August 23rd, 2011
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Newsweek’s “The Militant Homosexual”: 1971. It was just a two years after the seminal Stonewall Rebellion, and already that landmark uprising sparked a new burst of gay advocacy which went beyond anything that had gone before. Straight America was scratching its collective head: where did all of these homosexuals come from? They seemed to be everywhere: holding hands in Greenwich Village, running for student president at major universities, and marching in the streets shouting something about “gay pride.” Exactly forty years ago today, Newsweek devoted four pages trying to explain it all to its readers:
To supporters of gay liberation, marching in the streets and holding hands in public are only minor gestures of assertion. They are picketing the Pentagon, testifying at government hearings on discrimination, appearing on TV talk shows, lecturing to Rotary Clubs, organizing their own churches and social organizations and, perhaps most important of all, using their real names. “Two or three years ago, a homosexual who tried to explain what he and the gay movement were all about would have been ridiculed,” says Troy Perry, a homosexual minister who established Los Angeles’s Metropolitan Community Church in 1968 and has been a movement hero ever since.
…What seemed then it relatively minor clash is now enshrined in gay-lib lore as the “Stonewall Rebellion.” Within weeks, the first of scores of militant homosexual groups, the Gay Liberation Front, was formed in New York. The new mood quickly crossed the continent, leading to the creation of similar organizations in Los Angeles and San Francisco. By the first anniversary of the Stonewall incident, the militants were on the march in a dozen cities. By the second anniversary, they were celebrating Gay Pride Week with an elaborate panoply of parades and protests. The movement already has a book-length history in print and some of its more imaginative propagandists have even begun to speak of a “Stonewall Nation.”
Virtually the entire four-page article dealt with the sudden visibility of the gay community — a visibility which had personal, psychological, familial and political aspects. As one measure of the surprise this new openness must have engendered, the word “militant” appeared in the four-page article fifteen times. And what the authors regarded “militant” is revealing: they described “militants” coming out to their friends, families and employers; “militants” wanting acceptance; “militants” refusing to accept the APA’s verdict that they were mentally ill (the APA would set aside that verdict two years later); “militants” demanding an end to the ban on federal employment; “militants” starting gay churches and “militants” getting married in them, and “militants” saying it’s great to be gay. And that last point, according to Newsweek was especially dangerous:
What all this suggests is a central problem that gay liberation usually chooses to ignore: if the movement succeeds in creating an image of “normality” for homosexuals in the society at large, would it encourage more homosexually inclined people — particularly young people — to follow their urges without hesitation? No one really knows for certain. Dr. Paul Gebhard, the distinguished anthropologist who directs the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, believes that gay lib “will not convert heterosexuals into homosexuals but might encourage those who are going in a homosexual direction to feel less guilty about it.” New York sociologist Edward Sagarin takes an even dimmer view. “If the militants didn’t say that it is great to be gay,” Sagarin insists, “more adolescents with homosexual tendencies might seek to change instead of resolving their confusion by accepting the immediate warm security that tells them they are normal.”
Three weeks later, pioneering gay rights advocate Frank Kameny responded to that paragraph with this letter to the editor:
The gay liberation movement has been formulating its positions for some twenty years, has quite “come to grips with all the implications of its own positions” and does not at all “choose to ignore” the “problem” of “more homosexually inclined people-particularly young people -[following] their urges without hesitation.” Not only do we consider this neither a problem nor a danger; we consider it an eminently desirable goal to be worked toward and achieved as soon and as fully as possible. It is the very essence of liberation.
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Ryan
August 23rd, 2011
Fascinating. What a brave and awesome response from Kameny.
Charles
August 23rd, 2011
Was that only 40 years ago? Too many people still want to label any gay or lesbian who is out of the closet as militant.
Charles
August 23rd, 2011
I wish you would post the entire article, can you?
TampaZeke
August 23rd, 2011
All hail Frank Kameny!
True gay hero. True
TampaZeke
August 23rd, 2011
…AMERICAN hero!
Scott
August 23rd, 2011
I agree with Charles. I was accused of being “militant” for using a simple picture of me kissing my partner as a Facebook profile pic!
It’s gotten much better, but we haven’t arrived yet.
Timothy Kincaid
August 23rd, 2011
Dr. Paul Gebhard, the distinguished anthropologist who directs the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, believes that gay lib “will not convert heterosexuals into homosexuals but might encourage those who are going in a homosexual direction to feel less guilty about it.â€
OH NOES!! Less guilty? Oh how dim!
justme
August 23rd, 2011
It’s wonderful the Frank Kameny is being recognized so much nowadays as this country owes him more than we could ever repay.
Matt
August 23rd, 2011
Did the Earth move for you too? ;)
Just saw this on Gawker:
http://gawker.com/5833424/bisexual-men-exist-says-breakthrough-boner-study
Priya Lynn
August 23rd, 2011
Matt, Bailey’s 2005 study on bisexuals also showed bisexuality existed although he claimed the contrary. In that study Bailey inexplicably excluded some men from the results who showed attraction to both sexes.
Charles
August 23rd, 2011
“Dr. Paul Gebhard, the distinguished anthropologist who directs the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, believes that gay lib “will not convert heterosexuals into homosexuals but might encourage those who are going in a homosexual direction to feel less guilty about it.â€
OH NOES!! Less guilty? Oh how dim! – Timothy Kincaid”
I was born in 1951. The guilt that I felt growing up was enormous. I could not tell anyone, and I mean anyone. I became a semi-recluse and was so depressed. All I wanted was to be normal.
Timothy Kincaid
August 23rd, 2011
Charles,
Perhaps you missed my sarcasm. The author of the article considered it “a dim view” that homosexuals feel less guilt.
From our vantage point it seems bizarre that “less guilt” over something that causes no harm to others could possibly be anything but wonderful. But then the expected attitude was that this was something over which you should feel guilt. So common was that expectation that it is assumed by not only the author but his readers.
How far we have progressed in just 40 years.
error?
August 23rd, 2011
1971 = “a year” after Stonewall rebellion? I thought the Stonewall rebellion was in 1969.
Jim Burroway
August 24th, 2011
It was. I corrected the error.
Jim Burroway
August 24th, 2011
Charles:
I’d love to, but unfortunately copyright issues make it impossible to do so.
Bruce Garrett
August 30th, 2011
Just fyi Jim… Thanks Much for posting this. It tweaked my curiosity and I went Googling for the article. Instead I found a place that sells magazine back issues and they had a copy of that issue of Newsweek. It arrived in my mail yesterday and now I’m glad I got the entire magazine because having that article there, with all the other articles And the 1971 advertisements really put it into its context.
And it really brought back memories.
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