GLR May June

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cent American adventures in particular.
PSYCHIATRY. 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,
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.
THE ACADEMY. 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.
May–June 2015 17
* 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.
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