I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Todd Haynes's film “Far from Heaven” again; I think I liked it more this time around than when it first came out. Back then, I think I was trying to take the film seriously, at face value, but this time around, it felt more like a satirical farce – almost a comedy! To me, the queerest thing about “Far from Heaven” is the artificial, false reality it lives in.
Much has been written about the “fakeness” of the old “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” TV shows (shows I grew up watching and loved). Yes, gender roles were more proscribed then and children were better behaved, but we all know real life wasn’t as sanitized as depicted in those shows, even for middle class white people.
I saw a lot of that sort of ridiculousness in Haynes’s film, especially in the domestic scenes with the children. The son’s “Golly Gee Willikers, Dad!” dialogue had me in stitches, and I can’t help but think Haynes was playing it for laughs. Even when the film dove into themes that the TV sitcoms dared not touch – like domestic violence and spouse abuse – the dialogue borders on caricature: “I know it was an accident, dear. You didn’t mean it.” Now of course I’m not saying this wasn’t/isn’t the way it happens in these circumstances and that there isn’t truth in Haynes’s vision, but by dealing with these issues in the context 1950’s, with its gender roles and social conventions, but also using the filmic conventions of 1950’s melodramas (in a film made in 2002, not in the actual 1950’s, like the TV sitcoms Haynes emulates), Haynes delivers a twice-removed, double-dose layer of artifice that I found super-entertaining and often humorous, even though the situations being depicted were anything but that
And oh, such situations! Such drama! That is also a very queer thing about the film. The stereotype of the “melodramatic queen” is real, and Haynes really flexes that muscle here.
According to Wikipedia*, melodramas are films in which “the plot, which is typically sensational and designed to appeal strongly to the emotions, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue, which is often bombastic or excessively sentimental, rather than action. Characters are often simply drawn and may appear stereotyped. Melodramas are typically set in the private sphere of the home, and focus on morality and family issues, love, and marriage . . .” Sounds like what you’d find in the conversations at the Twin Peaks bar on a Sunday afternoon – people wringing out every drip of drama from their stories, both flattening and exaggerating the characters to intensify the sensationality, their frequently shrill and emotion-filled voices rising above the din of the crowd. Haynes ticks off all the requisite boxes for a melodrama in this film. Put on a blindfold and throw a dart, and you’ll find an example, so numerous they are. So I’ll just mention one of my favorites here: The scene when all the other mothers at the ballet school were protecting their daughters from the demon spawn of the n****r-lover and homo!
Once again, the racism and homophobia depicted in the film is nothing to laugh at. The problems depicted in the film were (and are) real. Haynes’s intention is not to belittle their significance. But by portraying them in a melodramatic format, he has created an immensely entertaining and humorous soap opera of a movie. Sort of like the “lost episodes” of “Ozzie and Harriet” that were deemed to controversial to air. Maybe Haynes and Ryan Murphy should collaborate on a “dark version” remake of “Leave It To Beaver”! That would be terrific.
Work Cited
“Melodrama.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Aug. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodrama.
* Yes, I know I shouldn’t cite Wikipedia in an academic paper, but it had a really good definition I couldn’t find replicated elsewhere, and unfortunately there was no primary source listed for it.
I'm writing this after having read John Lah'rs article in The New Yorker about Todd Haynes but before rewatching “Far from Heaven,” which I saw when it first came out. For better or for worse, I remember very little of the film, but that's par for the course for me these days, as my memory cells just don't seem to work as well as they used to! I do remember its mood, its color palette, and its credits believe it or not, all of which harken back to one of my favorite films, Douglas Sirk's “Imitation of Life.” Upon its release, I remember reading all the press about how the film was Haynes’s homage to the Sirkian melodramas of the 1950’s, a genre I quite enjoy, so I looked forward to the film then, and look forward to seeing it again with fresh eyes and brain cells.
I have been a fan of Todd Haynes ever since “Poison” came out, a film which I absolutely love. After seeing “Poison”, I immediately tracked down a VHS copy of “Superstar”, which was very hard to find at that time due to the Carpenter family lawsuit against Haynes – Or was it Mattel Toys that sued? I’ve sought out and watched nearly all of Haynes’ films as they were released. (I missed “I'm Not There” and “Wonderstruck”.) I’ve enjoyed all of them, but they’ve felt less “edgy” to me ever since “Velvet Goldmine”, which is Haynes’s first “mainstream” film IMHO.
From the article, I learned that Haynes and I are the same age and both grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles. That might explain why I resonate so much with his aesthetic (and his bizarre obsession with the Carpenters! I enjoyed learning about the nearly life-long friendship between Haynes and Elizabeth McGovern. I fell in love with her after seeing her in her debut “Ordinary People” when it was released in 1980. That was back when I still used to get semi-heterosexual crushes on girls, and her role in that film played right into tragic teen-age boy melodrama, so I’ve been a fan of McGovern’s ever since! I enjoyed learning more about the intimate nature of their friendship.
I believe I’ve seen “Poison” at least three times, always on the big screen, so I enjoyed reading Lahr’s recap. It inspires me to do the extra credit essay, since through writing, I may discover why I love this film so much! The recap of “Safe” reminds me of how bleak it was. Not sure I could withstand a re-watch of that nowadays. Too close to home! Maybe I’d say that “Mildred Pierce” is my least favorite of Haynes’s films, not that there’s anything wrong with it. But why bother to toy with perfection? (I feel the same way about a lot of “cover versions” of songs too.) I remember I saw “Carol” at the Paris Cinema in NYC when it was released.
So that’s my collection of random thoughts upon reading Lahr’s article, a very thorough career overview – a great introduction for a newbie to Haynes’s work, and a great review for those of us who were there from the beginning! (I also just remembered that Lahr wrote “Prick Up Your Ears”!)
In her 2017 interview with The Film Stage,
Dunye mentions that the Martha Page character in The Watermelon Woman is
based on real-life director Dorothy Arzner (1897 – 1979), a queer of historical
note whom I don’t recall ever hearing about before. This pioneering “out” lesbian
from Hollywood’s Golden Era maintained a forty-year relationship with Marion
Morgan, a dancer and choreographer who was ten years older than Arzner. Even
though she tried to keep her private life as private as possible, Arzner was rumored
to be linked romantically with a number of actresses, including Joan Crawford
and Katharine Hepburn (Mayer). She never hid her sexual orientation, nor her
identity; her clothing was unconventional for a woman of that time, she wore
suits or straight dresses (Mayne, 42).
Yet, I still wonder why Dunye couldn’t
find a real black actress from this era to profile in her film. We also got the
inside scoop on Camille Paglia’s participation in the film. I sort of had the
feeling Paglia was taking the piss out of herself, and this interview confirmed
that!
In her June 2020 interview with Vanity Fair, Dunye is
asked about the removal of Gone With The Wind from Netflix,
given the current political climate in the U.S. and the removal of
Confederate-era monuments. Dunye’s response is the same as mine: By all means,
keep the film out there. It is an undeniable classic! (It is also one of my
favorite films, along with another film released the same year about a magical,
fantastical place that really doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t stop The
Wizard of Oz from being great entertainment either.)
But the film needs to
be accompanied by a discussion of its content that places the film in its proper
socio-political context. It sounds like this is what Netflix plans to do. But
withdrawing the film from distribution outright would totally suck, not the
least of which is because, as Dunye notes, “it is a film that our first Oscar
came from, right? Hattie McDaniel. Her troubled life—in the sense of dying too
soon, in the sense of her place within the African American arts community and
the disrespect from that and what she lived for—you’re going to shut down that
film? Why not find out more about it? Why don’t we dissect it and think about
it a little bit more?” (Desta).
Works
Cited
Desta, Yohana. “The
Watermelon Woman: The Enduring Cool of a Black Lesbian Classic.” Vanity Fair,
19 June 2020,
www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/the-watermelon-woman-the-enduring-cool-of-a-black-lesbian-classic.
Mayer, So. “Dorothy Arzner:
Queen of Hollywood: Sight & Sound.” British Film Institute, 7 Mar.
2015,
www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/dorothy-arzner-queen-hollywood.
Mayne, Judith. Directed
By Dorothy Arzner (Women Artists in Film). Indiana University Press, 1994.
Schindel, Daniel. “Cheryl
Dunye on Making History with 'The Watermelon Woman,' Representation, and
Performance.” The Film Stage, 6 Feb. 2017,
thefilmstage.com/cheryl-dunye-on-making-history-with-the-watermelon-woman-representation-and-performance/.
When I first heard
the term "New Queer Cinema", I thought we’d be talking about something,
er, new, which in my mind means something within the past 5 years
or so. But after reading Ruby Rich’s piece on the BFI website, I realized we’d
be going back at least three decades to the 90’s when discussing new queer
cinema. And although Rich didn’t coin the term until 1992 in response the voluminous
queer content at film festivals that year, I had been aware of and seeing queer
independent film for several years already at that point. Due in large part no
doubt to my living in SF, I remember seeing films such as “Buddies” (1985),
“Desert Hearts” (1985), “Parting Glances” (1986), and plenty of other queer
films when they came out during the 80’s, but by 1992 we’d reached such a
critical mass that Rich was able to identify and declare a “new wave” of
film-making.
Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman exemplifies this genre with its low-budget,
independent production values, its rejection of heteronormativity, and its depiction
of queer lives on the fringe of society. I don’t think “heteronormativity” or
“Intersectionality” had been coined yet as academic concepts/terms when Dunye’s
film came out, but the film is relevant to today’s audiences and queer studies
students in the deft ways it portrays how sexual orientation intersects with race,
gender, and class affecting the lives of the characters in the film.
I pegged the film
as a “mockumentary” very early on. It was clearly actors reading from a script,
though I was kept guessing for a while whether or not “The Watermelon Woman”
was a real person. The appearance by Camille Paglia was a good move at throwing
us off the scent as well. I wonder if she was in on the joke? But at some point
the coincidences and fortuitous events were just too good to be true, like when
Cheryl meets her mother's friend Shirley, who
is a wealth of information about Fae Richards a.k.a. “The Watermelon Woman.” One of my favorite
parts of the film was when the white archivist woman at the CLIT Center dumped
out the contents of the box on the table. Hilarious, but a dead giveaway that
what we were watching was staged. Nevertheless, the film was very entertaining
and cleverly produced, even after you figured out the gimmick.
Dunye’s skillful blending of actual archival footage with creatively-produced
“historical” footage and photographs did initially reel me in, but I was left
wondering why Dunye needed to invent a character. She states at the end
of her film, “Sometimes you have to create your own history” but I’m sure there
must be other REAL black actresses from this era that Dunye could have
researched. To my knowledge, there has yet to be a good documentary about
Hattie McDaniel or Butterfly McQueen, and those are just two of the more
well-known such actresses that I can name off the top of my head. I just had to
Google her name, but I’ll never forget Juanita Moore’s powerhouse performance
in “Imitation of Life.” And yet I know NOTHING about her!
Works Cited
Dunye, Cheryl, director. The Watermelon
Woman. Dancing Girl, 1997, lumiere.berkeley.edu/students/items/35243.
Rich, B. Ruby. “New Queer Cinema: Sight
& Sound.” British Film Institute, 25 June 2017,
www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/new-queer-cinema-b-ruby-rich.
This semester (Fall 2020) I am taking an online class at City College of San Francisco: Contemporary LGBTQ Film. I've decided I'll blog the writing I do for the course, since I know you're all just SO god-damned interested! Here's my introduction, to get things started:
Hello Class!
My name is Jeff Matthews. I am a 59-year-old, gay, cisgender man, but I prefer the label "queer" for a few reasons.
1.) It's accurate. I knew I was queer long before I knew I was gay.
2.) It's provocative. I liked the in-your-face aspect of it at the time I adopted it, during the early 1990's Queer Nation Era. ("We're here. We're queer. Get used to it!")
3.) It's inclusive, encompassing everyone who is not heterosexual or cisgender.
4.) It's concise. No never-ending, forever-evolving anagram.
I took my first Queer Studies Course at CCSF in Fall 1995! Interestingly, it was a course titled "Homosexuality in Contemporary Film." I guess I've come full circle during the past 25 years, as this is the last course I need for my A.A. Degree in Queer Studies. Obviously, I wasn’t in any hurry to get the degree. Hey, I’ve been busy doing other things! LOL. Chipping away at the degree has always been a labor of love, anyways. I enjoy being a student.
I just retired in June, after teaching at a community college myself for 28 years. My crowning achievement there was creating an A.A. Degree Program in Queer Studies! I knew once I pulled that off, I could retire in peace, and I did. If you want to know more about that side of me, you can read this article.
I’ve also created some delicious music for stoned queers over the past 35 years or so, which you can check out here.
Besides not being able to travel, one of the things I hate most about Life During a Pandemic is not being able to go out to the movies. I developed a life-long love of movies (and grand theaters) when I was a little boy, and was there every step of the way as queers evolved in cinema since (and before) 1985. I am purposefully not looking ahead at the syllabus as I want to be surprised each week by Ardel’s picks. How many will I have already seen? This first week’s pick, “The Watermelon Woman,” will be new to me. I’m looking forward to watching it soon.
Good luck, everyone! Looking forward to getting to know you better this semester.
I wrote this essay for a sociolinguistics class I was taking at SFSU in February 1989. In fact I turned it in five days before I met my husband. At the time I wrote it, I never imagined living long enough to someday recycle it in a class I'd be teaching or in a blog. (What's that?) But here I am, over 30 years later, still alive and kicking. Obviously, a lot has changed since then, including my rather naive spiritual views. I no longer believe everything happens for a purpose. These days, I'm more inclined to believe that shit simply happens, and our job is to try to navigate the chaos as best we can. The universe doesn't take any of us personally. Then we die.
The assignment was simple: Write an essay about an encounter you've had with death.
It is rather hard to write
about an encounter I've had with death while lying in the sun on one of my
favorite beaches of the Big Sur Coast. It is rather odd to be thinking about
death in conjunction with a class I'm taking towards a Master's Degree in English.
I suppose it's not so unusual to think about dying while falling asleep late at
night. These are all places where I've encountered death, for I encounter my
own death every moment that I'm alive.
I first tested positive
for the HIV virus three years ago. According to the most recent figures and
statistics, I should be dead in four to ten years. So why the hell am I working
on Master‘s Degree?
When I first tested
positive to the antibodies of the virus which causes AIDS, the common belief
was "it doesn‘t mean anything" and "this is not a death
sentence." However, in the, three years since that time the statistical
curve has continued its upward climb in an exponential manner. Time has made it
apparent that now at least 80% of those infected with the virus do eventually
go on to develop full-blown cases of AIDS, which ultimately leads to death. It
just takes some of us longer than others.
Outside of a very minor
case of thrush four months ago ("...even people who aren't HIV positive get
this," my doctor told me), I have remained asymptomatic. I feel just fine. I
certainly have no constant physical reminders that the aforementioned
statistics apply to me. I can't say that I even spend much time in daily
thought about these things; yet the specter of death remains a perennial
possibility in my life, a potential reality I can't ignore which hides in those
gray fuzzy recesses barely below the threshold of consciousness.
The New Age Thinkers tell
us that our continued good health is dependent on not only sensible physical
care, but effective psychological, emotional and spiritual maintenance as well.
Our physical health is a direct manifestation of our emotional well-being.
"Dis-ease" is a result of an internal imbalance. It's only a thought,
and thoughts can be changed. I must not think bad thoughts. Positive thoughts.
Thinking about death when you're 26
Positive thoughts
Thinking positive thoughts about death when you're 26
About lost fathers whom you never thanked For
teaching you to walk strong Like a man, you loved so much.
About your lovers,
In their foreign lands, away from you
You reach too high, and listen for their alibi
Positive thoughts
About hospital beds and needles in my arms
Doctors, drugs, and forced hallucinations
About pain, about fear,
About fuck you
About I love you
About dying when you‘re 36 Positive thoughts
I rattled those words off
the top of my head about two years ago as lyrics to a song (for which the music is just as morose, as well as a blatant rip-off of Phillip Glass, but that's another essay...) They pretty much sum up how I feel about the New Age
Thinkers. Much of what they say I do believe. I do believe that maintaining a positive holistic approach to life is
what keeps us well; but I am too much of a pessimist, or realist as the case
may be, to not pay attention to the numbers generated by this epidemic. So I
walk a razor's edge, a fine line between an image a future filled with good
health and prosperity, and an image of an early death. Lean too far to one side
and I could easily become moribund, resigned to what fate surely has in store for me, devoid of any will to continue living.
Lean too far to the other side, however, and I could rosily trot through life
unconscious of what‘s going on in my body, blind to what fate may have in store for me, blissfully
unaware that life ever ends sooner than we expect. Fortunately I've developed
an excellent sense of balance and am undaunted by walking on a razor's edge. I
am blessed with a warm and caring support system which, along with my spiritual
beliefs, allows me to live my life in a state of relative calm and
centeredness.
Those who know me well
enough to know of my HIV status, but haven't known me long enough to understand
my core of acceptance are bewildered by my seeming detachedness from it all.
"I'd be freaked out!!!" By what, I always wonder? It's not that I'm
resigned to dying of AIDS at the age of 36; it‘s just that I'm not that attached to living in this body. I
believe that the soul continues to live even after the body dies, which takes a
lot of the pressure off of holding on to this lifetime as our only shot at
"getting it right". We chose to incarnate into these particular lives
because they held lessons our individual spirits needed to learn. Perhaps my
spirit, for whatever reasons, needs to encounter the experience of an early
death, or perhaps my parents must undergo the loss of one of their children.
The changes occurring in the lives of my loved ones and myself indicate that a
rapid acceleration of understanding and growth is already happening. This
direct confrontation with my own mortality has given me a true appreciation for
each moment of life that I'm granted. Iactually feel privileged when I look around at most other 27-year-old
graduate students, locked into such a future-oriented pattern of living, in a
self-perceived state of immunity from death. Observing them, I know that having
this disease does have its benefits, that it has increased my awareness of what
is truly valuable in my life.
I do believe that everything
happens for a purpose, and if the "Good Lord decides to call me home" a little
earlier than anticipated, well then who the hell am I to question it? We all
gotta go sometime, right? If I do die
when I'm 36, I won't feel like I've been cheated by life. I feel I've always
tried to do right by my sisters and brothers on this planet, and I've been
fortunate to already see and do a lot of things that many people never do in a
"full" lifetime. On the other hand, I can‘t help wondering how much
more I can accomplish in this lifetime if I live to be 90. But I am accepting
of whatever comes my way, and believe that whatever happens, happens.
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.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
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.
