Karel Bouley: LGBTQ Broadcaster, Activist & Media Trailblazer

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/25

Charles Karel Bouley—professionally known as Karel—is a trailblazing LGBTQ broadcaster, entertainer, and activist. As half of the first openly gay duo in U.S. drive-time radio, he made history while shaping California law on LGBTQ wrongful death cases. Karel rose to prominence as the #1 talk show host on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles and KGO AM 810 in San Francisco, later expanding to Free Speech TV and the Karel Cast podcast. His work spans journalism (HuffPost, The Advocate, Billboard), television (CNN, MSNBC), and music. A voting member of NARAS, GALECA, and SAG-AFTRA, Karel now lives and creates in Las Vegas.

In this candid interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, talk show host Karel Bouley reflects on decades of LGBTQ+ struggle, resilience, and activism. From the AIDS crisis to the fight for marriage equality, Bouley emphasizes how queer communities have survived and thrived—even without corporate sponsorship. He critiques performative allyship, highlighting the difference between marketing gestures and real support, and stresses the need for grassroots community funding during lean times. Bouley also shares personal stories from his radio career, where he often clashed with expectations from both straight and gay audiences. Looking ahead, he calls for renewed alliances, authentic activism, and unshakable queer visibility.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are here with Charles Karel Bouley, known professionally as Karel. He is an award-winning LGBTQ broadcaster, entertainer, singer, author, and activist. Karel, thank you very much for joining me in Las Vegas. 

Charles Karel Bouley: Where it is hot, yes.

Jacobsen: What is it—Celsius or Fahrenheit—right now?

Bouley: Right now, it is 103°F.

Jacobsen: That is a lot. 

Bouley: And NARAS is the Grammys, by the way. Yes, I vote on the Grammy Awards.

Jacobsen: A friend of mine used to write for Jimmy Kimmel Live! for twelve years, but I am not as up to speed on the initialisms and acronyms of American Hollywood as I probably should be. So, thank you very much for joining me today.

Bouley: No worries.

Jacobsen: So, how has political backlash reshaped corporate sponsorship of Pride events in 2024 and 2025, and moving forward?

Bouley: Well, you know, it just gave them a chance to save money. Corporations—now, I am old, okay? I am 62. God bless me, I am a survivor. God bless Beyoncé.

Thus, at 62, in the gay community, that means Jurassic World. I was seven years old when the Stonewall riots happened in 1969. That was in my lifetime, which is strange—that both the fight for Black voting rights, the last lynching in the U.S., and Stonewall all happened while I was alive. We act like this is ancient history. It’s not.

I was around for the very first Pride events, in Long Beach, California, where I lived for 43 years. I went to the first Pride they held there. I’ve been to many of the first Pride events in different cities.

As a singer, I’ve performed at many Pride events all across the country and the world. I’ve met the organizers, heard their struggles, and been involved in many LGBTQ community centers.

Now, in my first book, You Can’t Say That!, I was critical of Pride and the centers because I felt they were losing their way. And they did lose their way. Part of the reason they lost their way was corporate sponsorships. Pride was always about the community, for the community. The community funded it.

It was for the community. All of it. Then, all of a sudden, corporations realized we were a market. As laws began to loosen up under various presidents—people often think Clinton was a great president for gays—I had to remind him twice, in person, that it was under him we got Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defence of Marriage Act. He later admitted those were mistakes. And I said, “I’m glad you can live with those mistakes.”

It cost us our rights. I had a great debate about that with President Clinton. But under President Clinton, and later under Obama, it became easier—more acceptable in polite circles—to be gay. And so corporations said, “Hey, there’s a market over here. A loyal one, with more disposable income than the typical family, because many of us don’t have kids.” We have nieces and nephews instead—you can send them home. So, the corporations started coming to the party.

And as more and more corporations joined the party, fewer and fewer members of the LGBTQ community were at the center of it. Oh, there are so many letters now. Good Lord—LGBTQIA. I can’t. I can’t. I’m gay, that’s what I am. I’m not 13 other letters. That’s a whole different show. And I get in more trouble with the gay community than I do with straight people.

As much as I welcome and love all of those people, it’s not right that if you’re not a cisgender heterosexual, you just get assigned a letter with us. Because that means cisgender heterosexuals are “normal,” and everyone else is lumped together. That’s ridiculous. I think it dilutes many our causes. But that’s another story.

So advertisers started coming—the Wells Fargo float—just to get our business. It was never really about supporting LGBTQ rights. Because how many gay CEOs are there? How many out executives in the C-suites? The same thing happens in entertainment.

GLAAD hates me. They’ve never given me an award, even though I’ve been the first openly gay person to break barriers in so many areas of entertainment. GLAAD has never even invited me to one of their shows. Why? I always point out what a useless organization they are. They’ve been around more than twenty years, raised millions and millions of dollars, and yet we’ve gone backwards. And they’ll say, “Oh, but we’re sponsored by so-and-so.” And I’m like, so what? They’re only doing it to get you as consumers.

So companies started coming to the party—mainly alcohol companies at first, because we tend to drink—and then other companies of all kinds. Then came the merchandise. “Oh, look, we’ll slap a rainbow on anything and sell it to you in June and July.” And it’s like, so what? You’re just marketing to us.

That made gays and lesbians complacent. It also allowed Pride festivals to turn into “come see Mariah Carey” events. Suddenly, gay acts like me weren’t getting hired anymore, because now festivals had the budgets to hire Lil Nas X or Mariah Carey or whoever.

And then, under Donald Trump—both the last time and this time—those sponsorships started to dry up. They began to dry up because of a very few loud voices. America is overwhelmingly pro-gay, and many people forget that.

For instance, they’re coming for same-sex marriage again with that wretched beast, Kim Davis. She’s trying to get to the Supreme Court to overturn marriage equality. I blame Congress for that, by the way—the most ineffective, money-wasting entity on the planet, the United States Congress. They did not legalize same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court did.

They didn’t legalize Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court did. They didn’t legalize interracial marriage. The Supreme Court did. They didn’t legalize integration in schools. The Supreme Court did. Which means Congress has refused to do a lot of the heavy lifting. And if they had, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. That’s another topic, but still relevant.

So, under Trump, corporations got permission to back away from the gay community. And it proves what fair-weather friends they were. Now, there are a few that have stayed—Costco, for instance. I just left T-Mobile because they repealed their DEI commitments so they could get this deal through the FCC and appease the would-be dictator—who, frankly, has a… well, let’s say, a tater tot-sized ego. Sorry, I don’t know if I can cuss, but I do.

Anyway, it gave them the license to stop spending money and allocate it elsewhere, simply because a small group of people decided they didn’t want these companies supporting gay people. Or the president signs an anti-DEI order. It’s funny—he even tied DEI to artificial intelligence. He made the makers of large language models sign an agreement that their platforms—like ChatGPT—wouldn’t be “biased” toward DEI.

And yet, when I asked ChatGPT about the executive order and how odd it seemed—that he said AI couldn’t have a political agenda, but wasn’t that itself a political agenda—ChatGPT agreed with me. It is called the order contradictory and inflammatory. So, the large language model itself called out its makers for signing this agreement with Donald Trump, because it makes no sense.

But anyway, these corporations have to save money and cut back on their support of the gay community. They don’t care. They never have cared. To them, we’re “OTT.” Back in the days of television, when the legacy networks—ABC, NBC, CBS—were dominant, streaming wasn’t important. They considered any revenue from streaming as “over the top,” or OTT. But in less than ten years, OTT became their bread and butter.

It’s the same thing here. These corporations looked at supporting DEI as a bonus: “Oh yeah, we’ll get some extra customers, some goodwill, it’s a win-win.” The moment it stopped being a win-win, they backed away.

Jacobsen: What trends should LGBTQ+ nonprofits anticipate?

Bouley: Less support. Just less support. You’ve got NPR and all these other organizations bleeding support, begging for dollars. LGBTQ+ nonprofits now have to compete with NPR and everyone else because corporations are cutting funding across the board.

So they should anticipate less support from major corporations. What they should be doing is cultivating more support from within their community.

There are a lot of wealthy gays—a lot—many gay millionaires. There are people in our community who could, tomorrow, write the checks that would make up for the shortfalls Pride organizations are facing. But getting them involved is just as hard as getting a corporation. People hold on to their money.

So, nonprofits should certainly expect even more companies dropping off. We’ve only been in the Trump administration seven months—I know, it feels like seven hundred years, but it’s only been seven months. There are still three more years to go. And even if we take back the House and the Senate, it doesn’t matter. These people have been emboldened to be openly homophobic.

You’ve got preachers being retweeted by Pentagon officials, saying that gays should be abolished. You’ve got preachers that Trump himself champions, saying gays should be taken out back and shot. And so the notion that corporations are going to rally to our defence—why would they? Corporations are pieces of paper. That’s all they are.

I know the Supreme Court, under Citizens United, treats corporations as people, but they are not people. They are shareholders. And they only care about one thing: profit. If you’re suitable for profit, they care about you. If you’re bad for profit, they distance themselves. Supporting gays is becoming bad for profit, because of a small group of very loud individuals saying being gay is bad again. And with all the hatred being thrown at trans people, they’re coming for gay marriage again.

As this backward momentum builds, we cannot expect corporations to bail us out. Tim Cook is gay. He runs a trillion-dollar corporation. He could end this tomorrow. He could give—hell—a billion dollars to a fund to help the gay community and Pride. Has he? No.

Instead, he presented Donald Trump with an award at the White House with a 24-karat gold base. Just that award alone could have funded every Pride event on the West Coast. Apple’s biggest consumers include LGBTQ people, especially artists. And yet, does Tim Cook care? No. Why would he?

Jacobsen: From LGBTQ advocacy amid boycotts, brand-safety concerns, and shifting public sentiment—what measurable ROI do brands gain or lose from that advocacy?

Bouley: Well, gays are very loyal. When a product supports us, we help them. Many brands will attest to the fact that the gay community saved their business. We are faithful, and demographically, we do have more disposable income than our straight counterparts as a whole.

So, their return on investment is more sales and a more loyal customer base. I don’t think corporations see it that way, though, because of percentages. Trans people, for instance, make up less than 1% of the population.

Gays and lesbians, even if you go with the new polling and statistics, are seven to ten percent of the population. Corporations are more interested in the other ninety percent. So what’s the return on investment?

A: You’re doing the right thing—which, frankly, they don’t care about.

B: You’re going to gain very loyal customers.

For instance, Costco. The gays love Costco. We’ve always loved Costco. But now we love Costco even more because they refused to back down to Donald Trump. They refused to repeal their DEI. They said, “Nope.”

T-Mobile lost me as an eight-year customer, and now I’m with AT&T. Why? Because AT&T kept their DEI commitments. T-Mobile did not. So now AT&T has my monthly money simply because they stood by DEI. That’s return on investment: loyal customers who will continue to use your products indefinitely, as opposed to customers who shop once and disappear.

Because remember, we have the attention span of a gnat these days. A gnat might have a longer attention span—they only live twelve hours, after all. But the point is, ROI is brand loyalty from a demographic that has proven itself very brand loyal.

Is that enough? Not. Because so many corporations continue to back away, they don’t see our loyalty as valuable to their bottom line. They must look at us as negligible. If we were truly a booming business for them, they would have told Trump to take a hike. But they didn’t. They capitulated.

And they capitulated because they know that being on his good side—for regulations, for government approvals, for everything they need from Washington—that ROI is far bigger than “doing the right thing” for the gays.

Jacobsen: What about sponsorship alternatives—grants, in-kind media, employee matching—when Pride funding is withdrawn, so community impact and visibility aren’t reduced?

Bouley: Well, it already has reduced impact. Half of my friends who perform at Pride festivals didn’t get booked this year because there was no entertainment budget. My friends, like Thea Austin and Crystal Waters, saw fewer gigs because Pride organizations didn’t have the money.

Long Beach Pride didn’t even have a headliner. People paid $45 to get in and asked, “Where’s the headliner?” But there wasn’t one, because they couldn’t afford it.

So when you say grants—well, who are you getting those from? The government? The government is not currently giving LGBTQ grants. Yes, there are other companies we could apply to, but the pool of grants is tiny and highly competitive. Not many organizations are going to get those.

And ironically, Pride organizations are usually the ones giving out grants. In New York, they had to cut a million dollars in grants that generally go to community groups, simply because they didn’t have the funds coming in. So it’s an odd reversal: the groups that used to distribute grants now need grants themselves. And the usual sources—like Wells Fargo—aren’t stepping up with those funds anymore.

So it’s going to be a tough, lean time in the community. But look—we’ve been on our own before, okay? I’ve been queer since long before it was fashionable. We’ve been on our own before, and we made it. We found the funding. We kept Pride festivals alive. We kept gay centers funded so they didn’t fold and disappear.

This is not the first time we’ve had to rely on ourselves. I think it’s the first time this generation has had to. You know, there are queer people in their thirties, thirty-five years old, who’ve consistently grown up in what felt like a happy, rosy time. Well, this is a stark reminder: it wasn’t always a happy, rosy time. And it could quickly revert to something darker.

Jacobsen: What about crisis-communication strategies and open backlash? I mean less about the broad cultural backlash, and more about individual or organizational instances regionally in the United States.

Bouley: Well, you really can’t separate them. The tone of the country dictates the tone of the smaller arenas. Unfortunately, hatred trickles down. Money doesn’t trickle down—Reagan’s so-called “trickle-down economics” was just a joke, like “you mean you’re going to pee on us.” But hatred? Hatred trickles down.

The president has the bully pulpit, and he sets the mood of the country. If it’s okay for him to bash gays, then it’s okay for governors to bash gays. If it’s okay for governors, then it’s okay for mayors. If it’s okay for mayors, then it’s okay for city councils. If the federal government cuts DEI funding, then it’s okay for big companies to do it—and then small companies follow. Hatred trickles down.

So I don’t think you can separate national versus local. It’s all tied together. If it’s okay to bash gays and to defund us, then it’s okay across the board. And right now, it has become “okay.”

So, on a personal level, homophobia is skyrocketing. It’s more dangerous to be gay in America again. And violence against the trans community has surged—on average, a trans person is murdered every two days globally. It’s not a good time. And the most challenging part is that it’s happening on the local, state, and federal levels simultaneously.

Jacobsen: How do we stop that momentum? What kind of crisis communication can we do?

Bouley: It goes back to what we did before. Look at AIDS. There was enormous stigma—that gay men were going to “give you AIDS.” I remember White House press briefings where they laughed about it while my friends were dying. Ronald Reagan didn’t even say the word “AIDS” for seven years.

My friend Luke Sissyfag—yes, that was his stage name—made a career out of showing up wherever Reagan was and screaming the word AIDS at him. My departed friend Larry Kramer, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, was a fierce advocate who never let up.

I also met Harvey Milk when I was young, which was extraordinary. And look at Harvey—look at what he had to endure to promote equality, only to end up being assassinated for it. It has never been easy.

It has always been hard. It got easier for a while, and now it’s hard again. The way we win is by not giving up. It’s easy to want to throw up your hands and say, “Screw MAGA, screw Trump, screw the system.” But that’s not how we won the fight against AIDS. And that’s not how we won the battle for marriage equality.

You know, marriage wasn’t about gay men saying, Gee, I’d like to get married. That was not why marriage equality happened. It happened because of AIDS. We weren’t allowed into hospital rooms with our partners—they died without us by their side. When we returned to our homes, we found that the locks had been changed because families had moved in, and we had no legal right to reclaim our belongings. The only way to fix that was through same-sex marriage. That was the real push—it was about legal rights, not a cultural obsession with weddings.

When my husband died, he wasn’t legally my husband because marriage wasn’t legal for us. He was my domestic partner. And at the time, domestic partners in California had only eleven rights. One of those rights wasn’t the right to sue for wrongful death. I thought that was outrageous, so I challenged it—and I won. We changed the law so domestic partners could sue for wrongful death. The day that went into effect, seventy-two cases were filed. That’s what fighting back looks like.

And so we can’t give up. We need to support ourselves for now. That means giving more to our gay centers, supporting Pride organizations, attending events, paying the cover charge, and participating financially in our community until the money starts to flow again. Eventually, companies will realize that they miss them as customers. We sold much product to LGBTQ people. We want them back.

As soon as Trump either passes away—he’s nearly 80 and eats fast food every day—or is voted out of office, and hopefully leaves peacefully, the mood of the country will shift. And when that happens, companies will loosen their grip again. But until then, it’s up to us—to our community—to find and nurture the allies that are still standing strong, like Costco and AT&T. We should maximize what we can get from those allies.

And for the shortfall, we go back to the community. The truth is, our community has gotten used to corporate sponsorships. But before those existed, we supported ourselves. Look at the Imperial Court System—one of the earliest funders of the gay community. They put on benefit after benefit after benefit to keep our institutions alive. That model is still there if we choose to use it.

The Imperial Court System is essentially a drag king and drag queen–driven community, featuring an emperor, empress, and various court members. They hold events to raise money, and that’s how a lot of Pride was funded historically. When I first went to the West Hollywood Pride Festival, the main stage wasn’t backed by a liquor giant or a Fortune 500 sponsor—Rage, the gay bar across the street, paid for it. They covered the talent. That’s how it worked.

We may have to revisit the idea of larger gay clubs sponsoring Pride events. But it’s tough. Attendance is down across the board, especially at gay clubs. More of them are closing than opening. And that’s another issue: our safe spaces are disappearing. High rents, declining alcohol sales—Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, they’re not drinking the way earlier generations did. So while you want bars and LGBTQ organizations to give back to the community, many are barely surviving themselves.

Jacobsen: Any thoughts on performative allyship and rainbow-washing?

Bouley: As for corporate allyship—look, I hate rainbow-washing. I can’t stand it. I’d walk into Walmart, see rainbow tennis shoes, and think: Give me a break. If you cared, we wouldn’t be shoved in the back corner of the store. A lot of it was performative. And the speed with which companies abandoned LGBTQ sponsorships proves it. If they were truly committed, they wouldn’t have walked away so quickly.

It was never about genuine support. It was about marketing. Slap a rainbow on a product, make some noise during June, and—voilà—you look progressive. Five years ago, Harry’s or Dollar Shave Club did rainbow razor blades. Where are they now? Stripping those rainbows off. Because it was never a conviction—it was a marketing strategy.

Jacobsen: So, how do you vet actual values alignment for Pride events and advocacy? 

Bouley: Results. True allies don’t disappear when it gets tough—they double down. They stand firm in adversity. Anyone can be an ally when it’s easy. But when it’s hard—that’s when you find out who means it.

During the AIDS epidemic, it was brutal. There were no effective drugs, fear was everywhere, and stigma was crushing. But you know who stood with us? Lesbians. They saved us. They showed up in the hospitals, at the marches, in the trenches. That’s what real allyship looks like.

They did. Lesbians took care of us during the AIDS crisis. They stepped into leadership because we couldn’t—we were dying. They became the CEOs, the directors of gay centers, the heads of organizations that kept our community afloat. They didn’t have to—AIDS wasn’t directly killing them—but they stepped up.

True allies are the ones who show up when you’re being beaten down. During AIDS, gay men were being crushed on every level. The President of the United States was joking about us. Federal funding was nonexistent. And it was lesbians who stood by us.

It’s the same thing now. The people who step forward in this moment—the ones who say, “We don’t care if DEI budgets are being slashed, we’re still going to help you”—those are the true allies. This backlash may help us. I know it sounds odd, but it’s clarifying. It’s forcing us to see who was committed and who was rainbow-marketing to us for dollars. The ones who stay now are the ones who were always sincere.

Jacobsen: Alright, Karel, any final thoughts—or maybe a favourite quote?

Bouley: A favourite quote?“This wallpaper is hideous. One of us has to go.” That was allegedly Oscar Wilde’s last line. He sat up in his apartment, looked at the wallpaper, said that—and then he dropped dead. That’s one of my favourites.

But really—look, I’m a talk show host. I can go on forever. I’ve always been passionate. My whole career, I’ve existed at the edge of the gay community, even though I’ve broken the pink ceiling multiple times. For some people, I’m not “gay enough.” For others, I’m “too gay for straight people.”

When Andrew and I were on KFI—the number one talk station in the country—we got picketed by gay organizations. Why? Because we didn’t denounce Dr. Laura. She was on right before us, and people expected us to trash her publicly. Our position was: who cares? She’s on at two, we’re on at three. Don’t like her? Don’t listen. And if you picket her, if you boycott her, her face ends up on the news, not yours. You’re just giving her more press. The best way to deal with Dr. Laura was to ignore her. Please don’t give her oxygen.

But that rubbed some in the gay community the wrong way. Later, when I was on KGO, it was the same thing. After my first anniversary there, the San Francisco Chronicle did a feature on me. They called every gay organization in town—and none of them even knew I was on the number one talk station on the entire West Coast. The only gay person on that platform, and they didn’t even know.

So it just means we’ve always had to fight. And there’s a big fight ahead of us still—for the next three years at least. The good news is: we now know who our real allies are, because they’re the ones who stuck with us. So what will happen to us? Well, we’re here. We’re queer. They may not be used to it, but we’re not going anywhere. We will continue to form new alliances with new people and new companies, and we’ll carry that into 21st-century activism.

So thanks, Scott. Thank you so much for everything. And I look forward to reading the result.

Jacobsen: You’re very welcome. Thank you for your time—it was nice to meet you, Karel.

Last updated May 3, 2025. These terms govern all In Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices. In Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.