Bad Gays: Ben Miller on queer history's greatt antagonists - Exberler

IN ‘BAD GAYS,’ HISTORIL FIGUR ARE PRODUCTS OF THEIR TIM

Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller, hosts of a popular podst, take a look at history through the lens of problematic gay figur. * bad gay book *

They suggt an answer “Bad Gays, ” a ntextual history based on the popular podst of the same name, about “the gay people history who do not flatter , and whom we nnot make to hero: the liars, the powerful, the crimal, and the succsful. ”At a time when a nservative Supreme Court is signalg s willgns to revis qutns of privacy and self-termatn long nsired settled, and the rights of LGBTQ people to live their liv eely rema an open bate, a book tellg the stori of some of the worst gays history might seem ill-timed. “The history of homosexualy is a long history of failure, ” they wre.

”The tle “Bad Gays” is a b of a misnomer, however. The are the stori of gay and queer people who did terrible thgs and held terrible views, but the bulk of the histori are ls about “evil” gays and more about gays who reacted to the world around them, sometim shockg ways, sometim stctive ways, but que often the only ways that ma sense to them, given the tim. This approach is pecially helpful amg the liv and choic of people like Frerick the Great and notor Italian Renaissance satirist and blackmailer Pietro Areto, well before the ia of gayns as an inty existed.

Context is provid for choic and actns, but the thors take every one of their subjects to task for their racism, misogyny, genocidal actns, predatory natur and all-around bad behavr if not bad book is at s most bg when assailg a bad gay person’s athetic choic. Roy Cohn’s ho are scribed as beg “well-stocked wh young, blon men draped over the furnure or the pool, ” and there is an acid asi about the archect Philip Johnson’s mil tast: “like so many [slur for gay men] before him, he was ptivated by the mic of Wagner. ” The thors don’t fet that n be fun to be faced wh the stori of so many awful queers, one after another, partially bee of a long-standg gay tradn of sha and gossip: a tradn which they ocsnally dulge, to the book’s benef.

BAD GAYS: A HOMOSEXUAL HISTORY

It also feels like a bracg slap the face to the “Love is love” rporate logo form of gay inty and an acknowledgment of s limatns at a time when the rights of trans people to simply live their liv unimped is threatened and even the most nservative of hard-fought victori, same-sex marriage rights, uld be book is meticuloly and exhstively rearched, takg rears through much of Amerin and European history and walkg them right up to the prent-day nversatns about ncel culture, cril race theory and anti-trans legislatn, tyg all together a way that’s satisfyg but madng the relentlsns of s cyclil, repetive tths. The pots about natnalism, whe supremacy, toxic masculy and lonialism llectively fluencg almost all bad gays throughout history are well ma, but there are tim when the chapters seem like a seri of podst episos rather than a hive history. It manag this bee the thors acknowledge the difficulti their subjects’ sexual and romantic orientatn tend to brg upon them as well as the shortgs of the form of gay inty that alced around them.

Lemmey and Miller wre that they wanted to nvey “the story of the evolutn and failure of whe male homosexual inti, ” a story that rulted choosg rabows over radilism, service to a stra of mastream nservative equaly that hampered and nearly crippled the liberatn polics that gave the space to exist.