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rfmcdonaldThe passage of legislation authorizing same-sex marriage in New York City came just a day before the 42nd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City that, mythologized to whatever degree, helped catalyze the gay rights movement that eventually led to same-sex marriage. WNYC's news blog had a great photo of a crowd of celebrants proud of their identity taken outside the Stonewall Inn itself that was hosted the riots.
There's a nice circularity to the above paragraph: two circles, in fact, processes coming to their completion. (Symbolic, at least, if not quite actual. Much remains to be done, even if much has been done.)
The problem with these circularities?
I've no experience of the first half of the circle. It's not just that Stonewall is removed from me geographically and I'm more familiar with the local Bathhouse Riots of 1981. (Good article, by the way.) I've recently written a [FORUM] post about what I feel to be my grace of late birth in having come to age just in time to not worry about being imprisoned or dying in an epidemic or not having access to legally sanctioned relationship. Even two decades ago, I find it difficult to imagine everything working out as very positively as it have. (Seriously, it was a good thing; had I been straight, all things plausibly being equal, I'd probably have the physique of the Comic Book Guy and be living in my parents' basement. Things worked out so much better.) I imagine that I could be a binge-drinker who eventually had a fatal car accident on a confusingly linear road, or maybe someone who died of pneumonia compounded by "cancer" with family who never liked talking about the whole thing, or just someone repressed who'd never try to disturb the universe and would never been disturbed in return. A life fragmented and shortened by the compartmentalization and stigma forced on me would seem inevitable; the best I could do would be to limit the fragmentation by cauterizing uncomfortable extremities. I've no relevant experience. (I think. I hope?)
Partly because of Jim Parsons' starring role (I like Big Bang Theory), I've been paying some attention to the success Broadway appearance of seeing playwright/activist Larry Kramer's 1985 AIDS-themed play "The Normal Heart". In an interesting New York Times article the unexpected similarities and surprises that a young gay audience felt, recognizing some cultural elements that survived from 1985 to 2011 despite all the changes (20-somethings being interviewed as out, with photographs, even). And for me, yes, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been something I have experienced at a remove, time and law and medicine and the rest ensuring that. The restaging of The Normal Heart, and Kramer's anti-AIDS activism, did us all much good.
Just last month, one writer's asked Kramer to "shut the fuck up". I kind of get that impulse, actually: in the Salon interview that inspired the previous writer to anger, Kramer doesn't seem to think much of my generation for having gone through Will & Grace and Ellen DeGeneres instead of horrific epidemics and imprisonment on the grounds of sexual orientation. Leaving aside the cross-generational gap that I've seen bridged fairly regularly, is that attitude actually going to encourage people to engage with an uncomfortable history that detracts from an increasingly comfortable present? I read his speech/text from 2005, The Tragedy of Today's Gays, and I don't get it. Things aren't perfect and the younger generation isn't perfect so we are all doomed, doomed, doomed, despite whatever progress has been made or is continuing to be made because we're all aparthetic and insensitive to our elders and barebacking on tina and ... ? Thanks a lot, Larry, for all that respect.
There is a gap between the two perspectives, of Kramer and his sort against his critics: real, emotional, operating in multiple dimensions, solvable only in part. There may be others in my life, but this is likely the most important gap applying to a community (aggregate?) of which I am a member. There will not, I repeat, be a general solution; too much separates us for everyone to come together. The community will remain divided.
That's one of my divided communities? And yours?
There's a nice circularity to the above paragraph: two circles, in fact, processes coming to their completion. (Symbolic, at least, if not quite actual. Much remains to be done, even if much has been done.)
The problem with these circularities?
I've no experience of the first half of the circle. It's not just that Stonewall is removed from me geographically and I'm more familiar with the local Bathhouse Riots of 1981. (Good article, by the way.) I've recently written a [FORUM] post about what I feel to be my grace of late birth in having come to age just in time to not worry about being imprisoned or dying in an epidemic or not having access to legally sanctioned relationship. Even two decades ago, I find it difficult to imagine everything working out as very positively as it have. (Seriously, it was a good thing; had I been straight, all things plausibly being equal, I'd probably have the physique of the Comic Book Guy and be living in my parents' basement. Things worked out so much better.) I imagine that I could be a binge-drinker who eventually had a fatal car accident on a confusingly linear road, or maybe someone who died of pneumonia compounded by "cancer" with family who never liked talking about the whole thing, or just someone repressed who'd never try to disturb the universe and would never been disturbed in return. A life fragmented and shortened by the compartmentalization and stigma forced on me would seem inevitable; the best I could do would be to limit the fragmentation by cauterizing uncomfortable extremities. I've no relevant experience. (I think. I hope?)
Partly because of Jim Parsons' starring role (I like Big Bang Theory), I've been paying some attention to the success Broadway appearance of seeing playwright/activist Larry Kramer's 1985 AIDS-themed play "The Normal Heart". In an interesting New York Times article the unexpected similarities and surprises that a young gay audience felt, recognizing some cultural elements that survived from 1985 to 2011 despite all the changes (20-somethings being interviewed as out, with photographs, even). And for me, yes, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been something I have experienced at a remove, time and law and medicine and the rest ensuring that. The restaging of The Normal Heart, and Kramer's anti-AIDS activism, did us all much good.
Just last month, one writer's asked Kramer to "shut the fuck up". I kind of get that impulse, actually: in the Salon interview that inspired the previous writer to anger, Kramer doesn't seem to think much of my generation for having gone through Will & Grace and Ellen DeGeneres instead of horrific epidemics and imprisonment on the grounds of sexual orientation. Leaving aside the cross-generational gap that I've seen bridged fairly regularly, is that attitude actually going to encourage people to engage with an uncomfortable history that detracts from an increasingly comfortable present? I read his speech/text from 2005, The Tragedy of Today's Gays, and I don't get it. Things aren't perfect and the younger generation isn't perfect so we are all doomed, doomed, doomed, despite whatever progress has been made or is continuing to be made because we're all aparthetic and insensitive to our elders and barebacking on tina and ... ? Thanks a lot, Larry, for all that respect.
There is a gap between the two perspectives, of Kramer and his sort against his critics: real, emotional, operating in multiple dimensions, solvable only in part. There may be others in my life, but this is likely the most important gap applying to a community (aggregate?) of which I am a member. There will not, I repeat, be a general solution; too much separates us for everyone to come together. The community will remain divided.
That's one of my divided communities? And yours?
