“pansy,” and “faggot” were commonplace. The French used pédé, the Germans Schwul, the Spanish maricón or puto, and the Italians finocchio. But these words were all pejoratives. A term was needed that did not imply crime, sickness, or sinfulness. “Gay” to the rescue! It was an old word, arriving in England from France in the 12th century, and for the next 900 years it had a merry life as a synonym for “jolly.” But in the 1930s, in North America, it started to become a code word for homosexuals, and by 1949 Swasarnt Nerf’s Gayese-English Dictionary declared its dominance: “GAY: Homosexual, queer (adj.). The only word used by homosexuals with reference to themselves, their friends, their haunts, etc.” By the 1960s “gay” was known in police reports and the theater world, and by the end of the decade everyone learned the term. Activist Frank Kameny observed: “The change came fast. As late as 1968–69 we were still having meetings of NACHO— the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations. By mid and late ’69 we had the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. I had coined the slogan ‘Gay Is Good’ in 1968, and ‘Gay Pride’ had appeared.” Gay has been adopted in French, Spanish, and Italian, but not so much in Germany, where their old word Schwul is preferred. Many lesbians pointed out that they already had a word for themselves, and the pairing “gay and lesbian” was born. When the movement began to acknowledge bisexual and transsexual people (later superseded by “transgender”), it became the GLBT or LGBT, with more letters to come, along with LGBT+. “Queer” had been around for many decades as an insult, but starting in the 1990s there was a movement to reclaim the term as one that applied to everyone in the LGBT+ lineup, including those who didn’t identify with any of its letters. Thus LGBTQhas been widely adopted. “Queer” is hard to say in French, Italian, Spanish, and German, so it has not enjoyed the same level of international acceptance that “gay” has produced. Lo Vecchio’s Dictionnaire ends there, but linguistic evolution does not stop. Since the addition of “queer,” the community has begun to more widely acknowledge intersex and asexual people as members, and one widely used configuration is LGBTQIA+. No doubt any term or sequence of letters is a temporary convention that will change along with changing cultural norms and ideas about gender and sexuality. think AIDS is what finally got people into gear. We were no longer an abstraction. MH: But were you ever in the closet? BV: I was bisexual. I always had girlfriends because I wanted the white picket fence and children. Then at a certain point in the early ‘70s, I realized it didn’t square up with who I was, so I decided to live my honest life. I would laugh when people would say being gay was a choice. I’d say: “Yes, it’s a choice to be who you really are.” It’s a choice between living honestly or living in hiding. MH: You’ve written for everyone: Cher, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg.... Who has been the most rewarding to work with? BV: I’ve enjoyed working with everyone, but Bette Midler stands out. I started with her only fifty years ago, and we’re still at it. She was always my inspiration. I was in on the ground floor. When she first performed, she used to say: “I hope nobody needs an emergency comb-out because every hairdresser in town is in the audience tonight.” There were a lot of people attracted to her outsiderness. She wasn’t a conventional beauty. Part of her act’s appeal was to people who were different and felt that they could be different and still make it. There she was, defying every possible convention. She took old songs that people had discarded and turned them into something beautiful. The early fans all recognized that about her. That’s why she was such a huge success. I think for a lot of people, she set them free. She’s my north star. MH: When I asked Joan Rivers about comedy, she said it was all about survival—thus the Jewish connection to comedy. BV: Absolutely. I’m Jewish and gay, so I’m on the outside at two different doors. You have a unique way of looking at things because you’re not in the middle, you’re not in the immediately accepted groups. I could hide my ethnicity or my sexuality, but you don’t want to do that because it’s damaging. Joan was also a woman and faced barriers because of that. MH: Things seem bleak in the biz right now. Things haven’t picked up since the strikes, then there were the terrible fires in California, and people are concerned about what AI will mean. Variety estimates as much as twenty percent of the TV and film workforce in Hollywood is out of work. What’s your sense of how things are? BV: It’s in reconstruction, almost like the South after the Civil War. There are carpetbaggers everywhere. It’s a different business. More than anything else, the business models have changed. The Internet brought on the streamers and that changed everything. Netflix mastered the buy-up out front, so the residuals have changed. There are a million different attacks on how to get things done, which you would have thought might have meant more work, but it’s not working out that way. What used to be broadcasting has become narrowcasting. Audiences are fractured. Now we have a 500-channel universe and people are watching things on their watches. How do you remunerate people now? It’s a whole different thing. MH: Did you ever say No to anything? BV: Vanity projects. I did a couple of them, where a rich husband said, “My wife is a star and I’m going to spend money to prove it.” I did it once for Pia Zadora, but that was because she does have talent. But I got offered others and walked away. MH: You include a chapter on your work onCan’t Stop the Music. Did you ever think you’d see the Village People performing at a Trump inauguration? BV: It never occurred to anybody. They were quintessentially gay. That it’s morphed into this thing, like a wave, I don’t think people are listening to the lyrics, they’re just dancing. They see them not as reflective of gay culture but as reflective of American culture. What Jacques [Morali, the co-creator of the Village People,] saw when he arrived from Paris was gay people doing parodies of those roles. The first song he ever wrote for them was “Macho Man,” which was a big joke because they were obviously gay stereotypes. MH: Lots of anxiety, anger, and sadness about what the current U.S. president is up to. What do you say to people about surviving these rough times? BV: You have to find people who are likeminded and form a resistance. The Democrats are being a bit hapless right now. I’m impressed when people are cancelling their Kennedy Center engagements. He’s already trashed the Kennedy Center because nobody wants to work under his aegis. I think it’s that kind of civil disobedience that will work. Matthew Hays teaches media studies at Marianopolis College and Concordia University and is co-editor of the “Queer Film Classics” book series. November–December 2025 27
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