Know Your APA’s
To the Editor:
William A. Percy (G&LR letter, Jan.-Feb. 2010) appears not to know the difference between psychiatry and psycho- analysis. First off, he refers to the American Psychiatric Society. It is the American Psychiatric Association, publisher of the DSM.
Not all psychiatrists are analysts. In fact, few are. Conversely, few analysts are psychiatrists. They no longer are required to have an M.D. and undergo years of preparation as psychiatrists before becoming analysts, just as in Freud’s day. His daughter Anna, an eminent analyst in her own right, was not a psychiatrist. The requirement for the M.D. was an American abomination imposed for political reasons.
The American Psychological Association led the way in declaring homosexuality not to be an illness, followed by the American Psychiatric Association, then the heel-dragging American Psychoanalytic Association, and finally the American Medical Association. These organizations have been active in attacking the futility and cruelty of “reparative therapy” as espoused by Exodus and other charlatan groups.
Percy alleges that analysis is a pseudoscience without offering any evidence. Whatever it is called, it works. I know from personal experience. During my analysis, my sexuality was never mentioned, nor were my parents. Analysis was for me a positive, life-changing experience.
Charles-Gene McDaniel, Professor of Journalism (Emeritus),
Roosevelt University, Chicago
Essentialism v. Constructionism Redux
To the Editor:
As much as I have enjoyed seeing my name twinned with Larry Kramer’s in a rather overwrought letter from John Champagne in the January-February issue, in which he basically said that he and other queer theorists should just take their bat and ball and leave the playground unless he is treated better by writers like Kramer and myself, I can assure Mr. Champagne that he is certainly not any less “liberated” (his use of quotes around the word) than I am. He has just not, to use James Thurber’s retort to irate parents who claimed that their eight-year-olds could draw better than he, “had the experience.”
It is not so much that I’m not interested in a “reasoned debate” as that the usual academics keep returning to their last argument: that any form of empathy with the past or another culture is no ground for finding intimacy or connection with another aspect of same-sex attraction. When David Halperin, who seems to stand on only one piece of ground, “insists on the non-universality of homosexuality” by stating that it is impossible to consider the attractions of a classical Greek male adult, a berdache in woman’s clothing, or an Asmat tribesman in New Guinea, in any way comparable either to each other or to anyone in, say, modern Manhattan, I keep wondering if Halperin has ever read the love poetry of ancient Greece, which often sounds as if it came directly out of Chelsea. (“O what a magic comfort are boys to men”; or “Is Damon so beautiful he doesn’t say hello?” Who hasn’t felt that way?)
Or take Tobias Schneebaum’s rapturous accounts of his own life in New Guinea with the Asmat, whose incredibly homoerotic artworks (which you can view in the Michael Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum) make most of the offerings in present gay erotic art fairs look puny and lukewarm.
Inside the intense, often violence-ringed sexualities of all of these examples of queerness is a quality that we are only beginning to consider in a gay environment: the sexualization of valor. There is a reason why the reality of all three of Halperin’s “non-comparable gay” experiences are so colored with the intimacies of war: at a certain point men are pushed as far as they can go toward each other, and then even the most overt homophobic strictures fall apart, giving way to startling passions. Sir Richard Burton knew that, and, having been involved with several wars of my own, so do I.
Perry Brass, Bronx, NY
To the Editor:
The debate between essentialists and social constructionists is often self-polarizing argumentation, failing to realize that each interpretation contains fundamental insights that are most useful and valuable when used with each other. They are not irreconcilable, but are more like interlocking parts of the whole. We will get a more complete and useful portrait of ourselves and our history only when we fit them together.
We can believe in what Larry Kramer calls the “universality of homosexuality,” of same-sex attraction, attachments, and activities. Different people throughout time and space do indeed share the same sexuality. However, the meanings, importance, and implications of these activities—and the ways in which GLBT people see themselves—depend on how different societies define and interpret same-sex relations. The important thing is the intersection of the essential sexuality and the social construction given to it.
If we are to understand what we have been through and where we are—or should be—going, we have to accept that these two approaches complement each other, bringing together the universal and the particular. We have to avoid the either/or mindset and the tendency to label and limit. If the two camps were more willing to take ideas from each other, we would have a richer, more complex, and realistic view
of same-sex identities and relationships across cultures and through the millennia. What we would see would be more like real life: messy, complex, and defying easy categorization.
Ed Allard, Laconia, New Hampshire
Harsh Climate for Gay Publishing
To the Editor:
David Bergman’s article [“Do We Need Gay Literature?” Jan.-Feb. 2010 issue] on the decline of gay publishing and gay bookstores was right on target. In today’s climate, it is nearly impossible for community-based publications to survive.
I published The James White Review, a gay men’s literary quarterly, from 1983 to 1998. We basically broke even but did manage to compensate authors and editors. That would not be possible today. I eagerly wait for my subscriptions to Gay & Lesbian Review, the White Crane Journal and RFD, the only gay publications of intelligent discussion left.
Phil Willkie, Minneapolis
A Single Man’s Divided Audience
To the Editor:
Kudos to Andrew Holleran for his incisive analysis of A Single Man, which nailed the particular failings of the movie, especially in relation to its source material. One phenomenon I have noted: while I and many of my gay friends fell into the category of Mr. Holleran’s companion who sat impatiently waiting for the movie to end, nearly all of my straight friends found it deeply moving and gave it high praise—maybe even more than they gave to Brokeback Mountain. Similarly, the straight press was almost uniformly laudatory of A Single Man, while the gay press was generally critical or lukewarm.
What’s that all about?
Mashey Bernstein, Santa Barbara, CA
Rome’s Latest Anti-Gay Backlash
To the Editor,
I have enjoyed the March-April issue more than most because it is in large part devoted to the history and progress of the Gay Liberation movement, issues that have by no means been concluded in victory. I was mildly surprised, however, by the emphasis placed on the Left leaning politics of the movement and the continued misapprehension that it was all started by the Stonewall Riots in 1969.
I moved to New York in the winter of 1959–60, at which time all the gay bars in the city, then run by the Mafia, had been closed down by the police. The gay population, however, didn’t take this assault lying down as had been the case in the infamous 50’s. We poured out onto the streets and did our cruising there in default of available bars. The east side of Third Avenue from about 52nd Street to about 60th Street from dusk through the small hours was alive with gay men cruising. The same was the case on the west side of Greenwich Avenue in the Village and to a lesser extent on Christopher Street. This in-your-face gay parade lasted until well after Stonewall in 1969 and was a far more visible and effective protest against oppression than a few drag queens lashing out against the police.
I was an early member, albeit a fairly conservative one, of the Gay Activist Alliance. When the GAA voted to work for the abolition of any age of consent, I voted and spoke out strongly against the measure, and resigned and walked out immediately after it was approved.
The noisy radical leftists who had effectively taken over the gay liberation struggle did it no great service. Politically moderate gays who favored gay liberation were effectively marginalized and left without a voice. I was inclined to the Republican Party as the party then more inclined toward individual freedom. That was until Ronald Reagan sold out the finer principles of the party to the rump Dixiecrats and the extreme religious right in order to provide his party with a new electoral base. Similarly, I was inclined to support the Conservative Party in the UK until Margaret Thatcher forgot that power corrupts and abandoned her conservative principles in favor of outright bigotry.
Almost all my adult life I have spoken, fund-raised, and written on behalf of equal rights before the law for gay people. I now live in the UK and have come to the conclusion that the last really powerful enemy we face is the Church. I don’t call it the Christian Church because Christian is the last thing many of them are. The most insidious of these is the Roman Catholic Church, largely because it is well-organized and its members have been terrorized from early childhood into unquestioning obedience—a situation not dissimilar to that of Communist youth in the Stalinist era.
Possibly because it has been profoundly humiliated by the appalling record of its priesthood in North America and much of Europe for pedophilic abuse, the Roman Church has launched a campaign against gay equality, probably intended as much as a distraction from its own sins as it is an effort to repeal hard won-gay freedoms. The Pope’s recent outrageous interference in British politics was followed up by an equally outrageous incursion by the Pope’s henchman, the (Roman) Archbishop of Westminster.
The blind refusal of the Roman Church to recognize scientific advances is typified by its rejection of Galileo’s scientific discoveries centuries ago. That blind refusal continued from 1633 until 1835, a disgracefully long time for ignorance and prejudice to triumph over science. This rejection of science extends to the Roman church’s bigoted refusal to acknowledge that homosexuality is neither a choice nor a willful act, and therefore cannot be a sin. It is akin to having blue eyes as opposed to the much more usual brown.
This in turn leads to the Church’s vehement opposition to gay adoption and other similar equalities previously denied to gays before the law. This deeply un-Christian attitude inevitably leads to children that might otherwise have two loving parents and a solid home life instead being condemned to the dubious care of charity or the state.
Rome’s baseless insistence on a celibate clergy actually serves to provide a supposedly dignified social “cover” for those who have no desire for or interest in either heterosexual or gay marriage. The glaringly obvious result of this baseless rule has been the unending scandals of ghastly abuse of children by the Roman church’s supposedly celibate priests, and the consequent nervous suspicion of many people toward all Catholic priests.
Instead of basing its views on an ancient Jewish prohibition of a sexual act then associated with idolatry (and related only to priestly purity, the biblical equivalent of the prohibition against eating shellfish or pork), the church might instead consider the story of Jesus and the Centurion’s “slave” or “boy,” depending on translation. No Roman Centurion would consider chasing after an itinerant Galilean preacher in the outside hope of saving a mere slave. The ridicule and contempt of his fellow Romans would have been intense, and a mere slave would have been easily replaced in the local slave market. The boy could only have been the Centurion’s lover—a circumstance obviously known to Jesus at the time.
These points apply as well to the evangelical and fundamentalist churches, sadly including a distressingly large number of black churches. One might have hoped that after so long a history of slavery, persecution, and discrimination, black churches would have been in the forefront of those supporting the gay struggle for equal treatment. Obviously, memory in black churches is as short as it is in Roman churches.
The endless public condemnation of gay people by so many churches continues to reinforce bullying in schools, encourages hatred and violence against gays by the ignorant public, and is deeply un-Christian, violating as it does the Christian duty to love one’s neighbor.
It is fruitless for gay activists and intelligentsia to bemoan the inactivity of the political Left. The political parties are concerned with votes, not principle. What gay activists must do now is engage in a full frontal attack on the churches, using every possible means, from the courts to boycotts and harassment. A useful tactic that I have seen work is to infiltrate a church with activists who start a low hum at the beginning of the sermon, slowly increasing the volume. It is surprisingly effective. We are at war and we should bar no holds. The churches don’t do so, at times even condoning violence against us.
Andrew Trimingham, Devon, England
Even Then, They Knew
To the Editor,
With reference to the debate on “Queer History” in recent issues of GLR, I refer to my own experience in the 1960’s, when I informed my mother that I would be spending a month in Truro with my “roommate.” My mother immediately responded, “Truro, that’s queer.” I corrected her by saying, “Mother, I didn’t say Provincetown, I said Truro,” only to have Mother conclude the discussion by saying, “Nat Saltonstall lives in Wellfleet, and that whole end of the Cape is queer.” My father’s term was “musical,” or, getting his flowers wrong, “daisy.”
Regardless of the term, my lover and I of 45 years have been legally married in Massachusetts for the past five years.
Jim Hinkle, Cummaquid, Mass.
The Mainstreaming of Gay Literature
To the Editor:
Reading the piece on Edmund White’s City Boy [by Kat Long, Jan.-Feb. 2010 issue], I found the debate between White and Richard Poirier regarding the value and validity of “gay writing” to be a very interesting one.
It occurs to me that, in recent years, what is being desired in gay writing by those who edit and publish it has changed dramatically, in an apparent attempt to mainstream gay writing. As the “old school” journals—Christopher Street, The James White Review, Lodestar, et al.—began their decline, there seemed to have been a focus by those who succeeded them on promoting a more normalized version of the gay community through the material that they chose to print. If one were to write about a salacious bathhouse encounter these days, the writer would be wise to write it so that the two men end up falling in love and flying to Massachusetts to get hitched. Mischief is accepted only in moderation.
As a short story writer, I find it difficult to conform. John Stahle of Ganymede wrote to me recently on one of my stories: “we really like your writing style” but it was not appropriate for them because there were “too many straight people, not enough positive, forward gay life.” I am a student of the writings of Wojnarowicz, Holleran, Rechy, and others of that time. I was reading their stuff when I was fourteen years old, sneaking their books back home from the public library. The way that they depicted gay life profoundly shapes the way that I write today.
Josh Ivey, Appleton, WI
Milwaukee Opera Not So Corny
To the Editor:
I finished the new issue [March-April 2010] of the Review this morning, and was struck by one line in Colin Carman’s review of the new Rufus Wainwright album, Milwaukee at Last!!! Wainwright likes Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater “because the Wisconsin opera house has a rich opera tradition and is surrounded by cornfields.” I grew up in Milwaukee and can attest to the Pabst’s rich opera tradition; I went to the opera there regularly until I went away to college. The theater is located in the center of downtown Milwaukee; however, it is easily fifteen miles from the nearest agricultural field of any sort.
Richard Berrong, Cuyahoga Falls, OH
Corrections
The cover of the last issue included two misspelled names, to the editor’s embarrassed chagrin. The photographer of the cover photo of last October’s March on Washington was Perry Bindelglass. And the author of “The Visible Vidal” was not “Stephen” but instead Steven F. Dansky.
In the March-April 2010 issue, in a review of the book Living in Arcadia, by Julian Jackson, a facsimile of a spread by Jean Cocteau from Arcadie magazine was dated at 1958. It actually appeared in the first issue, in 1954.
