Audio Interviews and Transcripts

Interview with Bryan Thompson
by Adam Quimby

This is the interview Adam conducted with Bryan Thompson, DeKalb (NY) Town Historian. Bryan grew up in nearby Gouverneur, NY and attended Cornell University. He had no idea how to define his sexuality until going to college; he only knew that he was different. He eventually came out as gay. He has been living in DeKalb, NY for the past twenty years as an openly gay man. While many people choose to avoid the topic of LGBT discrimination in the North Country, Bryan thoughtfully discussed the discrimination he has witnessed. You can read a part of the interview below in the transcript typed out by the student or listen to the full interview in the audio player below.


From 33:00 to 38:00

Bryan: …Um, the baby, the baby died, and we weren’t able to adopt it ‘cause the only thing that would have saved it would have been a heart transplant at birth. And, we were in shock, and our lawyer went on vacation. Two days later the lawyer’s secretary who had been the one calling us and telling us what was going on, who was as devastated as we were by all of this, called us and said Gold is out of town and I’m going to initial these papers for you. There is a baby born in Kansas; if you can get there within 12 hours, you can have this baby.

Adam: (chuckles) Oh my gosh.

Bryan: So, I mean, we were, our baby had just died, and Gary got on a plane in Ottawa. He had to go to Ottawa, he found a flight, and it cost like $1200 because it was a last-minute flight to Kansas City, and picked up Julia, and but couldn’t leave because there was no Interstate Compact. And he waited and waited, and she was a tiny baby. I’m so glad that she wasn’t our first because I would have been terrified, she weighed five pounds, and you felt like you were going to break her in half every time you put clothes on her. Um, but anyways, eventually we got the Interstate Compact, and we brought Julia home. Uh, now with the babies I forgot to mention, the way we were able to adopt them at that time was Gary adopted as a single parent in the state, in Texas Isaac, and afterwards I applied in New York State, had a court ruling and I was able to apply as a second parent, to adopt Isaac. So we did all of the paperwork with a local attorney and we didn’t know anything about adoption, nobody had told us what to expect, we didn’t know we could bring friends, and so we didn’t. We went to the courthouse ready to adopt Isaac, we walked into the courthouse. Here we are, like just like in a TV courtroom, there’s just the judge up there on the bench and we’re standing down there with our attorney waiting to go. She starts going through the stuff and she made a, um, started to make this, to proceed. Suddenly the fire-exit by to the left of where she, her bench is in the courtroom, opens up. And even though family court proceedings are secret and no one is allowed to tell anybody, 20-some employees of the county clerk and the county clerk’s office walked into the room and stood against the wall with their hands folded like this, scowling at us.

Adam: That’s terrible.

Bryan: Yes, it’s absolutely terrible and no one was charged, no one did anything, but it was an absolute violation of law to have told all those people. And they stood there and scowled at us, and I think we were the only ones that ever had that happen. I know other people have done second-parent adoptions since and that didn’t happen. The first adoption was two women and they didn’t know about it, nobody told, but with us they told everybody in the courthouse. So that all of those people that disapproved could come and scowl at us, but the Judge, Kathleen Rogers… Um… (Starts crying)… Give me a minute…

Adam: Sure, take your time.

Bryan: Anyway, she made an incredible statement, about how she has straight couples come in all the time, that had been married three months and they claim it, and I grant them the right to be parents and they’ve only been together 3 months and they are going to become adoptive parents of the other person’s child. And here I have a couple who have been together for eight years… (pauses to cry) Anyway, excuse me.

Adam: You’re ok… I’m sorry to put you through this.

Bryan: Yeah, it’s ok. And then the second time when I adopted Julia, she just said were not going to have a circus, like we had the last time, and were going to do this in my chambers; so we did it in her private office. And it was great. But, it just really bothers me because um, one of the things, being a very open gay person here, is that we don’t get a lot of support from other gay people that like to pretend that there’s no discrimination here, and that there never has been, as long as you keep quiet, and it’s just that we don’t keep quiet enough, that we have problems. But, that’s just not the case...