LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters with Karen Ocamb cover art

LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters with Karen Ocamb

LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters with Karen Ocamb

By: Karen Ocamb
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Karen Ocamb has a broadly informed and deeply experienced view of what it means to be an LGBTQ+ freedom fighter. A journalist since 1973, when she clerked for Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and Bob Schieffer at CBS News, to producing coverage of the 1984 Olympics for CBS affiliates, Karen joined the “gay press” in the late 1980s after losing more than 100 friends to AIDS. Believing that “the personal is political,” she hopes to inform and inspire intersectional LGBTQ+ people through these shared conversations and stories to find their own power and joy in this long fight for freedom and equality.

Check Karen’s LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack for editorial context for the interviews. A note: AIDS Healthcare Foundation is a sponsor of this Substack. This podcast is distributed through partnership with the Los Angeles Blade.Copyright Pod Xperience Network
Episodes
  • AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein on Keeping America’s Promise.

    AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein on Keeping America’s Promise.
    Jul 14 2026
    Michael Weinstein co-founded AHF in 1987 in Los Angeles as AIDS Hospice Foundation to provide a caring, dignified death for those treated like lepers during the AIDS Crisis. He built the healthcare agency into an award-winning $3 billion nonprofit with 10,000 employees serving 3 million patients in 50 countries, including war-torn Ukraine and earthquake-ravaged Venezuela. Here we talk about politics, his long association with Sen. Bernie Sanders, his disputes with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on housing, and his fight to restore AIDS funding in Florida. A senior, married gay man who still gets goosebumps driving by the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, Weinstein says, “It’s up to us individually and collectively to bring out the best in us.”
    (See the download of the interview here) For editorial context: “AHF vs DIVIDED AMERICA” (Part 1 of Weinstein interview); “Is America on the Brink of a Makeover?” (Part 2 of Weinstein interview)

    AIDS Healthcare Foundation: https://www.aidshealth.org/
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    54 mins
  • Longtime West Hollywood Politico John Duran Marries Longtime Partner Mark Morris

    Longtime West Hollywood Politico John Duran Marries Longtime Partner Mark Morris
    Jul 14 2026
    On May 3, civil rights and defense attorney John Duran and Mark Morris, his partner of 27 years, were married in West Hollywood before family and forever friends. The wedding was officiated by Duran’s first legal and political mentor, attorney Diane Abbitt, an image that softly represented an arc of defiant LGBTQ+ love through California history from MECLA to LIFE AIDS Lobby to ANGLE to EQCA. “I think one of the most painful lessons that we learned around HIV and AIDS and around Karen Thompson and Sharon Kowalski’s story was that our relationships without legal protections would be really painful if a partner is sick, hospitalized, or dies. And we learned those very painful lessons and realized that equality of marriage was gonna be the remedy that we would seek long term,” Duran says during our conversation. After the Supreme Court scuttled women’s reproductive rights and eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, ending marriage equality may be next on the Trump/Project 2025 agenda.

    For editorial and historical context: When Is a Kiss More Than Just a Kiss? When It’s Been ‘Forged in Fire’ https://karenocamb.substack.com/p/when-is-a-kiss-more-than-just-a-kiss
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    38 mins
  • “Moms Club” Documentary Tells Moms’ Story Fighting MAGA Schoolboard Takeovers

    “Moms Club” Documentary Tells Moms’ Story Fighting MAGA Schoolboard Takeovers
    Jul 14 2026
    The Supreme Court ruling allowing states to ban trans girls and women athletes from playing school sports didn’t garner many headlines. But, New York Times columnist M. Gessen wrote, members of the court are “arguing about something more fundamental than the law. They are arguing about who should be seen, whose story ought to be heard and who deserves to be protected.” That’s what filmmakers Rocky Romano and Miranda Winters expose in their new documentary “Moms Club.” The film follows regular moms who find each other and speak up against the tyranny of MAGA schoolboard members’ ugly attacks on trans kids in Southern California. Since this interview with co-director Winters and her wife, co-executive producer Rayna Zemel, MAGA Chino Valley school board member Sonja Shaw became the top vote-getter in California’s June 2 Primary for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

    For editorial context: Trans & Queer Youth are Being Harmed by Anti-Trans Protesters “Saving” their Kids

    “Moms Club” documentary: https://www.momsclubfilm.com/

    SCOTUS Blog explains trans ruling: https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-states-can-exclude-transgender-athletes-from-girls-and-womens-sports-teams/
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    34 mins
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