The Gay Revolution, Never Over

A WRITER'S WIT
Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.
Jules Feiffer
Born January 26, 1929

My Book World

Faderman, Lillian. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015.
           
There are two things the world may not realize: one, that homosexuality has been in existence since the beginning of time (with variations worldwide of how homosexuals are treated throughout history and by which culture), and two, that “being gay” (more of a political declaration someone once said) is not much more than a half-century old. Lillian Faderman, noted LGBT author, addresses the latter struggle with great clarity and insight. As with much of the nonfiction I read, I first hear about this tome through C-SPAN’s forty-eight hour weekend programming, Book-TV. If your cable system doesn’t carry C-SPAN, you can access Faderman’s reading on Book-TV by clicking this link to its Web site. Her presentation is very compelling.
 
I’m also not sure the citizen-at-large understands how, legally, the deck has been stacked against gay people in this culture for decades if not centuries. There is a time, according to Faderman, when not even the ACLU would handle Gay Rights cases. There is a time that the mere whisper of your name in the wrong circles could cost you your job or career. She documents this assertion with notable case after case. The first real fighter for men is the Mattachine Society established in the 1950s. For lesbians it is the Daughters of Bilitis.
 
Faderman’s book, including copious Notes and Index, is nearly 800 pages long, but she leaves no story untold: Gay Liberation of the jubilant seventies, the AIDS crisis of the eighties and nineties. The struggle for gay men and lesbian women to serve in the military. The struggle to achieve the right to marry. The transgendered. She documents every stage of our struggle with accurate, historical detail, yet with a prose that is compelling.

A few golden nuggets concerning this valiant struggle:

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“In California, there was Atascadero State Hospital, constructed in 1954 at the cost to taxpayers of over $10 million (almost $110 million in today’s money). Atascadero was a maximum-security psychiatric prison on the central coast where mentally disordered male lawbreakers [including homosexuals] from all over California were incarcerated. Inmates were treated at Atascadero by a variety of methods, including electroconvulsive therapy; lobotomy; sterilization, and hormone injections. Anectine was used often for ‘behavior modification.’ It was a muscle relaxant, which gave the person to whom it was administered the sensation of choking or drowning, while he received the message from the doctor that if he didn’t change his behavior he would die” (10).

“They agreed the manifesto must say that lesbians are just like other women, but more so. ‘A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion’ would be their opening line. They’d say that heterosexual women become feminists when they finally understand that society doesn’t allow them to be complete and free human beings—but lesbians had always  understood that. Feminists are finally realizing that sex roles dehumanize women—but lesbians had always understood that; they’d always refused to accept the limitations and oppressions imposed by the womanly role” (233).

“To be sure, in the years after Frank Kameny’s [one of the pioneering activists] death the advance in rights hasn’t been without setback and confrontation. For instance, the continued failure of Congress to pass a no-exemption Employment Non-Discrimination Act wreaked mischief, as in the case of a much-loved fifty-seven-year-old physical education teacher at a Catholic school in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio” (631).

Even as late as 2013, this long-time teacher, Carla Hale, loses her job because her sexuality is made known by way of her lover’s newspaper obituary! Private school or no, this kind of action must stop.
 
For anyone, old or young, struggling to understand the history of the LGBT community in this country, Faderman’s book is required reading. I found a copy at our local B & N. Go figure.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2016

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 
Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

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