tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/stonewall-13391/articlesStonewall – The Conversation2022-05-18T14:39:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1833032022-05-18T14:39:45Z2022-05-18T14:39:45ZJake Daniels: how homophobia in men’s football is changing<p>Blackpool forward Jake Daniels’ <a href="https://www.blackpoolfc.co.uk/news/2022/may/16/a-message-from-jake-daniels/">announcement that he is homosexual</a> makes him the UK’s only active, openly gay, male professional footballer.</p>
<p>Daniels, aged 17, described the move as a “relief”, and was met with <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jake-daniels-comes-out-as-gay-receives-wave-of-support-messages_uk_62834c97e4b0c2dce654296f">support and praise</a> from key figures in men’s football and beyond, including Gary Lineker, Harry Kane and Sir Ian McKellen. He was also praised by national figureheads Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince William, who said Daniels coming out will “<a href="https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1526533668419903489">help break down barriers</a>”.</p>
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<img alt="A head shot of UK footballer Justin Fashanu smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463995/original/file-20220518-17-pqgko1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463995/original/file-20220518-17-pqgko1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463995/original/file-20220518-17-pqgko1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463995/original/file-20220518-17-pqgko1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463995/original/file-20220518-17-pqgko1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463995/original/file-20220518-17-pqgko1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463995/original/file-20220518-17-pqgko1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Justin Fashanu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Fashanu#/media/File:Justin_Fashanu_www.7sur7.be.jpg">Wikipedia/7sur7</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The first UK professional footballer to come out was <a href="https://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com/halloffame/justin-fashanu/">Justin Fashanu</a> in 1990. The support for Daniels has been a stark contrast to the homophobic responses to Fashanu, who killed himself in 1998 at the age of 37.</p>
<p>Sport in the UK has long been rife with <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1016/j.smr.2020.09.003">homophobia</a> and considered an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207594.2012.713107">unsafe place</a> for LGBT+ players. In 2017, a <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmcumeds/113/113.pdf">House of Commons report</a> concluded that “despite the significant change in society’s attitudes to homosexuality in the last 30 years, there is little reflection of this progress being seen in football.” </p>
<p>Men’s professional football is the last of the UK’s three most popular sports, following rugby and cricket, to have an active, elite professional player come out. Rugby player Gareth Thomas came out in 2009 and cricketer Steven Davies came out in 2011.</p>
<p>This lagging behind is no surprise given the vile homophobic chanting at some of England’s best players such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/may/15/sol-campbell-chant-guilty-portsmouth">Sol Campbell</a>, and the reaction to Fashanu in the 1990s. Indeed, there are some early signs of homophobic hate in response to Daniels that have been <a href="https://www.lancs.live/sport/football/football-news/blackpool-jake-daniels-championship-gay-23985118">condemned</a> by LGBTQ+ rights group Stonewall.</p>
<p>Still, over the last couple of decades, changing cultural attitudes and campaigning efforts by organisations and fans have raised awareness of LGBTQ+ participation in sport. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thejustincampaign.com">The Justin Campaign</a>, established in 2008 by a Brighton-based grassroots organisation, was one of the first official campaigns to raise awareness of homophobia in men’s football. The campaign had a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02614367.2010.541481">local reach</a> and targeted <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vNNyDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT69&dq=Caudwell+and+Spacey&ots=iCs3QBEoYa&sig=JYnnEtBfhT0LfDa-jVcWFAUMLgg#v=onepage&q=Caudwell%20and%20Spacey&f=false">young people</a>, mainly school and university students who entered tournaments as team “Tackle Homophobia”. </p>
<p>From the Justin Campaign came <a href="https://www.footballvhomophobia.com/our-story/">Football v Homophobia</a>, developed by <a href="https://pridesports.org.uk">PrideSports</a>, which now has a significant presence in the game worldwide. Alongside this grassroots activism, in 2013 betting company Paddy Power, working with Stonewall, initiated the <a href="https://news.paddypower.com/propaganda/2014/09/05/brief-history-paddy-powers-rainbow-laces-campaign/">Rainbow Laces campaign</a>. </p>
<p>The FA, football’s governing body in England and Wales, introduced its first anti-homophobia initiative in 2012, <a href="https://thefsa.org.uk/news/fa-launches-new-anti-homophobia-initiative/">Opening Doors and Joining In</a>. Since then, the FA has endorsed both Football v Homophobia and the Rainbow Laces campaigns. However, research indicates that efforts by sport governing bodies can <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19406940.2018.1479284?casa_token=jKDD4web8zAAAAAA%3AGZvZpknBtHYVAGEPUBEJtH0uE2K-1JzvKLpzPWyrWoAEqkD4e3WvlQplBBFF-9o2BfGcnfeu4xU">fall short</a> and can be <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1012690213479789?casa_token=E_tG00y4m6MAAAAA%3A9qdVOdsOuDPKq3HkDdVRGj6lcTZ6gwbP7R2b8POnMZE-Tg_C3AfKSHERVyoDj3xlwJgl5qFyCR4">ineffective</a> at actually implementing change. </p>
<p>While I don’t know how aware Daniels and his peers were of these campaigns as they were growing up, there is evidence from a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2017.1391073?casa_token=LDGuu0TyNH4AAAAA%3AvBeJWx1_ATEy0Nea56FjbeVh6Pd9FN0I7ikulUY3a5xF2-hQw4QEoAGuEWAXVEctT5EGhGkl_RQ">2017 study</a> at a boy’s football academy that revealed “progressive attitudes towards homosexuality” among a small group of 14-15 year olds. This suggests that attitudes are becoming more inclusive – although the boys in the study felt unable to individually challenge homophobia when they observed it.</p>
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<h2>Fan attitudes</h2>
<p>Homophobic chanting at men’s professional games can be a common occurrence. This chanting, often deemed as “banter” by the perpetrators, can be outright blatant homophobia, or what we now call a “micro-aggression”. Micro-aggressions are the everyday speech and actions directed at marginalised members of communities that reflect prejudice and discrimination, and can be damaging to minority individuals <a href="https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1071.2730&rep=rep1&type=pdf">in sport</a>.</p>
<p>Obviously, not all football fans make homophobic remarks and gestures at a game or on social media. Many formal <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038038521994012?casa_token=sbXf81iD83gAAAAA:RBm6t5M9xPjBQ_J9cw9WxN5BpgJmnLDKiQmmZkAr_f0gIoPdMYs5xqYdrbha-qGZLxuahvFMwos">LGBTQ+ fan groups</a>, such as the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LiverpoolFCLGBTSupporters/">Kop Outs</a> (Liverpool), <a href="https://www.arsenal.com/fanzone/gay-gooners">Gay Gooners</a> (Arsenal) and <a href="https://proudcanaries.co.uk/">Proud Canaries</a> (Norwich City), have also been set up in recent years, creating a visible community within the oft-discriminatory world of football fandom. </p>
<p>Despite these efforts by fans, football’s governing bodies continue to ignore or forget homophobia. A case in point is Qatar, host country for FIFA’s men’s World Cup later this year, which has <a href="https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/qatar/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwspKUBhCvARIsAB2IYusJRQPb9riqQSOg_qjO2s7zWjkoIO9onPGd6bnw0DjPwFR_TEwmCfEaAiB1EALw_wcB">anti-gay laws</a>. </p>
<h2>Cultural shifts</h2>
<p>At 17, Daniels has grown up with a popular culture that is more diverse than ever when it comes to gender and sexuality. There are more visible stories of LGBTQ+ people and communities generally, and within the world of sport. Thanks to decades of activism, LGBTQ+ culture has a place in the mainstream, and football is benefiting from this movement.</p>
<p>The women’s game is further along in <a href="https://www.outsports.com/2019/6/11/18660301/out-gay-lesbian-bi-2019-women-world-cup-soccer">celebrating out lesbian and bisexual players</a> internationally. The 2019 FIFA women’s World Cup alone had 40 out women – players, coaches and managers – offering further evidence that the women’s game is a safer environment than the men’s. This might be because women in sport have had to deal with sexist and homophobic stereotypes for a <a href="https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ssj/8/1/article-p61.xml">very long time</a>.</p>
<p>All of this, in addition to <a href="https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/friends-family-support-systems-for-lgbtq-youth">support from family and friends</a> and teachers, coaches, officials and managers who are <a href="https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/come-out-lgbt-becoming-active-lgbt-ally">LGBTQ+ allies</a>, will make young male footballers feel safe enough to come out. </p>
<p>The impact of Jake Daniels’ decision to come out cannot be underestimated. Not only will it allow him to be fully himself – and perhaps an even better player – it is set to shift the culture of men’s elite professional football.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jayne Caudwell previously received funding from British Academy, Lesiure Studies Association, Energise Me. </span></em></p>Sport has long been an unsafe place for LGBTQ+ players, but Jake Daniels’s coming out could change things for men’s football.Jayne Caudwell, Associate Professor Social Sciences, Gender& Sexualities, Bournemouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1745012022-02-07T13:07:13Z2022-02-07T13:07:13ZLGBT+ history: the story of camp, from Little Richard to Lil Nas X<p>Although camp is difficult to define, it probably doesn’t need much description. </p>
<p>Ever since 1956 – when former teenage drag queen Little Richard began performing his tribute to anal sex, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F13JNjpNW6c&ab_channel=Darwinner">Tutti Frutti</a>”, while wearing a six-inch pompadour, plucked eyebrows, and eyeliner – camp has increasingly been accommodated into social acceptance and understanding. It has been adopted and adapted by celebrities including Dolly Parton, Prince, Elton John, Ru Paul, Lady Gaga, and Lil Nas X. It was the theme of the 2019 Met Gala, prompting widespread commentary about what camp is.</p>
<p>Susan Sontag, whose work inspired <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/photos/2019/05/met-gala-camp-on-theme">the Met Gala Ball’s theme</a>, wrote in <a href="https://qz.com/quartzy/1419465/susan-sontags-54-year-old-essay-on-camp-is-essential-reading-to-understand-culture-in-2018/">Notes on Camp</a> (1964) that camp is about “artifice and the unnatural”, a “way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon”. Camp, Sontag continues, is “the spirit of extravagance”, as well as “a kind of love, a love for human nature”, which “relishes, rather than judges”.</p>
<p>Sontag also writes, however, that the camp sensibility is “disengaged, depoliticized”, and that it emphasises the “decorative … at the expense of content”. But camp is intricately enmeshed with queerness, and is anything but disengaged and merely decorative. Rather, in subverting social norms and rejecting easy categorisation, it has a long and radical history. </p>
<h2>Camp’s political beginnings</h2>
<p>For many working class queer men in urban centres such as New York around the turn of the 20th century, camp was a tactic for the communication and affirmation of non-normative sexualities and genders. This was enacted at <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/george-chauncey/gay-new-york/9780786723355/">Coney Island male beauty contests</a>, <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/queens-and-queers-rise-drag-ball-culture-1920s">Harlem and Midtown drag balls</a>, and in the streets and saloons of downtown Manhattan. </p>
<p>As historian George Chauncey established in his book <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2952659">Gay New York</a>, the so-called “fairy resorts” (nightclubs whose attraction was the presence of effeminate men), which sprang up downtown, established the dominant public image of queer male sexuality. This was defined by a cultivated or performed effeminacy, including make-up, falsetto, and the use of “camp names” and female pronouns. </p>
<p>These men questioned gender categories, and did so by behaving “camply”. In this way, camp evolved as a visible queer signifier. It has helped some queer people, both then and since, “make sense of, respond to, and undermine”, in Chauncey’s words, “the social categories of gender and sexuality that serve to marginalise them”.</p>
<p>Decades later, in late June 1969, not far from New York’s former “fairy resorts”, a group of queer and trans teenagers used camp to dramatically shift the outcome of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/stonewall-riots-global-legacy-shows-theres-no-simple-story-of-progress-for-gay-rights-119257">Stonewall uprising</a>. A series of demonstrations against the closure of a popular gay bar, these protests are often credited with launching the gay rights movement. </p>
<p>Facing an elite unit of armed police, the youths marshalled their campest street repertoire, joining arms, kicking their legs in the air like a precision dance troupe. They sang “We are the Stonewall Girls / We wear our hair in curls,” and called the police “Lily Law” and “the girls in blue”. Once again, camp accomplished a powerful subversion, this time of the presumed machismo and authority of the police.</p>
<h2>Liking camp</h2>
<p>Camp offers a critical stance that derives from the experience of being labelled deviant, highlighting the artificiality of social conventions. For the writer Christopher Isherwood, whose 1939 novel <a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/products/goodbye-to-berlin-by-christopher-isherwood">Goodbye to Berlin</a> became the darkly camp musical <a href="https://masterworksbroadway.com/music/cabaret-original-broadway-cast-recording-1966/">Cabaret</a> (1966), camp was underpinned by “seriousness”. To deploy it was to express “what’s basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance”. </p>
<p>Two of the 20th century’s campest artists, Andy Warhol and <a href="https://makeyourownbrainard.cal.bham.ac.uk/">Joe Brainard</a>, took Isherwood’s stance on camp seriously, and based much of their careers on the belief that “liking” was a valuable aesthetic. Both are famous for the camp excess of their imagery, producing work that featured multiple iterations of camp images. </p>
<p>For Warhol, it was Marilyn Monroes and Jackie Kennedys. For Brainard, pansies and Madonnas. Even, in Brainard’s case, a transgressive, dramatic account of how much <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/wonder-talking-joe-brainard-andrew-epstein/">he liked Warhol</a> , featuring the words “I like Andy Warhol” repeated 14 times. Warhol also embraced camp as a personal style, performing a theatrical effeminacy that equated to a strategic queerness designed to discomfit those among his contemporaries who held him to be “<a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/575/57574/popism/9780141189420.html">too swish</a>”.</p>
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<p>Warhol’s use of camp finds an echo, in the 21st century, in the work of <a href="https://theconversation.com/lil-nas-xs-dance-with-the-devil-evokes-tradition-of-resisting-mocking-religious-demonization-158586">Lil Nas X</a>, a musical artist who similarly deploys Sontag’s iteration of camp as “a mode of seduction — one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation”. </p>
<p>His smash hit “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Ov5jzm3j8&ab_channel=LilNasXVEVO">Old Town Road</a>” (2019) is a queer country/hip-hop cross-over, whose music video is replete with sequins, tassels, chaps and choreographed dancing. Much of this was ignored by some fans who only appeared to notice Lil Nas X’s commitment to camp on the release of the video for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6swmTBVI83k">“Montero (Call Me By Your Name)</a>” (2021).</p>
<p>Montero features the biblical Adam making out with the serpent in the Garden of Eden, before gleefully riding down a stripper pole to hell where he performs a lapdance for Satan (all characters played by Lil Nas X). Like Warhol, Lil Nas X uses a camp style to put visuals to repressive narratives and double standards. </p>
<p>In particular, he claims camp transgression for black queerness, enacting, once again, a critical stance on the contradictions and condemnations that serve to marginalise those who don’t, or can’t, conform. His work confirms, in other words, that camp is much more than a quirky outfit. That it is a strategy, as much as a style.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174501/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rona Cran works for the University of Birmingham. They receive funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>Camp defies easy categorisation and has come to mean many things over the span of queer historyRona Cran, Associate Professor in Twentieth-Century American Literature, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1470052020-10-05T03:48:08Z2020-10-05T03:48:08ZThe Boys in the Band: once banned in Australia, this pre-gay liberation story is now a fond, funny Netflix remake<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361511/original/file-20201004-20-o64p92.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C18%2C1081%2C689&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Andrew Rannells, Robin de Jesus, Jim Parsons, and Michael Benjamin Washington in The Boys in the Band (2020).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix Inc</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10199914/">The Boys in the Band</a>, a remake of a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065488/">1970 film</a> based on a 1968 play, has arrived on Netflix with little fanfare. </p>
<p>The film tells the story of Michael, a Hermés scarf-loving, Manhattan-dwelling gay man who is hosting a birthday party for a friend. Intended as a small event for seven gay men, a straight former college buddy of Michael’s also arrives unexpectedly. The party, to put it mildly, does not go well.</p>
<p>The guest of honour is Harold, a former figure skater who, in his spectacular party entrance, describes himself as “a 32-year-old, ugly, pockmarked, Jew, fairy.” That description sums up much of the film’s mood. </p>
<p>First performed a year before the New York <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/50-years-on-how-the-stonewall-riots-inspired-australia-s-lgbtiq-movement">Stonewall Riots</a>, when LGBT people fought against police brutality, igniting a revolution, this is a pre-gay liberation story in which homosexual men swap barbed insults, indulge in a cruel party game and seem to be drowning in a sea of self-loathing.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_in_the_Band_(play)">original play</a>, written by Mart Crowley, was regarded as a breakthrough in the telling of gay stories. It was revived on Broadway in 2018 and the cast of that production star in the Netflix film. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-moonlights-oscar-win-hollywood-begins-to-right-old-wrongs-73843">With Moonlight's Oscar win, Hollywood begins to right old wrongs</a>
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<p>But the 1970 film was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14490854.2013.11668449">initially banned in Australia</a>, judged “indecent and obscene” by the Film Classification Board. It wasn’t until 1972, with the introduction of the “R” rating system that Australians could watch the movie.</p>
<p>The differing responses to versions of Crowley’s drama, 50 years apart, offer an intriguing case study in how historical context alters the way we understand a story. </p>
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<h2>Outdated and harmful?</h2>
<p>In 1970, a film almost entirely about homosexual people was rare. As a result, The Boys in the Band was unlikely to be assessed purely on its merits as cinematic art or entertainment. Instead, it was read by censors as a threat to Australia’s inviolable heterosexuality.</p>
<p>When it finally screened here, in 1972, the gay liberation movement had burst into life and the response to the film from gay activists was wary. </p>
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<p>Watching the party goers decry each other as “faggots,” (one character declares, “Show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse”), <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14490854.2013.11668449">Australian gay activists</a> deemed the film outdated, harmful and cruel.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14490854.2013.11668449">It was seen</a> as a memory of a time happily left in the past, before gay liberation arrived with its messages of pride and freedom beyond the closet. But if this story was labelled a tired, outdated memory almost 50 years ago, what can a remake offer today?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-we-still-scared-of-seeing-two-men-kissing-61085">Why are we still scared of seeing two men kissing?</a>
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<h2>A memory of a memory</h2>
<p>As it turns out, plenty. Freed of much of the burden of representation it carried in 1970, The Boys in the Band now arrives as a funny, tense and heartbreaking memory of a memory. </p>
<p>The film is a fond, nostalgic replica of its predecessor. Some scenes are almost shot-for-shot copies. Others act more like the workings of memory, in that they evoke a sense of the earlier film without quite managing to create a direct duplicate. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361513/original/file-20201004-20-im37m7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361513/original/file-20201004-20-im37m7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361513/original/file-20201004-20-im37m7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361513/original/file-20201004-20-im37m7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361513/original/file-20201004-20-im37m7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361513/original/file-20201004-20-im37m7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361513/original/file-20201004-20-im37m7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361513/original/file-20201004-20-im37m7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cliff Gorman, Robert La Tourneaux, and Kenneth Nelson in the 1970 version of The Boys in the Band.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cinema Centre Films, Leo Films</span></span>
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<p>The performances similarly call to mind the original cast. At times, they sand the edges of some of the harsher earlier stereotypes, particularly Robin de Jesus, whose portrayal of the proudly “nelly” (or effeminate) Emory feels more real than the original one did.</p>
<p>Others add some new complexity or depth, including Andrew Rannells as Larry, who must negotiate his desire for free love with a partner looking for monogamous romance.</p>
<p>This distancing through layers of memory switches the central question of the story from “Is this who we are?” to “Is this who we used to be?”. Which isn’t to say present-day gay men won’t see something of themselves in the film. </p>
<p>The jokes, the relationships and the inner workings of gay friendship circles at times still ring true. But the stakes are lowered by the passing of time and the nostalgic haze. </p>
<h2>Gay artists in the Hollywood mainstream</h2>
<p>With an openly gay cast (many of them TV stars), a gay director and gay producers, the new film shows how gay artists, no longer on the fringes but working within mainstream Hollywood, have reclaimed and repositioned this story. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361512/original/file-20201004-22-87fj7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361512/original/file-20201004-22-87fj7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361512/original/file-20201004-22-87fj7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361512/original/file-20201004-22-87fj7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361512/original/file-20201004-22-87fj7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361512/original/file-20201004-22-87fj7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361512/original/file-20201004-22-87fj7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361512/original/file-20201004-22-87fj7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons in the 2020 remake of The Boys in the Band.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In so doing, they reveal an element of gay culture that simply didn’t exist in 1970. Gay men’s mainstream cultural memory as displayed in the original film revolves around the popular divas of the day (Judy Garland, Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich are all quoted or imitated by the cast). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-dorothys-red-shoes-deserve-their-status-as-gay-icons-even-in-changing-times-110187">Why Dorothy's red shoes deserve their status as gay icons, even in changing times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Today, that cultural memory also incorporates stories about gay people, written by gay people, including The Boys in the Band itself.</p>
<p>If the first film was Hollywood’s earliest attempt at revealing gay lives, the remake wraps its predecessor in layers of historical meaning.</p>
<p>Netflix’s film doesn’t carry the burden of being a landmark. Instead, it recalls the earlier film’s breakthrough as something worth remembering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147005/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott McKinnon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Judged by gay activists to be a cruel and outdated film almost 50 years ago, what can a remake of The Boys in the Band offer today?Scott McKinnon, Research associate, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1296092020-02-10T13:58:09Z2020-02-10T13:58:09ZThe history of ‘coming out,’ from secret gay code to popular political protest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310358/original/file-20200115-134797-epn1u8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters in Manchester, U.K., 1988.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/clause-28-march-in-manchester-people-demonstrate-against-news-photo/930164184?adppopup=true">Reid/Mirrorpix via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You probably know what it means to “come out” as gay. You may even have heard the expression used in relation to other kinds of identity, such as being undocumented. </p>
<p>But do you know where the term comes from? Or that its meaning has changed over time?</p>
<p>In <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u5MOC4YAAAAJ&hl=en">my 2020 book</a><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/come-out-come-out-whoever-you-are-9780190931650?cc=us&lang=en&">“Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are,”</a>, I explore the history of this term, from the earliest days of the gay rights movement, to today, when it has been adopted by other movements. </p>
<h2>Selective sharing</h2>
<p>In the late 19th and early 20th century, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/george-chauncey/gay-new-york/9781541699212/">gay subculture thrived</a> in many large American cities. </p>
<p>Gay men spoke of “coming out” into gay society – borrowing the term from debutante society, where elite young women came out into high society. A 1931 news article in the Baltimore Afro-American referred to “the coming out of new debutantes into homosexual society.” It was titled “1931 Debutantes Bow at Local ‘Pansy’ Ball.”</p>
<p>The 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s witnessed a growing backlash against this visible gay world. In response, gay life became more secretive. </p>
<p>The Mattachine Society, the earliest important organization of what was known as the homophile movement – a precursor of the gay rights movement – <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3640270.html">took its name from mysterious medieval figures in masks</a>. In this context, coming out meant acknowledging one’s sexual orientation to oneself and to other gay people. It did not mean revealing it to the world at large.</p>
<p>Such selective sharing relied on <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/contested-closets">code phrases</a> – such as “family,” “a club member,” “a friend of Dorothy’s,” “a friend of Mrs. King” or “gay” – that could be used in mixed company to designate someone as homosexual. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/george-chauncey/gay-new-york/9781541699212/">The term “gay”</a> was originally borrowed from the slang of women prostitutes, when they used the word to refer to women in their profession. Of course, “gay” was ultimately “<a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/contested-closets">outed</a>” when the gay rights movement adopted it following the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969. </p>
<h2>Out in public</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1533&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1533&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first article on Stonewall to appear in The New York Times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/06/29/89004281.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=LedeAsset&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=33">New York Times</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Coming out took on a more political meaning after the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, in which patrons of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F000312240607100502">Stonewall Inn in New York City</a> fought back against a police raid. The rebellion included riots and a resistance that lasted for days. It was subsequently commemorated in an annual march known today as “gay pride.”</p>
<p>At the first Gay Liberation March in New York City in June 1970, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/outing-shattering-the-conspiracy-of-silence/oclc/28026413">one of the organizers stated</a> that “we’ll never have the freedom and civil rights we deserve as human beings unless we stop hiding in closets and in the shelter of anonymity.” </p>
<p>By this time, coming out was juxtaposed with being in the closet, conveying the shame associated with hiding. By the end of the 1960s, queer people who pretended to be heterosexual were said to be “in the closet” or labeled a “closet case” or, in the case of gay men, “closet queens.” </p>
<p>By the 1970s, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/outing-shattering-the-conspiracy-of-silence/oclc/28026413">mainstream journalists were already using the term</a> beyond sexual orientation – to speak of, for instance, “closet conservatives” and “closet gourmets.” </p>
<h2>A rite of passage</h2>
<p>By presenting coming out as a way to <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3640270.html">end internalized self-hatred</a> and achieve a better life, the LGBTQ movement helped to encourage people to come out, despite associated risks. It also showed how <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3640270.html">coming could be used to build solidarity and recruit other queer people</a>.</p>
<p>For instance, in 1978, in his campaign to defeat a California initiative that would have banned gay teachers from working in state public schools, openly gay elected government official Harvey Milk urged people to “Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310354/original/file-20200115-134842-33il1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310354/original/file-20200115-134842-33il1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310354/original/file-20200115-134842-33il1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310354/original/file-20200115-134842-33il1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310354/original/file-20200115-134842-33il1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310354/original/file-20200115-134842-33il1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310354/original/file-20200115-134842-33il1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310354/original/file-20200115-134842-33il1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supervisor Harvey Milk sits outside his camera shop in November 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/avowed-homosexual-supervisor-harvey-milk-who-was-shot-and-news-photo/517432258?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Milk gambled that if queer people told their friends they were gay, Californians would realize that they had friends, coworkers and family members who were gay and – out of solidarity – would oppose the proposition. The campaign helped defeat the initiative. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, the gay and lesbian rights movement radicalized in response to the Christian right and AIDS epidemic. Activists used the mantra “Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are” to demand that people declare their homosexuality. The coming out narrative became a rite of passage, something to be shared with others, and the centerpiece of gay liberation movements.</p>
<h2>In your face</h2>
<p>In the 1990s, the radical organization <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/contested-closets">Queer Nation</a> took coming out to a new level. </p>
<p>Its members wore T-shirts in Day-Glo colors with slogans such as “PROMOTE HOMOSEXUALITY. GENERIC QUEER. FAGGOT. MILITANT DYKE.” Wearing these T-shirts, they entered heterosexual bars in New York and San Francisco and staged “kiss-ins.” They visited suburban shopping malls outside these same cities and chanted, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous – and we’re not going shopping!” Through these tactics, they not only came out, but forced heterosexuals to acknowledge their presence.</p>
<p>The politics of coming out has helped make LGBTQ people more visible and better protected by law. As testimony of this shift, today, marriage equality is the law of the land, the popular TV comedy “Modern Family” features a gay couple and one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential ticket, Pete Buttigieg, is a gay man.</p>
<p>To be sure, homophobia and transphobia are still alive and well. Still, LGBTQ people have made clear strides in the past half-century and coming out politics has been part of their success. </p>
<h2>Going bigger</h2>
<p>The success of the LGBTQ movement has inspired other social movements – such as the fat acceptance movement and the undocumented youth movement, among others – to also “come out.” </p>
<p>As I show in my new book, coming out has become <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/223459">what sociologists call a “master frame,”</a> a way of understanding the world that is elastic and inclusive enough for a wide range of social movements to use. </p>
<p>For example, just as Harvey Milk urged queer people to come out for “youngsters who are becoming scared,” so too the undocumented immigrant youth movement has urged undocumented youth to “come out as undocumented and unafraid.” </p>
<p>As one of the immigrant youth movement leaders quoted in my new book explained, Milk’s speech had impressed upon her and her peers that, “If you don’t come out nobody’s gonna know that you’re there. … They’re gonna say or do whatever they want because nobody’s standing up, and you’re not standing up for yourself.” </p>
<p>This campaign has been effective at <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=22645">convincing undocumented youth to be visible</a>, which has been crucial for political mobilization.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310359/original/file-20200115-134789-7ewpm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310359/original/file-20200115-134789-7ewpm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310359/original/file-20200115-134789-7ewpm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310359/original/file-20200115-134789-7ewpm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310359/original/file-20200115-134789-7ewpm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310359/original/file-20200115-134789-7ewpm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310359/original/file-20200115-134789-7ewpm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310359/original/file-20200115-134789-7ewpm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At a 2017 rally, one activist wears a T-shirt reading ‘Undocumented and Unafraid.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/activists-wearing-tshirt-reading-undocumented-unafraid-772202494">Diego G Diaz/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The specific language of “coming out, which is so closely associated with LGBTQ rights, allows other social movements to liken their experience to that of LGBTQ people. </p>
<p>For instance, when fat liberation activist <a href="http://www.marilynwann.com">Marilyn Wann</a> speaks about how she "came out” as fat, she is not just speaking about a turning point in her personal biography. By using the term “coming out,” she implies that being fat is like being gay – and that, just as homophobia is morally wrong, so too is “fatphobia.” In this context, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/197420/fat-so-by-marilyn-wann/">coming out as fat</a> means owning one’s fatness and refusing to apologize for it.</p>
<p>As my book shows, the multiple meanings of coming out – including coming into community, cultivating self-love, and collectively organizing to promote equality and justice – offer a productive way for social movements to move forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail C. Saguy receives funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>In the 1950s, ‘coming out’ meant quietly acknowledging one’s sexual orientation. Today, the term is used by a broad array of social movements.Abigail C. Saguy, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1192572019-06-28T09:38:02Z2019-06-28T09:38:02ZStonewall riots: global legacy shows there’s no simple story of progress for gay rights<p>Millions of people will take to the streets around the world in the coming weeks to celebrate “<a href="https://2019-worldpride-stonewall50.nycpride.org/">Pride</a>”. Those who find themselves doused in glitter or wrapped in rainbow flags may think this is merely an annual summer party of sexual and gender diversity. But, the last weekend in June anchors Prides around the world for a reason: it marks a queer uprising that took place at New York City’s Stonewall Inn in 1969. </p>
<p>Stonewall’s 50th anniversary is a moment to reflect on the riot that helped to globalise what many now call the “gay rights movement”.</p>
<p>In the early hours of June 28 1969, the New York Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn in an attempt to permanently close a bar that was violating licensing regulations. Police raids on Stonewall and other gay bars were routine but, on this particular night, local patrons refused to disperse or allow their friends to be arrested. These “queers” (such as drag queens, sex workers, trans women, gay men, lesbian butches), who came from various parts of the city to hang out at the bar, sung, threw objects, and used their bodies to resist the police invasion. The protests gathered momentum and continued throughout the week. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stormé DeLarverie, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sen Raj</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much has been <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576364/the-stonewall-reader-by-edited-by-the-new-york-public-library/9780143133513/">written</a> about the roles of the various people involved, such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie and Mark Segal. The fact that Stonewall celebrates so many iconic figures highlights why the event has <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/more-to-mardi-gras-than-glitter-and-theatrics-20110303-1bflv.html">global relevance to a range of communities</a>. </p>
<p>Stonewall is less a single event in gay history and more a historical constellation of queer expectations and experiences. This constellation captures the rage, pain, joy and hope of queer people – both then and now – fighting to exist in a world that negates atypical pleasures, intimacies and identities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-new-york-media-covered-the-stonewall-riots-117954">How the New York media covered the Stonewall riots</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Political liberation and legal equality</h2>
<p>Stonewall is a current symbol of “gay liberation” – a movement that sought to radically transform political institutions which prized the heterosexual family and patriarchal kinship. Its symbolic power is tied to movements such as Women’s Liberation and Black Power. Many who rioted at Stonewall campaigned not just to end sodomy laws (gay sex was illegal in every US state except Illinois in 1969) but also to end military interventions and police brutality. </p>
<p>This gave rise to other campaigns. For example, <a href="http://actupny.org/">ACT UP</a> began 20 years later by using direct action to combat the US government’s inaction on HIV. Stonewall’s liberationist legacies are also embodied in recent queer-led campaigns such as <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">#BlackLivesMatter</a>, rallying to stop state-sanctioned killing of black people in the US, and <a href="http://www.lgsmigrants.com/">Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants</a>, which organises to prevent state removal of people who seek refuge in the UK. </p>
<p>But gay liberation also emerged alongside activism for legal equality. As the black gay rights activist Ernestine Eckstein said in an interview with the lesbian magazine <a href="https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1003347905">The Ladder</a> in 1966: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would like to see more test cases in courts, so that our grievances can be brought out into the open. That’s one of the ways for a movement to gain exposure, a way that’s completely acceptable to everybody. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Stonewall’s activist legacies expose some of the tensions between seeking legal equality and demanding political liberation. Legal rulings from the <a href="https://www.epic.org/privacy/gender/lawrencevtx.pdf">US</a>, <a href="http://ceere.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/CASE-OF-DUDGEON-v.-THE-UNITED-KINGDOM.pdf">Europe</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-indian-judges-wrote-love-into-law-as-they-decriminalised-gay-sex-102810">India</a> have decriminalised gay sex by recognising the dignity of gay people and their rights to intimately associate in equivalent ways to heterosexual people. Yet, queer <a href="https://www.againstequality.org/">activists</a> and <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315582207">researchers</a> note that these cases render gay people as sympathetic figures deserving of recognition because their intimacies and identities are “acceptable” to social institutions that value monogamy. </p>
<p>Queer people still navigate the question of subscribing to existing social norms for equality while seeking liberation from those norms altogether. </p>
<h2>Making room for queer progress</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Remembering the Stonewall riot in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sen Raj</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stonewall’s legacies are a reminder of the impossibility of telling a simple story of LGBTQ unity. Queer and trans people of colour, for example, have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb-JIOWUw1o">recounted</a> the misogyny, racism, transphobia and classism they experienced before and after the riots. Similar exclusions within the LGBTQ community are apparent today in the <a href="https://www.mic.com/articles/179126/philadelphias-queer-people-of-color-have-fought-racism-for-years-now-the-city-is-paying-attention">racism of gay spaces</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/anti-trans-protests-london-pride-transgender-transphobia-terf-lgbt-feminist-a8448521.html">anti-trans hostility at Pride</a>. </p>
<p>This should caution us against romanticising progress. Pro-LGBTQ governments lecture former colonies about decriminalising homosexuality – an offence in about <a href="https://ilga.org/downloads/ILGA_State_Sponsored_Homophobia_2019.pdf">70 countries</a> – without realising how <a href="https://www.them.us/story/queer-women-fight-for-equality">paternalism alienates local LGBTQ communities</a>. LGBTQ politicians today join Pride parades while pursuing policies that <a href="https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/07/24/insufficient-emotive-terminology-the-bizarre-reasons-the-gov">deny LGBT people asylum</a> or <a href="https://www.mdedge.com/pediatrics/article/192965/transgender-health/homelessness-among-lgbt-youth-united-states">make them homeless</a>. Progressive media outlets subject trans people to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/02/guardian-editorial-response-transgender-rights-uk">hostile scrutiny</a>. Doctors still perform “<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/how-many-intersex-children-being-operated-on">surgical normalisation</a>” on infants with differences in sex characteristics.</p>
<p>Many of us can live freely today because of the political legacies facilitated by Stonewall. We can cultivate greater freedom by making room for expansive activism and refusing to turn progress into a single story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Senthorun Raj does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fifty years after the Stonewall riots, what is their political legacy for LGBTQ activism?Senthorun Raj, Lecturer, Keele Law School, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1189432019-06-20T22:26:45Z2019-06-20T22:26:45ZThere are infinite ways to have sex & there’s nothing unnatural about any of them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279812/original/file-20190617-118501-1lnibjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=445%2C0%2C5162%2C3640&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey once said the only unnatural sex act is one that can't be performed. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharon McCutcheon/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Humans have discovered an almost infinite amount of ways to have sex — and things to have sex with. The famous sex researcher <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.93.6.894">Alfred Kinsey said</a>: “The only unnatural sex act is that which can’t be performed.” </p>
<p>From foot fetishes to the kinkiest outfit or habits, fetishes are an endless <a href="http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/offices/vprgs/sgs/public-scholars/2017/07/02/fetish-rainbow.html">rainbow of preferences and practices</a>. Although human studies on fetishes and atypical sexual interest are few, case studies and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/bne0000300">research on non-human animal behaviour have revealed some insights about them and how they may develop</a>.</p>
<p>In fetishism, the subject of the desire is not necessarily related to sexual intercourse, yet the fetish drives a person’s sexual arousal, fantasies and preferences. Fetishes can be part of a healthy and playful sexual life for individuals and couples, and also forms the basis of some sexual subcultures. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, fetishes have often wrongly been associated with sexual deviancy, making it easy to feel weird or shame about them. Many of us are quick to judge things we do not understand or experience. When it comes to sex, we can believe that things we don’t do are weird, wrong or even disgusting. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280103/original/file-20190618-118514-4rfytu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280103/original/file-20190618-118514-4rfytu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280103/original/file-20190618-118514-4rfytu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280103/original/file-20190618-118514-4rfytu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280103/original/file-20190618-118514-4rfytu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280103/original/file-20190618-118514-4rfytu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280103/original/file-20190618-118514-4rfytu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Let’s not judge each other’s sex lives. Instead, embrace your curiosity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image by Shibari Kinbaku from Pixabay</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Pride marches taking place this summer began as a social movement against repressive and discriminatory practices against LGBTQ people following the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots">Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969</a>. Fifty years later, Pride month has become a commemoration and celebration of sexual minorities and diversity.</p>
<p>Let’s take a look under the covers together to paint a more positive view of these so-called “perversions.” We all may have a kink or two. So why not feel more accepting of our more obscure sexual desires?</p>
<h2>What are fetishes?</h2>
<p>Fetishes are not just about whips and leather, but part of a natural curiosity to explore the unknown territories of our sexuality.</p>
<p>A lot of the early science claimed fetishes were sexual abnormalities or perversions. However, most researchers and clinical practitioners now only consider fetishes to be harmful <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-009-9558-7">if they cause distress, physical harm or transgress consent.</a> </p>
<p>Scientists have recently begun to understand how some fetishes develop. <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1wc177zt">Several animal studies and case reports on humans</a> suggest that early imprinting and <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/pavlov.html">Pavlovian or classical conditioning</a> can shape the formation of fetishes. We believe learning from experiences plays a large role in forming fetishes.</p>
<p>From a Pavlovian conditioning perspective, fetishes are seen as the product of associating early and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/bne0000300">rewarding sexual experiences with objects</a>, actions or body parts that are not necessarily sexual. This is perhaps why different people have different fetishes.</p>
<p>As for early imprinting, the best example comes from a study in which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/26129">newborn goats and sheep were cross-fostered</a> by a mother of another species. Goats were mothered by sheep, and the sheep mothered by goats. The results showed male goats and sheep had sexual preferences for females of the opposite species, meaning the same species as their adopting mothers, while females on the other hand were more fluid in their choices and were willing to have sex with males of both species.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280104/original/file-20190618-118535-1uxm2vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280104/original/file-20190618-118535-1uxm2vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280104/original/file-20190618-118535-1uxm2vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280104/original/file-20190618-118535-1uxm2vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280104/original/file-20190618-118535-1uxm2vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280104/original/file-20190618-118535-1uxm2vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280104/original/file-20190618-118535-1uxm2vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Studies with rats have shown that other non-human animals also develop fetishes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image by Hebi B. from Pixabay</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This study shines some light on sex differences in human fetishes, as men with fetishes tend to vastly outnumber women with fetishes. </p>
<p>These sex differences appear to be explained solely by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1079063214525645">differences in sexual urges</a>, where men tend to show higher arousal or less repulsion towards various “deviant” sexual acts than women do. This, nevertheless, does not imply men have more psychological disorders.</p>
<h2>Fetish-related disorders</h2>
<p>Fetishes, just like any other thing in life, can be taken to where it may be a little “too much.” They may not only be preferred, but also needed in the expression of sexual arousal, which can impair the preferred pattern of arousal or performance.</p>
<p>Fetish-related disorders are characterized by the expression of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-009-9558-7">two main criteria</a>: recurrent and intense sexual arousal from either the use of objects or highly specific body part(s) that are not genitalia manifested by fantasies, urges or behaviours; those which can cause great distress or impairment of their intimacy, social or occupational life.</p>
<p>Some are particularly troubling, like exhibitionism or <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/frotteurism">frotteurism</a>. These paraphilias are believed to be distortions of normal sexual interactions with others. Sadly, both of them <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1079063214525643">still remain poorly understood</a>.</p>
<p>As previously mentioned, if by some reason we can establish associations that can drive our arousal through learning experiences, research has also shown that these associations can be “erased.” However, this process can be quite slow, difficult to change and susceptible of being spontaneously triggered by familiar cues.</p>
<h2>No definition of normal</h2>
<p>Fetishes have the potential of enhancing or expanding the repertoire of sensations we experience during sex. In fact, experimental data shows that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2013.08.005">animals become more sexually aroused</a> when they learn to associate sex with fetish-like cues.</p>
<p>Instead of focusing on what you should like or what should get you off or not, you’re better off wondering how that thing suits you or your partner. Normality falls within blurry lines, and it is up to you to expand its limits or not.</p>
<p>There is no exact definition of what constitutes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.318.7184.654">normal or healthy</a>. These definitions are highly dependent of the context (historical time and culture). </p>
<p>We get caught up with what appears to be more frequent, healthy, natural or normal: but what about what feels right?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280092/original/file-20190618-118543-1mbf6g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280092/original/file-20190618-118543-1mbf6g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280092/original/file-20190618-118543-1mbf6g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280092/original/file-20190618-118543-1mbf6g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280092/original/file-20190618-118543-1mbf6g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280092/original/file-20190618-118543-1mbf6g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280092/original/file-20190618-118543-1mbf6g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pride celebrations in Calgary in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toni Reed/ Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So how do you know if you have a fetish? If there is consent and respect, it really doesn’t matter what you do between the bed sheets, on the kitchen table or on that secret hidden spot.</p>
<p>Perhaps you don’t have a fetish. But it’s never too late to try.</p>
<p>As North Americans celebrate Pride this summer, we should take it as a reminder of our colourful sexual diversity —and also the infinite ways to have sex, with nothing unnatural about any of them. </p>
<p>We believe all people should be allowed to express their sexuality and embrace it without the weight of stereotypes or “normal” standards to live by. Life is too short to not make the best out of it, especially when it comes to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As North Americans celebrate Pride this summer, we should take it as a reminder of our colourful sexual diversity, and also the infinite ways to have sex, with nothing unnatural with any of them.Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino, PhD student, Behavioural Neuroscience, Concordia UniversityConall Eoghan Mac Cionnaith, Ph.D Candidate, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1179542019-06-19T19:54:31Z2019-06-19T19:54:31ZHow the New York media covered the Stonewall riots<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280300/original/file-20190619-171196-pzfcgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Staffers at The Village Voice were able to see the riots unfold from the news room.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-ny-usa-september-14-381470458?src=ZtJ24PJytHboABqq5XqoMA-1-0&studio=1">Osugi/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Stonewall riots were a six-night series of protests that began in the early morning of June 28, 1969, and centered around the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City.</p>
<p>Four days earlier, on June 24, 1969, the police, led by Deputy Inspector <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/nyregion/08pine.html">Seymour Pine</a>, raided the Stonewall Inn and began arresting bar employees and confiscating liquor. But when Pine led a second raid on the 28th, patrons fought back. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_gay_militants.html?id=iyUEAQAAIAAJ">Approximately 150 people fled</a>, regrouped on the street and stormed the bar, trapping the police inside. The protesters began throwing bricks, bottles and garbage, and attempted to set the bar on fire. </p>
<p>For six nights, protesters clashed off and on with police, while chanting and marching in and around Christopher Street. </p>
<p>Today, many <a href="https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-york-stonewall-lgbtq-20190606-story.html">credit the protests</a> with sparking the LGBTQ rights movement. But at the time, if you were a New Yorker reading the local, mainstream papers, you wouldn’t know that a new civil rights movement was unfolding in the city.</p>
<p>As someone who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=J9tfcl0AAAAJ&hl=en">studies the history and role of the alternative press</a>, I’ve researched <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/636/Chad_Painter_Dissertation.pdf?1560961317">how the Stonewall riots were reported</a> in New York’s mainstream and alternative publications. </p>
<p>In the days after the Stonewall riots, depending on which paper you read, you would have been exposed to a vastly different version of events. The major dailies gave a megaphone to the police, while alternative outlets embedded themselves among the protesters.</p>
<h2>When the press inadvertently outed people</h2>
<p>To understand the differences in media coverage, it’s important to recall the relationship between gay people, the press and the police prior to Stonewall.</p>
<p>In 1969, homosexual acts <a href="https://www.aclu.org/other/getting-rid-sodomy-laws-history-and-strategy-led-lawrence-decision">were illegal in every state except Illinois</a>. In New York – <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=HO7IKU79zgAC&lpg=PR14&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">home to the largest gay population in the U.S.</a> – police aggressively and systematically targeted places frequented by gay men. </p>
<p>If arrested, a person’s name, age, address and crime would be published as part of the police blotter in most local newspapers across the U.S. For example, if a man was <a href="https://watermark.silverchair.com/jav283.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAjswggI3BgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggIoMIICJAIBADCCAh0GCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQM7YblDfGCu1Lhde45AgEQgIIB7gHhOdDVqjzXMotRnztQkqOh6SQvDabaJyLkIQpitFWB7o98S3_L2KCaDBv-nSsJ8xsXzNbLbpvO2Agz1J4KEEnw9QwIOWHPvN_csIvNnBApyZd6lrlXHbIATmdLf6e1ckCGgkhZGETFAj91RR5wfLVzgTt3crbM4Zur1uN7kKIExXadoPvLgR0Cl5CSKdSfOPHvi1hzyUw-bV4L8y-ccJnm2mFAQZbfl2tbcqDWfd9A_D-E_vos9ioI3Qfmh6FM7c2JSAFNg90XeibHtuVGOJBqQvRK8WtrYS_OWGSFk23sRbKw-hV_tnYPw0BZnFeodrgSJr7zIH5_vTUDflHvxsA74U1yFUlEyg_yDo0VfJZE8sMlyZJubGhe9t56BDLrLSbwfpVw6rHNe_Owzjrdoo4CeZUXbaQ3C4Iwa7JH6VeVj9Mdz9CWBVtvzAgL4GQ7cu2Ya1QgTqFrNVXrGAETTkBclXPoICWmea3MNj2G7osGsqfTUOOzEn0rkG3lCLC7prPV-ySnYTkoxFXkKoCmX5s3ma77K1Lhrc_Imz6u9nnPoEaOy6inuFmrLX-Alt9JT72Zwr_87-MNpGvZGbbIRHKSOoyyfoLjaoi25NNRvlWTP0QB12xDIouaxPHrrsVQ1FjZEr_t45PdShlKQ6b1">arrested for committing a “homosexual” act</a> in Dayton, Ohio, his information would be published in the Dayton Daily News. Such publication often had disastrous consequences for the person “outed” in print. </p>
<p>Many were disowned by their family, fired from their workplace or dishonorably discharged from the military. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/6/11/18652876/queer-true-crime-lgbt-lgbtq-stonewall-polchin">Some were targeted for assault or murder</a>.</p>
<p>Gay men, therefore, were forced underground. Christopher Street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village became a fairly safe locale with bars and coffee shops that surreptitiously catered to a LGBTQ clientele. <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gqmym3/how-the-mafia-once-controlled-the-new-york-gay-scene-616">These bars often were run by the Mafia</a>, which owned the cigarette machines and jukeboxes, and sold watered-down liquor. </p>
<p>Unlike many clubs, the Stonewall Inn, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_D4XdvkOQpYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=history+of+stonewall+inn&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPg_b2t_PiAhXJmVkKHfO7AgMQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">which opened in March 1967</a>, was on a main thoroughfare instead of a side street. The clientele was mostly men, though even marginalized segments of the LGBTQ community frequented the bar because of its two dance floors.</p>
<p>On average, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_gay_bar/2011/06/the_gay_bar_4.html">police raided bars</a> once a month, though they typically would warn the bar that a raid was coming and time the raid to minimize disrupting the bar’s business. <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/6/14/15768274/police-lgbtq-pride-stonewall">Police raids</a> usually were accepted by bar employees and clientele. </p>
<p>However, this time was different. Stonewall’s patrons already were upset about the June 24 raid, so when one person resisted arrest, others joined in. The situation quickly escalated.</p>
<h2>The big dailies give the police a platform</h2>
<p>The scene was tense and chaotic. </p>
<p>Inside Stonewall, Pine gave his officers <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312671938">the order not to shoot</a>, fearing that any additional escalation could lead to a full-scale massacre. Outside, hundreds of protesters were throwing almost anything they could get their hands on, while others were trying to find a way to set Stonewall on fire with the cops inside.</p>
<p>Yet the mainstream media largely failed to adequately cover the protests. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1533&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1533&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280290/original/file-20190619-171281-1lwjdaf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first article on Stonewall to appear in The New York Times relied solely on interviews with the police.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/06/29/89004281.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=LedeAsset&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=33">New York Times</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The three city dailies – The New York Times, The New York Daily News and New York Post – wrote a smattering of stories in which they quoted exclusively police sources and offered little context. The story was framed as an instance of lawless youth run amok – an almost unprovoked riot.</p>
<p>For example, the Times’ first Stonewall article, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1969/06/29/archives/4-policemen-hurt-in-village-raid-melee-near-sheridan-square-follows.html">4 policemen hurt in ‘Village’ raid</a>” began “Hundreds of young men went on a rampage in Greenwich Village shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday after a force of plainclothes men raided a bar that the police said was wellknown for its homosexual clientele.”</p>
<p>The mainstream papers at least covered Stonewall. Local TV stations failed to even report on the riots happening in the heart of Manhattan.</p>
<p>In contrast, the most popular local alternative paper, The Village Voice, <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=KEtq3P1Vf8oC&dat=19690703&printsec=frontpage&hl=en">gave the riots front-page coverage</a>. It included interviews and quotes from the protesters, as well as two first-person accounts by Voice reporters <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/nyregion/howard-smith-trend-spotting-columnist-dies-at-77.html">Howard Smith</a>, who was trapped inside the bar with police officers, and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/08/30/the-village-voice-and-me-the-untold-story-of-how-i-became-a-writer/">Lucian Truscott IV</a>, who was outside with protesters. </p>
<p>Both reporters initially witnessed the riot from the Voice offices, which were a few doors down Christopher Street from Stonewall. </p>
<h2>The alternative press rises to the occasion</h2>
<p>The Voice’s coverage featured many hallmarks of alternative publications. </p>
<p>By incorporating the views of both protesters and police, they created a more complex, nuanced story. And the paper framed the Stonewall riots as an expression of liberation instead of rebellion, with Smith writing that the protesters were simply “objecting to how they were being treated.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280295/original/file-20190619-171271-1mxu94z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280295/original/file-20190619-171271-1mxu94z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280295/original/file-20190619-171271-1mxu94z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280295/original/file-20190619-171271-1mxu94z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280295/original/file-20190619-171271-1mxu94z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280295/original/file-20190619-171271-1mxu94z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280295/original/file-20190619-171271-1mxu94z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280295/original/file-20190619-171271-1mxu94z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square’ – The Village Voice gave the riots front-page treatment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=KEtq3P1Vf8oC&dat=19690703&printsec=frontpage&hl=en">Google News</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the Voice coverage was far from perfect. The anti-gay tone in Truscott’s piece angered protesters, as did some of the paper’s long-held <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Newspaper-Village-Voice/dp/0684156024">editorial policies</a> against same-sex personal ads. </p>
<p>While the Voice often was left-of-center politically, it wasn’t as radical <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120525133520/http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/exhibits/voices/">as some of its more underground counterparts</a> – the Rat, the East Village Other and the Berkeley Barb, all of which also covered the Stonewall riots.</p>
<p>Still, the Voice <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-village-voices-photographers-captured-change-turmoil-unfolding-on-new-york-citys-streets-103820">served as an important platform</a> for the otherwise voiceless left out of the mainstream discussion during both Stonewall and the paper’s 60-year run. The Voice closed in 2018, following the <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/20/a-eulogy-for-the-alt-weekly-216124">shuttering of similar publications</a> in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and San Francisco. </p>
<p>An alternative press has existed alongside the mainstream since the earliest days of the nation. These papers play an important role in the U.S. media landscape by covering stories and topics that go unreported by their mainstream counterparts. They often forego the pretense of objectivity for activism; rather than quote government officials and business leaders, they’ll quote people on the ground.</p>
<p>Fifty years after Stonewall, it’s important to reflect on the gains of the LGBTQ movement. But it’s equally important to think about what’s lost when alternative newspapers stop publishing – and thus stop covering unreported, underreported or misreported stories.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Painter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With major dailies giving a megaphone to the police, the coverage of Stonewall is a reminder of what’s lost when alternative media outlets wither away.Chad Painter, Assistant Professor of Communications, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/978372018-06-19T21:57:55Z2018-06-19T21:57:55ZIs queer culture losing its radical roots?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223887/original/file-20180619-126566-1nujdh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Has Pride been coopted? This year's Pride parade spectators have been asked to wear black in honour of the victims of serial killers. A drag queen at the Toronto 2016 gay pride parade.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you check out popular Canadian gay magazines such as <a href="http://inmagazine.ca/"><em>IN Magazine</em></a>, <a href="https://www.out.com/"><em>OUT Magazine</em></a> and <a href="https://gayliving.ca/magazines/"><em>Gay Living</em></a>, you may find headlines like: “Gay couple travels across Spain with pets” and “Middle-Age, Sexless Marriage: What’s to be Done?” along with the latest news about RuPaul’s <em>Drag Race</em> or the new <em>Queer Eye</em> series. Perusing these articles, one wouldn’t think gay men had any serious problems at all.</p>
<p>However, the more political <a href="https://www.dailyxtra.com/toronto-raises-the-pride-and-trans-flags-at-a-time-of-tragedy-87032"><em>Daily Xtra</em></a> featured a headline about this year’s Toronto 2018 Pride procession planned <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pride-toronto-mcarthur-gayvillage-parade-1.4643568">to remember not only the victims of an alleged gay serial killer,</a> but also <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/02/annual-pride-toronto-parade-to-be-a-mourning-procession-for-victims-of-alleged-serial-killer-and-the-van-rampage.html">those murdered by a van driver</a> in Toronto in April. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.pridetoronto.com/2018/04/17/pride-torontos-2018-theme-35-years-of-aids-activism/">official theme of this year’s Pride Parade</a>, “35 years of AIDS Activism” seems to have <a href="http://inmagazine.ca/2018/05/torontos-pride-parade-will-pay-tribute-to-bruce-mcarthurs-victims/">subtly shifted to emphasizing Toronto’s loss</a> related to these recent serial murders.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman walks during the Pride parade in Toronto in June 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Spectators at this year’s Pride <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/02/annual-pride-toronto-parade-to-be-a-mourning-procession-for-victims-of-alleged-serial-killer-and-the-van-rampage.html">are now being urged to wear black</a>, “to signify that while the festival goes on, this is a period of huge trauma for the whole city, particularly the LGBTQ community,” as executive director Olivia Nuamah told <em>the Toronto Star</em>.</p>
<p>I do not mean to diminish the horrors perpetrated by these (or any other) serial killers. Yet I would suggest that serial killers are not the most serious problem facing gay men in Toronto today. </p>
<h2>Depression, minority stress and suicide</h2>
<p>Cultural reporter Michael Hobbes writes about suicide and depression in the gay male community in a 2017 article, “<a href="https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gay-loneliness/">The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness</a>.”</p>
<p>Hobbes writes that gay people are now, depending on the study, between two and 10 times more likely than straight people to take their own lives. We’re twice as likely to have a major depressive episode. </p>
<p>In Sweden, which has had civil unions since 1995 and full marriage since 2009, men married to men have triple the suicide rate of men married to women. So even with all the legal changes, it is still dangerously alienating to go through life as a man attracted to other men.</p>
<p>Hobbes attributes the escalating suicide rates to what is called “minority stress.” He says: “Minority stress in its most direct form, it’s pretty simple: Being a member of a marginalized group requires extra effort.” </p>
<p>Part of the stress also comes from online dating apps like Grindr, Hobbes says. “If someone rejected you at a bathhouse, you could still have a conversation afterwards. Maybe you end up with a friend out of it, or at least something that becomes a positive social experience. On the apps, you just get ignored if someone doesn’t perceive you as a sexual or romantic conquest.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The early days of gay liberation: A dance at Gay Activist Alliance Firehouse in 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-5edd-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">Diana Davies/The New York Public Library Digital Collections.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Addiction linked to depression</h2>
<p>Depression comes with a side effect: Drug addiction. A 2017 article by music producer Anthony “aCe” Pabey, “<a href="https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/zmvej4/meth-ghb-epidemic-gay-queer-men-grindr">We Need to Talk About the Queer Community’s Meth and GHB Epidemic</a>” explains the situation.</p>
<p>In London, meth users who inject the drug while having sex jumped from 20 per cent in 2011 to 80 per cent in 2012, according to LGBT drug-and-alcohol support service <a href="https://www.nationalvoices.org.uk/wellbeing-our-way/wow-exchange/antidote">Antidote</a>. Hookup apps like Grindr and Scruff have gone so far as to ban words associated with drug use such as “meth” and “party.” </p>
<p><em>Buzzfeed</em> reported that <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/amandachicagolewis/the-responsible-high-that-is-also-a-date-rape-drug?utm_term=.mbLDeqBRN#.uslV3on8m">emergency room doctors in San Francisco have encountered the drug with increasing regularity</a>, particularly among gay professionals. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 2016 photo, a 19-year-old transgender teen who declined to be identified because she feared for her life after receiving death threats poses for a photo in Texas. Juvenile detention centres are largely ill-equipped to house transgender young people, leaving them vulnerable to bullying, sexual assault, depression and suicide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eric Gay)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Many economic challenges</h2>
<p>Depression, suicide and epidemic drug use? How can this be? Aren’t gay men happy hedonists and rich as hell to boot? Not according to a 2014 article in <em>The Atlantic</em>, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-gay-affluence/284570/">The Myth of Gay Affluence</a>:” “In reality, gay Americans face disproportionately greater economic challenges than their straight counterparts. </p>
<p>A new report released by UCLA’s Williams Institute found <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/press-releases/study-finds-lgbt-adults-experience-food-insecurity-and-snap-participation-at-higher-levels-than-non-lgbt-adults/">29 per cent of LGBT adults, about 2.4 million people, experienced food insecurity.</a></p>
<h2>The Stockholm Syndrome</h2>
<p>If the plight of gay men is so dire, why are gay magazines obsessed with pets who travel — and RuPaul? Why is the message of this year’s Pride that gay men are just the same as anyone else — including, tragically, the victims of serial killers? </p>
<p>Why are gay men dedicated to perpetrating a false image of themselves as not being victims of oppression? </p>
<p>I believe gay men are presently passing through a kind of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22447726">Stockholm Syndrome</a> in which the captured begin to identify with their captors to such an extent that they wish to become them. In this case, it is the oppressed identifying with their oppressors. </p>
<p>Though the phrase Stockholm Syndrome was coined <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/six-day-hostage-standoff-gave-rise-stockholm-syndrome-180964537/">after a bank robbery in 1973</a>, Irish novelist James Joyce spoke eloquently of the symptoms of identifying with your oppressors in his collection of short stories called <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/321917/dubliners-by-james-joyce/9780140247749/readers-guide/"><em>Dubliners</em></a>. </p>
<p>In "A Little Cloud,” the leading character is a dreamy, melancholy Irishman named Little Chandler — prone to fantasizing about being an English poet: “The English critics, perhaps, would recognize him as one of the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of his poems.” <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26883211">England ruled Ireland from the time of Henry VIII to 1949.</a> Irish citizens — who were persecuted for their Catholicism — toiled away as servants for absentee British landlords on their own stolen farms. </p>
<p>Despite or perhaps because of this history of oppression, Joyce’s Little Chandler has an epiphany: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/james-joyce-and-the-problem-of-justice/D852158AA22F5ABCF0012521CF99154D">“Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher? Could he go to London?</a>” </p>
<p>Joyce’s character does not have the strength of will to rebel against his oppressors. On the contrary, he sympathizes with them, because, English literature scholar <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/james-joyce-and-the-problem-of-justice/D852158AA22F5ABCF0012521CF99154D">Joseph Valente says</a> — “Chandler has been colonized by Gallaher’s attitude.”</p>
<p>In the same way, has resistance to homophobia been co-opted?</p>
<p>Recently, hip hop star Kanye West tweeted: “I love the way Candace Owen thinks.” Candace Owens’ message, <a href="http://quillette.com/2018/04/24/kanye-west-future-black-conservatism/">according to critical race writer Coleman Hughes,</a> “is that there’s a stubborn refusal — among Blacks and whites alike — to let go of the narrative that Blacks are continually beleaguered by white racism.”</p>
<p>According to Owens, what we need is a new story about what Black America can be, which “looks toward a bright future instead of clinging to an ugly past.” </p>
<p>Owens is not alone — many people hold these conservative views. Hughes mentions that “a <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/on-views-of-race-and-inequality-blacks-and-whites-are-worlds-apart/">2016 Pew poll found that</a> 60 per cent of Blacks without college degrees say their race hasn’t affected their chances of success.”</p>
<p>But we all know that racism and homophobia are systemic issues woven throughout our daily lives.</p>
<h2>Origins of gay liberation</h2>
<p>Is it any wonder that an oppressed minority might hope that wishful thinking might spirit oppression away? </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/an-amazing-1969-account-of-the-stonewall-uprising/272467/">Stonewall uprising</a> — the much celebrated night of rebellion of 1969 when radical queers (sex trade workers, lesbians and drag queens) took to the streets to riot against the police at the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan — inspired the modern gay liberation movement and it’s the reason we mark Pride weekend. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The raid of New York’s Stonewall Inn in 1969 and the protests that followed inspired gay liberation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Diana Davies/The New York Public Library</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet gay liberation didn’t begin with Stonewall. </p>
<p><a href="http://progressive.org/magazine/meet-pioneer-gay-rights-harry-hay/">Harry Hay</a> — a card-carrying communist and proud effeminate “fairy” — founded <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mattachine-Society">The Mattachine Society</a> in 1950. It was devoted to the notion that oppression had made gay men into different beings than straight men and that consequently there was such a thing as gay culture. </p>
<p>However, in 1953, as the oral historian <a href="http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/john-d-emilio--oral-histories/harry-hay">John D’Emilio tells us</a>, Hay was ousted by the New Mattachine society, which then tackled the enormous task of trying to “adjust to a pattern of behaviour that is acceptable to society in general (and) compatible with the recognized institutions…of home, church and state.” </p>
<p>But this more conservative Mattachine Society had little success. </p>
<p>It took a decade, and the Stonewall uprisings, to effect the changes that helped create what we know today as gay liberation. </p>
<h2>Let’s be radical</h2>
<p>But the pendulum has swung back again. It seems that once again, gay men are committed to lying about their oppression. How long will we continue this futile pattern of oppressing ourselves?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman dances in bubbles during the Toronto Pride Parade in Toronto in July 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I had the privilege of meeting Harry Hay once — by chance — in a Provincetown restaurant in the ‘90s. I’ll never forget it. </p>
<p>I immediately recognized him and felt compelled to introduce myself. (This was a “once-in-a-lifetime” chance!) Hay was old. Standing near, but at a bit of a distance from him, was his lifetime partner, John. </p>
<p>I asked Mr. Hay why he was in Provincetown, and he said, “You won’t like my answer.” I said, “You never know.” </p>
<p>“I’m here to protest gay marriage,” he said. I told him that I agreed with his position. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Burnside and Harry Hay with matching caps, June 25, 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sfpl.org/sfphotos">SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, he felt compelled to explain it. “You see that man over there? He’s my lover John. John and I have been together for a very long time. But we are not married. We would never marry. You see, at any moment I could leave him. We have that kind of relationship. I mean I could leave him for someone like…like well…like for you, for instance.” And his eyes sparkled. </p>
<p>I can say that Harry Hay — the founder of the gay liberation movement — flirted with me when he suggested he might very well cheat — with me — on his lifetime partner. </p>
<p>I’m not bragging about this. But it all just goes to prove that, unlike many gay men today, Harry Hay was not afraid to tell the truth. </p>
<p>Harry Hay knew that it was only by the admission of difficult truths that we can ever find the path to true liberation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97837/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sky Gilbert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Spectators at Toronto’s Pride parade this year are being asked to wear black to honour victims of serial killers. While it’s right to mourn, it’s not the biggest issue facing gay communities today.Sky Gilbert, Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/788882017-06-22T19:12:46Z2017-06-22T19:12:46ZFrom gay Nazis to ‘we’re here, we’re queer’: A century of arguing about gay pride<p>This month, hundreds of thousands of people around the world will join gay pride marches in cities big and small. In many cities, pride marches are controversial. In some – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/not-the-onion-moscow-bans-gay-pride-for-next-100-years/258296/">like Moscow</a> – they are even banned. But for many people in North America, parts of Europe, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/12/world/gallery/pride-parade-latam/">Latin America</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tokyo-pride-parade_us_57335fa3e4b0bc9cb048cd6f">elsewhere</a>, attending the local pride march has become an unremarkable ritual of summer. </p>
<p>There are still good reasons to march. Few countries around the world have <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-countries-score-an-f-on-our-lgbt-human-rights-report-card-78732">robust protections for gay and transgender rights</a>. And pride marches, the LGBTQ political rallies that take the form of exuberant, outrageous parades, often meet hostile <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-what-happened-when-christian-groups-tried-to-shut-do?utm_term=.huvYrkypx#.sl42EvKVp">counterdemonstrators</a>. </p>
<p>But such expressions of pride have faced another sort of opposition: from within the queer and trans communities themselves. One reason is that gay and trans rights doesn’t describe a single, unitary political movement.</p>
<p>I am a historian of queer and trans politics. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">My research</a>, together with that of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/505131967">James Steakley</a>, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">Katie Sutton</a>, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/950959961">Robert Beachy</a> and many others, shows that there are several traditions of gay and trans activism. These traditions have not always gotten along. And some of them hate what pride is all about. </p>
<h2>A history of multiple movements</h2>
<p>Gay and trans rights movements are quite old. For more than 100 years, political groups have been fighting on behalf of same-sex desires, gender nonconformity and transition from one gender to the other – although the terms “gay rights” and “trans rights” are <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-in-a-word-the-challenges-of-transgender-38633">relatively recent inventions</a>. </p>
<p>By the late 1800s, a movement that called itself “homosexual emancipation” formed in Germany. It <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-origins-of-the-modern-gay-rights-movement-in-wwi-76691">boomed after World War I</a> and flourished in the 1920s under <a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/section.cfm?section_id=12">the democracy</a> that existed before the Nazis took over. The movement included people who called themselves “transvestites.” Were they alive today, many would probably use the term transgender. </p>
<p>From the beginning, gay and transgender activists split into a dizzying array of factions. All were in favor of greater legal and social tolerance for same-sex relationships. But beyond that narrow common ground, they were a political hodgepodge.</p>
<p>Some were leftists. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">One prominent leader</a> of a gay rights group was also an important player in Berlin’s communist party. Others were middle-of-the road, calling for the end of Germany’s law against sodomy but otherwise content with the status quo. There were even <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1137017">right-wing</a>, explicitly racist gay rights activists. </p>
<p>The Nazi Party itself was zealously anti-gay. Once in power, the Nazis murdered thousands of men <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261">for the “crime” of male-male sex</a>. Yet, the historical record shows that a small number of men quietly belonged to both the homosexual emancipation movement and the Nazi Party, though they were not open about their sexuality within the party. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/362546906">Historians</a> are still <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/927276394">debating</a> the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">significance</a> of homosexuality in the Nazi Party. The small faction of gay fascists lauded erotic relationships between manly, “Aryan” soldier types while loathing feminists, Jews and leftists.</p>
<p>As you might imagine, these different camps within the homosexual emancipation movement did not agree on lots of things. </p>
<h2>A debate about discretion</h2>
<p>One of their big disagreements was about discretion: Was it acceptable for same-sex couples and gender nonconformists to cavort in view of the straight public? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/moOamKxW844?wmode=transparent&start=7" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1972 film ‘Cabaret’ is set in Berlin prior to the Nazi seizure of power. The story deals with homosexuality and the rise of Nazism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fifty years before pride marches began, 1920s Berlin had <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/946218131">a jumping nightlife of gay male, lesbian and transvestite establishments</a> featuring clubs like the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=0&MediaId=3162">Eldorado</a> – known for its cross-dressing wait staff – and dance palaces like the Magic Flute. There was even a yearly all-women moonlight cruise. The pre-Nazi government’s approach was <a href="https://youtu.be/moOamKxW844">live and let live.</a> </p>
<p>Not all advocates of gay rights, however, liked this public culture. </p>
<p>One man, a self-professed gay Nazi, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13139401">wrote</a> that Berlin’s clubs were “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insalubrious">insalubrious</a>” places where people surrendered to their animal lusts, and that “the general public inevitably gets the impression that it” – that is, the gay rights movement – “is all about sex.” This man wanted to celebrate homoerotic comradeship, a spiritual love, as he described it, as well as a physical one. However, he wanted to celebrate this manly love with maximum discretion, and certainly not in public. He wrote: “What two men do in the barracks,” by which he meant the barracks of the Nazi Party militia, “is no one’s business.”</p>
<p>Such complaints were not limited to the far right. Moderate activists had their own doubts about the bars and dance halls. One leader of transvestites warned, “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">When we demand that the public acknowledge us, then we have the duty to dress and conduct ourselves publicly in an inconspicuous manner</a>.” Transvestites were told to <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">avoid gaudy accessories like costume rings or oversized earrings</a>.</p>
<p>To admit that one was homosexual or a transvestite in public in the 1920s was to court serious social and legal consequences. Activists of that era probably could not have imagined that one day people would march in large groups down public streets celebrating their homosexual and transgender selves. </p>
<h2>‘We’re here, we’re queer’</h2>
<p>In 1970, activists organized the first pride marches to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Those riots occurred the summer before when people fought back against a police raid of a queer bar called <a href="https://www.nps.gov/places/stonewall.htm">the Stonewall Inn</a> in New York’s Greenwich Village. </p>
<p>Pride exploded the old worries about discretion when it arrived in cities around the world in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Pride reveled in gaudy accessories. It had lots of scanty dress, too, from drag queens in slinky gowns to shirtless dykes with political slogans scrawled in marker across their chests. By bringing the party – along with the politics – into the streets in broad daylight, pride fought against homophobia. At the same time, it flatly rejected the old fears about overt public displays. </p>
<p>“We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” a favorite chant at pride, was not only directed at mainstream, straight society. It was also, in my opinion, an answer-back to the debate about discretion that had marked the long history of gay and trans activism.</p>
<h2>More debates about pride</h2>
<p>By the 1990s, pride marches had run into more controversy within activist circles. They were criticized as too commercial, too male-dominated, too devoid of a broader left-of-center political agenda and insufficiently inclusive of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BlackCusePride/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf">people of color</a> – or indeed <a href="http://www.aviva-berlin.de/aviva/content_Interviews.php?id=1427323">downright racist and Islamophobic</a>. Alternative demonstrations cropped up, like Berlin’s <a href="https://xcsd.wordpress.com/">Alternative Pride</a> and New York City’s <a href="http://dykemarchnyc.org/">Dyke March</a>. Debates about pride continue to this day. </p>
<p>Pride is in part what people make of it. A pride march can have a social justice agenda. Or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/10/its-discrimination-gay-man-says-hes-barred-from-pride-parade-for-supporting-trump/?hpid=hp_no-name_hp-in-the-news%3Apage%2Fin-the-news&utm_term=.ca13eff4109b">it can have a pro-Trump agenda</a>. </p>
<p>Yet pride’s history is a story of a radical break with right-wing and even middle-of-the-road gay and trans politics. Pride rejected respectability and discretion. </p>
<p>Traces of that history probably survive in your local pride march. Look for the people who are not worried about alarming the straights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Marhoefer has received funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</span></em></p>Gay pride has many exuberant advocates. It also has critics in unexpected places.Laurie Marhoefer, Associate Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/580182016-04-21T10:07:13Z2016-04-21T10:07:13ZAlan Turing was one of many persecuted by Whitehall for their sexuality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119623/original/image-20160421-26988-1tw7faw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alan Turing is now feted – but what of other gay people in government service?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gerald Massey</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Computer visionary Alan Turing is rightly feted for his work in World War II which is credited with significantly shortening the conflict. But here’s something else we can thank Turing for – in a recent speech to the LGBT campaign group Stonewall, the director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Robert Hannigan, <a href="http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/speeches/Pages/directors-stonewall-speech.aspx">praised the growing diversity of GCHQ</a> as: “a vibrant workplace … welcoming to all”. </p>
<p>The speech followed the announcement that the security service (MI5) had been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35345515">voted Britain’s most “gay-friendly” employer</a> by Stonewall, something that received much press attention. The speech was also an opportunity to say “sorry” for the victimisation of gay people in the service.</p>
<p>Of course, Turing’s case is well known – his conviction, sentencing and chemical castration for homosexual offences led to his <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092">suspected suicide</a> in 1954 and has been the subject of considerable controversy ever since. In 2009, following a campaign including the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/pm-apology-to-alan-turing">issued an unequivocal apology</a> for Turning’s treatment, describing it as “horrifying” and “utterly unfair”. </p>
<p>In his statement, Brown wrote: “We are sorry, you deserved so much better”. Turing also received a Royal Prerogative of Mercy – <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25495315">a royal pardon</a> – in December 2013, following a further highly publicised campaign. The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, said it was a “fitting tribute to an exceptional man”.</p>
<h2>They also served</h2>
<p>While certainly welcome, the focus on Turing’s story has overshadowed the plight of other individuals in similar circumstances. In his speech to the Stonewall conference Hannigan referred to the case of “Ian”, a promising member of GCHQ’s staff in the 1960s. Despite his exemplary service and bright prospects, Ian was interviewed as a suspected homosexual, dismissed from his job and was transferred elsewhere in the civil service. Hannigan said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Ian] got no support from anyone in authority at all, even his union, and no-one ever followed up to check on his well-being or to show any compassion. Not surprisingly, his health suffered and the psychological effects of that humiliation were long-lasting … his prospects were cut short, curtailed because he was subject to what now seem completely archaic rules on sexuality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ian’s case is a reflection of just some of the hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals working in Britain’s defence sector who were persecuted for their sexuality in the post-war period. The introduction of “positive vetting” in the 1950s focused attention on so-called “character defects” – including drunkenness, gambling, schizophrenia, among others – but also homosexuality. Despite its decriminalisation under the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">1967 Sexual Offences Act</a>, homosexuals continued to be viewed as a security and disciplinary issue across <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/whitehall-debate-over-gay-civil-servants-revealed-6474692.html">Whitehall</a>, the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/347156.stm">armed forces</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35360172">intelligence agencies</a>.</p>
<p>In the military, gay men and women continued to be subject to military law and, if guilty, removed from the services. In 1969 the Royal Navy’s director of security circulated the report: “<a href="http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11067476">Homosexuality in the Royal Navy - Security Aspects</a>”, which said the issue was a “matter for concern .. in numerous ways – disciplinary, moral, health and security…” Particular emphasis was placed on “blackmail” by foreign powers.</p>
<p>Yet, despite the one-off case of Admiralty officer <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-john-vassall-1313796.html">John Vassall</a>, who had been compromised into sharing secrets with the Soviets, the fact remained that the issue of sexuality was often overblown and prone to traditional stereotypes – though, as in the case of “Ian”, it continued to have a significant personal impact on those accused. </p>
<p>By the 1990s, the ban on gay people in the armed forces forced <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/458625.stm">an estimated 60 service personnel to leave each year</a> and was subject to legal action in the European Court of Human Rights, forcing the British government to <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/2000/jan/12/armed-forces-echr">lift it in January 2000</a>.</p>
<h2>Lives destroyed</h2>
<p>The UK armed forces were not the only body to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. Ironically, in light of its “gay-friendly” award, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Defence-Realm-Authorized-History/dp/0141023309">MI5’s authorised history</a> reveals that homosexuals were seen by officials as inherently untrustworthy and suggested that homosexuals were socially unstable, likely to stick together – the so-called “<a href="http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1987/eirv14n03-19870116/eirv14n03-19870116_042-on_british_spy_scandals_the_homi.pdf">Homintern</a>” – and at risk of blackmail. By the end of the 1960s, half of all vetting queries from Whitehall departments were homosexual related.</p>
<p>Recently released files to The National Archives detailing the fallout from the defection of diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean also show the Foreign Office’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/revealed-the-panic-that-followed-the-defection-of-the-cambridge-spies-49623">obsession with sexuality</a>, leading to measures that would blight the careers of many aspiring diplomats. </p>
<p>As in the United States, homosexuals were placed in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/revealed-the-panic-that-followed-the-defection-of-the-cambridge-spies-49623">special category</a>, though – unlike in the US State Department – the number of individuals removed from their posts appears to be much smaller. By the early 1950s, the number of “homosexual separations” in the department had <a href="http://www.thelavenderscare.com/">reached hundreds</a>. By contrast, while no overall figures are available, a memorandum by the head of the Foreign Office’s security department, Arthur de la Mare, <a href="http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C14944183">identified just 26 cases</a> of real or possible homosexual activity by October 1955 with only two cases considered the most serious, having the possibility to bring “discredit upon the Foreign Service”. </p>
<p>In several cases many of the individuals identified enjoyed long careers in the Foreign Service, their homosexuality being suspected but not confirmed, though others were not so lucky. The former diplomat Charles Crawford recalled a friend, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-love-that-dared-not-speak-its-name-in-the-foreign-office-1931127.html">Robert Facey</a>, being driven to suicide because of the ban. Facey had been, recalled Crawford, a “quirky, brilliant diplomat … His life and career dissolved, and he committed suicide in 1989”. </p>
<p>As late as the 1980s, Whitehall was still implementing the recommendations of a Natonal Security Commission which identified homosexual tendencies as “character defects”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… which may remain latent or manifest themselves in a broader gamut of forms from inconspicuous stable relationships through promiscuity or exhibitionism to paederasty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But gradually it dawned on the security services that it was these very attitudes that rendered gay people susceptible to pressure. The ban on homosexuals was <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1991/jul/23/security-vetting">eventually removed in July 1991</a>.</p>
<p>The cases of Ian, Facey – and the hundreds of unnamed individuals blighted across the armed forces, Foreign Office and intelligence community – are a small section of the 49,000 individuals <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/22/family-alan-turing-government-petition-pardons-gross-indecency-homosexuality">prosecuted for gross indecency in post-war Britain</a>. Frustratingly – unlike Turing – we know very little about the experiences of gay men and women forced out of their careers because of their sexuality. While the recognition of past wrongs by GCHQ is certainly welcome, should other government departments be just as forthcoming in saying sorry?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Lomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hundreds, if not thousands, of gay people had their careers and lives blighted by official discrimination.Dan Lomas, Programme Leader - MA Intelligence & Security Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/569382016-04-04T11:18:02Z2016-04-04T11:18:02ZDesert Hearts: the 1986 film about lesbian awakening that gives Carol a run for its money<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117091/original/image-20160401-6827-riyheg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 1959, and Vivian, an immaculately manicured and tightly controlled English literature professor from Columbia University, is arriving in Reno, Nevada, to stay on her friend Frances’ ranch while waiting for her divorce to come through. Prospective divorcees have to be resident in Nevada for six weeks: long enough for Vivian to fall in love with casino change-girl and artist Cay, a friend of the family. It’s the beginning of an awakening.</p>
<p>This is <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089015/">Desert Hearts</a>, a 1986 film with striking parallels to last year’s hit <a href="https://theconversation.com/carol-review-stunning-1950s-tale-of-two-women-in-love-51148">Carol</a>. First shown 30 years ago at London’s first gay and lesbian film festival, it returned this year to <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/flare">BFI Flare</a>, serving up a heady mix of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll, casinos, cowboys, and lesbians. The success of Carol and the return of Desert Hearts reflects our need for stories that show not only the difficulties, hostility and discrimination faced by lesbians, but also offer up the possibility of honesty and love. </p>
<p>In recent years, several important lesbian films have both impressed critics and found box office success. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2278871/">Blue is the Warmest Colour</a> (2013) is probably the best known of these – an intense story of first love and the pain of a relationship’s breakdown. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0842926/">The Kids are All Right</a> (2010) was perhaps more unusual, about a long-established lesbian relationship and the challenges of bringing up children and staying in love. Lesbian films have become more mainstream since Desert Hearts was first released, but the film remains relevant today.</p>
<p>Desert Hearts was not an easy film to make. In the mid-1980s, director Donna Deitch sold her house to pay for the rights to the film’s soundtrack: Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash. Deitch had already raised a lot of the money to fund it herself. Casting agents told her no established film actresses would audition for the parts of Vivian or Cay. </p>
<p>Yet in 1986, the film got a glowing write-up in the Guardian “because it makes neither the usual appeal for tolerance nor proselytises”. Deitch said that she didn’t want to make an overtly political film; she wanted to make one “that didn’t end in a suicide or two suicides or a bisexual triangle”, one where you were “positively rooting for [the main characters] to be together at the end of the film”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117093/original/image-20160401-6270-78bmhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117093/original/image-20160401-6270-78bmhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117093/original/image-20160401-6270-78bmhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117093/original/image-20160401-6270-78bmhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117093/original/image-20160401-6270-78bmhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117093/original/image-20160401-6270-78bmhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117093/original/image-20160401-6270-78bmhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Feeling the heat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this was, of course, a political choice in itself. To set up the narrative so that we end up hoping that the two women can find a way to be honest with each other and themselves was a profoundly radical – and political – act. Deitch was, after all, making the film in the wake of the dramatic women’s liberation movement, which insisted that “<a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/rahila-gupta/personal-is-political-journey-of-feminist-slogan">the personal is political</a>”. </p>
<p>The films Desert Hearts took as its counterpoint were works like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084489/">Personal Best</a>, Robert Towne’s 1982 movie about track athletes, which implied lesbianism was just a “phase”. Or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063185/">The Killing of Sister George</a>, a British production from 1968 in which Beryl Reid played an unpleasant, masculinised lesbian who bullied, molested and seduced her way through the film. Desert Hearts is none of these things: intense, wild, as strange and lovely as the Nevada desert. </p>
<p>When Desert Hearts first came out in 1986, Steve Jenkins wrote in Monthly Film Bulletin that the film failed to evoke the hostility lesbians faced in the 1950s. This seems unfair for two reasons. First, Cay might be comfortable with her sexuality and find acceptance among her friends, but she certainly experiences hostility and rejection – not least from Frances, who is, to all intents, her stepmother, but who struggles to see her sexuality as anything other than unnatural and disgusting. </p>
<p>The idea that 1950s America was an implacably hostile and violent environment in which to be gay also obscures as well as reveals. Gay liberation had been underway in the US for over 15 years by the time Desert Hearts came out – ever since <a href="http://www.civilrights.org/archives/2009/06/449-stonewall.html">the Stonewall riots</a> of 1969. But the explosive power of gay pride could sometimes obscure the fact that life was not always unrelentingly bleak and lonely for men and women who desired the same sex in the years before 1969. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117092/original/image-20160401-6780-jsoog1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117092/original/image-20160401-6780-jsoog1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117092/original/image-20160401-6780-jsoog1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117092/original/image-20160401-6780-jsoog1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117092/original/image-20160401-6780-jsoog1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117092/original/image-20160401-6780-jsoog1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117092/original/image-20160401-6780-jsoog1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Desert Hearts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Desert Hearts gives a glimpse of the other side of the picture – it shows us unprejudiced characters, even in 1950s Nevada. There’s Cay’s best friend Silver, or the ranch-hand who jokes with Cay: “How you get all that traffic with no equipment beats me.” It is in this that the film, despite being 30 years old, is similar to last year’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/carol-review-stunning-1950s-tale-of-two-women-in-love-51148">Carol</a>, for which Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett were both nominated for Oscars. Carol, too, showed us quietly confident lesbians. It was one of Foucault’s great insights that the very persecution of a sexual minority could give that minority a heightened sense of identity and community.</p>
<p>Both films are based on books written in the 1950s and early 1960s – Desert of the Heart, by Jane Rule, published in 1964, and The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith, published in 1952. Highsmith published under a pseudonym to avoid drawing criticism. Rule’s position as a lecturer came under threat because of the publication of the book. Yet despite the climate of homophobia in which they wrote, both were determined to write stories where lesbian characters were given the possibility of a happy ending. </p>
<p>And the need for lesbian love stories that aren’t doomed is just as great now as it was in 1952, 1964, or 1986. Rule, Highsmith and Deitch all anticipated our contemporary yearning for authenticity, self-expression and truthfulness. That is what makes these books and films so compelling and relevant today.</p>
<p>Director Deitch is <a href="http://donnadeitch.com/desert-hearts-2/">currently fundraising</a> for a “sequel” to Desert Hearts, to be set in Manhattan during the intense period of the women’s liberation movement, which was divided in the US – often quite viciously – over the issue of lesbianism. If it’s half as good as Desert Hearts, it’ll be worth watching.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The need for lesbian love stories that aren’t doomed is just as great now as it has ever been.Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Lecturer in History, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/492732015-11-24T10:13:31Z2015-11-24T10:13:31ZDespite recent victories, plights of many LGBT people remain ignored<p>To be sure, monumental gains have been made for LGBT rights over the past decade: national marriage rights, widespread media representations and the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military. </p>
<p>Yet often glossed over in the coverage of political victories and pop culture accounts, like the recent film Stonewall, are those among the LGBT community who have yet to reap the rewards, who remain marginalized, exploited and victimized.</p>
<p>For example, just last week, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/11/21/homicides-transgender-women-reach-alarming-high/eqcaYEXzzCg3EPb2DhYutM/story.html?utm_source=Mic+Check&utm_campaign=acb9d1c66b-Monday_Nov_2311_22_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_51f2320b33-acb9d1c66b-285470697">reported</a> that homicides of transgender or gender-nonconforming people are happening at a startling rate. This year, the number has already reached 22 (compared to 12 in 2014 and 13 in 2013).</p>
<p>It’s a topic I explore in my recent book <a href="http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/Violence-against-Queer-People,5629.aspx">Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender, and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination</a>, which, while acknowledging certain political triumphs, argues that the main beneficiaries of these victories seem to be a certain type of LGBT person: white, gay, middle-class men.</p>
<h2>Still suffering</h2>
<p>During my research, I interviewed scores of those who still feel threatened – and marginalized – by their sexual identity. </p>
<p>For example, after running away from home, Jayvyn, a 33-year-old black gay man, experienced violence in a group home for several years. There, several of his male housemates referred to him as “the faggot” and would crush up glass, sprinkling it in his bed while he was sleeping. Jayvyn would awaken with shards of glass stuck to his skin. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Lela, a 48-year-old black transgender woman, experienced similar violence in a homeless shelter, where she was the only transgender woman living with men. Homeless shelters often segregate residents based on birth sex rather than gender identity, which can expose transgender people to tremendous amounts of violence. Some of the men Lela lived with in the homeless shelter would hold her down while others hit her with hard objects, including socks filled with rocks or marbles.</p>
<h2>Who’s left out?</h2>
<p>If you saw the (<a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/stonewall_2015/">widely panned</a>) 2015 film Stonewall, you might think that the gay rights movement reflected the struggle of closeted, white, masculine men. This whitewashes the events of not just the Stonewall Riots, but also the larger history of LGBT activism. Many of the participants in 1969’s Stonewall Riots were actually transgender women – known as “drag queens” at the time – in addition to people of color, butch lesbians and feminine gay men. </p>
<p>Rather than paying homage to accounts of the riots, the main character of the film ended up being a white, conventionally attractive, gay man.</p>
<p>But the Stonewall film is merely part of a long history in which marginalized LGBT people have been sidelined. It doesn’t exclude only women and LGBT people of color, but also homeless, transgender and HIV-positive LGBT people. </p>
<p>On the other hand, white and financially well-off gay men have routinely been catered to. The gay rights movement has presented this group as the face of the movement. Most well-known LGBT activists and spokespeople – Dan Savage, Ellen DeGeneres and Dustin Lance Black, to name a few – have been white. And marriage has been their call to arms; LGBT organizations have insisted that this emphasis moves the struggle for LGBT rights forward. </p>
<p>The problem with this approach is that it benefits a relatively small group of LGBT people – the most privileged. For example, many white and financially well-off gay men benefit from gay marriage becoming the law of the land because of the numerous <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304652804579571931962914924?alg=y">financial rewards of marriage</a>. Yet for LGBT people like Jayvyn and Lela, legalizing gay marriage doesn’t make much of a difference in their day-to-day lives; it does little to address the threat of violence, nor does it release them from the grip of poverty. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w17450">And because of discrimination in the job market</a>, women, transgender people and black and Latino LGBT people are less likely to be wealthy in the first place, and therefore less likely to benefit from these approaches. Meanwhile, issues such as homelessness or police violence have been left off the mainstream gay rights agenda. </p>
<h2>A movement with misplaced priorities</h2>
<p>When it comes to any political cause, <a href="http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic451464.files/Gilens%20-%20Affluence%20%20Influence%20Introduction.pdf">money plays an important role in whose voice is heard</a>. </p>
<p>The problem, however, exists beyond access to financial resources. It has to do with the way issues have been prioritized: those important to privileged LGBT people have been defined as “gay rights” issues; meanwhile, issues affecting marginalized LGBT people have been viewed as concerns that are “not gay rights issues.” This dynamic has occurred in large part because the LGBT rights movement has not been strongly linked with activist movements fighting against racism, sexism and social class inequality – which all affect LGBT people. </p>
<p>There’s significant evidence that transgender people – especially minority trans women – experience higher rates of violence than lesbians and gay men. For example, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs <a href="http://www.advocate.com/hate-crimes/2014/05/29/report-more-2000-incidents-anti-lgbt-violence-2013">found</a> that 72% of all anti-LGBT homicide victims in 2013 were transgender women. And of the 22 transgender people murdered this year, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/homicides-transgender-women-us-reach-alarming-high-35346236">86% were black or Latina transgender women</a>. </p>
<p>Despite these higher rates of violence among transgender people, attention has traditionally fixated on homophobic violence. In hoping to sell the seriousness of homophobic violence to mainstream society, the experiences of white and middle-class gay men such as Matthew Shepard and Tyler Clementi have been prioritized. </p>
<p>The emphasis on the plight of white, male gays comes at a cost: the predominant values of mainstream society – whiteness, the middle-class, maleness – remain idealized and unchallenged. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, other LGBT people – the most marginalized members of our communities – have been left behind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Doug Meyer receives funding from The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. </span></em></p>A new book documents how the gay rights movement has catered to a certain type of LGBT person: white, gay, male and middle-class.Doug Meyer, Lecturer of Women, Gender & Sexuality, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409422015-05-06T08:01:45Z2015-05-06T08:01:45ZThe role of public opinion in the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage legality<p>Public opinion has changed dramatically since Massachusetts first legalized same-sex marriage in 2001. <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2014/09/24/graphics-slideshow-changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/">At that time, 57% of Americans opposed same-sex marriage.</a> <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/america-is-ready-for-gay-marriage/391643/">Today 61% support it.</a> In states where such marriages are legal, support is at 64%. More remarkably, in the 13 states where same-sex marriage remains illegal a strong majority (54%) support it anyway. </p>
<p>This sea change in public opinion is important backdrop for assessing the arguments the Supreme Court <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-a-supreme-court-ruling-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-argument-or-set-off-another-round-in-the-culture-wars-40943">recently heard</a> over whether to invalidate state bans on same-sex marriage. (The decision is expected in June). </p>
<p>Such backdrop renders some of the arguments presented before the Court strangely out of place. </p>
<p>Arguing for the defense, for example, John J. Bursch claimed procreation or “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?rref=undefined&module=Ribbon&version=mostPopular&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Most%20Popular&pgtype=article">binding children to their biological moms and dads</a>” as a primary purpose of marriage (something same-sex marriages presumably cannot accomplish). Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked him how such an argument made sense considering 70 year-olds legally marry persons from whom one would not anticipate procreation.</p>
<h2>The 70-year-old daddy argument</h2>
<p>Bursch explained that procreation remains a compelling reason to limit marriage to heterosexuals even in this situation, because a 70-year-old male can still procreate. Such an argument seems unlikely to resonate strongly enough to persuade such a large majority of Americans to change their minds. </p>
<p>Furthermore, if the Court rules against the plaintiffs, upholding the rights of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee to retain their ban, it sets itself boldly against prevailing public sentiment. That decision would undermine one of the key arguments same-sex marriage opponents have made repeatedly. </p>
<p>Opponents have said it’s inappropriate for the Supreme Court to involve itself because ensuring a right to marriage is to function in an activist way against the will of the people.</p>
<p>Both conservative and liberal justices have acknowledged related concerns. Justice Antonin Scalia suggested the issue is not marriage itself “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/28/us/same-sex-marriage-supreme-court-excerpts.html">but who should decide the point</a>” while liberal-leaning Stephen G. Bryer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/28/us/same-sex-marriage-supreme-court-excerpts.html">prodded</a> the plaintiffs’ lawyers similarly: “Suddenly you want nine people outside the ballot box to require states that don’t want to do it to change what marriage is …?” </p>
<p>The irony here is that it would be a ruling against same-sex marriage, not one for it, that at this point would be the more activist decision, one imposed against the will of the majority, given the polling data.</p>
<h2>Not an echo of Roe v. Wade</h2>
<p>As added context, <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/06/in-gay-marriage-debate-both-supporters-and-opponents-see-legal-recognition-as-inevitable/">polling as far back as 2013</a> found that 75% of Americans think legalization of same-sex marriage is “inevitable.” There’s little reason to fear, therefore, that a decision in support of same-sex marriage will set off the endlessly rancorous battles that persist more than 40 years after Roe v. Wade (which even <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/america-is-ready-for-gay-marriage/391643/">Ginsburg has concluded went “too far too fast”</a>). </p>
<p>All evidence suggests a decision for same-sex marriage poses no such risk.</p>
<p>But at another level public sentiment is beside the point. At essence the legal question is whether or not marriage is, in fact, a matter of equal protection. If it is, as Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. put it, the gays and lesbians “deserve equal protection of the laws and they deserve it now.” Thus, the argument goes, public opinion on fundamental rights is irrelevant and the Court will have to invalidate the bans. </p>
<p>But if the debate is over the intrinsic nature of a longstanding institution – one the defendants argued to be innately heterosexual – equal access is not the question. If the Court perceives the issue as essentially boiling down to marriage’s nature, it must conclude that mandating inclusion of same-sex couples is a change beyond its reach and allow states to go on treating marriage as they see fit. (One might still wonder, in this case, why federal and state governments thus involve themselves in marriage at all by packaging civic rights and responsibilities into an institution the Court determines exists outside of judicial shaping). </p>
<p>In a month in which police violence against black communities dominates the news cycle, it would be beyond inappropriate to fail to name aloud the historical origins of the same movements for justice and equality ostensibly responsible for bringing to fruition the Court’s historic hearings on April 28.</p>
<p>LGBT communities claim the Stonewall riots of 1969 as the genesis of its collective, activist struggles. Though the racial dimensions are almost never noted in mainstream remembrances of the seminal Stonewall event, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/dismembering-stonewall_b_1625272.html">many of the rioters were black and Latino gay and transgender people</a> who decided to stand up to longstanding police violence against their communities. </p>
<h2>Two key cases that changed public opinion more than actual social and economic conditions</h2>
<p>In light of this, sobering questions remain about the actual implications of all of this. Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia (two cases often compared to same-sex marriage) accomplished more sea change in public perceptions than realized access to quality education or dramatically improved social and economic conditions for large swaths of the African-American community. </p>
<p>However the court rules, the impact of its decision on the well-being of the most vulnerable among LBGT communities – often the same kind of folks as those who rioted at Stonewall – is the most important ethical measure of the social implications of this case. On that question the verdict is still out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40942/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Harvey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public opinion may play a role in the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on gay marriage but it will likely be in an unexpected way.Jennifer Harvey, Professor of Religion, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/338692014-11-07T13:24:16Z2014-11-07T13:24:16ZHow activist groups became a force in workplace relations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63849/original/xnzwtrzk-1415262918.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Groups like Stonewall have become big players in the workplace</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paris_corrupted/4806226513/in/photolist-8jHaGn-oXykAz-oFkGip-oFjUaz-oXMYJC-oFkFKR-oVMU5J-oXPScD-oXPMyF-oFkE5M-oXykPR-oFkaib-oXPPze-oXyg8B-oFjVH4-oFkcjL-oXMYWm-oXMZAN-oXMXaq-oXMXVy-oFjYD4-oFkpQq-8fnSHT-oVMWVd-oXMWuN-8dFjam-a3fxL6-a3iz4o-a3iQzu-a3fHCB-dSD8c-2stds-8dC6vx-a3Zbfm-4uEiE2-a3ixKU-a3fy5v-a3fG9Z-a3fHP8-a3izHA-a3iuEq-a3fFwn-a3fGFB-a3fCX6-a3fG24-a3fyMc-a3iy6j-a3itDG-a3iyVE-a3iuAu">Linzi</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A key event in the British employment calendar is the publication of the <a href="http://www.stonewall.org.uk/at_work/stonewall_top_100_employers/default.asp?fontsize=large">Workplace Equality Index</a> each January. It is a ranking of the top-100 “gay-friendly” employers by Stonewall, the UK’s main campaigning organisation for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.</p>
<p>In a similar vein, campaigning by community network Citizens UK has helped bring to prominence the notion of the living wage – a wage calculated to provide a minimum decent standard of living to workers who receive it. The latter’s sister organisation, the Living Wage Foundation, operates a procedure through which more than 1000 employing organisations have been accredited as living wage employers.</p>
<p>Both are examples of civil society organisations’ growing role in employment relations. According to our research, <a href="http://eprints.port.ac.uk/5437/">there are</a> now about 400 such organisations trying to influence domestic employment in the UK. They usually rely on charitable donations and grants and sometimes also contracts with government to provide services to fund their activities. </p>
<p>They include advisory and advocacy organisations such as Citizens Advice; equality organisations such as Age UK, Action On Hearing Loss and Arthritis Care; and campaigning organisations concerned with single issues like safety at work or bullying. </p>
<h2>What they do</h2>
<p>Over the past three decades, British employment relations have become more complex and fragmented. Where once there were just trade unions there are now multiple channels of worker voice. Activist organisations form part of that by providing work-related services to individuals, helping to develop government policy and shaping employment practices beyond the letter of the law. </p>
<p>For workers, they provide information, advice and advocacy (some such as Citizens Advice concentrate on this kind of work). They also help workers find or retain work and build careers. For example Women in Film and Television <a href="http://www.wftv.org.uk/mentoring-scheme">offers</a> training, mentoring, networking and job-placement services. This is a different approach to trade unions, who would typically only support training within the employer organisation. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63851/original/wz4ss2cg-1415267054.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63851/original/wz4ss2cg-1415267054.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63851/original/wz4ss2cg-1415267054.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63851/original/wz4ss2cg-1415267054.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63851/original/wz4ss2cg-1415267054.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63851/original/wz4ss2cg-1415267054.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63851/original/wz4ss2cg-1415267054.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63851/original/wz4ss2cg-1415267054.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The alternative to union advice?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&searchterm=citizens%20advice&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=195347045">Duncan Andison</a></span>
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<p>In their dealings with the different branches of government, civil society groups sometimes seek to exert pressure through publicising an issue. But more frequently they behave as political insiders, responding to government requests for information and advice, serving on commissions and committees, and often receiving substantial funding to provide services or help implement policy. Much of this is of course equally true of trade unions, with whom these groups sometimes form alliances to secure particular changes to the law. </p>
<p>Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index is an example of an attempt to influence employment practices beyond the law. Groups try to influence employers in numerous ways – offering corporate membership or developing partnerships to promote particular initiatives. Cancer charity Macmillan has for instance <a href="http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Livingwithandaftercancer/Workandcancer/Workandcancer.aspx">worked with</a> the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development to promote good practice around workers with cancer.</p>
<p>Identifying good practice and enshrining it in voluntary codes, advice or standards is another common strategy – and was the most striking finding in our research. Groups offered things like training and consultancy, written guides, audit tools, benchmarking, award schemes and accreditation. </p>
<p>They sell these packages by strongly articulating the business case for diversity – tangible performance benefits, corporate reputation and so forth. And often they appear to have succeeded: employers have broadly embraced diversity management since the 1980s, and many want to develop positive “employer brands” through high-profile policies of corporate social responsibility. </p>
<h2>Why employment?</h2>
<p>There are several reasons why these groups have become more involved in employment issues. Most obviously, there has been an urgent need. Carers UK and Independent Age have, for instance, been drawn into campaigning on work-life balance because their constituents face major problems in combining paid employment with child and eldercare.</p>
<p>The rise of social activism since the 1960s has also played a part in making the likes of older people, GLBTI people, and more latterly faith groups more assertive. Activist groups saw an opportunity to help governments develop relevant policies and then to help employers interpret and implement the laws that emerged. The private voluntary regulation then uses the law as a base from which to further extend.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63852/original/bg3xqysw-1415267333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63852/original/bg3xqysw-1415267333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63852/original/bg3xqysw-1415267333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63852/original/bg3xqysw-1415267333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63852/original/bg3xqysw-1415267333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63852/original/bg3xqysw-1415267333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63852/original/bg3xqysw-1415267333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63852/original/bg3xqysw-1415267333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The rise of social activism has made such groups an inevitable workplace presence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=drz9KGOjMqBHM-tP8C2SAg&searchterm=social%20activism&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=146645084">Kunai Mehta</a></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19521535">The decline of trade union membership and collective bargaining</a> in recent decades was also an opportunity. This has been particularly relevant to general advocacy groups such as Citizens Advice and groups whose campaign themes draw them to largely non-union sectors like construction – over migrant workers’ rights, for example. </p>
<p>Yet these organisations don’t only thrive where unions are absent. Many are most active in the heavily unionised public sector for precisely the same reasons as unions: the “good employer” tradition renders management receptive. And unions have also adapted to the rise of new social movements themselves, negotiating collective agreements that recognise equality in gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and so on. Partly for this reason, unions and civil society organisations commonly work jointly and often reinforce rather than replace one another.</p>
<h2>Pros and cons</h2>
<p>So how do civil society organisations fare in employment overall?
When it comes to representing individuals, they have the advantage of being attuned to the distinct needs of their constituents. But their main weakness is that generally they don’t have a presence at the workplace – unlike trade unions – which limits their ability to make decisive interventions. They also often only have modest resources to commit. </p>
<p>In these austerity years the government has been reluctant to introduce further labour market regulation. Many organisations’ dependence on state funding also risks pushing them to a more consensual or less controversial agenda than their constituents may require. </p>
<p>Activist groups’ efforts to develop private voluntary codes with employers are meanwhile susceptible to the same weaknesses as any voluntary regulation: the incentive to comply is <a href="http://www.ippr.org/publications/what-price-a-living-wage-understanding-the-impact-of-a-living-wage-on-firm-level-wage-bills">often</a> highly variable between employers and over time. The same is true with employers’ accreditation systems. Stonewall has developed audit methods to get around this difficulty, but it remains a potential weakness. </p>
<p>Finally there is a downside to how these groups work with trade unions. They commonly told us they had constructive relationships, but that is often where they are jointly lobbying for a policy. In other areas, the relationship <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/community-unionism-jo-mcbride/?K=9780230572508">has sometimes</a> been more fraught. Unions complain about civil society organisations dealing directly with employers “over the heads” of workers and their representatives, while civil society organisations counter that unions are neglecting the needs of their worker constituents. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63853/original/q7m4xrh2-1415267690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63853/original/q7m4xrh2-1415267690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63853/original/q7m4xrh2-1415267690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63853/original/q7m4xrh2-1415267690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63853/original/q7m4xrh2-1415267690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63853/original/q7m4xrh2-1415267690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63853/original/q7m4xrh2-1415267690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63853/original/q7m4xrh2-1415267690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Relations between activists and trade unions could be better.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?safesearch=1&search_type=keyword_search&extra_html=1&lang=en&language=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&use_local_boost=1&searchterm=trade%20union&show_color_wheel=1&media_type=images&page=1&sort_method=popular&inline=112197956">1000 Words</a></span>
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<p>To the extent the two sides can overcome their differences, they can help one another. To address the big problem of civil society organisations’ relative absence from the workplace, there may be scope for more joint work with unions focusing specifically on workplace activity. This could help ensure the activist campaigns, policies and codes are sustained over time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33869/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edmund Heery receives funding from Nuffield Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve has received funding from the Nuffield Foundation.
</span></em></p>A key event in the British employment calendar is the publication of the Workplace Equality Index each January. It is a ranking of the top-100 “gay-friendly” employers by Stonewall, the UK’s main campaigning…Edmund Heery, Professor of Employment Relations, Cardiff UniversitySteve Williams, Reader in Employment Relations, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.