Sexual Leadership

July 1999

Where have we come in the thirty years since the Stonewall riots? How has the status of homosexuality changed as a result of three decades of gay activism? 

In answering these questions we can note enormous advances: police no longer routinely shake down gay bar patrons, being identified as gay today doesn't automatically jeopardize your job, those coming out are more likely to receive rational responses from family and friends, and fewer kids now cry themselves to sleep in abject loneliness, scared that they are "the only one."

Such progress has done a remarkable job in sweeping away much of the malignant homophobia that so crippled our culture. People are better able to love and work today because others have had the courage to confront insane attitudes that had unquestioningly linked homosexual expression with the deepest depravity imaginable. The gay movement can be rightly proud that we have replaced so much fear with sexual celebration.

But these advances have been accompanied by setbacks. While homophobia has been challenged with notable success, whole new sets of rules punishing all sorts of other "inappropriate" sexual expression have been formulated. Laws prohibiting mutually enjoyed sex between professionals and their clients, clergy and parishioners, employers and employees have sailed through legislatures. So-called "public" sex (well out of sight of all but the most snooping eyes) is met with new draconian penalties. And fully consensual sex by teens (even with others their own age) has been criminalized with a vengeance.

Indeed, we have far more people in prison now convicted of consensual sex "crimes" than ever before. Sexual reactionaries– frustrated by their recent inability to persecute all queers– have recast Boy Scout circle jerks and priestly shenanigans as the acts of sexual monsters. The therapy industry has encouraged sexual partners to reinvent themselves as victims in need of restitution. And the state has exploited sexual hysteria to erode civil liberties and better control everyone.

Many gay people have succumbed to the notion that we can prove our respectability by joining in the condemnation of the "real" perverts. Gay therapists parrot straight nonsense about the cataclysmic dangers of sex enjoyed by partners between whom there is a "power imbalance." Gay liaisons cooperate with police in "cleaning up" cruising areas. And anyone who challenges the lie that sex before an arbitrarily determined age is akin to murder is roundly denounced by virtually all gay spokespeople.

But we are fools if we think that any of us are safe in a society that brands record numbers of non-violent people as sexual monsters deserving of prison and torture. As long as we allow such fear of sexuality to persist, we risk having our gains against homophobia mean little more than the creation of a gilded ghetto; a change in the political wind could mean that even respectable queers find themselves subject to the laws supposedly aimed at the sexually "dangerous."

As yesterday's sexual monsters, gay people have a special responsibility to make sure our advancement is not predicated on shifting society's sexual phobias to other groups. We must challenge the straight mind-set that creates narrow boundaries for sexual expression. Our goal is not to join the erotically privileged, but rather to free everyone from irrational sexual fear.

Gay liberation means judging sexual interactions by the meaningful standards of love, compassion, and responsibility, not arbitrary rules about gender or race or age or which body parts are involved. Sex can be celebrated instead of feared– that is the enduring message that sets us free as gay people and the truth that we as sexual leaders must always be ready to proclaim. **

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