The More Things Change . . .

I wrote this essay in the Fall 1998 semester, when I was taking an "Introduction to Bi, Gay and Lesbian Studies" course at San Francisco State University. This is a more formal term paper that conveys my rather pessimistic assessment of LGBTQ politics as of November 1998. What’s remarkable, of course, is how much change we’ve seen since then. And yet, we still face the very same political enemies, who now try to disguise their bigotry under the banner of religious freedom. And I see that I was already starting to sound like a crabby old man before the end of the last millennium! It's been more than 20 years since I wrote this. Definitely time for an update!

A few notes:

The Stonewall Riots started on the night of Judy Garland's funeral, not on the night of her death as stated in the essay (even though the street youth most responsible for the riots were more likely to be listening to rock and R&B — not Judy Garland.)

I fudged a few of my sources when I tweaked my formatting to bring it up to MLA8 standards as a model for my students. I'm sure some of you will recognize a couple of my named sources! LOL.

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The More Things Change . . .

As a gay man living out the tail end of my thirties during the tail end of this millennium, I want to look at gay and lesbian American history from my situated perspective. Born in 1961, I am on the younger fringe of the "Baby-Boomer" generation, which most demographers cut off with people born in 1964. But I've never really culturally identified with that group of people. They were my older cousins. Yet I'm a tad too old to be considered part of so-called "Generation X" for which demographers generally use 1966 as the initial birthyear. I was too young to fully understand or participate in the anti-war and civil rights movements when they were happening in the Sixties, but am too old to understand the "Slacker" mentality either.

I was only eight years old when the Stonewall riots occurred, at least 12 years away from acknowledging I was gay. I was a junior in a Southern California high school when the Briggs Initiative, which would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching, was on the California state ballot. (Working as the announcer that year for the school band during a football game half-time show just after the initiative didn't pass, I made an impromptu, unscripted reference to our band director, who was widely rumored to be gay, announcing over the loudspeaker: "... and Mr. Morgan would like to personally thank each and every one of you for voting NO on Proposition 6!" Needless to say, he never let me in front of the mic again!) When I graduated high school in 1979, disco was in full swing and sexual freedom was at its peak, though I wasn't quite ready to join the party just yet, but when I began taking those initial, tentative steps into the gay community in the early Eighties, the AIDS epidemic hit, and all the gay lib frivolity that I had just begun 2 to get a taste of vanished almost as fast as thousands of young gay men were beginning to. The bleak years of the Reagan/AIDS era coincided w/ my rabble-rousing twenties, so when ACT-UP and Queer Nation emerged as potent political forces to be reckoned with, I was right there in the middle of it acting up, fighting back, being here, queer, and demanding that others get used to it. Those days seem like another lifetime now, as we wrap up the Nineties. As I survey the socio-politcal landscape of the United States for gays and lesbians now, in light of the class readings that focused on the Forties and Fifties, there's part of me that wants to say "We've Come a Long Way, Baby!" Yet in my more pessimistic moods, I find myself thinking, "The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same." 

The WWII era created what was, in many ways, the most liberating experience yet for gays and lesbians up to that point. As queer historian John D'emilio points out, "In releasing large numbers of Americans from their homes and neighborhoods, WWII created a substantially new erotic situation conducive both to the articulation of a homosexual identity and to the more rapid evolution of a gay subculture" (24).

People who had previously self-defined as homosexuals now had greater opportunities to meet others like themselves, while those who had a strong same-sex attraction but had yet to act on it now felt relatively free to enter into homosexual relations. Although homosexuals were still officially barred from the military, WWII created pressures to temporarily suspend the normally harsh punitive measures taken towards them. Officers were given orders to not engage in "witchunting or speculating, to ignore hearsay and to approach the problem with an attitude of fairness and tolerance" (D'emilio, 28). This can be contrasted with the today's "Don't Ask / Don’t Tell" policy, which has only resulted in a disturbing 67% increase in gay-related discharges since its implementation in 1994, according to U.S. Senators John Kerry and Ron Wyden (Straky, 26). Another change set in motion by the War, the spread of the gay bar, also helped to reshape the consciousness 3 of the homosexual, fostering an identity that was both public and collective. Then with the publication of the Kinsey Report in 1948, it seemed as if America was finally free from the constraining morality of its Victorian past and well on its way towards the liberation of human sexuality. 

Alas, such optimism was soon crushed. As D'emilio notes "After fifteen years of depression and war, many Americans wanted little more than to construct a tranquil family environment. Especially among the young, traditional sex roles were reasserted" (38). Gone were the popular images of "Rosie the Riveter;" in her place came Donna Reed and June Cleaver, middle-class Caucasian breeders fully contented by a faithful working husband, two happy children, and a kitchen full of modern appliances.

The reaffirmation of normative gender roles made those who lived outside them appear clearly more deviant. Noted herstorian Lillian Faderman writes, "The heterosexual majority tyrannized. As one writer expressed it in 1951, if homosexuality was condemned by most people in a society, then loyalty to the society demanded that good citizens support condemnation of homosexuality and the laws against it" (140). With the psycho-medical establishment firmly entrenched in the conception of homosexuality as an illness in need of a cure, and the government following the lead of the military and the McCarthy witchunting team, all promoting the irrational fear of homosexuality, it is no wonder that the mass circulation magazines of the day presented homosexuality as the chief cause of American ills in articles with titles such as "New Moral Menace to Our Youth" in which same-sex love was said to lead to "drug addiction, burglary, sadism, and even murder" (Faderman, 146). lt's not at all surprising that in such a hostile climate, whatever bold steps gay and lesbian Americans may have taken during the WWII era were counteracted by larger steps back into the closet. The Fifties and early Sixties were the era of the Sexual Outlaw, and with the exception of some organizing by the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society, would remain so until that hot Sunday night at the end of June 4 1969 when Judy Garland died, the night of the Stonewall Riots. 

But how much have things really changed for gay and lesbian Americans since the infamous Stonewall Rebellion? In terms of our civil rights and our acceptance by the heterosexual majority, are we that much better off than the sexual outlaws of the Fifties? Granted, the first half of the Seventies may have been a crescendo of sexual liberation for both homosexuals as well as the heterosexual majority, resulting in a number of state and local civil rights ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but by the end of the decade the just-then emerging Religious Right spearheaded a wave of repeals striking down these laws. As author Barry Adam writes, "Emboldened by an increasingly reactionary climate, police and street violence against gay people escalated, television programs appeared resurrecting old stereotypes, and many public leaders shed their veneer of liberalism to attack gay people as immoral sexual predators and threats to the family" (109). 

Indeed, the Religious Right has only continued to grow in power and influence, to the point that it now controls the agenda of the Republican Party, and together, they've launched an unprecedented attack on the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. With the Republican losses in the recent 1998 Congressional elections, the demise of Newt Gingrich, and the Presidential primaries just around the corner, it may be tempting to smugly let down our guard. But these very same elections also resulted in the repeals of four local anti-discrimination policies in the cities of Ogunquit MN, Little Rock AR, Portland OR, and eerily, Ft. Collins CO, a city one hour away from where Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten to death. Also, these elections effectively dashed any hopes gays and lesbians may have had regarding legalized same-sex marriage, as voters in Alaska and Hawaii voted, by a 2 to 1 margin, to amend their state constitutions to define marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman only. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Chuck Krysieniel discusses a sodomy law case which 5 is now going to trial in Texas; two men engaging in consensual sex in the privacy of their own home were intruded upon and arrested by police officers dispatched to the scene by a "Christian" neighbor who falsely reported a burglary in progress (with the intent of having his "avowed homosexual neighbors" caught in the act and thereby forcing a prosecution under the state's sodomy law, which applies only to homosexuals). As if all this wasn't enough, the Supreme Court recently refused to hear a case from Cincinnati OH, thereby letting stand that city's ordinance which permits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and seemingly ignoring their own precedent-setting ruling in Colorado's Amendment Two case. Is this new wave of anti-gay lawmaking any less oppressive than those in the Fifties or in the late Seventies? I think not. 

I think the extreme right-wing is only going to become more viscous in its literal and figurative use of homosexuals as their favorite cash cow in an effort to consolidate their voting base and raise funds from it. Under the guise of compassion, the Religious Right has launched a new anti-gay attack campaign at a time when hate crimes remain pervasive. Several groups -- including the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, the Center for Reclaiming America, Concerned Women of America and others -- are promoting the bogus notion that people can be "converted" to heterosexuality as camouflage for a new effort to strip lesbians and gay men of their basic civil rights.

 The ads offer a beguiling elixir of "hope and healing." But this is merely a kinder, gentler bigotry, as these ads are not about religion and healing; they're about politics and intolerance. How much have things really changed in the forty years since author Joan Nestle waited in the bathroom line at the Sea Colony Lesbian Bar in New York City, on guard against "the nets of the righteous people, the ones that reached into our minds, that most threatened our breathing." These ads in 1998, just like those nets in 1958, "carr[y] twisted in their invisible windings the words hate yourself because you are a a freak, hate yourself because you use your tongue, hate yourself because you look butch and femme, hate yourself because you are sexual." (38). 

So this is why, in my more pessimistic moods, I'm inclined to believe that we're really not that much better off these days as gay and lesbian Americans. And I can't say that I have much hope for the future either. I worry about the nonchalant, seemingly apathetic attitudes of young gays today. As I walk through the Castro, all the young queens seem more concerned about their pecs, the latest circuit party, and the proper place to have a latte than they do about the political issues I've mentioned. I get that same feeling from the comments of some of the young (presumably) gay students in our class as well. There's just no sense of urgency anymore. 

Perhaps things will have to get worse before they get better; maybe the Religious Right will have its way, and gays and lesbians will begin getting arrested in massive numbers for making love in their own homes, getting prosecuted under biblical law, and getting stoned in town squares, the biblically-prescribed punishment for our "sin." Maybe a few more upwardly mobile lipstick lesbians need to get fired from their jobs, or a few more "bisexual chic" suburbanites need to be denied housing, or a few more young white fags need to get beaten to death. Maybe then, these apathetic young queers will realize that their complacency was ill-begotten. Maybe then they'll realize that we're not so well off, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

WORKS CITED 

Adam, Barry D. The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1995. 

D'Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998. 

Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York, Columbia University Press, 1991. 

Krysieniel, Chuck. “Texas Sodomy Law Back in Courts”. The San Francisco Chronicle, p B2. October 4, 1998. 

Nestle, Joan. A Restricted Country. Firebrand Books, 1987. 

Straky, Peter. “Do Ask, Do Tell”. The Advocate, p 23. April 10, 1998. Print.