TEN YEARS AGO, the AIDS crisis dominated the discourse and the psyches of the gay male community in America. Friends and lovers had died or were dying. Ten years ago, sodomy was illegal in a large majority of the states. Although these laws were rarely enforced, the Supreme Court had ruled in 1986 that they were enforceable. Ten years ago, GLBT folks still had every reason to think of themselves, for better or worse, as members of a transgressive minority. That gave us the chance to define ourselves in opposition to something: persecution in general, inadequate or overpriced AIDS treatments, don’t-ask-don’t-tell policies from a new administration that had promised us better, preachers of hatred in the churches and on the radio.
But it was already clear by 1993 that our worst fears of the previous decade would not materialize. This was partly due to all the courageous gay men and lesbians who came out of the closet in the first quarter-century after Stonewall (June, 1969). But it was also importantly related to the gay community’s positive and aggressive response to AIDS. The fact that the epidemic drove so many people—patients, friends, lovers—out of the closet had a result few people dared hope for. Not only did it force most Americans to learn there was a decent and suffering person they loved who was gay; it also galvanized gay politics and gay writing.
AIDS caused American gay culture as a whole, and not just gay men as individuals, to come out of the closet and enter mainstream society. Of course, there had always been powerful GLBT people in every corner of society, but in general they had served in silence when it came to disclosing their sexual orientation. Disaster caused many of them—especially in government and entertainment, often goaded by activists such as Larry Kramer and others—to tell their families, friends, business associates, government agencies, audiences, and political pollsters who they really were. At that point they were instantly radicalized and tended to become involved politically in ways that only a few intellectuals had previously done. Many people owe their lives to the fact that gay people in organizations like act-up behaved obnoxiously, and also to the fact that our country responded, on balance, with concern rather than with the “I told you so” that many of us had expected.
The change of consciousness toward GLBT people culminated in the sweeping decision by a conservative Supreme Court to strike down all sodomy laws last June. Even as that was happening, Canada was moving to legalize gay marriage, while the U.S. was making progress on a parallel course toward the recognition of civil unions. TV shows appeared with their mostly stereotypical but nevertheless lovable gay characters. Can we now foresee a day when gay people will have attained full equality in all important respects? And what would a world of perfect equality be like? What would it mean to be gay in a world in which the fact that a friend, sibling, aunt, or uncle was gay was about as relevant as her hair color? What are the implications of a world in which GLBT people have become familiar features in the family, the media, literature, and the political scene? Such a scenario would pose a serious challenge to the perpetuation of “gay politics,” to say the least; less clear is what would happen to gay and lesbian literature, art, and popular culture.
It has often been pointed out that gay people—“gay” meaning simply people who are predominantly attracted to members of their own sex—have made a disproportionate contribution to Western art and civilization. Forced to see things from the outside in, sexual minorities have become cautious but observant criminals; and this has led to a propensity to question the established order, to take risks, and to innovate. Most great artists, straight or gay, have been outsiders, which raises the question: How much do we want to get in? Many, if not most, gay people want normal lives, whatever that means, but most gay people aren’t artists. It’s romantic to be transgressive, but of course it can also be self-destructive. The cost of ostracism has been high for the gay and lesbian population in the form of self-hatred, legal difficulties, mental illness, suicide, family rejection, and thwarted love. One modern response has been for people to flock to major urban areas to live in a gay ghetto. Who can blame a persecuted and threatened people if they live for the day and seek immediate gratification, or burn to make something new, to survive, to thrive on being different? How would we define ourselves if that were no longer necessary? Blacks, women, and others who have endured discrimination have achieved formal equality but are still struggling for social equality. Perhaps gay people will always be outsiders in the sense that our sexual practices will always be those of an isolated minority. On the other hand, the boundaries of this minority may not be as clear-cut as it now appears. Current research suggests that perhaps three to five percent of the population self-identifies as gay. But historical evidence from classical times to The Kinsey Report suggests that in a totally unrepressed environment, more like a third of the human population would engage in homosexual behavior for at least a portion of their lives. The blurring of hetero- and homosexuality, and of gender itself, calls to mind a related trend: the gradual extinction of the traditional herosexual male. Consider the popularity of the current television spectacle in which straight men are “made over” by gays. After all, we live in an increasingly mechanized and automated world that has less and less need for brute force. Meanwhile, the earth has about as many people as it can handle, so random breeding is no longer the status symbol, or the tribal necessity, that it once was. Besides, artificial insemination is available, with cloning on the horizon. This threat to the traditional heterosexual male propels many of the world’s fundamentalist movements, from the extremes of the American religious Right to the resurgence of conservative Islam. If these observations are correct, it will become progressively easier, though never easy, to be gay. But then, it’s not easy to be straight, or human, either. * * * These thoughts crystallized for me when I served as director for the Lambda Literary Festival recently held in Provincetown last fall (October 10 to 12). For all the spirit of harmony and camaraderie that marked the long weekend, some interesting issues—and fissures—about the future of the GLBT community also came out during this conference. To set the context, of the roughly 250 attendees, a significant majority were middle-aged men. Edmund White has written me that the conference should probably be held in a more accessible location, and I agree. Gail Leondar-Wright, who ran panels on publicity and transexuality, wrote that a GLBT conference intending to attract young people should include “slam poetry, the ’zine scene, performance art, and lyric writing.” Christopher Bram, author of Father of Frankenstein, a novel that was made into the movie Gods and Monsters, commented: “There is no denying that gay culture is changing, but the change most affecting the conference isn’t assimilation but that literature isn’t the only game in town anymore. People have always come to these things chiefly to network and get laid. The intellectual and political matters were just gravy. I don’t know how to re-create that old atmosphere of politics, literature, and cheap parties, but I can’t blame the lack of youth in Provincetown on the younger generation’s dismissal of the ‘movement.’” During an interview conducted by Kate Bornstein on the meaning of “tranny,” I raised the question of whether the non-heterosexual movement had fragmented to the point where it should no longer be considered a single entity. She replied that in the early 1970’s, “gays” became a significant influence in the Modern Language Association, and since that time an academic industry has arisen that focuses on gender issues. Queer Theory and Gay Studies have become serious academic disciplines. Richard Canning, who came to the conference from Britain, observed: “Something that I noticed kept happening by default at the Festival: the terms ‘fiction’ and ‘literature’ were often elided. For those of us who research or write prose, this may feel like testimony to the power and lure of narrative generally and novels specifically for male and female gay readers. Even if it’s over, or nearly over, we are still right to celebrate what may come to be seen as a sort of twenty-year ‘Golden Age’ of gay literature.” Michael Hattersley is the author of Cape Cod Light, a book of poetry. His contributions to this journal have ranged from the history of rock-and-roll to the gay legacy of Alexander the Great.
— Provincetown, November 2003
