The Lavender Scare — the 60-year federal policy that allowed gay people to be legally fired from government jobs — is the subject of Lisa Cordileone’s historical fiction TV series Committed, and in conversation with co-hosts Kenyon Farrow and Mattie Bynum, she makes a compelling case that its echoes are very much present today. Lisa pushes back on the tendency of queer film to market itself as an education for straight audiences, arguing instead for stories where queer people simply exist, the way they always have — intersecting across race, class, gender expression, and history. Drawing from nonfiction, stoicism, and overlooked histories like Hidden Figures and The Imitation Game, she builds characters who battle with morality rather than slot neatly into hero or villain roles. She’s particularly drawn to questions of colorism and passing — and how her own experience as a white queer woman means living simultaneously at the intersection of privilege and otherness. For Lisa, Power Beyond Pride means thriving without shame: not just surviving visibility, but choosing a life of truth.