The Last Closet | Moira Greyland Peat

Those of you who follow us on Facebook

may wonder why we have

things like this on Facebook.

And I do hope everyone is following us

on Facebook.

But if you do follow us
on Facebook

you know that we have a laugh

in the afternoon everyday.

Can you all see that? OK

So, you know, we have things

like this or things like this one.

This one was just up earlier this week.

It's a scientist's tip on how you tell an

alligator from a crocodile,

by whether the animal will see you later

or in a while. That's how you can tell

OK. There's another way you can tell

the difference between them

and that is if the animal is singing

and dancing and playing a musical

instrument, it's certainly an alligator

Crocodiles would never do anything

like that, so why do we do this?

Why are we 'yucking' it up all the time

Well, the fact is that the topics we

deal with on a regular basis
are very grim.

We deal with a lot of dark stuff.

As you just saw, our previous speaker,

practically in tears,

And he's not the only one that's going

through this type of stuff.

And one of the least fun things that

we deal with now is child abuse.

These are not fun things to deal with.

So we laugh, we try to yuck it up and have

a good time, because if we don't,

we'll give up. We gotta be in it for the

long haul, which means you gotta be

able to, you know, have some fun once

in a while. So that's why we have

stupid alligators and chick magnets

and things like that on our website

every afternoon.

So, I mentioned this pamphlet,

"Do you know a survivor

of the Sexual Revolution?"

If you open that up and study it,

you will not see survivors

of sexual abuse on there.

And the reason they're not on there

is because when I was working this out in

2013, I said to myself: "Well you know

there's always been sexual abuse,

it isn't really fair to attribute that to

the Sexual Revolution.
And besides, look at

all these other stuff we have to work on.

Isn't this enough for one organization?

And besides, secretly, I didn't want to

deal with it because it's not really...

It's awful. No one really wants to deal

with it, but then last year

these issues started coming up, with the

sexual harassment issues with

Harvey Weinstein and all of these things

And you could kind of see that the girls

were trying to solve the #metoo movement

but they weren't really going to get it

done because they were kind of hanging

on to the Sexual Revolution.

They were hanging onto things they

shouldn't be hanging on to.

And, so I thought:
"You know, maybe we need

to be talking about this". And then

the whole thing broke with
the clergy sexual abuse

within the Catholic Church, and then I

just became really convinced

"yeah, we gotta deal with it".
the Reuben Institutes got to deal with it.

First off, nobody else will deal with

the broad spectrum of the Sexual

Revolution like we will, so therefore

we're the only guys in the field.

But also the Sexual Revolution is deeply

implicated in this whole thing.

For this reason, the Sexual Revolution is

a set of ideas, and those ideas

empower predators. They encourage

predators. The core idea of the

Sexual Revolution is that everybody is

entitled to sex! Everybody is entitled to

guilt-free, child-free, problem-free sex.

And anybody who says otherwise is

violating your human rights, for crying

out loud!
Who really thinks

you're entitled to sex? I mean come on,

that's the view of a rapist. That's not

real to think you're entitled to sex.

So that one idea, has many tentacles

and is a very poisonous idea. And at the

same time, these ideas also undermine the

victims. They disarm the victims.

And so the Sexual Revolution is profoundly

implicated in the whole thing. And so,

that's what motivated me to reach out

to our next speaker, Moira Greyland Peat,

whom we're going to honour as

the public witness of the year.

I met Moira at an event sponsored by

in Texas, and I heard her story of growing

up with openly, actively gay and

lesbian parents. She's the author of the

best selling book The Last Closet and

she's the daughter of famous gay

authors, Marion Zimmer Bradley and

Walter Breen. And this is a photo of Moira

there, in the center, with her mother

and her brother. Her mother was the

author of this series of books,

The Mists of Avalon. She was married to

Walter Breen, who was also a famous author.

Moira's mother had a long-time lesbian

lover, and Walter Breen lived an active

homosexual life and was himself an

unrepentant child molester. Both of her

parents sexual abused Moira and her

brother for years. And since they were

famous authors, and icons really, in the

science fiction community, people didn't

really do much about it.

Her father enjoyed being in hot tubs

with children. Sometimes without any

clothes on. He would encourage

kids to get into the hot tub with him

without any clothes on. And numerous

adults saw or could have seen that the

kids were being groomed.

And really, for all practical purposes,

nobody did anything about it.

As a teenager, Moira called the police

on her father, when she caught him

in the act of molesting a 11-year-old boy

Her father was arrested, put in prison,

where he died, and her family considered

this an act of betrayal. Rather than

denying what her father did, her mother

said, "well children have the right to

make up their own lines about having sex

with adults".
Her father had made his views

clear in this book called Greek Love

and a journal called The Journal of

Greek Love, which she edited.

In 2014, Moira revealed all these things

about her parents. People were shocked,

and she was shocked to find how many

people who were also children of gays,

reached out to her with similar stories.

So The Last Closet, Moira's book,

is not simply a tale of victimization

its also a tale that explains
how her parents

became who they became.

But Moira regards herself as lucky in one way,

her lifelong pain resulted

in workholism and as a result,
she is a successful professional

musician. You wrote this, Girl.

I'm taking this right off your bio.
(laughter)

She is the founder and former artistic

director of the Royal English Opera.

She is an award-winning dramatic colour true

soprano with a nearly five-octave range.

She is an accomplished concert harpist,

singer, composer, recruiting artist and

movie actress.
Tonight... oops.

Tonight, we're gonna hear her

tell her story and perhaps, recite

a poem or two from her work.

But, first of all, help me welcome our

Ruth Institute Public Witness of the Year

awardee Moira Greyland.
(Audience applause)

Thank you so much, Moira ...

Thank you.

(Moira) Good evening, How are you doing?

Usually when I'm in front of a

crowd of people i'm sitting in the corner

with a harp and i don't have to talk

i'm just going to sit there,
(hums)

I'm the radio and that is i think very much

how i felt about my parents

for a long time. I'm just going to watch

and not say anything
i want just

to play the harp over here.

anyway Doug.. who is a wonderful witness

in his own right, contacted me

this afternoon and asked me to send him

a text of my speech.

Now since I'm usually speak
extemporaneously

usually...
in the one speaking occasion I had

before this, so I didn't have any text

to send him but i thought he wants me to

send the text I better write some.

thus the podium.
I'm sure I'll look

at it eventually.

In any case.
First of all, I wanted

to talk to you about growing up straight

and closeted. Yes closeted. My book is

called "The Last Closet". Am I saying:

"Alas! I'm the closet because I'm that

horrible of a sexual person who has no

refuge and it is so very sad?"

No? It's because i was growing

up in a family of gay people, and I was

straight, and when i finally was able

to admit this to my parents, they were

incensed.
Because my job as a child of gays

is to make them feel good.

Is to make them happy about themselves.

I will give a very extreme example

of what happens when we, children of gays,

cannot be the perfect advocates

that our needy, victimised parents need us

to be.
A little while ago there was a

case that was big in the news
and it was

of a married lesbian couple and their six

adopted children.
When CPS was closing in

to investigate the starvation and terrible

brutality that these children were

subjected to.
Rather than let these children talk

about what happened to them,
the mother dosed the children and her wife

with Benadryl and drove all eight of them
off a cliff.

I understood this story
and followed it closely, because

I really understood how it was
that the most important thing

in the gay family is to make sure that
the children approve, approve, approve.

that is why we are there! If we do not approve.
we don't deserve to be alive.

Now, that's heavy as hell. I am sorry about that.
Back to my speech! It's all here!

OK. My name is Moira Greyland.
I am the daughter of two gay authors.

my mother is famous science fiction author, Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Author of the Arthurian series,
the bestselling book,
The Mists of Avalon.

The MoA is a re-telling of the King Arthur legend
from a feminist perspective.

Naturally, the only way the only way to get Arthur, Gwenievere and Lancelot

into bed together at the same time

is to throw history, religion and good manners out of the window!

which is very much what happened in our family.

my father is famous numismatic author,
Walter Breen.

Between the two of them,

they were well over 100 books.

my parents were both sexually abused as children.
And both had broken relationships

with their opposite sex parents, while desperately
needing the love and approval of their same sex parent.

My mother was repeatedly raped by her
drunken father in the front seat of their truck,

where she would drive far away
from her farm house so

her screams would not be heard.
When she finally got the nerve to

call the cops,

(whispers) Its a tradition now, I guess,

(regular) her father was arrested.
But her mother forced her

to drop the charges,
rather than the sole provider imprisoned.

My father was brought up
in an orphanage,

where his adoptive mother worked
as a janitor.

he hated her for her harsh punishments,

and what he viewed as her religious
excesses.

She put him in a monastery
when he was eleven.

hoping he would become a priest.
All he would say about his exposure

to the priests was that the experiences
he had with them was the

only love he had ever known.
He was hidden from his adoptive

father when they divorced
and he always longed for

his missing father.
Both my parents identified

as gay long before they met.
My mother had lesbian relationships

in her teens, which did not stop her
from marrying a man at 19 and having

my oldest brother, David.
she ended up hating her first husband

for forcing her into repeated abortions.
and when she told him she would

never have another abortion,
he simply stopped sleeping

with her.
her liaisons with women continued.

my father already preferred boys
from his teenage years on.

his first arrest was in 1954
for exposing himself to a young boy

on a boardwalk in Atlantic City.
He was involved with a famous doctor,

Doctor Shelden, who was
into eugenics... nice fellow.

In a set of experiments in Colombia University,
called The Super Kids,
which was about high IQ children.

Now I am not convinced that all these boys
were necessarily so high 'IQ'ed.

But I am absolutely convinced that all these boys
had in common is that they were available.

because for some strange reason, all these boys
ended up being paedophiles themselves.

even on that day, my father was using sci-fic

conventions to groom his young targets.
My parents met through sci-fic fandoms

and through mutual memberships at MENSA,
which is another story.

my father was already well known
as a paedophile in sci-fic circles.

but since counter cultures back
in the 60s were reluctant to reject anyone,

he was tolerated.
the scandal called Breendoggle

that is B-R-E-E-N D-O-G-G-L-E, is online.
you can read what happened.

it contains eye witness reports of my father
publicly molesting about 10 children.

and when I say children, I mean,
children under the age of 12.

the youngest one was a little girl

who was 3. And this was in front
of other people.

nobody stopped him. The closest anyone came
to stopping him

was the mother saying that she was

going to order her children to barricade

themselves in their rooms if he came to visit

That was as far as anyone would go.

(Pause)

A few people hated him. Others wondered

whether he was actually harming the kids,

yet others were oblivious.

Some even claimed that they didn't like one

of the boys he was sleeping with.

So what happened to the little bastard?
Is what they said.

my mother walked fully into the scandal

fully cognisant and ready to marry my father.

Did my mother object to my father's actions?

Not on a tint pipe.

Admidst public denials, she welcomed the 10-year-old

boy he was sleeping with to bed
with both of them!