March 5, 2011.
The new issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review (March/April 2011) has a letter from me with a reply from the editor concerning articles on closeted gay authors from earlier eras.
I wonder if other people are frustrated when authors of the 1950s and ’60s, who were out, such as Joseph Hansen, have been ignored, while many literary publications keep having “tributes” to closeted English authors who did nothing to change things but merely hid and enjoyed life as hidden homosexuals—thus making lots of money and giving none of it to our cause.?
The other issue is that the “artistic” community keeps pushing movies and articles on a few hippy-era people who were homosexual and out but were “special” since they were weird and did outrageous things, personally and artistically.
I find it hard to believe that Allen Ginsberg and such people did more to make life better from our community than did those who worked in movement publications, such as Don Slater, Barbara Gittings, Barbara Grier, et al., who managed to affect the world without writing pornography or needing drugs to be creative.
And it is time to tell the world that the LGBT community is not limited to drag queens, which is apparently what sells, since Logo, the supposed LGBT network, can’t seem to find anything else of value in our community. I suggest they look up resources listed in Gayellow Pages and give some balance to their coverage, or else we should tell the advertisers they are wasting their money as no one watches 24 hours of repeat RuPaul.
