Morty Maniford on how the inside is more important than the outside -- he won't live a lie.

In 1975, only six years after Stonewall, Geraldo Rivera on network television did something almost unheard of -- gave gay men and lesbians a national platform to speak for themselves.

In this rare episode of Good Night America, "Coming Out of the Closet" goes inside Harry's Back East, a Manhattan gay bar. It sits down with people who had just come out to their children, their parents and their coworkers. And it hosts one of the earliest televised debates on gay rights, teaching and "legislating morality".

The emotional center of the episode is Morty Manford and his mother, Jeanne Manford. Jeanne is the schoolteacher who marched beside her son and went on to help found the group that became PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Her message to parents of gay children still hits hard almost 50 years later: "I'm a teacher, and everybody knows that I have a gay son, and I'm not ashamed of him"

Massachusetts State Representative Elaine Noble, one of the first openly gay people elected to a state legislature in America, and writer and professor Arnie Kantrowitz, former vice president of the Gay Activists Alliance, face off against David DePue of the Coalition of Christian Citizens.

DePue wants California's proposed sex-freedom law defeated and gay teachers kept out of classrooms. Kantrowitz answers with one of the sharpest lines of the era: he tells his students he's gay so they can "see a real, live one and know that I don't have horns."

This episode is a remarkable piece of LGBTQ history, a snapshot of the coming-out conversation when it was brand new to American living rooms, and an important document of early gay history on 70s talk show television.

Archival 1975 broadcast presented for historical and educational purposes. Language and viewpoints reflect the era.

Guests in this episode:
Jeanne Manford - teacher, mother, PFLAG founder
Morty Manford - gay rights activist
Elaine Noble - Massachusetts State Representative
Arnie Kantrowitz - professor, writer, former VP of the Gay Activists Alliance
David DePue - co-chairman, Coalition of Christian Citizens
Lee - grandmother who came out to her children
Kevin - came out to his parents at 17
Patrons of Harry's Back East, New York City

Chapters:
00:00 - "The love that dare not speak its name"
00:43 - Coming Out of the Closet: America in 1975
01:13 - Inside Harry's Back East, a Manhattan gay bar
01:48 - Coming out on the job
02:47 - "Nothing at all wrong with homosexuality"
04:23 - The problem of invisibility
05:32 - Would gay people rather be straight?
06:07 - Gay relationships and home life
07:07 - Lee tells her children
08:08 - Kevin tells his parents at 17
08:44 - Morty and Jeanne Manford
11:51 - A mother's response and the birth of a movement
13:45 - Jeanne Manford's advice to parents
14:31 - David DePue: "stay in the closet"
15:23 - The fight over California's Sex Freedom Act
16:04 - Can you legislate morality?
18:11 - Elaine Noble and Arnie Kantrowitz join the debate
20:16 - "What I do in my bedroom"
21:04 - Should gay teachers be in classrooms?
22:42 - Michelangelo, Plato and the teaching debate
24:22 - Closing

This day, Geraldo's Television History.

Violence begets violence. Is there justification? 1992