Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

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WOMEN AND GAY MEN IN THE POSTWAR PERIOD

John Portmann

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Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Since the Second World War, straight women and gay men in the United States have frequently found themselves friends. These alliances have not only soothed and steeled individuals but also fueled political progress. Those in such friendships frequently report a special kind of joy, one exempt from the potential jealousy of a female–female or male–male relationship. And the absence of sexual expectations frees these men and women to probe one another’s temperaments, to uncover alternative avenues of intimacy.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

Part I HISTORY Chapter 1 A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 13

Chapter 2 Antagonistic Women 33

Chapter 3 Two Movements: Women and Gay Rights 45

Chapter 4 Lesbian Charity 61

Chapter 5 Psychology 75

Part II CATEGORIES Chapter 6 Friendship 89

Chapter 7 The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 103

Chapter 8 Surrogate Mother 131

Epilogue: Did Gay Men Ever Need Rescue? 147

Appendices 152 Notes 157 Bibliography 171 Index 177 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Emily Drewe, my editor, embraced this project and propelled it to publication. I have enjoyed working with her and Frances Arnold at Bloomsbury. I thank the Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Vice President for Research at the University of Virginia for their financial backing of the project, which has been a labor of love. Jack Schlegel read my earliest proposal and knew just what to say. Charlie Tyson read a couple of the initial chapters and offered comments. Jamie Marks blanked out his busy schedule one day and taught me about surrogates who help gay men become fathers. Katharine Maus read the chapter on gay husbands and then improved it. Dan Ortiz has taught me more about research than anyone. Three anonymous scholars evaluated the project for Bloomsbury, and I thank them for the comments and questions they submitted along the way. One of these readers was signally helpful, and I requested that Bloomsbury reveal that academic’s name to me. Laura Doan enriched this manuscript, and I am pleased to thank her by name. Since childhood, countless women have sustained, protected, and guided me. Thanks to them, waves of gratitude have buoyed me through life. INTRODUCTION

It’s a man’s world, they say. It’s a straight man’s world, they mean.

Before PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) began in 1973 in the United States, many straight women had already been helping gay boys and men survive in a “man’s world.” Until the last decades of the twentieth century, few women without vast personal fortunes could help gay men advance socially. Compassionate women might try to prevent predictable cruelty, but these women couldn’t move mountains in the way Elizabeth Taylor did. Over a decade before the founding of PFLAG, Taylor had discreetly offered $1 million of her own to persuade a Hollywood studio to hire Montgomery Clift, an unstable actor tormented by the sex he had with men. In fact, quite a few women did the best they could for the men whose social vulnerability they seemed to understand intuitively. We know this because gay men would eventually say so. A new way of being friends came alive in the 1960s. The rapport I have in mind here, coupled with the element of social oppression, distinguishes this intriguing affinity from the friendships gay men may have enjoyed with straight men, other gay men, or gay women. After the Second World War, American women needed support of their own. As the twentieth century wore on, Western women in ever greater numbers demanded equality with men. A little later, many gay people (not just men) called for legal protection from police interference and hostile employers. Straight women sometimes found themselves embroiled in two social struggles at the same time. The women’s movement and the gay rights movement both stretched and reconfigured the traditional script for femininity, or for things traditionally coded as feminine (such as having sex with men). It was still a man’s world in the 1970s, but the ground was shifting. The African American novelist James Baldwin had argued in 1949 that the American obsession with masculinity rested on ill will toward women.1 An openly gay man living dangerously in a homophobic society, Baldwin linked masculinity to the sexual domination of, and discrimination against, women. Intolerant Americans imagined that gay men aspired to a repulsive imitation of womanhood and therefore forfeited any claim to respect (because they were not “men”). If Baldwin was correct, straight women and gay men occupied a similar (although not identical) rung on the social ladder of mid-century America: both were feminine and thus scorned. 2 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Religion of course made a difference and continued to influence Americans for decades.2 The straight woman, weak and unsuitable for public leadership roles, was born female and thus not to be blamed. On the other hand, the gay man’s erotic script violated natural law and so damned him to the fires of hell. With God against them, gay men arguably needed more social support than straight women did. A straight woman would not be sent to hell for acting like a woman, but a man could be (St. Paul said this explicitly); straight women did not fear being bullied at school or heckled on the street for seeming feminine or childlike, but men did. Despite what they had in common, a straight woman and a gay man internalized different senses of their place in the American world. Misery loves company, and straight women may implicitly have recognized that gay men were as unlikely to become leaders in American society as they were. A nagging sense of injustice may have appealed both to straight women and gay men, a concerted revolt against traditional male entitlement. Families and communities generally endorsed male privilege, which oppressed many—but certainly not all— women. Demographic studies have shown that women are less likely than men in the United States to fear or disapprove of gay men.3 I want to probe why. Many women fear rape and sexual assault, but they needn’t worry about such violence when in the company of gay men. In private conversations, gay men may have extended more sympathy than straight men; gay men may have been more comfortable asking for sympathy as well. Even the evanescent thrill of getting up and going dancing (and the difficulty some straight women have had in enlisting their boyfriends to join in) deserves consideration. It is tempting to say that an “us-against-them” attitude may have united straight women and gay men, but racial and class-based variables stand in the way of simplifying the alliance in this way. For reasons both obvious and not, straight women have often felt at home with gay men. Most of us understand the categories “straight” and “gay” to be as clear and important as red lights and green lights at traffic intersections. But although it may be convenient to speak of people as though they fit neatly into categories such as homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual, scholars have repeatedly emphasized the inaccuracy of such labels. Even people without doctorates in psychology understand that some individuals experience these categories as fluid, flowing into one and out of another at various times of the year or their lives. Even some people who self-identify as gay or lesbian may at one time or another engage in heterosexual eroticism, for a variety of reasons. Freud propounded that humans are innately bisexual, and hippies tripping through the sexual revolution may have purported to believe the theory, if not exactly live by it. Despite Freud’s earlier theory of pervasive bisexuality, many Americans winced at the conclusions of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who in 1948 famously published his findings about the prevalence of male–male sexual experiences. In the early 1970s, psychologists officially stopped treating homosexuality as freakish. Michel Foucault (d. 1984) argued influentially that “homosexual” should surprise us by its singularity; prior to the nineteenth century in the West, people did not think of those who occasionally or regularly have sex with members of their own sex as Introduction 3 a distinct group unto itself.4 Foucault lamented that the West began to stigmatize “homosexuals” at the same time as this strange group acquired scientific and social definition. Foucault argued not long after Americans had removed homosexuality from their list of mental illnesses that this process of scientific and social definition was itself oppressive, so the stigmatization and the process of definition were not just two independent, concurrent developments. The objective of this book is to thank women for their kindness to gay men in America since the 1940s. The book does not seek to capture the sum total of this kindness, only to gesture toward the magnitude of it. The book takes for granted several concepts, such as “gay man.” An influential scholar suffered biting criticism for having believed the category of “gay men” was too self-evident. I mean here several negative reviews of David Halperin’s How to Be Gay (2012). Many reviewers were troubled by this scholar’s assumptions about gay male culture, as seen in this excerpt from the Guardian:

What does it mean to be gay? Is it enough, as many people think, just to fall into the sex-clinic’s category of “men who have sex with men”? That is intended to include the closet case and the cottager who goes home to wife and children. There are plenty of people—increasing numbers, in fact—who are gay without having much to do with traditional gay culture. There are gay people who follow rugby and even play it—not necessarily in a pervy way—and those who genuinely quite like the New Statesman. Some gay men live their entire lives kitted out in beige anoraks. Some of them collect stamps and others work for engineering companies. Some of those men—gay but not Gay, as it were—regard the whole musicals-interior decoration-fashion-thing as a curious foreign language, not really worth learning. They have never said “Bona” or “fabulous” in their lives; the only musical they have ever seen is Phantom of the Opera, because their aunt took them. What their culture is, and whether it forms a unity, the cultural critic cannot, apparently, say. What he can be concerned about, it seems, is the culture of Gay, passed down through generations of slappers, propping up the bars of Soho in London, Chelsea in New York, and the Marais in Paris, all quarters which are now as dead as the proverbial dodo.5

I acknowledge my location within (and engagement with) a certain kind of “gay culture” at a particular moment of time and in a particular place (1980s/1990s urban white male American culture). The sub-cultural experiences described in this book are historically and culturally specific, I recognize. Beyond that, it bears mentioning a vibrant new subfield evolving on the topic of “post-gay.” Some social critics and gender/sexuality theorists believe the moment of gayness and the formation called the “gay community” may be coming to an end (think of the closing of most gay/ lesbian bars in places like London and Laguna Beach, California). If we are in fact in the midst of a new era known as post-gay, there is still a need for a book like this because it explores a distinctive relationality between a certain kind of “gay” man and “straight” woman in late-twentieth-century America. That locatedness could continue to speak to some people for decades, and the wider 4 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period appeal of the book should extend to other readers interested in what gay life was like at this time. I take gay male identity to be a political category, an instance of vulnerability to, or experience of, a particular kind of social discrimination. Being a gay man disqualified you for certain types of employment, military service, inclusion in various social clubs, marriage, and the safety that comes with being part of “the elect,” that is, pious people of any stripe who enjoy God’s favor. Whether you were a man frequently having sex with other men, simply fantasizing about having sex with other men but never going through with it, or merely looked like a man who might want to have sex with other men, you walked on thin ice. Having sex with your wife, fantasizing about glamorous Hollywood starlets or “pin-up girls,” and looking like a choir boy or his father entitled you to a world of privileges. Even in twenty-first-century America, others around you could use your sex life against you, resulting in job loss and other social discrimination. You could not marry a man who might wish to marry you as well. You could not always count on the sympathy of friends who had known you for years but suddenly learned of your true sexual orientation. You needed protection from a society that in many ways wished you would disappear. Category complications removed from sexual behavior may also arise. It is not uncommon for a heterosexual man to be homosocial: he may have sex only with women, but when it comes to non-sexual recreation, he only wants to be around other men. The gay man, on the other hand, may or may not be homosocial. It is wrong to assume that gay men dislike women (or that lesbians dislike men) and want nothing to do with them. While it is true that some gay men prefer the company of men—even when not having sex with them—quite a few gay men actively seek out the company of straight women. Historian Jonathan Ned Katz has deepened Foucault’s insights and illuminated a phenomenon that today may strike us as a puzzle: Nineteenth-century American men may have had sex with other men but not thought of themselves as gay. “The universe of intimate friendship was, ostensibly, a world of intimate feeling,” Katz writes. “The radical Christian distinction between mind and body located the spiritual and carnal in different spheres. So hardly anyone then asked, Where does friendship end and sodomy begin?” Analyzing the passionate friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed, two men who shared a bed, Katz asserts:

The common custom of men casually bedding down together, for example, became uncommon, even suspect, in the consciously eroticized twentieth century after the construction, naming, publicizing, and stringent tabooing of “sexual perversion,” “Inversion,” and “homosexuality.” At the start of the twenty- first century it may even be difficult to imagine a man, especially a bachelor, offering another a place in his bed without some conscious fear or desire that the proposition will be understood as a come-on.

Of course it is possible that men sometimes shared beds because it was cheaper to do that than rent two separate ones in a boarding house; even if you were staying Introduction 5 over in someone else’s house, the high cost of heating may have compelled you to share a bed with your male host, whose natural body heat would radiate and warm you. Katz takes the view that it is short-sighted and morally suspect of us to define people in terms of sexual practices. And yet, men and women were often separated in social situations in nineteenth-century America, no doubt in part out of fear that sexual activity might result from unsupervised heterosocial mingling (or whatever). What I aim to do is lift the blanket of sexual suspicion off friendships between straight women and gay men and explore the sex-free passion that remains. Quite a few nineteenth-century men who today might be referred to as “closet cases” reveled in the company of women once the expectation of sex disappeared. Lincoln himself apparently shied away from women until he discovered they were married or engaged; once sex became a moral impossibility, then he was free to enjoy a lady’s company. Katz leaves us to understand that Lincoln was a gay or bisexual man who basked in the energy of ladies (almost all of whom would have been considered heterosexual). This book celebrates heterosocial gay men, that is, gay men who especially enjoy the company of women. What comes as a surprise to some heterosexuals who have little or no knowledge of actual gay people (as opposed to those portrayed on television) is that gay men and straight women can fall madly in love with one another, not unlike the way in which straight men sometimes fall in love with one another in “buddy films” brought out by Hollywood studios. Intimacy is not always about sex. Why do these relationships work? Some women with gay male friends have observed an absence of the competitiveness they often feel toward women; absent as well is any sexual tension they might sense from straight men. Andrew Solomon has divided gay men into two distinct categories in order to suggest why some straight women work so well with some gay men:

There are two ways to be gay. Some gay men separate themselves entirely from women; they choose men not only for the bedroom but also for social enterprise, and live in a male world untouched by any femininity except, perhaps, their own. They find women distasteful or confusing or even hateful. They themselves may not be masculine in the conventional sense of the word; they can be butch or flamingly queeny, tops or bottoms,Brokeback Mountain cowboys or faux- finish painters, but they are guy’s guys, citizens of a unisex world. Other gay men strongly identify with women, often feeling that their own thought processes are akin to those of the fair sex or simply that the kind of thought that makes them feel seen and whole is the woman’s gaze. Such gay men feel most comfortable with women, and women are their best friends. They have an emotional life that has some of a woman’s flux and acknowledged melancholy. They may sleep with men, but they also love women deeply and truly. Such men need not be feminine, but they understand women’s hearts and follow the complex logic of women’s minds. It’s Tom of Finland versus Henry James.6

The coupling I analyze has become familiar, almost a cliché, as Solomon notes. As one female writer described her friendship with a gay man: “ours was never one 6 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period of those double-snappin’, Cosmo-swillin’, shoe-shoppin’ gay man-straight woman relationships depicted ad nauseam in popular culture.”7 As many a television script writer has noticed, American society includes not only “fag hags” but also “hag fags,” which is to say that the cliché works in both directions. Graham Robb has articulated a more insightful characterization of femininity. In a study of nineteenth-century homosexuality, he writes:

It is at this deeper level—the level of psychology—that enduring friendships between women and gay men are founded and cultivated. Robb is only one of a number of thinkers to draw our attention to emotional similarities between women and gay men. (In addition to the emotional experiences he lists, he might also have mentioned anxiety over physical appearance and especially aging.) The similarity of anxieties has spilled over into traditional thinking about family values. In his widely discussed bestseller of 1987, Allan Bloom attributed the strength of a family to the dissimilarity between a mother and a father. Bloom lambasted feminism and gay liberation, two movements allegedly bent on collapsing the emotional differences between men and women. It was hardly new to argue that women are nurturers, but for Bloom, the decline of Western philosophy dovetailed with liberal attempts to erode the strength of the family: The “ambitious, warlike, protective, possessive character” of men was vital to maintaining the foundations of the Western family, Bloom wrote in The Closing of the American Mind; the aggression of males had long been offset by the nurturing women provided to children and spouses.9 Not so anymore, Bloom said. Feminism had made women indifferent to the aggression of men. Male aggression was no longer a woman’s problem to solve, but rather a man’s. Bloom urged women to return to their traditional gender roles in order to protect men from themselves and to enable families to thrive. Critics such as Eve Kosofsky Sedwick bristled at the newfound influence of Allan Bloom, in part because he hid his own homosexuality and in part because his discomfort with it seemed to discredit his own arguments. A self-loathing gay man’s praise of traditional patriarchy may make some sense, but surely a gay man who accepted himself would not feel the need to feed “the enemy.” Weak men and strong women both bothered Bloom, as they have hordes of conservative Americans. Chapter 1, on women heroes in gay lives, will highlight a few historical examples, all the while probing the social, political, and emotional congruities between straight women and gay men. Later, the chapter on lesbian charity will highlight the social and political congruities of two very distinct sexual minorities. And later still, the chapter on psychology will specifically probe this “deeper level” of affinity. These friends of a different stripe find something in their relationships they probably could not match elsewhere. What that is fascinates me. It’s not so unlike Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman at the well: He started Introduction 7 a conversation, and she recoiled. In traditional societies, sharply defined gender roles prevented men and women from chatting. This would be generally true in countries in which women must wear a veil. The friendship of men and women who laugh together regularly represents a victory over the presumption that men and women are destined for hanky-panky if left alone with each other.

Capturing the Alliances

Loyalty between straight women and gay men has captivated television audiences. Only because of the tumultuous changes highlighted in the 1960s and 1970s could the following observation by a writer in the magazine Vanity Fair become a laugh line: “The history of queer culture shows us that gay men are trailblazers. Where they go, heterosexual women follow, dragging reluctant straight men behind them, who in turn bring Texas.”10 This study focuses on whom gay men befriend, not how they maintain friendships with straight women (i.e., over the internet or social media; meeting regularly for drinks, lunch, or dinner; cohabitating; or taking vacations together). I assume that these couplings became more common in the late twentieth century without attempting to provide census-like data that they did. I have pondered how anyone might prove the point. If we wanted to gauge, say, the commitment of an American university to attracting students of different races in the 1970s and 1980s, we could collect the official admissions booklet it circulated each year and tabulate the number of photographs featuring students appearing African American, Latino, or mixed race (Asian students were not really targeted). We could then compare the annual results and plot them on a graph, as separate data points. Similarly, we might think of establishing the gradual integration of gay men into the American mainstream by plotting on a graph certain indications of progress in public documents. We could, for example, ascertain the identities of known homosexuals (or men who dress flamboyantly) and examine how frequently they appear in, say, annual reports by the New York City Ballet or the Metropolitan Opera. Such work would skate on contextual difficulties. A man like Rudolf Nureyev, for example, was able to leap over social hurdles in part because of his extraordinary talent and in part because of his foreignness. Yes, he was openly gay, but he was also other things. Beyond that, some men who dress well—even lavishly—have been heterosexual (think of Tom Wolfe, who might more precisely be pegged as a “metrosexual”). Or we could focus on gay male enclaves—such as AIDS charities, ACT-UP, or the Human Rights Campaign—and document the extent to which heterosexual women were increasingly able to show public support for such endeavors (as in public donations or appearances at benefits). Another possibility would be to try to quantify straight female support for artists or works of art, such as Tony Kushner’s influential play Angels in America. But I will not do that. I will rather examine written records not created for the purposes of this book in order to make my arguments. 8 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

A full account of the symbiotic relationship I have in mind would go on to document the support of gay men for the women’s health movement (which includes the legal right to abortion), the Equal Rights Amendment, and the right to join the military. There’s a two-way street here: gay men have helped straight women as well. It is already too late to interview and study many of the people involved in these debates in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The stories I sketch here will collectively suggest (rather than definitively document) kindness and kinship. Popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and The Advocate have deepened our awareness of friendships between straight women and gay men. Film and television have contributed much to our understanding of this pas de deux across the sexual orientation line. My analytical applause for these friendships will provide straight women and gay men with a philosophical perspective on transformative emotional experiences. Political alliances and deep friendships often went hand in hand. This project is suggestive, not conclusive, and allusive, rather than empirical. The book can insinuate a strain of social sympathy but not prove it, much less demarcate its contours. Nonetheless, I want to acknowledge straight women who made North America safer for, more hospitable to, gay men.

Framework

Two excellent histories of the women’s movement—Ruth Rosen’s The World Split Open: How the Women’s Movement Changed America11 and Gail Collins’s What Just Happened12—remain silent on friendships between straight women and gay men. We know that these attachments happened, but we do not know how often or how to gauge what political effect they had. In order better to understand the women’s movement and the homophile movement, it is worthwhile looking for a source of joy and support which left little in the way of organizational skeletons. The film The Object of My Affection (1998), like the television sitcom Will & Grace (1998–2006), wasn’t exploring something brand new but rather celebrating a nonpareil that had been gaining momentum for a few decades. How can anyone chronicle this social history, a belated thank you note? Many of the initial characters in the story are long gone. New York Times columnist Frank Rich struggled to piece together the history of a gay man he had known as an adolescent.13 That gay man quietly disappeared, as many gay men did (because they had to abandon their familiar communities in order to forge a new identity in a city), and then died before Rich came looking for him. In a marvelous sleuthing Rich tries to understand what life for his lost friend must have been like. Rich acknowledges that he ultimately fails, but his effort honors the lost man nonetheless. The book strives to supplement Rosen and Collins, neither of which I gainsay. I ask how we can connect the dots: We may lack evidence of gay men marching in the streets to support women’s causes, but we understand the success of Introduction 9

Will & Grace, which delighted Americans in part because they recognized actual friendships of that sort in their own workplaces, neighborhoods, or lives. We may lack a catalog of acquaintanceships which must have seemed rebellious at the time, but we yawn at the cliché such amities have become. How can we honor the many women who helped gay men live in a man’s world after all? We can start by trying.

Part I

HISTORY

Chapter 1

A GAY MAN’S BEST GIRLFRIEND

Paling around with or sticking up for a sissy boy could harm almost anyone’s reputation for much of the twentieth century in America. And yet a number of women courageously intervened. We’ll never know how many women championed gay men or why, but we can be certain that women loved gay men long before Will & Grace. We should distinguish between “a friend to gay men” and “a friend to the gays” (as in “a friend of Israel” or “a friend of animals”). My examples of Elizabeth Taylor and Lady Bird Johnson would seem to fall under the first category, which refers to care at the level of the individual and does not necessarily entail a broader social commitment. Often, the two forms of friendship go hand in hand. We’ll see the difficulty involved in separating a love of principle from a love of specific people when, at the end of this chapter, I’ll explore the psychologist Evelyn Hooker, the medical activist Linda Laubenstein, and the entertainer Barbra Streisand. These three women were friends to specific gay men and also friends to the gay male community more broadly. In the 1980s Elizabeth Taylor became a tireless proponent for AIDS research, a deliberate career choice that lands her in both the first and the second categories. Let’s begin by considering two examples in the first category, women who helped individual men. It is difficult to speculate on the extent to which these two heroes modeled behavior for other, less powerful, women because much of the generosity I am about to discuss unfolded in the shadows, a calculated move designed for the repressive moral culture of 1960s America. It might be thought that women who enjoy remarkable power are free to do whatever they like and so don’t really deserve as much praise as, say, supermarket cashiers or housewives with authoritarian husbands. Remember, though, that powerful people stand to lose more. On some level, losing your reputation can be devastating, regardless of your social rank. This means that one primary difference between powerful people and the rest of us is that we tend to know more about them. Any First Lady commands a certain amount of respect and applause, as Lady Bird did. And it would be difficult to overstate the media frenzy over Elizabeth Taylor, who made herself into a cultural icon likely to be remembered for at least a century.

* * * * * * * * * * 14 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

In the mid-1960s, Elizabeth Taylor rescued Montgomery Clift, a closeted gay man. Although Clift’s unmistakable talent, showcased in such films asFrom Here to Eternity (1953), won him acclaim, he had developed a reputation in Hollywood for being unreliable. Directors regretted that they simply could not work with someone who did not always show up for work. Addicted to alcohol and drugs, Clift had disrupted the shooting schedule of previous films. The delays caused by his absences cost studios money. In 1961 Clift starred inThe Misfits, which was to be the last film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe famously declared in a magazine interview that same year that Clift was the only person she knew with even more problems than she had. The director John Huston and Universal Studios went so far as to sue him for costs incurred over delays after filming forFreud (1962) finally concluded. Distraught over his difficult straits, Clift asked his old friend Taylor for help. She had rescued him once before, and that moving story is the stuff of soap operas. The two of them had first starred together in the 1951 blockbuster A Place in the Sun. While subsequently working together on Raintree County (1956), Clift attended a dinner party at Taylor’s house. He left drunk and wrecked his car, suffering facial damage surgeons could never fully correct. Taylor was alerted by another actor who had left the party with Clift, then returned to the house to let her know Clift was injured and immobile by the road.1 She immediately raced to Clift’s side. When she arrived, she pulled a tooth from his tongue, where it had been embedded due to the impact of the crash. She confronted the assembled reporters, who by that time had already snapped pictures of the bloody actor. In a brilliant move, she warned the newspaper and magazine writers that she would continue giving interviews with them over the course of her career on the condition that they not publish a picture of Clift; any reporter who defied her wish would be denied access to her forever. Taylor knew that the 1956 crash had left her friend addicted to prescription medication, as well as alcohol. She also knew about his bad reputation with the studios. She knew Clift was sinking and one day responded to a studio trying to cast her in an upcoming film The( Defector, 1966) that she would agree only if it also starred Clift. When the directors demurred, citing the refusal of insurance companies to cover Clift, Taylor put up her own salary of one million dollars as insurance. Taylor used her power (again) to assist a gay man in trouble. The studio wanted her, for the obvious reason that she was a dependable box office draw; the studio gave in to her, but only because she was willing to shoulder a significant financial risk. At that point in her booming career, she could pick and choose among roles. She chose this particular part because it allowed her to help Monty. Clift, a self-loathing homosexual, later relapsed to drugs and died several months before the film was released. This was the very end from which she had tried to avert him. Taylor and Clift had fast become friends during the filming ofA Place in the Sun, which won six Oscars in 1952. Clift was twenty-eight at the time; he, like Taylor, was at the height of his beauty. Their love scenes seemed remarkably believable, no doubt in part because each was so visually appealing that the two stars just had to A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 15 end up together. A non-erotic intimacy blossomed between them. One of Taylor’s biographers described her friendship with Clift like this:

Despite the closeness of their personal relationship following this film, Clift’s sexual orientation kept him from giving himself to her. They got along so well, it seemed unfair that he preferred men over women …. If Monty had been heterosexual, there’s little doubt that he and Elizabeth would have been married. “We really loved each other,” Elizabeth once told Barbara Walters, “in the fullest, complete sense of the word.”2

It seems Clift was the first of Taylor’s many gay male friends. Not long after completing A Place in the Sun, she starred in Giant with two other men who sought sex with other men, Rock Hudson and James Dean. Taylor reflected on her emotional intimacy with Clift and stated to the gay magazineAdvocate years later:

I was 18 or 19 when I helped him realize that he was a homosexual, and I barely knew what I was talking about. I was a virgin when I was married, and not a world expert on sexuality. But I loved Monty with all of my heart and just knew that he was unhappy. I knew that he was meant to be with a man and not a woman, and I discussed it with him, introduced him to some really great guys. It was very hard for men who wanted to come out of the closet in those days. The men I knew—Monty and Jimmy [Dean] and Rock [Hudson]—if anything I helped them get out of the closet. I didn’t even know I was doing it. I didn’t know that I was more advanced than most people in this town. It just never occurred to me.3

Taylor speaks of her inclination to befriend and actively help frightened gay men as instinctive, and natural and, in so doing, suggests her ease with male homosexuality. Many people try to aggrandize their biographies, to puff up their accomplishments and general merit. How interesting that Taylor does not. Looking back on her earlier self, she seeks no praise as a progressive. She was just doing what appeared to her to be the right thing. We may puzzle over whether those who lived in the little enclave of Hollywood shared a higher tolerance for homosexuality than the rest of America or whether Clift was simply using Taylor. I see no point in undermining Taylor’s warmth and generosity. Working on a set had to be as tiring for her as it seems to have been for other actors; nonetheless, she took on the additional work of Clift. “Elizabeth had to take Monty under her protective wing just to get him through the picture due to his many emotional and physical addictions.”4 Cliff owed Taylor a great deal. Hollywood may have been a man’s world, but it was hardly his. What motivated her to rescue him? She did not seek to profit from her compassion through a public relations stunt. On the contrary, she kept his secret. I don’t want to compare Taylor to Christians who risked their lives by hiding Jews during the Second World War. And I don’t want to spit on the culture of 16 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

1960s America. We can’t really call Clift’s oppressors homophobic, because they were conforming to the larger culture. Of course many of these people did in fact cause great pain to Clift and countless other closeted men, but these people no doubt genuinely perceived homosexuals as a moral threat, a pollution seeping into a society worth protecting. We can make these concessions to Americans of the 1960s without in any way diminishing the beauty of Taylor’s gestures. Taylor had already converted to Judaism by this point, a faith to which she was to remain devoted until her death, and it should not seem far-fetched to think her Jewish identity sensitized her to other marginalized people. It could be that countless other women have used their power, such as it was, to help gay men escape bullying, advance socially, fly under the radar screen as undetected homosexuals, and just keep them company when mainstream society did not want them around. Elizabeth Taylor stands in for them. She did not inspire other women to do as she had done because virtually no one knew about her kindness until the 1980s. We can’t trace a domino effect back to her, nor can we say she was the only heterosexual who showed kindness to gay men—or men suspected of being gay. And Taylor kept on orbiting sexual dissidents. Gay rumors dogged the singer Michael Jackson (d. 2009), for example. He trusted few people, one of whom was his beloved friend Elizabeth. It would sound odd to speak of Taylor’s good fortune to live in the 1950s, because she had no say over when she was born. And yet her historical position has a good deal to do with the opportunity she seized to help her gay friend. In the twenty-first century, some fifty years after the example I have just described, Liza Minnelli helped a gay man struggling with alcoholism. The singer Sam Harris had risen to national fame after winning a televised singing contest; he and Minnelli became unusually close friends shortly afterward. In his memoir and in subsequent interviews, the openly gay Harris credited Minnelli with having helped him admit his addiction and overcome it.5 Harris’s sexuality was no secret, and the support he received from his dear friend differed in kind from what Taylor did for Clift. The friendship between Minnelli and Harris lacked the “me and you against the world” element that characterized Taylor’s commitment to Clift. Minnelli had struggled with substance abuse problems of her own and had married at least one gay man; as successful as Harris became, his star never threatened to eclipse Liza’s fame. Scholars lack hard data about the extent to which women used their influence with straight men—the most common bullies of gay men—to protect and even promote gay men. Straight male politicians in the United States have sometimes used their wives as proxies to discuss gay issues (and Elizabeth Taylor was herself once the wife of Virginia Senator John Warner). A book of stories of this sort would help make more concrete this goodwill. Often people will help one another for an ulterior motive, such as financial gain or sexual favors. Women helping gay men usually has nothing to do with sex, and female friends of gay men no doubt act altruistically more often than not. These women deserve recognition, and though I start with Elizabeth Taylor, I don’t mean to suggest she was the first. A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 17

Lady Bird Johnson “Defends” Walter Jenkins

A month before the 1964 presidential election, Lyndon Johnson was out on the campaign trail, checking in daily with his most trusted adviser, Walter Jenkins. On October 7, 1964, Jenkins and his wife attended a party in Washington, DC. Jenkins drank heavily. When his wife departed for their home, Jenkins headed to the nearby Washington YMCA, a site renowned for its homosexual activity.6 District of Columbia Police arrested Jenkins in the YMCA restroom shortly thereafter. He had been caught soliciting sex from another man. He and another man were booked on a disorderly conduct charge. He paid a $50 fine and returned to work at the White House later that night.7 He must have been deeply frightened, in part because quite a few American newspapers at that time routinely published the names and even addresses of men arrested for homosexual activity. Not only did Americans generally find gay sex repulsive—even several years after theWolfenden Report (1957), which recommended the decriminalization of gay sex in the UK, had begun to change popular opinion overseas—they also believed that gay men could not resist a sexual opportunity. In the 1960s many Americans linked homosexuality to national security. Employing a homosexual (no matter how latent) in the federal government made the entire country vulnerable to Communists, who could plant an attractive man as a spy in close proximity to the employee. A homosexual would supposedly succumb to the advances of the spy and surrender vital national secrets in exchange for sexual satisfaction. Afterward, fear of exposure made gay men particularly vulnerable to blackmail, which further threatened state secrets (because a man who had had sex with a man would presumably do anything in order to avoid exposure). Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles had been forced to resign in 1943 over suspicions about his sexual orientation, and Jenkins would surely have known that. Rumors of the Jenkins incident circulated for several days and Republican Party operatives helped to promote it to the press. Some newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Cincinnati Enquirer, refused to run the story. Nonetheless, the story surfaced. Journalists quickly learned that Jenkins had been arrested on a similar charge in 1959, which made it much harder to explain the thwarted tryst away as the result of overwork or, as one journalist wrote, “combat fatigue.” The news pained Lady Bird deeply and she resisted her husband’s instruction to stay quiet. She claimed that her heart compelled her to defend Jenkins.8 Lady Bird biographer Jan Jarboe Russell has revealed the role Mrs. Walter Jenkins played in this affair.9 Marjorie Jenkins called Lady Bird after learning the astonishing news of her husband’s scandal and sharply criticized both Johnsons for having worked her husband too hard. It seems Lady Bird deeply cared for the Jenkins and refused to abandon them in their hour of need. Lady Bird seems to have believed in the story Marjorie Jenkins wove out of the facts: Walter’s deed was not sexual at all but a simple act of exhaustion. The idea that Walter Jenkins was not looking for something sexual in a locker room known as a walk on the wild side suggests the extent to which denial can prompt someone to lie to herself. An exhausted, 18 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period overworked person in Walter’s shoes could have done any number of things to act out: disrobe publicly, abuse drugs, vandalize public property, disappear to a remote getaway. Instead, he chose a sexual encounter with another man. Lyndon Johnson may have feared for his own public reputation and, not wanting to appear friendly with any gay man, may have chosen to pretend that Jenkins’s sexual encounter was not sexual but merely regrettable, in the way that a car accident is. Nonetheless, the politician saw within a week that Jenkins had to go. Despite resistance from her husband, Lady Bird insisted on defending Walter Jenkins: “I’m going to say this is incredible for a man I’ve known all these years, a devout Catholic, the father of six children, a happily married husband. It can only be a small period of nervous breakdown.”10 It is important to note that Lady Bird reached out to help her friend while her husband Lyndon was still campaigning and in urgent need of the public’s approval. Ultimately, Lady Bird left out the Catholic reference and issued the following statement to the press: “My heart is aching today for someone who has reached the point of exhaustion in dedicated service to his country. Walter Jenkins has been carrying incredible hours and burdens since President Kennedy’s assassination. He is now receiving the medical attention he needs.” It seems that Lady Bird’s instincts vindicated her; instead of her participation strengthening Republican opposition, it quieted the seas. The whole matter passed from public commentary in a few days. (Even so, Jenkins’s career was destroyed; he quickly returned to Texas.) The stakes in those days were high: the Hollywood gossip paper Confidential nearly ended Rock Hudson’s career in the late 1950s by disclosing details of his secret gay life (studio executives intervened and prevented publication). It might be thought that Lady Bird was only acting out of self-interest: She sought to make her husband appear compassionate, and protecting her husband amounted to protecting herself. However, her husband—among others—tried to prevent her from speaking out on Jenkins’s behalf. The president prompted Jenkins to check himself in for psychiatric treatment—at least until after the upcoming presidential election. There is no evidence that she tried to prevent this dodge, even though psychiatric treatments for homosexuality in the mid-1960s sometimes included gruesome electroshock therapy. Lady Bird did not spearhead a national campaign to encourage acceptance of gay people, nor did she organize a march, or meet with gay activists (who were already starting to pop up in New York and Los Angeles). She used her influence discreetly to help a particularly close family friend. She arguably saw Jenkins more as a friend than a symbol. And she denied that he was gay in the course of helping him through a gay scandal. Such help may seem to come at too high a price (“I’ll help you if you betray yourself by denying who you are”). In 1964, though, this may have been as much as a gay man could expect—especially from a First Lady, who was extraordinarily vulnerable to public criticism, given her political position. After Johnson won the election, he circuitously defended Jenkins by attributing what had happened in the Washington YMCA that night to some sort of medical crisis.11 Even the president had to lie in order to defend a gay man, such was the revulsion toward gay sex at this time. A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 19

The Jenkins case did not involve police entrapment. Nonetheless, it is useful to think of the case in the context of Norton v. Macy. A 1963 incident of police entrapment became a law suit, one which made its way to the Supreme Court in 1969 (Norton v. Macy). A Washington, DC, man who happened to be a federal employee, offered another man a ride in a car but did not have sex with him. The driver was then arrested by police, who had closely watched the activity. Several years after the Jenkins YMCA incident, the Supreme Court ruled in Norton that federal civil servants suspected of being gay could be fired only if their job had some vital connection with their sexuality.12 But that was 1969, and Jenkins was living in 1964. In any event, no Supreme Court ruling could have helped a member of the president’s inner circle accused of a gay tryst in the early 1960s. Context determines much of our contemporary assessment of Lady Bird’s response to Jenkins’s predicament. Let’s take a brief look at the protection Mae West tried to extend to gay men in the 1930s and then at another bathroom sex scandal in the 1990s. When we place Lady Bird’s defense, such as it was, in historical context, her efforts on Jenkins’s behalf indicate genuine courage. The brassy, sassy Mae West catapulted to fame in the 1930s with a defiantly sexual style of performing and finessing interviews with the press. She liked men and she felt no shame for it. It seems difficult to deny that she was out in front of her time with regard to sexual permissiveness and expression. And yet she did not wholly break with the surrounding culture, puritanical though it may have been. (It could in fact be argued that the 1920s were more permissive than the 1960s.) In the course of her theater work in and around Manhattan, West came to know a number of gay men. Enamored of one in particular, she began to study the work of Freud, Richard Kraft-Ebbing, Karl Heinrich Ulrich, and Havelock Ellis in order to understand homosexuality. According to biographer Jill Watt:

Although West stated that she believed homosexuality “a danger to the entire social system of western civilization,” she also expressed sympathy for most gay men, whom she perceived as female spirits burdened with men’s bodies. West bragged that she had warned police, “When you’re hitting one of those guys, you’re hitting a woman.”13

How interesting that West perceived gay men not so much as a new class but rather as women in disguise. It could be argued that West was only fighting for women, not for gay men. And yet her altruistic motives do seem clear, if a bit complicated. The female impersonators she hired for her 1927 show The Drag were, of course, men literally posing as women (although not necessarily gay). Anticipating the Catholic Church’s formal decree on homosexuals by three or four decades, West divided gay men into two categories—those who were “born that way,” as Lady Gaga would later sing, and those who, for a variety of reasons, just decided to enjoy sex with a man on a particular occasion. And decades before Tennessee Williams arrived on the scene, West was performing in and actively promoting a play (The Drag) about a respectable husband whose sexual desire for men burdens his kind 20 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period wife and leaves her lonely. West challenged reigning conventions just by raising this topic in public. Bold as her move to present New York audiences with authentic views of gay male experience may have been, West’s narcissism may have explained her behavior just as much as humanistic impulses or business acumen (because an edgy show would be more likely to draw curious audiences). West’s plays themselves may have been highly dramatized, but the problem of gay men marrying women who knew nothing of their ongoing sexual encounters with men was daringly realistic. The lady had guts. West enjoyed the kind of “camp” humor drag queens used in their provocative performances; it is hard not to laugh at West’s idea that the drag queens were simply imitating her:

West defined camp as “the kind of comedy where they imitate me … Camp is bein’ funny and dishy and outrageous and sayin’ clever things.” Although she always claimed ascendancy, she found comradeship in the camping of the drag queens.”14

Susan Sontag would later articulate another view of camp—certainly a more authoritative, intellectual account. Sontag’s influential essay “Notes on Camp” makes no reference to West, who, in her measured but ultimately deficient way, did try to protect gay men. (In the 1970s, West, by then an aged but still well-known figure, emerged as an outspoken proponent of gay liberation.) Now think of an incident similar to the Jenkins scandal, one that occurred about thirty-five years later. In April 1998 Los Angeles police apprehended the singer George Michael in a public restroom, where he had made sexual overtures to a plain-clothes officer. The news quickly circled the globe—more as gossip fodder than anything else. Technically, Michael had not yet come out of the closet, but his sexuality was an open secret. He was an artist, not a politician like Walter Jenkins; yet both an artist and a politician depend upon public support, even if in quite different ways. A flamboyant singer in 1998 America had a much easier time than a politician in the early 1960s. So well established was George Michael that he did not worry much about his future after the scandal: gay singers such as Elton John and Boy George had arguably paved the way for Michael’s public acceptance. No one—male or female—really needed to stand up and defend Michael to America. The BBC reported on celebrity reaction to the juicy scandal, and we can judge from the yawning responses the extent to which other singers were not roiled:

Celebrities attending the Capital FM London Awards ceremony on Thursday expressed their support for Mr. Michael. Hot Chocolate star Errol Brown said: “I am sad for him because I think he’s a great artist and it’s a shame when you get tainted in any way.” And actor Paul Barber, who played Horse in The Full Monty, said: “I’m a fan of his, and it won’t stop me playing his music. George Michael is the business, he’s great.”15

Just as George Michael was saved by shifting mores (America was no longer automatically disgusted by news of a man seeking sex from a stranger in a men’s A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 21 room), so was Walter Jenkins defeated by it. This explains in part the generosity of Lady Bird’s defense, because it was less narcissistic than West’s. West was in the business of shocking respectable people; Lady Bird’s job description was just the opposite. Perhaps that explains in part why she decided against reminding the American public that Jenkins was a “devout Catholic”: that detail still threatened to unsettle Protestants in 1964 (think of the difficulty John F. Kennedy had faced during his presidential campaign), and she was trying to be gentle. Certainly there have been similar incidents—think of Representative John Hinson (R-Mississippi) or Idaho senator Larry Craig (this list is hardly exclusive).16 A married man openly opposed to gay marriage, Craig was accused of soliciting sex from a stranger in a men’s room in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June 2007. Craig initially pled guilty to a misdemeanor; when news of the arrest circulated weeks later, Craig emphatically denied that anything untoward had happened. He insisted he was heterosexual but subsequently chose not to run for re-election in 2008. No one really came to his public support in part because he had insisted both on his innocence and his aversion to the idea of two men engaging in sexual activity. Indeed, Craig felt abandoned by the leadership of his own Republican party. One of two Senate liaisons for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign, Craig exited that campaign role after the conviction became public. Romney distanced himself from Craig, who had disappointed the American people. In a subsequent interview with Matt Lauer, Craig expressed bitterness about Romney, who had heartlessly betrayed and deserted him. Romney was no Lady Bird.

Evelyn Hooker

Evelyn Hooker (d. 1996) was both a friend to individual gay men and also to the gay community at large. In this respect, her example differs from the Taylor and Johnson stories just discussed. Hooker moved to California in the 1940s as a newly minted psychology PhD. She struck up an important friendship with Sam From, a gay man. Little by little, she acquired other gay male friends. Concerned that the scientific diagnosis of gay people as mentally ill did not bear up under scrutiny, she published a 1957 paper “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” and began a gradual reassessment of the equation of homosexuality with mental illness. She urged the end of electroshock therapy for gay men and lesbians.17 Eventually, the US government decriminalized homosexuality and in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed it from the official list of mental disorders. Hooker spent the later decades of her life in private practice, helping principally lesbians and gay men. She labored to make life easier for gay men in the United States. Hooker performed a vital service (albeit one without immediate payoff, such as the APA removing homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses) for her friend From but at the same time helped the entire gay community—both male and female—through her scholarly efforts. In the words of two psychologists, 22 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

“That research changed the meaning of same-gender love from an illness to a gift.”18 Similar to the way Jews proclaim some good souls “righteous Gentiles” (or honorary Jews), so do these two authors celebrate Hooker by including her in the gay community. According to Linda Garnets and Douglas Kimmel, she was “an honorary homosexual.” They describe her as a “foremother of the gay liberation movement.” Hooker openly displayed her affection for the gay men she studied in the 1950s. Her biographers report that she frequently went to gay bars and parties, and enjoyed being the only woman present. Garnets and Kimmel, both openly gay scholars, describe themselves as “direct beneficiaries” of Hooker’s work. Linda Garnets later became an actual friend of Hooker, sharing private meals and holding long, casual conversations with her. Garnets offered another biographical anecdote as a gesture of gratitude for the social influence of Hooker’s research and personal friendship:

One experience with Hooker exemplifies the kind of impact she had on my life. In the summer of 1995 my parents were visiting me and I wanted them to meet Hooker. We went to see her with my life partner and my uncle, who is gay. Earlier in the day, I had shown my parents Changing Our Minds, the film about Hooker’s life and work. Eventually our conversation turned to a discussion about homosexuality. Hooker remarked that she believed homosexuality was genetic, at which point my father jumped up and exclaimed, “It’s not my fault!” When he realized the effect of what he had said, he confided in Hooker, “You know, I’ve always wished that Linda was heterosexual, and I still do.” Now it was Hooker’s turn to jump out of her seat. She said, “Ira, how sad! Here you have a daughter who has done everything to make a parent happy. She has a loving, stable, long- term relationship; she’s successful in her work; and she has a happy and fulfilling life. What more could any parent want?” What Hooker did for me that day is what her research has done for all of us. (p. 33)

Here a professional woman makes concrete the theoretical link to which I’ve tried to point. At the same time, Hooker provides the kind of parental approval (although Garnets herself did not suffer outright parental abandonment) that eluded many lesbians and gay men. Resentment over familial betrayal proved to be a social glue, one that bonded many lesbians to gay men. We’ll see in the chapter “Lesbian Charity” that one of the reasons many lesbians volunteered to sustain gay men hospitalized during the AIDS epidemic was empathy; lesbians knew what parental abandonment felt like and rushed in to offer themselves as a new family. In 1967 Hooker was invited to form the National Institute of Mental Health Task Force on Homosexuality, which lasted until 1969. According to John Bayer, “The Task Force placed enormous emphasis on the extent to which the misery of homosexuals could be alleviated through an end to the discriminatory social practices of the heterosexual world.”19 It would be excessively difficult and ultimately pointless to draw up criterion for establishing precisely when two people can responsibly say they are friends. That said, it should not seem far-fetched to claim that one of Hooker’s former patients, A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 23 one Wayne Placek, viewed her as a friend and, in part because of that friendship, left her half a million dollars when he died. True, he stipulated that the money was to be used on research into gay and lesbian issues. And true, he had only met Hooker twice, decades earlier, as a patient. Still, he likely viewed her as a friend and ally. The American Psychological Foundation’s Wayne Placek Fund has been awarding grants since 1994 to scholars interested in researching matters central to the lives of lesbians and gay men. The obituary E. S. Shneidman crafted in 1998 for the journal American Psychologist included the notion of gift I try to highlight throughout this chapter:

Many homosexual men have stated that they owe improvements in the attitudes of society and in their acceptance of themselves directly and indirectly to the work of Evelyn Hooker.20

Hooker exemplifies the broader sense of friendship I have in mind when I speak of her as a gay man’s best friend. At the same time, she gave a gift to one particular man, Sam From, and that gift cascaded through the lives of many other gay men. As late as 2015, so-called reparative therapists were still touting their ability to “convert” lesbian and gay people to heterosexuality, to cure the “illness” of same-sex erotic orientation. In April 2015 President Barack Obama publicly exhorted such “professionals” to stop.21 Hooker had paved the way for an American president to help lesbians and gays.

Linda Laubenstein Fights for Gay Men in the Health Crisis

Like Hooker, Dr. Linda Laubenstein (d. 1992), enriched the entire gay male community through her academic research and social activism. It seems reasonable to infer that a woman who had helped an entire community, however marginalized, would have also established individual friendships with members of that community. Working from the NYU hospital in downtown Manhattan, Laubenstein identified some of the earliest AIDS cases in the early 1980s and urged public awareness of the new disease, which she was certain would become an epidemic. The infamous “Patient Zero” was hers, and she resolved to develop a research protocol for him. Dr. Laubenstein protested what she claimed was governmental and social reluctance to combat AIDS. In 1989 she co-founded Multitasking Systems, a non- profit organization selling office services to other businesses and employing people with AIDS as the workers (see Appendix 2 at the end of the book). She responded compassionately to the social plight of persons with AIDS, many of whom lost their jobs. She focused on employment because she understood that work was vital to emotional and physical health (i.e., not just for financial support). In a personal interview, Linda’s mother insisted that Linda did not see herself as a hero, but rather as a humanist, a compassionate physician resolutely dedicated to upholding the Hippocratic Oath she had taken.22 Mrs. Laubenstein recalled that 24 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period her daughter felt compelled to help gay men because no one else at the time would. Mrs. Laubenstein supported her daughter’s decision at the outset of the epidemic to fight for gay men. Linda, who had already been confined to a wheelchair for years, decided to attend Barnard College because it was wheelchair-accessible (this was years before the American with Disabilities Act). Linda knew that she wanted to become a doctor and gravitated toward science classes; her parents strongly urged her to take a few classes in art and music while an undergraduate. Those classes later proved useful to her, because many of her patients were involved in the arts and, Mrs. Laubenstein explained, Linda could easily strike up conversations with them about their professional work. With regard to Linda’s moral motivation to help gay men, it bears mentioning that she was not a particularly religious person. On a trip to Sedona, Mrs. Laubenstein remembered that Linda gasped at the natural beauty of the rocks and cliffs and uttered, “Only God could create this.” Mrs. Laubenstein believes it was concern for humanity that motivated her daughter, not a desire to please God. According to Mrs. Laubenstein, Linda criticized the Catholic Church a number of times for the way it treated lesbians and gay men. Larry Kramer, one of the best known gay activists in the United States, wrote a tribute to Laubenstein after her death. Because of its relevance, I have reproduced Kramer’s eulogy here in its entirety:

I have been in love with Dr. Linda Laubenstein ever since 1981 when she became my doctor. I have been living with Linda since 1983 when I started writing my play, The Normal Heart, in which she is one of the leading characters. I am still living with her now that the movie of my play is about to begin shooting. I have been able, because it is a movie, to greatly expand her part, which will be played by Julia Roberts. Ellen Barkin, who played Emma in the Broadway production, received a Tony for her portrayal of Linda. Over all these years since the play first opened in 1984, it has been done all over America and all over the world. Hundreds of actresses by now have played her. Linda would never come and see the play when it was first done at the Public Theater here in New York, even though our producer, Joseph Papp, offered to send a limousine. I of course gave her a copy of the play before we ever did anything, but she told me she wouldn’t read it. I’m uncertain why she felt this way. Someone suggested it might be because there were also other doctors at New York University Medical Center who were also taking care of patients who had what would become known as AIDS. And that by singling her out, she felt I might be exploiting her because she was in a wheelchair, and hence more dramatic. I confess to being guilty of this. I wanted to make a parallel with her courage in overcoming such a physical liability as a yardstick for the guys getting sick to see what courage can really be. The play is still being produced everywhere and with the movie, all of which is accompanied with the information that the part of Dr. Emma Brookner is based on Dr. Linda Laubenstein, will, I hope enshrine her legacy forever. I miss her very much. Her courage gave me courage, a great gift.23 A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 25

Kramer thanks personally a woman who had served as his personal physician and who, through her research and fearless commitment to serving sick gay men, aided an entire community. As I’ve indicated, Linda helped gay men in more ways than one. Through her non-profit agency Multitasking Systems, which she founded with Dr. Jeffrey B. Greene, she helped suddenly unemployed gay men find work. Mrs. Laubenstein remembers that most of the men Linda helped in this regard worked in offices in New York City. Although they began as temps, many of these men were eventually offered full-time employment. Barbra Streisand wanted to meet Linda, after having read Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart. Larry Kramer had arranged for Streisand to come to Linda’s apartment, but Linda died shortly before the appointed date. Although Linda never met Elizabeth Taylor, the two had much in common.

* * * * * * * * * *

I’ll now consider a broader form of friendship, that of an individual working to benefit an entire community. Just as ordinary people may feel they know a particular celebrity (because they’ve seen all their films and read various biographical sketches), so too might a gay man feel a particular—although unfamiliar—benefactor is his friend. “It has been estimated that in the medieval world the average person saw one hundred other people in the course of a lifetime.”24 By the twentieth century, this limit had disappeared for most Americans. Rapid transit, newspapers, and television exposed most people—even rural people—to a broader array of individuals. By the twenty-first century, social media such as Twitter and Facebook expanded the circle even wider. We have so much access to the intimate lives of public figures— politicians, professional athletes, authors, and film stars—that celebrities routinely complain about invasions of their privacy. Indeed, this lament has become commonplace. It is not so surprising that individuals without any fame of which to speak may somehow believe that they actually know someone like Princess Diana or Madonna; the image of a public figure may have entered a person’s home and computer screen so often that the star seems utterly familiar. When you add into the equation a passion for the rights of an embattled group—religious, racial, environmental—it becomes even easier to see oneself locked in an important moral struggle with a genuine friend, albeit, a friend one has never met.25 A desire for fame may prompt a well-known performer to take on a political or social struggle, in an effort to go down in history for having made an important difference to society, not just for having entertained people. I don’t wish to doubt the sincerity of Elizabeth Taylor’s AIDS activism, only to note how convenient it was for one of the most recognizable women in the Western world to become an activist in the 1980s, as the epidemic was spinning out of control and as her fabled beauty was all but faded. Unconsciously thinking of a celebrity as a personal friend or as a psychic extension of oneself can also help explain the deification or the fanatical 26 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period devotion of some gay men for women such as Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Maria Callas, or Madonna.

Friend to the Whole Community

Elizabeth Taylor, Once More Elizabeth Taylor deserves credit for the very private help she extended to Montgomery Clift, as I’ve asserted. Beyond studio executives and Hollywood insiders, few knew of what she had done for him. The news of her generosity would have drawn attention to Clift’s sexuality, and the actor’s professional reputation— the very thing she was trying to shore up—depended on the public not knowing about his sexual orientation. In helping him, she necessarily reinforced the closet walls. Elizabeth Taylor took a thoroughly public step in 1986, when she (along with other celebrities) testified before a US Senate committee to deplore the lack of federal funding for AIDS research and to urge passage of the Ryan White CARE Act. Americans had already identified AIDS largely with the gay male community, an equation that harmed the group. She raised money for AIDS research, a much needed venture from which gay men disproportionately benefitted. AIDS dissolved the closet for many gay men, who needed help as much as Montgomery Clift had two decades earlier. Taylor’s new crusade shaped the way she viewed herself and the way she asked her fans to view her. In addition to establishing a foundation dedicated to AIDS research, she spoke before the National Press Club and addressed the General Assembly at the United Nations on World AIDS Day. Dr. Mathilde Krim, a professor of public health at Columbia University, persuaded Taylor to co-found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).26 Krim’s husband was president of Orion Pictures and knew Taylor. She was named the founding national chairman for the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 and in 1993 established the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to provide direct support for those suffering from HIV/AIDS.27 Taylor also hosted the first AIDS fundraiser in 1984, to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles. Later, she modeled the compassion she had called for by publicly holding the hand of her friend and former costar, Rock Hudson, after he announced that he had AIDS. Taylor had starred opposite Hudson in the 1956 film Giant; Hudson announced in July 1985 that he had AIDS and died later that year. She convinced President Ronald Reagan to speak at the foundation’s gala dinner in 1987. That was only the second time he had publicly mentioned the scourge. Taylor kept fighting, despite criticism on several fronts. When the actress was hospitalized for pneumonia in 1990, rumors circulated that AIDS was the true reason. For her sixty-fifth birthday in 1997, the still glamorous star threw a televised birthday bash complete with a new song performed by Michael Jackson. The event raised over $1 million for AIDS research. Taylor checked in to the hospital that same week for high-risk surgery to remove a brain tumor. She may have exploited A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 27 media attention to her operation to publicize her AIDS work. Taylor, a notorious heterosexual, mainstreamed what was considered a gay disease.

A Funny Girl and a Funny Amendment On November 3, 1992, Colorado voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that all but ended the struggle for gay rights in that state. Amendment 2, which Coloradans approved by a vote of 53 per cent to 47 per cent, prohibited localities from recognizing gays and lesbians as a minority group entitled to legal protections. The measure reversed civil-rights protections for gay men and lesbians that had been instituted in Denver, Aspen, and Boulder. Further, the amendment prevented other localities from passing ordinances granting protections to gay men and lesbians. The amendment’s scope was unusual. In 1992, to take an example, Colorado had no state-wide gay rights law, but the state permitted cities and towns to enact protective ordinances on their own. Later that November, Barbra Streisand, one of the most recognizable figures in the American entertainment industry, criticized the amendment in a speech at an AIDS gala in Los Angeles. She exhorted the celebrities in the room to boycott Colorado as a way of expressing opposition to the new law that made it legal to discriminate against gay men and women in housing, employment, and other areas. Specifically, she urged those in the room and beyond to eschew the state’s fabled ski slopes and to vow not to hold any conventions in the state (conventions usually generate significant revenues for the local and state economies). A number of politicians, including mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, endorsed Streisand’s boycott. The US Conference of Mayors cancelled its annual meeting, which had been scheduled to take place in Colorado Springs the following June. (Some two decades later, after the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which overturned gay marriage in the golden state, California and even Utah were to find themselves the targets of even more sophisticated boycott efforts.) Beyond urging a boycott of Colorado, Streisand sharply criticized former president Reagan’s lack of response to the AIDS crisis, much in the way Elizabeth Taylor had done. At a 1992 gala (called “Commitment to Life VI”) for AIDS Project LA, she termed his reaction a “genocidal denial” of the AIDS epidemic. Early in 1993, the New York Times published a letter to the editor praising Streisand for using her influence to help secure a million-dollar grant for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a non-profit AIDS service organization based in New York City. Streisand lobbied in other ways: Her production company Barwood Films produced the Emmy Award-winning Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (NBC, 1995), based on the true story of a lesbian who served with distinction in the US military. In 2001, Streisand oversaw production of the filmWhat Makes a Family, with a strong lesbian story line, for Lifetime. Did Streisand succeed in Colorado? Yes and no. Many critics—especially from the right—lambasted her. Could an entertainer really have anything meaningful to contribute to a complicated political issue? Was Streisand simply biased because 28 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period her only son happened to be a gay man? Social conservatives dismissed her as a misguided narcissist. I disagree, and I believe the evidence indicates Streisand did succeed. The Colorado Supreme Court decided that the amendment was subject to “strict scrutiny,” the most exacting standard of judicial review employed by US courts (a law will not pass “strict scrutiny” unless it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest) under the Equal Protection Clause. The amendment’s proponents appealed, and the case made its way to the US Supreme Court. In 1996, the Court voted 6–3 in Romer v. Evans to overturn Colorado’s Amendment 2. That influential case paved the way forLawrence v. Texas, which discontinued sodomy laws in 2003. It would be a mistake to credit Streisand with the victory in Romer v. Evans, but it is right and just to credit her with arousing popular debate over the fairness of discriminating against gays and lesbians.

Straight Allies Straight women don’t have a monopoly on gay support. We’ll see in Chapter 4 that lesbians contributed substantially to the gay male community. Ultimately, straight men have answered the call as well, particularly as the debate over marriage equality in the United States became more strident after 2003. As time wore on, it became safer to champion gay rights. I don’t mean to minimize the efforts of the celebrities whose names follow here, for speaking up for gay marriage could still incur criticism. Gay rights supporters view gay issues as a matter of human rights, it might be fair to say. It would be strange, though, if a pro-gay celebrity were to have no gay friends. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, American actors especially popular with audiences around the world, once declared that they would not marry until America opened the institution of marriage to LGBT people. In 2009, Pitt donated $100,000 to fight Prop 8. In 2008 the director Steven Spielberg also donated $100,000 to defeat the proposed amendment. Cyndi Lauper launched her Give a Damn campaign, to encourage support for gay and transgender youth. Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe openly supported gay rights, especially The Trevor Project, which assists LGBT teens confronted with suicidal thoughts. He appeared on the March 2013 cover of gay men’s magazine Out. Long dogged by rumors about his own sexuality, George Clooney stated in a March 2012 interview with the Advocate that he would never angrily deny the speculation, because that would be an affront to his lesbian and gay friends. He has insisted that he is heterosexual, though. The actor Josh Hutcherson founded the Straight But Not Narrow campaign in 2011, to sensitize boys to the sting of homophobic teasing and humiliation (www.WeAreSBNN.com). It would be impossible to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between what Elizabeth Taylor or any other straight woman did back in the 1960s or 1980s and the bold steps of these celebrities. Chances are these celebrities were not thinking of Taylor; Hutcherson, for example, had two gay uncles, both of which died of A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 29

AIDS. Nonetheless, we can put these highly publicized gestures on a coherent continuum, one which could move gay people across America to strong emotions.

Of Gays and Jewish Ladies

This selection of examples may seem capricious, arbitrary. They are not meant to be exhaustive or fully representative of the positive interactions between straight women and gay men. In 1985 Doris Day lent her image and reputation to gay men by appearing at Rock Hudson’s side when he informed the world he was dying of AIDS. Before Elizabeth Taylor publicly demonstrated her support for Hudson, Day smiled and held his hand and, consequently, sided with the underdogs. (Decades later, the reclusive star wrote a letter to the nearly 3,000 riders in the AIDS/Lifecycle trek to commend them on their important work; Day explicitly said she saw their work as honoring Hudson.28) Even big stars sometimes helped in relatively small (although not one-on-one) ways. As early as 1984, for example, the singer Barbara Cook attended an AIDS- related fundraiser in a private home in Coconut Grove, Florida, and helped raise a considerable sum of money. In 1995 the singer Deborah Harry sang a benefit concert in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the proceeds of which fortified the Provincetown AIDS Support Group. In that same year singers Cyndi Lauper and Dianne Reeves and Vice-President Gore’s wife Tipper also made public gestures of support for AIDS awareness.29 Other forms of assistance to gay men deserve mention. In the 1950s, for example, various women served as “beards” for gay men. Do they deserve credit for “helping” gay men or were they merely responding to pressure from Hollywood executives to let themselves be used in this way? Depending on the time, working as a beard may be considered a valid form of helping a gay man (because his career depended on the ruse of heterosexuality). Take the Hollywood heartthrob Tab Hunter, for example. In a 2006 memoir, he confirmed that he has been gay all his life. According to William L. Hamilton of The New York Times, detailed reports about his alleged romances with close friends Debbie Reynolds and Natalie Wood were nothing more than fictions disseminated by studio publicity departments. As Wood and Hunter embarked on a well-publicized and groundless romance, promoting his apparent heterosexuality while also promoting their films, insiders developed their own headline for the item: “Natalie Wood and Tab Wouldn’t.”30 Debbie Reynolds and Natalie Wood were perhaps benefitting from the publicity, but they also showed compassion to Tab Hunter (surely these women knew he was not in love with them). I am crediting Lady Bird Johnson and especially Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand with having done much more than that. A number of the women I praise in this chapter were or are Jewish (I realized this after the fact). In 2013, Vice-President Joe Biden praised Jewish leaders for leading the country’s way to gay emancipation and equality.31 “I bet you 85 per cent of those changes, whether it’s in Hollywood or social media are a consequence of Jewish leaders in the industry,” he said. “The influence is immense, the influence 30 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period is immense. And, I might add, it is all to the good.” This is the same man who had publicly credited Will & Grace with the change in American attitudes toward gay marriage a couple years earlier (he repeated his praise of Will & Grace on the night he addressed the Democratic National Committee’s reception in honor of Jewish Heritage Month). The show’s producers David Kohan and Max Mutchnick were Jewish, as was James Burrows, the show’s director. Debra Messing, the actress who played the (Jewish) character Grace, was also Jewish. The number of Jewish women thanked in this chapter calls out for mention and raises the question of whether this book should bear a different title, one such asPostwar Jewish Women and Gay Men. Why did quite a few Jewish women (I’m not suggesting they all did) step up to the plate in this way? Jewish people and gay people share some interesting features. Both Jews and gays tend to skew liberal. Both Jews and gays are also less visible in day-to-day interactions: You can almost always identify someone as black or female, but Jews and gays are less physically distinctive—there’s no obvious marker. Just as gay people “come out” as gay, Jewish people often “come out” as Jewish to Christian schoolmates and co-workers. Jewish people are disproportionately involved in the media and in academia (at least according to stereotype), so maybe many Jewish allies were also well positioned to disseminate favorable views on gay people. Many Jewish people and many gay people are drawn to professions related to arts and culture. Many “liberal intellectuals” have been gay or Jewish or both. Beyond that, Jewish culture has less stringent, less patriarchal gender roles. The stereotype is loud, dominant women and shy, nervous men. So while some Jewish men experience something of a crisis of masculinity, feeling they aren’t considered manly enough (other minority groups, such as Asian men, suffer from similar perceptions), the looser gender roles embedded in modern Jewish culture may make it easier for Jewish men who are gay to come out. There is also less emphasis on some sort of rigid heterosexually grounded gender order. This is certainly not proper sociological theorizing, and I’ve no doubt ventured into stereotype more than once without sufficient data or evidence. I could also gesture at a more theological explanation. Some sects of Judaism—especially the Reform sect and the Reconstructionist sect—place a high premium on social justice (justice in this world, now, rather than kicking up our heels and hoping for something better in an afterlife).32 A darker reason could be at play. Some Jews strongly resent Christian smugness. Christians have most of the power in the United States, and Christians implicitly believe their morality is superior to every other—including Jewish. When Jews can expose Christian cruelty, they not only improve America but also bring Christians down a peg. Almost immediately after taking the throne of St. Peter in 2013, Pope Francis seemed to demonstrate sensitivity to how many people (many of them raised Catholic) despise Catholic power. When Jews can show Christians how cruel they are, Jews improve their own public image, which centuries of anti-Semitism has tarnished. Jews deserve praise A Gay Man’s Best Girlfriend 31 for their social activism and kindness to lesbians and gay people. We’ll see that several feminist leaders were Jewish (e.g., Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Gloria Steinem) and that a number of influential gay activists were as well (e.g., Harvey Milk, Larry Kramer, and Barney Frank).

* * * * * * * * * *

No one ever directed Elizabeth Taylor to rescue Montgomery Clift, and no one ever charged Jewish women in postwar America with defending a despised minority. They just did it. It should not seem far-fetched to conclude that these women felt compelled to do the right thing. The Harvard political scientist Judith Shklar (who was also, incidentally, Jewish) wrote that “the worst thing people can do is cruelty.”33 If you pardon the grammatical awkwardness of the phrasing, you may see a profound truth. For centuries Christians had been awfully cruel to Jews; in the twentieth century, as homosexuality became more visible, Christians were often awfully cruel to lesbians and gays. Without excluding the contributions of Jews, I will press on and thank women in general. The gift to gay men raises a moral challenge to gay men: How will the gay male community, once liberated from their various social obstacles, reach out and help other beleaguered groups?

Chapter 2

ANTAGONISTIC WOMEN

Not all straight women help gay men. Animosity between women and gay men in mid-century America developed for at least two reasons, one psychiatric and the other economic. By the 1950s, psychologists had drawn battle lines between straight women and gay men. Since gay men were allegedly created by overbearing mothers, mothers bore much of the blame for having produced a moral monster.1 It was guilt by (family) association. To the extent that women stuck together or that mothers empathized with one another, it is not hard to imagine the conflicted emotions a woman might have experienced when seeing an effeminate man: anger toward his mother for having failed, sympathy with her for having tried too hard to raise a stalwart son, fear that one of her own sons might suffer the same fate. Either way, the gay-seeming man lost. In a book praising women for their virtue, it would be a mistake simply to cast women as a caring, intuitive, emotional lot. Groups of women, like individual women, can be brutal. They can also make political miscalculations. For example, Erika Mann, a noted German actress and essayist, blamed the rise of Hitler in large part on women. During the Second World War, Mann delivered a speech at Madison Square Garden sponsored by the American Jewish Congress. In an address entitled “Women in the Third Reich” Mann declared, “an uncomfortable truth behind the Nazi rise to power: women voters had been primarily responsible for electing Hitler.” Nazis still ruled, and from America Mann decried their lack of gratitude (among other things). As evidence of their callousness, Mann revealed that Nazis punished German women—the same women who had elected them— in various ways: university study, work outside the home, and personal ambition generally were all ended or sharply curtailed.2 Mann spoke with conviction that German women—voting as a bloc—could affect (and indeed had sometimes swung) elections. On other occasions in other countries, women have also voted against what is arguably in their best interest. Of course this point will frequently dwindle into internal disagreement—think of women who voted against the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights. The central argument of this book is that individual women all over America helped gay men in private moments of charity over the course of several decades since the Second World War. Some women, though, worked to impede the advancement of gay men (and still do so in the twenty-first century). Perhaps their 34 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period reasons for doing so were wrong-headed and easily forgiven in retrospect, perhaps not. In order better to understand the point that some straight women used their social clout to hurt gay men, I’ll consider a few salient examples. I’ll begin by trying to clarify the psychiatric and economic reasons I just mentioned.

The Two-Pronged Problem

The hurdle American psychiatrists erected before gay men in the 1950s and 1960s was so high that some gay men thought of them as the enemy feeding and cultivating anti-gay politicians and religious leaders. Psychiatrists used what scientific credibility they had in order to legitimize discrimination against gay men.3 The US military, for example, accepted the findings of the psychiatric establishment, which ruled that homosexuality was a mental illness, and refused to hire gay men. (This is in part the problem to which Evelyn Hooker dedicated herself.) It wasn’t until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association reversed its position on this issue (and not until much, much later that the US military would knowingly hire gay men). Frequently psychiatrists would also blame a man’s homosexuality on his mother. For this reason, women found themselves on the defensive. Not only the child but also the mother was at fault. Only by making gay men invisible (i.e., by scaring them back into the closet) could women escape the shame of having failed spectacularly (by having raised a repugnant child). Women thus had an incentive to deny male homosexuality to whatever extent possible and to vilify it when a man refused the closet. Acting perhaps out of a will to survive in a world that blamed them for their gay sons, mothers became an enemy for gay men as well. Gay men were made, not created. Mid-century psychiatrists legitimized the already prevalent assumption that people are born heterosexual or at least pre-heterosexual. According to this theory, which held sway in the psychiatric establishment until the 1970s, babies and children are all on their way to heterosexuality, unless someone should thwart them on their way. The idea that people might be born gay in the way they are born with other genetic destinies (e.g., to unusual height or to deafness) seemed lost on psychiatrists, most of whom probably knew very little about genetics. As we saw in Chapter 1, Evelyn Hooker openly opposed psychiatrists who provided or advocated electroshock therapy on lesbians and gay men. Medical personnel would strap a non-heterosexual person into a chair and then send electrical charges through his body while showing a homosexually erotic image. The idea was that this kind of induced aversion (some might call it torture) could gradually train a gay man to dislike the thought of an attractive man naked. Making matters worse for gay men, mothers and fathers would frequently sign their sons up for this procedure. The desperate attempt to cure gay men only deepened their misery and better explains why psychiatrists might have been hated. The Roman Catholic Church took a surprising lead in this debate when, in 1973, it issued the document “On Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics.”4 Antagonistic Women 35

The document, which emerged at roughly the same time the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental illnesses, pronounced that some people are born gay and cannot be changed. The Church was speaking to Catholic families that had shoved their gay children into electroshock therapy or traditional heterosexual marriages.5 The Church recognized the futility of such measures and advocated social respect for gays and lesbians, even as it condemned gay sex acts. It was morally acceptable to be gay, but not to have gay sex. This logic didn’t necessarily compel gay people into the closet, but it did demand they give up sex forever. Of course, some closeted gay people were having furtive sex. Given that an out gay Catholic might suffer the burdens of being gay without being able to enjoy gay sex, it seemed less likely that a gay person intent on avoiding all sex would bother to come out of the closet. In this way, some Catholics may have discerned a motivation for keeping quiet about their sexual orientation (i.e., for staying in the closet). In an important way, the tension also comes down to economics. Many straight women—particularly traditional ones who stay at home to raise children—view gay men with suspicion. The more that gay men adopt and raise children, the more that some conservative women feel threatened. Let’s analyze why.

* * * * * * * * * *

Some straight men in mid-century America resented having to slave all day long at work for their wives. This resentment frightened some wives and provided an incentive for them to endorse the traditional nuclear family structure. In the September 1963 issue of Playboy magazine, William Iversen argued in a whiny article, “Love, Death, and the Hubby Image,” that no sane woman would walk away from the life of being taken care of throughout decades of marriage, and no sane man would want to finance the venture.6 This negative view of marriage cast all women as freeloaders and gold diggers. Women intent on achieving a traditional marriage were and are understandably cynical of this version of their true motives. Kristin Luker’s 1985 book Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood shaped academic discourse for decades to come and dovetailed with Iverson’s view.7 In that work, Luker argued that people who oppose abortion most are people invested in a particular—almost mythical—vision of motherhood. Women without higher education are statistically more likely to relish their role as child-bearers—even to consider that role sacred. The only way such women can earn social applause is to announce that they are engaged or, later, pregnant. Working women—women with a college education and perhaps advanced degrees—are less likely to think of themselves first and foremost as child-bearers. Working women are more likely to support the use of contraception and abortions. Women who crave (or claim to crave, because they lack viable employment alternatives) the job of traditional mother have a vested interest in opposing anyone who undermines that job description or opens it up to others (e.g., surrogate mothers or gay dads). Two men raising a child together without a woman might threaten those women who viewed child rearing as an occupation suitable only for women. If women were no 36 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period longer necessary for that role, they necessarily suffered a loss of social prestige—or so Luker’s argument went. The argument has garnered significant support from scholars and remains as relevant in twenty-first-century America as it was in the mid-1980s. Working moms and divorced dads have supported gay men—particularly those gay men trying to raise children—more than stay-at-home moms have. Heterosexuals in what might be termed non-traditional families have an easier time understanding alternative families of the LGBT sort. The California vote on Prop 8 offers an excellent example in which to see this dynamic play out. In May 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that statutes barring same-sex marriage in California were unconstitutional. The state began granting same-sex marriages. This period of freedom for gay Californians, however, lasted only a few months. In November 2008 California voters narrowly passed a proposition to amend the state constitution such that same-sex couples could not marry in their state. The result in this traditionally liberal state surprised many commentators. After the vote, many suspected the Mormon community of having used its growing social and economic power to tip the scale. The suspicion proved correct: journalists rushed to uncover and publicize the extraordinary sums of money Mormon churches had raised to support the amendment. It seems that ordinary moms—straight women—played an important role here as well. In Prop 8 we see another example of straight women opposing gay men (and, in this instance, opposing gay women as well). Dave Fleischer, a Harvard-trained lawyer, worked for many years at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and then at the LGBT Center in Los Angeles. He compared the day-by-day polls to the day-by-day ads broadcast in the lead-up to Prop 8, and discovered the crucial vote of straight moms in preventing gay people from marrying legally.8 In red-state America, according to Fleischer, mommy rules over her domain and wants to keep it that way.9 That’s where she receives maximum financial protection, since it’s a man’s duty to provide for her while she raises his children. Mothers of school-age children became the decisive voting bloc in the Prop 8 struggle: late in the game, 300,000 moms switched their votes to oppose gay marriage in California. A televised political ad galvanized support for denying gay people the right to marry in California: the television commercial featured a little girl who brings home a book about Prince Charming.10 Prince Charming chooses a boy— not a girl—to ride off in the sunset with, to live happily ever after. It seems many traditional moms found the message threatening: girls could no longer expect to rely on the support of a male breadwinner. Men who raise children without a mother can scare moms who fear they will not be needed anymore, or at least not as much. This scenario can undermine a woman’s self-esteem and trigger fears about financial security. Some women integrate bread-winning and child-rearing. Family-values conservatives strive to protect motherhood from the challenge posed by a new model: The mommy role is not allowed flexibility, it seems. Artificial insemination, surrogacy, adoption: new medical and social arrangements threaten the old model. Antagonistic Women 37

A painful irony surfaces here. Childless couples have long been criticized as selfish; men and women who claim not to want children are too focused on themselves and on enjoying the good life.11 They can’t be bothered to pay their debt to society, which comes down to creating new Americans. Gay male couples cannot reproduce; they must either adopt or opt for a surrogate. It was unfair to criticize gay men for being selfish (just as they had earlier been criticized for being promiscuous) when gay men couldn’t have children. When gay men sought the legal right to adopt children, they were usually denied as unfit parents and role models to children. So much for the accusation that gay men are too selfish to bother with child-rearing. Americans with few professional and economic opportunities find an incentive to glorify child-rearing as a rather remarkable achievement, something they can be justly proud of. Luker’s argument still fascinates, in part because quite a few Americans arguably view their children as trophies. In any event, the very idea of a same-sex couple raising a child outraged mobs. The opposition of straight women to Prop 8 was not without precedent. Three decades before Prop 8, Anita Bryant made hers a name familiar to Americans from coast to coast. A former Miss Oklahoma who became a national spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission, in 1977 she fought an ordinance in Miami- Dade County, Florida, that would have made discrimination against gay men and women illegal. Bryant argued publicly that Dade County must be permitted to fire people discovered to be lesbian or gay, because gay people are predators who “recruit” children to join their ranks. As she claimed, “Gays can’t reproduce, they have to recruit.” Reverend Jerry Falwell of Virginia echoed this claim in his increasingly popular ministry. Bryant’s wrath apparently extended to the wildly popular music group The Village People. As I indicated in the discussion of Walter Jenkins in the previous chapter, this wacky but quite successful rock group mainstreamed campiness in the 1970s and introduced many rural Americans to now-familiar stereotypes of urban gay males. She reportedly sent President Jimmy Carter a telegram asking him to deport the French-born Jacques Morali of the Village People because of his corrupting influence on children.12 Bryant sought to become the spokeswoman of good mothers across America; mothers who had not worried much about the sexual futures of their sons found themselves fidgeting, reluctant to reject Bryant, who insisted that the social threat was real. My focus is indeed on straight women and gay men, but it is worth noticing that straight women may also oppose gay women in socially powerful roles. Think here of the 2012 Million Moms campaign against Ellen DeGeneres, who had been named a national spokesperson by JC Penney.13 Lesbian tennis players such as Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova can hardly be said to have enjoyed widespread support from straight women in the 1970s and 1980s either. Let’s move to the struggle over passing the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed amendment to the US Constitution that sought equal rights under the law for women, to see why straight women in droves hesitated to endorse the new model of femininity that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) seemed to champion (a new model popular with most lesbians). Then we’ll come back to gay men. 38 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Women v. Women

It is axiomatic that many gay men would have supported equal rights for women. The Equal Rights Amendment would have delivered new social protection to women, almost all of whom agreed that male privilege harmed them in important ways. Feminists—though not just feminists—fought for gender equality. Chapter 3 will delve into ways in which the women’s movement and the gay rights movement worked in tandem; here I focus on this important moment in the women’s movement. Some of the biggest opponents of the ERA were themselves women. On the night of June 30, 1982, about 1,400 opponents of the ERA assembled in the ballroom of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, to celebrate its defeat. After roughly a decade since the amendment was sent to state legislatures for ratification, the measure had failed to garner sufficient support to be added to the Constitution. Many among the jubilant would have opposed gay men as well. The reasons for opposing the ERA had been frequently repeated: women would be drafted into the military; public restrooms would become unisex; the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts would merge; and besides, women already had all the freedom they needed. Of particular concern was the threat the ERA allegedly created to the right to be a housewife. Many women worried that the ERA would undermine or make obsolete laws obliging husbands to provide for their families. Barbara Ehrenreich saw economic fears driving what she called the “anti- feminist” woman, the prototypical woman who fought the ERA. “In the ideology of American antifeminism, it is almost impossible to separate the distrust of men from the hatred of feminists, or to determine with certainty which is the prior impulse ….” The labor activist continued, “Distrust of men takes the socially more acceptable form of resentment directed at the would-be independent woman, who, in her selfishness, would undermine other women’s fragile privileges.”14 That is to say that women opponents of the ERA feared that men would no longer want to support women (their present or future wives) but would instead view women and children as burdens. If women could support themselves and their progeny, then a man needn’t bother. This is what drove quite a few women not only to oppose the ERA but also to view women who supported its passage as enemies. Women fighting for the ERA may well have caused other women to fear that, deep down: (1) they were just parasites who lived off their husbands (think of the Iverson essay I mentioned earlier); and (2) they were basically incompetent to hold down professional posts, should they ever try. It is reasonable to suppose that this anxiety may have motivated some women to dislike the ERA and the scary new world it presaged. The national figurehead of the anti-ERA movement was no male chauvinist pig but a well-educated and devoutly Catholic woman, Phyllis Schlafly. Of all her claims, the one that most angered women in favor of the ERA was likely that American women did not need any legal protection from men, for there was in fact no problem for women in employment discrimination, sexual assault prosecution, and family law generally.15 Schlafly was a dream come true for conservative men. Antagonistic Women 39

Here was an articulate woman endorsing the social architecture of patriarchy. And here was a massive obstacle to those women who complained about the difficulty of making it in “a man’s world.” Republicans campaigning against Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 seized upon the Walter Jenkins scandal and alleged that Democrats could not provide “moral leadership.” Promoting the nuclear family became a popular strategy for demonstrating leadership potential. Support for what came to be known as “family values” cast gay men and working mothers as a threat to social purity was also growing during the 1970s. Proponents of family values, such as Schlafly, eventually went so far as to divide America into two warring factions—those who supported family values and those who did not.16 It was enough to cast gay men as failures at masculinity; now, they became a sort of cancer, eating away at a healthy America. Gay men knew their enemy. A crowd estimated at 100,000 turned out for the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights on July 14, 1984. During the pre-rally festivities the night before, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (an irreverent group of female impersonators) performed a stage exorcism of a woman made up to resemble Schlafly (for whom any nun joke would likely have been offensive).17 Straight women and gay men may not have been working in concert with one another, but the coincidence of their movements—for gay rights and gender equality—became fuel for conservative fires. It was easy to lump the two threats together, even if gay men troubled Americans more deeply than professionally ambitious, politically ardent women.18 Decades later, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed these two factions for incurring the wrath of God to the point that he ordained the 9/11 bombings. How did these distaff opponents of the ERA view gay men? We lack extensive polling data. We have some evidence, however, that the “anti-feminist” woman was also anti-gay man. One woman, “who had flown to the event [in Washington, DC] from Lake Oswego, Oregon, feared that sexual equality would legitimate ‘homosexual marriages,’ and that the homosexuals, thus encouraged, would start reproducing.”19 The ERA ultimately floundered, having failed to attract enough public support for ratification. It should not seem far-fetched to attribute some of this failure to fear of gays. According to journalist Gail Collins:

The final nail in the ERA’s coffin was the suspicion that it was a vehicle for abortion and gay rights. While supporters of the amendment doubted that was true, most would have been happy if it was. The women’s rights movement had become deeply invested in the abortion issue and in the fight for gay equality. The new political forces that had risen up to challenge the ERA were opposed to both. In fact, many cared much more about fighting abortion and homosexuality than they did about constitutional amendments of any stripe.20

Traditional moms, presumably an overwhelmingly heterosexual groups, opposed the threat to motherhood allegedly embedded in gay rights. Note that the pivotal voice of Phyllis Schlafly made it impossible to draw a clear division between us (women) and them (men). If an articulate woman could convince crowds that 40 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period an apparent attack on men (i.e., the ERA itself) would hurt women, then it made sense to claim all Americans should sink the ERA. As Collins put it:

She [Schlafly] drove the pro-ERA forces crazy. They were used to thinking of themselves as the voice of American women, allied against the enemy: chauvinistic men. Having to fight against other women who depicted themselves as the true voice of their sex threw them off balance. And, of course, the fact that Schlafly was winning made it worst of all.21

Schlafly was not deterred when one of her sons later came out of the closet as gay. She did not abandon her conservative social stance because of her son. Surprising as it may seem, she enjoyed his public support for her crusade. Of course, quite a few straight women also oppose abortion. These protesters could also be considered antagonistic women of a sort. We lack data here, but it could well be that many women who opposed abortion also opposed gay marriage, as Schlafly certainly did. A reason for anti-feminist women to oppose gay men socially would be the assumption that gay men as a group tend to support abortion. The logic would go: gay men want sexual liberation, and even though gay men aren’t having sex with women (and consequently sending their girlfriends to abortion clinics), gay men do want to loosen sexual mores generally, and one result of greater sexual freedom would be abortion-on-demand. The Family Equality Council coalesced in the early twenty-first century to help coupled gay men fight for the legal right to adopt children. I tacitly invoke the approval of this advocacy group in Chapter 8, an analysis of women who volunteer to serve as surrogates to gay couples desiring children. To the extent that the basic goals of the Family Equality Council elicit sympathy from the majority of gay men in America, it is safe to say that gay men do indeed support reproductive freedom for women. Not surprisingly, the Family Equality Council appeals to few if any traditional moms.

A Different Kind of Antagonistic Woman

With respect to the general argument of this book—that gay men and straight women have cooperated in remarkable ways since the 1950s—it seems reasonable to conclude that the two groups have much in common. The literary critic Camille Paglia challenges such an assumption, and it is important to consider a view such as hers, which someone else may share. Because Paglia’s view of masculinity is rooted in the body, particularly gorgeous, rippling muscles, she has asserted: “Gay men and straight men have much more in common than do gay men with lesbians or straight men with straight women.”22 While she is correct that a good number of straight men do care quite a bit about the appearance of their bodies, it might be simple stereotype that gay men and straight women worry quite a bit more about appearances and weight gain and fashion sense than either straight men or lesbians do. The men Paglia has in mind, straight Antagonistic Women 41 men who care deeply about how they look, would come to be called “metrosexuals” shortly after she wrote the essay bearing that assertion. In another work Paglia argued that, “Cults of beauty have been persistently homosexual from antiquity to today’s hair salons and houses of couture,”23 and acknowledged the link I have in mind. Paglia might qualify as another example of an “antagonistic woman” in a broader sense as well. She has contended elsewhere that gay men were more interesting individuals back in the 1950s, when social pressure kept almost all of them in the closet. Much as the sand in an oyster shell creates a pearl, so did the social oppression confronting gay men in the early twentieth century produces artistic and musical gems. The closet made gay men fascinating, if miserable. Although everyone would like to be considered interesting, the closet will be too high a price for most gay men in the twenty-first-century West. Then there is the accusation of whining. In the late twentieth century, many gay Catholics in the United States lobbied their religious leaders to soften institutional opposition to homosexuality. Paglia wrote in the early 1990s, “As a lapsed Catholic of wavering sexual orientation, I have never understood the pressure for ordination of gay clergy or even the creation of gay Catholic groups. They seem to me to indicate a need for parental approval, an inability to take personal responsibility for one’s own identity.”24 Paglia essentially accused organized gay Catholics of pouting. In Paglia, then, we see that a community of all the straight women and all the gay men would hardly be the peaceable kingdom. Paglia really has nothing useful to say about gay men with straight women. Beyond that, it is far from clear that gay men have more in common with straight men than with straight women. Even if it were, it would still be worthwhile pondering with gratitude the goodwill straight women have shown gay men since the 1950s. I have not said much about the loneliness many gay men felt while lying about their sexual orientation. It is worth remembering what the closet was like. Legal scholar William Eskridge has summed up the anxiety as follows:

The homosexual in 1961 was smothered by law. She or he risked arrest and possible police brutalization for dancing with someone of the same sex, cross-dressing, propositioning another adult homosexual, possessing a homophile publication, writing about homosexuality without disapproval, displaying pictures of two people of the same sex in intimate positions, operating a lesbian or gay bar, or actually having oral or anal sex with another adult homosexual …. Misdemeanor arrests for sex-related vagrancy or disorderly conduct offenses meant that the homosexual might have her or his name published in the local newspaper, would probably lose her or his job, and in several states would have to register as a sex offender. If the homosexual were not a citizen, she or he would likely be deported. If the homosexual were a professional—teacher, lawyer, doctor, mortician, beautician—she or he could lose the certification needed to practice that profession. If the charged homosexual were a member of the armed forces, she or he might be court-martialed and would likely be dishonorably discharged and lose all veterans’ benefits.25 42 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Viewed from the twentieth century, much of what antagonistic straight women did appears cruel. Of course, they would have countered that sometimes one must be cruel to be kind. Paglia, herself a lesbian, doesn’t seem to be actually pushing gay men into the closet. She’s simply playing the provocateur by arguing that gay men were more interesting when they were closeted. She is useful in this discussion only to the extent that she represents the view of other women. We can question whether she does speak for others or whether she is simply trying to be provocative. The closet is too awful to joke about, and wishing gay men back into it constitutes a social problem.

* * * * * * * * * *

Like Paglia, Susan Sontag, the celebrated New York intellectual, also enjoyed sexual relationships with women. And like so many of the other women discussed in this book, Sontag was Jewish. And so it comes as something of a surprise to hear Sontag described as unfriendly toward gay men. Sontag biographers Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock mention approvingly her friendship with Paul Thek, a gay man who died of AIDS. Sontag dedicated her influential book on AIDS,AIDS and Its Metaphors, to Thek.26 But Sontag, who preferred guarding her privacy to living openly as the lesbian partner of famed photographer Annie Liebowitz, lectured publicly on AIDS and enraged gays with her characteristically cool tone. The plague required alarm and anger, but Sontag would not meet the expectations of an increasingly angry mob. Beyond that, she pooh-poohed superlative statements and dire predictions, the very stuff of the arsenal of AIDS activists. Her use of the words “homosexual” and “sodomy” sounded tinny, and her avoidance of the word gay baffled gay men, who must have constituted the lion’s share of her readers. These Sontag biographers offer a particular passage fromAIDS and Its Metaphors (1989) as evidence of bad faith on Sontag’s part:

Of course, between the perennial official hypocrisy and the fashionable libertinism of recent decades there is a vast gap. The view that sexually transmitted diseases are not serious reached its apogee in the 1970s, which was also when many male homosexuals reconstituted themselves as something like an ethnic group, one whose distinctive folkloric custom was sexual voracity, and the institutions of urban homosexual life became a sexual delivery system of unprecedented speed, efficiency, and volume. Fear of AIDS enforces a much more moderate exercise of appetite, and not just among homosexual men. In the United States sexual behavior pre-1981 now seems for the middle class part of a lost age of innocence—innocence in the guise of licentiousness, of course. After two decades of sexual spending, of sexual speculation, of sexual inflation, we are in the early stages of a sexual depression. Looking back on the sexual culture of the 1970s has been compared to looking back on the jazz age from the wrong side of the 1929 crash.27 Antagonistic Women 43

True, Sontag does come across as somewhat moralistic (this specifically of her use of the word “licentiousness”). The biographers are not exaggerating when they raise the question of wholeheartedness, for Sontag resembles an old-fashioned enthusiast for the evils of the Seven Deadly Sins (among which fornication figures). A woman who became famous by analyzing gay camp did not seem to understand gay life at a crucial juncture in the fight against AIDS. While she was not exactly antagonistic to gay men, the disappointment some gay leaders felt hurt almost as much as antagonism would have. Despite the arguably prudish choice of the word “licentiousness” (keep in mind Sontag’s noted mastery of the English language), it could not have been that she aimed to sabotage the psyche of sexually active—even very active—gay men. A safer conclusion suggests itself: In contrast to the skyscraper generosity of Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Sontag meted out sympathy for gay men sparingly.

* * * * * * * * * *

If nothing else, we see through these few examples the difficulty of casting antagonist women as wholly bad or sympathizers as wholly good. The “halo effect” described by psychologists works both ways: the people we consider good aren’t thoroughly good, and the people we consider bad aren’t simply rotten.

The Social Influence of Women

It would be a mistake to suppose that all straight (or lesbian) women support gay men, just as it would be foolish to hold that all gay men do. Fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (both openly gay) publicly opposed the idea of gay men obtaining children through surrogates and hurt the feelings of Elton John, among many other gay men.28 The Italian style icons found the practice unnatural. So much for the idea of all gay men sticking together in a united coalition. According to the madonna/whore complex, Western society has sometimes divided women into two disparate categories. The media does this less often, but fascination with the black-and-white division remains. The Danish director Lars von Trier, for example, created a number of films around a female character who is effortlessly virtuous. Judging from his films, this gay man seems fascinated by women. von Trier’s heroines—as in Dancer in the Dark or Breaking the Waves or Dogville—invariably suffer unjustly at the hands of vicious neighbors or colleagues. The heroine is always obvious. In real life, however, it can be difficult to agree on what a heroine looks like. To many in America, Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly were heroes. It bears mentioning that it can also be difficult to identify a socially oppressed man in need. Sometimes the man we take to be gay isn’t really so. Straight men in stereotypically gay professions (e.g., dancers such as Peter Martins, Alexander Godunov, and Mikhail Baryshnikov; a countertenor such as Iestyn Davies) may 44 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period find themselves the recipients of help straight women might gladly give but which is curiously misplaced. Bullies may spit even on a heterosexual hairdresser or ballet dancer or opera singer, but the joke is on the bullies. I don’t mean to imply that Phyllis Schlafly or Anita Bryant would have bullied a man in a profession socially coded as effeminate, only to raise the possibility that a “fag hag” may rush in to sympathize with a man whose sexuality will come as a disappointment. Times change, and it is worth noting that Anita Bryant abandoned her campaign and changed her mind about gay men. Schlafly never did and probably represents an increasingly small (but still very important) minority of straight women. When a gay man moves to a new place and looks for friends, it is reasonable for him to assume that the random straight women he meets will not rise up to use his sexuality against him. In this chapter and the previous one, I rely only partly on a “great woman” theory of social change, such that some influential women (such as Elizabeth Taylor and Lady Bird Johnson) inspire other women to help gay men. I expand the “great woman” theory to include faceless, ordinary women who quietly did the same thing—independent of any sort of organized grass-roots movement. It was more like following a particular fashion, a way of dressing or speaking or holding oneself. At the same time, I recognize that some other women—both great and ordinary—manipulated whatever social influence they could muster to impede the advancement of gay men. Chapter 3

TWO MOVEMENTS: WOMEN AND GAY RIGHTS

With little effort we can see Elizabeth Taylor as a strong-willed woman comfortable with gay men. In 1959 she had already won critical acclaim for her starring role in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She would have known, as everyone who came into contact with him did, that Tennessee Williams was gay. She played the controversial role of Maggie, a southern woman married to a man who has no sexual interest in her and who is pining for his deceased high school buddy. Prompted by the Legion of Decency, the Production Code had forced Williams to bowdlerize the film, removing references to the husband’s homosexuality. If you read the play (as it had been performed on Broadway) and then see the film, you can hardly fail to notice the removal of the gay references. In fact, it is a little difficult to understand why Brick (the husband, played by Paul Newman) will not get into bed with Maggie, who appears only in a revealing white slip for the first fifteen minutes of the film. Viewers are left to wonder if depression or incessant drinking is to blame. In 1959 Taylor eagerly struck out on her own as soon as her contract with MGM expired. Her friend Monty was struggling with the addictions described in Chapter 1, and she struck a bargain with producers for Suddenly, Last Summer to hire Clift, whose face had been scarred by the 1956 automobile accident also recounted in Chapter 1. How odd it must have felt for Taylor to play the role of a closeted gay man’s cousin in Suddenly, Last Summer. The actor who played the doctor assigned to silence her account of how her gay cousin Sebastian had died was himself a closeted gay man, Montgomery Clift. Beyond that, the woman who played Taylor’s ferocious aunt (the mother of the gay cousin) was Katharine Hepburn, a lesbian. The film was released just months before the birth control pill, recently invented in Massachusetts, hit the American market in 1960. The pill in part launched what came to be known as the sexual revolution. To some degree, women became more sexually independent in the 1960s. The spirit of liberation no doubt fueled enthusiasm for the women’s movement in that decade. Because the gay Sebastien came to a horrific end in the play, the Production Code Administration (PCA) allowed a much franker depiction of a gay theme than they had allowed the previous year, when Tennessee Williams (the same author) saw the release of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This was progress. It would be a mistake to 46 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period infer that most gay men across America were coming out of the closet at this time. Despite a flourishing subculture in places like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, gay men were blackballed as deviants (which was part of Montgomery Clift’s predicament). It was precisely because so very many gay and bisexual men consciously chose to remain in the closet that they were socially vulnerable and, in many instances, benefitted from the kindness of straight women. Remember that Jenkins had first been caught soliciting sex in a men’s room in 1959. There is no record of Jenkins being arrested for this again until 1964, which might suggest a frightened Jenkins had stopped cruising for sex. Taylor would have known that the closet could divide gay men, prevent them from banding together. Fear of being discovered would have compelled them to avoid each other. It took some social defiance for a woman to befriend a man whispered about, which is not at all to suggest that only a feminist would take this step. Elizabeth Taylor defies attempts to classify her as a feminist. While Elizabeth was making bold career choices, playing characters who had gotten too close to gay men, she was leading a fairly traditional personal life. Every time she married a new husband, she would gush in interviews that she had never wanted to be more than Mrs. ______(fill in the blank with the name of the man she was marrying). She would claim that she was no longer searching for her identity but had found it in her marriage.1 It seems Taylor was a die-hard romantic; she didn’t have to play the off-screen role of dewy-eyed bride, but she kept choosing to do so. She was herself divided in roughly the same way social politics of the 1960s were. Even at her most conventional, though, she never disrespected gay men. It will be useful to take a very quick glimpse of the social landscape of America in the 1960s and 1970s to understand better Taylor’s heroism in regard to Montgomery Clift. She might have been happy to champion Tennessee Williams as well, but he, like Gore Vidal, who wrote the screenplay for Suddenly, Last Summer, was quite comfortable out of the closet. Williams didn’t need a confidante (although virtually everyone in the world would have liked to be seen with Liz Taylor). You can’t force lasting friendship: it either happens or it doesn’t. The bond between Taylor and Clift depended to some extent on the traditional gender roles and sexual ethics the two actors undermined by the very way they lived, worked, and loved. In another decade, Taylor and Clift might not have been so close. We’ll see that, starting in the 1960s, most gay men sympathized with the women’s movement and that cross-fertilization strengthened both causes. Both movements were largely white and middle-class; both took place on the coasts, not in the heartland. Women and gay people in rural America—along with people of color everywhere—do not fit readily into the narrative that follows here.

Betty Friedan

This chapter aims to show that the women’s movement and gay rights movement overlapped in mutually productive ways in the late twentieth century. The chapter also provides historical context for the examples already mentioned in the Two Movements: Women and Gay Rights 47 previous two chapters. I focus on “second wave feminism,” generally thought to have coalesced after the publication of Betty Friedan’s 1963 work The Feminine Mystique. Second wave feminism relied on consciousness-raising groups, protests, and law suits to achieve its social and political goals. Betty Friedan, a prominent leader of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s, did not support gay rights. For the most part, the growing gay rights movement championed the women’s movement during the same decades, although the two groups occasionally clashed. By the 1980s, most of the conflict had disappeared. Both movements consciously aimed to transform values, gender roles, and senses of entitlement in the late twentieth century. What it meant to be a woman was up for debate. The answers to this question colored the separate but germane question of what it meant to be a gay man. Individuals rooted in social networks of religion, gender, ethnicity, and political alliances joined together to expand the realm of opportunities available to women and gay men. Lifting restrictions that no longer seemed fair was an important goal. Of course, not all women participated in this process. For gay men, the participation rate was even lower, given the significant percentage who chose to remain in the closet, living as straight men with wives and children. Quite a few scholars have analyzed both of these movements. Perhaps no one has illuminated the friction between the women’s movement and the gay rights movement more effectively than Linda Hirshman. Her work focuses on the leaders of the respective movements (resembling but not endorsing the “great man theory” of historical change), and not so much on the faceless followers. Her work is valuable for the obvious reason of alerting us to the tension between these two movements, a tension that may have worked on the micro-level to prevent friendships between straight women and gay men. I’ll investigate what might be called identity-based separatism—the idea that each social movement must fend for itself—and argue that mutual support between women and gay men could still triumph. Despite what Betty Friedan may have been proclaiming, many feminists and gay men bonded. Of course Friedan didn’t speak for the entire movement; with rare exceptions, no leader ever does. And yet, she exercised considerable influence as a researcher, writer, speaker, and political activist. It is worth noting, given the prominence of Jews in Chapter 1, that she was also Jewish. Friedan openly opposed the advancement of both gay men and lesbians. It would be misleading to judge her as homophobic, as she was fighting for the survival of the women’s movement in the 1960s. She faced terrible odds. One way adversaries sought to undermine her was to charge that all the women in the movement, as well as most of those who sympathized with it, were lesbian. Friedan had to rebut that charge if her movement were to succeed, and so she openly opposed the gay liberation movement. Beyond that, she no doubt understood that some of the Americans to whom she appealed for support might be willing to countenance one of the embattled groups, but not both. Friedan could not save the world (other groups, such as blacks, were also in trouble), and so she had to focus on her own cause for strategic reasons. Other feminists generally endorsed Friedan’s repudiation of the gay rights movement. 48 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

That leaders of the women’s movement may have openly opposed gay people does not mean that individual women were not befriending and supporting “sissy boys” in their schools and neighborhoods. In countless face-to-face interactions and confrontations across America, a significant number of straight girls and women may have helped gay boys and men, perhaps without fully realizing that those picked on were in fact what they were accused of being (i.e., gay or bisexual). In this way too, the personal was political. What individual women did, how they acted, came to have broader social implications capable of dividing and mobilizing groups. It’s not as though these lone actors were recruiting other girls and women to follow them; rather, these actions indicated loyalties and possibilities which came to inspire and mobilize sympathizers of the sort I discuss in Chapter 6.

Social Movement Theory

Various scholars, particularly sociologists and political theorists, have analyzed what might be termed “bottom-up” (as opposed to top-down) changes in social organization.2 Scholars studying social movements aim to explain how movements such as women’s rights and gay liberation change the way we understand basic assumptions such as the place of women in a society and the support or tolerance to which gay people are entitled. How, for example, do we move from a social dynamic in which gay-bashing or racism is tacitly permitted to one in which it is openly deplored? How can we change popular attitudes such that once a school teacher or public figure utters a homophobic slur, he will forfeit his job and social standing? A revolt in attitudes becomes necessary. People on the streets talking to one another, radio programs, television interviews, grassroots activism: these forces can end ostracism and usher in a different way of thinking. Of course, it remains possible that people in the new regime are just faking it, that is, they still hold the old beliefs but now bow to political correctness and profess to agree with the (alleged) majority. The point is that grievances mold values, loyalties, and obligations. A movement, generally speaking, usually arises from a collective identity among similarly situated individuals. Think of a movement against abortion, drunk driving, smoking in restaurants, or freeway construction opposition groups. Social movements start with an agreement among people that something is wrong on the social landscape. Of course, a movement borne of protest can beget other movements, which are sometimes referred to as counter-movements (think of Focus on the Family, an influential group of evangelical Christians determined to prevent gay marriage specifically and enforce conservative social values generally, which arose in response to gay liberation). A good model of a social movement is E. P. Thompson’s 1966 studyThe Making of the English Working Class, which depicted both class and class consciousness as an ever-changing process.3 He theorized the common experiences of low-wage factory workers in cultural terms. What these workers shared sprang from value systems, tradition, and opposition identity (e.g., upper class/lower class). The Two Movements: Women and Gay Rights 49 consciousness of a class can vary over time in different ways. The sense that they were being dominated as a class fueled their collective work to end the oppression. Straight women, already less psychologically predisposed to fear gays, sometimes deployed the influence they had with straight men to prevent or curb bullying of effeminate guys. And gay-suspected friends of females affirmed their confidantes as more than just sex objects (which is not to suggest that being a sex object is necessarily something to cry about). Neither movement involved violence, for the most part. True, policemen did raid gay bars and forcibly cart off patrons in paddy wagons. And true, the Stonewall riot did involve fighting back against police. But the level of violence never rose to what Americans saw in, say, the Black Panther riots. So, what problems did the gay rights encounter? Hirshman notes several important ones. It is not enough for a despised and marginalized minority to harp on equal rights in their private corners, for individualism is never the way to equality. Its members must recognize themselves as an oppressed class and act collectively. “If there was ever to be a gay revolution, gays could not walk away from the differences that divided them from the majority into some imagined paradise of universal human rights.” Homosexuals in the 1960s and 1970s didn’t have their own land or economy, but in some urban circles they had a unique culture and a kind of language.4 Through fashion, interior décor and sympathy offered over kitchen tables, gay men learned how to make themselves appreciated—indeed sought after—by some straight women. Now let’s take a brief look at the profiles of these two movements.

Women’s Movement

It would be a mistake to assume that either the women’s movement or the gay rights movement began in the 1960s. Here are a few key dates in the women’s movement in the United States:

1920 Women receive the right to vote. 1960 Birth control pill arrives on US market. 1966 Formation of National Organization of Women (“NOW”). 1972 Passage of ERA by both houses of Congress.

* * * * * * * * * *

It would be a mistake to assume that all those sympathetic to the women’s movement huddled under the umbrella of the Democratic Party. Leading conservatives of the 1950s and 1960s (such as Barry Goldwater and Robert Taft) worked hard to contain the power of the federal government and to give individuals more liberty. As Gail Collins has put it:

Women’s rights had traditionally been a Republican issue, and one with which many conservatives sympathized. It had been the Democrats, with their base in 50 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

heavily Catholic urban districts and the South, who were more likely to resist anything that encouraged women’s independence from the home. But both parties were changing, and the passage of the ERA by those huge congressional majorities in 1972 might be a good marker for the point when the Democrats and Republicans crossed paths on women’s issues, one moving toward the cultural left while the other moved right.5

Since the 1980s, most sympathizers with the woman’s movement or the gay rights movement have been on the Left. The right has galvanized its base by opposing these movements (albeit in different ways). As I’ve indicated, Betty Friedan (b. 1921), a feisty mother from New York City, emerged as the spokesperson for the women’s movement in the 1960s. She was not exactly a radical, at least not in every sense. With regard to gay men, Friedan shared the opinion of the vast majority of Americans; she wanted nothing to do with them. According to biographer Daniel Horowitz:

Friedan also cast her discussion of sexuality in terms that would appeal to conventional, middle-class, heterosexual suburban women. She promised that emancipation from the tensions of the feminine mystique would insure that women intensified their enjoyment of sex …. She was concerned that some mothers’ misdirected sexual energies turned boys into homosexuals. She warned that for an increasing number of sons, the consequence of the feminine mystique was that “parasitical” mothers would cause homosexuality to spread “like a murky smog over the American scene.” Friedan’s homophobia was standard for the period and reflects the antipathy to homosexuality widely shared in Popular Front circles. Her emphasis on feminized men and masculinized women echoed stereotypes widely held in the 1950s. What makes her perspective especially troubling is that it came at a time when reactionaries were hounding gays and lesbians out of government jobs on the assumption that “sexual perversion” had weakened their moral character, making them more likely to break national security due to blackmail.6

In Friedan we find a useful example of how separate these two movements were. Straight, white, Christian men ruled America in the 1960s, and they were the ones responsible for oppressing gay men. Straight women may or may not have been willing collaborators; a wife who had no job of her own was more likely to assent to her husband’s (and her culture’s) view on gay men than a gainfully employed, independent career woman. References to “the women’s movement” should not paper over the sometimes deep class distinctions between feminists. Gay men might have intuitively thought of women as natural allies, given that they too were fighting men in power. But, at least with regard to the gay rights movement, the women’s movement under Friedan’s leadership shored up prevalent American aversion to homosexuality. Beyond that, Friedan did nothing to undermine the oddly persistent belief that homosexuality can spread like the flu, that heterosexual men were only ever a few beers away from diving into bed with the first muscle man they could grab. Two Movements: Women and Gay Rights 51

Friedan occasionally sparred with Gloria Steinem, a Jewish feminist portrayed by the media as a rival to Friedan’s ascendancy within the movement. Steinem, a one-time Playboy bunny, was young and photogenic, unlike Friedan. The two leaders were not fast friends. “It is most frequently assumed that Friedan’s resentment of Steinem stems from simply envy of Steinem’s looks.”7 Meanwhile, a 1970 New York Times magazine article dubbed Friedan “The Mother Superior to Women’s Lib” and she continued to attack lesbians, Bella Abzug, and feminist sympathizers who appeared radical. In time, Friedan softened and reached out to lesbians. She attended the International Women’s Year Conference in 1977. Tensions must have been high at that conference in Houston, as a competing Pro-Family Rally sponsored by Phyllis Schlafly convened across town. Of course, Friedan and Schlafly were political enemies; each sought to discredit the movement of the other. A resolution supporting abortion rights passed easily at the International Women’s Year Conference (Roe v. Wade had just been decided four years earlier). A resolution to support gay rights stirred even more anxiety than the one on abortion. To the surprise of many, Friedan openly endorsed gay rights: “As someone who has loved men too well, I have had trouble with this issue,” Friedan said after having recently been divorced. “Now my priority is passing the ERA. And because there is nothing in it that will give any protection to homosexuals, I believe we must help the women who are lesbians.” Friedan did not reach out to gay men, though. She was trying to make the women’s movement more inclusive, not to make a political statement about the dignity of men who happened to be gay. Friedan was delivering two messages: one was in favor of the resolution (which passed), and the other was to remind the world that the Equal Rights Amendment was not about gay liberation. The idea that the ERA was a veiled attempt to liberate and empower gay women had turned many Americans against the ERA. “I thought we had it made until Phyllis Schlafly came into the state with those films of the San Francisco gay parade,” said Minnette Doderer, the former president pro tempore of the state senate in Iowa and a proponent of women’s equality. “She spent twenty- five thousand dollars to put those on television and to say, ‘This will happen in Iowa if you get the Equal Rights Amendment.’” Some thirty years later, social conservatives would derail support for Prop 8 in California through a similar, late- in-the-game strategy. The women in Houston had already witnessed the antigay forces cow Florida. Miami-Dade County had been roiled by what the Miami Herald called in an editorial “hysteria more appropriate to the seventeenth century than the twentieth” over an ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals in housing and employment. The improbable leader of the movement to repeal the ordinance was Anita Bryant, a 37-year-old former Miss America runner-up who was best known as the spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission, chirping, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine,” on TV commercials. Suddenly, there she was on the barricades, warning Floridians that gays were out to seduce their kids into a decadent lifestyle: “Since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must freshen their ranks with our children. They will use money, drugs, alcohol, any 52 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period means to get what they want.” As I indicated in Chapter 2, Bryant was no friend to the gays (at least not until after her divorce). Bryant, whom I introduced in Chapter 2, sang, quoted the Hebrew Scriptures, and hinted that Florida’s ongoing drought might be a punishment from God. One interesting part of the controversy was the low profile of gay women. “Most of the time, Bryant has concentrated her fire on male homosexuals, rather than lesbians, partly because her biblical texts deal with men,” wrote Newsweek. “In addition, lesbians seem less of a threat to the foes of gay rights. Fewer in number than male homosexuals, lesbians are generally less visible in Miami and other cities—and they are playing only a modest role in the gay coalition that [gay rights leader Jack] Campbell has assembled.” It was not unusual for gay women to be left on the fringe of the early gay rights movement, although many lesbians have said they were better served by the gay rights movement than by the women’s movement. This is so because the women’s movement defined its goals in terms of men, whereas lesbians tend to define their goals in terms of women. (In her 2003 book Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective, Australian radical lesbian feminist Sheila Jeffreys argued that lesbian culture had been negatively affected by the pernicious influence of the gay male subculture of dominant/ submissive sexuality.)8 Many women claimed that homosexual men behaved like men first and fellow gay rights activists second, and marginalized women when they tried to work together. However, the fact that gay women weren’t seen as a major target of Bryant’s crusade did not mean they were not affected. After the antidiscrimination ordinance was defeated by an enormous margin, Newsweek reported that a lesbian who had worked as an executive secretary in the county government for fifteen years lost her job the morning after the vote. And with Bryant’s help, the antigay alliance successfully lobbied to bar gay Floridians from adopting children. While other towns followed Miami’s lead in repealing antidiscrimination statutes, a backlash against the backlash was also under way. Voters in Seattle refused to repeal their city’s gay rights ordinance (passed in 1973), and California voters defeated a 1978 initiative (the “Briggs Initiative”) that would have led to the firing of gay teachers. Bryant’s career, which had been based on her pleasant persona more than any extraordinary talent, floundered. A few years later, she divorced her husband and told the Ladies’ Home Journal that she felt a new kinship with feminists: “I can see how women are controlled in a very ungodly way.” As far as homosexuality went, Bryant said, “I’m more inclined to say live and let live.”9 Bryant, like Friedan before her (and allegedly the disco queen Donna Summer after her), ultimately stopped fighting gays and learned to live with them.

The Continuum: Women’s Rights and Gay Rights

In the 1960s, being gay disqualified you from many jobs and social opportunities. Being a lesbian could disqualify you from the same privileges a place in the women’s movement to boot. The internal inconsistency of women refusing to Two Movements: Women and Gay Rights 53 liberate lesbians eventually gave way, as I’ve noted. The fall of a prominent feminist may have accelerated the transformation. Let’s circle back now to the Equal Rights Amendment, which I discussed in Chapter 2. A major goal of the women’s movement was the passage of the ERA. In the previous chapter I did not mention Kate Millet, who emerged as an influential figurehead in the 1970s.Time magazine ran her portrait on its cover in 1971 (she had refused to sit for a photograph). As the media fawned on her and she became a superstar. By Thanksgiving of that year, the media had discovered she was involved in a lesbian relationship and used that knowledge to discredit her and undermine her much discussed book Sexual Politics. Once again, a dogged connection between the women’s movement and lesbianism raised its head. According to Millet, opponents of the ERA tried to paint all supporters as lesbians and gay men. She defiantly retorted that the women’s movement and the gay rights movement agreed on theoretical points. After Millet fell from grace, Gloria Steinem became the new face of the women’s movement. Conveniently enough, Steimem was not only heterosexual but physically attractive as well. This chapter, like this book, focuses on the United States. It is worth mentioning that women in other countries were fighting a similar battle at roughly the same time. The Australian feminist Germaine Greer gained some traction in the United States during the 1970s, particularly after the publication of her widely discussed book The Female Eunuch (1970). She had distinguished herself as a forceful thinker while still an undergraduate at Cambridge University. She assumed leadership in her home country as well as in the UK, eventually. Through her writing, she had already established herself as a bawdy woman who liked to laugh and enjoy life. In January 1972 Greer, a heterosexual, spoke up for gay rights at a forum on sexual liberation at Sydney University. She stood out on the stage, which included a gay group, in part because she held a bottle of whisky. When informed that this was the first public appearance of a gay liberation group in Australia, the audience applauded. Sex acts between men were still illegal, and discrimination and hostility still governed the continent. She declared that gay liberation and women’s liberation were part of a continuum. In a defiant and defamatory act of gay solidarity, she went on to repeat the widespread rumor that Australia’s conservative prime minister, Billy McMahon, was gay: “It’s not a put-down saying he’s a homosexual. That’s the best thing about him.”10 Greer’s power may never have rivalled Friedan’s or Steinem’s, but she contributed much to the women’s movement; not least among her accomplishments was an insistence on viewing the women’s and gay rights movements as two parts of a whole. Greer may well have been out in front of the American continuum, such as it was. Both movements gradually gathered steam, but it seems safe to say that Hollywood showed more kindness to women (by featuring them in increasingly more assertive roles) than gay men. Many gay men in the 1970s would cultivate a macho image, one that curiously aped the hyper-masculine figures who objectified women as sexual targets and airheads. All this is to say that the continuum was at base complicated. 54 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Lastly, consideration of a continuum between the two movements should include attention to what gay men did for women. The historical record is not particularly helpful here. Why don’t gay men help women more often (e.g., sexual assault)? What happened to the coalition, however unofficial, between women and gay men? Two possible answers emerge:

1. Gay men feel they already do in fact help women’s causes—in part by being openly gay, they dare to stand up to straight men by admitting the possibility of sexual attraction and thereby undermine old notions of masculinity. 2. It could be a protest against patriarchy, or the established order: “we don’t contribute to this mess, so we shouldn’t have to clean it up.” Gay men assume everyone knows that gay men have no interest in stalking and sexually assaulting women; gay men see these sexual assaults as the equivalent of gay-bashing and oppose them both without ever bothering to trumpet the fact.

The reasons for the silence are complex. Gay men are not a monolithic group: They don’t always agree. No national organization represents them. And a man who happens to be gay is not necessarily a “Gay Man” 24/7. For years, gay and lesbian people struggled to persuade Americans that “gay” is just an adjective pertaining to the kind of sex they have, not a blanket description for everything they do. The fact that not everything a gay man says is “gay” speaks to the success of the gay rights movement to integrate gay men into mainstream America. This integration makes it more difficult to trace gay views or trends, to the extent it still makes sense even to speak of such things. Let’s take a brief look at the two movements before returning to the question of how, if at all, gay men returned the favor to women who supported them.

Gay Liberation

Although what we think of as the gay rights movement is only a few decades old, the gay community’s struggle for recognition began well before the 1960s. Here are a few salient dates:

1950 Mattachine Society (homosexual organization) is founded in Los Angeles. 1957 Wolfenden Report (UK) blesses what “consenting adults” do in private. 1969 Stonewall riots (New York City). 1970 Stonewall One-Year Anniversary March (arguably more important than the riots). 2003 Lawrence v. Texas de-criminalizes sodomy in all American states. 2015 Obergefell legalizes gay marriage throughout the United States. Two Movements: Women and Gay Rights 55

Scholars have already richly detailed the history of the gay rights movement.11 The point of this section is not to introduce new details, but only to set the stage for a discussion of how this movement—largely propelled by men—complemented the women’s movement. Among the various chroniclers of the gay rights movement, few scholars other than Hirshman have focused on the intersection point I have in mind. Hirshman’s research incorporates insights of many other scholars, but her book Victory also makes useful, new observations. Women and gay men may have a lot in common, but in the 1960s their differences were more salient. Homosexuality was widely perceived as a disease which could be cured; being a woman was not a disease, and there was no way out of being a woman. Hirshman also points out:

• The gay movement (specifically, the Mattachines) predated the second-wave feminist movement (p. 41). • The threat of Communism impeded the early gay movement, because fear of gay men bolstered fear of Communism (both threatened to undermine the fabric of society); early gay activists ended up conspicuously conforming to the ruling ethics of the day (which would presumably have been opposed to the liberation of women). • The advancement of blacks could sometimes work against gays: “Some of the most avid advocates of racial civil rights were among the biggest homophobes” (p. 52). Blacks sometimes flushed all whites out of their civil rights organizations, and most gay activists were white (important exceptions here are Bayard Rustin and, much later, Coretta Scott King).

The major point to be made here is that gay men did not initially and unequivocally support the women’s movement. This is strange, because gay activists should have been automatic cheerleaders for women. According to Hirshman, “Men who lived through the era of rising gay consciousness during the Sixties now say that feminism was one of the social movements that paved the way for gay liberation. Yet, there is almost no contemporaneous evidence of this in their diaries or correspondence before 1969. In thousands of pages, the many magisterial histories of the gay revolution discuss feminism only in the context of its effects on lesbians—the women of the ‘gay’ revolution” (p. 70). The gay critic John Lauritsen (b. 1939) has held that most gay men did indeed support the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s.12 Hirshman contends that, at least early on, the gay activists were following the fairly conventional script of early-Sixties movements. The self-invention at the heart of Sixties radicalism, particularly the sexual radicalism, enabled a handful of gay leaders to boldly come out. Combining litigation with direct action, they set about exploiting the divisions (e.g., class, political affiliation, and religion) in the white, Christian establishment that was oppressing them. Revolution seemed to be everywhere, as blacks and women and gays mounted protests. The various movements sometimes borrowed strategies from one another and from Mahatma Gandhi as well. In the gay rights movement, Hirshman considers these the three 56 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period core principles of a successful movement: (1) admit you’re different; (2) demand respect; and (3) take care of your own interests first. The “Gay Liberation Front” (GLF) began just after the Stonewall riots in 1969 in New York City and aimed to liberate all Americans sexually. It lasted barely nine months. Members of the GLF debated how, if at all, to ally themselves with other movements, such as the Black Panthers. Being categorized as sinful, crazy, criminal, and subversive, gays would have to fight for moral acceptance and respect. The fight for moral acceptance was the crucial priority, for gays could only convincingly claim the goods of the liberal state (i.e., security, freedom, and equal self-governance) after gaining moral acceptance. Proving that they were not mentally ill was a pivotal step in the political advancement of gay men and lesbians, and Evelyn Hooker contributed monumentally. As difficult as the black struggle certainly was, people of color did not have to convince the establishment that they were sane capitalists. Revolutions frequently create new values. It would take America a few more decades to value the love of gay men for each other and for their children. Two of the more serious threats to the social status of gay men became a scientific search for a “gay gene” and the ongoing “ex-gay movement.” Some Americans look askance at scientific attempts to prove that homosexuality has a genetic basis. True, such a discovery could exculpate gay men from the charge that they consciously choose to be gay (as opposed to giving in to the natural, heterosexual, orientation). But such a discovery could also enable scientists to identify and “save” any child with the gay gene, thus possibly stamping out gay people forever (which has more or less been the dream of homophobes). Some conservative Christians refused to grant gays moral acceptance. Every now and then stories of the “ex-gay movement” would appear in the press, but these stories were increasingly greeted with derision (“these guys are fooling themselves!”) and condemnation (especially when minors are targeted for conversion).

Gays and Women Unite!

The overarching argument of this chapter is that (a) the gay movement and the women’s movement overlapped, because both movements sought a new way of thinking about gender and family, and both movements were opposed to the hegemony of straight men; and (b) actors in the women’s movement helped the gay movement. A movement that wants to advance gay liberation and women does not necessarily appeal to both gays and women. It may attract only people who want to advance both gay liberation and the feminist cause, a much, much smaller group than either group alone. Not all gay men thought of themselves as gay men first and foremost; they might have been surgeons or Catholics or ex-cons. Women as well may have given some other aspect of their personalities prominence in their self-descriptions. The shifting fortunes of the women’s movements and the gay rights movement made interactions between women and gay men less easy to predict.13 Lesbians may not have been inside the Stonewall bar on the night of Two Movements: Women and Gay Rights 57 the riots, but it would not have taken much effort to understand what they had at stake in the struggle. Problems for gay men and straight women did not magically disappear after Stonewall: In the 1978 decision Smith v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., the Supreme Court defended an employer’s right to fire or not to hire males specifically because they were deemed “effeminate.” The case Strailey v. Happy Times Nursery School (1979) was brought by a male nursery school teacher who had been fired for his “effeminate appearance”; he wore an earring. It is worth noting that the job of nursery school teacher is stereotypically feminine. Consideration of past legal decisions provides, for us today, concrete examples of past social stigmas. Women no doubt recognized gay men as fellow-travelers. In a subsequent court case, masculine women fared better than gay men had under Strailey: In 1989, the Supreme Court disapproved of sex stereotyping, such that it was impermissible for an accounting firm to advise a woman being considered for partnership that she should “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled … wear jewelry,” and go to “charm school” (Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins). Stereotypically feminine behavior in both women and men has led to sexual harassment in the workplace and bullying in schools. The bullying usually came from straight men. Religion became a useful weapon (as it so frequently is) for straight men. In 1993 the Hawaii Supreme Court declared that resistance to “marriage equality”—a later term for a refusal to legalize gay marriage—constituted sex discrimination. Then, conservatives of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant stripes kicked into action and, not long after, Hawaii and thirty states passed laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Then the federal government passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), just in case Hawaii recognized gay marriage. Under DOMA, which the Supreme Court ultimately overturned in June 2013, a marriage in Hawaii would have no federal standing because of DOMA (the couple would receive no federal benefits either). Writing about the 2000 election battle in the United States, Time magazine columnist Margaret Carlson observed:

Two years ago, gay bashing was a staple of the Republican right. Lately, Republicans have largely gone quiet since their pollsters warned them to knock it off. Spreading stories about gays just wasn’t working. Too many people had come out, and too many blue-haired mothers in the heartland didn’t like hearing that their gay son or daughter was worthless or immoral.14

Carlson may have spoken too soon, as gay bashing returned as a political strategy in 2004. In any event, the Supreme Court would invalidate all anti-sodomy laws in the United States (in the decision Lawrence v. Texas). (In overturning Bowers v. Hardwick from 1986, the court used due process rather than equal protection in its majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas.) And so, in a remarkably short period of time, the gay rights movement went from being a hopeless case to a success. 58 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

When Women Make It

The Supreme Court decided the Windsor case, giving more protection to same-sex couples, in 2014. Obergefell followed in 2015, providing marriage equality to lesbian and gay couples. While dismissing the idea that gay men need saving in post-2014 America, I want to point out that various influential groups have at different times and in different ways taken as a given that women require rescuing too. Barbara Ehrenreich’s For Her Own Good documents at amusing length the extent to which American men in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (particularly doctors and politicians) endeavored to help “fallen” women and the distaff segment in general resist sliding down the slope to ruin.15 Most of this sort of “advice” has stopped or at least gone underground. A curious exception would be those Americans who believe that veiled Muslim women are all in need of rescue. And yet women were still notably vulnerable in the twenty-first century. The politically charged subject of sexual assault on campuses surfaced on the national stage in September 2014, when President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden announced the formation of “It’s On Us,” a national campaign to draw attention to the issue. They addressed the sexual problem in blunt and unequivocal terms. “Society still does not sufficiently value women,” the president said.16 Few would have contended that party-eager female undergraduates require rescue; the point was rather that university rules and regulations had long favored male undergraduates and unfairly swept under the carpet frightful charges leveled against men. It wasn’t so much women who required saving as the rules needed changing; still, the message was all too easily lost for people who blamed the female undergraduates for having placed themselves in harm’s way. In a book extolling women who helped gay men, it was only natural to ask whether men ever returned the favor. To continue here: How could gay men assist women in their social struggles from the 1960s onward? And in which struggles did women immerse themselves? How many gay men have volunteered for Planned Parenthood? How many gays have spoken up for underpaid, overworked maids and nannies? Or opposed human trafficking? Looking back to the 1970s and 1980s, did any NOW chapters combine with gay men or work on their issues? Not really. This lacuna indicates further the contentious nature of the personal rights groups—then and now. We’ll see that gay men took the same path feminist leader Betty Friedan did, namely, nurturing their own movement, keeping their focus, lest the movement be diluted and then disbanded (discussed later in this chapter). Gay men apparently lacked the time, energy, or interest to stick up for women’s causes en masse. But that doesn’t mean that gay men failed to bolster individual women suffering any number of social injustices—men accomplished this as friends, not as organizers. That a proper social movement never gelled does not mean that nothing of the sort ever happened. It did. It could be that gay men were genuinely, independently confident that straight women would work it out on their own, that they were beyond the point of needing a lifeguard to jump in the pool, as it were. It is possible to read the lack of help as a sign of respect for the wherewithal of independent women to stand up for themselves against a weaker opponent. Two Movements: Women and Gay Rights 59

Despite the varied and significant advances of the women’s movement in the United States, no one would say that women have achieved full social equality with men. When will we know they have? It is very difficult to say, but “equal pay for equal work” must certainly appear on the list of criteria.

A New Ballgame for Women and Gays Both

American women have come a long way since Betty Friedan’s youth. Early in the twenty-first century, women still suffered from nagging social problems, such as unequal pay schemes, catcalling in public spaces, drugs designed to increase their sex drive, and, especially on college campuses, sexual assault.17 Where were the gay men? What good do they do? The Introduction to this book pointed out how diverse—we might even say splintered— the gay male community had become by the time gay marriage was legalized. That community as well had come a long way since the 1950s (when it could scarcely be said there even was a gay community). By and large, gay men have left little in the way of documented assistance to their female fellow-travelers. There was no social movement on their part. Then again, straight women never exactly mounted a social movement to help gay men either; rather, the beautiful friendships they sometimes formed in the late twentieth century just blossomed, unplanned. Of course, America harbors a wide variety of groups which could be described as marginal or counter-cultural. We might wonder how any combination of groups got along, generally speaking, but I am interested in these two subsets. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, two prominent televangelists (Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell) publicly stated that God had orchestrated New York City’s destruction in order to punish feminists and homosexuals. A ridiculous claim, the idea holds a certain fascination. The popular television series Will & Grace had already bewitched quite a few American viewers by 2001—what did these two conservatives make of it? Though the two “moral leaders” never addressed how these damned groups get along, one wants to know the view from inside. From the outside perspective, it seemed the damned were either leading the damned or racing each other to the bottom of a pit of iniquity. How curious that any leaders of the Christian Right should lump together these two “rebel” groups. Was it because they seemed the two most threatening groups in America, or did the two share a special, internal connection? Or maybe both? This book praises women who have saved gay boys and men from bullies and conservative Christians. Those women were not necessarily part of the women’s movement, nor necessarily a grassroots struggle for social justice. Women and gay men supported each other in ways which defy easy classification.

* * * * * * * * * *

I have not sought to provide statistical analysis of a demographic change but rather to propose a social psychological explanation for individuals’ participation in 60 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period social movements. We know that both the women’s movement and the gay rights movement gradually succeeded, and it should not seem far-fetched to propose that feminists played a significant—if difficult to document empirically—role in the success of the gay rights movement. These problematic women did not address what would come to be known as a massive social problem in the 2010s: rape. Gay men do not rape. Beyond that, they spoke as if gay sex were obviously, automatically a horrible crime against the Christian God. Absent from their rhetoric was an issue which would assume enormous social significance in the United States: abortion. It could be argued that a woman who has an abortion is just as guilty as a man who has gay sex (this would be a very conservative argument, following St. Thomas Aquinas) or that a woman who has an abortion occupies an even lower moral position than a man who has gay sex (because she has supposedly committed murder). Absent from the rhetoric of problem women is nuance. Also missing is the notion that gay men might form stable, monogamous relationships (which is not to say that the only morally acceptable gay sex is that which takes place in a monogamous relationship). New understandings of and perspectives on both gay men and feminism have altered the social structure in which friendships begin and blossom. This is to say again and in another way that a “great woman” history of friendships with gay men must include sensitivity to the reigning culture in which any particular pairing evolved. Absorbed as Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift may have been by their own problems and ensconced as they were in a bubble of stardom that insulated them from the problems of other Americans, both stars would have been aware of the social changes unfolding around them. Clift needed Taylor more than she did him. And she, a heterosexual, also proved luckier than he: She would live to see the fruit of both the movements I have profiled in this chapter. For him, the two movements started too late. Chapter 4

LESBIAN CHARITY

In 1995, a close friend—a man who painted with brio and dreamt of artistic greatness—died from AIDS. He spent the last weeks of his life at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, a hospital where he told me lesbians volunteered in significant numbers. Hugh Steers, a blood relative of Gore Vidal, had distinguished himself academically at Yale before becoming a gay activist and full-time painter in New York. I found it thrilling to see the world through his eyes and felt moved by his admiration for lesbians. It might be assumed that gay men and gay women share a great deal in common and form an integrated community in larger American cities. As I tried to show in Chapter 3, though, gay men and lesbians frequently inhabit separate social spheres; this makes the charity of lesbians who devoted spare hours to terribly sick men all the more compelling. I have often thought about what I learned from Hugh. I have wanted to read more about the service lesbians provided for gay men during the height of the health crisis. I never saw anything. When I started this book, I thought it was time to try again. I reached out to (male) gay activists, to Facebook groups (such as alumni of the AIDS activist group ACT UP in New York and San Francisco), to the AIDS quilt community, and to the lesbian activist Amy Hoffman, whose book about her time caring for a gay man with AIDS was the most helpful publication I turned up. Each source told me the same thing—that gay women been an indispensable source of care for men with AIDS. Yet I struggled to find names of actual women who had been there to help. When most people hear of “care,” they think of medical attention. Activism is also a form of caring, albeit a different one. Not all activists would have necessarily served as caregivers to individual gay men (and of course, AIDS-afflicted groups other than gay men). Many caregivers, however, would have also participated in activism of one sort or another. AIDS activists frequently saw themselves as not only trying to change social disapproval and fear of the disease but also undermining a white model of power. Being white carried with it the presumption of heterosexuality and even Christianity, according to many sexual dissidents at the time. Activists from different social and racial backgrounds worked for various but usually interrelated social goals, such as gender equality and women’s health. Activists from these distinct movements jointly opposed the unstated American 62 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period notion that adultery, homosexuality, sadomasochism, and child abuse were basically all the same thing. The point is that lesbians were there, part of the fracas. Writing at the end of the 1990s, Nancy Stoller theorized that some lesbians may have stayed “out of AIDS” from the beginning because they were unconnected to gay men, did not see themselves at risk, or just wanted to avoid the whole thing.1 Stoller stressed the lack of a single, overriding goal of the many lesbians who worried about and acted to fight AIDS. And some lesbian activism may have been muted, indiscernible from our perspective. Indeed, some lesbians saw the very fact of living openly as a lesbian as a form of social activism (“the personal is political”), a move that could ultimately weaken social reluctance to recognize and counter the disease. Judy Macks and Caitlin Ryan have regretted the difficulty involved in finding out about lesbian contributions to the fight against the AIDS epidemic:

The pioneering contributions of lesbians have been lost or obscured as the written and oral history of AIDS has been reported in both the general and gay press. The involvement of lesbians in the formation of community-based AIDS organizations as direct service providers, fundraisers, community organizers, educators and activists has rarely been acknowledged. Yet that does not make our varied contributions any less real, historic or vital.2

Macks and Ryan were writing in 1988. In the quarter century since, little has changed: It is easy to overlook the role lesbians played in fighting the disease. Why has so much writing about AIDS skirted the contributions of lesbians? Infighting within the gay community might account for some of this neglect. And some lesbians complained openly about the sexism of gay men with whom they tried to work under the auspices of the activist group ACT UP.3 It would take a separate book to give proper credit to the contributions of lesbians; I try here only to nod to such beneficence appreciatively.4 That some lesbians giving care in the 1980s and 1990s criticize gay men for trying to run the gay world, as it were, only underscores the goodwill of women working in the trenches. While acknowledging lesbian contributions to activism, I want to focus on individual care-giving narratives. In Chapter 1, I distinguished between straight women, such as Elizabeth Taylor and Lady Bird Johnson, who had helped individual gay men, and straight women who had helped the entire gay male community. Both efforts deserve praise. The similarity extends to this chapter: It makes sense to view lesbian AIDS activists as friends to the entire gay male community (and, in fact, to all people, because anyone can contract AIDS). I want to put forth a couple of individual stories and, considering them together, thank the lesbian community. These are by no means the only stories of charity. My book deliberately focuses on friendships between straight women and gay men; yet neglecting lesbians altogether from such a project would be worse than a humble effort to acknowledge another, equally moving, story. Lesbian Charity 63

Lesbian Contributions

Lesbians have helped gay men in any number of different ways. The intellectual Sara Schulman, for example, has portrayed gay men sympathetically in novels. In a decidedly unsentimental book about AIDS, Schulman looked back over her literary career and mused:

Although I have spent thirty years of my life writing about the heroism of gay men, I have also come to understand their particular brand of cowardice. There is a destructive impulse inside many white gay men, where they become cruel or childlike or spineless out of a rage about not having the privileges that straight men of our race take for granted. They have grief about not being able to subjugate everyone else at will. Sometimes this gets expressed in a grandiose yet infantile capitulation to the powers that be—even at the expense of their own community.5

This quotation, not entirely sympathetic to gay men, indicates Schulman trying to think her way into the “gay male mind” (think of Meryl Streep’s assertion that straight men don’t want to think their way into the “female mind”). One sometimes senses in her work an overreaching contempt for gay white men and for white men in general. This literary lesbian makes her sympathy for despised men more appealing to skeptical or mainstream audiences by virtue of her capacity to see flaws in the population she endeavors to uplift. Beyond that, she broaches a topic many straight people preferred to ignore. Schulman helped make gay men visible. Visibility may not save a life, but it can lead to broad social change. Let’s consider a more obvious way of helping gay men. Late in the 1980s, a group of lesbians in San Diego banded together to provide blood for gay men who needed transfusions. The American media had bubbled with rumors that gay men were infecting the nation’s blood supply, endangering the health of untold thousands. Sexually active gay men had been forbidden from donating blood since the early 1980s, a policy that continues until today. And several tragic stories of hemophiliacs contracting HIV/AIDS through blood transfusions understandably gave Americans pause. The Women’s Caucus of the San Diego Democratic Club formed a new organization they called the “Blood Sisters.” An infected gay man might have gay male friends willing to donate blood, but of course another infected man could not help. Family members of infected men all too often failed to step forward and donate. No donation restrictions, however, had been placed on lesbians. The Blood Sisters organized their first drive on July 16, 1983, at the San Diego Blood Bank on Upas Street in Hillcrest.6 Here is another example of lesbians striving not only to stamp out anti-gay hysteria generally but also to help specific gay men. Various motives prompted lesbians to pitch in during the health crisis on which I have focused this chapter.7 Lesbians deserve praise for having helped to care for gay men during the crisis, as well as for the lovers these men sometimes left behind.8 Surviving lovers felt a new kind of loneliness in their grief. Parents who had shunned them or their now deceased partner would not have felt much sympathy. Lesbians, on the other hand, understood. 64 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

In an essay published in 1990, a lesbian activist asserted:

Although we are understudied, and virtually invisible to the public eye, dykes have a long history of being politically active and have brought tremendous energy to the AIDS activist movement. There are some feminists, in fact, who feel that we have devoted too much energy to AIDS, that it is drawing energy away from “lesbian issues,” and that we should disassociate ourselves from the crisis. But AIDS is a lesbian issue.9

The novels of Sarah Schulman may well have succeeded in drawing attention to such contributions, but they are just a beginning, a beginning that has not led (so far) has not led to further treatments of this bounteousness. Nancy Stoller has argued that women in general and lesbians in particular had special skills to bring to the AIDS response and that these skills benefitted “‘the guys,’ our gay brothers.”10 It is important to remember the difference between the women’s movement and lesbian activism. Speaking specifically about the Women’s AIDS Network (WAN) in the San Francisco Bay Area, Stoller observed that some lesbians explicitly opposed feminism:

They saw feminism itself as hostile to gay men (because feminism criticized the men for “camp,” or sexual promiscuity) or opposed to individual success. Their involvement was more often a result of connection to the gay male community and less a result of a political analysis. These women were sometimes unsympathetic to their more feminist coworkers, especially when they presented feminist agendas concerning services for women, interpreting such behavior as uncaring toward men.11

When a gay man encountered a lesbian nurturer in the midst of the epidemic, it would have taken some time for him to determine her political view of gay men. Alas, it may also have taken some gay men time to recognize the kindness of their lesbian caregivers. According to Jeannine DeLombard:

[D]espite the often voluntary nature of their involvement, many lesbians have mixed feelings about AIDS caregiving. Voicing an opinion commonly expressed by lesbian AIDS workers, Leah Chaplin says she believes that “if this epidemic had been the other way around, if the lesbian community had been affected, I don’t think you would have seen the same outpouring [from gay men]. I think it’s just the whole nature of women as caregivers versus men.”12

At least some lesbians see gay men as selfish, thankless. This perception is no doubt based in someone’s personal experience. Part of my motivation for thanking lesbians is to undo instances in which gay men were too preoccupied or distracted to do so themselves. The variety of women’s contributions to AIDS nurturing itself suggests some of the depth and breadth of lesbian charity during the health crisis. A proper account Lesbian Charity 65 of this charity would solicit as many interviews with lesbians as possible. And an even fuller account of women’s contributions during the AIDS crisis would also demarcate the extent of straight women serving as caregivers.

A Lesbian Caregiver Turned English Professor University of Texas English professor Ann Cvetkovich (b. 1957) experienced ACT UP meetings firsthand in 1980s New York. Her 2003 bookAn Archive of Feelings recounts the thrill of being young and active on the front line of this organization. The book usefully includes interviews with other lesbians who were there at the same time.13 Through Cvetkovich’s interviews I obtained a fuller idea of what my friend Hugh had been talking about before his death in the same city. Cvetkovich found herself in New York City during the health crisis and delighted in the discovery of ACT UP. She spent less time in ACT UP activism after her two male friends (the two men were lovers) got sick. She became “intrigued by the strong presence of women and lesbians in ACT UP, some of whom were working specifically on women and AIDS issues.” She worries that the history of ACT UP is in danger of vanishing; further, she writes, “Once again lesbians, many of whom came to ACT UP with considerable political experience, seem to be some of the first to disappear from ACT UP’s history.” Cvetkovich’s goal is to learn “how people looked back on their experience with ACT UP, whether they missed it, and whether it continued to inspire and sustain them.” She asks: “From the vantage point of lesbian participation, what does the tension within ACT UP between whether to focus on AIDS and treatment issues exclusively or to tackle other related political issues look like?” She opted to focus on New York City, “ACT UP’s most visible and well-documented chapter.” Cvetkovich shows deep respect for the ACT UP legacy and specifically cautions against trying to construct any “representative picture” of the organization; she believes that providing snippets of how various people experienced the organization will be more productive, intellectually and culturally. I think she is right here. She effectively weaves AIDS activism and mourning into the fabric of trauma studies, her academic specialty. Cvetkovich interviewed twenty-four women, most of them lesbians. She reminds us not to equate ACT UP with AIDS activism, as some activists did not join ACT UP. These interviews indicate the richness of personal interactions there. Although ACT UP has been described as a vast cruising ground, it gave birth to a number of enduring friendships which Cvetkovich’s interviewees still consider extraordinary emotional opportunities. Cvetkovich does not mention the Facebook page for ACT UP alumni. Having studied the page, I find Cvetkovich’s interviews more useful, in part because of her sensitivity to bias. A white woman, she worried about “the extent to which most of my … interviews were a form of insider ethnography where I felt comfortable with my narrators because of a range of shared experiences that often went without saying.” Earlier I expressed concern about my own focus on white women such as Elizabeth Taylor, Lady Bird Johnson, Evelyn Hooker, and Barbra Streisand. I believe it would be a mistake to dismiss the contributions of these women simply 66 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period because they were privileged and white. Cvetkovich draws the same conclusion, which I find valid, about ACT UP: “Ultimately, it seems reductive to describe ACT UP as white and middle class or to do so dismissively … .” We all understand that no single history can capture the fullness of AIDS activism or women’s compassion. Of particular interest to me was Cvetkovich’s interview with Jane Rosett, the only HIV-negative founding member of the People with AIDS Coalition (PWAC), which predated ACT UP by four years. Rosett recalled:

Until ACT UP rendered AIDS activism “chic” within the dyke world, lesbians working in the early AIDies were often dismissed as confused fag hags and, far from experiencing any sense of “community,” we were quite isolated from lesbian activists, who had specifically chosen not to do AIDS work.14

How curious that anyone should use the term “fag hag” as if it were a bad thing. Of course, the word is itself vulgar but the underlying concept would, within a decade, become altogether trendy. Rosett’s observation strongly implies a categorical distinction between “lesbian” and “friend to gay men.” And in further reference to Rosett’s interview, one of the reasons some lesbians opposed AIDS work was the concern that their participation would play into widespread homophobia, specifically by further igniting hysteria over the disease. An intriguing insight into lesbian charity in specific and gay kinship in general is Cvetkovich’s conclusion that HIV status—that is, being positive or negative— came to assume greater importance in an individual’s identity than gender. And in a book focusing on friendships between straight women and gay men, her observations provide useful perspective: many lesbians came to ACT UP after disenchantment with feminism and recounted “the origins of queer social formations in friendships between gay men and lesbians that assumed public visibility in the AIDS crisis … .” Cvetkovich’s chapter on lesbian activism strikes me as a most compelling historical artifact of lesbian charity; I hasten to add, though, that Cvetkovich’s interviewees were in it for more than just the chance to care for gay men. ACT UP was bigger than caregiving.

The Prime Example of Amy Hoffman Like Cvetkovich, I seek not to provide an exhaustive account of lesbian activism but only an indication of the good it did. Instead of focusing on New York, I will look to Boston. Several references to the weekly Gay Community News will appear. This Boston publication ran from 1978 to 1993 and consciously aimed to create a sense of community for sexual minorities in New England. Note that the weekly was born before AIDS elbowed its way into the national consciousness in the summer of 1982. Amy Hoffman’s evocative memoirHospital Time details her devotion to a gay male friend dying of AIDS in the 1990s.15 Her book demonstrates how lesbian and gay people reinvented the notion of family, even though—or precisely because— their proper relatives had slammed the door shut, leaving them to their own devices. Lesbian Charity 67

Lesbians weren’t the only good actors here. Many gay men cared for their friends, lovers, and ex-lovers. But of course gay men were personally, intimately tied to the crisis in a way few lesbians were. Lesbians almost never contracted HIV/AIDS, and they did not live in fear of contracting it from sexual activity. Lesbians, on the whole, had more altruistic motives—or so I wish to argue in this chapter. Other groups, such as Mothers Against AIDS or Parents of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), also contributed. Frequently the motivation of someone in these groups was a family tie to an infected gay man. I don’t mean to disparage those who acted out of concern for a family member, only to elevate the contributions of gay women, who taught us an evolved, moving new version of family. One of the many notable aspects of Hoffman’s book is her humility. She is not interested in winning humanitarian prizes or gaining media recognition. Her book portrays her at her worst—including as it does the selfish moments we might expect to befall anyone in such a position. A reader may wonder (again and again) what motivated her to perform such kindness for her friend Michael Riegle during his agonizing, messy illness. Much like a young nun or priest struggling with solemn vows made to God, Hoffman saw herself as psychically or spiritually bound to her friend:

I had vowed to take care of him, and I fulfilled that vow. With the virus, you make a choice. When someone gets sick, you’re either in or out. That’s it. No middle ground. (p. 15)

Hoffman sees Mike, as she calls him, for all his flaws. She does not seek to idealize or romanticize him. This decision pays off in her memoir, as readers feel more comfortable making up their minds for themselves what to think of a quirky, not altogether affable man—a prisoners’ rights activist and an inveterate shoplifter. Caring for a saint is pretty easy; caring for a deeply flawed person is more trying. She met Michael through the Gay Community News, the Massachusetts publication at which she met most of the people who would emerge as significant in her life. In the late 1970s, Mike was healthy and no one had heard of AIDS. She was the managing editor and he was the office manager with a PhD who sometimes wrote articles for the paper. Their friendship deepened in the course of jointly contributing to the leading gay publication in a state that would later emerge as a very early supporter of marriage equality. A gay man who enjoyed frequent sexual escapades found a loyal comrade in a gay woman more intent on relationships and stability. Of particular interest for my purposes is her self-examination, her efforts to articulate why she devoted so much time and energy to Mike:

I tried to think daily about Maimonides. In Hebrew school we wrote in blue notebooks with a picture of him in his turban on the cover. Hundreds of years ago he was a doctor in Spain, and the Jews are still proud of him. He wrote that there was a ladder of charity with eight rungs. At the bottom rung you ask me for something; I give it to you. Nu? It’s good enough for most people, but the righteous work their way up to the higher rungs, where the interactions are 68 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

unsolicited and anonymous. At the top, giver and receiver have no knowledge of one another. The ego of the giver, her desire for the indebtedness, the enthrallment, of the receiver, never enters in. I agree with Maimonides about this; he knew that gratefulness would not keep us taking care of one another. The recipient of your gift doesn’t want what you’ve given, or wants more, or doesn’t recognize that you’ve given anything at all. (p. 13)

This amounts to a cogent answer, one which begs at least some explanation of Maimonides. What she doesn’t mention is that she could have chosen hundreds, if not thousands, of other ways to help people. That she chose this particular way made all the difference. What makes the Maimonides analogy interesting is that he sought to perfect man’s moral and intellectual aspects. Born in twelfth-century Spain, Maimonides championed rationalism. Strongly influenced by Aristotle, he was struck by the apparent contradictions between faith and reason. His Guide for the Perplexed tried to resolve these conflicts. Maimonides evoked strong criticism at the time, in part because his theological work codified the entire oral law without providing sources. He was a Jew writing in Arabic about human conduct in a way that came to resonate with many subsequent non-Jews. According to him, Jewish law aimed at the improvement of the human soul, and non-Jews readily responded to that goal. Elizabeth Taylor set the pace for this book. I have written this story around her generosity to Montgomery Clift. A Jew, she initially helped individual gay men, whose misery she understood few others seemed to care about. Later in her life, she set herself to helping all those who had contracted HIV/AIDS (a great many of whom were gay men) and indeed to helping the world. Because any sexually active person or hospital patient in need of a blood transfusion could contract the deadly virus, almost everyone was at risk. Taylor ascended Maimonides’s ladder of charity and deserves praise. True, her giving was not exactly anonymous, but it seems unfair to hold this against her. As one of the most recognizable women in the world, she could not easily veil herself. And in order to solicit large sums from wealthy individuals and corporate entities, she needed to exploit her star power. Hoffman, a Jew, viewed her response to AIDS in general and Mike in particular as charitable (perhaps even holy) in some real sense. It shouldn’t take much effort to see the nobility in Maimonides’s account of altruism. And yet the matter is more complicated than that, because many Americans believed that gay men with AIDS were suffering God’s punishment and deserved their misery, which they had brought on themselves. In the national imagination, AIDS stood on a tawdry continuum with drug use, sex work, the prison system, and immigration. Now let’s turn back to Hoffman’s narrative. From her account of what she did for him, we can tell that caring for Mike was no picnic:

Diarrhea kept him up all night. He wouldn’t call for help, but I would wake when I heard him crashing around. His body wasn’t telling him anything anymore, and when he would finally realize what was happening, he wasn’t strong or quick enough to get himself across the narrow hall to the toilet. He refused to use the Lesbian Charity 69

adult diapers we had bought or the bedside commode we had ordered. Maybe he associated the commode with intensive care … I spent the night I stayed at his apartment cleaning off his bum when he didn’t make it, mopping shit off the floor, and helping him in and out of the bathtub. After each episode, he’d doze off briefly, then it would start all over: I’d hear something, Michael standing in the bedroom doorway, moaning, shit spewing from his behind as from a monster in a Boschian Hell. The mop, the bath. (pp. 14–15)

Caring for Mike was like caring for countless other infected men, which is not to diminish Hoffman’s work, only to put it in the sort of perspective she wants us to have. Hoffman is not blind to the nuances of Mike’s needs, some of which are humorous. Lusting for a young, healthy, and heterosexual man, Mike fantasizes that a colleague named Timo who fits that description will show him the same spirit of charity Hoffman does and, in that spirit, sleep with him. This never happens. Back to Hoffman’s motive(s): Does Hoffman deserve the praise I want to heap on her? The answer may vary from reader to reader; it will also turn in part on her motive:

So why did I do it? Why did I try so hard to care for him? I don’t know. How could I? I live in a post-Freudian society, and I don’t know my own mind. I was trying to do good. But acts that appear benign may spring form malicious motives and have ravaging effects. Or, on the other hand, not. We may say these effects are unintended, but we can’t know what we intend. Not without years of costly therapy.

It turns out that she is not actually sure about her motives. Maybe she was altruistic, maybe not. (She does, after all, later write a memoir about her experience with Mike; this makes her vulnerable to skepticism about her altruism. Maybe she was seeking glory through her care giving?) Nietzsche and Freud, among other thinkers, both remarked on the extent to which most of us are strangers to ourselves. We might like to think that we are experts on our own inner lives, but most of us will confess at some point that we baffle ourselves. This puzzlement is what keeps therapists in business. Hoffman also admits that the commitment to Mike distressed and drained her. Far from boasting about her emotional prowess, she wishes she had been perfect:

I was overwhelmed, it was all too much for me, how could it not have been? I wanted to run away, I wanted it to be over. I’m sorry. I wish, I wish, I wish—every single day—that I had been more genuinely kind, more open and loving and freely generous. Although if it happened again, someone I know having AIDS— and it has, it will—I’d do it again and feel the same … (p. 22)

After Mike’s death in 1992, Hoffman remained involved in the lives of other infected gay men. She cared for them in the traditional way but also reached to do more: She wanted to change American culture, such that men no longer had to feel shame over 70 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period having sex with other men. Her own father was uncomfortable with homosexuality, and she challenged him about this. Hoffman knew firsthand what many of her gay male friends had endured from their own parents (even though Hoffman’s father never abandoned her). The idea of her parents dying (of old age, not of AIDS) frightens her and evokes difficult questions about her commitment to them:

And the question is, would I do it for them? What I did for Michael. I wonder if that was what they were thinking when he was sick. “Don’t get too involved,” my mother advised me. Was she trying to protect me? Was she thinking, Save it for us. (p. 109)

Hoffman widens the notion of family she inherited and places Mike within domestic borders. She remains loyal to her parents, even though she could have walked away from them. She remains loyal to Mike as well:

Although actually Mike WAS my family, and I have the paperwork to prove it, the healthcare proxy, the power of attorney, that’s what those are about. I did it for him because he was family, and I’d do it for them, too, without question, whatever it takes, moving to New Jersey, cooking, driving the car, changing the bed. My parents are cold to me, and disapproving, but I won’t let them get rid of me that easily. (p. 109)

Hoffman offers us an appealing, utterly contemporary, model of family and kinship. It is often said that we don’t choose our families but we do our friends; this saying is generally used to convey a sense of the superior worth of friends. Without entering into endless debates over whether gay men suffered more in late-twentieth-century America than lesbians did, we can safely assert that Hoffman struggled socially too. How sad when your own parents disapprove of your lesbian tendencies. She forgives and moves on, undeterred, optimistic, above cynicism and bitterness.

Roberta Stone In this section I recount an interview with Amy Hoffman’s partner, Roberta Stone. Like Amy, Roberta responded to the gay men’s health crisis through caring for specific men in trouble. This interview, however brief, adds a bit more substance to our record of lesbian activism outside of New York. It also rounds out our understanding of Amy Hoffman. The three case studies I mention in this chapter, all from Boston, all from the Gay Community News, begin a micro-history. By recounting the story of this community, I’m helping to cast light on a broader trend of lesbian aid more broadly.

* * * * * * * * * *

Roberta helped several men whom she knew as friends and from political work. The person with whom she was most involved was Bob Andrews, her Lesbian Charity 71 best friend. She supported him all through his illness while he lived at home, through hospitalizations and ER visits, and was with him when he died in Mass General Hospital. When Bob was ill during the last months of his life, she would take time off from work during the middle of the day, many days, and go to his house to help him eat, and do daily things like sort through his things for some item he had inevitably misplaced, then she would shave him and help him get cleaned and dressed. He asked her to organize his memorial service which he planned very carefully, and he even planned his AIDS quilt panel. She has the drawings still. He was diagnosed around 1984 and lived until 1988. People died quickly back then as there was no Protease inhibitors, no cocktails; just AZT, and some early trials. Bob worked at Massachusetts General in the psychiatry department. He was an administrator. He was much loved, and when he died they named a clinic for him which focused on AIDS-related brain issues. Of course, that is now defunct because most patients now live well and are comparatively healthy. She was also involved somewhat in her friend Raymond Hopkins’s illness. She knew him from political work at Gay Community News. He didn’t have a partner and when he went into Hospice (there was live-in hospice at the time for AIDS patients) he was already somewhat demented from the virus in his brain. He couldn’t speak full sentences at that time but he kept saying her name. No one knew why he was fixated on Roberta but because he didn’t have an active support system, his hospice nurses called on her to help them make decisions about his care. When you are called to a dying person’s bedside and asked to help, you help, Roberta said. This was something she didn’t question. Two other helpers were Amy and her friend Mike Riegle. As Amy writes in her book Hospital Time, Mike was a very difficult person. Because Amy was a primary caretaker for Mike, Roberta was involved as well. This included sleepovers at his apartment to make sure he was safe toward the end, having him stay with Roberta and Amy at their home, taking him along on vacation so he could enjoy the beach (and the gay guys’ bodies) at the beach, and taking him to the ER during crises. Roberta and Amy also were with him in hospital for his final hospitalization. Motivation for such charity will baffle some readers. When a friend is dying and asks for your help, Roberta mused in retrospect, that is something that each person must decide for him or herself. For her, it was a conscious decision which she had to make for each friend. She was involved to different degrees depending on how close she was to that person. With gay people and AIDS, Roberta insisted you must understand that most people’s families abandoned them or were really on the far perimeter of their lives. As a politically conscious lesbian, she has always considered her gay “family” to be just that—family.

Louise Rice

Louise Rice lived through the AIDS epidemic in a major American city, Boston, and cheerfully volunteered to help more than a few infected men. The story 72 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period of how lesbians helped men with AIDS “is a subject very close to my heart,” Louise told me. “I was one of many lesbians who supported our gay brothers in the first decades of the epidemic, especially when support was hard to find,” she said. “My connections were both personal and political at the beginning. At first we were there to support friends and fellow gay activists, but we also became fundamental to the infrastructure and workings of several organizations. I worked for AIDS Action Committee for about ten years and did volunteer work in support of ACT UP.” Louise trained others eager to volunteer how to help. She had to help newcomers overcome a widespread fear of infected persons.16 Louise considers Alice Foley a “hero” from the early days of the epidemic. Alice Foley, a Massachusetts lesbian and nurse, cofounded the Provincetown AIDS Support Group in the 1980s. Over the course of the epidemic, she worked tirelessly for gay men in Provincetown. Foley died in 2009.17 “Alice was a no-holds-barred, fiercely dedicated advocate and caregiver,” recalls Louise. “People either loved her or hated her, but they never doubted her absolute commitment.” Louise herself worked as a public health nurse in Boston. She was married to a man, had two children, and then ended the marriage in order to live with a woman. She sees herself as having been more a part of the gay liberation movement than the gay rights movement. Gay liberation focused on visibility and overcoming shame; part of the project was to remove the stigma of being lesbian or gay. She remembers gay pride as uniting men and women; looking back on her experience, she sees much more uniting the two communities than separating them. She became active in the Gay Community News, “a place where we really fought out these differences,” that is, the differences about politics, about visions of liberation, and about sexism. (Amy Hoffman served as editor of theGCN .) According to Louise, “We had a lot to learn from each other.” She remembers that lesbians were amazed to learn about the very active sex lives of men (which included anonymous sexual encounters) and that the men also taught women to think in larger terms about sexual liberation. And gay men at the GCN learned about feminism and the legacy of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Louise’s new partner Tess wanted a child. The two women were close to a gay couple, and they asked one of the men in this couple, Geno, to help Tess conceive. For about a year the two tried. Geno was diagnosed with AIDS not long after. Fear of AIDS (HIV wasn’t discovered until 1984) dominated America, and this was one of many reasons Louise rushed to care for Geno. The principal reason was that Geno was her friend, a special part of her community. “I was doing my student nursing rotation at Beth Israel Hospital when the first AIDS patients were seen. Most staff were phobic about the perceived risks in caring for infected men.” Other health professionals have since confirmed that many doctors and nurses were afraid of persons with AIDS who had entered a hospital for care. Louise went to work for AIDS Action, an independent AIDS service organization. “Those are the proudest days of my life,” she remembers fondly. She participated in the training for the Buddies Program (about which the 1985 film Lesbian Charity 73

Buddies, directed by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr., was made). “There were a number of lesbians at AIDS Action.” Louise humbly downplayed the heroism of the time and energy she devoted to caring for sick men. When I challenged her by pointing out that she could have chosen to help people suffering any number of other diseases or conditions— including breast cancer—she emphasized how important a sense of community was for many lesbians. These women understood that many of their gay brothers had been cast out of their homes by parents, churches, and communities which believed gay men deserved to die in pain, alone. Lesbians and gay men were forming a community through shared struggles against homophobia and heterosexism. The AIDS epidemic highlighted many of the social inequalities that the community was already deeply committed to opposing. “Generally speaking, straight people enjoyed a privilege denied to gay people; poor gay people suffered the additional trial of having to beg for financial assistance.” Louise further pointed out, “If you have breast cancer, your family isn’t going to cast you out.” She credits Buddhism for having taught her that “This was in my interest. Standing up for the weakest in your community is the best way of standing up for yourself.” She notes that breast cancer activism grew out of AIDS activism, just as AIDS activism grew out of and learned from the lessons of the women’s health movement: “Die-ins and demanding fast access to parallel-track drugs were ideas women’s health advocates took from AIDS activists.” Louise celebrated both the women’s movement and the gay rights struggle and evaluates her life in terms of her involvement in them.

After the Need Ends

Now that a combination of drugs can effectively treat the symptoms of HIV/AIDS and allow those who carry it to lead relatively uninterrupted, productive lives, AIDS carers in affluent parts of America have been put out of a job—quite happily so. Where has all that positive lesbian energy gone? That I cannot say. Based on recent history though, it seems reasonable to suppose that the energy will return to gay men if and when needed.

Chapter 5

PSYCHOLOGY

So far I’ve discussed a variety of alliances between straight women and gay men. My examples and categories have unraveled some of the reasons for such collaborations without explicitly seeking a theory as to why they happen, nor a profile of what the essential dynamic between straight women and gay men might conform to. Why do these souls often feel drawn to one another? What might be the psychology of their peculiar romance? We’ll see that these friendships (which were sometimes also social roles) arose at a particular historical moment to resolve the tension of a “lavender scare” (about the sudden apparent swelling of the number of gay men) and to exploit the newfound confidence of women to assert their moral dissent from a patriarchal majority. This chapter, like this entire book, seeks to deepen and fill out the insights of previous thinkers who have pondered friendships between straight women and gay men.1 These thinkers have usefully brought to light several examples of this bond.2 Although I do not aim to provide a full-blown psychological explanation, this overview can usefully indicate a sense of the variety of explanations for these emotional concords.

Sexual Competition

Any theory in this regard would certainly mention sexual availability or competition. Ignoring for now that even gay people might occasionally be interested in straight sex, gay men and straight women do not enter the friendship for sex. Nor is it likely that they will often (ever?) be competing with each other for the same man. And so there is no sexual availability, really, nor any competition. The straight women I’ve discussed in this book are almost all women with a certain power, women who for one of several reasons aren’t partnered with a straight man. As a woman ages, her female and straight male friends gradually marry and become increasingly inaccessible to her—unless she’s a part of a couple, and even then these friends are available only on limited terms. The married woman won’t invite the single woman around for fear (perhaps not fully understood) of competition (for her mate), and the now-married man won’t be allowed to continue the same friendship with a woman he had before he got married because 76 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period his wife just wouldn’t understand or approve. The longer a heterosexual woman stays single, the more gay men friends she accumulates—partly because both may have lots of common interests (good food, good wine, art, the ballet, etc.) and partly because both are “available.” Beyond that, the friendships don’t compromise either one of them on the dating front. Will this dynamic change as more and more gay men marry? Probably not. A woman seen with a handsome man—in, say, a photo posted to Facebook or in a crowded Manhattan bar—becomes more remarkable, more desirable to straight men. It doesn’t matter whether the handsome man is straight or gay—he has increased her value on the dating market. Straight men might naturally worry if their wives had a male best friend—but not a gay male friend. History doesn’t offer many ready examples, because few men dared to exit the closet before the 1970s. Gay men “back in the day” were technically straight men cavorting with their female friends (Pillow Talk, a film from 1959, played with this conundrum, long before the 1970s television sitcom Three’s Company did) in the 1960s and 1970s. Truman Capote was a glaring and useful exception in the 1960s. Capote’s “girlfriends” adored their celebrity man- about-town and opened up to him for a variety of reasons, one of which was his unabashed gayness. His gleeful attempts to shock the upper middle-class were fashionable and dovetailed with the wealthy lady’s general sense of hauteur, of being plainly better than the masses. In an attempt to explain why so many society women spilled their secrets to Truman Capote, who later embarrassed some of those same women by publishing them in fiction that barely veiled their identities, one Louise Grunwald explained:

He was a pot-stirrer. He had this great quality of getting things out of people. He was a good listener and he was sympathetic and cozy. Also these women had a need to talk. Why Truman? Because he wasn’t threatening. If they told another woman, it would have been losing face. They felt that Truman was unshockable. So there wasn’t that to worry about. He had all the time in the world to listen and sympathize. So they told him things they should have been telling their shrinks … only. He was so cozy, such a good friend that it was hard to think of him first as a novelist, then as a friend—which was stupid of everybody.3

This example suggests in a roundabout way that women might open up and confide in anyone who listened well. Why should “ladies of leisure”—whether in Truman Capote’s social circle or not—beware of women friends and confide only in their therapists? One reason may be that therapists are professionally bound to secrecy. Grunwald leaves the answer for us to infer but seems to think it foolish for women to confide in one another. Betrayal is the obvious risk. It bears repeating that Capote was obviously, even outrageously, gay. He wasn’t a man’s man, but he certainly wasn’t a woman either. He seemed a woman in a man’s body. It would be impossible to claim Capote and his friendship with either Babe Paley or Lee Radziwill as the inspiration for the television series Will & Grace, and yet the Psychology 77 parallel is clear enough. Before Will & Grace hit the airwaves, various real-life couples had already lived the script. Biographers have given us no indication that Capote ever competed for lovers with his female friends, nor did gay men such as Nureyev, or Yves St. Laurent, or Elton John. No sharing happened, it seems. Gay male friends might frequently have sex with the same man, though. This isn’t sharing, but coincidence or lust or promiscuity. It would be a mistake to rely on generalizations and short-circuit the point I am making. It’s not simply that gay men want a 22-year-old and straight women a man over 40 (in part because the older man has had the time to garner wealth and social connections). Good sex is good sex, and straight women want what gay men want. That they are unlikely both to find good sex from the same men means they are invested in two different markets and therefore free to cooperate with one another guilelessly. That a straight woman may perhaps harbor a secret desire (or agenda) to bed her gay friend means that even these friendships resist classification as pure and uncomplicated.

Empathy

The different components of a putative theory here will sometimes blur into one another. As I’ve said, one of the reasons why straight women and gay men can easily empathize with one another is that they are not competing with one another sexually. They both want a man, but not the same one. Let’s probe empathy now, specifically the ability of those friends to empathize with: (1) the setbacks of pursuing a love object; and (2) the challenge of making it in a man’s world. In her 2010 commencement address at Barnard College, Meryl Streep averred that an actress’s supreme challenge is to get a straight male to empathize with a female. “As people in the movie business know, the absolute hardest thing in the whole world is to persuade a straight male audience to identify with a woman protagonist, to feel themselves embodied by her.”4 Streep was describing her own professional frustration. She had just explained to her Barnard audience the enduring popularity with men of the role she had played in the 1978 filmThe Deer Hunter. (It should be noted that the part of Linda was fairly small, unlike most of the parts Streep has played over the course of her illustrious career.) Linda was a small-town girl with little education and no social mobility; Linda worked hard at being the kind of shallow, eager-to-please girl that men often enjoyed. For Streep it was easy to see why straight men would applaud the role of a woman who considered herself subservient to men. Streep expressed ambivalence over the praise she received for that role. She voiced gratification that men had subsequently responded well to the role she played nearly thirty years later, that of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). That second character, a corporate executive of a fashion magazine, set high standards for herself and met them. For Streep, the second character was coded male. 78 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

According to Streep, the challenge of magnetizing a straight male audience explained—more than anything else—the paucity of roles for female actresses. It’s much easier for female audiences to empathize with male characters, for girls were all brought up identifying with the male characters they watched in films and on television—“from Shakespeare to Salinger,” as Streep put it. “There has always been a resistance to imaginatively assume a persona, if that persona is a she.” Streep asserted to the graduating college women that things were changing in America, that men were adapting, that empathy was prompting an “emotional shift.” Streep believed that straight men would learn to do what many gay men could manage effortlessly—to see themselves as a (straight) woman with her relevant problems and aspirations. Streep brought to the attention of her collegiate audience a topic already well known to academics. In The Managed Heart, Arlie Russell Hochschild examined women working as stewardesses, nurses, and school teachers to argue that women who needed a job were frequently compelled by the job market into “caring” professions, jobs which required lots of empathy.5 (Not surprisingly, quite a few gay men gravitated into these same professions.) Mary Belenky and her colleagues have argued that women’s ways of knowing give greater latitude to personal knowledge, to subjective knowledge, to intuition’s inner voice. Women, she contends, manage competing ideas less through strictly rational analysis than by entering another person’s head, much in the way that short stories and films seem to facilitate our doing, so that they can know and experience and grasp that way of thinking.6 Gay men and straight women can empathize with one another; they can picture themselves as the star in the other’s life. As a dramatic example, we might think of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Both knew their beauty excited audiences far and wide, both were bona fide movie stars with bright futures, and both thought of men as romantic partners. Both were acting when they played love scenes on- screen, but Clift wasreally acting—not just in the movies, but also when he went out to restaurants or mingled with attractive women. Perhaps it was because she could easily understand the social predicament of gay men that, later in her career, Taylor fought hard to attract funding for AIDS research. How interesting to think of Taylor the actress trying to impersonate Clift (with the help of a talented make- up crew), a gay man pretending to be straight. She might have just pulled it off. Other scholars have demonstrated that women responding to scholarly surveys describe themselves as more empathic—as being able to share another person’s joy or sorrow—than men.7 This belief may help explain why both men and women describe their friendships with women as more fulfilling than their friendships with men (that is to say, more intimate and nurturing).8 When seeking emotional support, then, a person may instinctively look to a woman. But if sexual tension threatens the resulting appeal for emotional support, things get complicated. One wants to know what difference it makes in these scholarly studies whether the surveyed men and women view themselves as straight or gay. For Streep, the answer seems intuitively clear (which is not to say static). Other scholars have tried to document that women are more skilled at reading the emotions of others than are men. In an analysis of 125 studies of sensitivity to Psychology 79 nonverbal cues, Judith Hall concluded that women do generally surpass men in this regard. When shown a two-second film clip of an emotional woman, women were better able to guess correctly whether the woman on film was criticizing someone else or revealing details of her own divorce.9 Of particular interest in a discussion of women’s intuition is a scholarly study that concluded that women have surpassed men in figuring out whether a male– female couple is genuinely romantically involved or just posing (I will discuss “beards” in the chapter on gay husbands of straight wives).10 It should not seem far-fetched to expect that gay men might share this empathic proclivity (or at least believe themselves to). Given that birds of a feather flock together, it is hardly surprising that empathic people gunning to attract a male gaze might seek each other out. Meryl Streep’s complaint admits of gay men not only identifying with but also celebrating women as role models. The 1994 filmPriscilla, Queen of the Desert features a few young gay men in awe of the female singers in the 1970s Swedish rock group Abba. This is but one of hundreds of examples of gay men worshipping a diva, who was almost always heterosexual (Dusty Springfield, an unsuccessfully closeted lesbian and popular singer from the 1970s, doesn’t quite fit this category, but many gay men idolized her). The fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi revealed in his 1995 film memoirUnzipped that he had worshipped Mary Tyler Moore while growing up in the 1970s. The diva is glamorous and talented. She represents or reflects the gay man’s “best self,” the treasured version of the person he always wanted to be. These women frequently had to overcome various obstacles, at least one of which was a straight man who had tried to cut her down. Straight women with artistic talent will frequently find themselves idealized by gay men. Given that idealization equals glamor, it is not hard to understand why many gay men might lionize the straight diva who ends up on top. Having considered empathy as something straight women find appealing in gay men, let’s now consider physical protection as another reason for the alliances of this sort.

Protection

Psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a highly influential theory of human development in 1943. For Maslow, our needs drive our actions and would explain, among other things, our choice of friends. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, safety counts for a great deal, and we instinctively seek it on our way to developing into deeper and broader human beings. Pressing the idea of sexual competition further and combining it with Maslow’s theory, gay men and straight women feel safe with one another because of the absence of sexual pressure or threat (as between two straight women, two gay women, or two straight men).11 Put otherwise, women who feel sexually vulnerable or threatened by a man will likely reject his friendly overtures. What people seek from relationships is someone who can help them learn, grow, and thrive; we can only accomplish these ends if we feel comfortable. 80 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Maslow theorized that after safety needs are met, people seek love and a sense of belonging. Until we feel safe, we can’t really become who we are, much less contribute to society artistically or intellectually. If we were to apply Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to this simple analysis, it may well seem that gay men and straight women generally used one another for protection in the 1960s and 1970s, up until who knows quite when. “Using each other” carries negative implications, although the relationship under consideration needn’t necessarily carry any. The point to be taken is that once the storm subsides, once it becomes socially acceptable to be an out gay man and, if you will, an empowered straight woman, then the relationship I’m discussing is no longer particularly useful. It’s not that the man and the woman no longer like each other, but rather that they don’t really need each other. They may contact each other periodically out of nostalgia and even meet up from time to time, much in the way that in college reunions graduates migrate back to their college days seeing people with whom they once had passionate friendships during a pivotal stage in their emotional development, only to drift apart in the intervening years. So the notion of political expediency suggests that gay men and straight women served as a psychological ladder to one another; each used the ladder to attain a goal. Later, individuals were free to discard the ladder. The relationship was one principally, although not simply, of instrumentality. But this explanation doesn’t seem to fit with the four examples that launched this book: It doesn’t capture the element of compassion, nor of sheer fun, of delighting in each other’s company. Nor would the explanation ring true if gay men gained broad social acceptance, according to some objective measure (such as the legalization of gay marriage, which did eventually happen in 2015, or the end of employment discrimination). According to the psychological concept of attachment theory, infants and very young children develop and retain a pattern of interacting with others. Whether children suffer abuse or radiate in the love of adoring parents/caregivers makes a pivotal difference to how they relate to others in adulthood (Freud had said much the same thing in the early twentieth century). Mary Ainsworth observed a number of children aged 12–18 months and categorized responses to their caregivers after having been briefly left alone.12 She termed the three major styles she observed secure attachment, ambivalent-insecure attachment, and avoidant- insecure attachment. The more dependable and available a caregiver, the happier and better adapted the child (and subsequent adult). Ainsworth did not focus on gender, which I view as a shame, given the aims of this book. I am merely nodding to the importance of presumed cultural authorities (such as Henry Biller) who had argued that young boys develop a dependency on their mothers that they later replicate with women who accept their homosexuality. Remember that psychiatrists in the 1950s had blamed gay sons on smothering mothers. Many mothers of gay sons would have communicated strong disapproval of homosexuality in part out of fears that authorities would blame a mother for having raised a gay son. But a woman who accepts a man despite his homosexuality would be another story. Psychology 81

According to a familiar stereotype, gay men are weak, docile, and cowardly. They could not protect anyone, least of all themselves, but they at least left women alone. A woman never had to worry about sexual aggression around a gay man. That’s not to say, though, that a gay man was useful to a woman who needed protection from aggressive men. It took an aggressive man to protect a woman from other aggressive men, or so the thinking may have gone. Perhaps in defiance of the stereotype of effete weaklings, many gays in the 1970s and 1980s propagated a macho man image (think of the Village People singing the anthem “Macho Man”). Big muscles became the rage in the gay community.13 Think of the later success of the 2006 filmBrokeback Mountain, which depicted two gay cowboys in the 1960s. In the American imagination, a cowboy had been by definition a rugged, utterly heterosexual, man. And so a woman’s image of gay men arguably shifted to include both reliable freedom from sexual aggression and the added bonus of protection from unwanted sexual aggression from pesky straight guys. Gay men may have seemed too good to be true, to some straight women at least. To return to attachment theory: Home life became a minefield, given its power to “spoil” a boy. A boy was to learn about protection at home. Parents in the 1980s or 1990s had of course been raised two or more decades earlier, when parents were socially expected to provide appropriate sex-role models. The danger was that, left to their own devices, boys might well become girly. This threat mandated that fathers—who had long been absent from the home—show up often enough to prevent this damage. While at home, the father had to conform closely to the masculine ideal. According to an expert from the 1970s, “Imitation of the father enhances the boy’s masculine development only if the father displays masculine behavior in the presence of his son.” A boy who might enjoy cooking or hanging out with girls had to be saved:

A crucial factor in the father-present boy’s masculine development is the degree to which his father exhibits masculine behavior … adolescent boys low in masculinity of interests often came from homes in which the father played a traditionally feminine role. The fathers of these boys took over such activities as cooking and household chores …14

Back in the 1970s, this “expert” brooked no tolerance for any sort of “Mister Mom.” Reminding ourselves of the way things were makes it easier to understand the anxiety of “family values” proponents in the 2000s about what happens when moms go to work, especially in lucrative careers. A corporate mom might out-earn her husband, and the couple might jointly (and reasonably) decide that she will be the one to leave for work every morning, and he will be the one to watch over the kids and clean the house. Such a decision might have “harmful” consequences, leaving the son effeminate and the sort of guy who would happily sit at one of the girls’ tables in the high school cafeteria. Fortunate girls (in loving families) or women (in secure careers) might not feel much need for protection. They might find themselves in a more mature stage of development, in Maslow’s terms. They may feel ready to give and receive love, 82 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period without an eye to receiving protection in return. These women are more interesting to me, because their gay male friends serve a different purpose.

Fear

We all want a friend. At times we may need one badly. The target pool can shrink, depending on where we are. Fear of being suspected of being gay can certainly affect our choice of friends. We’ve seen the theoretical importance of protection for women trying to make their way. Now let’s consider the psychological appeal of gay-friendly people, most of which seemed to be women (because a gay-friendly straight man usually invited socially threatening suspicion). It really wasn’t until the very late nineteenth century that people began to talk about homosexuals—people, as opposed to acts. And so it really wasn’t until then that men started to worry that someone might misinterpret their best friend as a lover. Despite the chilly sexual climate of Victorian England, people surely understood the idea of a terrible lover. At that time men must have become aware of an analogous disappointment, the deeply inadequate friend. I don’t mean a friend who betrayed you or forgot your birthday, but rather a man who turned out to be emotionally unavailable. Surely many men protected their reputations by intentionally choosing to appear unemotional, uninteresting, uncaring even (or especially) to their male friends and colleagues. We have known that some people (such as Oscar Wilde, according to his biographer Richard Ellmann) were largely auto-erotic. Some men have been able to satisfy their sexual urges all by themselves. Masturbation is an option available to everyone, and yet many will prefer sex with a partner to sex with oneself.15 It should not seem far-fetched to suppose that men with emotional needs for male bonding would have turned to something akin to emotional masturbation: Men had to learn to do it by themselves, to satisfy (or stultify or channel) their own emotional needs. Of course such men could not look for friendship with a woman, because everyone would suspect him of being either an adulterer (on a heterosexual interpretation) or a homosexual (because why would a man fraternize with a woman?). Whether a man would turn to his wife for friendship is uncertain: in the early twentieth century, C. S. Lewis found the notion patently ridiculous (in The Four Loves), as only men could provide deep emotional support to one another. Lewis surely spoke for many men of his day. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009) has written insightfully on this anxiety- inducing precipice of propriety. In Between Men, a book roundly described as groundbreaking, she mines English fiction about ships to argue that sailors understood intuitively the danger of friendships.16 In order for the ship to function—especially function optimally—all the men had to bind together, to work as a single unit. Friendship and openness were crucial. But cross the line of sexual intimacy and the social fabric of the entire ship disintegrates. These sailors exemplified the code adopted by other men in England: one must always be careful not to let a man get too close, become a friend with unbounded access. That would Psychology 83 be disastrous. (Sedgwick, a heterosexual literary scholar and a Jew, can be said to have helped gay men significantly through her creation, as it were, of the academic field of “queer studies” through the publication of Between Men and, subsequently, of the book Epistemology of the Closet.) Here it is worth quoting at greater length Graham Robb’s insights into men’s friendships:

Gay history is full of opportunities to see men trying to cope with experiences more common in women’s lives: the vain attempt to ward off condescension, the urge to conform out of weariness or in a spirit of self-destructive revenge, the unfair responsibility for other people’s pain, the sense of inevitable exclusion. Some part of the mind always agreed with society. It would have taken an unusually independent person—homosexual or heterosexual—to ignore the majority and to delete precisely from his upbringing only those elements that stood in the way of his happiness. Tchoaikovsky, according to his brother, “could not help submitting to the influence of the general detestation of this very defect.”17

Robb’s point is deepened by reading the vast work of Peter Gay, who chronicled the inner life of the Victorians in several different scholarly volumes, or the diary of Queen Victoria’s prime minister, William Gladstone (1809–1898), who lived tortured by guilt over his masturbation.18 And as for staying in the closet: after extensive research, Graham Robb has asserted, “in the 19th century, with the unique exception of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, there is not a single example of someone publicly declaring their homosexuality.” Of course, men could and did have sex with other men in private, without proclaiming themselves gay. The distance between their public and private selves must have deeply saddened some of them. Until the Second World War, few women worked outside of the home in the United States. Opportunities to meet potential female friends would have been few. The “lavender scare” of the 1950s would have redoubled the intention of most gay or bisexual men to remain in the closet. And so the available pool of male friends—heterosexual or homosexual—would have been small. This is part of the story I am trying to tell in this book: gay men risked something in reaching out to straight women. We’ll never know how many girls on how many school playgrounds did what they could to protect or shield boys at risk of being called gay. And yet too many gay men growing up in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s successfully reached out to straight girls to ignore the charity.

Social Organization

Drawing on the research of scholars such as Richard Sennett and Robert Bellah, historian Stephanie Coontz helps us see how the shifting contours of gender roles in the nineteenth century made it difficult indeed for (straight) men to maintain 84 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period friendships with women—even their own wives. Society drew an important line between interdependence in the private sphere (in which families helped one another, so as not to require governmental aid) and the public sphere, in which individuals competed—sometimes fiercely—with one another for jobs, houses, and prestige. Liberal capitalism assigned men to the public sphere and women to the private one. Americans began to praise self-reliance and the ability to thrive in competition to the extent that manhood came to rely on such traits. In order to counterbalance the unpleasant transformation of the now utterly selfish public sphere, which previously had turned on mutuality and cooperation, women bore the brunt of “correcting” market individualism. It was the selflessness, the undying altruism, the softness of women that made society bearable. Pure macho man-eats-man culture would have been shameful, difficult to reconcile with the story Americans liked to tell themselves about being neighborly. But just as Americans came to embrace the glory of competition and hard-nosed determination, many men found it almost impossible to respect women, who were barred from the public sphere and whose own success turned on embracing their subservience. Women and men could not communicate effectively because they defined themselves in such conflicting social terms. It would have been a sign of weakness for a man to admit emotional needs at all and self-destructive to confess self-doubt to someone who did not understand the business of the dog-eat-dog world. It would have been socially dangerous for a woman to indicate a strong interest in understanding that world, because she could never join it anyway. Such curiosity might indicate dissatisfaction with the private sphere, domesticity. A virtual traitor to other women, she could just be crazy. Added to the confusion was the idea of true love. This extraordinary experience was to complete two individuals who had basically nothing in common. The one who thought of nothing but altruism considered herself a success—a winner of a big competition—when she landed the one she wanted, a true man, an epitome of the masculine ideal. Similarly, the husband thought of himself as a winner, because he had found a truly dependent, even helpless, mate. His ambivalence explains why the prize was not obviously worth the fight: he really only enjoyed the company of peers, of people (well, men) who understood the ardor of competition. A woman could not. As Coontz put it:

The doctrine of separate spheres gave men and women fewer and fewer areas of compatibility just as their relations were becoming more and more dependent on love. Even as women long for the perfect romance and the ideal intimacy of true love, they increasingly felt that they could communicate deeply only with other women, who shared their personality traits and experiences.19

Today, a man who falls in love with a woman who works as, say, a corporate attorney or investment banker is almost falling in love with another man. His woman is much more like a man compared to her foremothers, so much so that her gender is thrown in question. Psychology 85

And so men and women could not get along very well. They could make babies, but they couldn’t revel in emotional intimacy. Coontz does not make the point, but it was roughly at this time (the early nineteenth century) that the category of “homosexual” was born. Some men—homosexuals—did not fit the model. Many women did not fit the model either, as staying at home made them anxious and frustrated. Coontz’s history helps us see a deeper reason—at once both psychological and sociological—for why straight women and gay men might have been drawn to one another. Keep in mind that until the middle of the twentieth century, plenty of gay men surely refused ever to reveal their same-sex attractions to anyone. Nonetheless, we can see not only another reason why these friendships “worked,” but also their social utility. As soon as women managed to join the public sphere, though, the reason might disappear. And as soon as gay men felt comfortable admitting to their same-sex attractions, the reason would conceptually shift.

Incidental Identity

The whole idea of investigating an underlying psychology or theory of friendships between straight women and gay men would be misleading if it simply took for granted that straight women live their sexual orientation or that gay men are nothing more than the sum of their sexual desires. Sometimes sexual orientation has nothing to do with it. Take for example two French artists widely known in Europe and North America in the late twentieth century. Catherine Deneuve rushed to the side of Yves St. Laurent again and again until he died. He had a lover of several decades and had amassed remarkable professional success. He suffered from serious depression and addictions to alcohol and pills, though. It was she who succored him (even if not exclusively so) again and again.20 The two loved each other. St. Laurent’s biographers do not tend to harp on his sexual identity. The designer was openly gay and had been since at least the early 1970s. That was that. He and Deneuve seemed to relate to one another as ambitious, hard-working, high-flying professionals, each accustomed to living in the public eye. It is certainly true that Deneuve knew and fraternized with other gay men. And in 2011 she appeared on the cover of what is perhaps the leading gay magazine in France, Têtu, provocatively posed between two muscular and naked young men. In the extensive interview with the diva, Têtu made clear her sympathy with and love for the gay community in France. It’s not that the magazine overstated Deneuve’s attachment to gay men that’s important to remember, but rather that a highly partisan publication of that sort might naturally polarize the issue and shade any of its interview subjects a little more (or less, depending on the person) gay-friendly, all in order to enhance its own political/publishing agenda. Deneuve was useful to Têtu, and she let them use her as an example of a fairy godmother. But Deneuve is also a tough professional who saw in her beloved St. Laurent a kindred spirit. Surely other friends spanning both the orientation and gender lines talk about more than just sex and glamor and fashion. It’s not always about sex. 86 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

The Love That Cares Not to Ask for More

Here are some awful problems to which gay men rarely (if ever) contribute: gangs, cat-calling, abortion, date rape. It is easy to understand why women might feel physically safe around gay men. It is not hard to understand the kind of protection a straight woman might find in friendship with gay men. Enjoyment matters too, after protection fears recede. Men’s friendships exemplified loyalty and courage. For Plato and Aristotle, friendship could only occur among peers; it transcended sexuality. When Westerners started to whisper their doubts about men’s sexuality, they found a new weapon, a new way of wounding a man. They also created a strong disincentive for men to develop strong emotional bonds with one another. Gay men long found themselves threatening to otherwise well-meaning straight men. Hanging around with a gay guy just wasn’t good for the image. And so gay men were left with other gay men (who might be sexual competitors) and straight women. We see now compelling psychological reasons for these cross-gender friendships. We are talking about a fairly small pool here—not just because the number of gay men is and always will remain fairly low, but because most men and most women make friends within their own gender.21 The category I’m after here evokes memories of how philosophers have distinguished the beautiful from the sublime. For eighteenth-century thinkers, the absence of sexual desire made something more special. Art featuring a naked human body, however beautiful, was more valuable to the extent that it did not arouse the viewer. A work of art whose naked subject did stir erotic passion was merely beautiful, not sublime. We can trace this privileging of the asexual over the sexual back at least to Paul of Tarsus, who in 1 Corinthians argued that those who can live without sex are morally superior to those who cannot (Paul seemed to be drawing on ancient ascetic philosophy here, such as that of Protagorus). I myself have not gone so far as to suggest that any sexless relationship is superior to a sexual one. Beyond that, I have tried to indicate problems in positing any sort of “natural” or permanent psychological similarity between straight women and gay men. Also absent would be a mutual political agenda. No statistics indicate that gay men participate in breast cancer events (e.g., long-distance runs) to a greater extent than other social groups. What I suggest is a crucial family resemblance between straight women and gay men, such that they often feel they belong together, that they comprise a comfortable tribe. Part II

CATEGORIES

Chapter 6

FRIENDSHIP

Gay men gradually won social approval in late-twentieth-century America, in part because straight women had helped them. This chapter will highlight just a few friendships between straight women and gay men in order to suggest that a new variety of social coupling appeared. We hardly need an exhaustive survey to establish that these partnerships happened; the question is how they mattered. My idiosyncratic approach to the vast subject of friendships between straight women and gay men does not aspire to empirical validity, nor does it pretend to do justice to the wide variety of alliances of this sort. Its very randomness underscores the slightness of any assembly of such stories and the ridiculousness of ever trying to nail it down in a simple formula or theory. The thinness of this chapter honors the multiplicity of these friendships. A number of the people portrayed in this chapter lived in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s (although they may have lived and worked other places as well); that city can hardly be taken as representative of American culture. On the contrary, it is thoroughly exceptional. A fuller treatment of these friendships would include stories from the heartland and from racial minorities. Bear in mind that the television show Will & Grace was set in New York City and depended on articulate, worldly white people. Progress has to start somewhere.

Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn

This chapter might have been entitled “Nureyev’s Orbit,” as it could have focused exclusively on Rudolf Nureyev. Instead of questioning hundreds of straight women with gay male friends, I might have chosen a wildly capricious strategy, one that traced the personal experiences of people who knew this prominent gay figure. I didn’t quite take this path. Instead I begin this chapter by exploring his own close friendship with a woman, who also happened to be his colleague and a famous dancer in her own right. Then I explore the personal life of one of his many lovers, a man I myself knew and from whom I learned much about gay New York in the 1960s and 1970s. That man, Louis Martinz, died of AIDS (as did Nureyev). Martinz had maintained an intensely close relationship with a woman he wanted to marry before dying. That woman, Karla Munger-Chubb, 90 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period had known quite a few other gay men before meeting Louis in the 1960s, in Manhattan. Munger-Chubb was not to the manor born; she grew up lower middle-class in downtown Manhattan at a time when a gay man could lose his job and family if he were discovered. Munger-Chubb’s friend Martinz was himself a close personal associate of Margot Fonteyn, Nureyev’s celebrated dance partner. Like Munger-Chubb, the singer Patti Smith and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe also came from the lower middle-class. Smith and Mapplethorpe each went on to achieve fame and some wealth, but it would be a mistake to dismiss them as the privileged children of aristocrats (openly gay people in the United States and the United Kingdom had largely come from the upper class, and my book admittedly focuses on examples taken from the upper class). Mapplethorpe met Nureyev briefly; the former was not yet an established artist and Nureyev was at the height of his fame at the time of the encounter. Andy Warhol accompanied Nureyev to the meeting and upset Nureyev (Warhol suddenly began snapping shots of Nureyev’s famous crotch, then Nureyev grabbed the camera and destroyed the film). Mapplethorpe seems to have charmed Nureyev, despite the unpleasantness. Mapplethorpe too died of AIDS (before Nureyev, in fact). His life inspired his intimate friend Patti Smith to chronicle their marvelous friendship in a moving book. After these Nureyev-related accounts, I move on to a few people who never knew Nureyev or even saw him dance.

* * * * * * * * * *

Perhaps the most celebrated dance pairing in the twentieth century, Nureyev and Fonteyn enjoyed a passionate friendship. In him we find a snapshot of the kind of freedom to which closeted American men of the time may have aspired. In Nureyev we also witness fear of the party ending, that is, of youth fading and leaving a gay man unwanted by young potential partners. Anyone whose livelihood depends on her or his own personal strength may dread aging, but Nureyev had a particularly hard time with it. Nureyev exemplified the brilliant, self-indulgent “artiste.” Because of his fame, he inhabited a realm unimaginable to most American gay men in the 1960s and 1970s. He had sex with whom he wanted, when he wanted. He knew, however, about the closet in which most gay men (many of them married to women) lived. The press, on which he relied for self-validation, would not speak openly about his relationship with the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn, his life companion: “For all his flamboyance and adventuring, Nureyev was an exceptionally concealed man, with an intense inner life he largely kept to himself … The press, in any case, consigned their relationship [with Bruhn] to the closet …”1 In 1955 Fonteyn, a British subject, had married the Panamanian politician Roberto Arias (known as “Tito”). According to Nureyev biographer Diane Solway:

There is no question that Nureyev and Fonteyn loved each other deeply; and one only had to see how she lit up in his presence or the way they laughed conspiratorially to feel the bond between them. “There was a real connection Friendship 91

between them, in many ways more than with Tito,” says Joy Williams Brown, a close friend for thirty years. “She never pretended not to love him.”

Louis Martinz, who was briefly a lover of Nureyev’s, described Fonteyn as “a lady with two great loves: her husband and Rudolf.” She was in any case fiercely loyal to both: “She would turn down opportunities to dance major ballets with other partners if they happened to be ballets in Rudolf’s repertory and she never approved photographs of them that didn’t make Rudolf look good as well” (p. 300). Despite her relatively advanced age, Fonteyn was thriving artistically and financially: “Her partnership with Nureyev had led to the highest performance fees of her career and she felt she had to keep performing” (p. 309). Her success was intertwined with Nureyev’s devotion to her. Fonteyn understood her beloved friend’s moods and knew well the allure he possessed:

Rudolf was “seductive with both men and women.” Among the latter was the buxom actress and cabaret singer Monique van Vooren, a jet-set party girl and “the kind of character that exists only in Fellini movies: hyper-sophisticated, hyper-dramatic, hyper-hysterical.” The Belgian-born van Vooren had got her start with a bit part in Gigi and would later star as a nymphomaniac in Andy Warhol’s 3-D cult film Frankenstein. “If Jackie Kennedy was one of the few women he stood up to greet in his dressing room, van Vooren was the sort of woman he relied on to fix his tea, run his errands, and be available on a moment’s notice. ‘If Rudolf was a religion, I’d join it,’ she was fond of telling reporters. Like many of the women in his life, she was thrilled to find herself admitted to his entourage and would do whatever he asked to remain there.” (pp. 337–338)

Fonteyn was Nureyev’s soul mate, not his lover, and she seemed to feel no jealousy over his female (or male) admirers. The absence of sexual expectations exempted them from proverbial lovers’ quarrels. Aging made Nureyev sad, but Fonteyn overlooked the wrinkles. His anxiety might be considered unusual in a straight man.2 His aging anxiety might even be included in a cliché Hollywood script of middle-aged women commiserating with one another in private:

“No one’s interested in me anymore,” he lamented one day to van Dantzig. “Even in love. I’m too old. They all walk past me. It’s so degrading. With women, I can get what I want, but I don’t want them.” (p. 474)

He may not have desired women sexually, but he did relish their company— perhaps more than he himself admitted. As he approached 50, Rudolf continued to have many male friends. But his most devoted circle was composed almost entirely of women, a situation that increasingly baffled him. “Women he looked to for comfort and understanding, men for sex and guidance” (p. 475). Nureyev seems to have viewed men as 92 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period intellectually superior to women, and yet he found himself drawn again and again to women. The idea that he looked down on women in any way undermines the point I’m trying to make in this chapter and indeed in this book. It should not seem far-fetched to conclude, as Nureyev’s biographer Solway does, that Nureyev was ultimately a stranger to himself, as most of us are. He did not grasp the reasons for his own need for female company. What is certain is that he could have had almost any friend or lover he wanted, yet he routinely preferred women friends. In 1993 Nureyev died of AIDS in France. He was just fifty-three.

Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith

Both were born in 1946 and both were living as paupers when they met by chance in Manhattan as twenty-year-olds. Patti Smith recorded the moving story of their friendship in the 2010 book Just Kids.3 One immediate qualification is in order here: the two maintained a sexual relationship for many months (unlike Nureyev and Fonteyn). That ended, but in time they resumed physical intimacy. This information is important because it would seem to raise questions about whether the two figures qualify for the category of “friendships between straight women and gay men” and also because some might classify him as bisexual (while still others would question the point of dividing humans up into categories such as “straight” and “gay”). Mapplethorpe is today known as a gay artist, indeed an in-your-face gay artist, and his heterosexual past with a woman he loved deeply would seem to undermine the binary distinction on which much of this book rests. If everyone is bisexual, then there is no point in a book exploring friendships between straight women and gay men. I chose to view Mapplethorpe as a gay man because he made clear the political importance to him of that identity. What is surprising about Smith’s memoir is how little importance she attaches to Robert’s homosexuality and how genuinely surprised she is when she learns that he enjoys sex with men. In order to pay the rent, Mapplethorpe worked with some apparent regularity as a hustler, that is to say that he was often having sex with other men; because he was doing it for money, not for pleasure, neither he himself nor Smith considered him gay. He eventually began to fall in love with men and enjoy sex with them, but even these affairs did not indicate to Smith that her sexual intimacy with him need be considered over. For Smith—as for Mapplethorpe— sexuality was not an all-or-nothing determination, such that either you’re gay or you’re straight. Sexuality for her seems to have been much more fluid. For him, this did not seem to be the case. He did propose sexual intercourse with her long after he had become exclusively homosexual, but he almost immediately rescinded the offer (she had wanted to accept it). They helped each other through penury and the considerable difficulty of achieving fame as an artist. Very early in their relationship, the two roommates vowed never to leave the other until each could clearly stand on his feet. They kept the vow. Friendship 93

What is certainly clear is that Patti Smith was never the sort of woman who abhorred the slightest sign of effeminacy in her man. No matter how flamboyant or outrageously campy Mapplethorpe may have been, no matter how many male pornographic magazines he may have purchased and hauled home, Smith still considered him all man. Before arriving in New York in 1967, she had swooned over the nineteenth-century poet Arthur Rimbaud, a man who loved other men (or at least the poet Verlaine). “Rimbaud held the keys to a mystical language that I devoured even as I could not fully decipher it. My unrequited love for him was as real to me as anything I had experienced.” Men who loved other men never ruffled her feathers. Smith is hardly representative of all, or even most, straight women. In her memoir, we see evidence of a strong-willed individual who wants—of all things— to be an artist. She got pregnant the first time she had sex with a boy and had to drop out of college. The burden of social disgrace in 1966 compelled her to give up her baby for adoption, shortly before she met Mapplethorpe. She endured the shame of her pregnancy; blessed with a strong backbone, she made her own way in the world. She journeyed with almost no money and no real employment plan to New York. And so a free-thinking, unattached, unemployed spirit such as Mapplethorpe did not scare her. The sexuality issue is different, though; we might have expected a keener faculty of suspicion. That is to say that some readers of her memoir might have blamed her for failing to spot or recognize clues that her man was gay and therefore an unwise match. But such criticism would overlook the possibility that artistic ambition in a man was sexually exciting to her and perhaps a more important criterion than machismo or exclusive, heterosexual orientation. Mapplethorpe died of AIDS in 1989. He was just forty-two. Smith’s memoir stands as a deeply moving testament to their friendship, which was also a passionate romance.

Karla Munger-Chubb (b. 1943)

Karla Munger-Chubb has never been famous, unlike Margot Fonteyn and Patti Smith. She maintained an absorbing friendship with a gay man at the same time and in the same place as Fonteyn and Smith. This is just a coincidence, as this chapter does not seek to illuminate the social background of New York City in the 1960s or 1970s. Friendships in this city may have been more or less similar to friendships in small-town America at the same time, but the reason many gay men came to New York City in the first place was in order to live more openly. This fact suggests that friendships in New York City might have been a bit easier to observe during the relevant time period. It would be pointless to argue that Karla’s friendship with Louis is representative in any way of other intimate relationships between straight women and gay men. Nonetheless, it should not seem far-fetched to argue that non-famous people were growing closer to one another in ways roughly similar to Smith and Mapplethorpe. Born in 1943, Karla grew up between Connecticut and an unusually tolerant Greenwich Village (New York City) with a very liberal mother. Whether someone 94 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period was homosexual or not just wasn’t a big deal; the family had lesbian and gay neighbors and friends. They also had black neighbors and friends, which was unusual in the 1940s and 1950s. Her mother made a point of getting to know people from many cultures; Saudi, Swedish, and Ghanaian students attended parties in their home. Karla’s mother took in a Chinese friend one summer when both girls were seven; Clinton, Connecticut (where the family at times lived) was taken aback, but the two small children didn’t suffer any nastiness. Karla remembers that a certain Jim Blunt was a very good friend to both her mother and her family. He and his lover had lived across the courtyard from them for a while in New York and then they bought a townhouse up the block. Jim came from a wealthy family, had been married with children, and lived openly with his “friend.” Karla remembers them as kind, interesting men who’d have her over often; they liked to introduce Karla and her mother to new foods and ideas. Jim gave Karla hand-me-downs from his daughter: cashmere sweaters, silk blouses. His daughter adored her father and visited often; the attitude of the rest of his family was just not mentioned. Karla’s mother prided herself on being open about people and sex; her own mother had been habitually prejudiced against everyone who was different. The Village was an area where gay and lesbian couples found tolerance in an intellectual, bohemian atmosphere. Outside the charmed expanse of the Village, people were openly anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, anti-gay. The most difficult challenge was to learn to be tolerant of their prejudice. Karla’s mother counseled her children to realize that people were just ignorant and afraid of things they didn’t understand. Karla had grown up to stand up for ideas and people but nonetheless had to learn that it sometimes wasn’t wise. Once a woman came to visit and was going on and on about “Jews”; she claimed she could always spot a “Jew” when she saw one. A dear friend of Karla’s mother, sitting next to her, was Jewish. The family kept their own counsel and laughed at the anti-Semitic woman after she left. It was embarrassing for everyone, Karla remembered, but it wouldn’t have accomplished anything to have shown her up as a fool. Karla met Louis on May 29, 1969. Robert Rauschenberg, the artist, was throwing a party with Marion Javits (wife of the mayor of New York) for Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev. Louis (a wealthy Panamanian who owned an apartment in the Hôtel des Artistes on West 67th Street in Manhattan) was a friend of Margot and Rudy. (He’d been romantically involved with Rudy.)4 Louis volunteered to make sangria for the assembled crowd. Since Karla worked for Bob, she helped Louis find pitchers, ice, and Tia Maria in the kitchen. Karla bumped into Louis several times that evening as the crowd munched shrimp gumbo and drank sangria. In October Louis called to invite Bob to a party for which he’d rented an entire small club on East 54th Street. When Karla responded that Bob was in Florida, Louis said, “I know who you are … why don’t you come?” Being pushy, Karla asked if she could bring a friend. She had just met Dwight Dayman, who was working at Leo Castelli’s gallery and who had just arrived from Vancouver. At the party Dwight and Louis hit it off, and the trio danced until three or four in the morning. Friendship 95

Marion Javits begged Karla and Louis to go with her the next day; it was the Moratorium, organized to protest the war in Vietnam. Tom Hayden had been at Castelli, Jasper Johns designed an American flag as part of the protest. Wearing the tiny dress from the night before, Karla watched as many familiar faces read the long, long list of names of the dead. After Marion read, the trio left Trinity Church and walked toward a crowd on Wall Street. Caught in the press, they became frightened when the crowd was so tight Louis couldn’t bend down to find his watch, which had been forced off his wrist. They ended up on the roof of Bob’s studio and bonded over the moving experience of the Vietnam protest. Louis and Dwight had a short fling. Dwight was hurt when Louis broke it off. Marion asked Karla and Louis to one event or another, and the three became a little clique. Karla explained that when she met Louis, it was just taken for granted that he was gay. His family (back in Panama) didn’t acknowledge it, nor did various friends of his. But it just wasn’t an issue. His mother always acted as if Karla were his girlfriend. Karla remembers the HIV disclosure vividly. It was a summer day in 1989, and Louis called her out of the blue. He had been in New York that spring. He went down to a press conference at the White House, they were both thrilled. He hadn’t been feeling well; from what a friend who had kidney problems had told her, she suspected Louis had a kidney infection. He’d promised to see his doctor when he got home. (Louis’s friend, Eduardo, had died of AIDS in 1983. Karla and Louis both joked sometimes that it was a good thing that neither of them were “running around” like they had been in the 1960s.) His voice was frightened; he explained that his doctor had run a test without notifying him, much less obtaining consent. Louis had HIV; it was a shock. Louis was coming up to see his New York doctor. Karla told him she’d go with him. When he arrived in New York, the friends avoided talking about the worst- case scenario. They went to see the doctor he trusted; she tried to point out to Louis that HIV wasn’t this doctor’s area of expertise. He was a kind, competent man; he put Louis on medicines recommended at that point. Louis started coming to New York (from Panama) every two months; Karla would come down from Connecticut to accompany him to doctor’s appointments. Once she insisted he show his leg to the doctor; the deep black bruises seemed like karposa sarxoma. It wasn’t; the doctor told Louis that Karla was a good friend to force the issue. He didn’t tell anyone about the diagnosis. It was their secret. He went into business with a female friend; Karla insisted that he tell her. Karla was friends with the actor Anthony Perkins, who also had HIV. Louis’s diagnosis brought him even closer to Karla, and their long-standing friendship deepened. In September 1994 he told her he hated taking AZT and was going to stop. He asked Karla to marry him. She agreed and selected a Christmas date. When he came to New York that November, he was really sick. Karla found it painful to take him to the AIDS expert at Mt. Sinai hospital; he could hardly walk. 96 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

It seemed obvious he was fading fast. She called his nieces and urged them to come to New York; the nieces accompanied the pair to a doctor’s appointment. They might have suspected something, but he hadn’t told them he was sick. She helped them take him to a cab and promised she’d see him at Christmas. Karla and Louis talked a few times on the phone, but he sounded confused. They hired a nurse for him and he died late Christmas Day. Alone.

Mark and Beth

Born in 1962 (Beth) and 1963 (Mark), these two Columbia University undergraduates (during the 1980s) lived the Will & Grace script before the television show hit America. (In the show, the characters Will and Grace are Columbia undergrads during the 1980s.) As Mark and Beth both became university professors, it seems natural to feature their own narrative (as opposed to an interview with them). Mark speaks for the couple.

* * * * * * * * * *

I first saw Beth in August of my freshman year at Columbia. She was a Barnard sophomore helping to run orientation, and when I first noticed this larger-than- life character, I made a mental note to meet her later, that we’d be great friends. I could see from her vivacious personality that she offered me new ways of getting to know the world. But don’t confuse that great insight for wisdom beyond my years: it was a very lucky guess. I met her through friends a few weeks later. Picture us. I’m a tall, skinny preppy boy from Connecticut, introverted and back then morose mostly as a product of being very confused about my sexuality. She was an extroverted plus- sized girl from Whitestone, Queens, a whip smart graduate of Stuyvesant High School, and she knew herself very well. From that first meeting, we made a date to meet at the dining hall for dinner a day or two later. But she never showed. Instead she’d tripped and fallen down some stairs, spraining her ankle—and standing me up. No smartphones or SMS in 1981. When we finally did meet, we hit it off famously. She knew everyone, all the parties, and all the teachers. I knew the prep school crowd and some of the fabulous gays. She showed me around New York, the Village where she’d gone to school and hung out late on Saturday nights, Queens and her loud, loving family of parents and aunties. I showed her New England, gin & tonics, the academic world, and the satisfaction of an exhausting workout. When Beth’s beloved father died suddenly a year later, I supported her and gave her strength to carry on. And when my mother succumbed to cancer exactly a year after that, she was with me through every painful step of grieving and ultimately recovering. We became inseparable and have remained so for thirty-five years—across long distances and through many relationships, a number of careers and too many losses to count accurately. Friendship 97

One thing I’ve learned well from Beth is how to enjoy being in groups, particularly to throw a party. She has always loved to entertain, and it turns that I do, too. Plenty of food (her) and drink (me). Music—Rock Lobster (her) or Vivaldi (me). In the first years, we often threw New Year’s Parties jointly (Guy Lombardo). Now we’re more likely to alternate. I’ve brought champagne to her fêtes in New York, Cambridge, and Moscow. She’s brought life to my gatherings in New York, Connecticut, Oxford, and Berkeley. Moreover along the way, I’ve even learned to enjoy parties whether we host or someone else does. For an introvert like me, this change represents something significant. Reflecting on our friendship, I asked Beth what she’d learned from me. Beth remembers that I taught her sophistication. As the product of Whitestone, Queens, she wasn’t brought up around people who knew that wine had classifications beyond red, white, or rosé—or that one could eat peas or asparagus that didn’t come out of a can. Beth always felt safe admitting to me that there were things she didn’t know, and was grateful to have someone she could—and still can—ask anything. She says she still often asks herself, “What would Mark think?” when faced with decisions, whether it’s picking a pattern for her china or which man to date. I think one of the reasons our relationship has stood the test of time is that we’ll give honest answers to each other, even when the reply may not be what the other was hoping to hear. We agree that we make each other better. We’ve had our issues—perhaps not as hilariously or even as acutely as Will & Grace. We have each confused our roles, and our priorities have vacillated. But we always get back on track. We’ve taught each other so much about how to communicate personally and how to be friends, how to be family. Naturally, over a third of a century, we’ve changed, and our relationship has matured. She married, had a child, and divorced after twenty years. I’ve been with the same dear man for twenty-three years. In many ways, we are one family but not in the bickering, must-be-together-for-holidays sorts of ways. Rather, we’re family and share joy in various ways—including teaching. Many people who found themselves friends with a gay man in the 1980s ended up bereaved, after an untimely AIDS death. I hope my death is rather more timely. Thankfully, I live a happy life, mostly well adjusted and insulated from most causes of early death. And thanks in no small part to my relationship with Beth, it is a life well worth living.

Jeff and Kathy

Jeff Burton (b. 1962) was thirteen years old when his family moved from Queens, New York to Charlottesville, Virginia. Jeff became aware of his physical attraction to other boys at a young age. At sixteen Jeff discovered a local magazine that advertised a service through which gay men could seek relationships and arrange sexual encounters. While filling out the required form in his bedroom, Jeff’s father surprised him and demanded to see the form he had quickly hidden upon his father’s appearance. Finally Jeff surrendered the form. Angry, Jeff’s father 98 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period questioned what on earth made his son think he was gay. “Because I am and I know it,” Jeff responded. Jeff’s father insisted his son was not gay. The next day, Jeff’s parents informed him he had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon. Jeff knew something was wrong when his parents instructed him to pack a suitcase to take to the appointment. Jeff’s parents led him to the David C. Wilson hospital (which later became Charter Health and is now used as student housing at the University of Virginia). Jeff spent three-and-a-half months in a mental institution. He found himself with other young people, not all of whom were gay or lesbian (some exhibited ongoing behavioral problems, others may have suffered from substance abuse). The staff in the center insisted that Jeff was not gay, simply mistaken. Jeff was required to attend regular group therapy sessions and attended classes within the high school (for the first time, Jeff flourished academically— because of the small setting, he thinks). Jeff was put on suicide watch, which meant he had little private time. He disliked his roommate, a Virginia “redneck,” as he put it. To his surprise, a sexual relationship between them soon began. The sex, always furtive, became increasingly passionate and had to be timed carefully. One day they lost track of time and were caught by some of the psychiatric technicians hired to guard the patients. The pair was severely reprimanded and sent to isolation. Jeff’s roommate pled to be put in isolation with Jeff, but Jeff did not agree with his plan (which the hospital would never have allowed anyway). During his three-and-a-half month stay, Jeff found three boyfriends—two older and one younger. His sex life took off. All the while, Jeff was writing letters to his friends on the outside, protesting that he had been put away for being gay. Jeff was not at all ashamed of being gay and wanted people to know what was happening to him. Jeff feels relieved today that he was not subjected to electroshock therapy in the hospital (he knew a woman who was forced to undergo it and who was, he said, “never the same again”). In the hospital Jeff met Kathy Kitterman, a straight woman his age who became his confidante. Well over thirty years later, Jeff and Kathy are still very close friends. Kathy and Jeff shared the experience of having been incarcerated in a mental facility; Kathy was the only one Jeff felt understood him and really cared about him. Jeff began a career as a hair stylist after graduating from high school. He entered a profession often thought of as natural for gay men, but, after decades within the profession, Jeff estimates that half of all male stylists are straight. When asked why he thought so very many gay men have ended up in service professions (i.e., as waiters, airline attendants, retail assistants, florists, hair stylists), Jeff said he did not know. Jeff decided against working as a barber because he wanted more daily balance— both female and male clients. Jeff loves the energy of being around women and dislikes being in all-male enclaves (“too much testosterone,” he says). Most of Jeff’s clients through the years have been straight women, who seem to feel quite at home around him. Jeff, though quite masculine, feels certain that his clients can tell he is gay. Years ago Jeff purposely chose a woman as his medical doctor; he Friendship 99 trusts and relies on her and has not responded well to the care of male doctors (although Jeff thinks he might take to a gay male doctor, which he has never had). Jeff believes that black gay men face a tougher struggle than white gay men (Jeff is himself black). Jeff blames black churches with fostering a culture of intolerance toward gay men. It may sound strange or harsh to read of a parent dropping a child in a mental ward, but we should remember the thread of the “Lesbian Charity” chapter: in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, quite a few parents heard their children confess to being lesbian or gay and then kicked that child out of the house. Lesbians have stated one of the reason they cared for gay men during the health crisis was that they all had something important in common—not so much being gay, but having been cut off by ashamed and angry parents. Jeff’s parents did not ultimately abandon him; he went back to live with them after leaving the hospital. Jeff emerged largely unscathed from a trial almost unimaginable a couple decades later. He credits his friend Kathy in significant part for his eventual success and emotional stability.

* * * * * * * * * *

Kathy Kitterman (b. 1962) thinks of the early years of her friendship with Jeff and exclaims, “We had a lot of fun!” Kathy’s family had just broken up; she had never been out of South Carolina but moved with her mother after the divorce to her mother’s hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia. Kathy was bipolar, but doctors didn’t know how to diagnose it back in the 1970s; the prevailing wisdom held that you needed to observe a patient over the course of at least a decade before you could tell what was wrong. Meanwhile, Kathy suffered from occasional manias. She attempted suicide and overdosed on drugs. She ended up in a private psychiatric hospital, which is where she met Jeff. She remembers the hospital as being “like a hotel—and they just kept you there until your parents’ insurance ran out.” Kathy thinks she must have met Jeff in 1976, because Elvis Presley died the next year. That death left a permanent impression on Kathy—she still remembers where she was when she heard the news and what she was doing as well. Kathy was not aware of being a racist, but she feels certain she was. “You just picked it up in South Carolina, through osmosis.” Kathy had never had a black friend before Jeff, much less a gay one. She can’t remember what word she used back in the 1970s; it probably wasn’t “gay,” but she remembers signaling to Jeff that she objected to his embrace of his own sexuality. She resolved immediately to have nothing to do with him. Jeff’s “positive energy” weakened her determination not to like him; it infected and transformed her. “He was just so uplifting to this group of adolescent, lost children. He got us to dance.” Kathy found Jeff bracing because “he was just so very frank” and “he would call me out on things.” Through Jeff, Kathy learned to laugh at herself. He taught her all about music and how to dance. The highpoint of every day in the hospital occurred after dinner, when all the kids would get together and dance together to Jeff’s music. He inspired everyone and taught Kathy that a gay guy could be a life-changing friend. 100 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

When she finally got out of the hospital, she discovered to her great surprise that she and Jeff lived in the same condo development. In fact, Jeff lived just one building away. The pair was never out of touch again. Jeff went to beauty school and Kathy was doing her thing here and there, but they always wrote to one another. No one liked long-distance calls in the 1980s and 1990s, because they were expensive. Kathy would break down and call Jeff every now and then, because she missed him. In brief, Kathy remembers, “Jeff was a cool cat.” Kathy was introverted, reserved, and usually kept to herself. Jeff brought her out of herself. He got her to go out drinking and dancing; the two just loved being out on the town. Jeff would always stick up for Kathy if anyone made fun of her or gave her a hard time. “Jeff would laugh at me, but he wouldn’t let anyone else.” Kathy married and moved to another part of Virginia, but she says, “Jeff is in my thoughts a lot.” Looking back on this friendship, Kathy mused in 2015: “Now, after all these years, I can still tell you that if Jeffrey were straight, l would have wanted to marry him. And he knows it, so I am after all just your average fag hag. I will always love him no matter what.”

Maru Gonzalez

Maru Gonzalez (b. 1983) grew up in Peachtree City, Georgia, a moderately sized suburb thirty minutes south of Atlanta. Though not particularly devoted to their Catholic faith, her parents—both of whom were born and raised in Puerto Rico— emphasized the importance of justice and fairness, a message that struck a chord with Maru early on. Even as a young child, Maru often noticed and subsequently inquired about social and economic inequities—including, for example, the time she asked her parents why Santa Claus didn’t give homeless children houses for Christmas. As Maru transitioned into adolescence, her evolving understanding of social justice became overshadowed by a need to fit in, to belong, and to be liked. And in her staunchly conservative, predominately evangelical Christian community, “fitting in” meant adopting a belief system that was explicitly anti-gay. Her sophomore year in high school, Maru wrote a persuasive essay arguing against adoption for same-sex couples and used the Bible to support her position. And when her peers were bullied and harassed for being gay, she remained silent, choosing the comfort of complacency over the responsibility of action. Maru’s anti-LGBT beliefs began to shift once she left her hometown for college. Exposed to a broad spectrum of perspectives and life experiences, she learned to think critically about the world around her and began to challenge her once heterosexist positions. It was not until Maru became a school counselor, however, that she transformed into an advocate and activist for LGBT rights, prompted largely by the anti-gay hostility and resistance she witnessed from both teachers and students. During graduate school, Maru began volunteering as a teen group facilitator at an LGBT youth center. Held weekly, these meetings gave LGBT and questioning Friendship 101 youth a space to explore issues from the serious to the mundane. To end on a light note, meetings would generally close with a checkout question, one proposed by a group member and answered in a round by all in attendance. At a meeting early in her service, the checkout question was “Who would you go straight for?” As the only straight volunteer at the center, most youth assumed Maru to be gay or bisexual and, thus, answering the question posed a bit of a challenge. Her response—“I’m already straight but I’ll tell you who I’d go gay for”—generated some laughter and one very poignant question. “If you’re straight,” one young man asked, “why do you volunteer here?” Simple as it was, this question underscored the experiences of far too many LGBT youth: straight people have never cared about them in meaningful ways and certainly not enough to actively advocate for and with them. That moment marked a shift in Maru’s work with LGBT youth, and she vowed to keep fighting to ensure that her involvement as advocate and activist would be seen as more of the rule than the exception. Maru worked with both gay men and lesbians; she helped an entire community in her area. She accomplished this work in part through establishing relationships with individuals. One in particular stands out. A young man named Austin summoned the courage to visit Maru’s office. As a not-yet-out gay student, he was the frequent target of schoolyard taunts aimed at his perceived sexual orientation. Motivated to inspire systemic change, Austin sought Maru’s support and that of another school counselor. Together, they helped cultivate a more respectful school climate by establishing a Gay-Straight Alliance, creating awareness about bullying and harassment among the student body, and coordinating an educational workshop for school personnel. They soon joined forces with a team of activists, educators, and community members to establish the Georgia Safe Schools Coalition, an organization which creates safer, more affirming schools for all students throughout the state. Since then, Austin and Maru have taken their message from Georgia school houses to the US Capitol, lobbying for anti-bullying measures such as the Safe Schools Improvement Act and the Student Non-Discrimination Act. In 2010, they successfully helped secure enumerated protections for LGBT students and other marginalized populations in their local school district’s anti-bullying and harassment policy. In recognition for their advocacy efforts, they were invited to the 2010 LGBT White House Pride Reception and subsequently honored with Georgia Equality’s “Champions for Equality” award. Austin and Maru also marched as Grand Marshals in the 2010 Atlanta Pride Parade and have embarked on a number of individual anti-bullying and harassment initiatives, including “Outrun Bullying”, an effort to create awareness about and raise money for LGBT- affirming safe school measures. Inspired by her relationship with Austin, Maru would go on to write a PhD dissertation on school counselors who have advocated for and with LGBT students in the southeastern United States. Long after Austin graduated from high school, Maru continues to think of him as a pivotal friend. Austin has since gone on to become an LGBT activist. 102 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

A New Way of Being Friends

This chapter falls woefully short of capturing the diversity of friendships between straight women and gay men. The chapter might, for example, have analyzed the love between siblings of this sort. Think of Klaus and Erika Mann; Gianni and Donatella Versace; David and Amy Sedaris; Madonna and Christopher Ciccone; Jamaica and Devon Kincaid; and Anne Hathaway, who left the Catholic Church once her brother Michael came out. Then there are the mother–son friendships: Liberace; Barbra Streisand; Rufus Wainwright; Stephanie Seymour (American model-turned-socialite, mother of socialites Peter and Harry); and Alexander McQueen (who committed suicide in part because his mother had died), for example. Time and space constraints prevented a more thorough examination, which would have ballooned into a book of its own. The narratives collected in this chapter suggest (rather than prove) that a new way of being friends emerged in the late twentieth century. Unchaperoned men and women together had earlier raised eyebrows in communities worried about untoward sexual alliances. Because women largely inhabited a domestic sphere, they could not well understand workplace struggles and therefore might not understand men’s anxieties. Once men started confiding in trusted friends, men and women could be alone without sexual anxiety. They both understood that America was a straight man’s world, and they both felt oppositional tension. They could love each other in a new way. These women did not fear their gay friends, nor did they try to rescue them. Rather, these women celebrated their alter egos. Chapter 7

THE GAY HUSBAND: NO FRIEND TO HIS WIFE?

In August 2012 Denmark’s prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt denied that her husband (Stephen Kinnock, the son of the former British Labour leader Neil Kinnock) was gay.1 This rumor had circulated so widely in the European and British presses that she felt compelled to confront it publicly. She was hardly the first woman to face this strange shame. The various women who have been married to the American actor Tom Cruise have found themselves in much the same boat, as did Lisa Marie Presley, briefly the wife of Michael Jackson, and as Mrs. John Travolta has. Countless other women have endured such whispers. Were these women honest with themselves or the media? What difference does it make? A study of friendships between straight women and gay men will naturally ask such questions, even if they can’t be answered definitively. We do not know how many straight women have married—wittingly or unwittingly—gay men. We do not know whether this arrangement occurs more or less often today, but it certainly seems easier to discuss. The Chinese have coined a word for straight women married to gay men: tongqi.2 The existence of a separate term for this phenomenon might suggest that the Chinese are more familiar with— or more promptly responsive to—this peculiar pairing. Whether a woman would automatically disqualify a suitor (or fantasy man) who happened to be gay on the basis of his sexuality would probably depend on the individual. It is not entirely obvious that most women would avoid such men: The American magazineCosmo ran a serious article aimed to help straight women decide whether to marry a gay best friend.3 The article was not meant in jest. Of course many men who feel predominantly or exclusively homosexual are nonetheless capable of sex with women (whether the women enjoy it or admire the technique are separate questions). Some gay men married to women may stop having sex with their wives, and this cessation holds highly significant religious implications. Whether the marriage still exists without regular sex is open to debate in Judaism and Christianity.4 Even if the couple makes love frequently, the husband may be thinking about the delivery man. Arguably, homosexual fantasies on the husband’s part don’t matter—as long as he is paying his conjugal debt and having sex with his wife.5 This unwieldy matter of an authentic sex life, if we can call it that, is not purely academic; ordinary people understand the implications of stopping conjugal 104 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period relations. This is how Richard Ellmann put it in his epochal biography of Oscar Wilde, a flamboyant homosexual:

Constance (Wilde’s wife) was the mother of their children, and he had no intention of giving them up. She was as loving as ever, in a way he could no longer enjoy. He had to find a pretext for their remaining sexually apart. Her brother Otho said there was a virtual divorce, meaning that sexual relations ceased.6

Wilde had become more confident of both his sexual attraction to, and resolve to obtain satisfaction from, men; Wilde understood he then had to invent an excuse for not having sex anymore with his wife. He told her that he had contracted syphilis at Oxford and, in order to protect her, would have to embrace celibacy. The Wildes were operating under the traditional Christian (and Jewish) understanding of marriage: no more sex meant in some worrying sense no more marriage. It is worthwhile noting that although Wilde did not sexually desire his wife, he prized his children. The urge to have children, to be a father, may have prompted quite a few sexually frustrated gay men to marry women, who alone could give them something that they wanted (of course, some women—like some men—prove infertile; children are not guaranteed to young couples). So many gay men have married straight women that it would be impossible to develop a comprehensive theory of such unions. Surely, though, a great many of the matches were designed to dodge ostracism and bullying in homophobic societies. As such, the marriage of the American painter Grant Wood (1891– 1942) may have been common enough to propose as more or less typical. Long suspected by townspeople in Iowa City, Iowa of being gay, Wood dodged and denied rumors for decades. After becoming famous for having paintedAmerican Gothic, an iconic image of twentieth-century art, Wood became increasingly worried about hearsay and decided to marry a mayor’s daughter. Despite the marriage, Wood struggled to hold on to his university teaching job; same-sex dalliances could end his career at any moment, if brought to light or proved in the past. The four-year marriage was miserable and, after it, his former wife felt abandoned (and also descended into poverty). She had apparently not understood her husband’s sexuality, or perhaps not fully. In this, Wood was probably typical of most gay husbands of his day. Wood suggests himself as a stereotype, insofar as he was throughout his life unusually close to his mother and to his only sister.7 Are these marriages between straight women and gay men essentially just formalized friendships? It is hard to say. When you look at the memoirs of women such as Elsa Lanchester, Vanessa Redgrave, or Carol Channing (all of them noted actresses), you find no reference to the sexuality of the husband. Nor do you find resentment, which would make sense if you were trying to keep the truth of your marriage a secret. This chapter exposes the falsity or at least shortcomings of a memoir, particularly when a shameful secret is of central importance to the narrative. It would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that homophobia is at The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 105 work; so very many wives have known that their husbands cheated on them with a woman and felt shame about it (and never wrote about it in their memoirs), that it is hardly surprising to find that women whose husbands had boyfriends would also choose silence. Let’s consider a few examples of famous people, whose stories arguably hold more influence than those of the faceless people who read and hear about celebrities on a regular basis. It really wasn’t until the 1960s that ordinary people started hearing rumors about celebrity homosexuals, but by that time certain patterns had been established, only to be revealed (not created) by the media. Cole Porter is the model around which I would like to construct this chapter, the entirety of which will reveal how difficult it is to view this model as standard or normative.

Historical Background

The idea that a man and wife could be friends is relatively recent, historically speaking. C. S. Lewis, noted for his warm heart, patience, and love of God, wrote early in the twentieth century that he could not possibly be friends with his wife, only with other men. The ideology of marriage actually starts to change in the early modern period to a more companionate and romantic model—consider many of Shakespeare’s comedies, Milton’s divorce tracts and Paradise Lost. What happens then, though, is that the emerging conception of a loving marriage based on personal compatibility starts to encroach on long-entrenched notions of single-sex friendship.8 In the twenty-first-century West, many married couples expect to be friends in addition to lovers. Instead of spending a hundred pages summarizing the scholarly literature on marriages, let’s take a look at a largely unexplored type of marital friendship, that between a straight woman and her gay or bisexual husband. We’ll see that it is difficult to categorize or pass quick judgment on such pairings.

Success: Cole Porter

Why make a moral model of Cole Porter in this chapter? Elizabeth Taylor for one approved of his private life. He made no effort to hide, disguise, or lie about his sexuality (nor did George Kukor), and so Taylor blessed his decision to marry a woman.9 Taylor’s moral instinct sets the pace for this chapter: As long as he was honest, a gay man might shamelessly marry a straight woman. The musically talented and debonair Yale graduate bowed to the prevailing morals of his time and married a woman. She apparently knew all about her husband’s sexual tastes. She herself may not have been interested in a sexual relationship with a man, particularly after having emerged from a very unsatisfying marriage. Both the bride, Linda, and the groom were rich and excited 106 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period by the glamor and sophistication of Paris, Venice, and New York. This is how Cole Porter’s biographer William McBrien describes Linda:

One commentator remarked, Linda “realized Porter was gay at first meeting and, on condition that he maintain a minimal façade, was prepared to accept it. It is likely that sex repelled her.” Another explains the marriage by insisting that “great beauties don’t want sex—don’t want to be pawed by men.” Indeed, this is a view that a number of Porter’s acquaintances advance. “Linda became Cole’s best friend,” said the Comtesse de Rochambeau, Cole’s godchild, “and they had a mother/son arrangement. Linda brought sanity to Coles’s life and was a wonderful foil for him.” “It was always obvious to us,” wrote a relative of Linda, “why she married Cole Porter. She was so abused by a heterosexual [Edward Thomas] she most probably would never have married again.”

And so the paradigm I have in mind is Porter’s: gay man finds straight woman who understands him, will stand by him, and will never out him, despite his affairs on the side. The two live happily ever after. It could be, though, that Mrs. Porter had a secret of her own to hide (much as the English writer Vita Sackville-West, the lover of Virginia Woolf and other women, had). Here again is William McBrien:

Speculations about Linda’s sexuality abound: Rocky [Mrs. Gary] Cooper, for instance, is convinced that Linda was lesbian. The most recent biography of Irving Berlin asserts that she “tolerated [Cole’s] homosexual affairs as he tolerated her lesbian encounters,” but gives no evidence for this claim. Porter’s friend Ben Baz thought Linda “not at all lesbian—she was sexless—but absolutely in love with Cole who adored her.” What can be said is that Linda moved easily and comfortably with lesbian friends, though in other regards acquaintances found her “old-fashioned, not modern at all.”10

What may strike contemporary readers as remarkable is that, according to McBrien, Porter cared deeply whether Linda approved of his various boyfriends. If she did not approve, he was inclined to reject them. McBrien insists that “Porter was homosexual and not bisexual” and uses this premise to explain why the marriage worked beautifully; Linda never felt threatened or diminished by her husband’s various lovers, because she understood that she had never been in the running for his sexual attention. McBrien asserts that, despite their ups and downs, Cole and Linda remained the best of friends throughout their long marriage

Despite Linda’s extraordinary tolerance of Cole’s crushes and sexual wanderings, she must at times have felt hurt and angry. Then too, Porter probably resented her disapproval, if only implied, and the guilt it engendered … Cole loved her tenderly, if not passionately, which seemed to satisfy her. But as the two aged and illnesses overtook them, Cole grew less guarded in his sexual pursuits and so jeopardized Linda’s amour-propre with the gossip his behavior begot.11 The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 107

The formula for successfully opening up a marriage will usually include discretion: That is, a husband or wife who keeps a lover (or two) on the side will almost certainly need to operate out of the public eye. The formula must also include sensitivity to the wife’s self-image, or amour propre, as McBrien puts it. After Linda’s death, Cole struggled. She had been ill for some time, and Cole knew she would die soon. His concern for her seems quite close to what we might expect from a heterosexual husband who had maintained a sexual relationship with his wife. McBrien finally summarizes the marriage as one of convenience, certainly, but also much more:

The marriage of Cole and Linda was genuine and enduring, sexless as it was. Today such a marriage would be more difficult, because the press would not respect the privacy of a man as well known as Cole. “Linda Lee adored and inspired Cole Porter,” maintains her cousin, “and he adored her … Linda Lee adored his sophistication, glamour, and he spoiled her more than she was.” At the same time she was considerably older than he was, and both had needs that were met by what was virtually a mother–son relationship. With rare exceptions, Cole remained attentive to Linda, and she was happy to share a life with him.12

While it is true that Cole could not share all his thoughts with Linda, it must be remembered that this is true of heterosexual couples as well. It would be quite difficult for even (or especially) a happily married husband to tell his wife about his sexual fantasies about various women he works with or watches on television. Cole yearned for someone to listen to his admiration for beautiful young men; we’ll see shortly that Thomas Mann was just the same way. Like Thomas Mann’s son Klaus (also possessed of same-sex attraction), Porter had tried hard to fall in love with women, but to no avail. The Cole Porter story raises the question of whether a sexual relationship is necessary to a durable marriage. Adultery may or may not be a deal-breaker in such a marriage. Although Cole had quite a few sexual relationships during his marriage, they were all with men. And, until the last years of his marriage, he managed to keep these affairs private and save his wife any embarrassment. It seems quite safe to say that Cole and Linda were best friends. It must also be said that, as wealthy individuals, their lives differed significantly from those of people who have to work to pay the bills and live in some real respect at the mercy of the opinion of colleagues and neighbors, many of whom would never bless the sort of relationship that “worked” for Cole and Linda. The risk here is that the Porter example is epiphenomenal, that it is a “freak” incident that can hardly be taken as representative. Still, though, this arrangement is one worthy of critical analysis, and the rest of this chapter will test its relevance. Ultimately, McBrien may be correct that the invasiveness of modern media make it all but impossible for a contemporary couple to live as the Porters did (and neither Facebook nor Twitter had been invented when McBrien wrote). The selection of Cole Porter’s marriage as a model for gay men and straight women is of course speculative. Few married couples will allow questions about their sex life, no matter how conventional it might be. Yet it stands to reason that 108 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period few women who expect an ongoing sexual relationship with their husband will welcome the news that he has made other plans—or that he never shared her expectations. As a foil to the Cole Porter example, we can think of Rock Hudson’s marriage. According to a private investigator (the veracity of whose testimony can likely never be proved), Mrs. Rock Hudson gradually came to believe the many rumors she heard about her husband’s alleged proclivity for picking up men on the street and then rushing off to have sex with them in some private location. When his wife confronted him in January 1958, Hudson vehemently denied these rumors. Nonetheless, Phyllis Gates—Mrs. Hudson—hired private investigator Fred Otash to eavesdrop on a tryst and then to issue the ultimatum to her husband; the private investigator would later use what he claimed to have heard as evidence in a divorce suit.13 Gates divorced Hudson three months later. Based on this very basic information, it should become easy to conclude that the Porter marriage involved a conjugal friendship in a way that the Hudson ménage did not. Gates apparently decided that she had been duped; a marriage (if in name only) to one of most handsome, recognizable men in the United States was not enough for her. The divorce must have troubled him, if for no other reason that he would need to find another woman he could pretend to be in love with. What’s more, if his ex-wife spread rumors about his sexuality, his career might end abruptly. Hudson did not enjoy marriage in the way Porter did. Hudson lived in constant fear of exposure and did not publicly come out as gay until 1985, shortly before his death from AIDS.

Thomas Mann

The German writer Thomas Mann (d. 1955) moved to Los Angeles after Nazis came to power. He considered himself homosexual, even before he married.14 He had concluded a four-year sexual relationship with a young man he loved. The Nobel Prize winner remained married to his wife until he died, many decades later. Together, they had six children. Incidentally, three of their children self- identified as gay (one of these three eventually as bisexual). As if this were not unusual enough, Thomas Mann fell in love with his oldest son, Klaus. Our focus is on the marriage of Thomas, though. According to some of his children, Thomas Mann was a distant, frequently disapproving, and generally emotionally unavailable father. He seems to have been a faithful husband, which is not say a loving man fully invested in his marriage. In this he may simply have been following his own father, who conveyed disappointment in his own sons.15 Or it could be that Mann was distracted by the erotic life he was missing, the life he had sacrificed on the altar of respectability. Physical attraction to men did not end with his marriage, as the diaries make clear. Although Mann likely never acted on the homosexual impulses, they found their way into his fiction: “Yet impelling The[ Magic Mountain], as many critics have pointed out, is a current of repressed homosexual passion, diverted to a woman. It is a memory of an unrequited fixation on a young boy that dominates Hans Castorp’s [the protagonist’s] (and his creator’s) sexual life.” The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 109

Mann wrote the climax to his magnum opus The Magic Mountain (1924) after catching his son Klaus in what appeared to be a sexual act with Klaus’s younger brother: “Thomas wrote the narrative’s long-awaited climax, the love scene, only shortly after he entered Klaus and Golo’s bedroom, and found his handsome eldest son ‘totally nude and up to some nonsense by Golo’s bed. Deeply struck by his radiant adolescent body; overwhelming.’” The two brothers had been wrestling each other, both naked, in the style of ancient warriors. For Thomas’s part, the marriage was also a capitulation to convention. He already knew he was homosexual, as I’ve indicated—he had enjoyed a four-year love affair with the young painter Paul Ehrenberg. Thomas spoke openly with his older brother about his sexual life. Thomas felt torn between the joy of sex with his boyfriend and self-loathing. Thomas hurled himself into a conventional marriage with a young woman of higher social standing: “A punishment he imposed on himself” is what one of Thomas Mann’s biographers called his marriage to Katia Mann, claiming that “in marrying her he was building a dam to divert the course of his sexual energy, sacrificing his natural inclinations on the altar of his public image.” Shortly before his marriage, Thomas abandoned his boyfriend. Thomas did not seek to find happiness in marriage but rather social respectability. “He genuinely saw the marriage as the socially proper and appropriate step to take, neither dishonorable nor deceitful.” Of course, life is more than just sex, and war interrupted Mann’s private domestic drama. Thomas Mann and his wife Katia did not so much flee Nazi Germany as fail to make it home after a lecture tour. Daughter Erika persuaded her parents of the danger in returning to the family headquarters in Munich. Mann acquiesced but worried considerably that the Nazis would find his diaries, which he had hidden in a safe. Anyone with access to the safe might read about his infatuation with a string of adolescent boys, including Klaus, his own son. The Mann family is interesting in part because the two oldest siblings strongly self-identified as gay. Klaus felt absolutely no sexual attraction to women, much as he may have tried. Erika, his sister, lived quite openly as a lesbian. Then the war intervened. Fleeing Nazi Germany, she needed a foreign passport in order to start a new life. The English poet W. H. Auden, himself gay, married her for purely humanitarian reasons. Erika was later to fall in love with several men, although she never seemed to consider herself heterosexual. Erika’s second (and final) husband was an openly gay man, her brother Klaus’s former lover, Gustaf. Unlike Klaus, Gustaf was eager to repress his homosexuality. Klaus eventually committed suicide, far from his heartbroken family. He had maintained an especially close relationship with his mother throughout his life. She never took her hands off the plow and remained a devoted wife to Thomas Mann. Katia did not know about the contents of her husband’s frankly erotic diaries. Katia’s son Golo, a renowned historian and gay man, returned home to live with his mother for much of the last thirty years of his life. Like the Cole Porters, the Manns were an affluent household—a nationally blended one as well. The Porters were influenced by England but lived in America; the Manns were Germans in California. Both marriages succeeded, at least insofar as neither couple ended in divorce. 110 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester

Elsa Lanchester (1902–1986) drops no clues about her husband’s sexuality in her book about their marriage and does not seem to want to be found out. True, she never speaks of having children or of carnal passion for her husband, but this does not make a case. Only after Charles’s death did Elsa publicly reveal that her husband had been a gay man. Charles’s erotic inclination may have been an open secret in Hollywood, at least it was according to the former prostitute Scotty Bowers; this prostitute’s riveting book Full Service garnered the backing and approval of Gore Vidal, among others, and deserves our critical consideration. It is possible that, as Full Service claims, almost everyone in Hollywood knew of Charles Laughton’s sexual tastes in the 1930s and 1940s. Her memoir contrasts sharply with Full Service, which was admittedly written decades later in a markedly different social climate. Plus, Charles her husband had read the entire manuscript of her memoir and signed off on it. To preserve his career, he would not have wanted any sign of homosexuality to appear. Beyond that, censors would have demanded any scandalous whiff be expurgated from the manuscript before publication. As a woman who loved her husband and as an actress who was in some real sense dependent on him for roles (at least in Hollywood, if not also in London), she would have seen the prudence of protecting his reputation (and at the same time safeguarding his closet). Beyond that, it is at least possible that she had no idea of his sexual tastes at the time. The mere fact that he enjoyed sex with men does not exclude the possibility that he enjoyed sex with women. And even if he did not enjoy sex with women, he may have been capable of faking it. It is also possible that at the time of the book’s publication, Charles had not yet started to “get around” and so did not yet know that he enjoyed sex with men. According to Full Service, Elsa knew all about her husband’s dalliances through most of the marriage. Of course we should always exercise caution when reading any source (even autobiographical ones), and that holds true for Scotty, the man who supplied Laughton and scores of other celebrities with “tricks” or prostitutes. Bowers professed admiration for what might be termed the sexual generosity of Lanchester, who took a laissez-faire view of her husband’s erotic life:

Another fascinating man that I met during the fifties was that wonderful British actor, Charles Laughton. I think we were introduced at a party where I was working, and I soon began tricking him regularly [that is, having sex with Laughton], as well as arranging for him to see other guys. I also introduced him to my old pal Tyrone Power [another film celebrity of the day]. Charles became very enamored with Ty and saw him often. Charles was married to the actress Elsa Lanchester who, in addition to many other roles, had played the bride in the campy horror filmThe Bride of Frankenstein, in 1935. They had already been married for many years when I met him. I doubt the relationship could ever have been categorized as conventional. Charles, or Chuck as some people called him (much to his dislike), was openly gay. Elsa once told me that although the The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 111

marriage began with the two of them having sex now and again, things changed as the years rolled by. Gradually, those encounters became more infrequent, so much so that eventually Charles’s sex life was exclusively gay. Yet she never held that against him. I always admired Elsa for her unstinting loyalty toward him. In fact, it was far more than loyalty. I do believe that Elsa loved Charles deeply. She stood by him for more than thirty-three years, from the time of their marriage in 1929 right up until Charles’s death in 1962. She went beyond the call of duty, tolerating his double life without ever questioning it … She unflinchingly accepted her husband’s infidelities and double standards. You don’t see that very often in either a wife or a husband.16

There is arguably something tacky about those who kiss and tell. Yet, such accounts as Bowers’s are useful to scholars trying to understand a sort of domestic arrangement that those concerned almost never want to discuss publicly. If Bowers is correct, then we might today read Lanchester’s memoir with a kind of admiration, a sense of surprise at how well she managed to maintain discretion and how deeply she loved a husband whose sex life could have gotten him into plenty of trouble. She never played the morals card, as we might call it, though the temptation to do so must have been strong in one of those inevitable marital feuds. Lanchester’s book was published in 1938; yes, that was certainly a time far, far away. It could be argued, though, that the closet is the closet—whether in the early twentieth or the early twenty-first century. Even an actress in a conventional marriage may have yearned for privacy and therefore learned to shield her emotions from curious onlookers and prying fans. “How could she have put up with that?!” or “Is she some kind of freak too?” may have been questions for which she had no patience (I’ll turn back to such questions in Chapter 7). The Introduction is quite interesting, because Elsa indicates strong interest in what other women (wives?) think of her (p. vi). She begins Charles Laughton and I: “All things considered, I think Charles and I are weathering the storm of art and marriage as well as anybody else … .”17 Elsa comes across as adoring. She lavishes praise on her husband’s mother (“one of the smartest women I have ever met,” p. 5). Her only criticism of her husband is that he is not very well dressed (p. 5) and she acknowledges at several points in the book that he does not have classically good looks, that is, that he is not exactly handsome. It seems unlikely that many people would argue with her here; indeed, many would no doubt consider Charles homely. Elsa’s book, though devoid of any indication of her husband’s sexuality, does, however, deliver plenty of double-entendres. Looking back, contemporary readers may reasonably sense a playful irony in her account of the domestic life she narrated. What follows here is a short list of them. Again, it could be that Lanchester lived in total ignorance of her husband’s proclivities, but it could also be that she was playing a part in the memoir, much as she did on the stage. Charles comes to see Elsa perform in 1926, but the two did not actually meet for another two years; Elsa describes him as “a distant but devoted admirer of mine.” In January 1925 Charles gained admission to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts 112 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period and in 1926 Elsa heard rumors of Charles’s talent. In 1928 they started thinking of marriage, despite no formal engagement. They must have already achieved some fame, for after the papers announced the engagement, “journalists were living on the doorstep.” Twenty-first-century readers familiar with the idea of Charles as a gay man may well puzzle over a statement such as, “I think Charles is more fond of [director Leo McCarey] than of any director he has worked with.” Of course, the relationship between the two may have been purely professional. Even if McCarey had no sexual interest whatsoever in Charles, Charles may have found McCarey physically attractive. The reader will likely never know. When read with the idea that Charles was largely gay, though, such statements add a titillating mystery to Lanchester’s record of her life with him. The same is true of a statement such as “Charles got to like [Gary Cooper] very quickly” or “A married couple acting together often find an ease in their timing which it is impossible to acquire with a stranger.” The two are always playing a part together—“natural naturalness.” This seems ironic, although it would be a mistake to read too much into this statement, for not everything has to do with sex. It could be that Lanchester was musing on the difficulty of two actors ceasing to act when they are alone with each other. Ignorance is bliss: “Since I was in England during the shooting of Mutiny on the Bounty, I can’t give many details about Charles’s life in Hollywood at that time.” What could that mean? They seem to sleep in separate bedrooms; in any event each has a bedroom of his own, and Charles decorates his own bedroom to suit his personal tastes. Discussing how she makes up her face and the subject of natural beauty, she writes, “no one (except Charles) is likely to see me getting out of a bath in the morning.” In 1983 Lanchester published her autobiography Elsa Lanchester Herself, in which she revealed that the reason she and Laughton never had children was that he was gay. A memoir such as Lanchester’s 1938 work could further her own career; it could also benefit her husband, an acclaimed Shakespearean actor and winner of an Academy Award. In order for the memoir to work, she had to respect various conventions. She could not have broached her own peculiar proclivities, had she any. Lastly, Scotty Bowers, whom I quoted earlier at length and who professed admiration for Lanchester, alleges that Lanchester had a peculiar compulsion: sexual ambition for men with no carnal interest in women. According to Bowers:

Perhaps because of Charles’s sexual rejection of her, Elsa had developed a rather odd but quaint predilection. She had a passion for young gay men. She would seduce them by whatever means possible and then call upon her substantial talents to coerce them into having sex with her. The younger ones, who were often more experimental than their older counterparts, were the easiest to win over, and still willing to dabble in heterosexual behavior. She once told me that she loved nothing better than to “conquer” men who had never had sex with a woman before. Even though she knew it was a futile exercise she fantasized about changing them.18 The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 113

This agenda gives new meaning to the familiar—and vulgar—epithet “fag hag.” A familiar stereotype of heterosexual men is that they hunger to deflower young, nubile virgins. Lanchester does not necessarily masculinize herself by (allegedly) confessing to an analogous fantasy; she sexualizes the concept of a gay man and indicates the depth of her excitement for a certain type (we do not know if this was her exclusive fantasy). If Bowers is right, he introduces a sexual element into what I have been portraying as a purely psychical and emotional relationship between straight women and gay men. Beyond that, he gives us a working example of a strong friendship between a straight woman and a gay man who happen to be married to one another.

Carol Channing

The American actress Carol Channing (b. 1921) achieved notoriety for a variety of roles, perhaps most notably Hello, Dolly, Lorelei, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She was received by presidents and royalty. In her memoir, Channing mentions obliquely “the trauma of my marriage with Charles” (p. 10).19 Scotty Bowers, the kiss-and-tell precursor of Perez Hilton, had this to say of Channing’s husband:

I met Carol while she was still married to her second husband, Alexander Carson, with whom she had a son named Channing. She absolutely adored and worshipped that boy. In the early fifties I introduced her to a producer and publicist friend of mine, a guy by the name of Charles Lowe. Charley was the original producer of the long-running TV comedy series The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show … Charley was gay and I often fixed up tricks for him. (p. 237)

Bowers claims that Carol Channing availed herself of his offer of assistance when she tried to extricate herself from the first marriage. Bowers contacted an old friend of his who happened to be a judge in Nevada. Bowers felt he had failed Channing when, in 1956, she announced plans to marry Lowe, who was openly gay: “I immediately saw the writing on the wall. I felt guilty about it; after all, I was the one who had introduced them. Although they remained married for over forty years it was a marriage in name only. Throughout it Charley continued to play the field in the gay world” (p. 239). Not surprisingly, Channing leaves us with a different story. In her memoir Channing states elliptically, “What Charles and I did manage to create together was a circle of friends, including truly wonderful people like George Burns and Gracie Allen.” Of fellow performer Jerry Herman Channing reminisced:

I was spitting jealous of [a girl pursuing Jerry]. I was married to Charles Lowe at the time, but Charles always knew Jerry’s and my love would remain unconsummated. Charles was all for our “affair.” How did he know? By then I was in love not only with Jerry but with his music. It turned out to be true love right up to this minute. Just eternal, spiritual, true love. (p. 181) 114 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Channing, a religious woman, signals her inability to commit adultery (even with a man she loved) and her belief that what she had with Charley was, at base, still a real marriage. As if to confirm to her readers that she did sleep with her husband: “Charles told me my feet were dancing in bed all night long in my sleep. It was the fastest I can remember amalgamating direction.” Channing did ultimately divorce her husband, but she never outed him (or at least not in her memoir). This is a sign of friendship, or perhaps a sense that attacking the reputation of her ex would be tacky.

Vanessa Redgrave

In her eponymous memoir, the acclaimed British actress Vanessa Redgrave (b. 1937) gives no indication whatsoever of her husband Tony Richardson’s sexuality.20 Richardson was a well-known and influential director before his death. She seemed to think the marriage fine until, one day, Tony supposedly fell in love with another woman in 1965. She wept because Tony didn’t love her anymore. “It’s a tragedy! I wept one evening as we talked. ‘It’s not a tragedy, it’s life,’ he replied simply.” She sets off to China but, on the way there, decides on a dramatic gesture, one designed to save her marriage. She turns around and returns to Rome, where her husband was staying with their two small daughters. Displeased to see her arrive unexpectedly, Tony tells her: “It would have been much better if you’d kept to your plans and gone back to China. I’m going on a holiday with John [Osborne] on a yacht to Greece.” The reader wonders what sort of relationship Tony had with John. Not long afterward, Tony and Vanessa start a new project together. They had always worked well together, and Vanessa still thought most highly of him. “I knew that whatever happened, Tony and I would have a lifelong friendship.” Tony did offer an explanation for why he had had a change of heart about their marriage: he had become bored with her, and she was not “reliable in small things.” THis seems like a pretty thin pretext for a divorce, but divorce they did. Vanessa Redgrave gives no clue in the autobiography as to Richardson’s now well-known sexuality, as I’ve indicated, nor does she attribute any role to it in the decision to split. All of this was taking place not long before she began filming Antonioni’s now classic film Blow-Up (1966). She mentions in passing that she felt curiously distant from “swinging sixties” London and blames her distance from it on her “conventional middle-class education.” Such an education would presumably have made it more difficult to accept the fact that her husband was gay. Fast forward a couple of decades: Redgrave flies suddenly to Los Angeles in 1991, as Tony is dying. She mentions in the same paragraph in which she offers this detail that she engaged in a conversation about AIDS with a friend, but she never indicates what Tony died of. Redgrave and Richardson both worked extensively in the United States, which explains why I include them in this chapter. The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 115

Redgrave indicates unfailing admiration for Richardson. We find not the slightest hint of anger that he deceived her (if in fact he did) by marrying her under false pretenses. Remember that she and he had children together; even though her children were grown at the time she published her memoir and her former husband was dead, she may have had an incentive to hide any anger. She may not have wanted to spoil the image her children carry in their minds of their father. Plus, it can be difficult to admit defeat, and talk of this aspect of the marriage may have made her feel defeated. Or it could quite possibly be that she remembers him fondly, as an intimate friend.

Michael and Arianna Huffington

The wealthy Texas politician Michael Huffington (b. 1947) married Arianna Stasinopoulou, the ambitious Greek graduate of Cambridge University in 1986. The marriage lasted until 1997. In 1994 Mr. Huffington spent $30 million of his own money in order to run for a senate position in California. Shortly before the election the news leaked that Huffington and his wife had employed an illegal alien as their nanny.21 That revelation was later blamed for his narrow defeat. In December 1998, after having divorced Arianna, ex-Congressman Michael Huffington finally revealed to Esquire that he was in fact bisexual.22 This despite having told himself eighteen years prior: “I am straight, I will get married. I will have children. I will never sleep with another man again” (according to the Esquire interview). It seems difficult to accuse Huffington of hypocrisy or deceit, as he claimed to have prayed fervently (after the advice of Protestant leaders Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson) to overcome his homosexual desires and become a proper heterosexual. He seems to have believed that such a conversion was psychologically—or spiritually—possible. So although he knew he had homosexual desires, he had not believed he was a homosexual. When Arianna ran as an independent candidate for California governor during the 2003 recall election, Michael instead endorsed Arnold Schwarzenegger, who he described as “a charismatic leader.” This decision must have struck Arianna as a betrayal. He did not support the mother of his children. We can only guess whether Arianna blessed Michael’s new relationship (with a man). By 2003, an openly gay man could have run for a senate seat in California and been taken seriously, but not in 1994. Huffington was in a sense a victim of his time. Much more so than the divorce, Huffington’s decision to back Arianna’s rival suggests that the former couple is not an illustration of best friends, a gay man and a straight woman working together for mutual benefit. One reason why a straight woman might marry a man she suspects of being gay is money. Huffington came from a wealthy and powerful family and Arianna, an ambitious woman, might have seen the influence his family wielded as attractive. Even if that were true, she might still have genuinely loved him. We may never know, as she does not discuss the divorce. 116 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

James McGreevey

Former New Jersey governor James McGreevey (b. 1957) fills out this chapter by reversing its order. I have so far focused largely on the writings of straight women; this time, I turn to the memoir of a gay man, the former governor of New Jersey, who was outed in a 2004 sex scandal. Again, we do well to take all biographical and autobiographical sources with a grain of salt. Taking McGreevey at his word, though, we see that he never told his wife about his sexuality during their courtship or marriage. As the outcry that was to topple him began, McGreevey found himself frightened one night while alone with his wife Dina:

After we were safely out of [their daughter] Jacqueline’s earshot, she turned and glared at me. “This whole thing is ridiculous,” she said. I knew exactly what she meant. “What thing?” I asked anyway. She walked back toward me, in the darkened hallway, until we were close enough for her to study my face. “Are you gay?” All my life I had dreaded that question. Others had asked it, and I can’t think of a time when I lied affirmatively about my sexuality, but I lied every day by omission and obfuscation. And I allowed others to lie for me. My marriage to Dina was a major part of that lie; that much I knew consciously. As our years together ticked by, I found it harder and harder to deny the truth.23

McGreevey’s account of the first meeting with Dina, the woman who was to become his second wife, reminds us of the occasional inscrutability of even our own actions:

When the event was over I walked her out to her car. She didn’t mind when I took her hand. We leaned against the car, and I kissed her. I’m still not sure what made me do it. Loneliness, I suppose. Maybe she just seemed like the perfect politician’s wife; it might have been that self-serving. Or it could have been the glass of Portuguese wine I drank. Whatever it was, she kissed back. (p. 177)

Before condemning McGreevey hastily, it is worth remembering that no state had ever before elected an openly gay man governor. And so a politically ambitious man who feared his own sexual desires naturally had an incentive to look for a wife. In McGreevey’s case, it seems the woman courted was also politically ambitious. This is not to suggest it was morally permissible to lie to her about his homosexuality. The budding romance, such as it was, becomes more understandable in context. Of course, two people may differ over the interpretation of a memory they created together, and this is what happened to McGreevey:

Years later, Dina accused me in legal papers of courting her, and ultimately marrying her, for purely political reasons. That’s not true. I treasured her The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 117

companionship, and in my way I loved her. But as a gay man, I could only love her so much. She deserved more. (p. 183)

The anger his estranged wife expressed seems more rational if one accepts the assumption that she genuinely did not know about his sexuality. (McGreevey indicates elsewhere that he did not expect his wife to be surprised when he came out of the closet to her, p. 317.) Of course McGreevey may only be trying to justify his own sense of guilt here, to rationalize away any responsibility for the divorce. This assumption, though, disqualifies the couple from the category of best friends, the organizing category of this chapter. A high-ranking politician adds a peculiar twist to the McGreevey example, insofar as he broaches the possibility that a gay man’s sexuality can taint his wife. Tony Coelho, a former White House Democratic whip and one-time campaign manager for presidential candidate Al Gore, telephoned McGreevey before the widely publicized coming-out speech and informed McGreevey:

Dina [a Portuguese American] will feel she is being punished by all of this. She will be stigmatized because of your homosexuality. I know the Portuguese American community, Jim. They’re going to hold this against her. (pp. 323–324)

In Coelho’s assertion we see a dark underside to the decision of a straight woman to marry a gay man. Women such as Vanessa Redgrave and Carol Channing— stars in their own right—may have risked less. But even a Broadway or movie star can suffer a terrible loss of reputation. And so could a Portuguese American woman in the first decade of the twenty-first century, apparently. Because Mrs. McGreevey responded with anger when she discovered the truth, she can hardly be said to have been a genuine friend to him. For he was deceiving her throughout their marriage and she did not know that he was—on some level— using her (“I should have known that would be unfair to her, and it was blind of me,” p. 197). It sounds as though Dina was more of a “beard,” a person whose role was to help a gay man hide his sexuality from public view. The McGreevey marriage differs significantly from Cole Porter’s, most because Porter was honest with his wife about himself.

Alison Bechdel

In the memoir Fun Home (2006, told in comic strip format) we find a powerful narrative of what it is like to grow up with a gay father.24 We also gain access to the marriage of a gay man and straight woman from a child’s perspective. Bechdel was away in college when, in 1980, her 44-year-old father died. She suspects he killed himself; the driver of the truck that ran into him said he appeared to have been surprised by a snake, which would explain why Bruce (the father) jumped back into the road, right into the path of the oncoming vehicle. Bruce’s wife Helen had asked him for a divorce just three weeks earlier. Bruce had been in 118 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period trouble with the law after having supplied underage boys with beer; Bruce had had sexual relationships with various male students he employed to help around the house and in the yard. Bechdel’s poignant and highly creative memoir sometimes treats her father, a capricious man with a passion for interior design, harshly. She succeeds in conjuring a sense of how restrictive life in small town Pennsylvania was for everyone, not the least for a man of college age in the 1950s who had figured out his physical attraction to other men. Bechdel weaves a number of literary works into the memoir, because her father worked as a high school English teacher (in addition to running the family’s funeral business). Bechdel never mentions Madame Bovary, despite striking parallels. Like Emma Bovary, Bruce felt trapped in an unfulfilling marriage and dreamt of erotic adventures in a city a couple of hours away (Paris for Emma, New York City for Bruce). The teenage boys Bruce chose for these couplings were unlikely to have satisfied him for very long. Bruce’s wife gradually became aware of her husband’s secret life, which made her miserable. An English teacher as well, she felt stunted by his prissiness and coldness. She felt especially put out when her daughter Alison wrote from college to say that she was a lesbian. Later in the memoir, Alison softens and eloquently explores what life for her father might have been like, had he lived through the 1980s. She never blames her father for having married her mother, who seemed genuinely in love with him at the time of their marriage and who may have known something about his sexual history before accepting his proposal.

Ted Haggard

Former Idaho Senator Larry Craig (b. 1945) found himself at the center of a media circus after allegedly seeking sex in an airport bathroom in 2008 in Minneapolis. A married man, Craig had vociferously fought gay marriage. Unlike the governor of New Jersey James McGreevey, who was outed by a former boyfriend/employee and then held a press conference in order to announce that he was a “gay American,” Craig vehemently denied rumors that he was gay. Craig simply disappeared from the national spotlight after the scandal.25 The evangelist Ted Haggard (b. 1956) also strongly opposed gay marriage. To his surprise, he was outed by a male prostitute (and alleged drug buddy) who saw Haggard denouncing the gay rights movement on television and realized what sort of problem client he had on his hands. Haggard had given a false name to the hustler he had been seeing regularly for two years, which explains why the hustler was so surprised to see a client on television. Founder and former pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, he lost his professional reputation in November 2006, when the scandal broke. The father of five Haggard had been married for many years—to the same woman. Alexandra Pelosi’s HBO documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard, detailing the downfall of the evangelist, aired in January 2009. Not long afterwards, a young The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 119 male member of Haggard’s former church came forward and alleged that he too had had a lengthy sexual relationship with Haggard. In early 2009, after the release ofThe Trials of Ted Haggard, Haggard and his wife Gayle became media hounds, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, Good Morning America, and other nationally televised programs. Haggard claimed he wanted to confess his sins openly and presumably atone for them by subjecting himself to the subsequent humiliation and gawking, not to mention the scoffing of people who thought he was still too frightened to come out of the closet (for he claimed he was only bisexual, not gay tout court). Remarkably, the couple went so far as to appear on the syndicated television show Divorce Court in April 2009. In this particular venue, Ted wished that his wife would divorce him, claiming that he thought he had become too “toxic” to remain with her and their children. In an interview published in the February 2011 issue of GQ magazine, Haggard opined, “I think that probably, if I were 21 in this society, I would identify myself as a bisexual,” adding that “Just like you’re a heterosexual but you don’t have sex with every woman that you’re attracted to, so I can be who I am and exclusively have sex with my wife and be perfectly satisfied.” One feels some sympathy for the largely silent Mrs. Haggard, as few wives have to bear the various emotions—whatever they may be, they must be tiring—attached to watching your husband sort of come out of the closet in the national newspapers. Through it all, his wife has stood by him. Whether she views herself as married to a gay man is not exactly clear. It would be unfair and no doubt inaccurate to sneer that Haggard is just using his wife in order to maintain his dignity, as he lost that years ago. It could be that he is a victim of his own passion for a traditional script: Perhaps he is just a man who desperately wishes he were in fact the straight- laced family man he long played on television and in public gatherings.

Judith Newton

The last and most recent narrative to be added to this section comes from an English professor named Judith Newton (b. 1941). Her 2013 memoir Tasting Home includes numerous recipes, because her memories of the past are closely tied to food.26 Newton’s concise, sensible way of putting things makes hers a winning book. My interest in the biography comes from the happy marriage at the heart of it. In the late 1960s Newton married a fellow PhD student in English literature who had had to drop out of graduate school for a year in order to return to Texas and undergo therapy, because he felt sexual attraction to other men. Newtown married him anyway a few years later and loved him deeply, even after their eventual divorce. Newton did not get along with her mother, who lived to be 101. From her mother, Judy acquired a strong sense that sex was dirty, shameful. Consequently, Judy did not develop an interest until fairly long after college. She had had sexual intercourse before meeting her husband Dick, and she sometimes enjoyed 120 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period quite pleasurable sex with him, but she was not terribly bothered when the sex gradually stopped—because she harbored deep reservations about whether sex was something good people actually did. A native Californian, Judy studied English literature at Stanford, where she fell in love with higher learning. She decided to pursue a PhD at nearby Berkeley, where she met Dick. After years of graduate school, they moved to Philadelphia. Both had landed university teaching positions, Judy’s at the University of Pennsylvania. Both Judy and her husband began therapy, although not as a couple. Dick’s analyst thought Dick was gay. The news did not shock the couple, but they did not exactly seem to agree on what to do about it. They married in a small civil ceremony. In the summer of 1975 Judy had to return to Berkeley, and the couple was geographically separated for a short while. In Berkeley, Judy slept with another man and felt guilty. She confessed the deed to Dick after returning to Philadelphia; she asked if he had slept with anyone during the same time. When he answered that he had, she asked whether a woman or a man. It had been a man. Judy supported Dick’s decision in ways somewhat surprising; she viewed it as an act of courage to place an ad in a local newspaper and visit the apartment of a stranger for a sexual opportunity, as he had done. She recalled:

But somehow we hadn’t left each other, although, I learned later, there had been seven men for Dick that summer, not just one. Dick had been afraid to tell me more. He’d been shielding me from his desires, his disappointments, and his occasional despair since that winter day in 1966 when he’d told me, “If it weren’t for you, I’d be homosexual.” And yet I knew he loved me, too. “Grow old with me,” he wrote that evening in a journal that he meant for me to read. He wrote that we’d “shattered each other, bombed each other out,” but not out of bitterness at each other. “We weren’t in a war. The bombs were accidents of our own unmalicious pursuit of our own growth. And that growth, mine anyway, and yours I absolutely believe, was intended for our future.” “Judy,” he wrote, “when you read this, and I think sometime you will, know that I love you desperately and completely. I feel great hope for our future. Now life really begins again.” And Dick was right.

Newtown describes Dick’s love as “unforgettable.” Judy leaves the East Coast to spend a year in Laguna Beach for professional reasons. Of the departure she writes, “Dick and I cried on each other’s shoulders as were hugged good-bye in May. Leaving Dick felt risky, and I wrote in my journal, ‘Dick means more to me than anyone else in the world. If I were to lose him the universe would seem a mighty stranger.’ We meant never to part.” For years after their divorce, Judy and Dick remained roommates, in various apartments and each with a lover on the side. As she put it, “We were having a life together, despite everything.” Dick was eventually diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and subsequently became terribly sick. Judy remained by his side though it all. Dick lingered in a terrible state of health and, when asked, stated that he was staying alive for Judy. When he died, Judy wrote: The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 121

Through all the days of his dying, Dick and I had been in a relationship. It hadn’t been like I was losing him at all. It was like being with him more intensely than before. Dick had said “the best thing about this is loving you again.” Even now, in death, Dick was in the room—not in his body but somewhere above it. I felt him there as energy and wanted nothing but to stay there in his presence.

Dick passed away in 1985 at the age of forty-six, having tried hard to help Judy (who was then well into her forties) realize her dream of becoming a mother. After having dutifully produced sperm samples for months, he consulted a physician, who determined that Dick was infertile. Judy became pregnant by another man, bore a girl, and ends her memoir thinking of herself as exceedingly fortunate to have had Dick as the love of her life. She came to enjoy sex with men immensely, we learn in the memoir, and yet sex didn’t really seem to matter in the final analysis, in her rumination on life and love. Judy’s happy marriage took place a couple decades after Cole Porter’s. Both Judy and Porter found sexual satisfaction outside their respective marriages, and yet both felt quite happy married.

“Beards” The term “beard,” perhaps not entirely unflattering, refers to a person who masks the sexual preference of a gay woman or, by extension, gay man. Lela Rogers was probably a “beard” for former CIA director J. Edgar Hoover (b. 1895), who never admitted publicly that he was gay. His glamorous and conventionally female friend Lela would sometimes appear with him at public events and “passed” as Hoover’s date or love interest. Hoover himself never came out of the closet; in 2011 a major Hollywood movie (J. Edgar, directed by Clint Eastwood) portrayed him as a man who enjoyed a long, happy, and monogamous relationship with another man. No doubt plenty of Hollywood celebrities from days gone by (e.g., Rock Hudson or Tab Hunter) availed themselves of a “beard.” It would be a mistake to press too hard on this category, as it seems inappropriate to describe Elsa Lanchester, for example, as her husband Charles’s “beard.” She genuinely loved him, and he probably loved her back. He wasn’t just using her; a closet case’s relationship with her/his “beard” is usually parasitic or at least instrumental (i.e., one person is with another specifically to gain something). If a “beard” receives cash compensation or significant favors, then the “beard” amounts to a soft-core prostitute of sorts. If the “beard” publicly pretends to be a heterosexual love interest simply to help out a tortured friend, then the beard is a compassionate soul, one perhaps owed admiration. Do the straight women who marry gay or bisexual men know or at least suspect their husband’s orientation? Do the couples have sex? If so, how convincing are the men? Could the women perhaps have very low sexual expectations? Perhaps the women don’t know because their gay husbands are such skillful lovers and are so convincingly playing a part. Perhaps some people prize companionship over sexual activity. 122 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Relevance of the Porter Paradigm I began by proposing the Cole Porter marriage as indicative of how well this coupling of a gay man and straight woman could go. The examples in this chapter involve mostly famous artsy types whose views on marriage, and whose practical options (especially for the women) are likely to be nonstandard in many ways. If you’re in a social context in which marital fidelity is optional, for example, Bloomsbury or “bohemia” in New York or Paris or Berlin or Hollywood, and you’re rich/liberated/childless enough that you can find other ways to entertain yourself, you can maybe be a lot breezier about your spouse’s behavior than if, say, you’re a lower middle-class evangelical Protestant in Oklahoma, dependent on your husband for financial support. The Internet facilitates research on these more common, non-celebrity couples. Yahoo! harbors a support group called “Making Mixed Orientation Marriages Work” (“MMOMW”). These subscribers come from all walks of life and educational levels; quite a few of them are non-American. They share a common goal: staying in their heterosexual marriages despite the fact that one or both of them is gay or bisexual. Sometimes both members of the couple are on the list, sometimes just the straight or queer one. A fair number of them, but certainly not all, are deeply religious and reject divorce as an option for them. It’s a “closed” list, that’s to say that one must apply for permission to join. There’s very frank discussion on MMOMW about the issues involved—what “counts” as infidelity (what about, for instance, a gay porn habit?), how to manage various kinds of open relationships, sexual jealousy, guilty celibacy, STD exposure, etc. Does the “straight spouse” have a friendly (or even sexual) relationship with the gay/bisexual spouse’s partner, or do they never meet each other, or something in between? Do the kids get introduced to the partner, and if so, are they made aware of what is really going on? Is it better, from the straight spouse’s point of view, that the gay relationships be purely physical, even anonymous, or that the gay spouse have a regular lover, or that the “mixed” couple find another similar couple and negotiate some sort of swapping arrangement? The MMOMW group generally endorses my general point—that open communication between the members of the couple determines how others evaluate the marriage (which is arguably none of anyone’s business). But that doesn’t mean that this kind of openness is easy to achieve. There’s an awful lot of pain on that list. In marriage, as in countless other types of human interactions, deception entails significant costs. This is not to say that all parties will condemn deception, or the silence about orientation which may sometimes seem to be deception. Some spouses will insist on having no secrets from each others, while other couples will take a different view. Scholars have examined Internet listings in which heterosexual, married men seek a male partner who will penetrate them.27 These married men frequently claim that they will prefer to be penetrated by their wives (as, e.g., with a dildo), but their wives have refused. Instead of simply accepting that they will not accept this kind of sexual pleasure, which for them might be sexual pleasure tout court, these men seek erotic fulfillment from discreet strangers. That unwilling wives would The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 123 automatically condemn such a solution, such as it is, is not immediately obvious; some wives might perhaps be relieved that someone else is doing unpleasant work for them. It is important to notice that these married men do not simply qualify as gay; the mere desire for anal stimulation may make a man gay in the eyes of the general public, but not in the eyes of scholars and public health officials. We must remember the elasticity of sexual categories. Scholars have argued that Americans at least generally hold higher opinions of gender-conforming gays (that is to say, men who “act like men” and gay women who “act like women”) than we do of gender non-conformists.28 The idea of a heterosexual man enjoying anal stimulation—from a woman or from a man—will make some readers squirm; this discomfort, though, does not make the putative man gay. These same squirmers may be surprised to learn that some men who self-identify as gay do not engage in any anal stimulation, whether they find themselves with a sexual partner or masturbating alone.

Yahoo! Group: Making Mixed-Orientation Marriages Work

So far I have discussed traditionally published sources—biographical or autobiographical. Now I move to the Internet site I have already referenced several times. Below appears a lengthy excerpt from an individual post, by no means out of the mainstream for the site. In order to preserve the rawness of posts on the site, I have not edited the excerpt. Note the tone of the subsequent replies, the “yes, I know just how you feel because I went through something similar” tone of the sadder-but-wiser sympathizers.

Randy, My Story (May 2014) Hello again so you guys pretty much know the deal. I came out to my wife about two months ago. It has been a constant roller coaster. I had previous relationships with men all ending five years ago when I lost my business in Florida. A opportunity became open to me to start over when I was in a bad place. A women that I knew already loved me more than I ever thought could happen. So I took a chance. And after a few years we decided to get married. It has been a good relationship. I have done everything in my being to be a understanding and helpful equal partner we have 2 daughters from her previous marriage that over time I have become a stable male figure in their lives. I care dearly about my family. But I still feel incomplete. I have tried to repress my SSA [Same-sex attraction] thinking I would grow out of that. I feel that this has cause me to yern for that very thing. Now since I have been able to explore my ssa again without expecting anything to become anything. I have meet a very nice man. That has treated me like a equal made me feel special. Has at least supported my relationship with my wife. And in the last six weeks things have developed and it is something that had brought me a great deal of joy and happy ness. It problem has developed my wife doesn’t feel that my relationship with this man is something she can deal with. Which has hurt me so much I feel 124 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

that this new relationship has been the only time I have truly happy in a long time. It has filled the pit in my heart. Now I’m back in the pit with the weight of the world on my shoulders. Yes I guess as you say I have been only caring about myself and my needs for the last few months. But I have to make sure that I’m in a place where I can deal with the issues that have come up … it has not been easy to get to that better place. My life has been a bundle of stress for many years. I have made many sacrifices for my family. Carried everything and tried to be the strength and support system for them. Bite my tongue and have allowed them to do things that may not jive with my well being. So that is where I am at. Between a rock and a hard l what makes me happy has.

Cheryl responds:

Nice to see you post Randy. I am another Cheryl, new to the group. My husband came out a couple years ago as bi. We took it slow and finally agreed bringing a bi male in to be with both of us together was the best for keeping our marriage secure. He isn’t looking for more than that but it took me a long time to realize bringing someone else in would not lead to him leaving me. Before I was ready for that step we experimented with strap ons, dildos, and bi porn. It hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it would be, it helps that I find the bi side hot. And when we are together with another bi male it’s not all about the males, I am the focus but they do play together, however much they are both comfortable with. I like to direct, lol! Have you considered this type of arrangement? Where your spouse is included? Everyone is different but I would not be able to stay married to a man that leaves me at home to go have sex with another man. Including me is the key to making this type of situation work in our marriage. I hope you two can find a way to make the marriage work while BOTH get what you need!

—Another Cheryl

Then Casey chimes in:

Randy,

Welcome, and thank you so much for sharing your story. It’s so helpful to everyone when they can hear both sides, and it can easily change any thoughts or advice that they share with you and Effie. Hopefully you understand that everyone here speaks from their own experiences and the experiences of others they have come to know here. If they only hear one side of things, that’s all they can react to, which is what you have read in past posts, before you introduced yourself to the group. I feel for both of you and truly hope you are able to come to a compromise where you are both having your wants and needs met, while still maintaining a strong, loving, primary relationship together. The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 125

Effie [Randy’s wife] has made it so clear how much you have been through together over the years and how supportive you have been for her. Now she wants to be there for you in return. That tells me there’s a strong foundation to build on, which is a great beginning and more than many couples have to work with. I wish the best for both of you, as individuals and as a loving couple.

—Casey

Randy appreciates Casey’s advice and replies on the same day:

Thank you Casey I hear you … All weights on me greatly.

Casey then comes back, also on the same day:

I know it does Randy and you have a long road to navigate before you both get to where you want and need to be. I have been through my own hell over the past year and a half, having lost both of my parents, a brother-in-law and my home, all within the first year after discovering my husband of sixteen years is bi. Even with all that, my situation is nowhere near as complicated as yours and Effie’s. My heart goes out to both of you as you work together to find your way. It won’t be easy, but the more worthwhile something is, the harder we should be willing to fight for it right? … It takes a very special person to give so much of their time, energy, and love to animals that can’t do for themselves, but I’m sure the love and satisfaction you get in return makes it well worth the effort. It does my heart good to know there are people like you out there, doing all they can to help. Thank you for that.

—Casey

Now consider what Effie has to contribute:

Hey guys It’s Effie … Thanks Casey,,we will have to chat again about pets. I am so glad you are a lover of furries too:-) Unfortunately tonight I did come out and ask Randy what he had decided about his friend. And I was surprised that he said “yes, we are still going to see each other.” So, the last hour has been rough but we have been talking. We are at an impasse and in all honesty and I just said this to him, I am torn now too. Half of me thinks he should just leave and go be with this man and see what happens because that’s what he seems to feel is the answer for him. I did say that I am upset that this man seems to be the deciding factor in how or if we have any chance at all. And I didn’t think it was fair that he gets favor over me and us right now. And Randy responded that it’s not about His friend it’s about him and what he wants. And he is miserable here in our state with no jobs and the social scene and he isn’t happy. And I am so stressed out it makes it harder. But I said that if he wasn’t going far away most of my stress would go away and he would come home to a happy home. No problem. I’m there! 126 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

But, he needs this. So, that’s where we are. I have to decide what to do and I am terrified. My children LOVE him and I LOVE him. I know … I know … I am lost. And he is lost too. I don’t want to make these choices right now. I want to go to therapy or something and just catch our breathes. Thanks for listening. I love Randy. I am just lost.

—Effie

Now a new voice enters the conversation:

Effie and Randy,

I don’t know why your story has hit me so much harder than others, but my heart is breaking for you both over this latest news and I can’t stop crying! Randy, anyone who has been through anything like this will tell you not to make any major life decisions for at least a year. It’s just too soon and emotions are too raw. You both need time to clear your heads so you can make rational decisions together. If you allow that time and you still feel you have to move on, then at least you know you are making that decision with a clear head and not just based on the emotional state you are in right now. Randy, you have a wife who is willing to work with you towards a common goal. She wants your happiness as much as she wants her own. Not every man going through this has someone as supportive as she is willing to be. Please don’t throw that away and do something that can’t be undone. Obviously you have met someone who means a great deal to you. Someone you feel a connection with and who you believe is the only one who can fill that empty space you’ve been living with for so long. I get that, I really do! The thing is though, that all of the time you have spent with him has been during a time of emotional highs. What I mean is, having just come out, and finally having the opportunity to fulfill your long hidden needs, it’s only normal to feel sort of a state of euphoria, where nothing else matters but holding on to that feeling. I’m not trying to downplay your feelings for this man, or his for you. I’m sure they are very real, but they are also very new. I don’t know if you believe in this sort of thing or not, but I lost my father about a year ago and every now and then when I’m going through a rough patch, different wise pieces of advice he has given me over the years will suddenly pop into my head. It’s more than popping into my head really and it’s hard to explain without making me sound insane, but it’s almost as if he’s right there, whispering that advice into my ear. I can feel his presence, his love, and his compassion and somehow I know he is right there with me, supporting me and giving me strength, as he always did when he was here on earth. My father was an incredible man. He was one of the most open minded people I have ever known and had a life full of friends and associates from every imaginable walk of life. Anyway, that being said, and now that you all think I’m nuts, this morning when I saw Effie’s last posts, I immediately heard my father in my head saying “The other foot.” Crazy right? To anyone else who didn’t know my father, those words would The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 127

mean nothing. To me, they brought me back to a time many years ago, when I was talking to my Dad and telling him I was thinking about moving in with the man who is now my ex-husband. In those days, many fathers would have been against their daughters living with a man before being married, so I was very nervous about telling him. His response however was the exact opposite of what I had expected. He said “That’s good, because it’s the only way you will ever see (the other foot) and know if he’s the right one for you.” What he meant by that was that when a relationship is fresh and new, everything is hearts and roses and you’re in that euphoric state we all feel in the early stages of falling in love. Each party is putting their best foot forward in an attempt to woo the other into wanting and needing them. You’re not together all the time, so you don’t see all the maybe not so wonderful little things about them that could later drive you crazy, or irritate you beyond belief. All you know is that you miss them when you’re not with them. It’s later, when you spend a lot more time together, or even live with them, that the newness wears off and reality kicks in. That’s when “the other foot” my Father spoke of, starts to slowly come into view. Just when you’re feeling like you’ve never been happier, and it’s all due to this new person in your life, it’s like “Oh crap, I didn’t know that about him!” or in my case, after we were married “Shit … He honestly sees no reason why he shouldn’t sleep with numerous other women, including the one I thought was my best friend!” Unfortunately, after moving in with him, I had chosen to ignore the many instances of “the other foot” and married him anyway. I’m sorry I have made this into a short novel, but I just want you to think about “the other foot” and understand that this new person may not be all the things you want and need him to be, because it’s too new and you have only seen that best foot forward so far. I’m not telling you to end it with him. I’m just saying don’t throw away the love you and Effie have, for someone you can’t possibly know everything about yet. Work out a way together, where you can continue seeing him, if that’s what you want, but give it enough time for the newness to wear off so you truly know if he is who you want and need above all others. It’s a lot to ask of Effie, to stay together while you try to figure things out, considering you could decide to leave in the end anyway, but if there’s a chance of an ending that makes you both happy, I know her love for you is strong enough to get her through it. My hope is that your love for her will encourage you to at least try, and to base your future decisions on reality, rather than something so uncertain.

You are both in my prayers

Casey

Then a new voice enters. Here is Belle of Boston:

Thank you for introducing yourself to the site. I have been away getting ready for the Spring Fling in two weeks. I must admit that I was a bit taken aback by your first comment. I thought it was not a great introduction to us all. But with a couple of passing days of hard work here, I realized that the way you reacted when you read about your wife’s postings on line could have ruffled your feathers. 128 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

I know for me being the straight spouse,y husband would be shocked at what I have written, but for the most part it is a mirror of my journey with my hubby. Writting and posting to this group and others has given me a special side off which was I eeant to get back too. It has always been difficult when hubby was trying to find a man. We take no sides here, but Effie has asked our thoughts and many of us reflected. As far as I know we are not a group filled with arseholes … just great people.

—Belle in Boston

And then lastly, “boydsinme” offers this:

Randy—have you thought about what you may need to stay in your marriage? What works me deeply from your story is that you care deeply for your family, but is there love and a desire on your part to continue in your relationship? If there is many on this site have both a fulfilling marriage and relationships that satisfy a ssa. First, however, you have to look honestly at what is important to you. So does effie.29

Practical Advice for Trapped Spouses Amity Pierce Buxton has contributed to the emerging field of coping strategies for people who find themselves married to a gay person.30 Not surprisingly, the heterosexual partner feels like a failed woman or man. Buxton has proposed specific coping strategies and paths for moving beyond the signal disclosure, which other scholars and therapists have already begun to analyze and implement in private practice.31 The point to be taken from Buxton’s work is that the disclosure of one spouse to another does not automatically end the marriage. Bonnie Kaye, herself divorced from a man who came out to her during their marriage, strongly objects to the idea of a straight woman remaining in a mixed- orientation marriage. She has developed a website and counseling service to assist women deceived by their husbands. She argues that gay men strategically choose the caring types—women who often work as teachers or nurses or counselors or housewives. Her newsletters and books deserve careful attention, particularly because of her sensitivity to how gay men can assault the self-esteem of their wives.32 Take the sense of smell:

They’ll say, “I can’t touch you down there because it’s stinky …” It’s so dehumanizing to you. I know women who have spent hundreds of dollars on treatments to take away a smell that’s a natural, normal, beautiful smell to straight men.33

This arresting observation may reflect the pain of many straight women surprised by their husband’s emergence as a gay or bisexual man. No relationship is easy, not even between a bona fide straight man and his bona fide straight wife: one of the most common complaints of married men in America is that their wives find oral sex revolting and will provide it only when begged. As the anecdote goes, women dislike the smell and taste of semen and resent the idea that their The Gay Husband: No Friend to His Wife? 129 conjugal duty extends to swallowing it. Indeed, many of the husbands who end up seeking sexual encounters with gay men claim their fellatio-averse wives are to blame. Plenty of men who had sex with other men (e.g., Laurence Olivier and Cary Grant) married women. This chapter only mentions a few of them. These few examples should show that such marriages can differ significantly in happiness. Not all of them fail. It might seem that no single group has a greater stake in gay liberation than straight women. The costs of divorce are high, and homophobia pressures gay men to remain in the closet. What better way of passing as straight than to enter a conventional marriage? When that marriage later breaks down (because the husband has found a boyfriend and wants to live with him full-time), a woman may be in the midst of establishing herself professionally. She may have children as well. She is too busy to go through a divorce. The coming-out of her husband disrupts her life, no matter how gay-positive she may be politically. This explains why straight women across America should be organizing parades and gay pride events. Straight women should want gay men to come out of the closet and, consequently, exit the (heterosexual) marriage market. This view presupposes that the gay husband will likely leave his wife once he finds a boyfriend. That may or may not be the case, as various testimonials from the Yahoo! group indicate. Maybe sex would be part of their relationship, maybe not. A film like The Object of My Affection (1998) challenges and undermines traditional assumptions about marriage. In that film, Jennifer Aniston plays a character who sees sex as significantly less important than emotional support and a stable father figure. She opts to court an openly gay man because she thinks he will make an excellent husband, all things considered. Remember that many heterosexual couples divorce, sometimes because the sex has become stale or too infrequent. Aniston’s character reasons that a stable union with a loving—if gay—man would be better than a brief marriage with a man who performs well in bed and then, after a few years, moves on to another woman. Long before anything like the “Second Wives Club” was the category of straight women who gradually or perhaps suddenly realized that their husbands were gay. In the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend, Mr. Lammle and Sophronia realize that each has married the other for a fortune that does not in fact exist.34 Initially devastated, the two spouses go on to live quite happily together. Same-sex attraction is only one of various potentially devastating disclosures a spouse can make.

* * * * * * * * * *

How many Western children grew up in the twentieth century suspecting their father was gay (which is not to mention those children who did know)? We’ll never know. We know that in some religious communities—such as Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism—gays were strongly encouraged to enter conventional marriage, on the thinking that a conjugal union would straighten them out. Well 130 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period into the twenty-first century, many Protestant Americans believed that everyone is born heterosexual. Some mistaken misfits choose to have gay sex for one bad reason or another (e.g., curiosity, prison, rebellious spirit, a desire to look cool). Plenty of unknown closeted gay people likely have married. Pressure to conform was no doubt more intense in American small towns (think of Grant Wood in Iowa). These marriages, if Christian, would not have been valid if not consummated. Thus, more pressure to feign heterosexual interest. If even the privileged were succumbing to pressure to pass as heterosexual, then it stands to reason that the less privileged were as well.

* * * * * * * * * *

We must not forget the fundamental difference between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior. Plenty of other famous men who had sex with other men (e.g., Cole Porter) married women. This chapter only mentions a handful of examples and does not presume to prove that the men discussed here had a homosexual orientation (although it seems pretty safe to assume some of them did). It would be wrong to assume or conclude that gay husbands always kept their wives in the dark. In a private letter to her husband, Mrs. Leonard Bernstein acknowledged plainly that he was simply a homosexual and could never change that; she loved him and felt compelled to articulate that his being gay would not be an obstacle to their love.35 Sexual orientation seemed to matter very little to her, at least in the case of her gay husband. The list goes on. What is the point of collecting anecdotes? What analytical value might they have, what cumulative contribution might they make to our understanding of such marriages? These examples collectively attest to the difficulty of dismissing marriage between gay men and straight women as a preposterous idea, even as they illuminate the ugliness of deceiving other people, particularly those who rely on our integrity. In quite a few instances, gay men and straight women stayed in legal (and perhaps ostensibly conventional) marriages for the friendship. Chapter 8

SURROGATE MOTHER

Let’s now explore and celebrate women as the intentional surrogates for gay male couples seeking to become fathers to (and legal custodians of) children. It should no longer come as news to anyone that many gay men yearn for children, but a childless and openly gay man in America finds himself in a postmodern bind when it comes to becoming a parent. He requires help. Someone—and perhaps a host of people—must respect his abilities as a prospective parent enough to enable him to become one. A man—particularly a lower-income one—might take on the care of a child informally, such as one placed with him from within his extended family. More formally, if his state allows, he might apply to become a foster parent or to adopt a child, which of course involves extensive governmental scrutiny of his parental fitness. Last but not least, if he desires biological offspring, then he needs the very committed help of at least one woman. In this, the man’s need is asymmetrical. A woman who visits a sperm bank doesn’t need to know the donor (although the child might benefit from a relationship with him), but a man who visits an agency for egg donation and surrogacy is at the beginning of what will be one of the most profound relationships of his life (and the surrogate’s, and the child’s). An unforgettable friend is the woman who respects men enough to be their surrogate—and this goes especially for gay men, from whose parenting abilities society has withheld respect far too long. We have already considered Meryl Streep’s assertion that most men cannot or will not imagine themselves in the shoes of a woman; it may be easier for a childless and openly gay man to imagine himself a woman than for straight men who plan to sire children with an eventual wife. I will recount the stories of a few gay men who wanted, needed a child; I will also introduce a few women who understood their power to fulfill the wish of these gay men. Then I will try to tie the surrogacy discussion into Freud’s thinking about rescue fantasies. The Freudian script casts men as rescuers, but in surrogacy we find a curious reversal, as well as a new stage on which friendship can dazzle.

Aching for Fatherhood

The HBO documentaryPaternal Instinct (2005) followed the quest of a gay couple to find a surrogate.1 Before we consider what drove her, let’s consider what drove them. 132 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

In 1994 Erik and Mark entered a civil union in New York City, where they lived. It would be almost a decade before Lawrence v. Texas decriminalized sodomy and over two decades before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in the United States. That their marriage would not be legally respected in the United States until many years later reflects a national government hostile to their relationship at that time, and a climate in which parenthood for them was unexpected. Several years after their civil union, they began to yearn for a child. They advertised for a surrogate online and heard from Wen, a generous woman in Maine. In 2000, they got their wish. Mark was initially reluctant about the idea of having a child, but Erik felt certain, and so Erik initially took the reins. Perhaps one motivation becomes visible when he mentions that his father had squirmed when Erik came out years earlier, because the father worried that Erik would never experience the joy of fatherhood. Erik’s father greeted the news of his son seeking a surrogate with approval and enthusiasm. Beyond delighting his father by having children, though, Erik’s primary motivation is clear in his abundant warmth and nurturing abilities: devoting those qualities to raising children makes good sense. Why seek biological offspring, though? Erik and Mark mention a gender distinction they’ve discovered: their women friends flatly assert the couple should adopt a child, but their male friends understand the importance to Erik and Mark of having a genetic tie to the child. For Erik and Mark, as is often the case for heterosexual men, a genetic tie fuels the desire for children. How to realize that desire can be complicated, not least because the surrogacy process involves surrendering to the intended parent(s) a child to whom the surrogate has just given birth. Poignantly, the couple sits down with Erik’s mom, who questions how any woman who gives birth to a child can then give it up. Erik responds immediately that every woman with whom he’s discussed the idea of surrogacy has asked the same question.2 An answer comes from Wen, who writes to the couple and explains that “giving the gift of a child to a gay couple is extremely important to me.” She is echoed by her husband Curtis, who explains in the documentary that he wants his wife to experience life to the fullest and to savor the joy of providing a child to a gay couple—something she had wanted very much to do. Wen—and Curtis—are deeply generous. Wen is deriving great joy from her ability to make this life- changing gift, and there is something special about doing it for a gay couple. (The next section discusses the desire to help specifically gay men.) Wen agrees to try to give the couple two children—one with Mark’s DNA and one with Erik’s. The couple is ecstatic when she administers an early pregnancy test over the phone and determines that she is pregnant. Emotions later sink, when Wen miscarries at the end of her first trimester. After a year of failure, Wen expresses fatigue and dread. She also states that walking away is not an option, because she is too emotionally invested in the goal of providing Mark and Erik with a child. After giving birth to a girl in 2000, Wen formally gives away the baby to the fathers in a public ritual. During the ceremony she states that, “it has been an honor and a privilege to carry your daughter.” Surrogate Mother 133

Cecilia turned out to be Mark’s daughter genetically; nineteen months later, Wen and Erik welcome baby Liv (Erik’s biological child) to Cecilia’s side.

* * * * * * * * * *

Gay men who earnestly desire fatherhood do not always search for a surrogate the way Erik and Mark did. Sometimes the surrogate finds them. Alan (b. 1950) grew up in upstate New York in an Orthodox Jewish household. (Alan was in fact born into the high priest tribe of Judaism, which means his family enjoyed special admiration within the Orthodox community.) He attended Adelphi University and then transferred to the University of Michigan. He had considered studying for a PhD in psychology and even enrolled at the University of Denver for this reason but later decided to become a licensed clinical social worker. At the age of 23, Alan married a Jewish woman. Before his divorce two years later, Alan had met and fallen in love with a man who was himself divorced and had come out late in life. Alan’s marriage produced no children, a fact he mourned. Alan settled in Colorado and helped gay men coping with AIDS. In Colorado Alan eventually met his long-time partner Joe. In 1991 the couple moved to Charlottesville, Virginia so that Alan could take advantage of an interesting professional opportunity at the University of Virginia. Around 1994, Alan, by then a happy employee at the University, received a phone call from a woman named Kirsten who was about to move to Charlottesville with her husband and small child. The caller inquired about job opportunities in Alan’s office, the Office of Employee Assistance. Like Alan, Kirsten was also a licensed clinical social worker. Once moved to Charlottesville, Kirsten arranged an appointment to meet Alan in person. From the moment he met her, Alan felt taken by her charm and personality. The two were fast friends, even though he did not have a job for her. He referred her to a friend, who subsequently hired her. As Alan’s office grew progressively busier, he thought to call her and inquire whether she might be willing to fill in at his office, on a project or contract basis. She happily agreed, and the two began a professional relationship, which complemented nicely their budding personal one. As their friendship deepened, she began to speak of marital problems. She and her husband, from a conservative Christian family, had sought counseling. Kirsten confided all this in Alan, who tried to help. One day he asked her when she felt happiest. Her response was, “When I am pregnant.” Alan, who had yearned for a child, joked that she could help him and his partner realize their dream. A couple years later, Alan and Kirsten, who had never lost touch, found themselves at a party. Kirsten approached Alan and his partner Joe and bluntly stated, “I’m now 38 years old; if you want to do this, we had better get moving.” Joe, who had previously been unwilling to entertain the idea of fatherhood, surprised Alan by agreeing. The three went to see a therapist in order to make sure they were on the right path. A physician at the University of Virginia Fertility Clinic agreed to see the three of them and offered several syringes. The “turkey baster” method worked well. Kirsten let the male couple know when she began ovulating; the two 134 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period mixed their sperm in a syringe, and Kirsten privately injected the genetic fluid and got pregnant in no time. The three were thrilled. While pregnant, Kirsten brought the two men home to nearby Richmond. She wanted to introduce them to her parents. The parents expressed reservations, but the daughter firmly indicated she wasn’t seeking permission. She had already made up her mind and wanted to do them the favor of putting them in the picture. The parents eventually became supportive. Kirsten had always wanted a home birth, and she got her wish at the birth of her third child. A midwife was on hand to help out with a quick and relatively easy delivery. With her two gay friends at her side, Kirsten welcomed a baby daughter in 2003. A local judge awarded the two gay men custody of the child, an unusual step in Virginia at that time. Kirsten has never interfered in the parenting of her two gay friends. She remains a devoted mother, but from a respectful distance (she continues to live in the same town as her friends and third child). Alan reported that the local community became more accepting of his relationship with Joe. Beforehand, Joe was routinely introduced to new people and promptly overlooked by them. Suddenly, Alan and Joe were embraced by townspeople as fellow parents, assimilated into the world of diapers, sleepless nights, and day care. Alan never viewed Kirsten as a “surrogate,” which for him connotes a woman who gets paid to produce a child, does so, and then disappears. Alan and Kirsten remain close friends. When asked whether he views Kirsten as a hero, Alan fell silent and thought hard. She may not have been a hero in the gay rights movement, but she was certainly a hero in the life he had created with Joe. The desires of Erik and Mark, and of Alan and Joe, seem in one sense simple. They wanted biological offspring, the way a lot of men do, and in a societal climate of lack of respect—for Erik and Mark’s marriage, for Joe as Alan’s partner—they found profound respect from Wen and Kirsten, whose generosity, confidence, and ability transformed the lives of all concerned. How is it that these women become heroes?

Stepping Up to Help Gay Men Create Families

This book will end with the question of whether gay men need rescue. Although rescue might be one word for conferring dignity on a surrogate’s desire to do so, another word might be heroism, in the sense of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey: a pioneering adventure into the unknown, from which the hero returns victorious, inwardly and outwardly transformed.3 The surrogate is venturing into territory that is legally, ethically, sexually, and emotionally new, that is taboo for some—and the goal of her journey is that she return heroic, having created new life, having benefitted a gay man or men, and having unlocked her personal power in a way that also transformed herself. This process of surrogacy is at least as much her journey as it is the men’s.

* * * * * * * * * * Surrogate Mother 135

Dorothy Greenfeld has been working for years to help women become surrogates. Mark, Erik, and Wen met on the internet; Alan, Joe, and Kirsten met each other organically. Not all connections occur without assistance, though—not all heroes are self-created, and not all are equipped for the obstacles along the way. Just as the heroes of legend need mentors, surrogates can benefit from supportive programs to help them create the relationships and the outcomes they desire. Since 1982, Dorothy has been a social worker at Yale—New Haven Hospital, where she came to serve as lead ethicist for the fertility program there.4 She also consults nationally for the Center for Surrogate Parenting, founded in 1980, to help in the evaluation of prospective surrogates. Her specialization is fertility, and she has assisted scores of gay men (as well as infertile heterosexuals) start families. Confidence is one core characteristic of women who step forward to serve as surrogates. As an aside, Dorothy pointed out that some surrogates have been so confident about their ability to become pregnant that they have complained about the necessity of taking progesterone (which stimulates ovulation and which is necessary in order to coordinate and streamline the entire medical procedure involved in IVF). According to Dorothy, women who step forward to serve as surrogates usually share the following characteristics:

(1) THey love being pregnant. (2) They are often married (usually they are heterosexuals; lesbians are rare). (3) They already have their own children. (4) They find any financial compensation useful, but they are not making a living at surrogacy. (5) They accept the risks of pregnancy. (6) They prefer to work with gay couples.

Dorothy reports that many surrogates have observed to her that it is easier to work with gay couples than with infertile women. The latter—often having come through emotional, medical, and financial exhaustion in their goal to have a child—might in their anxiety micro-manage a surrogate, check up on her intrusively, or criticize diet, exercise routine, or sleep pattern. The program at CSP actually employs a parent alumna of its program to intervene with the intended parents, in case it becomes necessary to shield a surrogate from such anxiety. Anxiety is not unique to heterosexuals, of course. In the documentary Paternal Instinct, the two gay fathers quarrel with their surrogate over her obesity. Gay men, however, have never personally experienced the emotions connected with a failure to become pregnant, so the potential for jealousy of the surrogate is diminished. Dorothy indicates that surrogates report that gay men are more deferential to them. A seasoned professional, Dorothy noted that sometime after about the mid- 2000s women did not seem to find male homosexuality the least bit interesting or threatening. “Young women today are so accepting of everyone,” Dorothy said, 136 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

“that pointing out to them that their child will be raised by a gay male couple doesn’t throw them in the least.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Kirsten: Intentional Surrogate, Unintentional Activist

Dorothy has helped gay men in one way, Kirsten (Alan and Joe’s ally) in another. The story of Kirsten (b. 1964), though moving, poses the question of whether friendships between straight women and gay men are really any different from any other friendships. While it is true she did something quite unusual for a gay couple, she may have given that same gift to an infertile straight couple, if the opportunity had presented itself. Classifying Kirsten and her remarkable generosity is difficult for a couple reasons, one of which is that she doesn’t see herself as generous: She just wanted to be pregnant, and so she became pregnant to help a man she really liked. That she helped a gay man arguably makes an important difference. Ultimately, readers will have to decide for themselves how to interpret her story. Kirsten’s parents told her from earliest memory that she was adopted. Her somewhat unconventional childhood may have predisposed her to become a surrogate years later (surrogacy was nothing if not unconventional in 2002). Part of what makes Kirsten so very interesting is her perspective on America. She has lived both in “red” (i.e., conservative and Republican) America and “blue” (i.e., liberal and Democrat) America. She spent six years in Tennessee as a child; her parents then moved the family to North Carolina, and then to Richmond, Virginia (where her mother still lives). Kirsten lived in New York City for several years, working as a therapist at the Phoenix House Foundation (a nonprofit devoted to helping people with substance abuse problems). Apart from her ex-husband, Kirsten has encountered virtually no social disapproval for having served as a surrogate to a gay couple. Kirsten sees herself as having been very fortunate in this regard. While working in New York City, Kirsten frequently saw low-income women with little education beyond high school. She doesn’t think the low-income women she saw professionally could succeed as surrogates because those women tended to be rebellious. “You can only keep up the rebellious spirit for so long,” Kirsten pointed out. Also, a suitable surrogate must be emotionally grounded and secure in herself, which her former clients were not for the most part. I asked her about rural women in general, quite apart from addictions, and Kirsten hesitated. She didn’t think surrogacy would be easy for these women, because their communities may well shun them for choosing so unconventional a path. To return to the ex-husband: Kirsten felt compelled to tell her husband about her surrogacy plan even though the two were no longer married. The surrogacy would affect the two children she and this man were parenting, and so she thought he should be informed. His response, she said, illustrated anew why she had divorced him: “It’s a good thing you’re doing that now, because I wouldn’t have let you,” he told her. Surrogate Mother 137

Kirsten’s ex-husband had grown up a minister’s son in rural Danville, Virginia. He was not pleased to learn that she would place her child with a gay couple. Kirsten reported feeling “empowered” after her divorce: Suddenly, her decisions and her entire life were her own. She was thrilled that her husband could not stand in her way. She relished the idea of becoming a surrogate, in part because she “just loved being pregnant.” Anyone who wanted to proclaim Kirsten a hero would stumble over the revelation that she loved being pregnant. Maybe the child she bore for Alan and Joe was the fruit of a selfish motive instead of an altruistic drive. I did see Kirsten as worthy of great admiration, in part because she could have given the child up for adoption (as she herself had been adopted). She also could have placed the child with a straight couple. This is where the real difficulty arises. Kirsten reported that she loved Alan and wanted to help him. That he happened to be gay was “inconsequential.” She later met Joe and saw that the two men loved one another deeply. Kirsten stated a number of times that she wanted very much to help two good people realize their dream of having a child. This might suggest that Kirsten is not really a hero to the gay community. Kirsten was certainly an extremely generous person, yes, but her friend Alan’s sexuality played no role in her decision to help him. That his sexuality was irrelevant might mean that Kirsten had not helped gay men per se but rather humanity in general. And yet Kirsten later mentioned that she had fantasized frequently about being invited onto the Oprah show with Alan and Joe to discuss their surrogacy experience. I probed and asked what she would say to Oprah: What had been Kirsten’s goal—to make America safer for surrogacy or to help the gay cause? Kirsten responded that helping gay men had indeed been part of her fantasy response to Oprah, and that makes all the difference to this book. Critics who would say that friendships between straight women and gay men are no different from any other kind of friendship miss the point that being gay makes an undeniable difference in a homophobic society. Alan’s sexuality changed everything, even if Kirsten hadn’t focused on it. Kirsten came across as a modest, immensely likable person who resisted attempts to apotheosize her. She knew that she was helping gay men and not an infertile couple, and she did understand the activist undertones to her generosity. To make this even clearer: Kirsten responded to my questions with the admission that her gay activism was not intentional. It seems that she liked Alan so much (and, in turn, Joe as well) that she didn’t think of him as a gay man who wanted a child. She thought of him as a person who wanted a child. There’s a bit of heroism in that perception. Kirsten came to know the gay community better through Alan and Joe. While pregnant, she was feted at no fewer than five baby showers. She said that the gay men at these showers “put her up on a high pedestal.” Two men at one of the showers gushed with tears and thanked her for what she had done for Alan and Joe. Were these two gay men grateful that a straight woman had helped two fellow humans or two members of small and detested minority? And what difference does it make? 138 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Saying “It doesn’t matter to me whether my child is placed with a straight or a gay couple” was already a form of gay activism in 2002 America. It was impossible to ignore Alan’s sexuality, because America made such a lot of noise about it. The question of what difference all this makes might come down to Alan. Was it possible for Kirsten—or anyone—to know him just as a human being, as something other than a gay man? Probably not. Most gay men will say their sexuality is such a big part of their identity that it is impossible to slice that bit off, even when you’re just theorizing. Kirsten cherishes family ties. A strong woman, she discovered in her mid- twenties that her birth mother was still alive. She learned as well that she had three full siblings and a half-sibling as well. She has become emotionally close to her full siblings, who live back in Nashville. She views her birth siblings as the aunts and uncles of the child she placed with Joe and Alan. Kirsten, a well-educated, articulate woman, understands that America has changed fairly dramatically since her surrogacy experience back in 2002–2003, when “there was no template” for what she and Alan and Joe were doing. Gay marriage was illegal and gay parenting was still an absurd idea to many Americans. Though she never meant to become a gay activist, she avows that “she now has an immediate ‘in’ with gay men across America.” When gay men learn what she has done, they invariably smile. They think of her as a friend to the gay community, even though she did not explicitly set out to be one. It’s better to give than to receive, we frequently teach children. Kirsten became an honorary gay man and found that in giving we often receive.

* * * * * * * * * *

Elton John, Neil Patrick Harris, and Ricky Martin might be out publicly as gay fathers, but the surrogates who helped them remain largely hidden. An exception is the case of the actor B. D. Wong and his partner Richie Jackson, who began the process in 1998 and in 2000 had twin sons, borne by a surrogate named Shauna (Wong had provided the sperm and Jackson’s sister provided an egg). In that case, it was not Shauna who opted to be public, but rather Wong who chose to write a tribute to Shauna and demystify their surrogacy experience via a book, Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man. Wong’s book recounts in useful detail the steps involved in securing a surrogate mother, and so I quote him at length. Of particular importance is the admiration he felt for the woman who fulfilled his wish: “our amazing surrogate mother, Shauna.” She invited the two fathers to share the experience of pregnancy, to the extent she could: “Our entire pregnancy was peppered with ‘quality time’ visits … accompanying Shauna to doctor’s appointments, or just being with her and her husband and two toddlers, or just with her fellow surrogate girlfriends.” Some of the women who bear children for gay couples relish the sense of being a rebel, going against the grain of American mores.5 This might explain in part the unfair aspersion that surrogate women are unbalanced, that it is heartless of Surrogate Mother 139 them to give up the children they bear. Even those women, though, deserve praise for their altruism, for one can rebel in many different ways. In a society obsessed with thin women, any pregnant woman may feel like a rebel. In any event, Wong considers Shauna’s motives pure. Indeed, Wong viewed Shauna as a sort of saint:

People sometimes asked, how can you trust this young woman? How can you be sure that she won’t change her mind at the last minute and want to keep the babies? Why is she doing this? You just don’t understand, we would say. She’s doing this so that two people who can’t have a baby themselves can start a family. There’s really not much more to it than that. Aside from an amount of money that she could much more easily earn working at McDonald’s, what she will receive in return is a feeling of unparalleled distinction that very few mortals can claim. Her behavior for the duration of our relationship with her has pretty much been commensurate with all of the above.6

The kindness Shauna shows the gay couple vastly exceeds the favors friends routinely do for each other—few will deny that. Wong articulates his gratitude to Shauna; after delivering the twins, she sleeps and Wong reflects:

Shauna was ensconced in the postpartum ward, and they had thoughtfully assigned her a private room, anticipating that I might need to crash on the floor. I told her everything, and then suggested we try to sleep. It had taken an awful long time to stop Shauna’s post-delivery bleeding, and by now she was rather weak and dopy, two words that one would never normally use to describe her. I tucked her in, and reminded her that I was indeed happy, and profoundly thankful for her presence in our lives.

Bereaved, Shauna has given herself over to the task of helping her new son Jackson and his two fathers:

That morning, while waited from Richie’s arrival, Shauna thought of something that could make her feel a little better while she recovered. She asked to rent a breast pump, and began pumping breast milk to nourish Jackson. This was never part of our arrangement with her, and we never would have asked this of her, particularly since we live in New York and Shauna lives in California. But it was Shauna’s idea to draw the life potion from her body to eventually help strengthen the baby, since it was clear we would now be in California indefinitely. She started that first day with an orientation from a lactation specialist, and drew a modest amount of the precious colostrums, which is the crucial mother’s milk from the first few days after birth, chock-full of all this crazy stuff that’s good for the baby. It’s so concentrated that it’s a salubrious golden color. So we showed the fruits of Shauna’s first efforts to Richie and my folks, and then I took the newcomers all down to the Intensive Care Nursery to view the prince in the plastic castle. 140 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Shauna was carrying twins and started contractions at twenty-eight weeks. Richie was far away, but Wong stayed with Shauna during the emergency delivery, which proved to be quite painful. One of the twin boys died within hours. Wong and his partner (from whom he later separated) were “early adapters,” that is, among the first male–male couples to strike down this path to fatherhood. Critics may scoff at Wong’s quest and blame him for not having adopted an unwanted child (as quite a few gay men have done). Wong explains and contextualizes his strong desire to have a child and the importance to him of a genetic link to that child. His exploration of the surrogacy option yielded the following in September 1998:

The research was fast. We had been terrified and dismissive of surrogacy; this was because of Dateline, 20/20, and 48 Hours (“Baby M” and all that). Come to think of it, for the last couple of years as we’ve been having this adventure, we’ve been terrified about a lot of things, and they were ALL onDateline , 20/20, and 48 Hours … Anyway, we soon heard of an agency call “Growing Generations” which matches same-sex couples (usually men, of course) with surrogates, and straightens out all the many complicated legal and medical rooms in the “house o’ surrogacy.” I happened to be going to L.A. on business, and met with them, to check it all out. They managed to allay my fears about custody battles, and then taught me the different options surrogacy included. There was Traditional, or AI (artificial insemination), Surrogacy, in which one of the Intended Parents was the genetic father of the baby, and the surrogate was the genetic mother; and there was Gestational Surrogacy, in which the intended parents obtain a third party, a donor, to provide the egg, which is then fertilized in the lab by the father and implanted in the uterus of the surrogate. Got it?

Wong articulates the anxieties of many men searching for a woman willing to share her body in this way and discovers the difficulty of locating surrogates and egg donors. Richie’s sister Sue eventually provided the eggs which were then fertilized by Wong’s sperm. The embryo was then implanted in Shauna. Wong feels tremendous gratitude toward Sue as well:

As for Sue, I know she takes seriously what she has done for us. I know she fully comprehends the ramifications of it. That’s why it is so astounding to me that she is so peacefully low key about it. Shauna and her girlfriends serve us heaping portions of “Surrogate Pride”; they righteously and rightfully wear their maternity clothes like a marine wears a bulldog tattoo …. Sue’s pride is like the sweet smile of a child just before she has been told she has done “a good thing.”

In these excerpts from Wong’s book we see the frequent concerns and hopes of gay men striving to become—and becoming—fathers. Once upon a time a man who realized that he was probably gay and who understood a strong desire to be a father welling up within him had little choice—either relinquish that hope or enter a traditional marriage, usually as a closeted gay (think of Thomas Mann Surrogate Mother 141 here). The latter option would likely deliver not only children but also plenty of social approval. No more. Wong and other gay men have increasingly organized surrogate arrangements through which they’ve managed to have it all. It bears mentioning that a prejudice against adopted children still occasionally raises its head (more on this at the end of the chapter). Beyond that, it hardly seems fair to blame someone—either straight or gay—for wanting a biological child. If this strong preference asserts itself, denial of it may only invite psychological problems. Gay men who have struggled to make themselves straight understand the futility of denying certain strong preferences.

* * * * * * * * * *

One final surrogate story will highlight the generosity of women who have placed a child with a gay couple. Lori was no gay activist before she catapulted a gay couple into paternal bliss. In 2005 the Washington Post ran the story of Michael Thorne-Begland, who became the first openly gay judge elected by the Virginia General Assembly of Virginia to the General District Court of Richmond.7 His sister had agreed to donate her eggs. After two prospective surrogates were deemed unsuitable for medical reasons, Thorne-Begland and his partner Tracy began looking for a surrogate and found Lori Berry, thirty-nine, a special education teacher from Annapolis, Maryland. Berry and her husband, who worked in law enforcement, were the parents of triplets conceived after three years of grueling fertility treatments. “Lori exceeded our wildest expectations in so many ways,” recalled Tracy Thorne-Begland, who was thirty-eight at the time. “We were really comfortable that she was going to take care of our children the way she took care of hers.” Lori’s best friend in high school was gay, which may have explained in part her willingness to smile on the male–male couple. The mother of three-year-old triplets, she was scanning the want ads in the newspaper and came across a solicitation for a “special surrogate.” In a subsequent piece for a different publication, Lori explained her motivation for responding to the ad as follows: “I remembered all the trouble my husband and I had conceiving, and felt this instant need to give back and help someone else.”8 Lori eventually gave birth to twins, a girl (Logan) and a boy (Chance), and these were the children she placed with Michael and Tracy. The Washington Post mentioned the creative force behind the agency through which these fathers found Lori—Diane Hinson. Hinson, like Elizabeth Taylor, has been a godsend to the gay community. Hinson is not herself gay but rather motivated by what she sees as a matter of social justice—just as Taylor was. In a personal interview, Hinson stated: “I am very passionate about helping gay men build families—in fact, when I founded Creative Family Connections, that was who I had in mind when I chose our founding principle: ‘because everyone can build a family’.”9 From the beginning, her goal has been to do everything possible to help all parents build families—no matter whether the parents are straight or gay, single or couples. She has welcomed parents of all types and matched them to surrogates who think a gay couple or a gay man is their “dream” parent.10 142 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period

Legal Problems for Gay Couples

When it comes to families, gay men certainly needed political support, given the breadth of popular opposition to the idea of gay men raising children.11 It is important to point out that legal complications can follow the efforts of a gay couple.12 As if creating a family weren’t difficult enough, same-sex parents arguably faced slimmer odds of success. The court caseDeBoer v. Snyder (2012) marshals extensive evidence of the obstacles Americans have placed on a gay (or lesbian) couple’s path to parenthood.13 One exasperated judge used the lofty standard established by some conservatives against gay men. He concluded: “Taking the state defendants’ position to its logical conclusion, the empirical evidence at hand should require that only rich, educated, suburban-dwelling, married Asians may marry, to the exclusion of all other heterosexual couples. Obviously the state has not adopted this policy and with good reason. The absurdity of such a requirement is self-evident. Optimal academic outcomes for children cannot logically dictate which groups may marry.” In part because of social opposition to gay fathers, famous gay couples may understandably choose to veil their children. Ordinary gay couples across America may have thrilled to the happy stories issuing from celebrity gays. Partnered gay actors may have an easier time of finding a surrogate and deeper pockets to pay for an attorney, in the event something goes wrong. Even celebrity gays, though, might wince at stories of what can happen when ordinary gays use a surrogate. I have already referred to the DeBoer court case; let’s conclude with another legal example and consider the stress it created for surrogates opting to help out a gay man or gay couple. In June 2014, Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs, a gay couple in Texas, lost their twins.14 A surrogate, Charlyn, had borne the twins for the couple two months earlier. Each man is the father of one of the twins, yet neither father could legally claim paternity of his own biological son, nor of the other child. Texas did not allow gay marriage and judges were permitted to use their own discretion in legal issues involving gay couples. The couple had married in 2010 in Washington, DC, where gay marriage was legal. Two fertilized embryos were transplanted to the surrogate, who is the only legally recognized parent (even though the fathers can use DNA tests to prove their own respective parentages). The judge denied the gay couple their twins. When it comes to surrogacy or adoption, legal problems can affect any individual or couple. Legislation prohibiting gay marriage once trumpeted the supposed moral dangers of allowing two men to raise a child. In spite of these cultural obstacles, some women joined in the struggle to make America safe for gay dads. These women became a new kind of freedom rider for the gay rights movement.

Adoption

The kind of charity I celebrate in this chapter finds a parallel in the charity some gay couples had already demonstrated. These couples found it often Surrogate Mother 143 difficult to adopt a child and took in many of the abandoned children begotten of ill-fated heterosexual marriages or couplings. Unwanted, often accidental, children pose a serious and long-term problem to American society, and so it is perhaps not surprising that even conservative states (which steadfastly refused same-sex marriage legislation) allowed gay couples to adopt children, particularly kids no one else seemed to want. In 2013 Gary Gates estimated that more than 200,000 American children were being raised by gays, mainly gay couples.15 According to Gates’s data, gay couples are more likely to adopt foster children than straight couples. As of 2011, more than 400,000 foster care children awaited adoption.16 It is important to keep in mind the distinction between raising children and creating them through surrogates. Critics might call selfish or narcissistic gay couples who want to produce children with a genetic link to one or both of the fathers; here, though, it would be important to note the invisible advantage fertile straight couples enjoy. While a fertile heterosexual couple might purport to claim a selfless willingness to adopt children, they can produce children of their own and explain the decision as faster and less problematic legally. It could also be and probably is that many heterosexuals—even those who had themselves been adopted at birth—actively want a genetic link to their offspring; it would be hypocritical for such people to blame gay couples for wanting the same thing.17 Further, it would be unfair to dismiss gay men as unwilling to help society by, as it were, picking up after irresponsible straight people who produce unwanted children. That would be a little like arguing that, since we need people to clean our bathrooms and tidy our yards, it would be prudent to bar certain racial minority groups from university study. If everyone has a university degree, no one will want to clean the houses of the upper classes. And if everyone can have a child through a surrogate, no one will house and nurture unwanted kids. Given the choice between surrogacy and adoption, many gay men have chosen the former. It would be a mistake to blame them for that, even if their preference were to perpetuate a sense that adopted children are somehow inferior to or less desirable than genetically related ones. Biotechnology may be changing much of Western culture but certainly has not transformed all of it.

Unforgettable Friends

We began with a problem: two people want a child but cannot make one themselves. This problem is hardly new. Throughout the Book of Genesis, for example, we find repeated references to procreation. The story of how the world was created is followed by the story of how humanity was created, how the race managed to survive and flourish. Each time we meet a favored character, we come to understand the names of descendants hidden within him or her. Characters out of favor with God generally meet the same end: infertility, the end of their family line. We find a working analogy between a womb and a well: Both contain life-sustaining 144 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period water and both are essential for overcoming death. Each new birth represents an important, if only limited, victory over death. For new people promise future generations, and future generations indicate that death, which is inevitable for humans, will not empty the earth of all people. Adoption was the traditional solution to this nagging problem (“what will I leave behind the world?”). When Abraham and Sara could not have a child, they relied on Hagar, a surrogate of sorts, to give them one, a child they intended to raise as their own. Medical technology recently presented another option: surrogacy. What kind of woman would give away her child to someone else, and why? We can only guess at why a woman might choose to give a child to a gay couple; overcoming homophobia and changing a society grimly determined to be heterosexist might have something to do with her motivation. Rescuing a gay couple with no other place to turn to might be another. Regardless of any psychological benefits a surrogate might gain, she transforms the life of a gay couple and fits Joseph Campbell's description of a hero. Diane Hinson mentioned the possibility that a surrogate would request to work with a gay couple, out of desire that her child be raised by gay men. It would be interesting to find a woman putting her child up for adoption and requesting that it be placed with a gay man or a gay couple. What a surrogate does for a gay couple changes everything for her and them. Though physical beauty may not figure high on the list of cons, it nonetheless deserves mention as a veritable sacrifice. When a surrogate becomes pregnant, she gains weight. In 2008 New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski drew widespread criticism after confessing her relief that her surrogate had saved her from getting fat. Kuczynski could not conceive a child herself, located a surrogate, and spotted a silver lining in the cloud: not being pregnant spared her all the fat and body problems women usually struggle with after giving birth.18 Surrogates, of course, endure those problems (and others). My goal has not been to produce empirical research or a definitive statistical profile of women who help gay men start a family. The goal has simply been to thank a couple of women, who may or may not have something basic in common with the countless other women who have helped gay men. The generosity of these women makes them unforgettable friends—to gay men, at least. It should not seem too far-fetched to assert that when a surrogate helps a single gay man or couple, she is helping the entire gay community. Whether we want to call surrogates heroes will likely invite disagreement. “Unforgettable friends” is a safer bet. When we think of heroes, our minds may leap to men who saved hundreds of Jews during the Second World War—men such as Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, or Nicholas Winton. Surely heroes come in many shapes and sizes, and surely bringing joy to one single couple—as opposed to hundreds of otherwise doomed Jewish children—qualifies you as a hero of sorts. A surrogate is like someone who volunteers to give you a kidney Surrogate Mother 145 when you need one. Surrogates never get pregnant accidentally; they make an intentional choice and want very much to conceive a child. Long after gay men stopped needing the help of girls on playgrounds to castigate their bullies, some gay men still needed the help of women—this time, to give them a child. The women who stepped forward and delivered children deserve praise.

EPILOGUE: DID GAY MEN EVER NEED RESCUE?

Starting in 2010, the “It Gets Better” media campaign aimed to prevent gay and lesbian adolescents from committing suicide.1 Scholarly research had documented that these kids stood a higher risk of killing themselves, and the older gay community reached out to shoulder the emerging one by recording brief video testimonies of lesbians and gay men who assured viewers that it was much easier it was to be an out adult than teen. If gay teens still needed rescue in 2010, it seemed gay men no longer did. When these gay teens grow into adults, will they still see themselves in need of rescue from internalized homophobia or a homophobic culture? Had America genuinely embraced its gay men in the four or five years before gay marriage became the law of the land? Even before gay men starting coming out of the closet in increasing numbers, compassionate Westerners have wanted to “save” them. American psychiatrists in the 1950s and 1960s labored to change sexual homosexuals for the better, even though this work would soon come to be viewed as torture. In 2004 a major Hollywood film—Saved!—lampooned the efforts of a young evangelical Christian who opted to sacrifice her treasured virginity in the name of pulling her boyfriend, who had just come out to her, off the path to damnation. The film played with the notion of rescuing gay men. Viewers laughed at the extravagant strategy of a high school girl who represented the enemy, namely, conservative Christians. The young woman pressures her reluctant boyfriend into sex, becomes pregnant and, as an unwed mother, an outcast in her community. The joke centers on the irony that Christians view her as a victim of her own lust, when in fact she believed she was just doing what Jesus would. People who need rescue teeter on the brink of self-ruin. Various classes of people really do need social, often medical, interventions: drug addicts, alcoholics, even shopaholics. After the psychologist Evelyn Hooker’s 1957 work, it became reasonable to insist that gay men had never needed rescuing from themselves. The very idea of rescue is fraught with difficulties, as no one really wants to be rescued or pitied: Most people will prefer to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And yet a number of social groups—Jews, blacks, illegal immigrants— have required rescue at various times. (A proper history of Christian attempts to convert Jews still waits to be written; it will be a heart-breaking and long book.) As difficult as it may be to specify the end of social oppression, the 2015 legal right to marry (Obergefell v. Hodges) capped a string of crucial victories for gay 148 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period men, after which rescue seemed unnecessary, silly even. It must certainly still be difficult to grow up closeted in a family dead-set against gay rights (as the gay boy in Saved! did), but most of those closeted boys will figure out where to escape to as soon as feasible. After the break for freedom, these boys may well prosper in neighborhoods and communities too busy for gay-bashing.

Rescue Fantasies

Given how many gay Americans may have tried to wish or pray themselves into becoming straight, it bears clarifying what “rescue” meant to gay men and how that notion clashed with the hopes of those straight people who wanted “perverts” to disappear. The phenomenon of rescuing a person is referenced more often than analyzed. The most penetrating analysis I have come across is Freud’s. Freud introduced the concept of “rescue fantasy” in 1910 (in the essay “A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men”) to denote the wish in certain men to save and transform “fallen women.”2 Psychoanalysts sometimes use the term to designate the therapist’s conscious or unconscious aims with regard to his patient, particularly in the context of therapy with children. Freud deployed his famous oedipal theory in support of an argument that the man unconsciously views the woman as his mother, and her rescue from sexual exploitation signifies winning her for oneself, in defiance of the oedipal father. Surely the idea of rescue fantasy is much older than Freud’s naming it. The Catholic Church, for example, had been reaching out to prostitutes for many centuries, housing, educating, and rehabilitating them. And students of literature regularly learn about the deus ex machina, the person or event which suddenly transforms a drama and, in so doing, drastically improves the fortunes of a central character. And the persistent dream of a better life runs through the depiction of characters in many a movie today. Part of the reason for the frequent deployment of a rescue fantasy in literature and cinema stems from its familiarity: Most of us have had them. They work well in biographies too. Nureyev’s biographer, for example, recounts the emotional state of the Russian peasant who would dramatically defect to the United States in the 1960s and become one of the most celebrated male dancers of all time: “Ever since he had stepped inside the Ufa Opera House [in Russia] and discovered a new world, his only thought had been to travel there. He had been dreaming ‘of the savior, who would come, take me by the hand and rescue me from that mediocre life …’ .”3 One of the more moving passage’s from Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being features the character Teresa, trapped under an oppressive Communist regime in Prague, cleaning her family’s dirty underwear and hankering after a grand life elsewhere. Examples are endless and often richly indicative of social oppression. Someone who dreams of escape to a better place isn’t clearly a passive victim longing to be rescued; Nureyev, for example, can be said to have rescued himself (through hard work and courage). Still, it is important to maintain a distinction Epilogue 149 between the fantasy of rescuing someone else and the fantasy of being rescued. Psychiatrists and conservative Christians may have fantasized about rescuing gay men, but they didn’t fantasize about themselves being rescued. Freud illuminated the difference. The roles in which we may creatively cast ourselves as rescuers face no limits beyond our imagination. That said, it wouldn’t make sense to entertain a rescue fantasy about an old age home or a medical ward for people suffering from incurable diseases. We might try to comfort such people out of kindness, but we wouldn’t seek to rescue them. Compassion and respect for shared humanity usually motivate those who work with the dying. Although we sometimes hear that women—particularly young women— entertain Cinderella rescue fantasies (according to the script, life was drab until her Prince Charming showed up and elevated her above her lowly past), the term is better used from an internal perspective, as Freud meant it. By “rescue fantasy” I mean the goal of supposed do-gooders who viewed gay men as desperately needing someone to terminate a downward spiral of disgusting sexual encounters. It is easier to understand fear of gay people when you consider the rescue fantasy of straight people who surrounded them: Straight men seemed to fear contamination, that some sort of gay virus might spread and infect them or their children. This was “gay panic.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Still close to the height of his international fame, Mick Jagger further popularized rescue fantasies in the 1970s. Seductively singing, “I will be your knight in shining armor, coming to your emotional rescue,” his rescue fantasy never mentioned violence. And yet psychoanalysts after Freud have pointed out this dark underside. The rescue of a fallen woman or a gay men requires killing of a sort; after the savior has done his work, the sinner will no longer be the same. She or he will be reborn as someone new, someone more presentable.4 This disturbing point deserves serious consideration. Presumably even the faceless woman to whom Mick Jagger sang was hoping for a very different life; unless he were a fool, he would not have promised to rescue her if he didn’t think she were likely to find the idea appealing. She needed help, serious help; and he was going to deliver it. For Freud, the classic rescue fantasy aimed to transform a “whore” into a “madonna”; whether Jagger’s intentions differed, we’ll never know. It may have been the decadent 1970s, but it is entirely reasonable to read the lyrics of Jagger’s song “Emotional Rescue” in this Freudian way. Jagger assures his desired one later in the song, “You will be mine, you will be mine, all mine” (we don’t know whether he will be hers, all hers). The end of a rescue fantasy usually involves this kind of possession or domination. Gay men rescued by psychiatrists or conservative Christians would belong to the moral majority in American society; formerly gay men would then march to the beat of the same drummer as everyone else. Freud’s daughter Anna would later discover a new neurosis, one she called “identifying with the aggressor.” This notion usefully fills out Freud’s theory. Take 150 Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period the example of a woman who does not believe she is in need of rescue from a given state or practice. If her parents and community roundly oppose her view and wear her down, she may come to agree with them. She may grow to dislike herself and identify with those who try to “kill” her or wash away the naughty, recalcitrant part of her.5 It hardly needs stating that many self-loathing lesbians and gay men have tried to change themselves, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Another point should trouble us: Jagger or any analyst casting herself in the role of hero may be courting applause. We should see immediately Freud’s point that narcissism, a persistent desire for self-glorification, surfaces in the rescue fantasy. Not only is the rescuer on some level hostile toward the poor soul to be helped, he is also hungry for the approval and admiration of his parents or community, who will throw roses at his feet for having saved someone. The rescuer yearns to play the role of his idealized parent, the mother or father he remembers from early childhood.6 According to this script, the “victim” awaits and then welcomes her rescue (just as a small child might). How many young men and women aspire to the medical profession in the hope of “helping” people? Dr. Linda Laubenstein, who worked tirelessly to succor gay men dying from AIDS, became a physician for just that reason. No one would argue that those afflicted with cancer or Alzheimer’s or gunshot wounds do in fact need medical attention. And so this sort of rescue fantasy might strike most of us as blameless. But the idea of “helping” people of other religions or caught in the grips of non-heterosexual attractions should give us pause. The rescuer of a gay man does not deserve any prize. Even in the early twenty-first century, the social reaction to gay men still divided significant swaths of the American public (think of the legal battle for marriage equality).

Will Gays Ever Achieve Full Social Equality?

When will gays have achieved full social equality? When the federal government enacted marriage equality and listed gay bashing as a hate crime, a good deal of the work was done. Nonetheless, it seems safe to assume that gay men will continue to face social discrimination and that religious believers of different stripes will “pray” for them (which often sounds like a passive-aggressive way of fighting their social advancement). As long as significant numbers of well-meaning souls continue to pray for the conversion of gay men or scientists look for a way of reversing sexual orientation, gay men might need protection from gay-bashing. If we lend psychoanalytic theories any credence (as I think we should), it seems reasonable to conclude that gay men feared the violence underlying rescue. Gay men would have presumably been able to discern the thrill-seekers who crave association with any transgressive group (these thrill-seekers are perhaps not so unlike “adrenaline junkies” who may leap from planes or drive ambulances). An alienated high school sissy boy could probably tell that his new friend wanted to hang out with anyone freakish, as opposed to with him specifically. Surely some assistance does not in fact entail an unconscious desire to kill a person and rebuild Epilogue 151 him as another. I have asserted that the friendships celebrated and analyzed in this book qualify for the noble category: broadly characteristic of these friendships was the absence of a rescue fantasy, as well as the defiance necessary to sustain such alliances in a culture opposed to gay men (because friendships with them validated or legitimized their deviant way of life). Once upon a time gay men did need rescue—not from themselves, but from their would-be rescuers, that is, Americans who wanted them to disappear. It is in part because of straight women that twenty-first-century Americans no longer believe that gay men need to be rescued. Gay men eventually became a desirable social accessory, a necessary addition to an evening out, a thorny break-up, or a youth well spent. Straight women have made all the difference to more than a few gay men, and this emotional support deserves applause. Kindness of this magnitude is never forgotten. American women smoothed the rocky path for many gay men, and it remains to be seen how and when gay men will return the colossal favor. APPENDIX 1

Someone interested in media portrayals of alliances between straight women and gay men might profit from the following entries (by no means an exhaustive list):

I. Theater

A. The Drag (1927) (gay man marries a woman, who regrets the ensuing sexual desert) B. Relative Values (1951) (Noël Coward play; duchess’s beloved nephew is coded gay) C. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) (gifted athlete harbors a secret, refuses sex with wife) D. A View from the Bridge (1956) (a father figure accuses niece’s young suitor of being gay) E. A Taste of Honey (1958) (a pregnant girl in trouble is cared for by openly gay friend) F. Suddenly, Last Summer (1958) (family secret comes out: artistic son likes sex with men)

II. Film

Censorship laws governed both literature and film well into the 1960s. The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (also known as the Hays Code) made frank portrayals of homosexuality impossible in American films. It was very difficult even to gesture toward homosexuality (for example, in the filmsTea and Sympathy and Women in Love, which avoid naming homosexuality; Women in Love’s totally- not-gay wrestling scene surely disappointed many viewers). Gay men fought to change these rules, often with the sympathy of straight women. An early film featuring gay men, Boys in the Band (1970), does not include any women at all and feels claustrophobic; relationships between gay men who are not lovers resemble relationships between two women (think of the familiar stereotype of bitchy women in George Cukor’s 1939 filmThe Women). Through the decades, the scripts evolved and reflected complexity and tension in the friendships between gay men and straight women. The support these friends gave one another reflected an understanding that it was a man’s world Appendix 1 153 and, for that reason, a world of physical danger. Navigating the power of men who disliked femininity outside of sexual contexts required a particular brand of canniness. Popular sentiment eventually prevailed and the Hays Code collapsed in 1968.

A. Tennessee Williams (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof [1958]; Suddenly, Last Summer [1959]) (In first film, a closeted gay man tortures his loving wife for having stolen his boyfriend; in second film, a closeted gay man pimps out his gorgeous female cousin in order to attract boys to his circle; both films star Elizabeth Taylor) B. The Long Hot Summer (1958, Martin Ritt, director) (Joanne Woodward hopes to marry a man she later realizes is gay; she gracefully shuts down her quest and falls for Paul Newman instead) C. Pillow Talk (1959, Michael Gordon, director) (Doris Day chases a man (played by Rock Hudson) she later fears might be gay) D. Darling (1965, John Schlesinger, director) (Julie Christie plays a glamorous model who relishes the friendship of an openly gay man) E. Bonnie & Clyde (1967, Arthur Penn, director) (Clyde insists he does not want sex with women; he just wants to be Bonnie’s pal and partner in crime; Bonnie is determined to seduce him) F. My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997, P. J. Hogan, director) (Julia Roberts plays a frustrated woman whose gay friend Rupert Everett comes to her emotional rescue) G. The Object of My Affection (1998, Nicholas Hytner, director) (Moving story of straight woman Jennifer Aniston who proposes marriage to her gay best friend Paul Rudd; sophisticated, convincing portrayal of deep love between the two) H. The Next Best Thing (2000, John Schlesinger, director) (Rupert Everett is back, this time playing the gay best friend of Madonna, who wants to sleep with him) I. Saved! (2004, Brian Dannelly, director) (Hilarious portrayal of young Christian woman who sacrifices her virginity in order to prevent her Christian boyfriend from “going gay”) J. The Devil Wears Prada (2006, David Frankel, director) (Meryl Streep plays a corporate leader so comfortable with gay men in the fashion world that she doesn’t even think about it; her gay advisor, played by Stanley Tucci, befriends and rescues an ugly duckling, played by Anne Hathaway, and turns her into a swan) K. A Single Man (2009, Tom Ford, director) (Gay man played by Colin Firth loses his lover in mid-1960s car crash; best friend Julianne Moore comes to his emotional rescue; interesting scene in which she blames his sexuality from preventing the two from becoming a very happy, married couple) 154 Appendix 1

III. Television

The following television shows centrally involve at least one friendship between a straight woman and a gay man:

A. Three’s Company (1977–1984) (straight man pretends to be gay in order to become roommate of two straight women; landlord would not permit a straight man to room with two women) B. My So-Called Life (1994–1995) (powerful portrayal of teen angst but also of straight woman–gay man friendship) C. Will & Grace (1998–2006) (iconic portrayal of friendship between gay Will and straight Grace) D. Queer as Folk (2000–2005) (original British show highlighted friendships between gay and straight high school students; American version showed gay guys in Pittsburgh doing the same) E. Ugly Betty (2006–2010) (so many gay men and straight women working together in fashion that it is difficult to list them all) F. Glee (2009–) (straight girls befriend, defend, nurture various openly gay boys in Ohio high school) G. Vicious (2012 English sitcom featuring Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Derek Jacobi, and Frances de la Tour) (available on American channels, this sitcom showcases the witty friendship between an older straight woman and her older gay friends)

IV. Comic Strips

9 Chickweed Lane

V. Social Media

“Sassy Gay Friend” series (available on YouTube, went viral on Facebook) APPENDIX 2 156 Appendix 2

Appendix 2 graciously provided by, and published with permission of, Mrs. Priscilla Laubenstein. This Appendix pertains to the charity set up by Dr. Linda Laubenstein to put unemployed gay men back to work in New York City. NOTES

Introduction

1 James Baldwin, “Preservation of Innocence: Studies for a New Morality,” [1949] in James Baldwin: Collected Essays, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, 1998), pp. 594–600. 2 See, for example, Bernard E. Whitley, Jr., “Religiosity and Attitudes toward Lesbians and Gay Men: A Meta-Analysis,” International Journal for Psychology of Religion 19 (2009): 21. 3 See, for example, Glenn J. Meaney and B.J. Rye, “Gendered Egos: Attitude Functions and Gender as Predictors of Homonegativity,” Journal of Homosexuality 57 (2010): 1274–1302; Todd K. Shackelford and Avi Besser, “Predicting Attitudes toward Homosexuality: Insights from Personality Psychology,” Individual Differences Research 51 (2007): 106–114; John G. Kerns and Mark A. Fine, “The Relation between Gender and Negative Attitudes toward Gay Men and Lesbians: Do Gender Role Attitudes Mediate This Relation?,” Sex Roles 31 (1994): 297–307. 4 See Robert Aldrich, “Gay and Lesbian History” in Gay Life and Culture: A World History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006). See also Louis Compton,Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). 5 Philip Hensher, “How to Be Gay by David M. Halperin – Review,” The Guardian, August 29, 2012. I owe this reference to an anonymous and quite astute reviewer for Bloomsbury, later identified as Laura Doan. I am particularly grateful to her. 6 Andrew Solomon, “In Praise of Women,” in Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, p. 230. 7 Alexandra Jacobs, “A Harvard (Fag) Hag-iography,” in Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, eds. Melissa de la Cruz and Tom Dolby (New York: Plume, 2008), p. 62. 8 Graham Robb, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), p. 126. 9 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 86, 104–105, 115, 129. Quoted in Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were (New York: Basic, 1992), pp. 42–43. 10 A. A. Gill, “Can This Wedding Be Saved?”Vanity Fair, September 2012, p. 204. 11 Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Women’s Movement Changed America (New York: Penguin, 2006). 12 Gail Collins, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journal of Women from 1960 to the Present (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2010). 13 Frank Rich, “Ancient Gay History,” New York Magazine, May 26, 2013. See also the related piece, “Gay Bashing at the Smithsonian,” New York Times, December 11, 2010.

Chapter 1

1 See William Mann, How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2009). 158 Notes

2 J. Randy Taraborrelli, Elizabeth (New York: Warner, 2006), pp. 119–120. See also pp. 261–262: “… Elizabeth filmedReflections in a Golden Eye, with Marlon Brando playing a part originally intended for Montgomery Clift. When the studio would not insure Clift because of his problems with drugs and alcohol, Elizabeth put up the insurance herself. However, Monty died at just forty-six from occlusive coronary artery disease before the movie went into production.” There may be some confusion here, as Clift’s biographer Patricia Bosworth identifies the film Theas Defector in the 1980 documentary Montgomery Clift, directed by Claudio Masenza. It could be that Taylor put up insurance money for Clift on two separate occasions. Robert LaGuardia details Taylor’s insistence that Clift be hired to star opposite her in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); see his Monty: A Biography of Montgomery Clift (New York: Avon, 1984), pp. 203–207. 3 Taraborrelli, Elizabeth, p. 120. Later in the same biography, the author writes: “Over the years, many of her gay colleagues in the entertainment industry had suffered terribly in their private lives as a result of their true selves not being accepted in the business. She’d known many actors who’d been closeted, such as Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson, and she had always reached out to them with friendship and a shoulder to cry on” (p. 396). 4 Taraborrelli, Elizabeth, p. 133. 5 Sam Harris, Ham: Slices of a Life (New York: Gallery Books, 2014). Just as whatever lovers or sexual partners Clift would have had before coming out to Taylor would have known of his sexual orientation, so did some of the friends and acquaintances Harris had drunk with know of or suspect his addiction. About his drinking he muses: “Alcoholism didn’t happen to me. No one led me down a garden path or lied to me or bamboozled me into becoming a pathetic drunk …. I told myself if I could run five miles in the morning and never drink before a show, I couldn’t possibly be an alcoholic. When that criteria couldn’t be met, I simply stopped running and stopped doing shows” (pp. 108–109). About Minnelli he writes: “We’d seen each other nearly every day for years, and the depth and complexity of our friendship had even at times become a threat to my relationship with Danny. He was my partner, my best friend, the person I’d committed to spending my life with. But the connection between Liza and me was like a private refuge to which no one gained entry and would take its toll on anyone” (p. 169). He describes the revelation to his friend as follows: I walked down the hall and to the doorframe of her room. And the dam broke. All of the tension of the last week, the last years, the last life, had culminated in this single moment of release. I couldn’t speak. Liza remained in her bed, knowing somehow to let the moment stand. “What is it? What happened?” I somehow managed to move one foot in front of the other and made my way to her bedside, sitting on the edge next to her. She took me by the shoulders and stared deeply into my eyes. I collected myself and took a breath. “I’m an alcoholic,” I said, and burst into tears once again. She smiled and pulled me close and cradled me in her arms, rocking me back and forth, pushing the melting snowflakes from my brow and wiping the endless stream of tears from my eyes. “I know, baby. I know.” (pp. 228–229) 6 On this, see John Donald Gustav-Wrathall, Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Less than fifteen years after the Jenkins scandal, a riotously campy group known as the Village People would garner international fame with their song “YMCA,” a paean to the warmth a young man could find in any YMCA. Notes 159

7 For a thorough account of this sex scandal, see Robert David Johnson, All the Way with LBJ: The 1964 Presidential Election (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 248–263. See also Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 179–181. 8 Bill Moyers comments on Lady Bird Johnson’s tears in a 2009 piece he wrote for Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2009/02/moyers _responds_to_slate.html. 9 Jan Jarboe Russell, Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson (New York: Scribner, 1999), esp. pp. 264–268. 10 Russell, Lady Bird, p. 267. 11 Arthur Vandenberg had had to resign from the Eisenhower administration over rumors that he was homosexual. Johnson claimed that Eisenhower “had the same type of problem with one of the men in his retinue [Vandenburg] …. The only difference is, we Democrats felt sorry for him and thought it was a case of sickness and disease and didn’t’ capitalize on a man’s misfortune.” New York Herald-Tribune, October 27, 1964. Quoted in Johnson, All the Way with LBJ, p. 263. 12 For an overview of this case and the legal climate in the 1960s, see David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). John Nash, the celebrated Princeton University mathematician who won a Nobel Prize, was arrested in a men’s room for indecent exposure in the summer of 1954. See Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 184–189. It would be an understatement to say that gay and bisexual men suffered quite a lot when publicly outed. 13 Jill Watts, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 82. 14 Watts, Mae West, p. 87. See also George Chauncey’s treatment of Mae West and her influence on the gay male world inGay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), esp. pp. 286–290. 15 BBC News, “George Michael Goes to Ground,” April 9, 1998 (published online at 15:16 GMT). 16 Hinson resigned his seat on April 13, 1981. He had recently been arrested on charges of sodomy in the restroom of a House building in Washington, DC. He had attempted a liaison with an undercover policeman, not unlike Jenkins had done nearly two decades earlier. In his autobiography The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative (New York: Arbor House, 1986), former Representative Robert Bauman (R-Maryland) details his similar 1980 fall from grace. 17 See the documentary Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, directed by Richard Schmiechen (Intrepid Productions, 1992). 18 Linda D. Garnets and Douglas C. Kimmel, “What a Light It Shed: The Life of Evelyn Hooker,” in Psychological Perspectives on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Experience, eds. Linda D. Garnets and Douglas C. Kimmel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 31. I follow Garnets and Kimmel closely in the next few paragraphs. For another biographical sketch, see A.M. Boxer and J.M. Carrier, “Evelyn Hooker: A Life Remembered,” Journal of Homosexuality 36 (1) (1998): 1–17. 19 John Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (New York: Basic, 1981), p. 53. Quoted in Garnets and Kimmel, “What a Light It Shed,” p. 40. 20 Bayer, American Psychologist 53: 480–481, p. 481. Quoted in Garnets and Kimmel, “What a Light It Shed”. Note here that Collins credits the women’s movement with fighting for gay rights. 160 Notes

21 See Tom Dart, “‘Praying the Gay Away’: Trauma Survivors Crusade to Ban Conversion Therapy,” The Guardian (London), April 11, 2015. 22 Interview with Mrs. Priscilla Laubenstein, July 29, 2015. 23 Larry Kramer, “A Love Letter: I Live with Linda Every Day,” in Tales of Linda: An AIDS Pioneer Is Remembered by Patients, Colleagues, Friends, and Family, ed. Priscilla Laubenstein (New Mexico: NIB Press, 2013), p. 9. 24 Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 27. 25 For a scholarly treatment of this topic, see G. Shteynberg & Adam D. Galinsky, “Implicit Coordination: Sharing Goals with Similar Others Intensifies Goal Pursuit,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011): 1291–1294. 26 Susan Maizel Chambre, in her history of AIDS and New York, notes an interview Krim gave to Newsweek in 1987 about the role she and Taylor were able to play. “We had to have credibility; we had to be seen as a mainstream group and not a gay organization.” See her Fighting for Our Lives: New York AIDS Community and the Politics of Disease (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006). 27 In an interview with National Public Radio, Dr. Mervyn Silverman, a former president of amfAR, states that Elizabeth Taylor decided to help fight the AIDS crisis because no one else would step up to the plate. You can listen to the interview on the NPR website: http://www.npr.org/2011/03/23/134800900/Elizabeth-Taylors-AIDS-Activism. 28 Jeremy Kinser, “Doris Day’s Letter to AIDS/Lifecycle Riders,” The Advocate, June 12, 2012; accessed at: http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/people/2012/06/15/ doris-days-letter-aids-lifecycle-riders. 29 John-Manuel Andriote, Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 294, 298–299. 30 William L. Hamilton, “Did Success Spoil Tab Hunter?,” New York Times, September 18, 2005. 31 See “Biden: Jewish Leaders Drove Gay Marriage Changes,” Washington Post, May 22, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/22/biden -jewish-leaders-helped-gay-marriage-succeed/. 32 I am grateful to Charlie Tyson for discussion on this point. 33 Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1985).

Chapter 2

1 This continues a long tradition of blaming mothers when they give birth to a deformed child. See, for example, Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 2 Andrea Weiss, In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 142. 3 See Tim Dean and Christopher Lane, eds., Homosexuality & Psychoanalysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 4 See the Vatican’s website for the full text of this document: http://www.vatican.va/ roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19751229 _persona-humana_en.html. 5 On electroshock therapy, see the documentary on Evelyn Hooker, “Changing our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker” (dir. Richard Schmiechen, 1992). Notes 161

A psychologist, Hooker railed against the use of such measures, which she viewed as cruel and ineffective. 6 William Iverson, “Love, Death, and the Hubby Image,” Playboy, September 1963. 7 Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 8 For more on Fleischer’s research, see: http://prop8report.lgbtmentoring.org/ and http://prop8report.lgbtmentoring.org/read-the-report/executive summary# _Toc268001397. 9 See the Fleischer report at http://prop8report.lgbtmentoring.org/. See also Steve La, “Does Gay Activist David Fleischer Debunk Myths Surrounding 2008 Prop 8 Campaign?” in LA Weekly (August 11, 2010): http://www.laweekly.com/ informer/2010/08/11/does-gay-activist-david-fleischer-debunk-myths-surrounding -2008-prop-8-campaign. 10 The ad is available on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PgjcgqFYP4. 11 See Elinor Burkett, The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless (New York: Free Press, 2000). 12 See Alice Echols, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), pp. 138–139. 13 See the 2012 coverage by The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/ one-million-moms-ellen. 14 Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (New York: Anchor, 1987), p. 147. We should not assume that all socially conservative women opposed the ERA: Sonia Johnson, a committed Mormon and otherwise conservative woman, fought tirelessly for it. See Neil J. Young, “Equal Rights, Gay Rights, and the Mormon Church,” New York Times, June 13, 2012. 15 See Phyllis Schlafly,The Power of the Positive Woman (New York: Crown, 1977) for an account of why the ERA was bad for women. 16 Pyllis Schlafly, “Two-Class American Society,”The Phyllis Schlafly Report 19 (1986): 1. Quoted in Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 107. 17 Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 467. 18 See, for example, Donald R. McCreary, “The Male Role and Avoiding Femininity,”Sex Roles 517 (1994): 31, for an analysis of theories that people generally respond more strongly to gender violations by men than to those by women. Both gay men (who are not necessarily effeminate) and female ERA supporters (who were both gay and straight) struck conservatives of the day as “gender non-conformers,” which means that gay men and female ERA supporters presented an image that conflicted with people’s gender stereotypes. 19 Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, p. 145. Ehrenreich pointed out, “The ‘rights’ and ‘privileges’ that the antifeminists believe are accorded to women by marriage are, at best, private arrangements reinforced by convention; at worst, comforting fantasies” (p. 146). 20 Gail Collins, When Everything Changed (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2009), p. 227. 21 Ibid., p. 226. 22 Camille Paglia, Sex, Art, and American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1992), p. 23. Neuroscientists may prove Paglia wrong. See Ian Sample, “Gay Men and Heterosexual Women Have Similarly Shaped Brains, Research Shows,” The Guardian, June 16, 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/jun/16/neuroscience.psychology 23 Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 117. 162 Notes

24 Camille Paglia, Sex, Art, and American Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1992), p. 36. Paglia made the same point in a Canadian interview conducted in 2009: http://www.towleroad.com/2009/06/camille-paglia-gay-activists-childish-for -demanding-rights.html#more. 25 William Eskridge, Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 98. 26 Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock, Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 266. 27 Rollyson and Paddock, Susan Sontag, pp. 264–267. 28 Tim Teenan, “Boycott Dolce and Gabbana: Gays Can Be Hypocritical, Prejudiced Dumbasses Too,” The Daily Beast, March 15, 2015.

Chapter 3

1 J. Randy Taborrelli Elizabeth, The Biography of Elizabeth Taylor (New York: Warner Books, 2006), p. 323. 2 Stephen M. Engel, The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Carol McClurg Mueller, “Building Social Movement Theory,” inFrontiers in Social Movement Theory, eds. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 3–25. 3 E. P. Thompson,The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966). 4 Linda Hirshman, Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), pp. 24, 26, 37. 5 Gail Collins, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2009), pp. 222–223. 6 Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), pp. 203–204. See also Christine Wallace, Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew (New York: Faber and Faber, 1999): “[Friedan] was militantly opposed to the rise of lesbians within the ranks of the feminist movement,” Jill Johnston says. “She was scared to death it would turn off the women in the suburbs, and called us the lavender menace” (p. 197). See also the 2014 New York Times article on this subject: Matt Apuzzo, “Uncovered Papers Show Past Government Efforts to Drive Gays From Jobs,”New York Times, May 21, http://www. nytimes.com/2014/05/21/us/politics/uncovered-papers-show-past-government- efforts-to-drive-gays-from-jobs.html. 7 Carolyn G. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem (New York: Dial Press, 1995), p. 242. Heilbrun quotes from a 1970 interview with Friedan in the Palo Alto Times: “I think the movement has been infiltrated and the lesbian issue has been pushed forward for divisive purposes. We must not let ourselves be used” (pp. 243–244). 8 Sheila Jeffreys,Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective (Cambridge: Polity, 2003). 9 Gail Collins, When Everything Changed, pp. 236–237. 10 Christine Wallace, Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew (London: Macmillan, 1997), p. 214. 11 See George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Martin B. Duberman, About Time: Exploring the Gay Past (New York: Meridian Books, 1991); William Notes 163

Eskridge, Gaylaw; Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999); Gary Mucciaroni, Same Sex, Different Politics: Success and Failure in the Struggles over Gay Rights (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Michael Bronski, A Queer History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011); Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price, Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 12 See his home page: http://www.paganpressbooks.com/jpl/ as well as his self-published book Dangerous Trends in Feminism (2007). 13 For a useful discussion of identity, see Rogers Brubaker, “Beyond Identities,” in Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 14 Margaret Carlson, “McCain and His Gaydar,” Time, January 31, 2000, p. 43. 15 Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women (New York: Anchor, 2nd edn, 2005). 16 Michael D. Shear and Elena Schneider, “Obama Unveils Plan for Young People to Do More against Campus Assaults,” New York Times, September 19, 2014. 17 On social disagreement over drugs to make women more sexual, see the New York Times editorial, “A Pill to Boost Female Libido,” June 12, 2015.

Chapter 4

1 Nancy Stoller, Lessons from the Damned: Queers, Whores, and Junkies Respond to AIDS (New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 29. Stoller noted the influence of generations: “The differences between the older lesbians and the younger generation are deep, widespread in the lesbian community, and in many cases quite antagonistic” (p. 30). “The younger generation of lesbian AIDS activists carries a different psychology, culture, politics, and sexuality form those who came to the movement in the early eighties. These activists are connected to the older women by the term ‘lesbian’ and by some similarities of sexual practice. Many, however, see their elders as sexually repressed, conservative, and somewhat anti-male” (p. 31). Stoller usefully describes her own experience of activism (AIDS, women’s, lesbian) (pp. 21–25). See also Beth E. Schneider, “Lesbian Politics and AIDS Work” in Modern Homosexualities, ed. Ken Plummer (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 160–174. 2 Judy Macks and Caitlin Ryan, “Lesbians Working in AIDS: An Overview of Our History and Experience,” in The Sourcebook on Lesbian/Gay Health Care, eds. Michael Shernoff and William A. Scott (Washington, DC: National Lesbian/Gay Health Foundation, 1988), p. 200. 3 See, for example, Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 341–345 and 355–364. 4 On the subject of friendship between gay men and lesbians, see John Nestle and John Preston, eds., Sister and Brother: Lesbians and Gay Men Write about Their Lives Together (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994). For a very different yet useful comparison between the two groups, see Gary David Comstock, Violence against Lesbians and Gay Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). 5 Sara Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), p. 41. 164 Notes

6 Pat Sherman, “Moments in Time: the Blood Sisters,” Gay San Diego, July 16, 2010. Accessed at: http://www.gay-sd.com/moments-in-time-the-blood-sisters/. 7 For more on the different motivations of both lesbians and straight women to take part in the AIDS movement, see Chapter 4 of Ulrike Boehmer, The Personal and the Political: Women’s Activism in Response to the Breast Cancer and AIDS Epidemics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). 8 For an account of therapeutic approaches to this kind of grief, see Sally B. Geis, Ruth L. Fuller, and Julian Rush, “Lovers of AIDS victims: Psychosocial stresses and counseling needs,” Death Studies 10 (1) (1986): 43–53. 9 Zoe Leonard, “Lesbians in the AIDS Crisis” in Women, AIDS, and Activism, by the ACT UP/New York Women and AIDS Book Group (Boston: South End Press, 1990), p. 117. 10 Nancy Stoller, “Lesbian Involvement in the AIDS Epidemic,” in Women Resisting AIDS: Feminist Strategies of Empowerment, eds. Beth E. Schneider and Nancy E. Stoller (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995), p. 277. For another discussion of lesbians and AIDS activism, see Diane Richardson, Women and AIDS (New York: Methuen, 1988). 11 Stoller, Lessons from the Damned, p. 26. 12 Jeannine DeLombard, “Who Cares? Lesbians as Caregivers,” in Dyke Life: From Growing Up to Growing Old, A Celebration of the Lesbian Experience, ed. Karla Jay (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 352. 13 Ann Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). The quotations listed here all come from Chapter 5, “AIDS Activism and Public Feeling: Documenting ACT UP’s Lesbians,” the same chapter that distills the interviews with lesbian activists. 14 Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feelings, pp. 179, 178, 181. 15 Amy Hoffman,Hospital Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). 16 For a brief tribute to Louise’s work during the epidemic, see http://www.baywindows .com/louise-rice-rn-activist-nurse-and-educator-106373. I interviewed Louise in March 2014. 17 Foley’s obituary can be found here: http://www.wickedlocal.com/x126907399/Loss -of-a-maverick-AIDS-advocate-Alice.

Chapter 5

1 See, for example, Dan Shepphard, Adrian Coyle, and Peter Hegarty, “Discourses of Friendship between Heterosexual Women and Gay Men: Mythical Norms and an Absence of Desire,” Feminism and Psychology 20 (2005): 205–224; C. Carrington, No Place Like Home: Relationships and Family Life among Lesbians and Gay Men (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Geoffrey L. Grief,The Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); and L.M. Tillmann-Healy, Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship across Sexual Orientation (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2001). 2 See especially Anna Muraco, Odd Couples: Friendships at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual Orientation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). Muraco aims to show “how these friendships serve as a barometer for shifting social norms, particularly with respect to gender and social orientation” (p. 2). She asks, “… in the absence of socially sanctioned sexual tension and expectations of a romantic Notes 165

relationship, can men and women maintain egalitarian relationships?” (p. 6). She probes how gender norms operate in male–female friendships when sex is supposedly out of the question. 3 George Plimpton, Truman Capote (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 339. 4 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-a8QXUAe2g. 5 Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Feeling [1st edition 1983] (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012). 6 Mary Field Belenky, Blythe Mcvicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule, Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986). 7 See Nancy Eisenberg and Randy Lennon, “Sex Differences in Empathy and Related Capacities,” Psychological Bulletin 94 (1983): 100–131. 8 See Lillian B. Ruvin, Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives (New York: Harper & Row, 1985) and Linda A. Sapadin, “Friendship and Gender: Perspectives of Professional Men and Women,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 5 (1988): 387–403. 9 See Judith A. Hall, Nonverbal Sex Differences: Communication Accuracy and Expressive Style (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). 10 Bella M. DePaulo, “Spotting Lies: Can Humans Learn to Do Better?” Current Directions in Psychological Science 3 (1994): 83–86. 11 This theory was set out in his 1954 bookMotivation and Personality. For a personal testimony, see the documentary by Monica Davidson, Handbag: Diary of a 3rd- Generation Fag Hag (Australia, 2013). 12 See Mary D. S. Ainsworth, Mary C. Blehar, Everett Waters, and Sally Wall, Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1978). See also John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, Vol. I (New York: Basic Books, 1969). College psychology textbooks routinely introduce undergraduates to this theory. 13 The macho gay man is not just a comical idea, played with by Freddy Mercury and Log Cabin Republicans. The macho gay man may not seek out friendships with women and this example deserves consideration, undermining as it does in a certain way the thrust of my argument in this book. For more on the gay macho man, see Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New York: New York University Press, 1998). See also Chris Packard, Queer Cowboys: And Other Erotic Male Friendships in the Nineteenth Century Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 14 Henry B. Biller, Father, Child, and Sex Role (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1971), pp. 45, 24. Cited in Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women (New York: Anchor, 1978), p. 271. For much more on this, see Michael Kimmel, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009). 15 Anthony Ellis takes this preference as a given in his essay “Casual Sex,” in In Defense of Sin, ed. John Portmann (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002). On the remarkable history of masturbation, see Thomas Laqueur, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (Boston: Zone, 2004). 16 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 17 Graham Robb, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), pp. 126, 127. 166 Notes

18 See Travis Crosby, The Two Mr. Gladstones: A Study in Psychology and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 19 Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 60. 20 Deneuve, already a star in her early twenties, met St. Laurent as she was preparing to meet the Queen of England. Satisfied with his fashion design for the occasion, Deneuve asked him to design her wardrobe for the iconic filmBelle de Jour. It was during the fittings that the two cemented what was to be a long friendship. According to Deneuve: “We spoke of films, of clothes, of people in a professional context … Then we began to talk of other things which, little by little, created a bond between us.” Alice Rawsthorn, Yves St. Laurent: A Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1996), pp. 82–82. Famously reclusive, St. Laurent may have embellished his friendship with Deneuve: Edmund White was struck by his loneliness. During their conversation Yves cited Catherine Deneuve as one of his closest friends. “She’s very protective of me—like a big sister.” But when White spoke to Deneuve she told him that “she seldom saw Saint Laurent and didn’t” really know him very well. I realised how deep his isolation must be … Almost as though their friendship was something he elaborated more in his fantasies than pursued in reality. (p. 326) St. Laurent depended on the friendship of other straight women, notably the model Betty Catroux. According to Rawsthorn: She and Yves made a striking couple, looking as alike as Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick did when she cropped her hair and sprayed it silver to resemble his. But whereas Edie was literally a “girl of the year” for Warhol, the bond between Yves and Betty was stronger. “We were like brother and sister, like twins. We were so alike. We had fun together, doing crazy things and being silly. And we were both full of anguish at that age. So we shared that too.” (pp. 91–92) 21 According to one study, 75 per cent of women and 65 per cent of men chose someone of the same sex as best friend. See Mayta Caldwell and Letita Peplau, “Sex Differences in Same-Sex Friendships,” Sex Roles 8 (7) (1982). See also Shavaun Wall, Sarah M. Pickert, and Louis V. Paradise, “American Men’s Friendships: Self-Reports on Meaning and Changes,” The Journal of Psychology 116 (1984). Both quoted in Michael Kimmel, The Gendered Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 264. For lesbians and gay men, cross-sex and same-sex friendships often have different styles. In a 1994 survey, Peter Nardi and Drury Sherrod found significant similarities in the same-sex friendship pattern of gay men and lesbians. Both value close, intimate friendship, define intimacy in similar ways, and behave similarly with their friends. Two differences stood out to the researchers—how gay men and lesbians dealt with conflict and sexuality within their friendships. Gay men, for example, are far more likely to sexualize their same-sex friendships than are lesbians (Kimmel, The Gendered Society, p. 268). Peter Nardi and Drury Sherrod, “Friendship in the Lives of Gay Men and Lesbians,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 11 (1994).

Chapter 6

1 Diane Solway, Nureyev: His Life (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1998), p. 296. Another good biography is Julie Kavanagh’s Nureyev: The Life (New York: Vintage, 2008). Notes 167

2 A younger and long-standing lover finally broke silence after a legal gag order and confirmed how deeply aging had affected the ballet idol. See John Ezard, “Nureyev and Me,” The Guardian, January 29, 2003; http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/ jan/30/dance.artsfeatures. 3 Patti Smith, Just Kids (New York: Ecco, 2010). 4 This liaison is confirmed in Solway,Nureyev: His Life.

Chapter 7

1 Lauren Collins, “Danish Postmodern,” New Yorker, January 7, 2013, p. 23. 2 China Real Time blog, “A Proposal for Unwitting Wives of Gay Men in China,” Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2013. 3 “I’m Marrying My Gay Best Friend,” Cosmo, February 2013: http://www .cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/relationship-advice/marrying-gay-bff?click=main_sr. 4 See John Portmann, The Ethics of Sex and Alzheimer’s (New York: Routledge, 2013), especially Chapter 1. 5 In Roman Catholicism, for example, the husband would have to fight against any extra-marital fantasy (even if heterosexual), under pain of mortal sin. It is arguable that in Judaism a husband owes his wife not only sex but good sex which culminates in a proper orgasm. See David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), particularly with regard to onah. 6 Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (New York: Vintage, 1987), p. 278. 7 See R. Tripp Evans, Grant Wood: A Life (New York: Knopf, 2010). 8 See Laurie Shannon, Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) and also Alan Bray’s posthumous book The Friend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Shannon’s earlier essay “Nature’s Bias: Homonormativity and Elizabethan Comic Likeness,” Modern Philology 98 (2) (2000): 183–210 also fills out the picture here by providing unusual historic perspective. 9 William J. Mann, How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009), p. 138. 10 William McBrien, Cole Porter: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1998), pp. 102–103. 11 Ibid., pp. 254–255. 12 Ibid., p. 352. 13 Otash’s family released some previously confidential transcripts in 2013 in order to clear his name. See Tim Walker, “Dirty Secrets of Hollywood’s Golden Age Revealed as PI’s Archive Is Released,” The Independent, June 8, 2013. 14 Anthony Heilbut, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (New York: Knopf, 1996). “Mann’s two oldest sons shared his sexual preference, though both acted on it more happily than he did. His diaries make clear that his desires were primarily, if not exclusively, homosexual, despite his fifty-year marriage and the births of his six children” (p. 14). Heilbut provides rich details of Mann’s fantasy life in this extensive and nuanced biography. According to Heilbut, “Mann’s women, frequently surrogates for himself—and therefore disguised homosexuals—can’t keep their loves hidden” (p. 29). The German constitution of 1871 criminalized homosexuality, and Mann 168 Notes

surely knew that. Heilbut believes that the young Thomas Mann and his friend Paul Ehrenberg had a fully sexual relationship (p. 142). 15 Andrea Weiss, In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 27, 28–29. The quotations in the next paragraphs come from Weiss. See also Hermann Kurzke, Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art. A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). The rest of this section comes largely from Weiss’s readable study. 16 Scotty Bowers, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Lives of the Stars (New York: Grove Press, 2012), pp. 198–199. 17 Elsa Lanchester, Charles Laughton and I (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938). 18 Bowers, Full Service, p. 199. 19 Carol Channing, Just Lucky I Guess: A Memoir of Sorts (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 10, 237, 239, 129, 181, 186. 20 Vanessa Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1994), pp. 147, 148, 343. 21 For a biographical overview, see Margaret Talbot, “The Politics of Fame,”New Yorker, April 13, 1998; Suzanna Andrews, “Arianna Calling!,” Vanity Fair, December 2005; and Lauren Collins, “The Many Lives of Arianna Huffington,” New Yorker, October 13, 2008. 22 See Frank Rich, “The Closet Candidate,”New York Times, December 9, 1998. David Brock authored the 1998 Esquire piece. In a 2008 New Yorker profile of Arianna, Huffington claims that he informed her of his interest in men prior to their marriage. 23 James E. McGreevey, The Confession (New York: Regan Books, 2006), p. 4. 24 Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006). 25 See “Senator, Arrested at Airport, Pleads Guilty,” New York Times, August 28, 2007, and William Yardley, “Ex-Senator Ends Effort to Withdraw Guilty Plea,”New York Times, January 8, 2009. 26 Judith Newton, Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen (Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2013). 27 Wendi E. Goodlin-Fahncke and Kelly Ann Cheeseman Dial, “‘Do Me Please, She Won’t’: An Examination of Personal Ads Posted by Married Men Seeking Sex from Other Men,” Deviant Behavior 33 (2012): 126, 133–135. 28 Peter Glick et al., “Defensive Reactions to Masculinity Threat: More Negative Affect toward Effeminate (but Not Masculine) Gay Men,”Sex Roles 57 (2007): 55. See also Robert D. Schope and Michele J. Eliason, “Sissies and Tomboys: Gender Role Behaviors and Homophobia,” Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services 16 (2004): 73, 93. Quoted in Ian Ayres and Richard Luedeman, “What Straight Views of Penetrative Preferences Could Mean for Sexuality Claims Under Price Waterhouse,” Yale Law Journal 123 (3) (2013), p. 726. 29 Source: https://usmg5.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=0udobkej4s8 pl#4930985339. 30 See Amity Pierce Buxton, “Paths and Pitfalls: How Heterosexual Spouses Cope When Their Husbands or Wives Come Out,”Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy 3 (2004): 95–109; and “Writing Our Own Script: How Bisexual Men and Their Heterosexual Wives Maintain Their Marriage after Disclosure,”Journal of Bisexuality 1 (2001): 155–189; and “Works in Progress: How Mixed-Orientation Couples Maintain Their Marriages after the Wives Come Out,”Journal of Bisexuality 4 (2004): 57–82. Prior to these articles, Buxton wrote The Other Side of the Closet: The Coming- Out Crisis for Straight Spouses and Families (New York: Wiley, 1994). Notes 169

31 See, for example, Sophia Treyger, Nicole Ehlers, Lynn Zajicek, and Terry Trepper, “Helping Partners Cope with Coming Out: A Solution-Based Approach,” The American Journal of Family Therapy 36 (2007): 30–47. 32 See her website: www.gayhusbands.com. 33 Chadwick Moore, “The Good Wife,”Out , September 2015, pp. 90–95. 34 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (New York: Random House, 1960), p. 132. 35 Nigel Simeone, ed., The Leonard Bernstein Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

Chapter 8

1 Paternal Instinct (Murray Nossel, director), Strand Releasing, 2005. 2 Louise Brown, the first “test-tube baby,” was born in the United Kingdom in 1978. Soon after the advent of IVF (in vitro fertilization, outside a woman’s body), the use of donor eggs followed. A woman experiencing difficulty with her own eggs, or who wishes for other reasons not to have a genetic connection with the child she carries can be implanted with a fertilized egg from another woman, and carry the child to term. Some surrogates report that it feels more comfortable surrendering a child not biologically their own. 3 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces [1949] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). 4 Telephone interview, August 28, 2014. 5 Ginia Bellafonte, “Surrogate Mothers’ New Niche: Bearing Babies for Gay Couples,” New York Times, May 27, 2005. 6 B.D. Wong, Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man (New York: Harper Entertainment, 2003), pp. 41, 56, 59, 235–236, 254–255. 7 Sandra G. Boodman, “Fatherhood by a New Formula,” Washington Post, January 18, 2005. The article mentions prominently the law firm “Creative Family Connections” currently located in Chevy Chase, MD, which specializes in finding surrogates. Diane S. Hinson, a Harvard Law graduate, started the firm, which helps gay men and heterosexual couples as well, and which subsequently moved to Maryland. 8 See Cheryl Anderson (as told to Lori by her), “My Unexpected Journey as a Surrogate: Enriching, Engaging, and Incredible Beyond Words,” Family Magazine, February 2006. I thank Diane Hinson for this citation. 9 Personal correspondence with Diane Hinson, July 2015. 10 See the agency’s website: http://creativefamilyconnections.com/. Rankings of virtually every service in America have proliferated. Gay men considering surrogacy would do well to consult the ranking available at menhavingbabies.org 11 On whether children are psychologically harmed by having gay parents, see Gabriella Herman, “What Could Gay Marriage Mean for the Kids?” New York Times, June 13, 2015. The organization Colage supports anyone with lesbian, gay, or transgendered parents. See the Colage website: www.colage.org. 12 Witness this report from the United Kingdom: Damien Gayle, “High Court Orders Surrogate Mother to Hand Baby to Gay Couple,” The Guardian (UK), May 6, 2015. 13 A lesbian couple in Michigan had filed suit in federal district court. They challenged their state’s ban on adoption by same-sex couples; because Michigan prohibited two women from marrying each other, neither Ms. DeBoer nor her female partner could adopt each other’s children. The case ultimately made its way to the US Supreme 170 Notes

Court, which in 2015 overturned Michigan’s bans on same-sex adoption and same- sex marriage. 14 Michelangelo Signorile, “Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs, Texas Gay Fathers, Denied Legal Parenthood of Twin Sons,” Huffington Post, June 18, 2014: http://www.huffingtonpost .com/2014/06/18/jason-hanna-and-joe-riggs_n_5506720.html. 15 Gary J. Gates, “LGBT Parenting in the United States,” 3 (Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, February 2013); see http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/ uploads/lgbt-parenting.pdf. 16 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, “How Many Children Are in Foster Care in the U.S.? In My State?,” www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/ faq/foster-care4. 17 An ancient and wealthy Italian family became the international stage for a twenty- first-century adoption drama that pitted a straight woman who had been adopted against her gay brother, who had also been adopted. See James Reginato, “Palazzo Intrigue,” Vanity Fair, January 14, 2014. 18 See Kuczynski’s piece, “Her Body, My Baby,” New York Times Magazine, 28 November 2008. Kuczynski herself became pregnant the following year. See also the first installment of the “Pregnancy for Pay” series, “Coming to U.S. for Baby, and Womb to Carry It” (front page, July 6, 2014). “Social surrogacy” is defined as “having someone else carry their baby so as not to damage their career, or their figure.”

Epilogue

1 The stated purpose of the campaign is to give hope to gay and lesbian youth.http:// www.itgetsbetter.org/. 2 See Aaron H. Esman, “Rescue Fantasy,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly LVI (1987). I borrow from this article in this paragraph and the next. 3 Diane Solway, Nureyev: His Life (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1998), p. 42. 4 Both Abraham and Grinstein concluded as much. See K. Abraham, “The Rescue and Murder of the Father in Neurotic Phantasy-formations,” in Clinical Papers and Essays in Psychoanalysis (New York: Basic Books, 1955), pp. 68–75; and A. Grinstein, “A Specific Defense in Psychoanalytic Therapy: ‘Comes the Knight in Shining Armor,’” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 5 (1957): 124–129. 5 Today psychologists refer to this as the “Lady Macbeth effect.” See Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Knopf, 2011), p. 56. 6 J. Frosch, “Transference Derivatives of the Family Romance,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 7 (1959): 503–523. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Note: Locators followed by the letter ‘n’ refer to notes.

Abzug, Bella 31, 51 Collins, Gail 8, 39, 40, 49 ACT UP 7, 61, 62, 65, 66, 72, 163 n.3, compassion 1, 15, 18, 23, 26, 29, 61–73, 164 n.9, 164 n.13 80, 121, 126, 147, 149 Advocate (magazine) 8, 15, 28, 160 n.28 conversion therapy 160 n.21. See also AIDS 7, 13, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 42, rescue fantasy 43, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, Cook, Barbara 29 72, 73, 78, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 97, 108, Coward, Noël 152 114, 120, 133, 150 Craig, Senator Larry 21, 118 amfAR 26, 160 n.27 Cukor, George 152 An Archive of Feelings (book) 65 Cvetkovich, Ann 65–6 Angels in America (play) 7 attachment theory 80–1 Day, Doris 29, 153, 160 n.28 Auden, W.H. 109 Dean, James 15 Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) 57 Baldwin, James 1 De Generes, Ellen 37 “beard” 121 Deneuve, Catherine 85, 166 n.20 Bechdel, Alison 117–18 Diana, Princess of Wales 25 Biden, Joseph 29, 58, 160 n.31 diva 79, 85 Bloom, Allan 6 Dolce & Gabbana 43 Bowers, Scotty 110, 111, 112, 113 Bowers v. Hardwick (legal decision) 57 Ehrenreich, Barbara 38, 58 Boys in the Band (film)152 electroshock therapy 18, 21, 34, 35, 98, 160 n.5 brain size 161 n.22 Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) 8, 37, Brokeback Mountain (film)5 , 81 38, 39, 40, 49, 50, 51, 53, 161 n.18 Bryant, Anita 37, 43, 44, 51, 52 Eskridge, William 41–2 bullying 16, 49, 57, 101, 104 Everett, Rupert 153 Burton, Jeff97 –100 “fag hag” 44, 66, 100, 113, 157 n.7 Callas, Maria 26 Family Equality Council 40 Campbell, Joseph 134 family values 6, 36, 39, 81. See also Bryant Capote, Truman 76, 77 Anita; Million Moms March Catholics 18, 19, 21, 24, 30, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41, The Feminine Mystique (Friedan) 47 50, 56, 57, 100, 102, 129, 148, 167 n.5 feminism 6, 38, 47, 55, 60, 64, 66, 72, 163 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (play) 45, 152 n.12. See also women’s movement Catroux, Betty 166 Foley, Alice 72 Changing Our Minds (documentary) 159 n.17 Following Foo (book) 138–41 Channing, Carol 104, 113–14, 117 Fonteyn, Margot 89–92, 93, 94 Clift, Montgomery1 , 14, 15, 16, 26, 31, 45, Foucault, Michel 2–3, 4 46, 60, 68, 78 Freud, Sigmund 2, 14, 19, 69, 80, 131, 144, The Closing of the American Mind (book) 6 148, 150 178 Index

Friedan, Betty 31, 46–9, 50, 51, 52, 53, 58, It Gets Better (media campaign) 147 59, 162 n.6 Full Service (book) 110 Jackson, Michael 16, 26, 103 Fun Home (book) 117 Jagger, Mick 149, 150 Jenkins, Walter 17–21, 37, 39, 46, 158, Garland, Judy 26 159 n.16 gay brothers 102, 163 n.4, 166, 170 n.17. Jews 15, 16, 22, 29–31, 33, 42, 47, 51, 57, See also Madonna; Mann, Klaus; 67, 68, 83, 94, 104, 129, 133, 144, 147, Sedaris, David 160 n.31 Gay Community News (Boston John, Elton 20, 43, 77, 138 newspaper) 66, 67, 70, 71, 72 Johnson, Lady Bird 13, 17–21, 29, 44, 62, 65 gay fathers 18, 43, 104, 129–30, 131–45, 162 n.28, 169 n.11. See also Bechdel, Katz, Jonathan Ned 4, 5 Alison; Huffington, Michael; Mann, Kaye, Bonnie 128 Thomas King, Billie Jean 37 Gay Men’s Health Crisis (New York City) Kinsey, Alfred 2 27 Kramer, Larry 24–5, 31 gay rights movement 1, 6, 8, 22, 38, 39, Krim, Mathilde 26 45–60, 72, 118, 134, 142, 162 n.11, Kushner, Tony 7 163 n.1 gay sons 33, 34, 37, 40, 50, 80, 102, 108 Lanchester, Elsa 104, 110–13, 121 gender equality 38, 39, 61 Laubenstein, Linda 13, 23–5, 150 Giant (film)15 , 26 Laughton, Charles 110–13 Give a Damn Project 29 Lauper, Cyndi 28, 29 Gonzalez, Maru 100–2 Lauritsen, John 55 Gore, Tipper 29 lavender scare 75, 83, 162 n.6 Greenfeld, Dorothy 135–6 Lawrence v. Texas (legal decision) 28, 54, Greer, Germaine 53 57, 132 lesbian charity 61–73 Haggard, Ted 118–19 Halperin, David 3 Madonna 25, 26, 102, 153 Harris, Neil Patrick 138 madonna/whore complex 43, 149 Harris, Sam 16 The Magic Mountain (book) 108–9 Harry, Deborah 29 Maimonides, Moses 67–8 Hays Code 152, 153 Making Mixed Orientation Marriages Hepburn, Katharine 45 Work (listserv) 122, 123–8 heterosocial 5 Mann, Erika 33, 102, 109 Hinson, Representative John 21, 159 n.16 Mann, Klaus 102, 107, 108, 109 Hirshman, Linda 47, 49, 55 Mann, Thomas107 , 108–10, 140, Hoffman, Amy66 167 n.14 homophobia 50, 66, 73, 104, 129, 144, 147, Mapplethorpe, Robert 90, 92–3 168 n.28, 169 n.11 Martin, Ricky 138 homosocial 4 McGreevey, James 116–17 Hooker, Evelyn 13, 21–3, 34, 56, 65, 147 metrosexual 7, 41 Hoover, J. Edgar 121 Michael, George 20 How to be Gay (book) 3 military 4, 8, 27, 34, 38 Hudson, Rock 15, 18, 26, 29, 108, 121 Millet, Kate 53 Huffington, Michael 115–16 Million Moms March 37 Hunter, Tab 29 Minnelli, Liza 16, 158 n.5 Index 179

The Misfits (film)14 Schlafly, Phyllis38 , 39, 40, 43, 44, 51 Monroe, Marilyn 14, 26 Schulman, Sara 63, 64 Mormon Church 36, 161 n.14 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 6, 82, 83 Munger-Chubb, Karla 89–90, 93–6 self-loathing 6, 14, 109, 150 Serving in Silence (documentary) 27 Navratilova, Martina 37 sexual assault 2, 38, 54, 58, 59 Newton, Judith 119–21 Sexual Politics (book) 53 The Normal Heart (play) 25 Smith, Patti 90, 92–3 Norton v. Macy (legal decision) 19 Smith v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. (legal Nureyev, Rudolf 7, 77, 89–92, 94, 148 decision) 57 Solomon, Andrew 5–6 Obama, Barack 23, 58 Sontag, Susan 20, 42, 43 The Object of My Affection (film)8 Steinem, Gloria 31, 51, 53 Out (magazine) 28 Stoller, Nancy 62, 64 Stonewall 49, 56, 57 Paley, Babe 76 Straight Spouse Network 122 Paternal Instinct (documentary) 131 Strailey v. Happy Times Nursery School People with AIDS Coalition (PWAC) 66 (legal decision) 57 PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians Streep, Meryl 63, 77, 78, 79, 131 and Gays) 1, 67 Streisand, Barbra 13, 25, 27, 28, 65, 102 A Place in the Sun (film)14 , 15 Suddenly, Last Summer (film)45 , 46, 152, Porter, Cole 105–8, 109, 117, 121, 122, 130 158 n.2 post-gay era 3 suicide 98, 99, 102, 147, 150 Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (legal surrogate 35, 37, 40, 43, 131–45 decision) 57, 168 n.28 Proposition 8, 27, 36, 37, 51 Provincetown 29, 72 Taylor, Elizabeth 1, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 25, psychiatry 34, 71, 80, 147, 149 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 43, 44, 45, 46, 60, psychology 2, 6, 75–86, 163 n.1. See also 62, 65, 68, 78, 105, 141, 153, 160 n.26, Hooker Evelyn 160 n.27 Tea and Sympathy (film)152 queer culture 7, 83, 122 Trevor Project 28

Radcliffe, Daniel28 Vandenberg, Arthur 159 n.11 Raintree County (film)14 Vanity Fair (magazine) 8 rape 2, 60, 86 Versace, Gianni 102 Reagan, Ronald 26, 27 Victory (book) 55 Redgrave, Vanessa 104, 114–15, 117 Vidal, Gore 46, 61, 110 rescue fantasy 148–50. See also conversion Village People (band) 37, 81, 158 n.6 therapy von Trier, Lars 43 Richardson, Tony 114–15 Rich, Frank 8 Wainwright, Rufus 102 Rimbaud, Arthur 93 West, Mae 19–21 Robb, Graham 6 What Just Happened (book) 8 Romer v. Evans (legal decision) 28 What Makes a Family (film)27 Rosen, Ruth 8 White, Edmund 166 n.20 Ryan White CARE Act 26 Wilde, Oscar 82, 104 Will & Grace (television show) 8, 9, 13, 30, Sackville-West, Vita 106 59, 76, 77, 89, 96, 97, 154 St. Laurent, Yves 77, 85, 166 n.20 Williams, Tennessee 19, 45, 46, 153 180 Index

Windsor (legal decision) 58 women’s movement 1, 8, 38, 39, 45, 46, Wolfe, Tom 7 47, 48, 49–54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 64, 73 Wolfenden Report 17, 54 Wong, B.D. 138–41 Women in Love (film)152 Wood, Grant 104, 130 women’s health movement 8, 73 The World Split Open (book) 8