Is The Gay Revolution a Flop?

By Anastasia Toufexis

"The gay revolution has failed." To thousands of homosexuals who marched last weekend in the annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Day parades, the thought may be heretical, but it is exactly the argument put forth by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, two Harvard-trained psychologists, in a provocative new book, After the Ball (Doubleday; $19.95). As Kirk and Madsen point out, the revolution began 20 years ago last week in New York City at a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, when for the first time patrons fought back against police conducting a routine raid.

The authors, both of whom are gay, acknowledge that homosexuals' lives have improved since then, but they say the victories are limited because America's fundamental attitudes have not changed. "The gay movement hasn't got nearly so far as the black civil rights movement," declared Madsen in an interview. "Yes, our life-style is now 'public' -- in highly restricted urban areas -- but coast to coast, hatred and contempt for gays aren't far from where they were 25 years ago."

In fact, the majority of gay men and women still do not openly disclose their sexual orientation because prejudice remains so deeply embedded in the U.S. About 25 million Americans are gay, but society's institutions, from government to the church and the press to advertising, virtually ignore their existence. "America is not only reluctant to recognize news events or address public issues concerning gays, it also refuses to educate citizens on the nature of homosexuality itself," write the authors. Americans, they hold, continue to harbor distorted perceptions. Among them: people choose to be gay, homosexuals are kinky sex addicts and child molesters, they are untrustworthy and antifamily, and they are suicidally unhappy. Such social attitudes give tacit approval to bigoted behavior, from antigay jokes to violence.

Kirk, 31, and Madsen, 34, put much of the blame for the revolution's failure on gays themselves. The pair argue that the movement for too long was wrongly focused on sexual freedom and self-expression, issues that they feel have antagonized the public. Instead, they say, the emphasis should be on civil rights and fairness, concerns that appeal to all Americans. AIDS, which has devastated the gay community, has helped shift the gay-rights agenda away from liberated sex to more mainstream values.

Kirk and Madsen charge that the gay movement has been weakened by its insistence that self-hatred is a basic problem. "Learning to like yourself is an essential first step," Kirk told TIME, "that's all it is." It does not guarantee that everyone else will like you too, he notes. If gays are to achieve the ultimate goals of acceptance and assimilation, they will have to overcome America's hostility.

To that end, Kirk and Madsen assert, gays need to project an unthreatening, respectable image to the straight world. They advise curbing flamboyant excesses and keeping drag queens and butch lesbians out of the public eye. Explains Madsen: "If you want to stop the fire of bigotry, don't put it out with gasoline." The authors advocate a calculated national media campaign $ using clean-cut types, an idea they first suggested in 1985.

While praising the book's analysis of antihomosexual sentiment, many gays reject its arguments. Self-acceptance is still a major hurdle for gay men and women, critics insist. But they are most riled by the suggestion that gays need to tone down and blend in: that would slash at the heart of the gay- rights movement, they charge. Says Sherrie Cohen of the Fund for Human Dignity: "We're for embracing diversity and for protecting the civil rights of anyone who is perceived as 'different.' " Toby Marotta, a sociologist in San Francisco, finds the book's thesis the same "homophile argument used before Stonewall and abandoned afterward." Some gays believe, too, that the conservative approach may actually encourage homosexuals to remain invisible; the better gays succeed in blending in, they suggest, the easier and more tempting it may be to hide their sexuality.

Still, most agree that a campaign promoting positive images of gays is a necessity. On the West Coast, the Lesbian and Gay Public Awareness Project has run advertisements in the L.A. Weekly and the Pasadena/Altadena Weekly. One of them shows a mother, her gay daughter and her partner embracing happily. Reads the headline: I'M PROUD OF MY LESBIAN DAUGHTER. In New York City last month, the Fund for Human Dignity unveiled a model national campaign that would feature gay-rights supporters in 60-second TV spots called "Stonewall Minutes." In one sample spot, attorney Thomas Stoddard of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund declares that "the days when gay people could never be themselves, when gay issues were never discussed, will never come again." That is undoubtedly true. But most gays would also agree with one of Kirk's main points: "Success will only come when we've managed to push up and down to the other side the huge national rock of hatred."

With reporting by Edward M. Gomez/New York