PhilPaine.com

This fas­ci­nat­ing book dates from 1989, when the Gay Rights move­ment was in con­fu­sion and trans­for­ma­tion. The authors, who came from a back­ground of neu­ropsy­chol­ogy and math­e­mat­ics (Kirk), pub­lic rela­tions and adver­tis­ing (Mad­sen), where among the minor­ity of gay intel­lec­tu­als who felt that the stag­na­tion that their cause had suf­fered dur­ing the resur­gence of reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism in the U.S. owed more to flaws and fail­ures in the gay com­mu­nity than to the strength of its ene­mies. They felt that there was a clear­ly trod­den path by which despised minori­ties had his­tor­i­cally won a place in Amer­i­can soci­ety, and that their gen­er­a­tion of gay activists had failed to fol­low that path, and become their own worst ene­mies. In ret­ro­spect, much of their argu­ment now seems com­mon sense. Con­sid­er­able progress has been made in this area (though much more in Cana­da than in the Unit­ed States), and it has been made large­ly by the growth of a new mind­set among gays. Kirk and Mad­sen pre­saged this new mindset.

Essen­tially, what Kirk and Mad­sen want­ed was for the gay com­mu­nity to turn away from the self­ish­ness, irre­spon­si­bil­ity, dis­hon­esty, and grotesque­ness of the gay sub­cul­ture, which they felt was root­ed in the expe­ri­ence of per­se­cu­tion, and cul­ti­vate civil­ity, while at the same time using mod­ern tech­niques of pub­lic rela­tions to “nor­mal­ize” the gay pres­ence in society.

Well, it’s not true that Amer­ica con­quered its fear and hatred of gays in the 1990’s, but there has been some good progress in that direc­tion, and the evi­dence points to the fact that the authors were, if not exact­ly on the right track, then at least point­ed in the right direc­tion. Progress in Cana­da has been far more dra­matic, per­haps because Cana­dian gays were more inclined, by exist­ing cul­tural trends, to take Kirk and Madsen’s pre­scrip­tions to heart. I live in a neigh­bour­hood in Toron­to where their val­ues call the tune. Gay pub­lic life is dom­i­nated by respectable mar­ried cou­ples. The local mem­ber of the provin­cial par­lia­ment is in one such mar­riage, and holds an impor­tant cab­i­net post. He has no trou­ble main­tain­ing a con­stituency of inmi­grant fam­i­lies, straight pro­fes­sion­als, shop­keep­ers and house­hold­ers. Young gays are more inter­ested in romance, lead­ing to mar­riage and a house in the sub­urbs than they are in anony­mous sex, leather bars or épaté les bour­geois. You see gay cou­ples of every age walk­ing arm-in-arm, with no more sense of their stand­ing out ― they are just anoth­er ele­ment in a com­plex mosa­ic. They are nei­ther “mak­ing a state­ment”, nor fac­ing any hos­til­ity, mere­ly behav­ing in man­ner that every­one in the neigh­bour­hood, straight or gay, con­sid­ers nor­mal. Now, my neigh­bour­hood can­not claim to be typ­i­cal in Cana­da, though many places in the coun­try are near­ly in the same pat­tern. It does have every indi­ca­tion of being the tem­plate for the future across the country.