The April 14, 1997, issue of TIME featured a s-down wh the edian, who nfirmed that her s character was gay—and so was she.
Contents:
- HOW TIME’S REPORTG ON GAY LIFE AMERI SHAPED—AND SKEWED—A GENERATN’S ATTUS
- GAY
- READ THE 'YEP, I'M GAY' ELLEN DEGENER INTERVIEW FROM 1997
- SEX: HOW GAY IS GAY?
- GAY MARRIAGE ALREADY WON | APR. 8, 2013
- FLORIDA'S 'DON'T SAY GAY' BILL IS PART OF THE STATE'S LONG, SHAMEFUL HISTORY
HOW TIME’S REPORTG ON GAY LIFE AMERI SHAPED—AND SKEWED—A GENERATN’S ATTUS
Read the latt stori about gay on Time * gay time magazine *
In that spir, TIME is publishg this article by Eric Marc, thor of Makg Gay History.
Over lunch one afternoon at our kchen table, wh the latt issue of TIME turned to an article about Ana Bryant’s succsful mpaign to repeal a gay-rights bill Da County, Fla., I raged over the jtice of both Bryant’s assertn that gay people were a danger to children and the wardly legislators who ved to prejudice and ignorance. Unknowgly, my red-faced outrage offered another clue to my mother that there was more than a ltle self-tert at stake for me the fate of the gay civil-rights movement. Weeks later, she would ask me if I was gay.
June 20, 1997 TIME article about Ana Bryant’s mpaign to repeal a gay-rights bill Da County, Fla. It wasn’t until more than a later, when I began rearchg an oral-history book on what was then lled the gay and lbian civil-rights movement, that I realized that TIME magaze had also played a role shapg how my mother thought of homosexuals — and how she’d e to view her teenaged gay son. In my rearch, as I stggled to ga an unrstandg of why people saw homosexuals as sick, sful and crimal, I stumbled on a 1966 say TIME that jt about burned the sk off my face as I read .
GAY
* gay time magazine *
I thk was meant as a medatn on what to make of the then-growg visibily of gay life Ameri. The media those years, as is most often the se today, reflected society’s prevailg views about homosexuals.
Back then, homosexualy was still nsired a treatable mental illns, sexual relatns between two people of the same sex uld get you arrted almost every state, and thoands — perhaps tens of thoands — of gay men and lbians had been hound out of feral employment sce Print Eisenhower signed an executive orr 1953 banng them om ernment jobs. In New York, a state law about “disorrly” nduct was terpreted as makg illegal to serve known homosexuals alhol, and the police routely raid gay bars. The now-celebrated 1969 Stonewall uprisg — triggered by a police raid of the Stonewall Inn gay bar — which is beg marked this month by 50th anniversary celebratns, march and protts, got a particularly pungent headle the New York Daily News: “Homo Nt Raid, Queen Be Are Stgg Mad.
” The Village Voice, an alternative downtown newspaper, published an article the immediate aftermath of the first night of rtg which the reporter ed a slur to refer to the uprisg’s participants, earng the Voice, jt days after the start of the uprisg, one of the first public protts that would e to characterize the newly ant era of “gay liberatn. 31, 1969, ver story was headled “The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Unrstood.
READ THE 'YEP, I'M GAY' ELLEN DEGENER INTERVIEW FROM 1997
T.J. of the Brothers Osborne is now the only openly gay artist signed to a major untry label—a historic moment for the genre. * gay time magazine *
And yet the picture the article pated of the “newly unrstood” homosexual was still drippg wh sarsm and ntempt. One sectn of the report noted several “typ” of homosexuals: “The Blatant Homosexual, ” “The Secret Lifer, ” “The Dperate, ” “The Adjted, ” “The Bisexual, ” “The Suatnal-Experimental. ” After scribg the different tegori, the wrer not: “The homosexual subculture, a semi-public world, is, whout qutn, shallow and unstable.
” Although that ver story also said some paratively nice thgs about homosexuals, is any wonr members of the newly formed Gay Liberatn Front and the Dghters of Bilis (an anizatn for lbians found 1955 San Francis) picketed the Time-Life buildg after s publitn? ” Gay people weren’t gog to take anymore.
SEX: HOW GAY IS GAY?
When I told my mother eight years later that y, I was gay, she jt looked at me wh a blank stare.
Was she tryg to figure out what kd of homosexual I was? In tth, I was a prsed gay teenager who feared that his life was ed bee of this one, immutable flaw.
” I’d e to unrstand om the rearch I’d done the Vassar College library that parents of gay children often felt that was their own flt (also thanks to TIME and all the other news outlets and so-lled experts who blamed homosexualy on a domant mother and passive father). Even before my mother asked me that fateful qutn, TIME had published a ver story on Leonard Matlovich, who was challengg the ban on gay people servg the ary. That and subsequent ver stori — the 1997 Ellen DeGener “Yep, I’m Gay” ver or the 2014 Laverne Cox ver about transgenr civil rights, for example — helped rhape a posive way how people like me thought of ourselv and how the rt of the world saw .
GAY MARRIAGE ALREADY WON | APR. 8, 2013
Marc and his mother at the 1993 March on Washgton for Lbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberatn.
My mother me around, too, and by the early 1990s was an activist her own right, volunteerg to lead a support group for gay men whose partners had died om AIDS and helpg found the Queens chapter of PFLAG (once known as Parents, Fai and Friends, of Lbians and Gays). Eric Marc is the thor of Makg Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lbian and Gay Equal Rights and the founr and host of a podst of the same name.
FLORIDA'S 'DON'T SAY GAY' BILL IS PART OF THE STATE'S LONG, SHAMEFUL HISTORY
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