As gays enter the mastream, do the muny cle importance?
Contents:
JT WHAT IS 'GAY CULTURE' IN 2013?
* gay 2013 culture *
One kd of “gay culture” domated the years and, ed, centuri before the 1969 Stonewall rts New York; another was s ascendance durg the brief but extremely by and lorful uple of s that followed; and a third began to take shape the early 1990s. The book reprented a challenge both to anti-gay prejudice and to the monolhic, margalized notn of gay inty that was promoted – and enforced – by the gay cultural and polil left of the day, which sisted that gays who, say, wanted to jo the ary, or attend church, or who lived mted relatnships were apg the straight majory and betrayg the queer natn, probably bee they were “self-hatg” or “sex-negative” or both.
This fact has long sce been nveniently dropped down the memory hole, but 1993 virtually all of the lears of the gay polil tablishment were fiercely opposed to the ia of gay marriage, and they vilified as sellouts those of who supported . My book – and I am only sayg this to make a pot – was for several months nng the #1 btseller Ameri's gay bookstor, those by, vibrant templ of gay cultural life that thrived durg those uple of s after Stonewall. The book helped set off an tense and urgent bate wh what was generally known as the “gay muny” (a term that I have always risted, and that I thk most young gay Amerins nowadays also react to wh skepticism).
The book was arntly discsed – and, most s, vigoroly attacked – natnal gay magaz such as The Advote and Out and Ten Percent and such lol gay publitns as New York's Native, which I had ced the book as a sort of totem of the official gay culture of the day. I still remember walkg halfway across San Francis one eveng wh an terviewer for a lol gay paper who was as passnately engaged his qutns as I was my answers. At the same time, mt be add that gay culture, sce a time long before any of were born, had been, even for s foremost creators and champns, a ncept ght wh ambiguy and paradox.
HOW 2013 BEME THE GREATT YEAR IN GAY RIGHTS HISTORY
Gay-activist lears, leftists all, were enemi of mastream culture who sisted that gays were the vanguard of a revolutn agast palism and, ed, agast the entire premise and project of Wtern civilizatn; and yet the more sophistited of them held up as hero of the “muny” people like Osr Wil, Benjam Brten, and W.
Was there somethg specifilly gay that uld be intified – isolated, almost as if a chemistry lab – the works of artists as diverse as Jam Merrill and Allen Gsberg, Glenway Wtt and Gore Vidal?
Over the centuri, to be sure, there were ocsnal sensatnal exceptns, and om Osr Wil onward, gay wrers, filmmakers, songwrers, and other artists – among them Tennsee Williams, Tman Capote, and Gore Vidal – shocked dienc om time to time by the sheer act of acknowledgg their works the existence of homosexualy and the humany of homosexuals. There were also ocsnal works var genr which gay characters, often only implicly intified as such, met tragic ends, the implic pot beg that this was, if not their jt sserts, then the evable fate of persons who have no natural place society. ) As the twentieth century moved to s last s, there were creasg efforts var pockets of mastream culture – om the soap opera One Life to Live, which 1992-93 featured a storyle about a gay teenager, to the movie Philalphia – to promote gay visibily a way that did not shock or smear but normalize.