CHAPTER 1 We Are Everywhere

We are everywhere” is a statement that many lesbians and gay men have uttered in response to the oft heard “But I don’t think I know anyone gay.” But what does that mean, “We are everywhere”?

The truth is, lesbians and gay men are not always visible to each other, let alone to the nongay world. Despite common myths, most gay people cannot be picked out of a crowd. We cross all racial, class, ethnic, and religious lines. We are African Americans, Native Americans, Italian Americans, Asians, Latinos, Irish Americans, Buddhists, Catholics, Mormons, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, to name only a few. And we are in every family: We are mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, uncles and cousins.

There is an old joke that says that if all the gay people in this country were to stay home from work on the same day, business and government would cease to function; planes wouldn’t fly; banks, schools, and grocery stores couldn’t open; church pulpits would be empty; trains would stop running; and nobody would be able to get a decent haircut. This is not just because of our sheer numbers (see Chapter 6 for a discussion of those statistics), but also because even when we aren’t visible, we are indeed everywhere: We are in every city and town, in every occupation, in every community.

It is invisibility that has led many people to dismiss the important contributions lesbians and gay men have made to society. This chapter is in large part about making the covert overt. It is one thing to know we are everywhere; it is another to become visible. In this chapter, we have focused on people who are prominent, whose names might be familiar to the reader not because they are gay, but because of their achievement or prominence in the world at large. (For another view of how gay people have made ourselves visible by creating our own institutions, see Chapter 5.)

For many gay people, the experience of finding ourselves has been a painful and rocky path; but many find coming out to be freeing. The thrill of discovering that someone like ourselves is gay is an almost giddy experience. In a world without role models, if you never see yourself, you have no idea of who you could become. Finally, that is changing. For young athletes today, sports figures like Greg Louganis (four-time Olympic gold medalist) and Martina Navratilova (the finest tennis player in the history of the sport) are the kinds of role models we wish we’d all had.

art DID YOU KNOW…

Jose Sarria, famous female impersonator, was the first openly gay person to campaign for public office, running for supervisor in San Francisco in 1961. While he was not successful, he did win nearly 7,000 votes. He ran, he said, not to win, but “to show gay people that we could do anything.” Looking back years later, he added, “I don’t know what I would have done if I had won!” It turns out that on the last day to file for candidacy, the “city fathers” discovered that there were fewer candidates than vacancies—which would have guaranteed Jose a spot on the board. By day’s end, there were thirty-four candidates vying for the five vacant offices.

But just as important, both gay and straight people have their world expanded when they find out someone is gay. We all grow when we begin to recognize the diversity of lesbians and gay men, when we begin to see the whole picture of who gay people are, and when we understand the almost limitless possibilities of who we can become.

art

LESBIAN SURVIVAL HINT #211: WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT TO COME OUT, YOU’LL KNOW.(Rhonda Dicksion)

What we are attempting in this chapter is to break that invisibility, to present a wide range of out lesbians and gay men, a smorgasbord of who we are as lesbians and gay men. The examples here are not meant to be exhaustive—that would take several volumes. You’ll notice that we’ve presented scientists but not psychologists, composers but not lawyers, dancers but not plumbers. This chapter represents only the tip of the ice-berg of who we are.

PINK POLITICS: GAY AND LESBIAN PUBLIC OFFICIALS

Social change happens in many ways, but gay and lesbian elected and appointed public officials are on the front lines of mainstream progress. While we must build coalitions with other groups in order to secure civil rights for all people, we must also stand up for ourselves. By running for public office, gay people demand inclusion in the democratic political process and they increase public awareness of gay struggles.

At the same time, it is important to recognize that gay and lesbian politicians, whether elected or appointed, do not necessarily represent only gay and lesbian issues. The contrary is often true; most gay people deal daily with the tension between being gay and having “gayness” define every aspect of what we do. While most out gay politicians are concerned about gay and lesbian civil rights, they are also concerned about the environment, education, health care, and taxes. When gay people are elected to office, they have been chosen by a constituency that is probably not overwhelmingly gay; they have been elected precisely because they bring all of who they are to the political table.

Today, out gay men and lesbians are running for public office in record numbers. According to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which provides support to gay candidates, in 1994 there were more than 150 gay people currently holding public office nationwide, either through appointment or direct election. More and more, gay candidates are being elected and appointed not only because they are gay, but also because gay people are no longer seen as one-issue candidates.

Harvey Milk

Sailor, Wall Street investment broker, hippie, and camera shop owner Harvey Milk went relatively unnoticed in his first two runs for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. But in 1977, his successful bid brought him into the national media spotlight. The openly gay politician understood his role as a media darling: “I understand the responsibility of being gay,” he said. “I was elected by the people of this district, but I also have a responsibility to gays—not just in this city, but elsewhere.”

During his first year in office, he submitted and pushed through a gay-rights ordinance that moved to end antigay discrimination in jobs, housing, and public accommodations. Mayor George Moscone signed the policy into effect after Supervisor Dan White cast the only dissenting vote. Milk also took his show on the road, speaking to lesbian and gay organizations around the country. He was, and continues to be, an inspiration to gay people nationwide. Milk often told a story about a young boy from Altoona. Pennsylvania, who called him just to say “thank you” after hearing of Milk’s election.

But his first year in public office was also to be his last. On November 27, 1978, politically conservative former supervisor Dan White gunned down both Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. The act of political vengeance shocked gays and straights alike. On the evening of the shooting, more than twenty-five thousand people carrying candles marched in silent vigil, and the memorial services two days later brought out thousands of people.

In May of the next year, when Dan White was found guilty only of manslaughter and sentenced to just seven years in prison, the city’s lesbians and gay men erupted with rage. The White Night Riots brought three thousand angry gay people to city hall, where they caused an estimated million dollars in damage. Lesbian San Francisco State University Professor Sally Gearhart spoke to a crowd the next day, saying, “There is no way I will apologize for what happened last night.… Until we display our ungovernable rage at injustice, we won’t get heard.”

Haney Milk was a kind man, an ambitious man, and a man of his people. His legacy lives on, detailed in both print and film. But more than that, he lives on as a symbol of the strength of our political convictions. His assassination serves as a historical reminder of the difficult opposition gay men and lesbians face demanding inclusion in the mainstream political process.

Gay and Lesbian Elected Officials

Out lesbians and gay men represent areas large and small—from Mayor Gene Ulrich of Bunceton, Missouri, population 321, to Carole Migden, the San Francisco supervisor elected at large in a city of 730,000.They’ve been elected in every region of the country—from Dallas, Texas, to Des Moines, Iowa, from Los Angeles to New York City, from Key West, Florida, to Burlington, Vermont, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Seattle, Washington, and many have been reelected time and time again.

“When lesbians and gays choose to do public service and do it openly we can shift attitudes and change people’s opinions,” says Rochester, New York, Council-member Tim Mains, who’s been in office since 1985. History bears that out. West Hollywood, California, which has had three openly gay elected officials serving at one time, was one of the first cities in the nation to offer domestic partnership benefits to city employees. In fact, lesbian and gay elected officials, while working on issues as diverse as community preservation and a national health care plan, have pushed for lesbian and gay civil rights on several fronts. They’ve spoken out against antilesbian and antigay violence, helped pass state and local civil rights laws, organized successful campaigns to win domestic partnership benefits, and spearheaded efforts to fight ordinances undoing the gains of the lesbian and gay movement.

FIRSTS

1972

Nancy Wechsler and Jerry DeGrieck were elected to the Ann Arbor, Michigan, City Council as candidates from the Human Rights Party, though neither ran as openly gay. They both came out soon after in response to a homophobic incident at a local restaurant.

1974

Elaine Noble and Kathy Kozachenko were the first openly gay people elected to office—to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Ann Arbor, Michigan, City Council, respectively.

Allan Spear, a state senator in Minnesota, who had been elected in 1972, came out as an openly gay man.

1977

Steve Camara was the first openly gay person elected to a local school board, in Fall River, Massachusetts.

1980

Gene Ulrich was the first openly gay person to be elected mayor when he won the post in Bunceton, Missouri (population: 321). He has been reelected in every bid since.

1989

Albany, New York, Common Council member Keith St. John became the first openly gay African American elected official.

1990

Dale McCormick became the first openly lesbian state senator when she was elected to the office in Maine.

1991

Sherry D. Harris became the first out African American lesbian elected official when she won a seat on the Seattle City Council.

1994

San Francisco School Board member Angie Fa became the first Asian American lesbian or gay elected official.

Tom Duane of the New York City Council became the first openly HIV-positive candidate to be elected to office.

The same year saw the first statewide runs by lesbian and gay candidates—Karen Burstein for New York State attorney general and Tony Miller for California secretary of state.

And while there are still no openly gay or lesbian U.S. senators, there are three openly gay congressional representatives: Gerry Studds (D) and Barney Frank (D), both of Massachusetts, and Steve Gunderson (R) of Wisconsin.

There is, of course, no “prototype” gay politician, just as there are no prototype gay people in any field. The individuals profiled on the following pages are representative examples of the more than 150 lesbians and gay men who have sought and won public office over the past twenty years.

Elaine Noble

Although Kathy Kozachenko won election to the Ann Arbor, Michigan, City Council as an open lesbian in April 1974, it wasn’t until Elaine Noble’s race for the Massachusetts House of Representatives later that year that the nation’s eyes really became focused on the possibility of an out lesbian serving in elected office. “She became the most highly publicized state legislator since Julian Bond.” said Ms. magazine. Even the New York Times wrote an article about “the first avowed lesbian elected to state office“.

Born in a Pennsylvania mining town, Noble put herself through Boston University by working as a cocktail waitress, then went on to get two graduate degrees, one in speech, the other in education. Noble also became active in her Fenway/Back Bay community, helping elderly people sign up for food stamps and get transportation to health clinics, organizing a neighborhood garbage clean-up, and fighting the conversion of a school playground into a Red Sox parking lot.

In 1973, she was appointed to the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women, and a year later, she ran for the Massachusetts State House, edging out her nearest opponent in a five-way Democratic primary by 169 votes—out of 1,231 cast. She then handily beat her Republican opponent with 59 percent of the vote.

“When I decided to run, it was because I’m the most qualified for this job,” Noble told a Newsday reporter shortly after her election—a refrain that’s been repeatedly echoed since by lesbian and gay candidates across the nation.

And despite slashed tires, obscene phone calls, and threats to campaign workers, “what enabled Miss Noble to win the district was a campaign that stressed her community work and the fact that she had met so many of the voters face to face,” said the New, York Times.

Noble served in the Massachusetts House until 1980, when she unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate.

art DID YOU KNOW…

As of 1994, openly lesbian and gay elected and appointed officials hold state or local offices in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. California has the most gay office holders, with thirty-five.

Offices range from mayor (Berkeley and Santa Monica, California; Melbourne, Iowa; Cambridge, Massachusets; and Bunceton, Missouri) to state representative (Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin), and from police commissioner (Los Angeles) to public utility commissioner (Texas) to recreation and parks commissioner (Columbus, Ohio).

Sherry Harris

In 1991, Sherry D. Harris beat a twenty-four-year incumbent in the Seattle, Washington, City Council to become the first open African American lesbian elected to office anywhere in the United States. Harris, elected at large to represent Seattle’s 525,000 residents, won with a whopping 70 percent of the vote. Like Elaine Noble, she attributes her victory to her history of community activism on issues including the environment, transportation, and economic development.

“In fact, when I began my campaign, it was a big question whether to be up front about my sexual orientation. I wasn’t broadly known as a gay person, but we decided we could not NOT talk about it. Because then, in a big city like Seattle, there would be a whispering campaign. We didn’t want my sexual orientation to be an issue in the race—we wanted to talk about real issues.”

Harris notes that not having a “credential” in the gay community worked to her disadvantage. “They were really hard on me and made me prove myself to them,” she says.

That’s exactly what Harris has done. Not only does she chair the Council’s Housing, Health, Human Services and Education Committee and serve as a member of both the Transportation and Utilities Committees, but she’s also found the time to sponsor or co-sponsor more than a dozen gay-positive initiatives, and has helped raise more than a million dollars to fight antigay ordinances in Washington State.

Gerald Eugene Ulrich

Gerald Eugene Ulrich was one of only a handful of openly gay people to win office when, in 1980, he became mayor of Bunceton, Missouri (population: 321), in the heart of America’s Bible Belt. He’s been reelected in every election cycle since—including one tough campaign against an opponent “related to half the people in town,” as Ulrich puts it. Ulrich won by a two-to-one margin.

Lesbian and gay elected officials from around the country gathered at Stonewall 25 to celebrate gay political visibility. (Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund)

“I just didn’t think about it,” says Ulrich of his sexual orientation. “Everyone in town knew me. They knew my parents. I grew up in this area.”

“My lover and I have been together since 1972,” Ulrich says. “We’d always gone to city and state functions together, so pretty much everybody in town knew about me.”

Born to a farming family, Ulrich, a plant manager at a local rubber sponge factory, began his political life organizing a gay church for parishioners in central Missouri. But his life as mayor hasn’t been that different from the life of any other mayor of a small town in America’s heartland.

FEDERAL POLITICAL OFFICES HELD BY OUT LESBIANS AND GAY MEN, 1994

Though this compilation profiles only one year, it shows how pervasive our political presence is within the system. All positions are appointed.

DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR

Assistant Deputy Secretary

Special Assistant to the Secretary

Special Assistant

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Assistant Secretary

Confidential Assistant to Assistant Secretary

Confidential Assistant to the General Counsel

Director of Interior Government Relations

Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary

Special Assistant to the Secretary

DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Assistant Secretary of Community Planning & Development on the Homeless

Assistant Secretary of Fair Housing

Commissioner of National Capital Planning

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Multi-Family Housing

Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary

Special Assistant to the Secretary

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Deputy General Counsel

Deputy Secretary for Public Affairs

“I ran for office,” Ulrich says, “to get some things done that weren’t getting done by the old fogies here in town.” Among his accomplishments: securing nearly a million dollars in state and federal grants for housing rehabilitation for the elderly, a new sewer system, parks, and a new town well. “People in this town judge me by my character and not my personal life—which is the way it should be,” Ulrich declares.

Appointed Officials

One way to judge political power is to count how many people of a particular race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or any other category are appointed by elected officials. Judging by this standard, the political clout of lesbians and gay men has grown exponentially since Stephen Lachs and Mary Morgan were appointed to California municipal court judgeships by then-governor Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, Jr., in 1981.

As of 1994, there were more than eighty lesbian or gay, officials appointed to top local, state, or federal positions—and that’s just counting the ones who’ve made themselves known to organizations like the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, an organization that raises funds for lesbian and gay political candidates. There are no doubt many more.

Roberta Achtenberg

Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina got more than he bargained for when he took on Roberta Achtenberg, the San Francisco supervisor nominated to be assistant secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In an attempt to discredit Achtenberg, Helms decided to make an issue of Achtenberg’s “outrageous” public behavior: She had actually kissed her life partner, Mary Morgan, at San Francisco’s 1993 lesbian and gay pride parade. But dozens of senators rallied to her side, and Achtenberg became the first openly gay person to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 24. 1993, by a margin of 58 to 31.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services

Director of Special Education Programs

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Special Assistant of Labor

Special Assistant of Labor, Women’s Bureau

Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary

Presidential Personnel

Deputy Director of Information Services

Deputy Director Search Liaison

OTHER OFFICES

Correspondence Officer for Department of State, Department of Presidential Inquiries

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Internal Affairs

Deputy Staff Secretary to the President

Director of AIDS Prevention Center, the White House

General Counsel to General Services Administration

Office of Policy Development, Department of Justice

Senior Advisor for National AIDS Policy to the President

Senior Deputy Comptroller of the Currency

Senior Economist on Counsel of Economic Affairs

Special Assistant of Solid Waste, Environmental Protection Agency

Special Senior to the President

White House Liaison of Labor

Achtenberg, who had served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors since January 1, 1991, is responsible for enforcing federal Fair Housing Law and for ensuring that HUD housing programs provide equal opportunity for all qualified Americans.

Prior to her election as supervisor, Achtenberg (who in 1992 became the first openly lesbian speaker at a Democratic National Convention) worked for fifteen years as a civil rights attorney. This included stints as the Executive Director of the National Center for lesbian Rights and Director of the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation.

Paul Richard

Paul Richard, the deputy staff secretary at the Clinton White House, likes to tell a story about an interview the FBI had with Rob Keyes, Richard’s partner of thirteen years. During the interview—part of the FBI’s background investigation of Richard—the FBI asked Keyes whether Richard might be vulnerable to blackmail because of his sexual orientation. “The last time I was at the White House, Paul introduced me to the President as his spouse,” Keyes told the FBI.

Richard, whose office manages all of the President’s paperwork, is one of at least four openly gay appointed officials in the West Wing of the White House—the center of power for the executive branch. “As an African American and a gay man, I feel an obligation to make certain issues known to the President,” Richard says.

Brought up in Washington, D.C., when the schools were still segregated and when African Americans wouldn’t be seated at certain restaurants, Richard, a former lawyer in private practice, muses that “openly walking the corridors of power would have been inconceivable twenty-five years ago.”

art DID YOU KNOW…

Inspired by the massive October 1979 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, Melvin Boozer came out publicly. Already regarded as a “comer” in District of Columbia politics, Boozer, a young black professional, soon became president of the D.C. Gay Activists Alliance, a leading moderate voice among black gays nationally; in 1981 he became district director of the D.C. office of the National Gay Task Force. In 1980, he was an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention. That year, the seventy-five openly gay delegates and alternates placed Mel Boozer’s name in nomination for vice president of the United States. As the first openly gay person to receive such a major party nomination Boozer had the opportunity to address the convention, after which he withdrew his nomination in favor of the party’s official nominee. His work for gay rights and against racism continued until his death from AIDS-related causes in March 1987, at age forty-one.

Mary Morgan

In 1982, when Mary Morgan was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to a judgeship in the San Francisco Municipal Court, to preside over both civil and criminal cases, she was worried. “Were people going to think of me as a judge? Or were they going to think of me as a lesbian?”

Most people gave her the respect she deserved, but one defense lawyer did write a note to the prosecuting attorney: “How can I get that bulldyke off my case?” Unbeknownst to the defense attorney, the prosecutor was gay—and promptly showed the note to Morgan. Despite this, Morgan avers, “I always felt good about the fact that a lot of people had gotten beyond the label of being a lesbian and focused on the fact that I was a very good judge.”

By the time Morgan retired in 1993, she was Dean of the California Judicial College, responsible for training all the newly appointed judges in California.

The information in this section was compiled with the assistance of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the national fundraising organization for lesbian and gay candidates for public office.

Gay Speakers Take the Floor

Gay men and lesbians in several cities first became visible in the Democratic Party as the 1972 presidential campaign geared up. Pro-gay resolutions passed in some state caucuses, and most Democratic presidential candidates made at least some effort to solicit the gay vote. At the Democratic National Convention, held in Miami Beach in August, five openly gay people were seated for the first time as delegates or alternates. Jim Foster, political head of San Francisco’s Society for Individual Rights, or SIR, had written a strong gay rights position paper for Senator George McGovern, who, unfortunately, couldn’t always remember whether he’d approved or even seen that statement.

While other gay people demonstrated in the park outside the convention, Jim Foster and Madeline Davis, of Buffalo, New York’s Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, addressed those delegates who were still awake at five a.m.

“We do not come to you pleading for your understanding or begging for your tolerance,” Foster said. “We come to you affirming our pride in our lifestyle, affirming the validity of our right to seek and maintain meaningful emotional relationships, and affirming our right to participate in the life of this country on an equal basis with every other citizen.…

“The kind of harassment, enticement, entrapment, brutality, discrimination, and injustice perpetrated against gay people is a shame to the concept of justice in this country.… [It is] ironic, in view of its valiant efforts to eradicate prejudice, discrimination, and abuse in matters of race, creed, and color, that the government has itself been a major and active promoter of the abuse our society directs against gay women and men.”

He appealed for adoption of the gay rights plank, adding that whether or not it was adopted, “We are here. We will not be stilled. We will not go away until the ultimate goal of gay liberation is realized … [until] all people can live in the peace, freedom, and dignity of what they are.”

Ms. Davis, whose gay folk song album, Stonewall Nation, had been released weeks earlier, said more briefly, “Twenty million gay Americans are the untouchables in our society. We have suffered the gamut of oppression, from being totally ignored to having our heads smashed and our blood spilled on the streets.

“Now we are coming out of our closets and onto the convention floor to tell you … and to tell all gay people throughout America, that we are here to put an end to our fears.” Urging adoption of the gay rights plank, she said, “We must speak to the basic civil rights of all human beings. It is inherent in the American tradition that the private lives and lifestyles of the citizens should be both allowed and ensured, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others.… You have before you a chance to reaffirm that tradition and that dream.…

“You have the opportunity to gain the votes of 20 million Americans who will hope to put a Democrat in the White House.… I say to you that I am someone’s neighbor, someone’s sister, someone’s daughter. A vote for this plank is a vote for all homosexual women and men across the country to peaceably live their own lives.”

Despite the wee morning hour, it was a historic breakthrough, broadcast nationwide to an audience estimated by industry officials at a million. (More than 11 million heard Foster interviewed on NBC and CBS earlier.) Both speeches won loud applause, but the gay rights plank then lost by a voice vote. (A watered-down version passed four years later.)

Once he had the nomination wrapped up, George McGovern sought to distance himself from the gay men and lesbians, women’s liberationists, peace activists, environmentalists, and counterculture people who’d won him the victory; later there was an angry confrontation in his office between gay activists who felt betrayed and the more “mainstream” gay people who still managed parts of McGovern’s stumbling campaign.

OUT OF THE CLOSET, INTO THE NEWSROOM

Media shapes American society as much as it reflects it. From Washington politicians to Hollywood studios, from social movements to celebrities on trial, everyone has become keenly aware of the power of the media to influence attitudes and change public opinion.

Given the role media plays in our society, it is crucial to gay men and lesbians as a people that we have representation on the “inside.” There have always been mainstream gay and lesbian journalists. But the pressure of being in an aggressive and competitive job market, as well as the homophobia within the industry, often keeps gay journalists in the closet. In the guise of “objectivity,” their sexualities remain invisible both in the public eye and in the office.

More and more, individuals around the country have refused to remain silent. In the business of manufacturing images and presenting information, these openly gay and lesbian journalists are standing up and declaring that their identities are a relevant and essential part of who they are, not only privately, but publicly as well.

Out in the Media

• Leroy Aarons, Oakland Tribune executive editor in California. After coming out during a presentation of the first-ever survey of gay journalists at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Aarons started the momentum that became the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA). He is currently president of the NLGJA.

• Susan Baumgartner, columnist for the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Idaho. According to reports in gay publications at the time, Baumgartner was believed to be the first openly lesbian columnist for a rural daily newspaper when she came out in her column in October 1993.

• Lily Eng,Philadelphia Inquirer higher education reporter. Active in the Asian American Journalists Association, Eng was credited as being a leading force in having the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association invited to Unity, a historic national gathering of ethnic minority journalists, in Atlanta in 1994. She was also among those instrumental in making domestic partnership benefits available at the Seattle Times.

• Steve Gendel, CNBC reporter who disclosed his orientation during a network news report on Stonewall. According to New York Newsday of August 25, 1994: “CNBC producer and correspondent Steve Gendel has been openly gay for some time, but had never announced it in a news story until June, when he was narrating a Today Show report on the Stonewall riot.… ‘Few will deny,’ he intoned into the camera and out to millions of viewers, that the riot ‘was a great catalyst for the American gay movement, allowing many of us who are gay, including myself, to come out of the closet and fight for acceptance.’ With those words, Gendel became the first national TV correspondent to identify himself as gay during a network news story, breaking one of the most tenacious silences in broadcasting.”

• Lynda Moore, network news anchor for ABC Radio. A lesbian-identified bisexual, Moore says she believes if not for her presence and that of a gay person with AIDS (PWA) editor, there would be much less attention paid to gay and lesbian issues at the network. She’s been at ABC since 1980, and always out at work. She says if she hadn’t covered events like the 1987 gay rights March on Washington, “then they wouldn’t have been covered.”

• Juan Palomo, Houston Post columnist and editorial writer fired, then rehired, over corning out in print. Palomo wrote a column in July 1991 about a local Fourth of July gay-bashing murder. In the column, Palomo said people had a responsibility to speak out against such atrocities. His intended column concluded with Palomo saying he had a special responsibility to speak out because he himself was a gay man. His editors nixed that line (one expressing the fear, says Palomo, that the paper would lose subscribers). The Houston Press, an alternative weekly, found out, interviewed Palomo, and quoted him in its story about the deletion. This angered Palomo’s editors. Other media outlets picked up the story, and Palomo was eventually fired for insisting on his right to speak to other reporters about the incident. The Post rehired Palomo within a week, after a national outcry from other media professionals. Palomo now writes his column, which he estimates addresses gay and lesbian issues about 10 percent of the lime, as an openly gay man.

• Tom Rolnicki, executive director and editor of National Scholastic Press Association. Rolnicki, who has been involved with college and high school newspapers nationally for over a decade, says many of them are better on AIDS and gay issues than the mainstream commercial press is.

• Jeffrey Schmalz, New York Times AIDS reporter who died from complications of the disease in 1993. Some insiders say Schmalz had a profound effect on the New York Times (and, by extension, all the U.S. news media’s) coverage of AIDS and gay issues. Schmalz, who began working at the Times as a copy boy at age eighteen and rose to become a deputy national editor, collapsed and suffered a seizure at his newsroom terminal in 1990. He was diagnosed with AIDS, and subsequently came out as a gay PWA to top editors at the paper. He returned to active reporting, covering the White House, gay politics, and AIDS. His last piece, “Whatever Happened to AIDS?” was published posthumously in the New York Tunes Magazine on November 26, 1993.

• Andrew Sullivan, editor-in-chief, the New Republic. When openly gay Briton Andrew Sullivan, at twenty-eight, was named editor of this conservative and influential national magazine in 1991, it caused quite a media stir. Sullivan, who began working at the New Republic four years before becoming editor, has written on such diverse topics as race wars in New York, the Catholic Church in America, and the rift between HIV-negative and HIV-positive people.

• Helen Zia, award-winning investigative reporter. Zia is a contributing editor and former executive editor of Ms. magazine, where she was the first Asian woman to head a major national magazine. Zia was instrumental in publicizing the Vincent Chin case in Detroit, as detailed in her award-winning documentary Who killed Vincent Chin? Chin was beaten to death in 1982 by autoworkers who thought he was of Japanese ancestry and somehow responsible for hard times in the U.S. auto industry. At her request, Zia asked to be and was introduced as a lesbian before her keynote speech for the Asian American Journalists Association’s national convention in 1900, broadcast live on C-SPAN.

art DID YOU KNOW…

In 1991, Essence Magazine received more letters than ever before in its twenty-four-year history when readers responded to a Mothers Day article by senior editor Linda Villarosa and her mother, Clara, on Linda’s coming out. “It was coming out in a big way,” says Linda. The avalanche of responses were overwhelmingly positive, and prompted the Villarosas to follow “Coming Out” with a second article, “Readers Respond to Coming Out.” For those articles, Linda received the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Award.

Linda Villarosa

Though she had been openly lesbian for years, Linda Villarosa, out African American lesbian and senior editor of Essence Magazine, broke new ground with “Coming Out,” an article she wrote with her mother for the May 1991 Mother’s Day issue of Essence. The decision did not come easily; it kept her up at night and gave her nightmares. But as Linda said in an interview with Deneuve magazine, “This was not something I wanted to do, but something I needed to do.” Linda explained that writing “Coming Out” eradicated the pressures of hiding her personal life at work and in public. Most important, however, she was able to give voice and identity to a minority whom Linda says is invisible in our society. “There is a perpetuation of the stereotype, particularly in the black community,” she told Deneuve, “that there are no black lesbians … or that women who are gay are so unattractive and mannish—a bunch of people with bad haircuts.… Well, I wanted to challenge that stereotype.”

“Coming Out” is Linda Villarosa’s hope that black lesbians will gain a sense of entitlement to succeed in life as who they are without having to hide, and to serve as role models for young black lesbians and gays. “The best thing you can do in your life is to stop lying, be honest, be true to yourself and what is important in your life. I am very happy with how my life is going. And if I’ve helped a few other young women to come out and be honest with their lives, then that is great too.”

Linda Villarosa, the openly lesbian editor of Essence Magazine, was the first African American lesbian to head a major national magazine. (Essence Magazine)

Randy Shifts

Randy Shifts was probably the most widely recognized gas journalist in the mainstream media. His 1987 bestselling book, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic, details the early history of the AIDS epidemic and the indifferent, slow response to it by the federal government, the medical establishment, and by some gay organizations.

“He put AIDS on the front page,” said prominent AIDS physician Dr. Marcus Conant in the San Francisco Chronicle report on Shilts’s death from AIDS in February 1994. Shilts also wrote The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), a biography of the gay San Francisco supervisor who was assassinated with Mayor George Moscone; and Conduct Unbecoming; Lesbians and Gays in the U.S. Military(1993).

Homophobia among editors, Shifts said, had kept him from finding full-time journalism work in Oregon, where he had attended the University of Oregon and was managing editor of the student newspaper. He came out while a student there and was active in gay politics in Eugene. It was only six years after his graduation, in 1981, that the San Francisco Chronicle hired Shilts, making him one of the first openly gay reporters for a major U.S. daily newspaper. In the six-year interim, Shilts was a correspondent for The Advocate and a reporter for television stations KQED in San Francisco and KTVU in Oakland, during which time he also wrote much of The Mayor of Castro Street.

Shilts said he didn’t inquire about his HIV status until he had finished writing And the Band Played On because he didn’t want this knowledge to affect his investigation. Similarly, he didn’t publicize his illness until after Conduct Unbecoming, completed from his hospital bed, was published. Shilts told The Advocate he considered himself “more valuable to the gay movement as a journalist” than as “a professional AIDS patient.”

Because of his frank reporting in the 1980s about gay bathhouses and their role in the spread of AIDS, and his stance later against “outing,” Shilts was derided by some in the gay community, while others sung his praises.

Shilts himself seemed somewhat dismayed, writing in Esquire in 1989: “The bitter irony is, my role as an AIDS celebrity just gives me a more elevated promontory from which to watch the world make the same mistakes in the handling of the AIDS epidemic that I had hoped my work would help to change.”

Deb Price

Deb Price said she was “absolutely terrified” her successful journalism career might end when she proposed a weekly column on gay and lesbian topics for the Detroit News. But her editor and publisher liked the idea, and the column began in May 1992. It was quickly picked up nationally by USA Today and many of the eighty-three local Gannett newspapers, and has since been syndicated and is carried by other major publications.

Price says the positive reaction she received front early readers showed her how critical her columns are in small towns where gay people had no visibility.

In her columns, Price writes in a personal style about life with her partner (journalist Joyce Murdoch), religion, gays in the military, gay parents, and a wide range of other topics. She says her goal is to “bridge a gap between the gay and heterosexual communities, to get an open and honest dialogue started.”

Formerly news editor of the Detroit News Washington, D.C., bureau, Price said it took her a while to get used to using “us” and “we” instead of “them” and “they.” “No one has been more liberated by this column than I have,” says Price.

Garrett Glaser

Garrett Glaser made history in 1992 when he became the first openly gay on-camera reporter to address the Radio and Television News Directors Association. Although certainly not the first openly gay man on television news, Glaser’s presentation on a panel about newsroom diversity at the RTNDA’s national conference immediately proclaimed his homosexuality to many of the most influential newsroom decision-makers in the country (news directors whom he might someday have to ask for a job).

Never closeted in his own newsrooms, Glaser’s orientation became common knowledge to editors and reporters throughout Southern California when he became a director of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation/Los Angeles. At the time, he was a reporter for Entertainment Tonight, a national nightly covering Hollywood. He now covers media and entertainment for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles and, through syndication, is seen on other NBC stations nationally.

QUEERED SCIENCE

One can more easily prepare a list of gay scientists from almost any other country than the United States. For a variety of reasons, people in other countries who have gained high status in science feel less of a need to hide. In the United States, science is frequently wedded to the government and the military, both of which have traditionally been hostile to gay men and lesbians. Our society at large has never been particularly nurturing toward openly gay professionals and academics, either.

Still, there are great numbers of gay and lesbian scientists at the top of their fields, and the people we’ve included stand in the place of hundreds of others. There are also the geologists working for oil companies on the Alaskan Pipeline; horticulturists in the Midwest; and researchers in medical laboratories around the nation—a vast array of people across the scientific community count themselves as proud members of the gay family.

Gay and Lesbian Scientists

• Dr. S. Josephine Baker (1873–1952), pioneer public health specialist isolated “Typhoid Mary” and was listed in “American Men of Science.” She dressed as a man and was the longtime lover of Australian-born novelist I. A. H. Wylie, who called her George.

•Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), an African American gazetteer and astronomer, published Banneker’s Almanack for the years 1792–1797, popularizing antislavery causes. He assisted Major Andrew Ellicott in a survey of what became the District of Columbia.

•Rachel Carson (1907–1964), marine biologist and author of the revolutionary Sea Around Us and Silent Spring, detailed the devastating overuse of insecticides that threatens the balance of nature and the future of life on earth. Carson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her pioneering work resulted in major environmental legislation.

• George Washington Carver (1864–1943), African American biochemist, agrobotanist, and teacher, born a slave, revolutionized the lagging Southern farm economy with his work on crop diversification, and his many farm-related inventions, while heading the Tuskeegee University research staff for half a century. He was openly gay and lived for years with his loving successor at Tuskeegee, Dr. Austin W. Curtis, Jr.

• Charles Martin Hall (1863–1914), one of the inventors of the electrolytic method of producing aluminum inexpensively. He left his fortune to Oberlin College and to his longtime companion.

• Dean Hamer (b. 1951), geneticist at the National Cancer Institute, who published the results of his two-year study on genetic links to homosexuality in the 1994 book The Science of Desire: The Search for the Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior, co-authored with Peter Copeland.

• Dr. Franklin P. Kameny (b. 1925), Washington, D.C., Harvard-trained astronomer who fought his “security” dismissal from the U.S. Geodetic Survey—he had refused to answer questions as to whether he was homosexual—and became a strident and effective fighter of civil service and military discrimination cases, winning many major decisions in the courts.

Kate Hutton, lesbian seismologist and spokeswoman for the California Institute of Technology during the 1994 Northridge Quake, on firm ground with her dog. (Bob Paz/Caltech)

• Simon Levay (b. 1943), controversial neurobiologist who in 1991 announced the discovery of smaller hypothalamus glands in gay men than in straight. His book, The Sexual Brain, details his theories.

• Margaret Mead (1901–1978) and her lover Ruth Benedict (1887–1948), influential anthropologists and social critics who revolutionized the way of looking at so-called “primitive” societies.

• Maria Mitchell (1818–1889), the first American woman astronomer, held the initial chair of astronomy at Vassar and became the first woman admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1887).

• Ellen Richards (1842–1911), American chemist who helped establish the science of ecology and pushed for passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

• Nicola Tesla (1856–1943), Serbian-American scientist who invented the arc lamp and discovered the principle of the alternating current, wireless telegraphy, and other electrical breakthroughs. He worked first for Edison, then for Westinghouse.

KEEPING THE FAITH

For many gay people, organized religious institutions have not been exactly welcoming. Many mainstream religions openly condemn homosexuality; some of the more “open” institutions exhort their followers to “hate the sin but love the sinner.” But for many lesbians and gay men who were raised with traditional religious or spiritual values, and for others looking for the deeper spiritual meanings of life, religious beliefs still hold an important place in their lives. And although many religious gay people have joined the growing number of “alternative” offshoots of traditional institutions, others have chosen to stay within the mainstream churches and synagogues of their upbringing, fighting for acceptance and change within the institution. And often, they have met with success. Not long ago, out lesbian rabbis or gay ministers could be found only in gay synagogues and churches. Today we can be found in most mainstream religious institutions as members, as lay leaders, and as officials.

art DID YOU KNOW…

Alan Turing, the British mathematician who cracked the supposedly unbreakable German secret code during World War II, was tried and convicted of “gross indecency” in the 1950s. Because of his classified status with the British government, the court deemed his wartime achievements inadmissible, and he was forced to choose between prison and “organotherapy,” an experimental hormone therapy. He opted for the latter, and the treatment caused him to grow breasts and become chemically depressed. In 1954, he committed suicide, abandoned by the country that he had played a critical role in saving less that a decade before.

Queers in the Church

In February mourners for gay San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts filled a large downtown church, their numbers swelling into the surrounding streets. As the memorial service began, a homophobic minister from Kansas arrived with several followers holding signs that condemned homosexuality and AIDS as a punishment from God. In the face of such blatant homophobia by antigay religious zealots, it would be natural to ask: Why would any self-respecting queer have anything to do with such a homophobic institution as the church?

Most lesbians and gay men who continue to work inside the structures of mainline churches often ask themselves that same question. And while some, for various reasons, have left the traditional church and organized specifically gay autonomous religious congregations, many gay and lesbian people of faith stay. They argue that lesbians and gay men have been an integral part of the church throughout its 2,000-year history and continue to find a sense of community and spirituality that is life-giving while working within the structures to change its homophobia and injustice. In that struggle, gays and lesbians have found allies with justice-seeking communities in the church who share a history of working within racial justice, environmental, sanctuary, feminist, and abortion-rights movements, and now join the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered liberation movement.

Openly gay Lutheran minister Leo Treadway in his St. Paul, Minnesota, church. (MGM Photography)

One of the first places gay men and lesbians began pushing the church to change was in its policies on ordination. In the post-Stonewall 1970s, openly lesbian and gay candidates for ordination began pushing the churches to take a stand in support of lesbian and gay clergy. Most mainline churches voted to study the issue. Twenty-five years later many are still studying. While religious lesbian and gay support and advocacy organizations abound, most mainline denominations still refuse to ordain “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals.”

A History of Lesbian and Gay Ordination

• The United Church of Christ is one of the only mainline Protestant Christian denominations with a nondiscriminatory policy pertaining to sexual orientation. In 1972, Rev. Bill Johnson became the first out gay man to be ordained as a UCC clergyman.

• The Unitarian Universalist Association is not specifically Christian and also ordains lesbian and gay clergy. One of the denomination’s largest churches, Arlington Street Unitarian Church in Boston, is led by out lesbian Rev. Kim Crawford.

• In 1978 the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted against the ordination of “unrepentant, self-avowed, practicing homosexuals” but did grandmother in lesbians and gay men who had been ordained prior to 1978. In 1992 out lesbian minister Rev. Jane Spahr was denied a position with the Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York, because of her sexuality.

• The United Methodist Church voted to prohibit the ordination of “self-avowed, practicing” lesbians and gay men in 1984.

• Instead of being a matter of policy. Episcopal ordination is left up to the local bishop. Few out lesbians and gay clergy serve as priests, even though Rev. Ellen Barrett was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1977, the first open lesbian to achieve that status.

• In the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), two San Francisco churches, St. Francis Lutheran and First United Lutheran, have been charged with heresy over the issue of an “irregular” ordination of gay and lesbian clergy—Reverends Jeff Johnson, Ruth Frost, and Phyllis Zilhart—and face expulsion front the denomination in 1995.

• Because of the ecclesiastical structure of the American Baptist Church, there is no national governing policy. The general denominational attitude is homophobic, although there are notable exceptions, including the 1991 call to lesbian clergy, by Rev. Nadean Bishop of University Baptist Church in Minneapolis.

• The Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Church still do not ordain women as clergy. The Southern Baptists have expelled from the denomination churches who advocate for lesbian and gay liberation, while the Catholic hierarchy refuses to allow Dignity (the lesbian and gay Catholic organization) to worship in Catholic parishes. While many closeted homosexuals serve as priests and pastors, these churches are in many ways the final frontier.

Toleration or Inclusion?

Despite most denominations’ refusal to ordain lesbians and gay men as ministers, most denominations believe that while homosexuality is a “sin,” homosexuals should be tolerated and treated with respect. The United Methodist Church’s “Statement on Social Principles” regarding homosexuality reflects the general attitude shared by most mainline denominations:

“Homosexual persons no less than heterosexual persons are individuals of sacred worth. All persons need the ministry and guidance of the Church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship which enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. Although we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching, we affirm that God’s grace is available to all. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons.”

art “In everything else, I was out front. In the open. But here’s one piece of my life that wasn’t at all. That’ll kill you. You can deny something that is a basic part of you for only so long. . . . I enjoy gay friends. But equally, I enjoy straight friends. I really have tried to balance it. I don’t want to be just in gay life.”

HENRY FINCH, FORMER PASTOR OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, AFTER BEING STRIPPED OF HIS POST FOR BEING OPENLY GAY

Not all individual churches agree with statements issued by denominations at a national level. Some churches disregard the tolerance and respect and are extremely homophobic. Others go beyond tolerance and embrace the lesbian and gay community. Many of the same churches that provided counseling for conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War, referred women to safe doctors before abortion was legal, and provided sanctuary to Central American refugees during the 1980s, have made a commitment to welcome people regardless of their sexuality. There are presently more than 350 individual churches that have voted to become “welcoming churches” for the lesbian and gay community across the country. In November 1992, the four oldest welcoming programs became linked in an ecumenical move to publish Open Hands, a quarterly journal of “resources for ministries affirming the diversity of human sexuality.”

• United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ: Open and Affirming Congregations

Gay and lesbian people of faith have goals beyond being welcomed as worshipers and church leaders. They are not only interested in spirituality but are also interested in pushing the boundaries of misogynist and sex-negative theologies and strive to explore places where their spirituality and sexuality intersect. Much of the writing of lesbian and gay theologians and religious leaders has its roots in modern liberation theology. The basis of liberation theologies is that God stands on the side of the oppressed. Similar to Latin American, African American, Asian, and feminist liberation theologies, gay and lesbian liberation theologians contend that as an oppressed class of people, their very marginalization gives them a particular connection to the divine. Their work on earth—whether it involves tending to a lover with breast cancer or defending the rights of a gay father to keep his child—is sacred and holy work and is, in fact, being Christ in the world.

Jane Spahr

Jane Adams Spahr grew up in a Presbyterian family in Pennsylvania. She loved the church and knew she wanted to become a minister. In 1974 Janie was ordained. Four years later, she came out as a lesbian and was forced to resign her position as associate minister of First Presbyterian Church in San Rafael, California.

In 1981 Janie became the founding director of the Ministry of Light, later renamed Spectrum, a community program for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. She stepped down in 1991 and became one of four co-pastors of Downtown Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York. Despite endorsements from that church and its two supervising governing bodies, the Presbytery and the Synod, the appointment was overturned at the church’s highest level. Spahr renewed her effort to work for the inclusion of Presbyterian lesbians and gay men. In her memoirs, Travels of a Lesbian Evangelist, Janie Spahr describes her work:

art “After all is said and done, the choice for me is not whether or not I am a gay man, but whether or not I am honest with myself and others. It is a choice to take down the wall of silence I have built around an important and vital part of my life, to end the separation and isolation I have imposed upon myself all these years.”

OTIS CHARLES, FORMER EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF UTAH AND DEAN OF THE EPISCOPAL DIVINITY SCHOOL IN CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, ON HIS REASONS FOR COMING OUT AT AGE SIXTY-SEVEN

“I have met thousands of people who have shared their stories of the heart, asking difficult questions, crying, laughing, being angry, open, despondent, and hopeful. I have witnessed the most sacred moments… [from] a mother coming out to her son in Portland, Oregon, to several lesbian, gay, and bisexual seminarians who through tears say ‘I know I have been called to this work. I don’t want to lie about who I am, for it is a gift to be who I am.’”

CONTEMPORARY OPENLY LESBIAN AND GAY RELIGIOUS LEADERS

Bishop Carl Bean, founder of the Unity Fellowship Church

Rev. Malcolm Boyd, Episcopal priest and writer

Rt. Rev. Otis Charles, retired Episcopal bishop of Utah

Rev. Johannes Willem DiMaria-Kulper, minister

Beverty Wildung Harrison, Christian theologian

Rev. Carter Heyward, lesbian Episcopal priest and writer

Bernard Mayes, priest, journalist, and university dean

Rev. Renee McCoy, African-American minister and activist

Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Churches

Rev. Dusty Pruitt, Metropolitan Community Church minister

Rev. Herman Verbeek, Catholic priest, Dutch member of European Parliament

FROM “THE OUT LIST” BY MARK HERTZOG

Gay and Lesbian Jews in Orthodox and Conservative Jewish Communities

Many orthodox and conservative Jewish communities continue to claim that Judaism cannot accept homosexuality as a viable way of life. Orthodox gay men and lesbians do not have the benefit of any codified tolerance or acceptance, as Reform Jews do. Homosexuality tends to be much more blatantly and publicly decried within orthodox communities, and the pressures toward marriage and child rearing tend to be much more pronounced.

Rabbis have at times echoed orthodox rabbi Abraham B. Hecht in stating that acceptance of homosexuality means “the institution of marriage will go out of style and children will become strange creatures—unwanted and unloved. Our country cannot afford the spread of this disease which is destroying the fabric of the traditional family unit.”

Although some orthodox Jews have taken a slightly less virulent stance, their antigay message is still clear. Abraham Gross, while a spokesman for seven orthodox organizations that represent a thousand rabbis and a million and a half synagogue members, stated that “while we do not support the harassment of homosexuals, the Bible condemns the practice of homosexuality.” It is rare that gay or lesbian orthodox Jews receive acceptance from their congregations or their families.

Gay and lesbian orthodox Jews often describe a disenchantment with Judaism accompanied by feelings of isolation and alienation, and eventual rejection of their Jewish identities. Others must hide their homosexuality in order to remain within the community, or to maintain their positions within their synagogues as rabbis, cantors, and educators. This hiding often hurts these individuals, as well as their congregations. For example, one lesbian rabbi writes (anonymously) about her perceived lack of emotional attachment: “It appears that I simply have no love life. In some very significant way, I become different from them.… I cannot communicate with them on an emotional level, because I cannot he honest with them about my own emotional life. I and impoverished and the people with whom I work are impoverished.”

Another orthodox man has been married for twenty years, but finds male sexual partners “in the places frequented by many closeted homosexuals: bathhouses, porn flicks, and highway rest stops” once every six to eight weeks. When the guilt that these activities brought on became too much, he resolved to refrain from these encounters. However, after six to eight months, he became so irritable with his family that one of his children complained to a teacher. He decided that denying his homosexuality would not work. Although he believes strongly in obeying halacha (the Jewish law), this man feels that he has “to look away” when his sexuality is at issue. “To be happy, to be a good husband and father, I have to,” he says. “And I am willing to pay the price.”

There are a few organizations offering outlets to orthodox gay and lesbian Jews. Beth Simchat Torah in New York, the largest gay and lesbian synagogue in the U.S., has an orthodox minyan once a mouth. Additionally, David Belzer, an orthodox gay man, is a social worker in New York who works with other gay orthodox people. He and others meet regularly to talk about the complicated issues in their lives. These discussions give them, as one man puts it, “an outlet other than sex for feelings of frustration.”

THAT ARTISTIC FLAIR

Tennessee Williams once said that “homosexuals are indistinguishable from the straight man, except that they have more sensibility and they are more inclined to be good artists.” To say that gay people have had an influence in the arts is an under-statement. More than any other segment of the population, the arts community enjoys a large number of openly lesbian and gay members. Every gay person has her own theories about why that is; it can—and will—be eternally debated.

art DID YOU KNOW…

Katherine Lee Bates, who composed “America the Beautiful,” spent most of her adult life living with a lesbian lover.

But for every artist who is out of the closet, there are hundreds of others who are not. Be it in music, fashion, visual arts, or dance, coming out is never easy. While the arts are in many ways more embracing of lesbians and gay men than other communities, there is still a great deal of homophobia and silence surrounding the subject of homosexuality.

Many mainstream performers fear that coming out will jeopardize their careers, narrow their creative possibilities, and lose them some of their fans. A handful are willing to take the risk, and those who have deserve applause, support, and admiration.

A Few American Gay Composers

• Harold Arlen (1905–1986), American songwriter who penned “Over the Rainbow” (with lyricist Yip Harburg), “Stormy Weather,” “That Old Black Magic,” “The Man That Got Away,” “I Love a Parade,” “Paper Mann,” and at least 500 other popular songs and film scores.

• Samuel Barber (1910–1981), Pennsylvania-born composer best known for his Adagio for Strings, Capricorn Concerto, Vanessa (for which he won a Pulitzer in 1958), and Piano Concerto #16 (for which he won the 1963 Pulitzer). His Anthony and Cleopatra opened the Met at Lincoln Center.

• Mrs. A.H.A. Amy Beach (1867–1944), composer and pianist whose major works include Gaelic Symphony, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Quintet, Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet, and Improvisations for Piano. She wrote Festival Jubilee to dedicate the Women’s Building at the Chicago World’s Fair and Panama Hymn for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

• Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990), dynamic, multi-faceted composer and conductor known for works as varied as Peter and the Wolf, West Side Story, On the Town, Wonderful Town, Fancy Free, Candide, and Serenade for Violin and Strings.

• Marc Blitzstein (1905–1964), left-leaning composer known mostly for The Cradle Will Rock, The Airborne Symphony, Juno, Regina, Sacco and Vanzetti and his Americanization of The Threepenny Opera.

• John Cage (b. 1912), avant-garde composer and inventor of unusual instruments, such as a piano with various noisemaking instruments between the strings. He was a longtime associate of choreographer Merce Cunningham. His best-known works are I Ching, Europera, One, Imaginary Landscape, and Variations Four.

• Aaron Copland (1900–1990), composer, concert organist, critic, author, and concert producer who encouraged “new music,” Copland incorporated classical and popular or folk styles in El Salon Mexico, Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Fanfare for the Common Man, Lincoln Portrait, and Appalachian Spring. As “the Dean of American Music,” he won a Pulitzer, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and an Oscar.

DID YOU KNOW…

Harry Hay, a founder of the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, believes that we can identify actual musical patterns in a composition that signal whether it was written by a gay man or lesbian. His research on minstrels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance attempts to identify gay and lesbian performers and composers by isolating components of the music of known lesbians and gay men that are not found in the music of historically documented heterosexuals.

• Henry Dixon Cowell (1897–1965), pianist and composer who originated the concept of “tone clusters,” as seen in The Banshee, Aeolian Harp, and Rhythmicana. His atonal Quartet Romantic, written in 1917 for two flutes, a violin, and a viola, each playing different rhythms, foreshadowed electronic music but didn’t receive its world premiere for another sixty-one years.

• Lehman Engel (1911–1982), Broadway conductor of Showboat, Carousel, and Guys and Dolls, also composed music for A Streetcar Named Desire and various Martha Graham works.

• Stephen Collins Foster (1826–1861), self-taught composer of popular American songs “Old Folks at Home,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “I Dream of Jeannie (with the Light Brown Hair),” “Oh, Suzanna,” “Old Black Joe,” and a number of Civil War songs.

• Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1889–1920), openly gay impressionist composer known as “The White Peacock” for his flamboyant manner and for one of his works of that name. He also wrote The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan, The Kairn of London, Four Roman Sketches, and These Things Shall Be.

• Lou Harrison (b. 1917), a composer and gay activist, was a student of Henry Cowell. Leontine Price premiered his opera Rapunzel. His other works include Koncherto for violin and percussion orchestra, Symphony in G, and Invocation for the Health of All Beings.

• Robert Moran (b. 1937), composed The Desert of Roses based on Beauty and the Beast, set in the post—Civil War period; From the Towers of the Moon, based on an ancient Japanese legend; and The Juniper Tree, co-written with Philip Glass from a bloody Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

Cole Porter (1892–1964), Yale-bred American composer, lyricist, and performer who filled his wonderfully popular lyrics with gay lines. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “Love for Sale,” and “Night and Day” are just a few of his better-known songs.

• John Powell (1882–1962), pianist and composer and lifetime companion of composer Daniel Gregory Mason (1873–1953). Powell’s compositions include several that make much use of Negro folk themes—Rhapsodie Negre, The Virginia Country Dances, Natchez on the Hill, and The Babe of Bethlehem—and various concertos, songs, and chamber music.

• Ned Rorem (b. 1923), composer and author whose Third Symphony is a lament for his ex-lover, Claude. Rorem’s written works hold more music-world gossip than most other published sources.

• William Grant Still (1895—1978), got his start as an arranger for W. C. Handy, Sophie Tucker, Paul Whitman, and Artie Shaw. He wrote the ballets Sahdji and Lennox Avenue and the operas Troubled Island, A Bayou Legend, and Highway 1, U.S.A. His first success came in 1931 with his Afro-American Symphony. In 1936 he became the first African American composer to lead a major symphony orchestra.

• Billy Strayhorn (1915–1967), songwriter, pianist, and recording director who collaborated with Duke Ellington (who generally got credit for Strayhorn’s compositions) on “Take the A Train,” “Lush Life,” “Unforgettable,” and “Satin Doll.” Known as “Sweet Pea” by friends, he made no attempt to hide his gayness or to move out of the Duke’s shadow.

• Howard Swanson (1907–1978), leading African American composer. Leontyne Price sang his Night Song, with words by Langston Hughes, at a White House performance. Short Symphony was his first major success, followed by several piano sonatas and chamber works.

• Virgil Garnett Thomson (1896–1989), critic and composer who collaborated with Gertrude Stein on Four Saints in Three Acts and set the story of Susan B. Anthony to music in The Mother of Us All. He also wrote several film scores, including The Louisiana Story.

Rock, Roll, and Riot Grrls

Warning: This list of lesbian, gay, and bisexual artists and bands that have at least one openly queer member will be forever incomplete, since to record the hundreds of local bands making queer-positive music today would require a whole separate book.

In 1995, lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge won a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocalist.(Courtesy Island Records)

Sylvester

Disco diva Sylvester topped the dance charts in the mid-1970s with the hit single “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” But even before that, he had already become an icon of campiness, gay liberation, drag, and African American pride.

DID YOU KNOW…

The Village People was one of the first gay groups to crack pop music’s Top 40 and sell enough recordings to receive a coveted gold record, which they did in 1978. The group consisted of six gay male archetypes: the leatherman, the cop, the soldier, the construction worker, the cowboy, and the Indian. In its review of the group, The New York Times noted that the Village People’s widespread success “attests to the continuing permeation of homosexual ideas into the mainstream.”

Born Sylvester James Hurd in 1948, he always knew that he was a queen. But it wasn’t until his 1970 stage debut with the Cockettes, a genderfucking drag troupe, that others began to sit up and take notice. By the next year, he was playing with his Hot New Band to packed houses on both coasts, and in 1972 came out with his first album, Lights Out. In 1977, his album Step II went gold, making him one of the first openly gay performers to enjoy such a mainstream musical success.

During the eighties, Sylvester’s mainstream popularity waned, but he continued to perform for gay audiences both in the United States and abroad. Often he would play at AIDS benefits, supporting the communities that had supported him from the beginning. He died of AIDS-related causes in 1988 at the age of forty.

Gays in the Fashion Industry: What’s Covered Up Is Revealing

Gianni Versace—the bearded, vivacious Italian designer who lives and works by the credo more is more—was sitting in his baroque studio in Milan almost two years ago, talking about how he bought a palatial home on Ocean Drive in that mecca of Florida hip, South Beach.

“I was on the way to Cuba,” he said, “and I stopped just for ten hours in Miami. I said to the driver, don’t bring one to anything boring, just bring me to where the action is, where the young people go. He dropped me at News Cafe. After five minutes—five minutes!—I said to my boyfriend, Antonio, ‘You can go to Cuba!’ I stayed fifteen days and bought the house right away.”

Such a multimillion-dollar impulse purchase is nothing in fashion. But a designer of Varsace’s international stature speaking openly about having a boyfriend … well, that’s something that doesn’t happen every day.

Though it’s one of the worst-kept secrets in the world that the fashion industry is dominated by gay men, few designers talk to the press about their homosexuality or their relationships. And when they do take a journalist into their confidence, it’s almost always off the record.

Speculation about who is gay and who isn’t gay in fashion reached a fever pitch [in June 1994] with the publication of Obsession, the unauthorized biography of Calvin Klein by Steven Gaines and Sharon Churcher.

The authors, one of whom previously muckraked Halston, suggest that Klein, who is married to the former Kelly Rector and has a daughter from a previous marriage, is bisexual. They say he had an affair with the late designer Perry Ellis, often fell in love with straight men, spent summers in the Fire Island Pines on Long Island, and paid for sex with men, including porn stars. Published reports say Klein—through a channel of friendly entertainment moguls derisively called the Velvet Mafia—tried to have the book quashed for $5 million. The New York Post dedicated an entire column to the most tawdry of the “allegations.”

Fashion insiders gave it one big yawn. Really, how shocking is it to learn that someone who designs dresses, sells cologne, and plasters Marky Mark in his underwear on bus shelters may be bisexual?

Sadly, Klein’s sexuality—whatever it is—is being reported as an “allegation,” right alongside tales of drug abuse, plastic surgery, and 1970s-era good-time debauchery [and] Klein was not commenting on any of it.

He has never been a tell-all type. When it comes to details about his personal life, Klein is as spare in interviews as he is in his design philosophy.

Not Versace. He has always been as colorful as his clothes and just as raucous. “I don’t think a gay person has to he afraid,” Versace said that clay in Milan. “You don’t have to go with a flag and say ‘I’m this’ or ‘I’m that,’ but I cannot be a liar.

“I’m more interested to know the real personality of a gay man or a straight man, not to know a gay man who wants to he straight or a ‘straight’ man who’s gay. We are what we are. And, I don’t think we’re in had company [with] all the creative persons who are gay.”

Certainly, there are some very high-profile “out” gays in fashion. Isaac Mizrahi, Todd Oldham, John Bartlett, Marc Jacobs, and Jean-Paul Gaultier are among the few big names who have spoken freely in recent years. But for every star designer who is open about his homosexuality, there are many more gay and lesbian designers who don’t say a word.

Klein has a right to privacy, I guess. And he has never hidden the fact that many of his closest friends—most notably David Geffen—are openly gay. But out gays find it puzzling and aggravating that an industry that prides itself on being on the vanguard of pop culture is lagging behind when it comes to the gay rights agenda.

Some suggest that designers don’t talk about their sexuality for fear of losing customers. Mainstream designers, selling underwear and jeans to customers who may be less comfortable with anything-but-straight people, may have some cause to worry.

That’s a good part of Klein’s business. But in the world of high fashion—a world in which Klein is also very much a player—the risks seem negligible.

Designer Jacobs said several years ago during his tenure designing for the Perry Ellis company: “I’m not kidding myself about who fashion people are. Women love gay men. That’s not an issue.… I can’t imagine that a person who would say ‘I’m not going to buy clothes from a designer who’s gay’ would want to buy my clothes.”

Being out, Jacobs said, is “really about educating people. People can’t really hate someone they know.”

Still, he does not believe that out gays are “better homosexuals because we live our lives openly and they don’t.” For some designers, being out does not come so naturally. “I was very fortunate to grow up with people who encouraged whatever I did,” Jacobs said. “I didn’t grow up with rules. It was never about … this sexual preference is right and that sexual preference is wrong.”

Jacobs continued: “It was just not something that was discussed in polite society. People put on that facade of being married or being straight or whatever. I just think it’s a different time. The times have become more accepting of honesty. There are still many people left who come from a previous generation. But then there’s this whole crop of people who wouldn’t think of discussing it—not because they don’t want to talk about it, but because it’s just the way it is. It’s a non-issue to them.”

Whether this controversy is a non-issue to Klein’s customers remains to be seen.

Robert Mapplethorpe

Controversial, shocking, and talented photographer Robert Mapplethorpe brought his stark and cold images of floral arrangements, leathermen, and shaved models to the forefront of the art world. During the late seventies and eighties, he enjoyed a level of success and critical acclaim rare for an artist who so explicitly represented homoeroticism, not to mention hardcore man-to-man S/M acts.

After a long struggle, Mapplethorpe died of AIDS-related causes in 1989, after documenting various stages of his illness with photographic self-portraits. Mapplethorpe’s widest fame, however, came posthumously in 1989, when the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., canceled a traveling exhibit of his work after being pressured by politicians and the National Endowment for the Arts. The act cast a spotlight on the religious right and their attempts to censor art through preventing federal funding of projects that they deemed “obscene.”

A Sampling of Contemporary Lesbian and Gay Visual Artists

Artists We Have Lost

Artists Who Have Died of AIDS-Related Causes, 1983–1994

While AIDS is not an exclusively gay disease, the gay community has suffered disproportionate losses. In the arts community, the losses are equally profound. Often these two worlds overlap. Many of the performers, celebrities, and creative people who have died from AIDS-related causes are gay, and though the following list is not exclusively gay, nor is it complete, it reflects the tragedy of a decade of the disease.

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

Michael Bennett, 44, director, choreographer, and co-producer of A Chorus Line

Charles Ludlam, 44, actor-playwright-director, co-creator of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom

1988

1989

1990

Gregory Kolovakos, 38, director of literature program of the New York State Council on the Arts

1991

Howard Ashman, 40, lyricist of Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast

Paul Russell, 43, principal dancer with the Dance Theater of Harlem and the San Francisco Ballet

Burton Taylor, 47, leading dancer with the Joffrey Ballet and Dance Magazine contributing editor

1992

Darrell Yates Rist, author and co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) (Robert Giard)

1993

1994

Bravo! Brava!

It is important to note that the lack of visibility of lesbians and gay men has kept all of us, gay and straight, from recognizing the enormous contributions and achievements made by gay people. One of the more traditional forms of recognition in our culture is the issuance of awards for outstanding merit in various arenas, from the Nobel Prize to the National Book Award.

To find every gay person who had ever won a significant mainstream award would be impossible, even if the issue of lesbian and gay invisibility weren’t as far-reaching as it has been in our society. What we have presented here is an overview of the entire area of “mainstream awards,” with an emphasis on literary awards. We are proud to be able to claim the winners on the next several pages as our own.

Gay/Lesbian Bisexual Mainstream Award Winners

The following is a survey of documented gay, lesbian, and bisexual mainstream award winners. This list is categorized first by award, followed by some particularly high-profile or award-heavy individuals. The list is the tip of the iceberg and should be thought of only as the most basic indication of the number of gay and lesbian winners.

Gay and lesbian winners are accounted for as gay or lesbian in one or more of the following sources—Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, Fireside Companion/Book of Lists, Lesbian Lists, Alyson Almanac—or are generally publicly known to be gay (e.g., Harvey Fierstein, Jean Genet).Winners with a * are generally thought to be homosexual based on well-known current biographies.

There are undoubtedly obvious oversights and omissions. The list should be thought of as a survey, rather than as a definitive list of gay and lesbian mainstream award winners through July 1994.

Emmy Award Winners

Leonard Bernstein: Best Musical Contribution to Television (1956, 1957, 1960–1961), Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Music, with the New York Philharmonic: (1959–1960, 1961–1962), Outstanding Individual Achievement in Entertainment (1964–1965), Outstanding Classical Music Program, with N.Y. Philharmonic (1975–1976)

Raymond Burr*: Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama Series (1958–1959)for Perry Mason

Laurence Olivier: Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (1972) for Long Day’s Journey into Night, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Special Program: Drama or Comedy (1974–1975), Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Special (1984) for King Lear, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Special (1982) for Brideshead Revisited

MacArthur Awards

Special Obie Awards (Off-Broadway Theater, New York)

Charles Ludlam: for the Ridiculous Theatre Company (1969–1970), for Professor Bedlam’s Punch and Judy Show (1974–1975), for Derr Ring Gott Farblonjet (1977–1978), Sustained Achievement Award (1986–1987)

Dance Magazine Annual Awards

Tony Awards

Tony Kushner: Best Play for Perestroika (1994), Best Play for Millennium Approaches (1993)

Stephen Spinella: Best Actor in a Play for Perestroika (1994), Best Supporting Actor in a Play for Millennium Approaches (1993)

Harvey Fierstein: Best Actor in a Play for Torch Song Trilogy (1983), Best Book of a Musical for La Cage Aux Folles (1984), Best Play for Torch Song Trilogy (1983)

Lily Tomlin*: Best Actress in a Play for Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1986), Special Award (1977)

Katherine Cornell: Best Actress in a Play for Anthony and Cleopatra (1948)

Michael Bennett: Best Choreography for Dreamgirls (1982), Best Choreography for Ballroom (1979), Best Choreography for A Chorus Line (1976), Best Choreography for Follies (1972), Best Direction of a Musical for A Chorus Line (1976)

Leonard Bernstein*: Best Score for Wonderful Town (1953), Special Award (1959)

Tommy Tune: Best Actor in a Musical for My One and Only (1983), Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for Seesaw (1984), Best Choreography for Will Rogers Follies (1991), Best Choreography for Grand Hotel (1990), Best Choreography for My One and Only (1983), Best Choreography for A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine (1980), Best Director of a Musical for Will Rogers Follies (1991), Best Director of a Musical for Grand Hotel (1990), Best Director of a Musical for Nine (1982)

Grammy Awards

k. d. lang: Best Vocal Performance, Country (Female) for “Absolute Torch and Twang,” (1989), Best Vocal (Female) for “Constant Craving” (1989), Best Vocal Collaboration (with Roy Orbison) for “Crying” (1988)

Melissa Etheridge: Best Rock Vocalist (Female) for “Come to My Window” (1995), Best New Artist (1993), Best Vocal (Female) for “Come to My Window” (1995)

Vladimir Horowitz*: Best Performance, Instrumental Soloist, Classical (15 times)

Edward Albee: Best Spoken Word for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963)

Charles Laughton: Best Spoken Word for The Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton (1962)

Elton John: Best Vocal Performance, Group for “That’s What Friends Are For,” (1986), Best Male Pop Vocal for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” (1995)

In 1992, Paul Monette, the author of Becoming a Man: Half a Life, became the first openly gay man to win the National Book Award in the award’s forty-three-year history. (Carole Topalian)

Nobel Prize

Pulitzer Prize

Edward Albee: A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), Three Tall Women (1994)

Tennessee Williams: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), A Streetcar Named Desire (1948)

SPORTS ARE FOR SISSIES, TOO

Perhaps one of the most closeted worlds inhabited by lesbians and gay men is the world of sports. While gay politicians and gay people in other arenas are making great strides, gay and lesbian athletes are barely scratching at the closet door. Much of the sports world is a world of competition and domination, where brute strength is valued among men, and strong women are admired, as long as they’re not too strong. Throw into this mixture homophobia (“sissies can’t play sports,” “she doesn’t wear makeup on or off the field, she must be a dyke”) and it is no wonder few professional athletes have come out publicly. Those who do face not only discrimination, but financial loss. For example, Martina Navratilova, an out lesbian and inarguably the best tennis player to ever hit the circuit, collects millions of dollars less in endorsements from sponsors than Chris Evert, who is not gay.

Imagine a world without homophobia, and then imagine that the sports items presented here were chosen from a database with thousands of entries. The pieces that follow are meant to give the reader a peek at what that world could look like, and the people here are the role models we all need.

People Who Have Come Out in Big-Name Athletics

• Glenn Burke, an outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland A’s from 1976 to 1979 (and the only major league baseball player ever to come out)

• Bruce Hayes, who won a gold medal swimming in the 800-meter freestyle relay at the 1984 Olympics

• Ed Gallagher, offensive lineman at University of Pittsburgh in the late seventies

• Matthew Hall, a twenty-four-year-old figure skater on the Canadian national team, who carne out while still active in his sport, the only professional or nationally ranked male athlete in North America to do so.

• Martina Navratilova, the best female tennis player the world has ever seen, who was the first gay person to come out while still on the circuit.

Greg Louganis

Growing up, Greg Louganis was called “retard” and “nigger” because of his dyslexia and dark complexion; he was also called a “sissy.” Often harassed after school, he spent much of his childhood alone, seeking refuge in the rocky hills of his El Cajon, California, neighborhood. Diving saved him. “It was something that I could take pride in—and I was good at it,” he says. “It was the one way I could respond to the people who called me names. I was terrible at fighting back with words or fists, but I could show them all by diving.”

Luganis’s artistry and skill earned him a silver medal in 10-meter platform diving at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal when he was only sixteen. In the years that followed, he won scores of national and international titles and awards, including a total of four Olympic gold medals in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics for both platform and springboard diving.

And if anyone ever had questions about Louganis’s spirit, there was no doubt after the world watched him gash his head on the diving board during the preliminary round in three-meter springboard diving at the 1988 Olympics, only to see him return minutes later with stitches in his scalp to complete two more dives and qualify for the next day’s final competition. Again, he took the gold medal. Resilience, perseverance, and breathtaking skill, combined with humility, warmth, and a sense of humor, have earned Louganis the admiration of people around the world.

For those who recognized Louganis as a gay person, his accomplishments had special meaning. Many young people wrote to Louganis expressing their appreciation. He also heard from those who were frustrated that he did not step forward and speak publicly about his sexual orientation. “I was always out to my family and friends,” he says, “but I was never comfortable discussing that part of my life with the press or the general public. Keeping the secret was often painful. It was always the toughest for me when parents would bring their kids to meet me and say, ‘I want to be just like you.’ I always wondered if they’d still feel that way if they knew I was gay.”

At Gay Games IV in June 1994, Greg took what he’s called a “baby step” and came out publicly about being gay. Besides a videotaped welcome that was shown at the opening ceremonies in which he declared, “It’s great to be out and proud,” Greg gave two diving exhibitions. “Being a part of the Games,” Greg said, “made me feel like a complete person for the first time in my life.”

Eight months later, after finishing work on his autobiography and following a year of intensive psychotherapy, Greg took a much bigger step and came out about his HIV status, telling Barbara Walters in a 20/20 interview that he has AIDS. He also explained that he’d known he was HIV-positive since before the 1988 Olympics.

“I know there are people who wish I had come forward years ago,” Greg explained to reporters at his first press conference, “but each of us has a journey in life, and I got to this point only when I was ready.”

Greg’s painfully honest autobiography [written with Eric Marcus]. Breaking the Surface, was published by Random House in February 1995 and became an instant New York Times number one best-seller.

“I always wanted to make a difference beyond the world of diving,” Greg said, “and by telling my story, perhaps I can prevent one teenager from becoming infected with HIV.”

I DIDN’T KNOW THERE WERE GAYS IN THE MILITARY

No place has been less welcoming of openly gay people than the U.S. military. While the militaries of other industrialized countries accept openly gay members, the U.S. government has adopted a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which effectively keeps any openly gay person from serving.

Nonetheless, there are now and have always been people in the military who were gay, people who believe that serving their country is a cause worth fighting for. Many, though not all, of these men and women remained closeted throughout their careers. Those who have come out and struggled to change military policy deserve commendation for their strength, courage, and conviction.

Homophobia in the Military

Homophobia is often an underlying and unspoken form of hatred, but the military is one of few places where outright discrimination is sanctioned and where active persecution of gay men and lesbians occurs. For most of its history, the U.S. military has treated homosexuality as a behavioral problem, either discharging or jailing members who committed sodomy. In 1916 a revision of the Articles of War made sodomy a felony crime. A policy of not accepting gay men and lesbians as recruits and forcing them out of the service if they were later discovered was developed during World War II. In 1943, a policy was instituted that banned homosexuals from all branches of the service. This was due to contemporary psychiatric beliefs that homosexuals were mentally ill. The 1950s gave us McCarthyism and federal hiring rules that prevented the employment of known homosexuals.

Vietnam, the draft, and the civil rights movement meant more changes for the military. Sexual behavior and sex roles in society started to shift, and straight men attempted to evade the draft by pretending to he gay. The 1970s brought to the military a new dimension: an influx of women. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the admission of women as nearly equal members of the service has shaken the concept of going off and becoming a “man” through military experience. The struggle for change in the 1980s and into the 1990s centered on gays in the military, but despite the success of racial integration and the assimilation of women, homophobia is dying a hard, slow death.

Early in 1993, President Clinton, acting upon a campaign promise to end policy discrimination against gays in the military, publicly raised the issue for consideration by the military, both houses of Congress, and the media. The barrage of hateful and misinformed comments by Sen. Sam Nunn (D.-GA), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Colin Powell (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and others during the summer of 1993 gave the county an incredible chance to look at the roots of the rampant homophobia pervading the military—as well as a society as a whole—and its impact.

Gay community leaders tried to bring the debate into focus by placing the issue of gay civil rights almost exclusively in the language of equal rights. By doing so, the gay community missed an ideal opportunity to inform the public about the witch-hunts, coerced confessions, suicides, jail time, and waste of resources that the government has spent since World War II on ferreting out “suspected homosexuals.” The Congressional hearings also failed to address the fact that women are three times more likely to be discharged for homosexuality than men.

The RAND Organization was commissioned by. Clinton to study the impact of allowing gays and lesbians to serve as open homosexuals in the military. The report, withheld from Congress, stated that the readiness of our armed forces world not be compromised by allowing queers to serve. This was not the first of such studies. In 1956 a study on homosexuality in the Navy found that homosexuals posed no security risk but recommended nevertheless that nothing should be done until society moved forward on the issue of homosexuality. In 1989 a report from the Defense Personnel Security Research and Education Center found that gay people were not a threat to security or unit cohesiveness and cited the proven history of the military to accept change in integration and women. After being suppressed by then-President Bush, this report surfaced during the 1993 debate.

The problem of allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military is not a “gay” problem, it is the problem of straight men to accept that gay people are just like them when it comes to doing the job right. But despite President Clinton’s initial backing of gay equality in the military, when the dust cleared, the oppressive and ambiguous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy was enacted, and backed by the President.

Though a major defeat for gay equal rights activists, national gay political organizations, and lesbians and gay men serving in the military, perhaps we succeeded in some small way, in teaching the country that gay people really do exist, and that we can and do serve our country honorably. The military is just a microcosm of the society as a whole—a society that is slowly coming to grips with the changes that have been developing for over two hundred years.

Ten Lesbian and Gay Military Heroes

Revolutionary War (1776–1783)

• Baron Frederich von Steuben, known as the father of the United States Army, trained the Continental Army using consolidated drills, rules, and discipline.

• Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the United States Treasury, served as a colonel in the Continental Army and was assigned to help von Steuben at Valley Forge.

• Gotthold Frederick Enslin, a lieutenant in the Continental Army, was one of the first men to be discharged from the army for sodomy violations under the Articles of War.

Civil War (1861–1865)

• Major General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne was a Confederate hero, known as the “Stonewall Jackson of the West.” He was killed in action November 30, 1864, at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee.

• The cross-dressing women of the Fifteenth Missouri Regiment, Union General Philip Sheridan wrote of two women who passed as men and fought along-side the others. After nearly drowning, they were found to be women, discharged, and escorted behind friendly lines.

World War II(U.S. participation, 1941–1945)

• WAC Sergeant Jonnie Phelps served on General Eisenhower’s staff after the war in Europe ended. Eisenhower asked her to provide a list of all lesbians in the WAC battalion. She said she would do it, but only if her name was at the top of the list. Eisenhower then chose not to use the list.

Korean War (1954–1956)

• Navy Lieutenant (j.g.) Tom Dooley wrote the book Deliver Us from Evil, about his participation in Operation Passage to Freedom (1954), in which the Navy helped deliver over 600,000 refugees from North to South Vietnam. Dishonorably discharged from the Navy in 1956, Dooley went on to set up medical aid for the indigenous people of Southeast Asia through MEDICO. President John F. Kennedy set up the Peace Corps with Dooley’s accomplishments in mind.

Vietnam War (1959–1975)

• Navy Lieutenant Armistead Maupin, the popular author of the Tales of the City series, claims to have been the last American out of Cambodia by a toe.

• Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, earned a Bronze Star for valor as airman first class in 1966, and was given the Purple heart for being wounded in action in 1969. He became the first openly gay man to be on the coyer of a major news-magazine (Time) in 1975.

Operation Desert Storm (1990–1991)

Army reservist Donna Lynn Jackson. Under Operation Stop/Loss. a policy put in place during mobilization for the Persian Gulf, discharges for homosexuality were suspended if a unit was selected for deployment. Eventually she ended up on the cover of On Our Backs.

Profiles of Early Challengers to the Antihomosexual Military Policy

• Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was the son of an Air Force enlisted man born in 1943 on an Air Force base in Georgia. He challenged Air Force regulations against homosexuality through his appearance on the cover of Time magazine in 1975. He eventually won his case in 1980 but chose not to re-enlist and accepted a monetary settlement. Matlovich died in June 1988, from AIDS-related causes, after a life of controversial gay activism. Buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his epitaph reads, “They gave me a medal for killing two men, and a discharge for loving one.”

• Army Staff Sergeant Perry Watkins grew up in Tacoma, Washington, with his mother and an Army sergeant stepfather. He was drafted in 1967 and inducted in 1968, even after stating that he was a homosexual. During his long career in the Army, he performed as Simone, a fabulous drag queen, and was always openly gay. In 1984 the Army tried to discharge him for a fourth time and succeeded. He filed suit and won, but only on an individual level. He was allowed to retire with the full benefits of a twenty-year veteran. He still resides in Tacoma and is very active in the gay community.

• Army Reserve Sergeant Miriam Ben-Shalom was a single lesbian mother and an Army reservist in Milwaukee. She saw Matlovich’s photo on the cover of Time and asked her superiors why she wasn’t discharged. This led to three court cases and eventually to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower courts’ decision to discharge Ben-Shalom in 1990. Ben-Shalom has made a career out of challenging the military’s policy. During the Persian Gulf War, she proposed a gay and lesbian battalion. She also participated in a “freedom ride” during 1993 to publicize the unfairness of the antihomosexual policy.

WE REALLY ARE EVERYWHERE

While we have attempted in this chapter to recognize the many ways in which gay men and lesbians are outstanding contributors to society, and to give the reader a taste of the limitless flavors of the phrase “We are everywhere,” we have only touched on the diversity and vast experience of gay people in the world.

In this last section, we present an even more eclectic view of gay people, including lesbians and gay men in places where perhaps the reader wouldn’t expect to find us. The individuals noted here range from Bayard Rustin, who was instrumental in organizing Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington, to the story of a hog farmer/politician in Minnesota. From the streets to the living rooms, from the classrooms to the boardrooms, gay people can be found everywhere. We’re coming out of our closets, and society is slowly beginning to realize that we are here—and everywhere—to stay.

Bayard Rustin, African American Gay Hero

Bayard Rustin, a longtime African American civil rights and gay rights activist, organized the historic 1963 March on Washington. In 1987, he died at the age of 77, ending a life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century.

In the course of a 1987 interview, he described how, in 1963 when his homosexuality was being used to discredit the civil rights effort, the movement’s leaders readily stood behind him:

“Strom Thurmond stood in the Senate speaking for three-quarters of an hour on the fact that [I] was a homosexual, a draft dodger, and a communist. Newspapers all over the country came out with this front-page story.… I went immediately to Mr. [A. Phillip] Randolph [the official March on Washington organizer], and we agreed he would make a statement for all the civil rights leaders which basically said, ‘We have absolute confidence in Bayard Rustin’s integrity and ability.’ He read the statement to the labor leaders and the Jewish and Catholic and Protestant leaders involved in the march, and they all agreed to it.”

African American community leader Bayard Rustin stands in front of a map detailing the 1963 March on Washington for Civil Rights. Rustin stepped dawn as the official organizer of the march when his homosexuality became a source of controversy. Nonetheless, he was a major player in the civil right movement of the 1950s and early 1960s, and continued to fight for the equal rights of people of color and gay people until his death in 1987. He was seventy-seven. (Bettmann Archives)

Later in the interview, Rustin compared the black struggle with that of gay men and lesbians:

“The gay movement is much simpler [than the civil rights movement]; it only seems harder. In the civil rights movement, we first had to gain equality under law. Then, as Martin Luther King once said, ‘Now we have the right to go into the restaurant, but we don’t have the money to buy the hotdog.’ The economic uplift of blacks has been frustrated by every kind of technological development. … The homosexual struggle is only to fight prejudice under the law. It does not require billions of dollars for an economic program.”

Dick Hanson

Dick Hanson was an openly gay hog farmer and political activist who lived in tiny Glenwood, Minnesota, with his life partner. Bert Henningson, from 1982 until his death from AIDS-related causes in 1987. Henningson died in May 1988, also of AIDS-related causes.

Hanson’s political savvy and personal commitment to gay and lesbian rights, the farm movement, feminism, and AIDS education catapulted him into the spotlight of Democratic politics in Minnesota during the late 1980s. In a historic moment on May 5, 1987, two months before his death, Hanson addressed a special session of the Minnesota Senate, speaking to more than 250 people, including forty-five of the state’s sixth-seven senators.

“My name is Dick Hanson and I have AIDS,” he told the assembly. “But I am more than a statistic; I am a human being. I love and need to beloved. I live with hope and don’t take it away from meo”

Hanson and Henningson were the subjects of a Pulitzer Prize—winning series of articles called “AIDS in the Heartland” by St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch reporter Jacqui Banaszynski. The series chronicled the two men’s struggle with AIDS from February 1987 until after Hanson’s death. Banaszynski commented, “Dick and Bert were able to nudge people into rethinking attitudes, inherent and deep biases, because they were farmers born and raised in Minnesota. Readers couldn’t as easily dismiss them as they could Castro Street gays. Their values are so similar to mainstream Minnesotans and Wisconsinites.”

The two men’s relationship exemplified their rural Midwest values. Henningson, a scholar who held a doctorate in agricultural history and economics, was an assistant professor of history at the University of Minnesota-Morris who met Hanson through their political activities. Upon Henningson’s death, openly gay Minneapolis city council member Brian Coyle told Equal Time, a Minneapolis-based gay and lesbian newspaper, that he would remember Henningson and Hanson most for their love of one another.

“[Bert] and Dick loved one another passionately. They taught me a lot about gay love and courage,” Coyle said. Henningson himself wrote the epitaph for his and Hanson’s panel on the AIDS Memorial Quilt: “Openly gay and at home on their family farm in Minnesota, their love ran deep as the prairie soil.”

Homecoming Queer

The announcement of a ten-year high school reunion made this ex-cheerleader shake to the soles of her Converse high tops. Time flies? Ha. My panic-stricken reaction: It’s only been ten years?

I went from kindergarten to high school with most of the same kids. Our parents met at the Alpha Beta and P.T.A. meetings, on the golf course or tennis courts, or at church. Presbyterians and Catholics. The first black kids came to town sometime during my high school years, and you could count them on one hand, not including your thumb. Gays? I thought they lived in nearby Laguna and were interior designers. I first heard of lesbians in fifth grade when Cindy Thompson ran up to me in recess, stroked my arm, and said “Lez-be friends.” All the kids laughed. I didn’t get it but laughed anyway. I went home and asked my babysitter what it meant.

My high school scenario mid-1970s: The most important thing was to be part of the “V-squad.” The V-squad was a band of ever-changing most popular girls who were “V” as in virgin. Like a virgin didn’t count. Mostly, we tried to go as far as we could without losing V-squad membership (round the bases but not hit home) or our boyfriends, football players and jocks. There were several social groups at school: sochies (socialites), jocks, nerds, druggies, and surf rats. Okay, I was a sochie, my boyfriend a jock—Most Valuable Player on the football team. I myself also qualified as a jock, being the only girl on the boys’ water polo team. That presented a whole set of problems in itself: Pre-game pep talks in the locker room changed venue and, reluctantly, the coach made his talks a bit less spicy.

Getting dressed for high school was a two-hour ordeal: straightening and then curling the hair, changing outfits three times, calling to see what the other V-squaders were wearing. On game days we wore our cheerleading outfits and sipped soda cans filled with rum and Coke to give us that old school pep. Beach parties abounded. Beach Boys, Neil Young, Cat Stevens, our soundtrack; Mustangs and Cameros, our chariots; Mad Dog 20/20, our drink. I can’t tell you how strict the social code was: Popularity was measured down to the color of one’s lip gloss.

I offer public appreciation to my friends who weathered my apparel crises before the ordeal. It took hours of consultation to come up with linen trousers and a sequin-shell ensemble to highlight my flattop. My attempt to blend in was laughable as I arrived to find throngs of Dynasty-clad look-alikes in flower-print dresses and frosted, lacquered hair. I was not the sole female in pants; I was the only one with short hair. Any kind of short hair. No joke.

Now, several hometown friends had known of my coming out. My mother, who would have to face the aisle-to-aisle supermarket probings of small-town noseys, had balked at living with scads of inevitable town gossip. For the reunion, we compromised: I wasn’t allowed to don a label reading “Lesbian” (a fashion complement I really hadn’t thought of wearing); however, if the subject came up, I could answer truthfully.

Before-dinner chat ranged from the kids to husbands, and only once did I have the chance to offer my status. Mostly, I think people glanced to my left hand, assumed not married, and rabbited on to tell the names and ages of their offspring. Many people had to get close enough to see my name card and its senior picture to recognize me. “I can’t believe it’s you!” they said fondly, remembering the Farrah Fawcett hairdo. I sat with some members of the V-squad, long defunct, and their hubbies. I mentioned the girlfriend, received polite and seemingly accepting approval. As more alcohol was ingested, responses changed. “Rafkin, you always did make us open our narrow minds. I’m just not surprised.” Then an ex cheer buddy asked me to dance. She kicked off her four-inch heels and bopped to a roaring Pointer Sisters tune. I’ll he damned if she didn’t flirt with me. My dancing was less relaxed than usual; still, raised eyebrows skirted the dance floor.

A Magnum P.I. look-alike surprised me with a hug and a kiss before I could recognize him as my very first ever boyfriend—fourteen years old and holding hands in a matinee, one kiss a day on the beach at sunset. Ah, romance.… Having told me he’d spent half of his high school years thinking of my breasts and how elusive I’d been with them, he seemed most unnerved by news of my girlfriend. I asked him for a dance for old times’ sake—that is, if he wouldn’t mind dancing with a queer. “As long as you’re not one of those male kind who always try to grab my ass.” I assured him I wasn’t and wouldn’t.

Early on I spotted the only other queer and later cornered him behind a fern. “Are you the other one in ten?” I asked nonchalantly, without a clue as to who he was. He looked startled, and I thought I might perhaps be in error. “You know, the other one in ten?”

We chatted, he wondering how I could tell he was one. (And we’re talking obvious queer!) He conducts his life from a very small closet. Living at home, but not out to friends or family, on occasion he sneaks off to Laguna to hang out at a gay bar. Never been to San Francisco and couldn’t imagine it. “A whole street of gay people, wow.…”

I thought about each one of us going to our high school reunions and coming out. Would this change people’s attitudes? Would this change their hatred? I already live with their judgment, and this judgment is my own baggage. After all, everyone had been polite enough. Mr. First Boyfriend had even asked me sailing on his catamaran—no strings attached, he assured, glancing breastward.

Or had nothing changed in ten years? At the door, I glanced over my shoulder waiting for the knives to hit.

It Not Impossible to Be Queer in Idaho

Well, the white purse has to go.” “But my mom just bought me this purse. If I stop using it, she’ll get suspicious.” Lesa shrugged. “Well, no one’s ever going to know you’re gay if you carry that thing.”

Lesa and I walked the streets of Moscow, Idaho. She is, as far as I know, the only other lesbian in Idaho, and she is teaching me how to be gay. I hide the white purse in the bottom drawer of my dresser. I get out my old back-pack from college.

“I don’t know,” Lesa says. “It’s the way she walks. It’s eye contact. It’s a kind of electricity or chemistry.”

Gaydar, I practice for weeks. Mostly, I pick out farm women. Boots, Blue jeans. Short, tousled hair. No make-up. I loiter nearby, hoping for some kind of return signal, but inevitably the kids show up and then the husband and they all go off together, clambering into a nearby pickup truck.

My first potluck. Surprise! Lesa is not the only lesbian in Idaho. There is a whole kitchen full of them and a dozen in the living room and even more out back drinking beer around the fire. I sit quietly in the corner with my plate of food, chewing with my mouth open, just looking and looking. Who could ever have believed there could be so many? Who could ever have believed they would all he so beautiful?

It’s a couple years later. I’ve had my first long-term relationship. I’ve survived, barely, breaking up. I’ve come out to my sisters and my mom and my department chair. Now I’m in Seattle for Gay Pride, marching with the Inland Northwest Gay People’s Alliance. Our group starts small, about eight of us, but all along the parade route people’ rush to join us, all calling out their hometowns—Lewiston, Boise, Kendrick, Twin Falls—and add their voices, loud and proud, to our Ida-homo cheer. As we march on, spectators nudge each other and stare and smile at the cleverness of our chant. “Even in Idaho,” they seem to be saying. “They even have queers in Idaho.” Then they clap and whistle, proud of the pride of our tough little group.

It’s challenging to he queer in Idaho. We have to drive two hours to get to the closest gay bar in Spokane, Washington. We get a copy of something like the Washington Blade and stare in wonder at the pages and pages of news and activities. Then we look at our four-page photocopied newsletter and wonder what the hell we’re doing here. Some of us leave; just as many of you left your dull little hometowns for the action of D.C. But some of us are nonurban. Some of us have family here or good jobs or a kind of genetic dependency on wide, open spaces. So we stay and make the best of things.

Actually you are a part of the reason we can stay, the big communities in D.C., and San Francisco and New York City and Seattle. We read about the way you’ve banded together and the things you’ve accomplished, and we don’t feel so alone. We feel like we’re part of the big national gay community, and that solidarity gives us the courage to do what we can in our own little state.

We gossip about famous people who might be gay. We read the magazines and rent the movies. We pick up bits of the culture from friends who journey back from exciting places to visit us. Every other month or so, we rent the Moscow Community Center and gather together for a dance, all 100 to 150 of us who are out, who like to dance, who have just fallen in love and want to show off our partners. And for those few hours our world is gay. We are all crowded together in the same safe place and the energy of it makes the windows pulse and we soak up our combined gayness like sponges and carry it away until the next time and the next.

It’s not easy to be queer in Idaho, but its not impossible either. The exciting thing, I think, is that no matter where we live, no matter how old we are, if we’re gay we somehow find a way to he gay, to come out, to join the revolution. Personal identity is a powerful thing, and all the Lon Mabons and Kelly Waltons and Samuel Woodwards in America won’t be strong enough to make us disappear.

… One in Every Family

We are everywhere, including in the families of some well-known celebrities and public figures, gay-friendly and not so gay-friendly alike. Here is a list of just a few queer kin of famous folk.

• Alexis Arquette, younger brother of actresses Rosanna and Patricia Arquette.

• Chastity Bono, daughter of performer Cher and Republican U.S. representative Sunny Bono.

• Betsy Brooks, country-western star Garth Brooks’s guitar-playing sister.

• Cheryl Crane, daughter of Hollywood movie goddess Lana Turner. Cheryl wrote about her experiences in her best-selling book Detour: A Hollywood Story.

• Candace Gingrich, 1993 National Coming Out Day spokesperson and half-sister of Newt Gingrich, the conservative representative from Georgia who is speaker of the House of the 104th Congress

• Dee Mossbacher, physician and filmmaker daughter of former secretary of Commerce Robert Mossbacher.

• Julia Pell, daughter of Rhode Island senator Claiborne Pell. Julia says her father has been “very supportive” of her sexuality.

• John Schlafly, son of Phyllis Schlafly, leader of the antifeminist, conservative organization Concerned Women of America.