“Keith and the Girl,” a popular comedy podcast out of New York City, is celebrating Pride month by drawing attention to LGBT-rights issues.
The shows hosts, comedian Keith Malley (aka Keith) and reggae artist and singer Chemda (aka The Girl), recently celebrated the eight-year anniversary of the show, with more than 1,800 episodes recorded.
“We started the show while we were dating,” Chemda said. “We broke up while we were doing the show. We actually never skipped a show because of our breakup. We broke up an hour before we were about to record a live show and there was no difference. Keith and I are really good on-air together. Off-air … maybe we shouldn’t live together.”
As the show evolved, so did the hosts’ views on LGBT issues.
“We had a listener who was transgender and was 18 and was talking to us about getting a sex change,” Chemda said. “I really didn’t understand it and now I’m dating a transgender person. We’re helping educate everybody about what that means emotionally and what it means to everybody else. It’s really about everybody being themselves and just everybody acknowledging it. Whether you are in the LGBT spectrum or not, everyone just wants to be acknowledged for who they are.”
“I’m learning more,” Malley said. “I’ve been doing the show for eight years so I’m learning more and society is learning more. Eight years is so long. I’m sure eight years ago, if I saw a guy doing something effeminate, I would have thought nothing of using the F-word. Now if I hear Eminem, I think, Dude, what’s your problem?”
Given the recent rash of antigay violence in New York City, hopefully the rest of the city will undergo a similar evolution.
Chemda said she and her girlfriend Lauren have been the targets of antigay verbal abuse.
“When Lauren and I walk down the street, we sometimes get yelled at by people and we’ve had slurs thrown at us,” she said. “But we talk about it like we talk about any gross thing that happened or anything that is relevant to anybody on the show.”
Keith said he thinks someday people will look back on this chapter of history and be puzzled by the bigotry.
“When you see a movie like ‘The Help,’ it shows what a different time that was,” he said. “It was crazy that we treated black people a certain way. One day, it’s going to hit us in the face when we’re watching ‘The Help 2: The Gays.’ We’ll be like, ‘Whoa, they weren’t treated like regular people!’ We’re going to be grandparents and our grandchildren are going ask why we didn’t want gay people to get married.”
“It’s weird to hold people back from something like marriage,” Chemda added. “And by the way, the sanctity of marriage, when you can go to Vegas and get completely drunk and get married to someone you just met? Please! With politicians cheating on their wives left and right, if you want to talk about the sanctity of marriage, I don’t know if anyone should get married.”
Speaking of marriage, to celebrate Pride month, Keith and The Girl will be booking queer guests throughout the month as well as celebrating the anniversary of New York’s marriage-equality law.
“We celebrate all the time,” Chemda said. “We’re big advocates. Keith is actually getting married in the middle of the month and has picked his brother, who is gay, to marry him and his wife. One of the guests is my girlfriend. It’s weird that I’m even using female pronouns because, although she is born female, she is male. We’ll also have people like Judy Gold and Ben Lerman [from Logo TV] on the show and just people who have been on throughout the history of the show.”
Keith and The Girl’s comedy podcasts are available online and on iTunes. For more information, visit www.keithandthegirl.com.