In Search of Stonewall, the Riots at 50, the Gay & Lesbian Review at 25, Best Essays, 1994-2018 by Richard Schneider Jr

Author:Richard Schneider, Jr [, Richard Schneider Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Richard Schneider, Jr
Published: 2018-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

Flash Forward: Aftermath and Diffusion

Introduction to Part 3

After Stonewall: Liberation and Libido

ANDREW HOLLERAN

THE first thing that struck me about these essays on the 1970s that you're about to read is that they're for the most part about the early years of that decade-the first gay pride marches in New York and Los Angeles, for instance, took place in 1970-though reading the memoirs by Karla Jay and Ellen Shumsky describing attempts to form gay political organizations, one is struck by how "Sixties" they all were: the abhorrence of authority, the consciousness-raising, the aversion to organizational hierarchy. Even in the photographs of the first gay pride march in Steven Dansky's essay, "The Look of Gay Liberation," it's still all about '60s hair, '60s clothes, and the '60s counterculture. And, confirming the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, the ebullience evident in Peter Hujar's photo of the first marchers reminds us that gay liberation came out of the same impulse as the Summer of Love (1967).

It's painful to see those faces now-not only because everyone was so young, but because it's a reminder of how those ideals of community, of Walt Whitman's adhesiveness, were swamped by the tsunami of promiscuity that soon deluged cities like New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the very cities in which the parades were held. By 1976, communitarian ideals had surrendered to the fact that there were "So Many Men, So Little Time"; though by the beginning of the 1980s and the onslaught of AIDS, that song had acquired a grim new meaning, since there was no time at all for many of those marchers.

When I first got to New York, I was told to go to dances at the Firehouse-a '60s venue where politics were as important as sexbut I went only once because it all seemed, well, so '60s. I was more interested in what would become the '70s: the bars and baths, the Fire Island so well described in Felice Picano's essay. And that seems to me now the irony of gay liberation. Although the pride marches got bigger every year, by 1975 many of my friends preferred to stay at the beach than come into town to participate. Indeed, gay politics was not the real story of this decade. Nor was it the relationship between lesbians and gay men. These essaysfour by women, three by men-only remind us that there never was much common ground between gay men and lesbians, until caretaking and ACT UP brought them together. I had no female friends during that decade; I was too absorbed in the bars, the baths, and the beach. The '70s were all about coming out, as Steven F. Dansky, marching with a group called Flaming Faggots, notes; but it was AIDS that ended up advancing gay rights more than anything else.

As for my piece-an excerpt from a talk I gave to a gay group at Harvard in 1992-the question I asked that evening still resonates in my mind.

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