Ruthie Berman: Shares Her Epic, Decades-Long Love Story
"I deserve better in my golden years than what I have now. The world sucks. America is in the worst place in my history that it's ever been and I'm concerned about my community."
Ruthie Berman was in her 40s when she kissed her best friend, Connie Kurtz, for the first time.
"I was in another world. I was in another space in the way I was behaving. It was totally different than anything I had experienced."
This was the 1970s, with both married to men, both mothers, both members of the same small Jewish community in Brooklyn. But Berman felt something she realized she'd never felt before: she was falling head-over-heels in love.
After the kiss, Berman asked her, "Can't you do better than that?" They kissed again and they kept kissing for the next 40 years.
In the fourth episode of our new LGBTQ+ Elders Project, Ruthie Berman shares the details of her epic, decades-long love story. She talks about their activism, including successfully suing the New York City Board of Education for domestic partner benefits in 1988, adjusting to living alone for the first time now in her 80s, and reflects on how much has and hasn't changed for LGBTQ+ people since she came out almost 50 years ago.
"I deserve better in my golden years than what I have now. The world sucks. America is in the worst place in my history that it's ever been and I'm concerned about my community."
And we talk about it in the interview, but I highly recommend you also watch this clip of Ruthie on The Phil Donahue Show in 1988.
It gives me chills.
Thanks for listening.
See (hear) you next week.
-Jeffrey