Monthly Review | The Queer/Gay Assiatnist Spl

Contents:

• GAY ASSIATN?
• THE END OF GAY CULTURE
• GAY LIBERATN TO CAMP ASSIATN
• WHAT DO GAY MARRIAGE MEAN?
• THE QUEER/GAY ASSIATNIST SPL
• THE GAY LIBERATION FRONT, THE RADICALESBIANS, AUTHOR

GAY ASSIATN?

ADVERTISEMENTLetterMay 1, Center FilmsTo the Edor, Re “The Extctn of Gay Inty, ” by Frank Bni (lumn, April 29):Of urse, I don’t want to go back to the dangers and opprsns of those earlier days, but I don’t want to disappear don’t ask racial and ethnic muni to give up their cultural practic and habs as they ga their civil rights, but our lbian and gay culture — s boundary-btg prentatns of genr and so on — is too often required to “tone down, ” to prent ourselv as jt like everyone else the mastream world for the purpose of nvcg that mastream world we are not a threat to the stat New York, that enforced assiatn is, thankfully, ls te, but is not nonexistent. Ktzsch, Brett, 'Introductn: Memorializatn, Gay Assiatn, and Amerin Relign', Dyg to Be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformatn of Amerin Sexual Polics (New York, 2019; onle edn, Oxford Amic, 21 Mar. The chapter also tails how Prottant sexual standards shaped the natn’s ias about acceptable sexual cizens and, turn, how gay activists promoted Prottant valu as necsary for the rights of full Amerin cizenship.

It has long attracted artists, wrers, the offbeat, and the bohemian; and, for many years now, has been to gay Ameri what Oak Bluffs Martha’s Veyard is to black Ameri: a place where a separate inty sentially f a separate place. Men and women gather on the beach, drk ffee on the ont porch of a store, or meet at the Film Ftival or Spir, of urse, week after week this summer, uple after uple got married—well over a thoand the year and a half sce gay marriage has been legal Massachetts. East Village bohemians drift throughout the summer; quiet male upl spend more time browsg gourmet groceri and realtors than cisg nightspots; the predictable populatn of artists and wrers—Michael Cunngham and John Waters are fixtur—mix wh openly gay lawyers and ps and teachers and but unmistakably, gay culture is endg.

The distctn between gay and straight culture will bee so blurred, so actured, and so termgled that may bee more helpful not to exame them separately at many the gay world, this is both a triumph and a threat. Wh the growth of fundamentalism across the relig world—om Pope Benedict XVI’s Vatin to Islamic fatwas and Amerin evangelilism—gayns is unr attack many plac, even as wrts ee om reprsn others. This was the era of the post-Stonewall New Left, of the Castro and the Wt Village, an era where sexualy fed a new meang for gayns: of sexual adventure, polil radilism, and cultural fact that openly gay muni were still relatively small and geographilly ncentrated a handful of urban areas created a distctive gay culture.

THE END OF GAY CULTURE

Popular culture was suffed wh stunng displays of homosexual burlque: the mic of Queen, the stum of the Village People, the flamboyance of Elton John’s but; the advertisg of Calv Kle; and the toxitn of dis self, a gay creatn that beme emblematic of an entire heterosexual era. When this cultural explosn was acknowledged, when explicly perated the mastream, the rults, however, were highly unstable: Harvey Milk was assassated San Francis and Ana Bryant led an anti-gay csa. The history of gay Ameri as an openly gay culture is not only extremely short—a mere 30 years or so—but also engulfed and fed by a plague that stck almost poignantly at the headit moment of liberatn.

And those gay men and lbians who wnsed this entire event beme altered forever, not only emotnally, but also polilly—whether through the theatril activism of Act-Up or the fur anizatn of polil gays among the Democrats and some Republins. More ccially, gay men and lbians built civil stutns to unter the disease; they fed new ti to scientists and policians; they found themselv forced to more tense relatns wh their own natural fai and the fai of loved on. Unls the gay populatn was tied to the broar society; unls had roots the wir world; unls brought to s fold the heterosexual fai and iends of gay men and women, the gay populatn would rema at the mercy of others and of misfortune.

A ghetto was no longer an, when the plague reced the face of far more effective HIV treatments the mid-’90s and gay men and women were able to tch their breath and reflect, the qutn of what a more tegrated gay culture might actually mean reemerged. If the image of gay men for my generatn was one gleaned om the movie Cisg or, subsequently, Torch Song Trilogy, the image for the next one was MTV’s “Real World, ” Bravo’s “Queer Eye, ” and Richard Hatch wng the first “Survivor. Even more dramatilly, gays went om havg to fd hidn meang mastream films—somehow intifyg wh the agg, mpy female lead a way the rt of the culture missed—to everyone, gay and straight, regnizg and beg on the joke of a character like “Big Gay Al” om “South Park” or Jack om “Will & Grace.

GAY LIBERATN TO CAMP ASSIATN

So is the spokman for the most anti-gay senator Congrs, Rick new tolerance and tegratn—bed, of urse, wh the creased abily to nnect wh other gay people that the Inter provis—has undoubtedly enuraged more and more gay people to e out. If you pare data om, say, the 1994 Natnal Health and Social Life Survey wh the 2002 Natnal Survey of Fay Growth, you will fd that women are nearly three tim more likely to report beg gay, lbian, or bisexual today than they were eight years ago, and men are about 1.

There are no reliable statistics on openly gay teens, but no one doubts that there has been an explosn visibily the last —around 3, 000 high schools have “gay-straight” allianc. And the psychologil impact on the younger generatn nnot be all, what separat homosexuals and lbians om every other mory group is that they are born and raised wh the bosom of the majory. Unlike Lato or Jewish or black muni, where parents and grandparents and siblgs pass on cultural norms to children their most formative stag, each generatn of gay men and lbians grows up beg tght the heterosexual norms and culture of their home environments or absorbg what pass for their gay inty om the broar culture as a whole.

WHAT DO GAY MARRIAGE MEAN?

To give the most powerful example: A gay child born today will grow up knowg that, many parts of the world and parts of the Uned Stat, gay upl n get married jt as their parents did. From the very begng of their gay liv, other words, they will have ternalized a sense of normaly, of human potential, of self-worth—somethg that my generatn never had and that prev generatns would have found unimagable.

When I vised recently to talk about that very subject, the preppy, nservative stunt print was openly you be this generatnal plasticy wh swift mographic growth, you have our current explosn of gay civil society, wh a disproportnately young age distributn.

The gay anizatns that epted to beg as aids killed thoands the ‘80s—om the Gay Men’s Health Crisis to the aids Project Los Angel to the Whman-Walker Clic Washgton—stggled to adapt to the swift change the epimic the mid-’90s. ” The newer gay bars are more social than sexual, often wh rtrants, open wdows onto the street, and a welg attu toward others, pecially the many urban straight women who fd gay bars more ngenial than heterosexual pickup gay polil anizatns often functn more as social groups than as angry activist groups.

THE QUEER/GAY ASSIATNIST SPL

If the gay world is that polilly diverse unr the current polarized circumstanc, has obvly moved well beyond the time was synonymo wh radil left gay men and lbians exprs their inty has also changed. ” Tryg to fe “gay culture” this mix is an creasgly elive lbians, Ellen DeGener’s transn om closeted s star to out-lbian activist and back to appealgly middle-brow daytime talk-show host is almost a microsm of diversifyg lbian inty the past . And this, after all, is and was the pot of gay liberatn: the eedom not merely to be gay acrdg to some preordaed type, but to be yourself, whatever that see this even drag, which once fed gayns some rpects but now is only one of many exprsns.

Paradoxilly, gay culture s old form may have s most fertile ground those stat where homosexualy is still unmentnable and where openly gay men and women are more beleaguered: the red stat. The tired emblems of the past—the rabow flags and leather outfs—retaed their relevance same go for black and Lato culture, where homophobia, propped up by black church and the Catholic hierarchy rpectively, is more tense than much of whe society. The directn toward tegratn is clear, but the pace is far, when you see the ternalized fensivens of gays still livg the shadow of social hostily, any nostalgia one might feel for the loss of gay culture dissipat.

THE GAY LIBERATION FRONT, THE RADICALESBIANS, AUTHOR

If the end of gay culture means that we have a new plexy to grapple wh and a new, ls cramped humany to embrace, then regret seems almost a rebe to those untls generatns who uld only dream of the liberty so many now ty, rich space that gay men and women once created for themselv was, after all, the bt they uld do. And the thg that kept gay people together, that unified them to one homogeneo un, and that fed the parameters of their culture and the lims of their dreams, were the bars on that ge.