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Gay culture comes out As gays and lesbians began fighting for their political rights during the Clinton years, the cultural barriers they faced also began to fall. The advent of political correctness provided "homosexuals" with a new language to describe themselves. Words like "gay" and "lesbian" became standard entries in the media's lexicon; even derogatory terms like "queer" became badges that the community wore with pride. And the growing visibility of openly gay and lesbian people transformed how society looked upon matters of sexuality. Ten years ago, the mainstream media was reluctant to speak about a celebrity's sexual orientation. Homosexuality was a curse upon a person's public image, and some journalists went out of their way to "protect" individuals whom they knew to be gay by not reporting the fact. By then it was the height of the AIDS crisis, and gay activists were on a crusade, fighting both a hostile public and a disease that was ravaging parts of the community. And yet however desperate the situation, some prominent gays and lesbians refused to help. Closeted gay and lesbian celebrities remained silent amid the flurries of attacks by conservative commentators, refusing to speak out against the ignorance. Others even befriended and worked with these people who openly hated gays. Outraged by the hypocrisy, some militant gay activists--most notably the columnist Michelangelo Signorile of Outweek magazine--waged a campaign to name names. Signorile targeted more than 60 celebrities, including gossip columnist Liz Smith and then-Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams, announcing that these pillars of the mainstream community were gay and closeted. He reserved much of his ire for Williams, whom he considered a traitor for working in a Republican government that endorsed the court martial of any military person suspected to be gay. The "outing" attacks created hysteria in elite social circles. The mainstream media largely condemned the practice, calling it an invasion of privacy. But once unleashed, the deluge could not be stopped: each person's sex life became the fodder for intense debate, in an era of increased public reporting about sex. The media would never be the same. Today, Liz Smith is on the cover of the Advocate, the national magazine on gay and lesbian issues. Now Barbara Walters asks Ricky Martin about his sexual orientation on national television, while Kevin Spacey fends off rumors spread by gossip columnists that he is gay. In the new atmosphere of openness regarding sexuality, we even have journalists interviewing the gay children and siblings of Republicans who oppose gay rights, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary Cheney, or Candace Gingrich, the half-sister of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The last decade brought another welcome change to the gay community: a new optimism about AIDS. If the world's population of people living with HIV/AIDS mushroomed over those years, the severity of the syndrome in the United States declined. Once researchers developed potent drugs cocktails that slowed the effects of the syndrome in the mid-nineties, many individuals with HIV/AIDS (at least those who could afford the treatments) were able to retain or even regain their health. Nowadays, the syndrome is no longer associated as strictly with the gay population--it now devastates minority and lower-income American neighborhoods of whatever sexuality. 'I have a vision and you are part of it' Gay culture comes out |