GLR May June

cent American adventures in particular. P SYCHIATRY . The most recent American attempt to “cure” homosexuals—after thousands of gay men in the U.S. and the U.K. underwent torturous episodes, as documented by histo- rian Martin Duberman in his 1991 book Cures and in the recent movie about mathematician Alan Turing, The Imitation Game —is the “ex-gay” movement, which emerged a genera- tion ago and which continues to this day, although with distinct signs of faltering. In 2012, an influential psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Spitzer, who had claimed in a 2003 study that gay indi- viduals could be “cured” through a method called reparative therapy, admitted that the study, which religious fundamental- ists had pounced upon to establish “cure” clinics across the country, was “fatally flawed”; and he apologized for promul- gating it. And he went on to say, “I believe I owe the gay com- munity an apology,” a miraculous statement considering the years of psychiatric damage caused by many, not all, but very many of his colleagues. Not long after Spitzer’s apology, a World Health Organization report called his reparative therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being—even the lives— of affected people.” So here’s a case of “assimilation”—into the realm of “normal” psychology—that seems to me an un- mixed blessing. As an aside: the headline in a New York Times article about Spitzer’s apology (May 18, 2012) read: “Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay Cure.” To see such a headline in the Times attests to a revolution in the Times ’ treatment of gays and lesbians over the past many years. It wasn’t until 1987 , when the powerful—some say tyrannical—heterosexist executive ed- itor Abe Rosenthal left his post at the paper, that things began to change. Before that, even the word “gay” was banned in favor of the more clinical and subtly pejorative “homosexual”; but since then the Times has come to be a reliable and power- ful booster for all things gay and lesbian, both in the political and the cultural realms.* B OOKS . These days, bookstore shelves are groaning with gay- and lesbian-themed books of every description: academic studies, literary and not-so-literary novels, poetry chapbooks, mysteries, memoirs—some of them receiving substantial crit- ical attention (not to mention favorable reviews). This is a far cry from 1973 when a group of Philadelphia activists rented a storefront on the city’s South Street to establish a gay and les- bian community gathering place in the hope of including a gay and lesbian bookstore. They named that enterprise Giovanni’s Room after the James Baldwin novel and displayed what pos- itive written words were then available, which filled only one shelf of one short bookcase. However, over the years the book- store came to thrive, not always financially but as a center of discussion and activism. In 2014, after 41 years as the nucleus of the city’s gay and lesbian community, following the fate of many other independent bookstores, Giovanni’s Room closed its doors. Rolling Stone magazine, in its May 21, 2014 issue, * In 1974, according to my literary agent at the time, Rosenthal killed a “rave” review by Times staffer Judy Klemesrud of my book Woman Plus Woman: Attitudes Toward Lesbianism . Probable reason: not fit to print. It gave me some solace back then to see that a Boston Evening Globe editor was not so squeamish, running a “rave” review by Loretta Lotman in the July 14, 1974 issue.

saluted the store and its longtime activist-owner Ed Hermance. When asked about the store’s beginnings and its longevity, Her- mance said, “We were working on changing the world. That was our motivation.” Such was the dream when this and every other gay and lesbian bookstore came into being; surely their disappearance is an important, and not an altogether happy, de- velopment in our cultural history. T HE A CADEMY . Moving to the world of academia, one couldn’t have imagined a faculty position dedicated to gay and lesbian studies, but in 2009 Harvard University endowed a chair for GLBT studies (the F. O. Matthiessen Visiting Profes- sorship of Gender and Sexuality). But Yale trumped Harvard this time, having failed to endow a similar chair in 1997 but succeeding in 2001. Today, according to College Equality Index, an organization that assists the college search process for prospective LGBT students, there are some forty institu- tions that offer a minor in queer studies. These victories repre- sent a struggle that started in the 1970s, when graduate students first began to propose topics on gay and lesbian issues in liter- ature and in the social sciences. Even sympathetic faculty mem- bers, wary of tenure decisions in their future, would almost always turn their backs on such research. Today scholars are making up for lost time as doctoral candidates are turning out great numbers of dissertations and books on gay and lesbian topics. Assimilation into a dominant mainstream has always been a thorny issue for minority groups seeking acceptance. It would be cranky to begrudge the millions of gay men and lesbians who have joyfully embraced mainstream values and norms, even at the cost of jettisoning aspects of their lives that don’t fit the mold. But there are still many people who question these values and norms, including those who continue to be on the side of re-envisioning more progressive societal constructs by acting to change the status quo, and those who concur with what James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time (with refer- ence to racism): “Do I really want to be integrated into a burn- ing house?” So, far be it from me or anyone else of a certain age to re- sent those who are now enjoying the fruits of gay liberation in the form of acceptance into mainstream social institutions. At the same time, these folks should be aware of the inevitable backlash against these gains—anti-gay legislation is afoot in many states as I write—and be prepared to fight back against powerful individuals and groups that seek to destroy what has been gained.

The Trials of Christopher Mann A tale of love, law, & jealousy during some of the most dramatics years in modern gay history. “This is a coming-of-age novel in multiple ways—an intimate one for the main charac- ter and a societal one for San Francisco in the 1970s.” — Amazon Review

www.regalcrest.biz www.amazon.com

May–June 2015

17