‘In the Life’ Examines Stonewall-Garland Link

“In the Life” is one of TV’s most valuable resources.

The bimonthly newsmagazine on gays returns to KCET Sunday night with another smart, skillfully reported, wide-ranging episode that should interest straight viewers too. This one opens by exploring a possible link between the 1969 death of gay icon Judy Garland and the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village. Many regard that clash with police on the eve of her funeral--which is commemorated in the closing segment as well--as kick-starting the gay-rights movement.

The work here is blue chip, from a piece on Miami-based Project YES, which works with local organizations to assist gay and bisexual youths, to a captivating profile of African American Rev. Irene Monroe, an outspoken critic of black churches and the Nation of Islam for their treatment of gays and women. Their bias, she charges, is “pandemic throughout the entire African American community.”

There’s also a delightful segment on Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, who talks candidly about her career and life as a lesbian.

Best of all, though, is a splendid piece on Jim Brewer and Dale Riffle, a compassionate gay couple running PIGS, a Sanctuary, a rural West Virginia haven for exotic and other animals that have been abused or rejected by their owners. How appropriate that the star of the segment is one of their residents, a charismatic pot-bellied pig named Rufus.

This sanctuary has received a good bit of publicity, and for a time, Riffle says, he did mainstream interviews with Brewer not present, out of concern that contributions would dry up if it was known they are a twosome.

“We didn’t want the animals to suffer because we were a gay couple,” he says. The worry was unfounded, for after they disclosed their relationship, contributions zoomed.

The only disappointing story here is the opener, which though highly watchable--what’s not to like about footage of a singing Judy Garland?--only vaguely defines the Stonewall riots and offers no definitive reason for Garland’s “grip on the gay community.”

Someone suggests that her strength, not her suffering is what gay men identify with. Yet why her as opposed to some other supremely gifted pop diva? The answer must lie somewhere over the rainbow.

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* “In the Life” airs at 11 p.m. Sunday on KCET.