Lembet 21.2001
38
BOOKS
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In Celebration o f N atio n al Coming Out P ay
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The gaying of America
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Will and Ellen might be accepted and applauded,
but w bat about the rest of us?
by
O r ia n a G r e e n
Benefiting Esther’s Pantry & MCC-Portland ~
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with V ocalist
Featuring the Music of Broadway
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performances from the stage show
Merely Players
starring B arry M o r s e
B arry M orse
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With Presentation of the 2001 Shepherd's Award
and Farewell Tribute to Rev. Roy Cole
T h u r s d a y O ctober 11.2001
World Trade Center Theater
121 SW Salm on. P ortland
Doors Open at 6 pm with Silent Auction • Show 7 pm
Tickets $45 - includes Post Show Reception
Tickets thru FASTIXX & (jaiPied • www.outonbroadwajj.com
REBECCA WEBB
Longtime Co-Hott of 4M Sortkwnl
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Eric D.Brown
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Gary Boyer
S«ior Loan O raitart
Present this certificate for a
complimentary Sushi Roll of your choice
when you purchase two LUNCH entrees
at the Dragonfish Asian Café.
DRAGONFISH ASIAN CAFE • 909 PARK AVENUE • 503.243.5991
----------in the Paramount Hotel
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Expires November 30,2001. Not valid fo r cash, nor with any other promotion.
S u s h i
C e r t if ic a t e
Present this certificate for a
complimentary Sushi Roll of your choice
when you purchase two DINNER entrees
at the Dragonfish Asian Café.
DRAGONFISH ASIAN CAFE • 909 PARK AVENUE
~==-.......................
= In the Paramount Hotel " " ■ ■■
e are a living paradox.
Gay men and lesbians
have never enjoyed more
media visibility and sup-
port, yet 30 of our 50 states pro
vide no legal protection of our
basic rights. Polls reveal most U.S.
citizens want us to have equal
employment opportunities but not
the right to adopt children.
Author Suzanna Danuta Wal
ters, with her impressive creden
tials from Georgetown University
and the Gay and Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation,
demonstrates she’s up to the task
of dissecting this paradox and
guiding us to an understanding of
it. Her new book is titled All the
Rage: The Story o f G ay Visibility in
A m erica (University of Chicago
Press, 2001; $30 hardcover).
She calls our current times a
historic moment. “Only 20 years
GA
ago when I was coming out, this
world we now live in was unimag
inable... gay MasterCards and gay
ads, gay resorts and gay bingo,
politicians courting gays and
domestic partnership laws— who
could even envision this
moment?”
So doesn’t this new visibility
reveal an ideological shift in our
acceptance? “I would never downplay the sig
nificance of having gay characters enter main
stream culture. But which images of gays are
embraced, and which are pushed farther into
the shadows? Heterosexuals who laugh at Will
& G race may dig the aesthetic but avoid the
implications.”
Walters also is concerned that the kinds of
gay characters easily embraced by straights are
the ones who are least threatening. “Far too
often, representation of gays is limited to either
the exotic but ultimately unthreatening
Other— the cuddly cross-dresser like RuPaul—
or as gays [who are] really just like straights
after all— like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. [It’s]
the ‘aren’t we all just human beings’ position
that reduces cultural specificity to a bland
sameness and, of course, assumes heterosexuali
ty as the desirable default zone.”
And that reminds Walters of another buried
bias. “It’s reminiscent of the racist statement
‘but I don’t think of you as black’— implying
that inclusion is based on an erasure of differ
ence and an assumption of unquestioned white
as good and normal.”
Walters also worries that the true heart of
our culture is not represented at all. “Our
communities, our histories of struggle and sur
vival, our imposed shame and subterfuge, our
wit and alternative structures-of care— all
these differences get erased and really violated
when our worth is endlessly compared to that
of heterosexuals.”
In her book Walters expresses objections to
the coming-out scenes that are a staple of so
many films and television shows. “All too
often, they focus [more] on the heterosexual
reaction and response than the self-affirmation
of the gay person. Anguished parents and
compassionate ‘friends’ are the staples of these
stories, focusing much more on the ‘accep
tance’ and ‘understanding’ of the gay person,
W
th e
D ick S aunders
B and
503.243.5991
Expires November 30,2001. Not valid for cash, nor with any other promotion.
503-236-5599
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thus rendering gayness still a ‘problem’ to be
understood.”
Political dichotomies also are examined,
especially the Clinton administration, which
welcomed more than 150 openly gay
appointees yet failed us in so many other ways.
“Clinton changed the climate even while he
capitulated to anti-gay advocates,” Walters
says. “His own lurches back and forth speak to
the uneven development of gay rights in
America. It’s not simply a forward march.”
As a lesbian mother, Walters has strong
views about society’s volatile attitudes toward
gay parenting. “The family itself is the site
where so many of our cultural and social anxi
eties are played out: about sexuality, about chil
dren, about relationships between individuals
and the state...gay families are OK as long as
they look like heterosexual families and are
suspect when they attempt to revise family
structures and reinvent intimacy and parenting
practices.”
So what does she think is a solution to all
of this? “The gaying of American culture can
and should be more than a fleeting fashion
statement or subcultural suicide. In insisting on
visibility without assimilation, the new gay
movement can change the table settings them
selves, not simply find the places already set at
the table,” Walters believes. “A full and com
plete ‘conscious integration’ of gays into Amer
ican society means not just an end to the closet
or double standards or gay stereotypes in popu
lar culture. It means an opening up, a breaking
through the tightly drawn wagons of heterosex
ual assumptions that could potentially chal
lenge and expand all our conceptions of family,
gender, love, intimacy, sexuality.” J D
O r ia n a G
r e e n is happy to be visible as the
Entertainment Editor o f Just Out and can be
buttonholed at oriana@ justout.com .