Difference between revisions of "Symposium on Outing"
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=== Symposium on Outing === | === Symposium on Outing === | ||
− | ===== hosted by the [http://tangentgroup.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page Homosexual Information Center] in the spring of 1990===== | + | ===== hosted by the [http://tangentgroup.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page Homosexual Information Center] in the spring of 1990 in the home of Martin Block===== |
=====Transcribed and posted by C. Todd White===== | =====Transcribed and posted by C. Todd White===== | ||
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− | DS: …the only statement I was going to make was in regarding what we’re here for and that is as to “outing.” Now I want to ask a couple of questions first. I think that everybody here should introduce themselves; I’m not sure I have ever been at a meeting where we had a recording, but I am going to have to tape and transcribe this, so I think that everybody should introduce themselves. Anyway, this symposium is about outing, and as far as I’m concerned, I don't know if you've seen that there's a new novel out, it's called ''Taking Shelter,'' [Viking 1989] have you? | + | [[Image:dslater.jpg|right|Don Slater]]DS: …the only statement I was going to make was in regarding what we’re here for and that is as to “outing.” Now I want to ask a couple of questions first. I think that everybody here should introduce themselves; I’m not sure I have ever been at a meeting where we had a recording, but I am going to have to tape and transcribe this, so I think that everybody should introduce themselves. Anyway, this symposium is about outing, and as far as I’m concerned, I don't know if you've seen that there's a new novel out, it's called ''Taking Shelter,'' [Viking 1989] have you? |
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− | MB: When it comes to outing, I have been out so many years, I can hardly remember when I’ve not been out. Just as I have been gay, and practicing gay, since I was eleven. And that’s fifty-nine years ago. Not exactly yesterday. And I don’t think I ever made a big thing and came out and said, “I am gay! Look I’m carrying a banner?” I carried other banners. I marched in anarchist parades and anti Nazi parades, and my feet hurt, so I stopped marching in most of those parades. But I’ve always felt that this was a personal thing. | + | [[Image:martinblock.jpg|right|Martin Block]]MB: When it comes to outing, I have been out so many years, I can hardly remember when I’ve not been out. Just as I have been gay, and practicing gay, since I was eleven. And that’s fifty-nine years ago. Not exactly yesterday. And I don’t think I ever made a big thing and came out and said, “I am gay! Look I’m carrying a banner?” I carried other banners. I marched in anarchist parades and anti Nazi parades, and my feet hurt, so I stopped marching in most of those parades. But I’ve always felt that this was a personal thing. |
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− | MK: Morris Kight. Outing is a subject of considerable amounts of discussion at this time, so I think that it is perfectly appropriate that the Homosexual Information Center publish one more document on the subject. As far as I can determine, it was a campaign by Outweek magazine of New York, through the columns of Michelangelo Signorile, who I think is doing it to increase the circulation of ''Outweek'' magazine. [Slater chuckles.] ''The National Enquirer, The Star'' and a great many others are also getting a lot of grocery store sales out of outing people or discussing outing. Richard Chamberlain is the subject of considerable amounts of discussion in the press, so I just think it’s a perfectly appropriate subject. | + | [[Image:kight.jpg|right|Morris Kight]]MK: Morris Kight. Outing is a subject of considerable amounts of discussion at this time, so I think that it is perfectly appropriate that the Homosexual Information Center publish one more document on the subject. As far as I can determine, it was a campaign by Outweek magazine of New York, through the columns of Michelangelo Signorile, who I think is doing it to increase the circulation of ''Outweek'' magazine. [Slater chuckles.] ''The National Enquirer, The Star'' and a great many others are also getting a lot of grocery store sales out of outing people or discussing outing. Richard Chamberlain is the subject of considerable amounts of discussion in the press, so I just think it’s a perfectly appropriate subject. |
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− | HH: My name is Harry Hay, and differently from all of you, when I was being introduced to what my world was like--I’m not saying this is ?coming out?; back in that period you didn’t talk about those things in .. as a matter of fact all of you know, that we didn’t talk about coming out [DS: That’s right.] until quite late, this is talk in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Before that time we used to talk about keeping our hair up, we used to talk about [DS: or letting your hair down] or getting, letting your hair down. Or, we talked about taking the mask off, or putting the mask on. So we used, we used different phrases, I mean we didn’t…coming out of the closet wasn’t…belongs to… | + | [[Image:HayBW.jpg|right|Harry Hay]]HH: My name is Harry Hay, and differently from all of you, when I was being introduced to what my world was like--I’m not saying this is ?coming out?; back in that period you didn’t talk about those things in .. as a matter of fact all of you know, that we didn’t talk about coming out [DS: That’s right.] until quite late, this is talk in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Before that time we used to talk about keeping our hair up, we used to talk about [DS: or letting your hair down] or getting, letting your hair down. Or, we talked about taking the mask off, or putting the mask on. So we used, we used different phrases, I mean we didn’t…coming out of the closet wasn’t…belongs to… |
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− | JB: I was outed when I was five years old, although I had come out to myself when I was three. But at five I fell in love with a boy who was three or four. I'm afraid I was a child molester at that tender age! The boy and I had a good thing going, but he took sick, and his parents got to question him—and I was outed. I was sent to a rough Irish orphanage until I was about seven. | + | [[Image:Burnside.gif|right|John Burnside]]JB: I was outed when I was five years old, although I had come out to myself when I was three. But at five I fell in love with a boy who was three or four. I'm afraid I was a child molester at that tender age! The boy and I had a good thing going, but he took sick, and his parents got to question him—and I was outed. I was sent to a rough Irish orphanage until I was about seven. |
Latest revision as of 13:19, 27 March 2011
Symposium on Outing
hosted by the Homosexual Information Center in the spring of 1990 in the home of Martin Block
Transcribed and posted by C. Todd White
Don Slater [DS] was host and moderator for this Symposium.
Participants in the dialogue:
- Morris Kight [MK]
- Martin Block [MB]
- Harry Hay [HH]
- John Burnside [JB]
- Stuart Timmons [ST]
DS: …the only statement I was going to make was in regarding what we’re here for and that is as to “outing.” Now I want to ask a couple of questions first. I think that everybody here should introduce themselves; I’m not sure I have ever been at a meeting where we had a recording, but I am going to have to tape and transcribe this, so I think that everybody should introduce themselves. Anyway, this symposium is about outing, and as far as I’m concerned, I don't know if you've seen that there's a new novel out, it's called Taking Shelter, [Viking 1989] have you?
??: No I've heard about it, I haven't seen it.
DS: Well in the book, the boy and his girlfriend have become engaged. After a short time he tells her that he thinks that they should not have sex until after they are married. She gets a little worried and she asks him whether or not he is homosexual. And he says, Beth is her name, and he says, “Well it is my preference at the moment, but I am not sure that it will be my preference later on.”
I think this has something to do with outing because the people who are exposed right now may not, in a month or two, according to Kinsey and may not even consider themselves homosexuals, it may not even be their preference, next month. I have always felt that coming out was a do-it-yourself proposition. And I've really felt that it was just coming to terms with yourself; never making a public declaration, it certainly wasn’t like a debutante’s “coming out.” In fact, I’ve always been suspicious of people who felt the need to tell anybody that they were homosexual. And most of the people who I have met who felt that they had to announce their homosexuality publicly, I think are uncomfortable with their homosexuality. I think comfortable people just live their life and let the chips fall where they may. That’s just an opening statement and I know it is going to raise a few hackles here…?
MB: Well, it hasn’t raised my hackles; I can agree with it in part but not completely. Incidentally, you’re Don Slater, I’m Martin Block.
DS: Oh, pardon me. Okay we’ll go right around. I think everyone should make a statement and then we will be able to discuss from that point on. But I think people should each get something off their chest. Go ahead.
HH:Well Martin, why don’t you make a statement?
MB: When it comes to outing, I have been out so many years, I can hardly remember when I’ve not been out. Just as I have been gay, and practicing gay, since I was eleven. And that’s fifty-nine years ago. Not exactly yesterday. And I don’t think I ever made a big thing and came out and said, “I am gay! Look I’m carrying a banner?” I carried other banners. I marched in anarchist parades and anti Nazi parades, and my feet hurt, so I stopped marching in most of those parades. But I’ve always felt that this was a personal thing.
Many of my friends never, as such, came out. Many did; many felt that they came out because they moved almost exclusively in gay circles and all their friends knew. Without having to explain it to people where they worked, people where they worked knew. Sometimes if something came up in discussion it was yes or no, but it wasn’t emblazoned, and I think to this day it is a very personal thing. I think the Malcolm Forbes thing, which really has started the whole business about being out, is a little sad and a little silly, and at the same time a little healthy. But it carries unhealthy overtones with it.
DS: Is it Out we carry, or is it Outlook?
??: Outweek.
DS: Okay. Pardon me.
MB: Having mentioned Malcolm Forbes, I wanted to say that here is a man who is one of the foremost business men of the last twenty, thirty years certainly, who since his death has been, I don’t want to say brushed with, they used a tar brush on him, but his sexual life was brooded about, was more than brooded about for the first time and publicly, whereas up ’til then, only his intimates and the gay world knew that Malcolm was gay. I knew because I had visited the Tangiers, I had been in his house, not when he was there, but I met some of his servants and they talked about it…it was just one of those things that came about. And Forbes’s family hasn’t denied it, they just haven’t discussed the matter.
DS: I didn’t even know about it at all.
MB: You weren’t in those circles. I wasn’t in those circles either because I, as I say, I’ve been to Tangiers, where he had lived a rather active sex life, and I heard it from people who moved in the same circles he did there. But I never heard it referred to here, until after his death.
MK: Morris Kight. Outing is a subject of considerable amounts of discussion at this time, so I think that it is perfectly appropriate that the Homosexual Information Center publish one more document on the subject. As far as I can determine, it was a campaign by Outweek magazine of New York, through the columns of Michelangelo Signorile, who I think is doing it to increase the circulation of Outweek magazine. [Slater chuckles.] The National Enquirer, The Star and a great many others are also getting a lot of grocery store sales out of outing people or discussing outing. Richard Chamberlain is the subject of considerable amounts of discussion in the press, so I just think it’s a perfectly appropriate subject.
Let me just indicate right off how I feel about outing. I think it is a destructive, hostile, and arrogant thing to do. It seems to me that it is a form of homophobia. That we are saying that people are gay or lesbian for no apparent liberationist purpose. I agree with Don Slater, that coming out is a very personal matter. That you come out first to yourself — not easy, by the way, because of all of the institutions of society that are set in place to make us feel inferior. So you come out to yourself and then you come out, in measured ways, to family, friends, employer, neighbors, companions, or whomever. But I think it is a very personal matter. The idea of ripping the closet door off in someone’s face just seems to me the most awful, horrendous thing to do. That person might not be prepared. That person may not have done the homework, might not have done the spiritual work necessary to deal with being out. And thus to do it to them is, in my total notion, and I’ve put a good deal of thought into this so I am not being idle in my thought: it’s homophobic.
ST: Um, the campaign that started outing, as I understand, which as Morris said apparently began in Outweek magazine. Uh, has a lot of implications now as it becomes clear of being very crass and commercial oriented. And also started as a political strategy to deal with the emergency of the AIDS epidemic. To deal with the fact that an entire huge segment of a generation is dieing, and uh, um, that very little has been done to face this and to try to deal with it. So I would say that it’s important not to forget the fact that no matter how much of a wrong turn this may be, it does come out of some sort of uh, politically minded, liberation minded struggle.
DS: How does outing have anything to do with AIDS?
ST: The idea is that homosexuals are entirely expendable as long as those that are in a high position in society remain voluntarily invisible. In New York City, the people at Outweek magazine were really alarmed that some of the biggest gossip columnist, some of the biggest people in City Hall, some of the biggest people in Congress and at the National Health Institute in Washington were homosexuals who were closeted, who had not divulged themselves and they felt that this was a great betrayal. And Barney Frank, who was dragged out, or who was outed previously in a scandal, the old fashioned way of outing [chuckles all around], and it has gone on, people have been kicked out, or slipped out, or for decades. He has made the statement that when homosexuals hypocritically act against the interest of their group, like Terry Dolan who was a big conservative in the Reagan administration and [a part of] the machine that elected Reagan and Bush, that these people renounce the privilege of protection and they forfeit that privilege. I don’t necessarily agree with outing as a strategy; I think it has been radically co-opted by greedy publishers, and the fact that the tabloids are doing it is the ultimate sign of that. But it still reflects an emergency problem and the rage and despair and terror that so many young people are feeling, that their lives are in complete danger and are completely?
DS: You mean because of the people who are in the closet, they’re saying?
ST: Yeah because of the fact that this is an epidemic that has not been treated…
MB: Well, still, it’s coming from all directions. In the first place, I am out. I enjoy being out; there are no problems in my life with it. But, I would have to have somebody else make a point of my being out without consulting me. It is in the first thing an invasion of my privacy. It’s an invasion of anyone else’s privacy. And if you have nothing else, you certainly have a right to your privacy. Further: When it is somebody who is gay who is making these announcements about other people, then it’s gays bashing by gays and there is nothing more disgusting to me than that.
DS: That’s an interesting point, Martin, I must say. Are you through, Stuart?
ST: Yeah; I was being a bit of a devil’s advocate, but I’ll surrender my point to you…
DS: Well you got Martin to say some interesting points there.
ST: It’s part of the argument for it.
DS: Uh huh. I think it’s a weak one. Go ahead.
HH: My name is Harry Hay, and differently from all of you, when I was being introduced to what my world was like--I’m not saying this is ?coming out?; back in that period you didn’t talk about those things in .. as a matter of fact all of you know, that we didn’t talk about coming out [DS: That’s right.] until quite late, this is talk in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Before that time we used to talk about keeping our hair up, we used to talk about [DS: or letting your hair down] or getting, letting your hair down. Or, we talked about taking the mask off, or putting the mask on. So we used, we used different phrases, I mean we didn’t…coming out of the closet wasn’t…belongs to…
DS: There was no term.
MB: No, there was always, I think there was always “coming out of the closet,” I can remember that, as far as back as [HH: Really?] oh yes, “Came out of the closet,” that’s before the war. Before the second war. [HH: Oh really?] Yes.
HH:We tried looking back through the archives and we couldn’t find it earlier than about ’68 or ’69. I don’t think we need to quibble on that. What I do want to come to is this: When I was fourteen, and I was working on a tramp steamer coming down from San Francisco to LA which was one of the ways I used to get back and forth between the cities for free in that period, I met a sailor on board ship. And we stopped off, as the freighters back in those days took two days, two to three days to come down from San Francisco to LA. So we put in the first night, for instance we left, we left, probably go through the Golden Gate about one o'clock. And by eight o'clock made the great Monta Rey opening. And we lay out in the harbor because there wasn’t any port for them. And riders would come out and pick up the freight and take it into the port. And so the crew had the job of loading the riders and then coming into Mona Ray and then unloading them at the dock, and as usual the guys went in, this is 1926? so it’s prohibition. So they all go in to the speakeasy and they get laid. And then they go to the cribs, to get their rocks off. This I’d been going through all summer, because I had been working at the hay fields in Nevada I’m not going home at this point, so every Saturday night the guys are going and doing what these guys are doing so there was nothing different there. But after I came back on board, I [had] managed to live up to the act naturally, I mean after all I’m fourteen years old; I’m a man at this point. But I didn’t go into the crib. And after we get back on board ship, I hear a voice in the darkness that says, “I noticed that you didn’t go into the cribs tonight with the rest of the guys. Tomorrow we will make Santa Barbara, and the guys will do the same thing. And maybe tomorrow night you’d like to walk on the beach with me instead.” So I did.
But the point that I am going to make is that, in the course of the evening, I wanted to know about the world, I wanted to know about people like us. And he himself, I think he was, I don’t know, he was? let’s say a man with many colors. His home port was Dar Es Salaam, this is where he came from, in the Indian Ocean. And he told me all about the ports in different parts of the world where I’d go. And he gave a fourteen-year-old kid I think the most beautiful gift that any older man ever gave to a younger man. He said to me:
Someday you’re going to come to a port, and you won’t understand a word that’s said around you, and you won’t see a face, you won’t get a smell that’s familiar to you at all and you’ll be frightened, and terrified, and afraid. And all of the sudden across this room, because you’re a tall boy, you’ll see a pair of eyes open and glow, at you, as you lift your eyes open and glowing at him. At that moment of eye lock you are home, and you are safe, and you are free.
[DS: chuckles.] This is my gift.
But anyway, the thing that I wanted to say about, about all of this, is that what he did tell me, and he told me this and this is not the first [last] time I would hear this, is that we are a silent brotherhood, and that we must protect each others anonymity with our lives. And he said that over the centuries, this is how we have managed to stay alive and this is how we have managed to prevail: we have always guarded each other’s anonymity as if it were our own, because if I guard you, you in turn will guard me and that’s the only safety we’ve got. And this I thought, I’ve, I’ve never forgotten this, this is something that was embedded in my very young mind and I’ve remembered this many, may times.
And during the ’20s and ’30s, in this country, in this, and certainly here in the West coast, when I, for instance in the ’30s, joined the trade union movement, and eventually joined the communist party, and lived under the terror of the red squad, running into your house any day or night, without justification, simply going though your papers, going through and confiscating anything you have. And the vice squad doing exactly the same thing, and I have an idea ‘cause I think I sort of remember that some of the same people were on the same teams.
MK? :Yes this is true; yes they were the same.
HH: I think this was true. And so that they were confiscated the same way. So that any papers that you that implicated somebody else could draw the attention of that group to them. And this was something you must not do. That in a way you must guard it with your life. And I thought this to myself, you know, um, you mentioned to me today that Craig Holland said to you well what about Roy Cohen, would I take the same position for Roy Cohen, would I guard his anonymity in the same way as I guard my own and the answer is Yes.
MK:Absolutely.
HH: Because Roy Cohen is not going to go down without implicating a number of other people. And those people are not going to go down with implicating a number of people. And once you open the Pandora’s box, there is no way of closing it. So consequently so sooner or later it’s going to come back to you. So that you guard each other’s anonymity because this is your only protection. People during the Inquisition learned that to their sorrow. People in Nazi Germany, the Jews, learned that to their sorrow, and they didn’t learn it until rather late because the first victims, as you know, of the Nazi terror were the trade unionists, and the communists, and the reds; they didn’t get to the Jews until about ’35 or ’36, but they had been up it, up to that since ’33. So this is the way by which people guarded each other’s anonymity, and they guarded it like it was, like I’ve told Walter, I’ve never forgotten this, and I think this is important. And I think at this moment that we may very well be going into another period of oppression.
And I might point out to you that we had, in ’83 and ’84 we had a thing that came up called the Family Protection Act. [Slater: Yes.] It was one of those typical bills were it was about 300 pages filled with mostly [gunk, it was (chatter in background sounds like Slater] one-page stuff. And there were two paragraphs toward the very end of that Family Protection Act which said, among other things, that homosexuals, who were a threat to the family, this is the Family Protection Act, homosexuals who are a threat to the family must be from the time of that Act, from the time that that act was passed, that they would be denied social security and unemployment insurance — any Federal funds would be denied. And that all those people who knew them, would be denied it. And all those people who knew people who knew people[watch beeps twice], would also be denied.
DS: Yes but you know that the Family Protection Act didn’t even need to be fought because it didn’t have a chance of passing. Those very terms that you’ve expressed right there showed the absurdity of it.
HH: Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me? Henry Waxman, who is our representative of the 24th Congressional District, [DS: Yes?] said that there’s a very good chance of its passing. Simply because those particular paragraphs and things we’re talking about had not been called to anybody’s attention. [DS: I see.] And the trade union, the trade unions didn’t know anything about it, and there were two people [DS: They just slipped in?] and Jackie Goldberg were the ones who started to bring it up to the Trade Union Council, she was at that time a functionary for the American Federation of Teachers here in LA. And she brought it up to the trade union council , and was talking to all of the groups on the side. And I was very very busy, very active, and I never came across a single liberal group who knew a damn thing about those two paragraphs, because they were so far at the back end of the thing that they could have slipped through almost as a sort of secret. And that was the trouble with this thing, that it was a, had a very good chance of passing until we started raising hell about it. Of passing. And it came up again in the ’87–’88 conference. And my point is that if we get any more repressive than we do, it could very well pass. Don’t kid yourself, Don.
Here in the state of California, are you aware of the fact that the board of education is in the hands of the creationists?
??: Yes.
HH: So all of the time we have been making such fusses along things like environment and this and that and the other thing, the state board of education is in the hands of the fundamentalists here in the state of California, and that is a very uncertain situation. If that kind of thing can happen, that can happen other places too. So at this particular moment, I am saying that we can’t do anything like this publicly, we simply can’t allow that to happen — until we are safe. And we’re not safe, if you take a look at what’s happened in the Supreme Court. Remember when the Hardwick Decision came down? Byron White makes this bald statement…
DS: You mean Hardwick, did you say?
HH: What?
DS: You mean Hardwick, did you say?
HH: Byron White. The Hardwick decision said that under the terms of the constitution that homosexuals have no rights. He made that statement; it’s in the papers. You’ll find it. We have no rights under the constitution, this is the way it’s looked at.
MK :I remind you that he was allegedly a liberal appointee of liberal President Kennedy, [HH: Right.] but yet he’s been to the radical right all these years.
HH: That’s right. Now you see, the thing that we are also looking at, it’s something that {??} and I have been pointing out any number of times: we live in a large city, and we have a paper that occasionally comes out and does lip service for us, the Los Angeles Times. And the same thing happens to some extent in New York and in Boston, but these are three great big cities.
But the point is also that the Los Angeles Times, in 1975 and in 1985, they did a poll across the country on the subject of homosexuality and homosexual people living homosexual lifestyles in the communities. They ran around and they asked fifteen [?] questions of which I feel three are important: In 1975, when they asked the question, How many people felt that homosexuals were entitled to civil rights? 55% said they thought we were entitled to civil rights. When they were asked whether or not they were comfortable in having homosexual lifestyles lived in their neighborhood or in their apartment house, 73% felt that they could live [around it]. When they were asked how many people felt that homosexuality was wrong, they said 83% thought it was wrong.
Now, in 1985, the Los Angeles Times goes back to exactly the same communities, there was something like 2,937 communities, and they asked exactly the same questions, to see what the change had been like, and remember in the ten years between ’75 and ’85 we had movies, we had hundreds of books that came out, we had all kinds of radio programs, we had city councils that passed, uh,…
JB: We also had AIDS.
HH: What?
JB: We also had AIDS.
HH: True, but the thing I also wanted to point out — AIDS in 1985 isn’t that well known yet, as far as the community is concerned…
??: It wasn’t a major issue.
HH: …so that in ’85, we were still thinking in these terms. But what I am getting at is the radio programs that we had, the books we had, the state governors who had given [ mumbles] so we asked the same questions. And the question is: civil rights. The percentage had gone up, from 55% to 69% (lucky number); 69% thought we were entitled to civil rights. When it came to how many people were uncomfortable with the lifestyle, 73%; the percentage was relatively unchanged. When it came to ask how many of the people thought that homosexuality was wrong, the percentage had dropped from 83% to 81%. Two percent in those ten years, with all of that education: 2% change, no more! My point is that Byron White knew all about that 81% when in ’86 he, he…
MB: I don’t think Byron White cared. As a Supreme Court Justice, the only thing that concerned him was his interpretation of the…
HH: We learned a rather different thing when ...
<BREAK>
JB: I was outed when I was five years old, although I had come out to myself when I was three. But at five I fell in love with a boy who was three or four. I'm afraid I was a child molester at that tender age! The boy and I had a good thing going, but he took sick, and his parents got to question him—and I was outed. I was sent to a rough Irish orphanage until I was about seven.
After high school I joined the navy. By this time it was so obvious in my nature and makeup and looks, that I was tacitly known to be gay, but nobody had any proof. Although the navy looked at this one twice, I was taken into service. At the naval academy there were suspicions, and they tried to out me. But I offered no overt evidence. I left the academy of my own accord and eventually went to work for an engineering company. The young men there, back from war and very sophisticated by my standards, laid a sort of trap for me to see if I could be outed, but without success. Throughout, there was a clear perception that I was a homosexual. And, as for myself, I would have been perfectly willing to have been known as a homosexual—had someone with the right degree of appeal come along and made a play for me.
Finally, I simply outed myself. I was in my forties, and in a cooling marriage at the time. Then I learned about ONE, Incorporated, and with much pride and joy in my heart I went there, and found a marvelous kind of people with so many of the qualities I admire.
DS: How did you find ONE?
JB: First I found ONE Magazine at a little kiosk in Hollywood. In it was a reference to ONE lounge. I considered that an invitation. I remember sitting in my station wagon outside the door to ONE on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles thinking, “Isn’t this wonderful? Here's the step!”
Making that move of self-declaration, that I was no longer in any false position, that I was being myself—to me that was a deeply important thing of tremendous psychological and spiritual significance. Therefore, I believe it is unthinkable to force anybody in that direction. It is an outrage.
MB: It is plain that most of us agree coming out is a personal decision. And one has to make that decision for oneself. Outing is a gay-bashing thing by gays. I think it is important to be out. And many of us are out at least to ourselves in the sense that we live within and go out with a gay population.
JB: It is important to remember, though, that any of us could have a position in heterosexual society. But we choose, I think wisely, to be with gay people.
MB: If I might expound a moment, I have a theory that what we have gone through, as homosexuals, as gays, has been a century in a sense, of being out. In a broad sense—from the time of the Oscar Wilde trials in the late 19th century—homosexuality has been out of the closet. Whether you were for it or against it, you could face it yourself. There was enough publicity, favorable or otherwise, that if you were at all sophisticated, at all literate, you had to be aware. And when you think of the celebrities who have been known—the German nobility around the crown prince before the first world war, the playwrights and other authors people like Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham, right up through the days of the Mattachine and the much over-rated but very important business of fighting the police at Stonewall in New York city, to AIDS—from Wilde to the plague is what it amounts to—in this sense we’ve had a century of publicity and notoriety.
MK: Let me comment about Barney Frank for a moment. I admire him enormously politically. But since he has been accused of association with the hustler Steve Gobie he has really been crippled by the charges. However, his business of trying to force closeted members of the House out is, I think, an arrogant and hostile act. It is extortion of the worst kind. He wrote a “Dear Colleagues” letter to the entire House saying he was prepared to do that. Gosh! I think that's an awful thing to do. A stunningly irresponsible thing. There are members of the House who have bad marriages, who are alcoholics, drug addicts, who lie and cheat, who patronize prostitutes. These my be awful too. But I don't think any of these should be outed either. Decent people give you room in which to move and think for yourself. I’m terribly disappointed in Barney Frank.
HH: Yes. It is heart-rendingly understandable that the young people of today, in their fury and their terror over the federal government’s inaction want to speak out and kick out against it. But by the same token I suggest that they don’t know their own history very well, that persons like me, for instance, in the ’30s and ’40s, lived a life of terror and grief. Jobs, privacy, and property were completely vulnerable. But we didn't think of blowing the cover of other people. We held onto our integrity. If the young people today had to live through such a period they might think differently.
ST: I would second that and add that there has been a long period of calm and peace domestically so that the younger generation hasn’t had the experience of seeing repression in action. In consequence, there is a lack of reference points for political strategy; there's a lot of discord in figuring out just what to do. I should also like to say that when harry asked me to try and find someone in Los Angeles to speak in favor of outing at this symposium I couldn’t.
DS: It is my understanding that the division is between the older and the younger leaders, those in the movement the longest, who are against outing, and the younger activists, who seem in favor or it. Am I wrong?
ST: Yes. I think so. That's the impression the straight media is trying to foster.
DS: Well then, are we saying nothing? Is everyone on our side?
HH: No. There are many gay persons in favor of it.
<The point is made by Block and Hay that outing has been used as a covert political manipulation before, as in the case of Sumner Welles and military purges.>
MK: No question, there were pogroms. Awful, Awful! Friend against friend. They played one against the other. Lives were destroyed.
DS: Then, out of the arguments against outing that I’ve heard tonight, I like yours least, Harry! You speak of outing out of fear, because of the things we've all been through in the early days of the movement. And we did have much to fear. But I Iike the idea Martin expresses — that it is gay-bashing. To hell with fear! I think we are past fear. Most people now are at the point where they ought to be able to take it on the chin if it comes to that. The things against outing is it’s immoral.
HH: Just to who you how pas fear we aren’t, there's a proposition on the ballot in the June primary, 115, that will take out the privacy right in the California Constitution. That certainly hits us all over the place.
MK: There were some horrid, destructive outings in the past. In the faraway days of the ’40s and ’50s the way you got even with someone was to call him a queer. You called up their family, their employer, their banker and said, ”This uppity queen happens to be queer — for your information, Sir,” It was an act of viciousness because we were conditioned to have a low opinion of ourselves. There was a negative quality to much of our community in ratting on one another. I think of outing nowadays as just one more phase of that.
ST: But there’s a new dimension. You could just deny being homosexual in the past — like Liberace did when he won his libel suit. Now, because of the positive attitude demanded by gay lib. the reasoning is, why hide it? It's a bad thing. This also raises the question of the social contract between gays and straights. Who, for instance, is going to be able to continue a multimillion dollar career if they are openly homosexual? Some of the best adjusted people in the world just don't risk coming out.
<A discussion follows on the gay press and the role of ONE Magazine.>
DS: I think we may be through, unless there are brief summaries?
MK: At a meeting of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, I once said that to force anyone out of the closet was an arrogant and hostile act, but that it was our duty as gay and lesbian liberationists to lubricate the hinges of the closets so well that people could come out on their own without noise or clatter. I believed that then, and I believe that now. Outing is popular because the majority press had taken it up, and they've done so because it is embarrassing to us. In their homophobia their having a wonderful time playing with our lives, forcing us to take sides. A final word about Signorile. He's following the Andy Warhol fifteen-minute fame philosophy. He’s fomented outing to sell papers. But now he’s gotten his fifteen minutes, so I think it’s a debate we should get out of as fast as possible.
HH: I would like to add a postscript. I’m afraid the movement suffers from a false sense of euphoria. The fifth and fourteenth amendments to the constitution protect the right of privacy. But, as we learned in the House Un-American Activities Committee period, once you testify against yourself you waive that right. These amendments will not protect you then. Consequently, until the fifth and fourteenth amendments are interpreted to protect the rights of homosexuals as well as the rights of the population, we must protect ourselves.
DS: Let’s have coffee…
Text by C. Todd White. Copyright (©) 2010 by the The Homosexual Information Center. All rights reserved.
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