Why the “Bad Gays” of History Derve More Attentn ‹ Lerary Hub

Contents:

• BAD GAYS: A HOMOSEXUAL HISTORY
• WHAT’S WRONG WH BEG “GAY”? HERE’S WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU -- AND ’S REALLY DISTURBG.
• BAD GAY
• IN ‘BAD GAYS,’ HISTORIL FIGUR ARE PRODUCTS OF THEIR TIM
• WHY WE NEED TO GET TO KNOW THE “BAD GAYS” OF HISTORY
• BAD GAYS GOOD BOOKS
• WHY THE “BAD GAYS” OF HISTORY DERVE MORE ATTENTN
• WHAT N WE LEARN OM ALL OF HISTORY’S ‘BAD GAYS’?

BAD GAYS: A HOMOSEXUAL HISTORY

Based on the hugely popular podst seri, Bad Gays subverts the notn of gay ins and queer hero and asks what we n learn about LGBTQ+ history, sexualy and inty through s villas and baddi. They show that homosexualy self was an ia that emerged the neteenth century and that s terpretatn has been central to major historil moments of nflict om the ptur of Weimar Republic to red-bag Cold War Ameri. It has bee accepted wisdom most pole circl – as well as schools, ernment, rporate Ameri, and certaly the popular culture – that homosexual behavr is a normal and natural variatn of life.

As Gabriel Rotello—thor of Sexual Elogy: AIDS and the Dty of Gay Men and founr of OutWeek Magaze—wrote, “sexual brotherhood of promiscuy … any abandonment of that promiscuy would amount to a munal betrayal of gargantuan proportns. Rotello also said, “A stranger to gay culture, unaware of the realy of AIDS, might believe om much of the gay prs that HIV fectn was a sort of elixir that produced high self-teem, solved long-standg psychologil and substance abe problems, and enhanced physil appearance … creatg the subnsc imprsn that fectn—the ‘penalty’ of unsafe sex—is really not so bad after all.

WHAT’S WRONG WH BEG “GAY”? HERE’S WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU -- AND ’S REALLY DISTURBG.

O’Leary wr, “Gay bars, gay bookstor, theaters, certa rort muni, and circu parti have tradnally provid venu where MSM uld engage var forms of sexual activy wh numero partners. 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 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.

BAD GAY

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.

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

” 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. 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.

WHY WE NEED TO GET TO KNOW THE “BAD GAYS” OF HISTORY

“Bad Gays” succeeds s goals every way, offerg an furiatg, thoughtful, licly judgmental history of the very worst we had to Fzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez are the thors of “Legendary Children: The First De of RuPl’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life” and hosts of the “Pop Style Opnft” GaysA Homosexual HistoryBy Huw Lemmey and Ben MillerVerso. Those who are sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who subm to homosexual acts, men who practice homosexualy, thiev, greedy people, dnkards, revilers, and extortners will not her God’s Kgdom.

Listeners also hear about a very different si of Andrew Sullivan, the ntemporary wrer who helped popularize the nservative se for gay marriage and ntu to argue agast perceived radilism the LGBTQ muny. An actual spy stggl wh layers of ncealed inty, and the season ends wh a fixture of the McCarthy era and Donald Tmp mentor, Roy Cohn, who aids a wch hunt agast imaged gay spi the US ernment.

In the meantime, our nversatn about how they choose their subjects, bat over gay inty history, “evil twk energy, ” and how we might learn om the mistak of the bad gays, is below.

BAD GAYS GOOD BOOKS

For , the tert is not to perpetuate the ia of the good and bad role mols, but to e the ia of the “bad gay” to talk about thgs that jt focg on activist hero or thors or artists might not allow you accs to.

WHY THE “BAD GAYS” OF HISTORY DERVE MORE ATTENTN

I thk on the qutn of your stereotypil “good gay” — I mean, one of the people that we profile, Andrew Sullivan, is someone whose entire kd of public reer has been about embodyg and promotg the good gay as a liftyle. In that particular se, the kd of “born this way” le about gay people is first ed a big splashy public settg not as an activist plea but as a kd of exce for murr, the ntext of this very strange trial.

WHAT N WE LEARN OM ALL OF HISTORY’S ‘BAD GAYS’?

There seems to be some bate among historians about how we should treat the language ed the private letters and other rrponnce om the era, about how we might perceive “rrectly” or “rrectly” gay inty historil documents. So for , when we talk about a figure like Jam I and VI, to e the term “gay” is on the one hand totally absurd bee mak absolutely no sense given the historil ntext which he lived. One of the most tertg arguments I thk you make on the show is that Andrew Sullivan sort of vented gay marriage and that the nservative se he ma for was actually a vastatg setback for LGBTQ rights.

[Miller and Lemmey see Sullivan’s work the ia that gay marriage — and makg queer people’s liv look more like those of rich whe straight people — is the end goal of the LGBTQ rights movement.