The Gay World: 1980 to the Present
Gert Hekma
A world of pleasure
Berlin had a rich and varied homosexual subculture in the ‘roaring twenties’, andduring the 1950s gay life in Paris, Copenhagen and Amsterdam really took off.1 Butsince the late 1960s and the so-called sexual revolution, a public gay culture hasdeveloped in an ever greater number of cities. The raid on the Stonewall Inn in NewYork’s Christopher Street in 1969 and the rebellion that followed are often seen as awatershed in the US, and in fact the resistance of these homosexual and transgenderedmen and women assumed international significance. The day of the uprising, 27 June,is now commemorated with Stonewall parades and Christopher Street Days.2
Queer bars had existed before, but they were mostly mixed (patronized by gaysand straights), and the police often raided or closed down places where ‘unwelcomeelements’ such as homosexuals congregated. This world was unstable and facedinterventions by state authorities and the straight public. Its shifting nature was also aresult of the different types of sexual object sought by homosexuals. ‘Queens’ and‘sissies’, who often loved straight men, or ‘trade’ – sailors, soldiers, working-classyouths – did not necessarily depend on bars to meet their love objects, finding thestreets more worthwhile.3 Later, gay men increasingly sought sex with their equals –clones, machos and leather men – and they ventured into a world of bars withdarkrooms and saunas. From northwestern Europe and from the east and west coasts ofthe US, this new arena of gay sex and love spread all over the globe.
The gay world of the 1960s and 1970s became more exclusively gay. Bars andbathhouses had historically served both ‘queens’ (self-identified homosexuals) and‘trade’, while venues in post-Stonewall times catered almost entirely to gay men;straight men who continued to frequent them would now be classified as bisexuals or‘closet cases’. This world also became increasingly specialized, with particular venues
Appealing to particular groups: gay activists, for example, or men in leather, dragartists, or younger or older men. While drinking and drunkenness had always been apart of the gay social sphere, the discos of the 1970s and 1980s saw the use of drugs aswell. The old-style dance parlour turned into a discotheque; whereas the preferredaccompaniment had been folk or French chansons, pop and disco music – thesoundtrack to the sexual revolution – took over; and the elegant waltzing of coupleswas replaced by clones in tight blue jeans, t-shirts and work boots dancing wildly.(These masculine men rejected the effeminacy of the queens and pumped their bodiesin gyms that by the 1990s had become, in some places, more important for same-sexsociability than bars and discos.) The most important change of the 1970s, however,was the intense sexualization of gay culture. When bars and discos did not offer thepossibility of instant and anonymous sex on the premises, gay men could goelsewhere, to their bedrooms, a quiet spot in an alley, a sauna, a cruisy park or a publictoilet. The men who enjoyed ‘homosex’ had more of it in this short period before theadvent of AIDS, with fewer qualms about family or police, and when venereal diseasescould be cured with a shot of penicillin, than they had ever done in the past.
This new homosexual culture created a patchwork of sexual relations, romanticrelationships and acquaintances. Some one-night stands developed into grand passionsand love affairs, while others became lasting friendships. Homosexuals hadtraditionally felt threatened by family, friends, neighbours, state institutions and evensexual partners and lovers, but in gay ‘ghettos’ the pressures of the outside worldbecame less insistent. Here they created places to live together and invented multipleforms of sociability. While the straight world saw a growing dichotomy betweensingles and couples, the gay world found many ways to bridge the rift between thetwo. The main reason for this was that most homosexuals felt able to separate love andsex; and they no longer believed in monogamy, but in experiencing love and sex in awhole range of different relationships. Edmund White has sung the praises of thisvibrant culture world in his writing, while Patrick Moore has suggested reviving it.4
The growth of this gay world was nevertheless uneven. In The Netherlands andDenmark (that is to say, in Amsterdam and Copenhagen), it developed during the1960s, appearing in cities on the east and west coasts of North America, in Britain andin Germany in the 1970s. Spain had to wait for the death of Franco in 1975 beforeMadrid and Barcelona blossomed in the 1980s; and at the same time Paris closed downits old mafia-controlled bars. Milan and Sydney were next in line, followed by non-Western cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Bangkok and Manila. After the fall of theIron Curtain in 1989, the gay world established itself in Eastern Europe. So it was thatthe gay world in cities around the globe became a community, with both a sense ofidentity – of belonging – and of space. Homosexuals started to live near gay-ownedbars and businesses, and thus the gay world began to spread to whole neighbourhoods.Political, social and sports organizations flourished, and gay districts becamedestinations for gay tourists and immigrants.
Yet alongside the global spread of a gay community a serious problem wasemerging. The arrival of AIDS in the early 1980s almost halted the spread of a gayscene and effectively ended the reigning culture of sexual pleasure. The effects of theepidemic were most devastating in the US, where it had begun. The governmentreacted with repressive measures, and all over the United States police and healthofficials shut down places of sexual pleasure such as saunas and backrooms. Owing tothe close involvement of gay political movements in AIDS prevention, however,countries in northwestern Europe decided not to close sex venues – it was better, theyargued, to use such settings to give out information on AIDS and safer sex than drivegay men underground, where they would probably continue unsafe practices. Thecountries that were less restrictive in their response to the AIDS crisis did indeed provemore successful in preventing the disease. Much depended on the attitudes of the gaymovement, entrepreneurs and the public, as well as on the speed with which individualstates realized the gravity of the situation: the French gay press, for instance, initiallydenied the severity of AIDS. But by the end of the 1980s, no gay man in the Westernworld could convincingly say that he did not know what AIDS and safe sex were, although debates concerning precise definitions of safe and unsafe sex wouldcontinue.5
In the 1990s the gay community started to grow again and once more sexualpleasure became an important part of gay social life, although homosexuals were nowmore aware of what constituted safer sex. The subculture expanded and, on account ofAIDS, it also moved above ground. Media attention surrounding the epidemic hadsparked a general interest in gay men and venues, while the politics of safe sex hadbrought previously covert language out into the open. The gay world becamedifferentiated internally even as it became more homogenized on a global scale.Lesbians, drag queens, transgenders and bisexuals played a greater role than before,now establishing their own events and organizations, and minorities of African, Asianand Arab origin set their own agendas. Information networks such as Minitel inFrance, sex phonelines and the internet made it possible for those with all kinds ofsexual interests to make contact. Thus the ‘kinky’ scene in particular underwent greatdiversification: fans of rubber and sports clothing appeared alongside establishedleather and S&M groups, while bears, skinheads, and lovers of army and policeuniforms created their own meeting places for sex and sociability.
While the bigger cities saw a proliferation of venues designed for sexualpleasure, smaller tourist destinations, often beach resorts, joined the list: Mykonos,Sitges and Ibiza in Europe, and Fire Island, Provincetown, Miami’s South Beach, PalmSprings and Russian River in the United States. Weekend trips to urban destinationscombined the consumption of ‘high culture’ with opportunities for sex and sociability.In the past, only a few cities had a specific attraction for homosexuals looking for ashort holiday; nowadays, any major Western city is a possible gay destination, as aresuch non-Western places as Marrakech, Cairo, Manila, Bali and Bangkok. Many citiesin Latin America and South and East Asia now harbour lively local gay scenes.Guidebooks have opened up a global gay sphere that is quite recognizable for a Western tourist, although the Arab world, China, India, Japan and Thailand inparticular continue to host same-sex sexual practices and venues that are utterlypeculiar to their own cultures – not gay in a Western sense – and often difficult foroutsiders to access.
Gay life has always been largely urban because a city’s communities madeidentification among homosexual lines easier. In a highly suburbanized country such asThe Netherlands, a gay venue is never further than 30 miles (50 km) away – a bigdifference from the situation in a larger country such as the US, where people may livemany hours from the closest bar or club. Gays in remote places had little chance tofind sex and love, and straight people would not have come across homosexuality.Nowadays, however, the internet brings the gay world into one’s home, and email andother programs make communication possible over long distances. While it mayremain difficult for those who live in the countryside to find physical proximity withother gay men or women, cheap airfares allow others to participate in city-hopping andparty-going, to join demonstrations or to visit friends and lovers.
AIDS
The segregated homosexual world of the 1970s appears to have been the idealbreeding ground for venereal disease (VD). Most sexually transmitted diseases couldbe cured with simple treatment, and gays could even meet partners in VD clinics andjoke about the risks of sex. New diseases that appeared at the end of the 1970s and inthe early 1980s were not so easy to cure or make fun of. First there appeared varioustypes of hepatitis and chlamydia. Then, in the early 1980s, homosexuals began to comedown with diseases atypical for their generation and profile, such as Kaposi’s sarcomaand lung diseases. In June 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued itsfirst report on an unknown syndrome that affected younger gay men, and themysterious disease claimed its first victims. Most people showing symptoms of theillness died very quickly, and gay organizations and health authorities worried that a new and fatal epidemic was on its way. Doctors first called it Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), about a year later changing its name to Acquired ImmuneDeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The symptomatic diseases were explained as abreakdown of the immune system in those who were affected. Homosexuals fearedthat the AIDS epidemic would be a major setback for gay life and the gay movement;Christian crusaders saw it as a punishment for sin. It was a disaster for the gay world,and tens of thousands died of AIDS in the following decades, especially in the US.
Most governments nevertheless reacted very slowly to the epidemic, since itwas thought to affect only homosexuals – a position that created despair and angeramong the gay community. It soon became clear that AIDS was also affecting other,non-gay groups, the famous ‘four Hs’: homosexuals, heroin addicts, haemophiliacs andHaitians. The second and third groups became infected through unclean needles usedto inject drugs and through blood transfusions, while it seemed that the epidemic hadapparently begun in Haiti at the same time as in the US. As a true plague, the diseasesoon spread beyond these four groups to what was termed the ‘general population’.Such terminology was extremely offensive to homosexuals, since it implied that theywere a category apart; furthermore, it seemed that worries about the disease explodedonly once heterosexuals, and not just marginal groups, began to contract AIDS.
French scientists in 1984 isolated the cause of AIDS – the HumanImmunodeficiency Virus (HIV) – although they bickered with colleagues at theAmerican CDC who claimed to be the first to have discovered it. Once the agent wasknown testing became possible. This raised the question of whether patients who mighthave been infected should be tested: there was no therapeutic medicine available, andthe knowledge of having been infected could create psychological problems and socialdifficulties, for example with insurance companies and mortgage lenders. In somecountries people were initially advised against taking the test. When effectivemedication was developed, however, that advice was reversed. Before the exactmethod of transmission was discovered, many myths circulated: that it was possible to catch the disease by sharing glasses, toilets or toothbrushes with infected persons, for instance, or through insect bites or even by shaking hands. Scientists eventuallydiscovered that the virus was spread by blood, sperm and other bodily fluids, and thatit could not survive for long outside the body. This made it possible for doctors torecommend ‘safe sex’ – no anal sex without a condom. (Whether oral sex is unsafe hasremained a topic of debate.)
At the beginning of the epidemic, alliances between health authorities and gaypolitical movements were difficult to establish, but individual physicians and gayhealth groups helped to bridge the gap. Particularly important were organizations thatdelivered health care and mental and social support to patients, such as the Gay Men’sHealth Crisis, founded in 1982 in New York; the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; theTerrence Higgins Trust in London; and AIDES, established by Daniel Defert in Parisafter the death of his lover, Michel Foucault. Because medical and political authoritieswere slow to react to the epidemic, patients and gay men became radicalized. First inthe US, and subsequently in other Western countries, the failure of the state to pay forresearch and provide good care angered the gay community. Radical queer groupsattacked social and medical policies: the most prominent was ActUp, who coined theslogan SILENCE = DEATH and used aggressive methods of protest. Meanwhile artistsand advertising specialists were contributing to the success and visibility of radicalgroups, and gay writing, too – which had come of age during the 1970s – drewattention to the epidemic.
AIDS organizations were successful in several innovative ways. They came upwith the idea of ‘buddies’ – volunteers who helped patients with daily chores. SinceAIDS victims and their friends included many well-educated and self-aware youngmen, groups were articulate and confident enough to be able to criticize and ultimatelychange the medical system. The most important contribution of ActUp, the most activeof these organizations, was to democratize and critically examine the medical system,suggesting alternative methods of care and research; the trial of new treatments was speeded up on their insistence. Some groups started to import promising medicines illegally, while others created consumers’ organizations and provided information onthe disease and reputed cures. They lobbied for more money for research. Patients withother diseases picked up on such innovations and started organizing themselvesproactively. Even the funeral industry changed through AIDS, as gays created newforms of burial and remembrance ceremonies.
In some countries the government, health authorities and the gay movementworked together to combat the epidemic and to help its victims. This model ofcooperation had begun in Scandinavia and The Netherlands, where it had proved verysuccessful, and was taken up in other locations. Its achievements were to enddiscrimination in visiting rights, social security and health care; the wide disseminationof information on AIDS and safer sex; and to provide clean needles for drug addicts.Hospitals created special wards for AIDS patients, and mental care was madeavailable.
Around 1990, antiviral medicines such as AZT were introduced that prolongedthe lives of the patients, but which nevertheless had negative side effects and did notprevent patients from dying. In 1996 a new cocktail of different medicines becameavailable that for most patients made AIDS a chronic disease rather than a fatal illness,since it extended life expectancy by many years. Although the cocktail did not restorefull health, it made a more or less normal life possible. One unexpected drawback ofthis success was that some people paid less attention to safer sex, a few even going sofar as to run the risk of contracting AIDS by engaging in risky behaviour(‘barebacking’, or practising anal sex without a condom). Yet warnings made at thebeginning of the epidemic have largely been heeded, producing a slowdown in the rateof infection, at least in Western countries. Homosexuals in particular have taken safersex campaigns seriously and changed their sexual practices radically. Such high levelsof acceptance of health advice is rare in disease prevention, and the gay world hasdone an exemplary job in changing behaviour and preventing further spread of the disease.
Although AIDS has been a disaster, there have been a few beneficial results. The rise of a concerned and self-conscious ‘client group’ is one such development. Ithas also become possible to speak in clearer language about sex. The crisis fostered astronger cooperation between gays and lesbians. Loving relationships received moreattention: whereas previously it had been difficult for gays to share lives with eachother because of the interference of families, neighbours and institutions, with AIDS itbecame clear that such intimate relationships were essential. Gays were not merelysexual beings, but also people who maintained loving partnerships. AIDS also pointedup such issues for patients and their partners as hospital visiting rights, housing,insurance, pensions, and wills and bequests. The particular needs of same-sex couplesbecame a political issue, which in turn opened a debate on the subject of same-sexmarriage.
Homophobia and heteronormativity
Despite its successes during the 1960s and 1970s – at least in some countries – the gayrights movement has not ended anti-homosexual discrimination or modified thedominant straight culture. In all countries, changes in civil and criminal law may haveled to less official discrimination but social discrimination continues. Criminal lawsthat targeted male homosexuals have been abolished in Britain, Germany, TheNetherlands, France, Spain and many other European states since the late 1960s; andthe European Union has outlawed anti-homosexual legislation and endorses anti-discrimination policies in the workplace.7 But even in The Netherlands, considered bymany the most tolerant society, homophobia and violence remain widespread.Notwithstanding the fact that a new generation has grown up in a culture where homo-and heterosexuality are regarded as equal, many youngsters (mainly young men) stillharbour a prejudice against homosexuals and act upon their sentiments. Discriminationranges from murder to more covert forms of harassment, for example in political and intellectual circles. About twice a year, for instance, a male prostitute kills a gay man in Amsterdam – a crime police do not take very seriously because the perpetrators areoften arrested soon after committing the crime and because officers see it as a minorform of robbery or relational conflict. Although authorities have stopped consideringthe murderers as the victims, they continue to blame homosexuals as somehowresponsible for their fate.
Homosexuals face abuse not only in the world of prostitution, but also incruising areas, bars and discos, in workplaces and at home;9 the mutilation in early2004 of a gay man in his own garden by young men made headlines in France andfuelled the debate on same-sex marriage. Anti-gay slang words are common in schoolplaygrounds, and discrimination, either explicit or implied, exists in families,workplaces, and in the fields of health care and recreation. Promotions are refused, andlovers are rejected or neglected, while many regulations regarding housing, health care,insurance and pensions do not cover homosexuals or same-sex couples. Inemployment, there is a ‘glass ceiling’ for homosexuals similar to that experienced bywomen, and the heterosexist assumptions of society at large (gays and lesbians areseen as straight until the opposite is proven) pose a continuing problem. Although thereis no reliable data covering cases of discrimination and violence, the availableinformation indicates that gay men face high levels of verbal and physical abuse. Tomake the situation worse, gays and straights are both inclined to deny or neglect anti-homosexual violence and abuse, sometimes with the argument of ‘that’s the way lifeis’.
Since the 1960s European countries have gradually decriminalizedhomosexuality, and there is now no European state in which homosexuality isspecifically prohibited. Decriminalization has also occurred in such countries asAustralia and South Africa. In 1989 the US Supreme Court upheld sodomy laws,leading to a major protest; in 2003 it overturned the earlier decision in a landmarkruling that named specific criminalization of homosexual acts as unconstitutional.
Homosexuality’s status as pathology has become highly contested, and fewpsychiatrists in Western Europe now hold homosexuality per se to be a psychiatricillness, although many continue to view homosexuality negatively. This change ofposition followed the removal of homosexuality from the US list of psychiatricdisorders in 1973 and from a similar list kept by the World Health Organization in1992.10 Beyond the Western world, homosexuality is widely still seen as a vice.
For the most part, negative attitudes derive from a past in which homosexualitywas considered a sin, a crime and a disease. The oldest and strongest source for the rejection of homosexuality, at least in countries that have a predominantly Judaeo-Christian tradition, is religion. Although some Protestant denominations have changedtheir position since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the conversion has been onlypartial. The Danish Lutheran church successfully opposed the possibility of churchceremonies for same-sex partnerships when the government granted them legal statusin 1989. Anti-homosexual statements have come from the pope and from RomanCatholic clergy, from mainstream Protestant and evangelical leaders, and from Jewishrabbis. When they discuss the topic publicly, Eastern Orthodox clergy and Muslimimams are negative about homosexual sex and gay people nearly without exception,and they have spoken out against homosexual rights. Some religious groups began toaccept the sinner but not the sin, exhorting their gay members to remain chaste; thusthe Catholic Church maintains that the problem lies not in being homosexual, but inhomosexual sex. Such positions have led gays and lesbians to create their ownchurches, the most important being the Metropolitan Community Church, which wasfounded in California in the late 1960s. Despite their rejection of homosexuality, mostchurches count significant numbers of clerics with queer desires among their clergy – afact that became public knowledge with the various paedophile scandals involvingpriests in the US and Europe, although their erotic interests are not usually focused onunderage boys.11 Notwithstanding the anti-gay and pro-reproductive stances of mostreligions, the relationship between homosexuality and religious desire remains strong – partly on account of the frequently recognized link between femininity, spirituality and homosexuality,and partly because religious communities are normally homosocialenvironments.
Anti-homosexual sentiments vary according to ethnicity as much as religion. Inmany European countries, complaints are raised against male youths from ethnicminority backgrounds who behave violently against homosexuals. Their families oftencome from Muslim countries where homosexual practices, despite being widespread,are considered to be sinful. Muslim leaders have repeatedly maintained that, accordingto Islamic holy scripture, homosexual acts deserve the death penalty.13 There are noanswers to the many questions this argument raises, nor are there statistics to provethat youths from ethnic minorities account for a greater number of homophobic crimes,or whether they are influenced by their cultural or religious heritage. Often the youthssubject gays to verbal abuse in order to test the limits of tolerance, and anti-gayattitudes are facilitated by authorities who fear engaging in discussion ofhomosexuality.14 Meanwhile, gay youngsters from ethnic minorities themselves have toface serious conflicts. Their families often say they have become too Western bychoosing partners of the same sex, while the gay world stereotypes them as unreliablehustlers, queerbashers or pickpockets. Some have created their own groups and spacesfor socializing. London has Chinese and Indian groups; gay Turks have establishedorganizations in Germany; Arabs are able to join Kelma in Paris or the Habibi-Ana inAmsterdam; and the Yoesuf Foundation tries to create a bridge between Islam andhomosexuality in The Netherlands. The Parisian ‘Beur-Black-Blanc’ tea dances cater toArabs, blacks and whites, while in many cities Long Yang clubs attract Asians andEuropeans with mutual erotic interests.
There are, of course, many positive stories of gays who are embraced by theirfamilies, friends or work colleagues. There are indeed certain workplaces that prefermen without children to heterosexuals who take time off for childcare. There are alsoprofessions that are largely beyond homosexual discrimination, such as the worlds of fashion and art. The token gay in the straight world or the token black in the gay world are sometimes welcomed as expressions of political correctness.
The United States and Europe offer similar pictures of contemporary gay life, but the situation in the United States is generally worse. In world surveys, Americansexpress anti-homosexual sentiments more often than Europeans, and violence targetedexplicitly against gay people is also more common in the US (where the general levelof violence is also higher), while the researcher Luiz Mott has suggested that thenumber of victims of anti-gay violence are even higher in Brazil.15 Some US cities andstates accord equal rights to homosexuals, but in most places legal, civil and socialdiscrimination still rules.16 Notwithstanding positive changes, verbal or physicalviolence continues and is nowhere a high priority of the police or courts.
With homosexuality growing in visibility, in many places homophobic violenceis also on the rise, especially where homosexuality is considered a Western disease, asin Zimbabwe, the Arab world or in India. There have recently been anti-gay laws andraids, for instance, in Egypt, Tanzania, Nepal and Malaysia. In Zimbabwe, formerpresident Canaan Banana was convicted for sodomy in 1998, and in Malaysia thedeputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, was convicted of the same offence in 1999(although this ruling was overturned in 2004). Both convictions created scandalbecause they mixed sexual repression with political corruption. On the other hand, gaycultures and political movements have come into open existence in most countries,including the non-Western world. They are sometimes very successful in their aims, asis the case in South Africa, where homosexual rights are now enshrined in the post-apartheid constitution.
The main problem for gays and lesbians everywhere is that society remainslargely defined by heterosexuality, and excludes or marginalizes other choices; it is forthis reason that the queer movement has wanted to defy heteronormativity and create a‘queer public culture’. Even in tolerant societies, such as The Netherlands orScandinavia, public life remains straight: heterosexuality is the norm and homosexuality is viewed as a second-class option. Heteronormativity gives rise to adichotomy between public and private, in which ‘public’ equals ‘heterosexual’, and ‘homosexual’ is reduced to a personal and private affair. This creates a strange Catch-22 situation, in that gays are supposed to come out, but if they do so, others complainthat their sexual preference does not matter in public. Homosexuals are thus forced tosearch for an impossible balance between being silent and loudly proclaiming theirsexual interests. At the same time, they have to suffer others’ endless and very publicsmall talk of heterosexual ‘private matters’. This straight norm indicates thatdiscrimination against homosexuality has not disappeared; indeed, it shows that,following the gay struggle for legal equality, there is a difficult battle for socialemancipation still to be fought – difficult because its targets are harder to define, andbecause various subgroups sometimes have opposed interests.
The media
Since the 1970s, newspapers and television news programmes have begun to pay moreattention to gay issues, covering such topics as legal struggles for equality, gay pridemarches, debates surrounding a ‘gay gene’ and same-sex marriage – in fact, theentertainment industry and media in general cannot stop talking about what was onceunmentionable. This radical change was partly a result of the AIDS epidemic, whichforced health and public authorities to speak publicly and explicitly in a wayimpossible in earlier times. By the 1990s the media had become eloquent and verboseconcerning what had been unspeakable.
There are great differences among various countries, however. In NorthernEurope media attention is generally friendly, but some places do prefer the scandal-mongering typical of the sensationalist tabloid press. Germans, and even more so theBritish, are obsessed with the sexual transgressions of famous people. Major scandalssurrounded British Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe in 1976 and the German NATOdeputy supreme commander in Europe, General Gunter Kiessling, in 1984. Politicians in the past were forced to resign because of gay or kinky interests, but even Britain nowadays can have a openly gay political leader (although more closeted cases remainthe norm). Gay celebrities have also attracted greater attention, not always voluntarily:George Michael, for instance, was a victim of unwelcome attention after policearrested him for having sex in a public place. Now that more homosexuals in highplaces have come out, scandal is beginning to appear outdated. Many who work in thetheatre, the arts and in politics are openly gay and often receive respectful mediacoverage. Soaps, sitcoms and talk shows have increasing numbers of gay characters;Hollywood makes mainstream gay movies such as Philadelphia (1994) and Gods andMonsters (1998); and the British series Queer as Folk (1999) has enjoyed globalsuccess. There is now a set of gay icons representing high and low culture, fromscience to comedy: Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Rock Hudson, Pier Paolo Pasolini,Pedro Almodóvar, Alan Turing, Michel Foucault, Andy Warhol,
David Bowie, andmany playwrights, actors and fashion designers. Their lives, their work (which hasillustrated a variety of gay themes) and their status have contributed greatly to gayvisibility, showing queer life in all its diversity. To the list also belong ‘dangerous’figures such as serial killers and the Nazi leader Ernst Röhm. It has even been claimedrecently that Adolf Hitler was homosexual.17 A younger gay crowd – frequently popstars, fashion designers and actors – have joined the gay icons of earlier days (fewsports figures and businessmen appear on the lists).
In most countries it has thus become virtually impossible not to come acrossgay imagery or at least with public discussion of homosexuality, though it may notalways be favourable. This exposure has had both beneficial and dangerousconsequences. The increased visibility of homosexuals is a positive step, while the gapthat exists between media exposure and everyday lives has not been bridged. In someplaces, the prominence of news relating to the issue of homosexuality in Westernmedia has led to claims that it is a Western import that should be combated oreradicated. The tables have turned: while in the past the West attributed vice to the inhabitants of Africa and the Orient, nowadays some in Africa and Asia locate the origin of the homosexual ‘disease’ in the Occident. This has led to widespread anti-homosexual sentiment.
The newest addition to the media, the internet, has made it possible for gaysand lesbians in parts of the world where any kind of public visibility is well-nighabsent, such as China and the Arab world, to communicate via their computers. In theWest, it has allowed those who have difficulty in finding or fitting in with gay life,including young people and those who live outside large towns, to access it. Thevariety of ways in which people can meet on the internet, and discuss political issuesin chat rooms and on discussion lists, is a challenge with which businesses andpolitical institutions are constantly trying to keep up. In addition to chat and discussionforums, the web is an amazingly rich source for information, hosting everything fromacademic texts to kinky pornography. The abstraction of the internet provides aninteresting contrast with the physicality of the gay scene.
The Gay and Lesbian Movement
The continuing homophobia of state and society on the one hand, and the openingspromised by the 1960s and 1970s on the other, gave the gay and lesbian movement anew impetus during the 1970s. It became more radical and achieved undeniableresults: the abolition of the most repressive legislation; the removal of homosexualityfrom lists of psychiatric disorders; and a greater visibility for homosexuals in themedia and in the streets, partly through political demonstrations.18 These resultsnevertheless varied greatly among different countries.
The issues that have mobilized the gay rights movement have included equalityin criminal, civil and labour laws, sex education, housing, social security, pensions andtaxes; combating violence and prejudice; immigration laws and political asylum; equalrights and anti-discrimination legislation; laws against abuse and vilification; claims ongay spaces; and same-sex marriage. In most places, even such respectable goals have not been reached. The more radical aims of the 1960s, such as the abolition of sexual and gender dichotomies, were soon forgotten.
After the radicalism of the early 1970s, the gay liberation movement became less revolutionary, in part because activists had already paved the way for those moremainstream gays and lesbians who wanted respectability and toleration. The movementshowed its strength in annual parades: starting as small-scale demonstrations that putforward political demands, they became massive celebratory events more in the spiritof community days or weekend festivals. Commercial institutions played a growingrole and political leaders now took the front row. The marches that started in New Yorkin 1968 with the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots spread over the United States,Europe and Australia, and are now being taken up in various non-Western countries.The first demonstrations to be held in their respective countries, the marches inBelgrade in 2001, Zagreb in 2002 and Krakow in 2004 sparked ferocious attacks byhooligans and right-wing nationalists. (Even in the Amsterdam Gay Pride parade of2004, troublemakers amused themselves by throwing revellers into the canals.) In 1981activists in Sydney moved their celebrations to commemorate Stonewall from June toFebruary to coincide with the southern summer, thus creating the Mardi Gras, now theworld’s largest gay event. German cities developed a programme of parades thatfollowed one after another during weekends in June and July. In the US, massivemarches were organized in Washington, D.C., in 1979, 1987, 1993 and 2000, wherepolitics once again took centre stage; but the high hopes that had followed the
Supreme Court’s repeal of sodomy laws in 2003 and the quick spread of recognizedsame-sex marriages in 2004 were disappointed by the re-election of President GeorgeW. Bush.
In the 1980s and 1990s more conservative gay leaders came forward. In theUS, several authors defined the aim of gay emancipation as ‘getting a place at thetable’19 – principally same-sex marriage and the right to serve in the armed forces. Yetsuch activists also wanted to get rid of those at the margins of the gay world – in the first place paedophiles, but also drag and leather queens, and men who cruise for sex in public places – because they spoiled the image of homosexuals. These conservativesalso believed in a ‘gay gene’, in the innateness of homosexuality. They were opposedby some who believed that the struggle should not stop with equality for homosexuals,but should bring about sexual freedom for all: for them, the question of whether or notsexual preference was biologically determined was irrelevant. Notwithstanding amassive turnout of gays and lesbians at marches and parades, and intense debatesurrounding gay issues, even the most generally shared aims of the gay rightsmovement in the US have not been reached. The American military remain closed tohomosexuals despite the implementation of Bill Clinton’s policy of ‘don’t ask, don’ttell’, since when more homosexuals have been discharged from the army than everbefore.20 A more conservative has also become visible in the gay movements of othercountries. Integration into the political machine often means compromising the aims ofgay equality: even several leaders of right-wing parties have been openly gay – theneo-Nazi Michael Kühnen in Germany, for instance, who died of AIDS in 1991, andPim Fortuyn in The Netherlands, who was murdered in 2002.
Apart from issues of criminal law, AIDS, the armed forces and marriage, thegay rights movement also deals with questions of housing, health care, social security,partner benefits and inheritance. In the late 1980s, in the wake of the AIDS crisis, thethe success of ActUp led to the establishment of Queer Nation, a group that wanted tore-energize the gay movement by making queerness visible in the straight world andby queering heteronormative society. Queer Nation, which operated mainly in the US,espoused queer theory, which emphasized that concepts of identity and communitywere unstable.21 Since the recent conservative turn in US politics, however, QueerNation’s goals seem postponed to a distant future. Similar confrontational politicsbecame the trademark of the London-based OutRage!, whose leading voice was PeterTatchell. Among other examples of discrimination they fought against the Thatcher-eraClause 28, which forbad what the Conservative government saw as the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality. ‘Queer’, once an insult, has become a popular word, for someindicating rage and a radical struggle against straight norms and gay conservatism, forothers suggesting a way to remain closeted – yet in Croatia ‘queer’ expresses the desireof gay young men to live happily together. In English-speaking countries, the term hasbecome outdated, and no new terminology has yet taken its place.
The proliferation of gay groups with various agendas has led to the creation oflocal and international networks and contributed greatly to emancipation. Many groupsfocus on local issues, for example organizations that represent businesses and help tocombat discrimination against bars, promote the local scene or organize events. SexPanic!, a radical queer group in New York, lost its struggle against the ‘cleaning up’ ofTimes Square and against the city’s zoning policy, which forced most sex venues toclose down.22 An Amsterdam group was more successful, keeping a local park (apopular cruising ground) available for homosexuals. Other organizations offer safe sexvenues or establish facilities for increasingly popular gay and lesbian sports activities;since 1982, the Gay Olympic Games have offered an international platform for gayand lesbian athletes.
Openly homosexual politicians have been another major force for gay andlesbian emancipation. Some came out after being elected, but others won an electionvictory after making their homosexuality public. In 1977 the flamboyant Harvey Milkbecame a supervisor (councillor) in San Francisco but was murdered a year later by aformer colleague. Gerry Studds in 1983 and Frank Barney in 1987 were the firstopenly gay US congressmen, and, in 1988, Svend Robinson was the first Canadian MPto come out. Many European countries have openly gay MPs: Chris Smith, forexample, who came out in 1984 in the UK. The first male-to-female transsexual tobecome an MP was New Zealand’s Georgina Beyer in 1999. In The Netherlandsopenly gay men and lesbians made up seven per cent of the members of parliament in2001. The socialist mayors Bertrand Delanoë of Paris (once severely wounded by ahomophobic attacker) and Klaus Wowereit of Berlin both came out before being elected in 2001.
In countries where the legal aims of gay activists have been achieved, the movement is almost moribund. In Scandinavia and The Netherlands, for example,interest in gay organizations has declined dramatically. In these cases, equality underthe law has been realized, even if social discrimination has not ended. Gay rightsmovements have not been as successful in changing the focus from legal to socialissues, in part because social discrimination is more difficult to quantify. Often theynow target external goals instead, addressing problems of discrimination in othercountries. Since 1978, the whole movement has been organized under the banner of theInternational Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), but results have been limited. TheUN has frequently refused to give the ILGA observer status, and indeed the UNHuman Rights Commission in 2004 postponed a discussion on human rights protectionfor sexual orientation. The ILGA nevertheless has stimulated gay movements to lookbeyond national boundaries, to learn from each other and to support sisterorganizations. Other institutions, including the European Union and AmnestyInternational, have extended human rights definitions to include homosexuals, and theUnited Nations accords partnership benefits to employees from countries where theirrelations are legally recognized.
Boy-love
In the 1970s, in the wake of the gay liberation movement, paedophile groups came intoexistence with the hope that they, too, could benefit from emancipation, reasoning thatthe gay movement had often been supportive of intergenerational sex (sometimesreferred to as ‘boy-love’). For a long time, the gay world had viewed the boy as asexual ideal alongside masculine adults, and until the 1950s homosexual imageryfocused on adolescents and teenagers, as can be seen in the works of suchphotographers as Wilhelm von Gloeden. The Radical Fairies group of the early 1970ssupported travestism, sadomasochism, public sex and also paedophilia, although this alliance of interests proved short-lived. In The Netherlands, the psychiatrist who had done most to depathologize homosexuality suggested in a report for the NationalCentre for Mental Health that the same should be done for paedophilia. The head ofthe Rotterdam vice squad voiced support, as did health workers, scholars andpaedophile apologists. Their efforts were met with interest, but the times werechanging. Around 1980, feminists started to battle against the sexual abuse of womenby men, and of daughters by fathers, and shifted the focus from the medical topic ofabuse of children by their parents to the gendered problem of the sexual abuse of girlsperpetrated by men. While the discussion had concentrated on the issue of violence inthe family, it soon widened to take in the risks presented by unknown outsiders. Theabusers remained men, but the victims now included both genders. The US witnessed along series of scandals, ranging from serial killings and satanic rituals to the abuse ofboys and young men by Catholic priests. Today, most people in the West find relationsbetween minors and adults unacceptable, although medical research has indicated thatin general young people suffer no negative consequences from intergenerational sexunless it happens inside the family or unless violence is used against them.23 Westernsocieties have seen a major change in that sexual desire, once based on differences ofgender, age and class, is now founded on equality and symmetry. Power relations havebecome unacceptable, and this is especially true for intergenerational contact.
New laws were passed to counter the ‘paedophile menace’.24 In 1996 the USenacted the Child Pornography Prevention Act, broadening the definition of ‘kiddyporn’ to include computer-morphed imagery, but the Supreme Court declared the lawunconstitutional in 2002. Meanwhile, the European Union obliged member states todraft similar laws and, under outside pressure, Japan did the same in 1999, raising theage of consent from 13 to 18 years. In the past, the production and sale ofintergenerational erotic material was forbidden only because it resulted from the sexualabuse of children. Nowadays, however, the possession of such material is forbidden aswell because it is seen as promoting abusive relations. The United States and the European Union have set up vice squads that control internet material. Undercover officers in the US have even enticed innocent people into buy kiddy porn or meetingyoungsters for sex.25 Other laws have required authorities to notify the public ofreleased ‘sex criminals’ in the vicinities where they live. These laws target not onlychild abusers, but also homosexuals convicted of public sex. Irate neighbours haveattacked and even murdered some of these men, and other innocent people‘recognized’ from pictures on the internet or in newspapers.26 In the few places wherethey still exist, paedophile movements such as the North-American Boy-LoveAssociation (NAMBLA) and Dutch Vereniging Martijn were kicked out of gay andlesbian parades in the 1990s. In 1994, under pressure from the Clinton government,paedophile groups were expelled from the ILGA. Nevertheless, men have beingcoming out at increasingly younger ages, 27 while higher ages of consent inhibit theiraccess to the gay world; this poses the problem of how to incorporate youngsters intothe gay world.
Globalization and differentiation
A global culture in which men and women identified as homosexual developed fromthe late 19th century onwards and spread quickly in the years following the SecondWorld War.28 For a long period attitudes had been exported around the world alongwith colonization, overseas possessions absorbing the opinions of imperial powersthrough laws, religion, culture, social work and academic writing. Although some suchinfluences have continued into the postcolonial period, views in the West have nowchanged. Homosexuality is no longer a crime in most Western states, fewer physicianssee it as a disease, and some religious groups have stopped viewing it as a sin. Butfundamentalist religions are once more exporting homophobia to poor countries, andthe US government has stopped giving aid to organizations that provide abortion or(safer) sex education while not also preaching pre-marital chastity. Apart from cultureand religion, the media play a huge role in the process of globalization, whose ever more frequent reports on gay issues now reach even the deepest hinterlands. Medical and social sciences contribute to an international homogenization through theirfindings and activities, particularly with regard to AIDS and ‘men who have sex withmen’. Gay tourism, too, has promoted a standard conception of what it means to begay, although most cities continue to display their own local specialities andparticularities. Nowadays ‘gay’ often equals young, masculine, affluent, good-looking,fashionable and ready for sex – a stereotype that represents only a minority ofhomosexuals and excludes others who might wish to participate.
It may be that the gay world has become more homogenized as a result ofglobalization, but it has also become more fragmented. In some countries the commonaims of the past – primarily the struggle to end legal discrimination – have beenachieved, and no new widely shared goals have emerged. On the contrary, somejournalists have defined new aims that contradict the desires of many: no drag,intergenerational sex or flaunting of S&M; no public cruising or promiscuity.29 At thesame time, the gay world has broken down into many subgroups. There are suburbanlesbians interested in bringing up children and in education; urban queers who needspace for sexual experimentation; homosexuals from ethnic minority backgrounds whoare trying to combat the prejudices both of racist gay men and of homophobic ethnicgroups; transgenders who want to pass and queens who want to be outrageous; youngmen and women who long to be part of gay culture; corporate gays who have difficultycoming out of their closets; and queers who like public sex and need recreationalvenues. Gays can be right wing or left wing, out or closeted, black or white, poor orrich, old or young, well educated or poorly educated, masculine or unmasculine, intosex (of many and various kinds) and into relationships, keen on sports or interested inreligion. There are very many different ways to relate to this gay world. Many menmore or less live in gay bars or chat rooms, while others hate the scene because itflaunts promiscuity, is too queeny or, inversely, too macho. Others do not feel at homebecause they are bisexual, too old, or because they do not correspond to its ideals of beauty and fashion. Some men like gay sex but would rather have love affairs with women. These many conscious and unconscious exclusions create conflicts over theaims of the movement.
Same-sex marriage
Notwithstanding the gay world’s diversity, political and religious debates onhomosexuality have recently focused on same-sex marriage above all other issues. Inthe past, the social control exerted by family, neighbours and others made it well-nighimpossible for two men (or, to a lesser extent, two women) to live together as a couple.Marriage was an unassailable institution and fundamentally heterosexist. Before thesexual revolution, homosexuals were often advised to marry to rid themselves ofunacceptable desires; yet after psychiatrists had discovered that it was impossible tochange someone’s sexual orientation, gays were advised against marriage since itwould make themselves, their wives and their children unhappy. The institution ofmarriage also changed, from being an arrangement between two families designed toencourage reproduction and to safeguard economic security to a relationship based onlove between two individuals. These shifts in the institution of marriage and inattitudes towards homosexuality – as well as the climate created by the AIDS epidemic– made marriage more attractive to gays and lesbians not only as as a symbol ofcommitment, but also as a form of contract that systemizes social and financial affairsbetween partners and with the world at large. Depending on national laws, a maritalcontract brings with it a whole range of consequences and responsibilities covering allaspects of one’s interaction with society. Another reason to demand the right to marryis the legal recognition of children and the possibility of adoption.
Denmark was the first country to legalize same-sex relationships, in 1989, butits special legal partnership excluded the right to bring up children and or to marry in areligious ceremony. Other Scandinavian countries followed the Danish example withlegislation allowing civil partnerships. The Dutch and French opposed any specialarrangements for gays and lesbians on account of their universaliste ideologies – thenotion that all people should be equal under the law regardless of sexuality. Their‘Registered Partnership’ and ‘PACS’ (Pact of Civil Solidarity), respectively, weretherefore non-specific and could be entered into also by heterosexual couples. In 2001The Netherlands became the first country to open up marriage to same-sex couples,followed by Belgium in 2003, Spain in 2004, and most provinces of Canada the sameyear; Sweden promised same-sex marriage for 2005, and the US state of Massachusettsallowed it in 2004. Despite the provisions made by their government, marriage is notpopular among Dutch gays and lesbians; only about five per cent of same-sex coupleshave taken advantage of the marriage legislation. In the US same-sex marriage becamea major topic of domestic politics in the presidential elections of 2004, and George W.Bush promised to reintroduce a nationwide law forbidding same-sex marriages thatrecently had been defeated. Especially there and in France, the debate on gay marriageis ferocious, and clerics, politicians, family organizations and psychiatrists have spokenout against it in the strongest terms. (Nevertheless, in July 2004 a French court judgedthat two lesbians together could be legally responsible for their children.) Because ofstrong opposition, legalization allowing same-sex partnerships has been retracted ordefeated in, among other places, Hawaii, Vermont and San Francisco. At some point inthe future resistance may disappear, as it did in Europe and in Canada, while marriageitself will undergo an evolution.
Alongside the issue of same-sex marriage is that of gay and lesbian partnerswho wish to bring up child. Studies in the San Francisco Bay Area have suggested thatsuch households often function in quite traditional ways, with one partner making themoney and the other looking after the domestic arrangements.30 British researchers, onthe other hand, have underlined the transgressive nature of such families, in whichrelationships tend to be more open than among heterosexual marriages. Parents sharechildcare with others, living arrangements often go beyond those of the traditionalnuclear family, and monogamy is not necessarily the norm.31 The main question for the future will be not whether marriage is extended to same-sex couples, but howhomosexuals organize their social and sexual lives. Many gays and lesbians are veryhappy with the security offered by the nuclear family – with its established roles, itsdomesticity and the chance it offers to integrate into the local community – and enjoythe pleasures of monogamy. Others would rather return to the open relations of the1970s, when homosexuals constructed a web of relationships based on sex, love and friendship.
Towards the future
The sexual revolution of the 1960s brought with it great changes for gays and lesbians.The freedoms they attained did not undermine the basic structure of Western sexualideology that had emerged during the Enlightenment. This ideology stresses thebiological side of sexuality, and today includes discussion of sex drives, genes andhormones; sex should come naturally and need no cultivation. The distinctions drawnbetween men and women have not changed greatly since the 18th century, despite therecent re-examination of traditional gender roles. Dichotomies of sex and gender, socriticized during the sexual revolution, have largely remained unchallenged bytransgender and queer alternatives. For some, the rise of same-sex marriages and ofmonogamy denies a rich gay culture, in which love and sex were both combined andsuccessfully kept apart. The desire to come out of the closet and occupy the streets hasnot put an end to the straight norms of public life; sex remains a private affair, and thepolitical consequences of the sexual aspects of citizenship are not taken seriously.32 Theworld has changed, but the dominant heterosexist ideology has not. Gay space remainslimited to bedrooms, bars and the media.
The situation is ambiguous. On the one hand, a lively gay scene has developedin many major cities around the world, and the gay movement, founded on the notionof identity, has had some success, especially in Western Europe, South Africa,Australia or New Zealand than in other places. On the other hand, there are strong homophobic trends in various parts of the world, especially in Muslim countries and where various Christian denominations are vocal in their condemnation ofhomosexuality. The persecution of gays and lesbians continues, sometimes by stateinstitutions and often by private parties. Although it seems that the balance is tilting infavour of further rights for homosexuals, even some of the more positive developmentsof recent years are open to debate: the fact that same-sex couples in some parts of theworld can now marry, for instance, may mean that alternative forms of relationship andsexual behaviour become less tolerated. The future is open, and the direction in whichemancipation will lead us remains unclear.
I would to thank Robert Aldrich for his critical comments. Many of the people andevents cited in this chapter can be found easily on the internet, and I would refer readers to this source in the first instance; at the same time I have suggested booksand articles when they offer a broader perspective on particular issues.
1 Generalworks are Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon (eds.), Who’s Who inContemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day(London 2001); Didier Eribon (ed.), Dictionnaire des cultures gays et lesbiennes(Paris 2003); George E. Haggerty (ed.), Gay Histories and Cultures (New York2000); David Higgs (ed.), Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories since 1600 (NewYork 1999); Timothy Murphy (ed.), Reader’s Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies(Chicago 2000): Louis-Georges Tin (ed.), Dictionnaire de l’homophobie (Paris2003).
2 Martin Duberman, Stonewall (New York 1993); David Carter, Stonewall: The Riotsthat Sparked the Gay Revolution (New York 2004)
3 For the older homosexual bar culture, see Gert Hekma, De roze rand van donkerAmsterdam: De opkomst van een homoseksuele kroegcultuur 1930–1970(Amsterdam 1992); George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, andthe Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1944 (New York 1994).
4 Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony (London 1997) and The Burning Library(London 1994); Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned Historyof Radical Gay History (Boston, MA 2004).
5 Ronald Bayer and Gerald M. Oppenheimer, AIDS: Voices from the Epidemic Doctors(New York 2000).
6 General overviews include Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and thePolitics of Knowledge (Berkeley, CA 1996) and Douglas Crimp, Melancholia andMoralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (Cambridge, MA 2002).
7 Barry D. Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak and André Krouwel (eds.), The GlobalEmergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics (Philadelphia 1999); Peter Drucker (ed.), Different Rainbows (London 2000); Mark Blasius (ed.), Sexual Identities, Queer Politics (Princeton 2001); and for national histories, among other works, FrédéricMartel,
Le rose et le noir: Les homosexuels en France depuis 1968 (Paris 1996);David Rayside, On the Fringe: Gays and Lesbians in Politics (Ithaca, NY 1998),which discusses Britain, Canada and the US; John D’Emilio, William B. Turnerand Urvashi Vaid (eds.), Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and CivilRights (New York 2000); and Graham Willett, Living Out Loud: A History of Gayand Lesbian Activism in Australia (St Leonards, NSW 2000).
8 Frank van Gemert, ‘Chicken Kills Hawk: Gay Murders During the Eighties inAmsterdam’, Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 26, no. 4 (1999), pp. 149–74.
9 Gary D. Comstock, Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men (New York 1991);Gregory M. Herek and Kevin Berrill (eds.), Hate Crimes: Confronting ViolenceAgainst Lesbians and Gay Men (London 1992).
10 Ronald Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis(New York 1981).
11 Mark Jordan, The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism(Chicago 2000).
12 Randy P. Conner with David Haffield Sparks, Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions(New York 2004).
13 For a more positive interpretation of the Qur’an, see Omar Nahas, Islam enhomoseksualiteit (Amsterdam 2001).
14 See my ‘A Dutch Concert. Sex Education in Multicultural Schools’, in: Thamyris,vol. 7, no. 1–2 (2000), pp. 249–60, and ‘Imams and Homosexuality: A Post-GayDebate in The Netherlands’, Sexualities, vol. 5, no. 2 (2002), pp. 269–80.
15 Luiz R. Mott, Epidemic of Hate: Violations of the Human Rights of Gay Men,Lesbians, and Transvestites in Brazil (Salvador, Bahia, 1996).
16 See among others Michael Bronski, The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and theStruggle for Gay Freedom (New York 1998); Rayside, On the Fringe; and D’Emilio, Turner and Vaid, Creating Change.
17 Lothar Machtan, Hitlers Geheimnis. Das Doppelleben eines Diktators (Berlin 2001).
18 See the Adam, Duyvendak and Krouwel, The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics; Martel, Le rose et le noir; Rayside, On the Fringe; D’Emilio, Turner and Vaid, Creating Change; and the various anthologies listed in Note 1.19 Bruce Bawer, A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society (New York 1993).
20 Craig A. Rimmerman (ed.), Gay Rights, Military Wrongs: Political Perspectives on Lesbians and Gay in the Military (New York 1996).
21 Annemarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York 1996); Steven
Seidman, Difference Troubles: Queering Social Theory and Sexual Politics (Cambridge 1997).
22 Dangerous Bedfellows (eds.), Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of
Aids Activism (Boston, MA 1996); Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (New York 1999).
23 Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch and Robert Bauserman, ‘A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples’, in Psychological Bulletin, vol. 124, no. 1 (1998), pp 22–53.
24 Philip Jenkins, Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (New Haven, CT 1998).
25 Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (Minneapolis, MN 2002).
26 See F. E. Paul Luttikhuis, ‘Engeland: sociale zuivering’, NRC-Handelsblad, 10 August 2000, p. 5.
27 Gilbert Herdt and Andrew Boxer, Children of Horizons: How Gay and Lesbian Teens Are Leading a New Way Out of the Closet (Boston, MA 1993), p. 6.
28 Dennis Altman, Global Sex (Chicago 2001); Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin F.
31 Manalansan IV (eds.), Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Aftermath of Colonialism (New York 2002).
29 Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s (New York 1989).
30 Christopher Carrington, No Place Like Home: Relationships and Family Life Among Lesbians and Gay Men (Chicago 1999).
31 Jeffrey Weeks, Brian Heaphy and Catherine Donovan, Same-Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life Experiments (London 2001).
32 David Bell and John Binnie, The Sexual Citizen: Queer Politics and Beyond (Cambridge 2000); Ken Plummer, Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions andPublic Dialogues (Seattle 2003).