonna give up on my community.

I'm not gonna give up on myself.

If they come for me, I'll go down fighting.

(pensive music continues) - [Resident] You're vegetarian, Margaret?

- [Margaret] No, but I eat vegetables too.

- Okay.

(residents laugh) - That is Greek dressing, right?

- Yep, yep.

- Greek dressing.

- [Shirley] What did you bring?

- A carrot cake.

- Oh my God.

This is Eddie, everybody.

He lives upstairs.

- Hi.

- Yeah, people let the color of their hair go.

- Yeah, yeah.

(Thea laughs) - Welcome, everybody.

We're so glad that you're here.

Shirley and I produced this film, and I wrote the script.

- See, this is a musical, and when we first started, we had to borrow songs like... ♪ You don't own me ♪ And I used to love to sing.. - We are in the process of undoing 70 years of civil rights and LGBT rights and women's rights.

That is the reality.

That's what's happening.

- [Shirley] No, no, no.

♪ We need to rise for women's rights ♪ ♪ We're not as one ♪ ♪ We should unite ♪ ♪ We want to change ♪ It's very easy to get caught up in the fear, and I won't.

We all have a right to exist and to create our own happiness.

Who has a right to take away our happiness?

(gentle music) - [Thea] We moved here in December of 2024.

- December 11th.

And 10 days later, we had our wedding here, (laughs) so.

- Because of the election and because of what's happening politically, we kind of realized that we were potentially compromised in some way by not having a Massachusetts marriage license.

So we don't look at it as, you know, a renewal of our vows as it was more a protest wedding.

People didn't know who we were.

Like, we walk in and, "Oh, we're getting married, and you're invited to our wedding."

(laughs) - [Shirley] It's the first wedding at The Pryde.

- [Thea] Yeah.

- So many people who came just out of curiosity never experienced what we did with the hand-fasting cord, doing like once around our hands and then passing it out into the audience of the people so that they could hold it too 'cause we're creating community.

And it was really very meaningful, probably more in my head than what they experienced, but it was very meaningful.

- I think it was meaningful to everybody.

People are still talking about it.

- You are legally married in the state of Massachusetts.

- [Eddie] When I was first diagnosed when I was 26, there were no treatments.

And there were many, many times where it was very hard to get up in the morning.

But I also decided AIDS was not going to define me.

I was gonna define what living with AIDS was like.

(bag crinkling) You know I collect elephants, right?

- [Nurse] No, I didn't know that.

- I'm at that stage in my life where God forbid something should happen to me, I said, "What's gonna happen to my elephants?"

But I want you to have this.

- Oh my gosh.

- I've had this for a very long time, and I thought of you because of your baby.

- Thank you.

Oh my gosh.

- [Eddie] It needs to be cleaned, I'm sorry.

- It'll go right in her nursery, (laughs) give her a little glitter.

- And when she's old enough, you can tell her about me.

- Yeah, of course.

- "I met this guy once."

- Thank you.

- Particular excitement about this study is that it's one of the first that focuses on whether we can find a specific treatment- - Yes.

- To focus on the lung disease that we know is more prevalent, more common in people with HIV.

- And you know I'm a believer in studies.

- Oh, absolutely.

- Yeah.

When the first meds came along, it was a blessing, we thought.

But now we know that there were ramifications from those, kidney issues, cardiac issues, cholesterol issues, but what were our choices?

- All the way around.

Pull backwards.

Blast!

- [Eddie] And that's why I've done many, many studies over the years, so that these people that are getting infected now, they won't go through what we went through.

- [Provider] Two, one, quickly in.

Breath in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in.

Hold it.

Keep holding.

You're halfway there.

- [Eddie] I don't ever want them to have to go through that.

- [Provider] And blow it out.

Blow, blow, blow, blow, blow, blow, blow.

Relax.

- I'm ready for my next study.

I might- - Somebody's torturing him.

- I might do, donate one of my lymph nodes, and it's very important, and I think I should be able to give 'em a lymph node.

- These are a really wonderful story, my daughter, she was like, "You know, you should have kitten heels."

So as a gift, she bought me these, so they're very special.

It would've been nice to have a family representative from my married life, but I don't think that's gonna happen.

We're not at that point right now.

So maybe in a future concert that'll happen.

(gentle hopeful music) When I came out, I thought, (gasps) "Wait a minute.

What am I gonna call myself when I meet people?"

I started thinking of names.

How about something cute, maybe a little sexy, but like not over the top?

It's a non-threatening name.

It doesn't have a lot of baggage.

And I thought, you know, "Yeah, I'll go with that, Bunny."

I'm not doing anything else.

I'm gorgeous already.

Yeah, music's in there.

- This was Sunday's cake, and it's already gone moldy.

The old days, I would save it for people I don't like.

(utensil scraping) This was taken in the Fenway over at the war memorial.

This was just before I had to have my spleen out when I was 33.

I was sick, and I really didn't think I was gonna live.

So I decided to have a picture taken, and I gave one to every one of my siblings and to my friends.

My doctor told me at 26 I wouldn't see 30.

When I turned 40, I went and saw him.

I told him he was a liar.

Do I know why I'm still alive?

I think on some level, if there is a higher power, I believe that he did put me here to be with people.

That's one of the reasons why I live at Pryde place, is when the day comes, I hope to be here and to know that I'm safe and that I'm loved.

Looking good.

At one time in the Fenway, I knew every one of my neighbors.

We knew each other, and we looked out for each other.

And I have the same feelings here that I did back there, that I'm part of something bigger.

Showtime.

(residents chattering) - We should have a permanent sign, "Cake by Eddie."

- I know, I know.

We should.

We need a cake knife.

- We're the only non-binary/transgender orchestra, actually, so far as I know, in the world.

When I came out, I did a little Google research, and it didn't exist.

So I figured I better just start one.

So, enjoy.

(audience applauding) (slow elegant string music) The thing that really made me decide that I had to come out to people was my desire to be honest.

I didn't want to carry this secret with me to the grave.

I didn't want to die never being able to experience being a woman.

That would've killed me by itself.

As soon as I realized that I was gonna come out, I felt like I was a flower that was blooming, and it was just blooming bigger and bigger and just becoming more and more colorful and more and more beautiful every day.

It was just magnificent.

There's nothing as beautiful as finding yourself.

(audience cheering and applauding) - [Audience Member] Yay!

(festive music) (attendees chattering) - Oh, good idea.

(attendees cheering) (whistle blowing) - We have a huge contingent from the building this year.

The last lease was signed I think on the first day of June.

So now every single apartment at The Pryde, all 74 apartments, are occupied.

And I can't talk about this for too long without starting to cry because to see people coming out of their shells and coming out of the defensive posture that many had to live in to survive before they came to The Pryde is just extraordinary.

- Here we go.

This is exciting.

(festive percussion music) (bells ringing) (attendees cheering) Happy Pride.

- Happy Pride.

- Happy Pride.

- Happy Pride.

(attendees continue cheering) - Look at all these (beep) people.

- I know.

I love it.

- That's my wife.

- Happy Pride!

(attendees continue cheering) - [Eddie] My generation fought for a seat at the table.

(upbeat music) The generation after mine fought for the right to set and decorate the table.

This generation is fighting to expand and put as many leaves in the table as possible so that everybody has a seat at the table.

I want this younger generation to know this isn't the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last time.

And they must be prepared to stand up and say, "This is not who we are, and I fight for my Uncle Eddie."

♪ Our flannel closet full of cotton and wool ♪ ♪ And I scream at the top of my lungs ♪ ♪ Let's all be gay ♪ ♪ Come on, and I said hey-ey-ey-ey ♪ ♪ Hey-ey-ey-ey ♪ ♪ Let us, hey ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Let's all be gay ♪ ♪ Come on ♪ ♪ And I said hey-ey-ey-ey ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ I said hey, let's all be gay ♪ - Yeah!

(attendees cheer and applaud)