1
00:00:00,976 --> 00:00:05,206
"Even in purely nonreligious terms,

2
00:00:05,230 --> 00:00:10,446
homosexuality represents
a misuse of the sexual faculty.

3
00:00:10,970 --> 00:00:15,691
It is a pathetic little second-rate
substitute for reality --

4
00:00:15,715 --> 00:00:17,661
a pitiable flight from life.

5
00:00:18,167 --> 00:00:21,913
As such, it deserves no compassion,

6
00:00:21,937 --> 00:00:27,119
it deserves no treatment
as minority martyrdom,

7
00:00:27,143 --> 00:00:33,083
and it deserves not to be deemed
anything but a pernicious sickness."

8
00:00:33,687 --> 00:00:38,713
That's from "Time" magazine in 1966,
when I was three years old.

9
00:00:39,215 --> 00:00:42,719
And last year, the president
of the United States

10
00:00:42,743 --> 00:00:45,406
came out in favor of gay marriage.

11
00:00:45,992 --> 00:00:52,956
(Applause)

12
00:00:53,488 --> 00:00:55,045
And my question is:

13
00:00:55,069 --> 00:00:58,625
How did we get from there to here?

14
00:00:58,649 --> 00:01:02,711
How did an illness become an identity?

15
00:01:03,497 --> 00:01:06,564
When I was perhaps six years old,

16
00:01:06,588 --> 00:01:09,128
I went to a shoe store
with my mother and my brother.

17
00:01:09,152 --> 00:01:11,723
And at the end of buying our shoes,

18
00:01:11,747 --> 00:01:15,193
the salesman said to us that we could
each have a balloon to take home.

19
00:01:15,611 --> 00:01:17,727
My brother wanted a red balloon,

20
00:01:17,751 --> 00:01:20,291
and I wanted a pink balloon.

21
00:01:21,092 --> 00:01:25,694
My mother said that she thought
I'd really rather have a blue balloon.

22
00:01:25,718 --> 00:01:26,749
(Laughter)

23
00:01:26,773 --> 00:01:29,111
But I said that I definitely
wanted the pink one.

24
00:01:29,135 --> 00:01:34,239
And she reminded me
that my favorite color was blue.

25
00:01:34,752 --> 00:01:39,119
The fact that my favorite color
now is blue, but I'm still gay --

26
00:01:39,143 --> 00:01:42,372
(Laughter)

27
00:01:42,396 --> 00:01:45,247
is evidence of both my mother's influence

28
00:01:45,271 --> 00:01:46,425
and its limits.

29
00:01:46,449 --> 00:01:48,666
(Laughter)

30
00:01:48,690 --> 00:01:55,109
(Applause)

31
00:01:55,704 --> 00:01:58,374
When I was little, my mother used to say,

32
00:01:58,398 --> 00:02:02,985
"The love you have for your children
is like no other feeling in the world.

33
00:02:03,009 --> 00:02:06,185
And until you have children,
you don't know what it's like."

34
00:02:06,209 --> 00:02:09,659
And when I was little, I took it
as the greatest compliment in the world

35
00:02:09,683 --> 00:02:12,445
that she would say that
about parenting my brother and me.

36
00:02:12,469 --> 00:02:15,787
And when I was an adolescent,
I thought, "But I'm gay,

37
00:02:15,811 --> 00:02:18,143
and so I probably can't have a family."

38
00:02:18,167 --> 00:02:20,532
And when she said it, it made me anxious.

39
00:02:20,556 --> 00:02:22,253
And after I came out of the closet,

40
00:02:22,277 --> 00:02:25,180
when she continued to say it,
it made me furious.

41
00:02:25,204 --> 00:02:29,498
I said, "I'm gay. That's not
the direction that I'm headed in.

42
00:02:29,522 --> 00:02:31,558
And I want you to stop saying that."

43
00:02:35,400 --> 00:02:37,099
About 20 years ago,

44
00:02:37,123 --> 00:02:40,174
I was asked by my editors
at the "New York Times Magazine"

45
00:02:40,198 --> 00:02:42,894
to write a piece about Deaf culture.

46
00:02:42,918 --> 00:02:44,324
And I was rather taken aback.

47
00:02:44,348 --> 00:02:46,652
I had thought of deafness
entirely as an illness:

48
00:02:46,676 --> 00:02:48,636
those poor people, they couldn't hear,

49
00:02:48,660 --> 00:02:51,280
they lacked hearing,
and what could we do for them?

50
00:02:51,304 --> 00:02:53,798
And then I went out into the Deaf world.

51
00:02:53,822 --> 00:02:55,703
I went to Deaf clubs.

52
00:02:55,727 --> 00:03:00,105
I saw performances of Deaf theater
and of Deaf poetry.

53
00:03:00,129 --> 00:03:05,835
I even went to the Miss Deaf America
contest in Nashville, Tennessee,

54
00:03:05,859 --> 00:03:09,502
where people complained
about that slurry Southern signing.

55
00:03:10,031 --> 00:03:13,575
(Laughter)

56
00:03:14,035 --> 00:03:18,148
And as I plunged deeper and deeper
into the Deaf world,

57
00:03:18,172 --> 00:03:21,146
I became convinced
that Deafness was a culture

58
00:03:21,170 --> 00:03:23,392
and that the people
in the Deaf world who said,

59
00:03:23,416 --> 00:03:26,887
"We don't lack hearing;
we have membership in a culture,"

60
00:03:26,911 --> 00:03:29,173
were saying something that was viable.

61
00:03:29,197 --> 00:03:30,625
It wasn't my culture,

62
00:03:30,649 --> 00:03:33,578
and I didn't particularly
want to rush off and join it,

63
00:03:33,602 --> 00:03:36,112
but I appreciated that it was a culture

64
00:03:36,136 --> 00:03:38,503
and that for the people
who were members of it,

65
00:03:38,527 --> 00:03:44,857
it felt as valuable as Latino culture
or gay culture or Jewish culture.

66
00:03:44,881 --> 00:03:48,913
It felt as valid, perhaps,
even as American culture.

67
00:03:49,898 --> 00:03:53,190
Then a friend of a friend of mine
had a daughter who was a dwarf.

68
00:03:53,214 --> 00:03:54,713
And when her daughter was born,

69
00:03:54,737 --> 00:03:57,086
she suddenly found herself
confronting questions

70
00:03:57,110 --> 00:03:59,743
that now began to seem
quite resonant to me.

71
00:03:59,767 --> 00:04:03,353
She was facing the question
of what to do with this child.

72
00:04:03,377 --> 00:04:07,131
Should she say, "You're just like
everyone else but a little bit shorter?"

73
00:04:07,155 --> 00:04:10,372
Or should she try to construct
some kind of dwarf identity,

74
00:04:10,396 --> 00:04:12,767
get involved in
the Little People of America,

75
00:04:12,791 --> 00:04:15,368
become aware of what was
happening for dwarfs?

76
00:04:15,704 --> 00:04:17,187
And I suddenly thought,

77
00:04:17,211 --> 00:04:19,716
"Most deaf children are born
to hearing parents.

78
00:04:19,740 --> 00:04:22,189
Those hearing parents
tend to try to cure them.

79
00:04:22,213 --> 00:04:26,342
Those deaf people discover community
somehow in adolescence.

80
00:04:26,366 --> 00:04:28,502
Most gay people
are born to straight parents.

81
00:04:28,526 --> 00:04:31,097
Those straight parents
often want them to function

82
00:04:31,121 --> 00:04:33,349
in what they think of
as the mainstream world,

83
00:04:33,373 --> 00:04:36,824
and those gay people
have to discover identity later on.

84
00:04:36,848 --> 00:04:38,486
And here was this friend of mine,

85
00:04:38,510 --> 00:04:42,030
looking at these questions of identity
with her dwarf daughter.

86
00:04:42,054 --> 00:04:43,768
And I thought, "There it is again:

87
00:04:43,792 --> 00:04:46,287
a family that perceives
itself to be normal

88
00:04:46,311 --> 00:04:48,932
with a child who seems
to be extraordinary."

89
00:04:48,956 --> 00:04:52,993
And I hatched the idea that there are
really two kinds of identity.

90
00:04:53,518 --> 00:04:54,987
There are vertical identities,

91
00:04:55,011 --> 00:04:58,182
which are passed down generationally
from parent to child.

92
00:04:58,206 --> 00:05:00,330
Those are things like ethnicity,

93
00:05:00,354 --> 00:05:03,679
frequently nationality,
language, often religion.

94
00:05:03,703 --> 00:05:08,183
Those are things you have in common
with your parents and with your children.

95
00:05:08,207 --> 00:05:10,635
And while some of them can be difficult,

96
00:05:10,659 --> 00:05:12,603
there's no attempt to cure them.

97
00:05:12,627 --> 00:05:15,859
You can argue that it's harder
in the United States --

98
00:05:15,883 --> 00:05:18,002
our current presidency notwithstanding --

99
00:05:18,026 --> 00:05:19,666
to be a person of color.

100
00:05:19,690 --> 00:05:22,406
And yet, we have nobody
who is trying to ensure

101
00:05:22,430 --> 00:05:26,476
that the next generation of children
born to African-Americans and Asians

102
00:05:26,500 --> 00:05:29,352
come out with creamy skin and yellow hair.

103
00:05:30,027 --> 00:05:34,117
There are these other identities
which you have to learn from a peer group,

104
00:05:34,141 --> 00:05:36,217
and I call them "horizontal identities,"

105
00:05:36,241 --> 00:05:39,346
because the peer group
is the horizontal experience.

106
00:05:39,370 --> 00:05:41,947
These are identities
that are alien to your parents

107
00:05:41,971 --> 00:05:46,165
and that you have to discover
when you get to see them in peers.

108
00:05:46,189 --> 00:05:49,250
And those identities,
those horizontal identities,

109
00:05:49,274 --> 00:05:53,007
people have almost always tried to cure.

110
00:05:53,031 --> 00:05:55,366
And I wanted to look
at what the process is

111
00:05:55,390 --> 00:05:57,945
through which people
who have those identities

112
00:05:57,969 --> 00:06:00,438
come to a good relationship with them.

113
00:06:00,462 --> 00:06:04,609
And it seemed to me that there were
three levels of acceptance

114
00:06:04,633 --> 00:06:06,271
that needed to take place.

115
00:06:06,295 --> 00:06:11,646
There's self-acceptance, there's family
acceptance, and there's social acceptance.

116
00:06:11,670 --> 00:06:13,892
And they don't always coincide.

117
00:06:13,916 --> 00:06:17,730
And a lot of the time, people who have
these conditions are very angry,

118
00:06:17,754 --> 00:06:21,236
because they feel as though
their parents don't love them,

119
00:06:21,260 --> 00:06:24,988
when what actually has happened
is that their parents don't accept them.

120
00:06:25,012 --> 00:06:28,186
Love is something that,
ideally, is there unconditionally

121
00:06:28,210 --> 00:06:31,479
throughout the relationship
between a parent and a child.

122
00:06:31,503 --> 00:06:34,637
But acceptance
is something that takes time.

123
00:06:34,661 --> 00:06:36,405
It always takes time.

124
00:06:37,199 --> 00:06:41,287
One of the dwarfs I got to know
was a guy named Clinton Brown.

125
00:06:41,859 --> 00:06:45,093
When he was born, he was diagnosed
with diastrophic dwarfism,

126
00:06:45,117 --> 00:06:46,767
a very disabling condition,

127
00:06:46,791 --> 00:06:49,188
and his parents were told
that he would never walk,

128
00:06:49,212 --> 00:06:50,386
he would never talk,

129
00:06:50,410 --> 00:06:52,433
he would have no intellectual capacity,

130
00:06:52,457 --> 00:06:54,897
and he would probably
not even recognize them.

131
00:06:54,921 --> 00:06:58,451
And it was suggested to them
that they leave him at the hospital

132
00:06:58,475 --> 00:07:00,515
so that he could die there quietly.

133
00:07:00,539 --> 00:07:02,699
His mother said she wasn't going to do it,

134
00:07:02,723 --> 00:07:04,430
and she took her son home.

135
00:07:04,454 --> 00:07:08,231
And even though she didn't have a lot
of educational or financial advantages,

136
00:07:08,255 --> 00:07:12,279
she found the best doctor in the country
for dealing with diastrophic dwarfism,

137
00:07:12,303 --> 00:07:14,445
and she got Clinton enrolled with him.

138
00:07:14,469 --> 00:07:16,639
And in the course of his childhood,

139
00:07:16,663 --> 00:07:19,471
he had 30 major surgical procedures.

140
00:07:19,495 --> 00:07:21,761
And he spent all this time
stuck in the hospital

141
00:07:21,785 --> 00:07:23,578
while he was having those procedures,

142
00:07:23,602 --> 00:07:25,681
as a result of which, he now can walk.

143
00:07:25,705 --> 00:07:30,165
While he was there, they sent tutors
around to help him with his schoolwork,

144
00:07:30,189 --> 00:07:33,166
and he worked very hard,
because there was nothing else to do.

145
00:07:33,190 --> 00:07:34,741
He ended up achieving at a level

146
00:07:34,765 --> 00:07:38,152
that had never before been contemplated
by any member of his family.

147
00:07:38,557 --> 00:07:41,653
He was the first one in his family,
in fact, to go to college,

148
00:07:41,677 --> 00:07:44,817
where he lived on campus
and drove a specially fitted car

149
00:07:44,841 --> 00:07:47,788
that accommodated his unusual body.

150
00:07:47,812 --> 00:07:50,917
And his mother told me the story
of coming home one day --

151
00:07:50,941 --> 00:07:52,612
and he went to college nearby --

152
00:07:52,636 --> 00:07:55,628
and she said, "I saw that car,
which you can always recognize,

153
00:07:55,652 --> 00:07:58,779
in the parking lot of a bar," she said.

154
00:07:58,803 --> 00:08:00,176
(Laughter)

155
00:08:00,200 --> 00:08:01,938
"And I thought to myself,

156
00:08:01,962 --> 00:08:04,599
'They're six feet tall,
he's three feet tall.

157
00:08:04,623 --> 00:08:07,032
Two beers for them
is four beers for him.'"

158
00:08:07,056 --> 00:08:09,866
She said, "I knew I couldn't
go in there and interrupt him,

159
00:08:09,890 --> 00:08:13,268
but I went home, and I left him
eight messages on his cell phone."

160
00:08:13,933 --> 00:08:15,388
She said, "And then I thought,

161
00:08:15,412 --> 00:08:17,510
if someone had said to me,
when he was born,

162
00:08:17,534 --> 00:08:21,240
that my future worry would be
that he'd go drinking and driving

163
00:08:21,264 --> 00:08:22,757
with his college buddies ..."

164
00:08:22,781 --> 00:08:24,352
(Laughter)

165
00:08:24,376 --> 00:08:31,353
(Applause)

166
00:08:31,861 --> 00:08:33,026
And I said to her,

167
00:08:33,050 --> 00:08:35,522
"What do you think you did
that helped him to emerge

168
00:08:35,546 --> 00:08:38,395
as this charming, accomplished,
wonderful person?"

169
00:08:38,419 --> 00:08:41,064
And she said, "What did I do?

170
00:08:41,088 --> 00:08:43,146
I loved him, that's all.

171
00:08:43,170 --> 00:08:46,564
Clinton just always had that light in him.

172
00:08:46,588 --> 00:08:51,554
And his father and I were lucky enough
to be the first to see it there."

173
00:08:52,887 --> 00:08:55,410
I'm going to quote
from another magazine of the '60s.

174
00:08:55,434 --> 00:08:58,070
This one is from 1968 --

175
00:08:58,094 --> 00:09:01,501
"The Atlantic Monthly,"
voice of liberal America --

176
00:09:01,525 --> 00:09:03,915
written by an important bioethicist.

177
00:09:03,939 --> 00:09:07,836
He said, "There is no
reason to feel guilty

178
00:09:07,860 --> 00:09:11,415
about putting a Down's
syndrome child away,

179
00:09:11,439 --> 00:09:16,404
whether it is 'put away' in the sense
of hidden in a sanitarium

180
00:09:16,428 --> 00:09:19,406
or in a more responsible, lethal sense.

181
00:09:20,189 --> 00:09:23,169
It is sad, yes. Dreadful.

182
00:09:23,193 --> 00:09:25,058
But it carries no guilt.

183
00:09:25,082 --> 00:09:29,213
True guilt arises only
from an offense against a person,

184
00:09:29,237 --> 00:09:32,598
and a Down's is not a person."

185
00:09:33,838 --> 00:09:37,617
There's been a lot of ink given
to the enormous progress that we've made

186
00:09:37,641 --> 00:09:39,665
in the treatment of gay people.

187
00:09:39,689 --> 00:09:43,918
The fact that our attitude has changed
is in the headlines every day.

188
00:09:43,942 --> 00:09:48,318
But we forget how we used to see people
who had other differences,

189
00:09:48,342 --> 00:09:50,641
how we used to see people
who were disabled,

190
00:09:50,665 --> 00:09:53,522
how inhuman we held people to be.

191
00:09:53,546 --> 00:09:55,753
And the change that's been
accomplished there,

192
00:09:55,777 --> 00:09:57,337
which is almost equally radical,

193
00:09:57,361 --> 00:10:00,382
is one that we pay
not very much attention to.

194
00:10:00,406 --> 00:10:04,104
One of the families I interviewed,
Tom and Karen Robards,

195
00:10:04,128 --> 00:10:07,660
were taken aback when,
as young and successful New Yorkers,

196
00:10:07,684 --> 00:10:10,635
their first child was diagnosed
with Down syndrome.

197
00:10:11,316 --> 00:10:15,466
They thought the educational opportunities
for him were not what they should be,

198
00:10:15,490 --> 00:10:19,319
and so they decided
they would build a little center --

199
00:10:19,343 --> 00:10:22,920
two classrooms that they started
with a few other parents --

200
00:10:22,944 --> 00:10:25,262
to educate kids with DS.

201
00:10:25,286 --> 00:10:29,346
And over the years, that center grew
into something called the Cooke Center,

202
00:10:29,370 --> 00:10:32,068
where there are now thousands
upon thousands of children

203
00:10:32,092 --> 00:10:33,741
with intellectual disabilities

204
00:10:33,765 --> 00:10:35,280
who are being taught.

205
00:10:35,304 --> 00:10:38,548
In the time since that "Atlantic
Monthly" story ran,

206
00:10:38,572 --> 00:10:43,095
the life expectancy for people
with Down syndrome has tripled.

207
00:10:43,119 --> 00:10:47,664
The experience of Down syndrome
people includes those who are actors,

208
00:10:47,688 --> 00:10:52,690
those who are writers, some who are able
to live fully independently in adulthood.

209
00:10:53,579 --> 00:10:55,419
The Robards had a lot to do with that.

210
00:10:55,443 --> 00:10:56,896
And I said, "Do you regret it?

211
00:10:56,920 --> 00:10:59,415
Do you wish your child
didn't have Down syndrome?

212
00:10:59,439 --> 00:11:01,264
Do you wish you'd never heard of it?"

213
00:11:01,288 --> 00:11:03,942
And interestingly, his father said,

214
00:11:03,966 --> 00:11:06,106
"Well, for David, our son, I regret it,

215
00:11:06,130 --> 00:11:09,598
because for David,
it's a difficult way to be in the world,

216
00:11:09,622 --> 00:11:12,427
and I'd like to give David an easier life.

217
00:11:12,451 --> 00:11:15,258
But I think if we lost
everyone with Down syndrome,

218
00:11:15,282 --> 00:11:17,643
it would be a catastrophic loss."

219
00:11:17,667 --> 00:11:20,932
And Karen Robards
said to me, "I'm with Tom.

220
00:11:20,956 --> 00:11:24,818
For David, I would cure it in an instant,
to give him an easier life.

221
00:11:24,842 --> 00:11:26,753
But speaking for myself --

222
00:11:26,777 --> 00:11:30,254
well, I would never have believed
23 years ago when he was born

223
00:11:30,278 --> 00:11:32,356
that I could come to such a point.

224
00:11:32,380 --> 00:11:36,691
Speaking for myself, it's made me
so much better and so much kinder

225
00:11:36,715 --> 00:11:41,621
and so much more purposeful in my whole
life that, speaking for myself,

226
00:11:41,645 --> 00:11:45,121
I wouldn't give it up
for anything in the world."

227
00:11:46,422 --> 00:11:50,440
We live at a point when social acceptance
for these and many other conditions

228
00:11:50,464 --> 00:11:52,087
is on the up and up.

229
00:11:52,111 --> 00:11:54,172
And yet we also live at the moment

230
00:11:54,196 --> 00:11:56,827
when our ability to eliminate
those conditions

231
00:11:56,851 --> 00:11:59,676
has reached a height
we never imagined before.

232
00:11:59,700 --> 00:12:02,548
Most deaf infants
born in the United States now

233
00:12:02,572 --> 00:12:04,548
will receive cochlear implants,

234
00:12:04,572 --> 00:12:09,280
which are put into the brain
and connected to a receiver,

235
00:12:09,304 --> 00:12:12,288
and which allow them to acquire
a facsimile of hearing

236
00:12:12,312 --> 00:12:14,435
and to use oral speech.

237
00:12:14,459 --> 00:12:18,700
A compound that has been tested
in mice, BMN-111,

238
00:12:18,724 --> 00:12:23,297
is useful in preventing
the action of the achondroplasia gene.

239
00:12:23,321 --> 00:12:26,276
Achondroplasia is the most common
form of dwarfism,

240
00:12:26,300 --> 00:12:28,388
and mice who have been given
that substance

241
00:12:28,412 --> 00:12:30,256
and who have the achondroplasia gene

242
00:12:30,280 --> 00:12:31,993
grow to full size.

243
00:12:32,017 --> 00:12:34,937
Testing in humans is around the corner.

244
00:12:34,961 --> 00:12:37,414
There are blood tests
which are making progress

245
00:12:37,438 --> 00:12:41,494
that would pick up Down syndrome
more clearly and earlier in pregnancies

246
00:12:41,518 --> 00:12:42,673
than ever before,

247
00:12:42,697 --> 00:12:47,587
making it easier and easier for people
to eliminate those pregnancies,

248
00:12:47,611 --> 00:12:48,934
or to terminate them.

249
00:12:48,958 --> 00:12:53,913
So we have both social progress
and medical progress.

250
00:12:53,937 --> 00:12:55,519
And I believe in both of them.

251
00:12:55,543 --> 00:12:59,834
I believe the social progress is fantastic
and meaningful and wonderful,

252
00:12:59,858 --> 00:13:02,816
and I think the same thing
about the medical progress.

253
00:13:02,840 --> 00:13:07,179
But I think it's a tragedy
when one of them doesn't see the other.

254
00:13:07,203 --> 00:13:09,251
And when I see the way
they're intersecting

255
00:13:09,275 --> 00:13:11,651
in conditions like the three
I've just described,

256
00:13:11,675 --> 00:13:15,296
I sometimes think it's like
those moments in grand opera

257
00:13:15,320 --> 00:13:17,877
when the hero realizes
he loves the heroine

258
00:13:17,901 --> 00:13:22,165
at the exact moment
that she lies expiring on a divan.

259
00:13:22,189 --> 00:13:24,564
(Laughter)

260
00:13:25,401 --> 00:13:28,876
We have to think about how we feel
about cures altogether.

261
00:13:28,900 --> 00:13:31,712
And a lot of the time
the question of parenthood is:

262
00:13:31,736 --> 00:13:33,487
What do we validate in our children,

263
00:13:33,511 --> 00:13:35,316
and what do we cure in them?

264
00:13:35,340 --> 00:13:39,487
Jim Sinclair, a prominent
autism activist, said,

265
00:13:39,511 --> 00:13:44,088
"When parents say, 'I wish
my child did not have autism,'

266
00:13:44,112 --> 00:13:48,923
what they're really saying is,
'I wish the child I have did not exist

267
00:13:48,947 --> 00:13:52,299
and I had a different,
nonautistic child instead.'

268
00:13:52,858 --> 00:13:57,964
Read that again. This is what we hear
when you mourn over our existence.

269
00:13:57,988 --> 00:14:01,013
This is what we hear
when you pray for a cure:

270
00:14:01,037 --> 00:14:05,439
that your fondest wish for us
is that someday we will cease to be,

271
00:14:05,463 --> 00:14:10,082
and strangers you can love
will move in behind our faces."

272
00:14:11,241 --> 00:14:13,710
It's a very extreme point of view,

273
00:14:13,734 --> 00:14:18,047
but it points to the reality
that people engage with the life they have

274
00:14:18,071 --> 00:14:22,612
and they don't want to be cured
or changed or eliminated.

275
00:14:22,636 --> 00:14:25,698
They want to be whoever it is
that they've come to be.

276
00:14:26,245 --> 00:14:29,856
One of the families
I interviewed for this project

277
00:14:29,880 --> 00:14:31,607
was the family of Dylan Klebold,

278
00:14:31,631 --> 00:14:35,016
who was one of the perpetrators
of the Columbine massacre.

279
00:14:35,040 --> 00:14:37,681
It took a long time
to persuade them to talk to me,

280
00:14:37,705 --> 00:14:40,329
and once they agreed,
they were so full of their story

281
00:14:40,353 --> 00:14:42,049
that they couldn't stop telling it,

282
00:14:42,073 --> 00:14:44,872
and the first weekend I spent
with them, the first of many,

283
00:14:44,896 --> 00:14:47,882
I recorded more than 20 hours
of conversation.

284
00:14:47,906 --> 00:14:49,928
And on Sunday night,
we were all exhausted.

285
00:14:49,952 --> 00:14:53,192
We were sitting in the kitchen.
Sue Klebold was fixing dinner.

286
00:14:53,216 --> 00:14:55,866
And I said, "If Dylan were here now,

287
00:14:55,890 --> 00:14:58,537
do you have a sense
of what you'd want to ask him?"

288
00:14:58,561 --> 00:15:00,765
And his father said, "I sure do.

289
00:15:00,789 --> 00:15:03,634
I'd want to ask him what the hell
he thought he was doing."

290
00:15:04,068 --> 00:15:07,326
And Sue looked at the floor,
and she thought for a minute.

291
00:15:08,286 --> 00:15:10,631
And then she looked back up and said,

292
00:15:10,655 --> 00:15:14,288
"I would ask him to forgive me
for being his mother

293
00:15:14,312 --> 00:15:17,393
and never knowing
what was going on inside his head."

294
00:15:18,586 --> 00:15:21,531
When I had dinner with her
a couple of years later --

295
00:15:21,555 --> 00:15:23,768
one of many dinners
that we had together --

296
00:15:23,792 --> 00:15:26,648
she said, "You know,
when it first happened,

297
00:15:26,672 --> 00:15:30,731
I used to wish that I had never married,
that I had never had children.

298
00:15:30,755 --> 00:15:34,182
If I hadn't gone to Ohio State
and crossed paths with Tom,

299
00:15:34,206 --> 00:15:35,903
this child wouldn't have existed,

300
00:15:35,927 --> 00:15:38,135
and this terrible thing
wouldn't have happened.

301
00:15:38,159 --> 00:15:42,188
But I've come to feel that I love
the children I had so much

302
00:15:42,212 --> 00:15:44,919
that I don't want to imagine
a life without them.

303
00:15:45,563 --> 00:15:48,410
I recognize the pain
they caused to others,

304
00:15:48,434 --> 00:15:50,548
for which there can be no forgiveness,

305
00:15:50,572 --> 00:15:54,131
but the pain they caused
to me, there is," she said.

306
00:15:54,155 --> 00:15:57,743
"So while I recognize that
it would have been better for the world

307
00:15:57,767 --> 00:16:00,313
if Dylan had never been born,

308
00:16:00,337 --> 00:16:04,532
I've decided that it would not
have been better for me."

309
00:16:06,420 --> 00:16:07,938
I thought it was surprising

310
00:16:07,962 --> 00:16:10,614
how all of these families
had all of these children

311
00:16:10,638 --> 00:16:12,104
with all of these problems,

312
00:16:12,128 --> 00:16:15,180
problems that they mostly
would have done anything to avoid,

313
00:16:15,204 --> 00:16:19,094
and that they had all found so much
meaning in that experience of parenting.

314
00:16:19,118 --> 00:16:22,241
And then I thought,
all of us who have children

315
00:16:22,265 --> 00:16:25,176
love the children we have,
with their flaws.

316
00:16:25,200 --> 00:16:29,129
If some glorious angel suddenly descended
through my living-room ceiling

317
00:16:29,153 --> 00:16:31,355
and offered to take away
the children I have

318
00:16:31,379 --> 00:16:33,708
and give me other, better children --

319
00:16:33,732 --> 00:16:37,178
more polite, funnier, nicer, smarter --

320
00:16:37,202 --> 00:16:38,411
(Laughter)

321
00:16:38,435 --> 00:16:43,029
I would cling to the children I have
and pray away that atrocious spectacle.

322
00:16:43,053 --> 00:16:44,422
And ultimately,

323
00:16:44,446 --> 00:16:48,931
I feel that in the same way that we test
flame-retardant pajamas in an inferno

324
00:16:48,955 --> 00:16:53,140
to ensure they won't catch fire
when our child reaches across the stove,

325
00:16:53,164 --> 00:16:57,177
so these stories of families
negotiating these extreme differences

326
00:16:57,201 --> 00:16:59,864
reflect on the universal
experience of parenting,

327
00:16:59,888 --> 00:17:04,408
which is always that sometimes,
you look at your child, and you think,

328
00:17:04,432 --> 00:17:06,368
"Where did you come from?"

329
00:17:06,392 --> 00:17:08,916
(Laughter)

330
00:17:08,940 --> 00:17:13,653
It turns out that while each of these
individual differences is siloed --

331
00:17:13,677 --> 00:17:16,462
there are only so many families
dealing with schizophrenia,

332
00:17:16,486 --> 00:17:19,084
only so many families
of children who are transgender,

333
00:17:19,108 --> 00:17:20,970
only so many families of prodigies --

334
00:17:20,994 --> 00:17:23,483
who also face similar
challenges in many ways --

335
00:17:23,507 --> 00:17:26,354
there are only so many families
in each of those categories.

336
00:17:26,378 --> 00:17:27,613
But if you start to think

337
00:17:27,637 --> 00:17:31,145
that the experience of negotiating
difference within your family

338
00:17:31,169 --> 00:17:33,248
is what people are addressing,

339
00:17:33,272 --> 00:17:36,593
then you discover that it's a nearly
universal phenomenon.

340
00:17:36,617 --> 00:17:38,247
Ironically, it turns out,

341
00:17:38,271 --> 00:17:41,679
that it's our differences
and our negotiation of difference

342
00:17:41,703 --> 00:17:42,957
that unite us.

343
00:17:43,832 --> 00:17:48,832
I decided to have children
while I was working on this project.

344
00:17:49,292 --> 00:17:52,490
And many people were astonished and said,

345
00:17:52,514 --> 00:17:54,513
"But how can you decide to have children

346
00:17:54,537 --> 00:17:57,518
in the midst of studying
everything that can go wrong?"

347
00:17:58,550 --> 00:18:01,656
And I said, "I'm not studying
everything that can go wrong.

348
00:18:01,680 --> 00:18:04,792
What I'm studying is how much
love there can be,

349
00:18:04,816 --> 00:18:08,856
even when everything appears
to be going wrong."

350
00:18:09,499 --> 00:18:15,040
I thought a lot about the mother
of one disabled child I had seen,

351
00:18:15,064 --> 00:18:18,650
a severely disabled child
who died through caregiver neglect.

352
00:18:18,674 --> 00:18:21,698
And when his ashes
were interred, his mother said,

353
00:18:22,745 --> 00:18:29,656
"I pray here for forgiveness
for having been twice robbed:

354
00:18:29,680 --> 00:18:32,392
once of the child I wanted,

355
00:18:32,416 --> 00:18:35,020
and once of the son I loved."

356
00:18:35,577 --> 00:18:40,107
And I figured it was possible,
then, for anyone to love any child,

357
00:18:40,131 --> 00:18:42,469
if they had the effective will to do so.

358
00:18:43,003 --> 00:18:47,966
So, my husband is the biological
father of two children

359
00:18:47,990 --> 00:18:50,095
with some lesbian friends in Minneapolis.

360
00:18:51,293 --> 00:18:54,802
I had a close friend from college
who'd gone through a divorce

361
00:18:54,826 --> 00:18:56,490
and wanted to have children.

362
00:18:56,514 --> 00:18:58,227
And so she and I have a daughter,

363
00:18:58,251 --> 00:19:00,466
and mother and daughter live in Texas.

364
00:19:00,490 --> 00:19:03,838
And my husband and I have a son
who lives with us all the time,

365
00:19:03,862 --> 00:19:06,222
of whom I am the biological father,

366
00:19:06,246 --> 00:19:09,970
and our surrogate
for the pregnancy was Laura,

367
00:19:09,994 --> 00:19:12,771
the lesbian mother
of Oliver and Lucy in Minneapolis.

368
00:19:12,795 --> 00:19:14,222
(Laughter)

369
00:19:14,246 --> 00:19:15,405
So --

370
00:19:15,429 --> 00:19:22,131
(Applause)

371
00:19:22,155 --> 00:19:26,530
The shorthand is: five parents
of four children in three states.

372
00:19:26,554 --> 00:19:27,648
(Laughter)

373
00:19:27,672 --> 00:19:30,680
And there are people who think
that the existence of my family

374
00:19:30,704 --> 00:19:35,193
somehow undermines or weakens
or damages their family.

375
00:19:35,217 --> 00:19:38,747
And there are people who think
that families like mine

376
00:19:38,771 --> 00:19:40,425
shouldn't be allowed to exist.

377
00:19:40,449 --> 00:19:44,349
And I don't accept
subtractive models of love,

378
00:19:44,373 --> 00:19:45,752
only additive ones.

379
00:19:46,137 --> 00:19:49,640
And I believe that in the same way
that we need species diversity

380
00:19:49,664 --> 00:19:52,089
to ensure that the planet can go on,

381
00:19:52,113 --> 00:19:56,390
so we need this diversity
of affection and diversity of family

382
00:19:56,414 --> 00:19:59,693
in order to strengthen
the ecosphere of kindness.

383
00:20:01,082 --> 00:20:03,480
The day after our son was born,

384
00:20:03,504 --> 00:20:05,943
the pediatrician came
into the hospital room

385
00:20:05,967 --> 00:20:07,858
and said she was concerned.

386
00:20:07,882 --> 00:20:11,000
He wasn't extending
his legs appropriately.

387
00:20:11,024 --> 00:20:13,561
She said that might mean
that he had brain damage.

388
00:20:13,585 --> 00:20:17,316
Insofar as he was extending them,
he was doing so asymmetrically,

389
00:20:17,340 --> 00:20:21,054
which she thought could mean that
there was a tumor of some kind in action.

390
00:20:21,078 --> 00:20:22,742
And he had a very large head,

391
00:20:22,766 --> 00:20:25,701
which she thought
might indicate hydrocephalus.

392
00:20:25,725 --> 00:20:27,613
And as she told me all of these things,

393
00:20:27,637 --> 00:20:31,458
I felt the very center of my being
pouring out onto the floor.

394
00:20:31,482 --> 00:20:33,930
And I thought, "Here I had been
working for years

395
00:20:33,954 --> 00:20:36,479
on a book about how much
meaning people had found

396
00:20:36,503 --> 00:20:40,136
in the experience of parenting
children who were disabled,

397
00:20:40,160 --> 00:20:43,638
and I didn't want to join their number

398
00:20:43,662 --> 00:20:46,436
because what I was encountering
was an idea of illness."

399
00:20:46,460 --> 00:20:49,202
And like all parents
since the dawn of time,

400
00:20:49,226 --> 00:20:52,203
I wanted to protect my child from illness.

401
00:20:52,227 --> 00:20:55,470
And I wanted, also,
to protect myself from illness.

402
00:20:55,494 --> 00:20:58,241
And yet, I knew from the work I had done

403
00:20:58,265 --> 00:21:02,081
that if he had any of the things
we were about to start testing for,

404
00:21:02,105 --> 00:21:05,068
that those would ultimately
be his identity,

405
00:21:05,092 --> 00:21:09,131
and if they were his identity,
they would become my identity,

406
00:21:09,155 --> 00:21:13,423
that that illness was going to take
a very different shape as it unfolded.

407
00:21:13,447 --> 00:21:16,576
We took him to the MRI machine,
we took him to the CAT scanner,

408
00:21:16,600 --> 00:21:20,384
we took this day-old child and gave him
over for an arterial blood draw.

409
00:21:20,408 --> 00:21:21,669
We felt helpless.

410
00:21:21,693 --> 00:21:23,350
And at the end of five hours,

411
00:21:23,374 --> 00:21:25,586
they said that his brain
was completely clear

412
00:21:25,610 --> 00:21:28,388
and that he was by then
extending his legs correctly.

413
00:21:28,412 --> 00:21:31,412
And when I asked the pediatrician
what had been going on,

414
00:21:31,436 --> 00:21:35,596
she said she thought in the morning,
he had probably had a cramp.

415
00:21:35,620 --> 00:21:39,071
(Laughter)

416
00:21:39,095 --> 00:21:40,357
But I thought --

417
00:21:40,381 --> 00:21:44,306
(Laughter)

418
00:21:44,330 --> 00:21:46,929
I thought how my mother was right.

419
00:21:46,953 --> 00:21:50,425
I thought, "The love you have
for your children

420
00:21:50,449 --> 00:21:53,811
is unlike any other feeling in the world.

421
00:21:53,835 --> 00:21:58,508
And until you have children,
you don't know what it feels like.

422
00:22:00,158 --> 00:22:02,294
I think children had ensnared me

423
00:22:02,318 --> 00:22:05,320
the moment I connected
fatherhood with loss.

424
00:22:06,138 --> 00:22:08,172
But I'm not sure I would have noticed that

425
00:22:08,196 --> 00:22:12,540
if I hadn't been so in the thick
of this research project of mine.

426
00:22:13,462 --> 00:22:16,578
I'd encountered so much strange love,

427
00:22:16,602 --> 00:22:20,323
and I fell very naturally
into its bewitching patterns.

428
00:22:20,347 --> 00:22:26,220
And I saw how splendor can illuminate
even the most abject vulnerabilities.

429
00:22:27,206 --> 00:22:30,988
During these 10 years,
I had witnessed and learned

430
00:22:31,012 --> 00:22:34,564
the terrifying joy
of unbearable responsibility,

431
00:22:34,588 --> 00:22:37,676
and I had come to see
how it conquers everything else.

432
00:22:38,264 --> 00:22:42,313
And while I had sometimes thought
the parents I was interviewing were fools,

433
00:22:42,337 --> 00:22:47,334
enslaving themselves to a lifetime's
journey with their thankless children

434
00:22:47,358 --> 00:22:50,516
and trying to breed
identity out of misery,

435
00:22:50,540 --> 00:22:55,163
I realized that day that my research
had built me a plank

436
00:22:55,187 --> 00:22:57,701
and that I was ready
to join them on their ship.

437
00:22:58,581 --> 00:22:59,789
Thank you.

438
00:22:59,813 --> 00:23:06,792
(Applause and cheers)

439
00:23:08,096 --> 00:23:09,246
Thank you.