Gay Activists Alliance

Now that we've lost the battle with Proposition 8, and others as well, I've noticed a lot of talk over the Internet about getting back to the kind of gay militancy that existed in the seventies and eighties. It's being said that the polite approach of modern-gay GLBT groups just isn't working, despite the fact that such groups have undoubtedly done much good.

When I was in New York's Gay Activists Alliance -- I ran the media committee for several years through various regimes (I even pretty much ran it when I was ousted once) -- no one in the gay movement received a salary (except maybe some people in the budding National Gay Task Force), and there were no fancy cocktail parties. [That's me above on the left just before GAA days -- the enemy, time, in us all, as Tennessee Williams put it in Sweet Bird of Youth. I've often said that being a gay activist made all my hair fall out!]

Activists in those days were not professional gays; they were dedicated human rights advocates who cared so damn much about making a difference that they neglected careers, love lives, went hungry, pretty much turned their whole lives over to their dedication to Gay Liberation. (Well we did get laid now and then, and I remember many companionable nights in Boots and Saddle and elsewhere. And it's not true that activists have no sense of humor --we actually laughed quite a bit. )

Don't get me wrong. I think it's great that today's gay activists can actually make a living at doing what we all did for free back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth (at least that's how some of today's activists make us older people feel). But when you're doing it for a living, maybe the dedication isn't quite as pervasive, maybe after all it just becomes a job.

The Gay Activists Alliance was the country's first militant Gay Rights group. When I say "militant," I do not mean violent. We were not terrorists or zanies (although there were a couple of zany members). I'm not suggesting today that we get so angry that we start lobbing bombs. But I believe that the militant approach of GAA is needed more than ever. Maybe it will be "ordinary" gay men and lesbians and not the "professional gays,"who will undoubtedly make the difference.

I have fond memories of GAA (and a few bitter ones), and I'm intensely proud of my activities with the outfit. Many in the group saw the media committee -- and there were a great, dedicated bunch of people on the committee -- as simply the part of the group that would get out the news about GAA's activities. I saw it differently, rechristening it the media image committee. I felt that the way gays were portrayed in books, movies, plays and on television could make a big difference in how we were perceived, as people then and now learn a lot (often a lot of wrong things) from popular culture. Years later the group GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) basically started out from the same idea and ran with it.

Some of the other members were unimpressed."Who watches television?" they'd say. Millions of people, I'd rejoinder. One episode of All in the Family could educate more people (rightly or wrongly) than a hundred zaps or a thousand picketers. Monitoring our image was to me and others an extremely important thing to do. We organized protests against homophobic movies such as Cruising, Windows and A Different Story. The press releases we sent out about the films were quoted in reviews and elsewhere in the New York Times and other papers. We communicated and met with producers of various TV shows and magazines that presented homophobic portrayals and material, and tried to educate authors, performers and others that there was much more to the gay experience than shame, negation, "perversity," murder, and suicide.

Not that I didn't enjoy the "zaps" or actions that we held. Infiltrating a meeting of the homophobic cult the Aesthetic Realists (who married off self-hating lesbians to self-hating gay men, a forerunner of today's "ex-gays") and passing out pro-gay literature to the members and observers. Disrupting a lecture given by "S.O.B.," the trio of homophobic psychiatrists Socarides, Ovesy and Bieber, who made a living by convincing gay men they were "sick"and needed (to pay thousands) to be treated. Again we passed out leaflets with the truth printed on them. And there were plenty of other zaps, pickets, and actions.

I was not in GAA from the first, so I missed the famous "firehouse" era and the pioneer activists who were active at the time (most of whom had "burnt out"by the time I joined a few years later). GAA was a rag tag bunch with a slovenly Lower East Side HQ when I first joined up, but by the time Anita Bryant had reared her ugly head with her "Save Our Children" campaign(which posited the moronic theory that gay men had to molest and recruit children to get more "members") in the late seventies, GAA membership had swelled to over 300 men and women. Not all members had the time to devote to the group or the movement, and it wasn't long before AIDS activism became the number one concern and GAA eventually disbanded in favor of groups such as ACT UP.

GAA -- or at least its brand of in-your-face activism -- is sorely needed today. I'm not saying gays should run around ranting uncontrollably or without a game plan, but should employ intelligent actions as GAA did to get the maximum effect. To tell people we just won't put up with homophobia anymore. When a comic tells a fag joke on TV -- and yes comics still do this, although they generally are smart enough not to actually use the word "fag" -- their next live appearance should be picketed. GAA never let homophobic wise guys put down gays without calling them on it.

There was the New York Post or News columnist Bill Reel, who was constantly making "fag" and "fairy" remarks in his column. He wouldn't return phone calls, so I sent him a letter telling him to come down to GAA HQ -- by this time we were in a big building on 9th avenue and 14th street -- and call me and the other members names to our faces. I told him exactly when and where we held our meetings. Not only did he never show up (not that I expected him to, since homophobes, like bullies, tend to be cowards), but he never even answered the letter. (A few years later, when New York was in a grip of a rise in crime due to a crack epidemic, he wrote in a Long Island paper how he never came into Manhattan anymore because he was too scared to get mugged. What a complete wuss. Even my middle-aged mother came into Manhattan to attend the theater or Lincoln Center! Not that women of any age can't be brave.)

The polite "cocktail party" activists have done as much as they can --or want to. Peaceful but firm protests by angry "ordinary" gays who are sick of waiting for their full rights can only complement the efforts of these "professional" gays with their inflated six figure salaries.

Much more on GAA in future posts. For now I'll recall a number of my GAA colleagues. I don't remember the names of all of them after these many years, but I certainly remember Fred Goldhaber and R. Paul Martin (who were both on the media committee); Brian O'Dell; Art Gursh; Joe Kennedy ("I'm a real man who likes real men") whom I rather idolized for a time and who organized some of GAA's most noteworthy zaps; David Thorstaad, who was president when I first joined ("I'm actually bisexual you know") and was quite a character; Seth Lawrence; David Wynyard ("I am ipso facto president of GAA"); my old pal Frank Richter (at least he and I co-produced and co-hosted a WBAI radio show with Wynyard and GAA member David Pike); the inestimable Larry Quirk; the lovable Wally Hoffmann; Tony Dolce; Bobby Drew; and others that I distinctly recall but whose names have become foggy in my memory. My apologies!

Final Thoughts on "Chuck and Larry"

NOT TO MENTION STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

A fireman begs his best friend to pretend to be a gay couple with him so that they can reap financial benefits, but have to keep up a deception when an official comes around to investigate the veracity of their claim.

Sounds like last summer's movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, doesn't it?

Actually it's a 2004 Australian film entitled Strange Bedfellows, starring Paul Hogan (Vince) and Michael Caton (Ralph). Yes, it has the exact same premise as Chuck and Larry. (The last I heard, the producers of Strange Bedfellows were suing the producers of Chuck and Larry.) Strange Bedfellows was written by Dean Murphy (who also directed the film) and Stewart Faichney.

Chuck and Larry was accused of being a mass of stereotypes with a message of tolerance tacked on at the end. Actually, that description is more apt of Bedfellows, which is pretty much the movie everyone was afraid Chuck and Larry would be.

Bedfellows takes place in a small town, while C&L takes place in a big city. Bedfellows begins with Hogan, hit with a huge tax bill, reading a story in the paper about a (mythical) law allowing tax benefits to same-sex couples. As in C&L, one of the two guys seems more live-and-let-live about gays than the other.

In Bedfellows, the two men take photos of the town "faggot" (not referred to as such, although "poofter" is used now and then throughout the film) or hairdresser, a very stereotypical gay male, so that they can mimic his mannerisms for the tax official. There's a twist when it turns out that the effeminate man is actually straight, or at least having sex with half the women in town. While this bit could have made the point that there are girlish straight men and masculine gay guys, it's all ruined by the revelation that the hairdresser's mannerisms are all put on. He acts gay because "it's expected of" him and because he can sneak around having sex with half of the wives and daughters in town. Sure, as if any straight guy would want to be known as the town faggot!

Perhaps the worst scene in the movie has the straight if nelly-acting hairdresser teaching our two heroes how to "swish." At least Chuck and Larry doesn't have an equivalent sequence. The hairdresser also says that gay men refer to themselves as "girls" and "she." Indeed in a gay bar scene later on, there are leather men calling themselves "girls." I don't think so. (There may still be some gay men who do this, but they are a dying breed and they are definitely not leather men or bears.)

The gay bar scene presents most of the customers as freaks of one sort or another -- or at least wants the viewers to see them that way for the alleged comedic value. One perfectly "normal" man has a conversation with Hogan at the bar but he's vastly outnumbered by much more "fabulous" characters, all of whom are at least likable and who seem a bit perturbed when Ralph makes some comment about what's stranger than being a "poof." Still thinking he's gay, they pause and then giggle.

Unlike C&L, in Bedfellows there is no scene when an official suggests how wrong and obscene it would be for straight people, liars, to take advantage of laws supposed to benefit a minority group that has had to struggle for its rights for decades.

At the end of the film, we learn that Ralph's daughter is gay. While her girlfriend thinks her father is cool, the daughter herself, besides being closeted, seems full of internalized homophobia. "I don't want you to be that way," she says, because gay people are laughed at behind their backs. I can understand why a gay child might be uncomfortable with a gay parent -- most children don't even want to think of their parents as being sexual, gay or straight -- but her reaction is decidedly negative and even old-fashioned. You imagine that if a gay gene is ever isolated, this gal would want any kids she might have to be "straightened" out. Of course, she's only onscreen for five minutes so we learn very little about her. She's introduced to set up the ending, and her complaining about "being laughed at" is the springboard for her father's speech. But it makes her seem a very regressive character.

After learning his daughter is gay -- and not before -- Ralph gives the well-intentioned "tolerance" speech at the end of the film. He makes the point that everyone has known him and Vince for many years and what they do in the privacy of their homes shouldn't make any difference. I won't go into details, but it all comes down to the fact that Ralph and Vince really love each other -- aww-- albeit not in the romantic or sexual sense. The tax official, Russell (Pete Postlethwaite), who may or may not be gay, sort of forgives them and let's them off the hook because he hasn't seen "a stronger bond or a greater love between two men in many a year." So let's see, two straight guys can love each other more than two gay men who are in love with each other?

Strange Bedfellows may mean well -- or at least it tries to have some pro-gay sentiments to offset all the stereotypical crap -- but it just doesn't get it. The film is well-acted by all, has some mildly amusing moments, but it's too stupid and even offensive to make a positive impression.

So now we come to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which -- believe it or not -- is an improvement. Very few gay people that I know have actually sat through the movie. I think nobody actually wanted to go to a theater, plunk down twelve dollars, and possibly have to sit through the picture with a bunch of homophobic teens making crass remarks all the while.

Curiously, C&L, while it'll never be one of my favorite films, and there were aspects of it that I really disliked, was not nearly as bad as I had feared. DISCLAIMER: Remember that I didn't watch this in a theater with a straight audience, but at home with a gay friend, which probably affected my perception of the film to a certain degree. Had I seen it with a straight -- especially a straight homophobic audience -- laughing at or commenting on the stereotypes, I would have found it a much worse experience than watching my borrowed library copy at home.

First of all, contrary to popular belief GLAAD did not "endorse" Chuck and Larry. You can find my New York Blade story and interview with GLAAD's president here, which explains what really happened and how GLAAD tried to improve the film and may have helped to do so.

Okay, Adam Sandler's not a horrible-looking guy, but it's pretty comical (in the wrong sense) that he would wind up with half a dozen gorgeous twenty-something babes in his bedroom at the same time, as he does early in the movie. The real Adam Sandler, a billionaire movie star, probably has no problem getting babes, but an average-looking firefighter on the cusp of middle-age? But that's just typical Adam Sandler, aging-stud stuff that all geeky movie comics from Bob Hope to Jim Carrey indulge in. And especially in a movie with a sort of gay theme, Sandler probably felt he had to establish the character's heterosexuality in an as over-the-top way as possible. That is also the reason for a really stupid scene in which the lady social worker who helps them (Jessica Biel) let's Chuck (Sandler) touch her naked boobs so she can prove to him that they're real. Sure -- as if a professional woman would allow a male -- or any -- client to do such a thing!

On the positive side, the film makes fun of homophobes, and while there's a silly sequence when Chuck and Larry try to find some "gay garbage" to fool the domestic partnership inspector, they never swish around and act stereotypically gay as the guys do in Strange Bedfellows. Chuck makes a speech about how ugly and hurtful the word "faggot" is, comparing it to someone calling him "kike." I liked the gay mailman, and I especially liked the way the film winds up with a gay wedding instead of a straight one.

On the negative side, I could have done without the way Larry's supposedly gay young son Eric was handled. He hits all the stereotype buttons and literally screams when he looks at a nude female centerfold. Eric and his father get into a fight with another man and his kid, not because of the latter pair's homophobia but because they say Eric is gay (but the film is supposed to be saying that it's okay to be gay). After he comes out of the closet, butch firefighter Duncan (Ving Rhames) turns kind of "queeny" -- he sings "I'm Every Woman" in the shower -- the tiresome old notion that masculine gay men just "butch it up" but are big "fairies" inside. Then there's the whole business about whether it's Chuck or Larry who's "the woman" in the relationship, and the social worker taking Chuck out for a "girls' day," which she would hardly say to a masculine gay guy like Chuck. And I don't believe for one second that the gay community of New York would come to see Chuck and Larry as some kind of gay heroes or icons, especially after they've been exposed as straight. Sandler socks one of the homophobes outside of the gay bar, but I would have liked it better if an actual gay character had thrown the punch. (I have to admit that the fireman's calender that ends the film is kind of funny.)

Of course, some of the good points that are made about gays are kind of blunted or made pointless because Chuck and Larry aren't really gay (if only the film had had the courage to have one of them sincerely come out of the closet at the end of the picture.)

There are people who think Chuck and Larry is a lot tougher on Asians (part Filipino Rob Schneider's minister, who says "loom" for "room") and very obese people (the funny-gross opening with the guys rescuing an enormous home bound man from a burning building) than it is on gays.

Would I have gotten my old Gay Activist Alliance buddies to picket this film the way we did Cruising, A Different Story and Windows? -- Maybe not. While I can understand the negative gay reaction to the film, I can't quite understand why even straight reviewers were so brutal.

Was it because they objected to the stereotyping -- or, privately, to the message of tolerance and gay marriage equality at the end? Considering this was an Adam Sandler film geared toward a young, unsophisticated audience, it could have been much, much worse.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry was written by Barry Fanaro, Alexander Payne, and Jim Taylor. The director was Dennis Dugan, who had a role in the execrable "gay" movie Norman ... Is That You? in 1976.

New York Blade 10th Anniversary Party

Went to a nice party on Wednesday November 28th 2007 at the Gay center on 13th street to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the local gay paper The New York Blade. A number of people agreed with me that it didn't seem as if the Blade had been around that long, but it may only seem that way because I became a regular reader only within the past couple of years. The Blade has published a couple of my rants in their letters column, and I did a piece on author/activist Wayne Besen for their annual pride issue this summer.

I met quite a few nice and interesting people, male and female, of all ages at the party, so many that it's hard to place a name (on a business card) with the face or conversation. There was Dirk McCall, the Executive Director of the Greenwich Village/Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, and Daniel Tietz, Executive Director of ACRIA (Aids Community Research Initiative of America). I believe one of these gentleman was the great, friendly guy who introduced me to nearly everyone he knew at the party, which seemed to be half of the people there! Conversations tended to be brief, as they usually are at cocktail parties (there was much more to drink than eat, not that I'm complaining!) but I had longer talks with a young lesbian (I didn't catch her name, unfortunately) whose spirit of activism reminded me of my own, as well as a nice conversation with another young woman who just started working for GLAAD (I had just reported to the group a vile joke told by an alleged comedian on the Late, Late Show -- more on that on another post). I told her that I basically did what GLAAD now does when I was with New York's Gay Activists Alliance years ago, but today's young career activists seem pretty much unfamiliar with GAA and all that it accomplished. Too bad. But the once militant days of the Gay Rights Movement have been replaced by the "nicer" (but not necessarily ineffective) tactics of the GLBT movement. I also met Karl Hampe -- hope I got the name right -- a cartoonist whose strip The Regulars details what "might happen if a gay urban attorney wound up running a coffee bar." I also met Trent Straub, the editor of the Blade, but we didn't have much of a chance to talk.

There were some highly attractive men in the joint, but I kept my flirting to a minimum, as this wasn't Ty's on a Saturday night. There were a couple of very bizarre moments, which I'll mention in more appropriate posts. I remember shaking the hand of a guy who was described to me as "an openly bisexual" politician of some sort or another, which for some reason I found amusing. I overheard him telling another guest that he was just too busy to date. Jeez -- not a bad-looking guy, presumably likes both men and women, and he's too busy to go out on a date!

Nice party, nice people. All good. Here's wishing the New York Blade many more years of success!