printable versionEthics@Noon explores movement of gay rights into national consciousness
AIDS gave gay marriage, monogamy momentum, paving way for Brokeback Mountain to go mainstream, scholar says
BY MICHAEL PEÑA
Paul Robinson
History Professor Paul Robinson, an authority on the political pulse of the gay rights movement, shared an opinion about Brokeback Mountain that seemed to reflect a deeper appreciation for the movie than the simple gesture of two thumbs up.
"This is my take on it: It really is a story about gay marriage," said Robinson, referring to the tragic love that the two cowboys must conceal in the Oscar-nominated movie. "Clearly, what they're interested in most is a traditional monogamous relationship."
It was the sort of insight that makes his undergraduate seminar, Gay Autobiography, immensely popular, and the reason why every seat was filled in the classroom where Robinson delivered his Ethics@Noon lecture on Friday. His talk, sponsored by the Program in Ethics in Society, was titled "From Gay Liberation to Gay Marriage."
Robinson first traced the roots of gay liberation, which he described as the third wave of the political storm in the sixties and seventies from which the civil rights movement and then women's liberation arose. Gay liberation was a logical extension, Robinson said.
But while the civil rights movement had Martin Luther King Jr., the struggle for gay rights had no single, iconic leader—and this set the tone of invisibility that initially cloaked gay culture. "The closet became the metaphor to convey this invisibility," Robinson said. "The centerpiece became coming out."
Academically, Robinson said his expertise on the history of ideas about human sexuality—especially as it pertains to the experiences of gays and lesbians—stems from his close studies of the writings and thoughts that have emerged since the seventies. Robinson's own works include Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette (1999); Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters (2002); and Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics (2005).
Literature from the seventies—starting with The Best Little Boy in the World by Andrew Tobias—conveyed the existential suffering that gays experienced when "coming out." The pressure of conforming to convention during that time was strong, with Tobias assuming the pseudonym "John Reid" when his memoir was first published in 1973.
Meanwhile, about the time he was writing, a watershed moment in the history of gay culture came when a riot broke out in 1969 in a bar in Greenwich Village soon after Broadway superstar Judy Garland died. The standoff between police and the bar's patrons lasted a few days, according to Robinson.
"Many if not all of the patrons were drag queens," said Robinson, who mentioned the riot to illustrate how the gay rights movement also included the fight to freely express varying forms of gender identity. "It's not just about sexual orientation. It's also about this issue of gender."
Lastly, Robinson spoke about the politics of gay marriage. Far from being an issue championed just by liberals, same-sex marriage has found some of its staunchest supporters among the camp of gay conservative intellectuals in the Republican Party. According to Robinson, critics in the gay community have argued that marriage would impose the convention of monogamy on those who have historically chosen to live a more liberal lifestyle.
"It's politically ambiguous," Robinson said. "It can be construed as radically reactionary or deeply revolutionary."
He went on to say that the AIDS epidemic gave gay marriage and monogamy more momentum, with the film Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks, vaulting the epidemic to the forefront of the collective consciousness. Brokeback Mountain, debuting about a dozen years later, now shows how gay issues have fully crossed over into the mainstream.
"It's called a great 'date movie,'" Robinson said. "Movements that begin in a radical oppositional stance result in change."