The Dictionary of Homophobia (96 page)

On the flip side, the first attempts at building the gay press, between 1896 and 1960, were thwarted by homophobic
censorship
. The earliest known one took place in Wilhelmine Germany in 1896–97, by the aesthete Adolf Brand, whose
Der Eigene
was the first homosexual magazine in the world; it survived an arduous beginning until it ceased publication in 1931, after constant harassment by the Nazis. Another attempt, but less successful, was the literary monthly
Akademos
in France in 1909, which lasted less than a year. It was in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, however, that the gay press took on an exceptional vitality alongside the German gay movement: several successful periodicals appeared, including
Die Freundschaft
(1919),
Die Insel
(1922; by 1929, it had a circulation of 150,000), and
Die Freundin
(1924). These publications offered all types of information for readers, including a large number of classified ads; nonetheless, they became the target of a Christian crusade
“gegen Schund und Schmutz”
(“against smut and filth”), led by Pastor Reinhard Mumm, which helped to bring about prohibitions between 1928 and 1931; what was then left of the gay press in Germany ended up being stamped out by Nazism.

In the United States, the earliest publication was
Friendship and Freedom,
spearheaded by Henry Gerber in Chicago in 1924, but it published only two issues before police intervened. It was not until Los Angeles around 1950 that the next wave of gay press appeared, around the same time as the establishment of the Mattachine Society, the first American gay activist association:
Vice Versa,
founded in 1947, was the first American lesbian periodical, and
One,
founded in 1953, the first “queer” periodical. But within a year,
One
had to deal with the issue of the US Postal Service’s refusal to transport the magazine, which it found pornographic; the publishers of
One
took the postal service to court, and in January 1958, after a protracted battle, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor.

In France,
Inversions
, launched in November 1924, was condemned for “indecent behavior” in quick succession by the Court of Instance (March 1926), then the Paris Court of Appeal (October 1926), and finally the Court of Cassation (March 1927), the latter of which ruled that “indecent behavior” could exist without stylistic obscenity: on the topic of homosexuality, the horror is not in the words, but in the act itself. The very courageous and militant
Futur,
launched in 1952, was forbidden from being displayed in stores, and was forced to suspend publication from March 1953 to June 1954. After it resumed, France’s Council of State intervened on December 5, 1956, ending it for good. In its ruling, the council stated: “A publication that defends and emphasizes homosexuality in the name of absolute liberty of the individual and the liberty of sexual practices is a publication whose goals contradict ordinary morality.” In 1954, the first issue of the very proper
Arcadie,
the main gay magazine in France prior to
Gai-Pied,
was also prohibited from display and sale to minors, which remained in effect until 1975. In addition, its editor, André Baudry, was even arraigned for indecent behavior in 1955.

If things improved in the 70s and 80s, they only did so slowly and partially. One must first note the continued reluctance of radio and television programs to discuss the issue of homosexuality, which can be explained by several factors: the perceived lack of legitimacy of the subject, despite the Stonewall riots and gay liberation; the obsession with not wanting to upset the audience, which producers believed would be shocked by such material; and the unwillingness of most homosexuals to speak “on record.” While the
AIDS
epidemic, the growing number of gay organizations, and the success of Lesbian and Gay Pride have radically changed perceptions of homosexuality over the last twenty years, media homophobia is nonetheless always present. It is revealed when a journalist equates homosexuality with pedophilia or makes a point of emphasizing the homosexuality of a particular criminal; it is also revealed when a newsroom neglects stories pertinent to gays and lesbians (for example, the Gay Games, which are virtually ignored by mainstream sportscasters). Outside the West, the situation is worse: Igor Kon, who has written extensively on sexuality in Russia, has made note of the rigid homophobia of the Soviet press of the 1980s and the Russian press of the 90s, where homosexuality was (and still is) linked to everything that is loathed: Bolshevism, Zionism, Western democracy and sometimes all three at the same time!

The increasing visibility of homosexuals in the West in the 1970s provoked a significant media backlash among Conservative Christians: it started in the United States around 1977 with Anita
Bryant
’s crusade in Florida (“Save Our Children”) and continued throughout the Reagan years of the 1980s, when AIDS was deemed “God’s punishment.” Publications of the American Christian far right multiplied, aiming to present the uncultured public at large with stereotyped and negative images of homosexuality, fueled by pseudo-scientific data on the subject. For members of this so-called “Moral Majority,” one of their most important beliefs is that homosexuals can never be happy in their lives (because of their promiscuity and their inability to have stable relationships); as a result, they need to be “cured.” Of course, there is no mention that the unhappiness of homosexuals might have something to do with the negative social conditions imposed on them, including Christian homophobia.

In France in the 70s, the conservative newspaper
Le Figaro
was highly homophobic, sometimes revolting, as in the obituary of novelist Jean-Louis Bory by Renaud Matignon in June 1979: “He perverted all of the pseudo intelligentsia, making leftists out of buffoons, buffoons out of leftists, and converted little boys.” As for the gay press, the country made another attempt at silencing it as recently as March 1987, when Charles Pasqua, Minister of the Interior, requested that the 1949 Protection of Minors Act be applied to
Gai-Pied
. In the end, after much outrage, Pasqua relented. However, the Christian homophobic lobby did not disappear as a result: it made itself heard in the 90s during debates on AIDS prevention (should television programs show gays kissing each other?) as well as the PaCS civil-union proposal and other new rights for gays and lesbians. A conservative association created in 1986, Avenir de la culture (Future of the Culture)
,
linked to the Brazilian group TFP (Tradition, Family, and Property), condemned gays and lesbians to their secular invisibility and conducted massive protest mailing campaigns whenever they appeared on television, including during AIDS awareness campaigns. The homophobic family-oriented lobby was worried by the growing visibility of gays and lesbians and their roles as trendsetters, particularly among youth. The vehement public debate on the concept of the gay
family
in the 90s was thus an upheaval and a challenge: conservatives felt compelled to foment public opinion against gay
parenting
in spite of the seemingly favorable image of gays to the contrary. The result was a number of large,
anti-PaCS
demonstrations which used the media as a platform for their inflamed calls to respect “nature” and gender
difference
(whose apex was reached when conservative writer Guy Coq monopolized the conversation on the set of a news program on France’s public television network FR3, in front of its dumbfounded host, in November 1998). But the most important of these demonstrations, on January 30, 1999, turned out to be an abysmal failure: where the organizers were hoping to use the media to their advantage, the plan backfired, revealing only the protestors’ back-ward fears and beliefs (“Gays to the pyre!”).

The positive evolution of the media was instigated in part by gays and lesbians themselves. Conscious that homophobia is constructed and circulated by media, gays organized themselves into lobby groups, particularly in the United States. The
Stonewall
riots of 1969 were a decisive factor in this, given that Stonewall was a turning point in American gay history when homosexuals could confirm that they were victims of a palpable censorship by the press (the riots garnered only a few square inches on page thirty-three of the
New York Times
). As a result, they knew they had to fight to present themselves without distortion to the general public; they adopted the tactics of anti-Vietnam protesters and civil rights activists, which consisted of creating “events” through demonstrations, marches, and parades. In 1973, the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA)
,
founded in New York in 1969 by the moderate wing of the Gay Liberation Front, met with executives of the ABC television network to discuss gay and lesbian stereotypes on its programs. The same year, the self-styled Gay Raiders interrupted a broadcast of the
CBS Evening News
. In 1973, a dissident group of the GAA formed the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which organized a publicity boycott of the ABC drama series
Marcus Welby, M.D.,
which it accused of presenting homosexuality as a disease. In 1985, GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) was created in New York to protest the manner in which mainstream media covered the AIDS epidemic. By this time, the hysterical panic over AIDS had incited the same reaction in the American press, which frequently referred to its “innocent victims,” subtly dividing heterosexuals and children from homosexuals; it was also bent on outing celebrities who were afflicted, such as Rock Hudson. In the long run, GLAAD’s action was a complete success; AIDS is no longer “the gay disease.” Today, GLAAD is the primary gay media watch dog and lobby group in the US: among its victories, it convinced the
New York Times
to use the word “gay” instead of “homosexual,” in 1987; it also won the approval of executives at Disney/ABC to authorize the coming out of lesbian actor Ellen DeGeneres’s character on her comedy series
Ellen
, which became
the
television event of 1997, and landed DeGeneres on the cover of
Time
magazine (she also came out personally at the same time).

The origins of the gay organization ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) are essentially linked to a media fight. The movement was created in 1987 by New York activists in response not only to the unwillingness of the Reagan administration to acknowledge the AIDS crisis, but also to the general prejudice of mainstream media (one of the founders, Vito Russo, was a specialist on the representation of gays and lesbians in movies, as documented in his book
The Celluloid Closet
). ACT UP’s strategy, in the US and the rest of the world, was spectacular: demonstrations became street theater and agitprop, as members noisily harassed politicians and drug companies and chained themselves in the most unexpected public places, such as Wall Street in 1989. It created powerful images that were disseminated through the media, such as the pink triangle with the slogan “Silence = Death” or, in Paris, a giant condom placed on the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde in 1993. This strategy provoked a mixture of fascination and resistance: for a long time, mainstream media presented ACT UP as an irrational and extremist organization, and government authorities even tried to use the police, the FBI, and the justice system to intimidate members. But, generally, ACT UP succeeded in modifying mainstream media’s behavior: it became much more interested in gay and lesbian issues; there was less censorship of gays and lesbians. Reporters chose their words more carefully while media owners discovered the power of the gay audience, which not only is generally wealthier (and hence attractive to advertisers) but will also not hesitate to boycott a product or program if they are believed to be anti-gay. In England, responsibility for watching the media on gay and lesbian issues is essentially shared between two groups: Stonewall (an LGBT organization which underlines the inequalities gays and lesbians endure) and OutRage! (a queer rights direct action group which denounces homophobia in all its forms). One of the founders of OutRage!, Peter Tatchell regularly outs bishops and politicians, and distributes pamphlets to high school kids entitled “It’s OK to be Gay.” He has also interrupted an Easter service presided over by the archbishop of Canterbury, and attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of the arch-homophobe Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe.

In France, the gay movement of the 70s was mainly comprised of media protests. On March 10, 1971, Ménie Grégoire’s program on the radio network RTL was interrupted by lesbians, and this event led directly to the creation of the Front homosexuel d’action révolutionnaire (FHAR; Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action). After much misgiving, mainstream press eventually became interested in gays and lesbians, although not without a struggle.
Libération
, founded in 1973, was the first daily in France to seriously acknowledge the gay phenomenon (even bragging of publishing “more information on homosexuality in eight years than the whole French press in a century”); this attention, however, resulted in charges of “indecent behavior and incitation to
debauchery
” in 1979.Things went sour after that: in the 80s, articles in
Libération
made frequent references to the “gay cancer” in relation to AIDS, and between 1997 and 2001 it was curiously ambivalent on the question of gay rights.
Le Monde
, which in 1960 had not uttered a single word of denunciation for the
Mirguet
amendment (which proclaimed homosexuality to be a social scourge), acknowledged the importance of the gay vote just after François Mitterrand’s presidential victory in 1981. It continued its editorial evolution through the 1990s to the point that it is now considered very progressive on the topic, something that does not please all of its readers.

Finally, it should be noted that gay journalists who work in mainstream media now feel it is less necessary to hide their sexuality than before; their ability to access positions of power proves and highlights the decline of homophobia in the media (at least in the West). In 1990, Jeffrey Schmalz, assistant editor of the
New York Times
, revealed his homosexuality; in 1990, the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association was formed and, three years later, counted over 1,000 members. In Great Britain, there are growing numbers of visible gay and lesbian journalists who work for respected newspapers (
The Guardian, The Times, The Independent
) or major television stations (BBC, Channel 4, ITV).