An ABC show whose lead actor used an anti-gay slur last year has won an award from an organisation that monitors depictions of gaySeand lesbians in the media.

Auth: Bruce Bawer,
Pub: Touchstone / Simon & Shuster
The title is a quotation from a speech of Bill Clinton’s, made when he was looking to be President of the USA, the “table” being a homely representation of American society. The allusion leads to some strained images in this book. Bawer claims that Gays should sit at the table, as a matter of course: we belong there. One’s instinct is to wonder if a working-class black lesbian in Missouri “belongs” at the table in same way as Bawer. But that’s too easy: let’s try an upper middle class sophisticated Manhattanite, working in a media/arts environment (like Mr Bawer and his “companion” Christopher), who happened to be Jewish and lesbian. Would she be sure of a welcome at this metaphorical table?
Bruce Bawer iSean Anglo-Catholic professional, virtually married (and best wishes to him), youngish, healthy man who has moved all the way from a bourgeois bit of the Bronx to Manhattan. He dutifully refers to lesbians two or three times in this 251-page tract, but appears to spend most of his time in the company of (ostensibly) heterosexual, or other Gay, men. He is a happy (or at least comfortable) member of an identifiable Gay sub-culture. He claims that he, and the other “non-strident” types are the “mainstream.” – unlike the Gay sub-culture. The latter consists of eyerything distasteful, from leftist Gay political acthists to effeminate men, leather types, bar- and bath-house owners. That there are enormous contradictions between and amongst these groups does not deter him. By the end of the book, admittedly, his attitudes are more muffled and complex.
Bawer criticises elements of public, confrontational politics. and seems to be claiming that it is always counter-productive. (Here again he pulls his punches towards the end of the text. In some of the cases he cites, it might have been wiser to have taken a different tack; but, by the same token, he seems not to have engaged in the lobbying/letter-writing/petition gathering and signing end of Gay (or any other) politics. These organisations which he has the effrontery to sneer at, almost certainly (as well as Queer Nation, Act-Up, ILoo etc) also write letters to the Gay and non-Gay press, the Mayor, the President – you name it (the Pope?).
If this book were a piece of music, it would be described as ‘through composed,’ meaning the composer started at the beginning and continued steadily to the end. (This may sound silly, but lots of music – and writing – is made up of bitSeand bobs bundled together by authorial bailer-twine). It seems to have been something of a journey of self-discovery: Bruce Bawer huffSeand puffs about the Gay sub-culture from the very start. He’s still at it by the end of the book, where he claims that he and his friends are embarrassed by (and ashamed of) the Pride demonstration. (One gets the impression that he thinks that that stooshie outside a certain low-life bar in the Village (Greenwich, not Linfield) on June 28, 1969, and subsequent nights, would be best forgotten.
Mr Bawer has a pitch from where he watches the Pride march. He duly notes his distaste for drag queens (and drag kings, these days, probably), the leather ladies of both genders (the only consistently polite people on any Gay scene), and NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association). Of the latter, he appears to be as contemptuous of their advanced year (and the smallness of their contingent) as of their sexuality.
He does not note the lesbian and gay parents, PFLAG (ParentSeand Friends of fairy folk), SAGE (elder fairies), the military veteranSeand polis, the enormous ethnic diversity, mar shampla: handsome Portuguese chaps in kilts, the sheer – well – gaiety of the whole proceedings. Does Bruce actually want platoons of chapSeand chap-esses in drab ‘business suits’ walking along the Great White Way? Surely not – has he missed the carnivalesque buzz and good cheer? Given his critique, has he even heard of New Orleans? Mardi Gras? How about St Patrick’s Day in his native city – it is hardly a model of religious sobriety, in any sense ofthe terms.
Bruce is also in awe of the products of Ivy League colleges. He recounts conversations with fellow Tory intellectuals, and seems shocked, still, at their anti-Gay bigotry. If the person speaking had been a longshoreman or a machinist, and not a “professor of Philosophy at Harvard” he’d have spotted it on the instant. It is page 113 before he uses the word ‘bigot’ to refer to William J Buckley (a nasty bit of work). Ethan Morrden, in Christopher Street magazine, once wondered why all of Buckley’s Conservative Party faction were camp and/or (as he put it) ‘eunuchoid.’ That they were, to a man, ‘fruits in suits’ was generally understood.
As a lapsed Stalinist, I could take great exception to, probably, most of this book. When Bruce produces yet another exasperated, elementary school teacher put-down of the activists, one tends to think: “Well, what were you doing, mate?” But that’s too easy. This book is worth reading, aSean indication of what an intelligent, compassionate person has been forced by circumstance to think about his position in society. He is a privileged person, but also a member of a hated minority (especially hated by those whose political and social views he shares).
The circumstances in question include the deep-entryism into the Republican Party by fundamentalist, creationist fanatics. Some of these want to make the Holiness Code in Leviticus the law of the land. The dreadful effects of Reagan-omics, which helped make America’s AIDS problem into a genocidal disaster, and the New World Order, under which America has no countervailing power to keep her in check, are also part of the circumstances.
Bruce will (probably) not be joining Act-Up actions for a while yet. But maybe by 1999 he and Christopher, in their whistle’n’ flutes, will stride manfully, possibly even hand in hand, behind a tastefully appliqued banner in the Big Apple’s Pride.
A Place At The Table was written for Bruce Bawer’s fellow conservatives: they won’t read it. But it is required reading for all Gay people. Bruce can’t bring himself to write it, but he implicitly accepts (well before the end of his book) that the acthists/liberationists got it right.
[Anonymous]

This article was written in March 2006 by PA Mag Lochlainn for the magazine ‘ICON’ (Northern Ireland’s Gay Publication)
We in the LGBT community of Northern Ireland are engaged, willingly or not, in a perpetual struggle for our rights. American homophobes claim that “the gay lobby” seeks special rights: in fact, it is they who already have such rights, with their huge stake in press, radio and television worldwide, their unfettered access to schools where they persist in teaching lies about uSeand even the presumption that ‘any homphobe wearing a white collar must be more truthful than me – because I wear no such uniform’.
I pray that ICON will shine the light of truth above this tide of mis-information.
No-one has so far discovered any evidence that children are born homophobic (although there is some fascinating work from nursery classes that seem to show boys excluding the child who later turns out to be gay), and it is utter nonsense to talk about being born a Christian or a fundamentalist.
It is quite clear taht children are taught what to expect from boySeand girls, or from PortestantSeand Catholics. There is no room in this cosy world for little lesbians or gay boys. You have only to read the “problem pages” or the agony aunts to see the panic when Junior prefers pink, or Jane plays with tractors.
Strangely enough, we do appear to be born lesbian or gay. Wolfenden reported (back in the 1950s!) that children exhibited signs of minority sexuality from the earliest age which researchers could measure. As teenagers, all too many of us recall our frantic efforts to conform to heterosexuality. I never know whether to snigger or sob when I hear some (usually self-appointed) expert proclaiming that we are “sodomites” only because we deliberately chose to make ourselves so!
The struggle to present the truth about our community, in the teeth of such powerful propaganda, and is a long and arduous one. Nevertheless, many of us engage in this struggle, simply because we have no alternative. Never forget the wisdom of the slogan “Silence = Death“.
We can (and often do) disagree about what the wisest course of action is in this or that situation. What we must not do is to allow ourselves to be split into factions, which our enemies can then play of against one another. Only when united, can we stand: once divided, we shall fall. Let us by all means debate and discuss within our own groupSeand publications the way to tackle our many enemies. Our movement has a good record already of working through consensus: that is the only way forward.

Mission Statement: “upstart publishing” is a Gay community publication which provides support across all ages, all social levels, all genders, all ethnic communitieSeand all faiths.

 

In 1982, Se n McGouran, and David (Terry) McFarlane took over as the editors of NIGRA (the Northern Ireland Gay rights Association)’s publication Gay Star, following in the foot steps of previous editor Peter Brooke and Brian Gilmore(who had produced a photocopied update’ for Belfast GLF, and edited NIGRA NewSeand Northern Gay). It was felt that the community had already outgrown the need for a news bulletin. They and many other creative Gay women and men in out (then) catchment area needed an outlet for their talents. These included memoirs, articles about every possible aspect of Gay life from leather’ to nudity to religion (and irreligion). There was much poetry, and a solid input over years of cartoonSeand illustrations, articles to free standing and distinguished graphic material.

 

 

A fair number of contributors rode their favoured hobbyhorses in both Gay Star and upstart, from the general superiority of human culture anywhere on mainland Europe to those of the Islands of the North Atlantic (in particular Ulster’) to the total lack of anything like a Gay culture’. There was also nudism and leather’ (and drag’), Thomas Mann’s sexuality, (and that of Roger Casement), the singer-songwriter Diamanda Gallas (and the English poet John Gallas) and Benjamin Britten.

 

 

Our catchment area’ broadened out from the Six Counties of Northern Ireland to include contributors from all of Ireland, all of the British Isles, and as far afield as Denmark and all over the USA.

 

The two journals covered all the trialSeand tribulations of the Gay community (everywhere, in so far as it was possible) and the many and various campaigns of NIGRA. These ranged from the administering Jeff Dudgeon’s case at the European Court of Human Rights which led to Thatcher’s government having to extend the relevant elements of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act to the region. This was described by NIGRA at the time as inherently homophobic but it led to a position where all Gay people in the UK State were equally oppressed. (We could have campaigned together to demand equal citizenship, NIGRA organised a conference in 1984, to attempt to get an all-UK organisation off the ground but it failed in that respect). The Dudgeon Case’ had been used frequently in the past, in the Supreme Courts of Columbia and Romania, and in national assemblies as far apart as Azerbaijan and

Barbados.

 

Other campaigns included many clashes with the police, they were resolved, – we thought – by the RUC’s response to a number of phenomena. One was NIGRA’s monitoring of the law courtSeand visits to RUC barracks which had been involved in purges’ of men engaged in sex in the open or in public conveniences. Most of the Superintendent’s in charge of the stations were amenable to plain talk. We told them that the response was often hugely out of proportion to the crimes committed. That the men arrested could take their own lives (and this has become more prevalent, by the objects of moral cleansing’ by paramilitaries). And that families break up and divorce can ensue from what is usually very low level law breaking.

 

 

They in every single case told us that any such arrests were due to complaints from the public. This destroyed a long-cherished Gay urban myth’ which the police go out and arrest people in cottages’ and cruising areas, to boost their arrest targets.

Germane to the above were two campaigns, one on the murder, in July 1979, of Anthony McCleave, which the police claimed was not a gay-bashing killing. That was probably to spare’ the family the shame’ of owning up to Tony being queer. The family, which had lost a brother in the early 1970s, in a sectarian assassination, were determined that the case remain open’, even though there was little hope that the killer, or killers would ever be caught.

 

 

The other campaign had to do with the use of the Portsmouth Defence’ (or homosexual panic defense’) whereby men can plead that they killed other men because they allegedly made sexual advances to them. These killings were (and are) usually appallingly violent and, despite the sheer horror of being the objects of sexual advances by another male theft plays a part in many such killings. NIGRA fought mightily to get this matter onto the agenda of the Gay movement and it was taken up by many in the legal profession. The Portsmouth Defence’ is for all practical purposes a dead letter not just in the

UK but in all common law’ countries. (This is also due to the great change in the legal perception of Gay women and men women were victims of this same legal perversion.)

 

 

The RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary now the Police Service of Northern Ireland-PSNI) attended the major conference in

Manchesterin 1995, ‘Policing Diversity, An agenda for change’. In 1997 NIGRA commenced a series of seminars for students at the police college in Carnerville. For some reason the RUC unilaterally changed this arrangement, in 1999. The PSNI made a series of disastrous decisions about policing male sexual activity in various venues all over the region in 2006. This led, like all the other purges in the past, to suicides, family break-ups, men losing their jobs and social difficulties for their spouseSeand children. A sinister aspect of this particular crack down’ was the involvement of the UVF in the harassment of the men accused of very low level crimes. The behaviour of the Belfast Telegraph, the region’s largest selling journal was as bad, if not worse, than it has been for the past twenty years. The editor appeared to be condoning the vigilantism of a quasi-criminal paramilitary organisation, which has not surrendered up one bullet, twelve years after the original ceasefires’.

 

 

The journalistic queer-bashing of the Telegraph (aka Bellylaugh) and its stable mate Sunday Life has been the object of vigorous campaigning by NIGRA. This included pasting up a Wanted’ poster about a particular journalist in 1995. An article about this matter was published in Fortnight, and the journalist in question, in an interview in the Irish News, said that the person he was persecuting would have been treated better if he had played ball’. The Belfast Telegraph group had accused NIGRA of attacking press freedom, with a handful of yellow A3 posters! Yet here was the perpetrator of a publicity stunt that could well have ended in at least one suicide glorying in his power over other’s lives. The other papers are editorially liberal in regard to Gay women and men (but the Irish News still refuses to publish Cara-Friend’s advertisements), the New Letter has taken a liberal line since the early 1970s. The Sunday World and the now defunct Sunday News tried to outdo each other in tabloid’ silliness, but essentially did little harm. But NIGRA took the decision not to facilitate them for a number of years in the 1980s.

 

 

The ban’ was lifted when the Gay Pride festival got off the ground in 1991. The LGBT Pride is going from strength to strength (and has been a free-standing organisation since 2000). The police presented themselves for questioning in 1998, and there were a number of debates on ethics involving people as diverse as Brian McClinton of the Ulster Humanist Association, Michael Harnack an American queer Catholic’, and Bishop Pat Buckley. In 1999 UTV (

Ulster television) made a half hour programme on LGBT Pride. 1999 was also the year a Pride Reception was held in Belfast‘s City Hall. This video (donated by the makers*) was shown at the InterPride (the international organisation for LGBT Prides) held in Glasgow that year. Delegates from Mexico were particularly impressed by the fact that a bishop graced our Pride, and by the City Hall Reception. (Ours is a genuinely supranational movement this is not the first time a tiny region like NornIrl’ has affected the general movement in other parts of the world. A showing of a half hour video has almost certainly spurred those delegates on to more ambitious things.)

 

 

upstart

 

This publication was started in 1984 for a number of reasons GS was a quarterly and a regular news sheet was necessary for a number of reasons. NIGRA held its InterInsular Conference to attempt to get an all-UK Gay law reform movement off the ground, and tell our friendSeand allies in the Republic {of Ireland} about the proposed purge of workers by the Eastern Health and Social Services Board (one of the biggest employers in the region) which might have become relevant to them (fortunately it has not but many activists in the Republic realised in listening to Lawrence Pimley of NIPSA (the NI Public Service Alliance), who addressed the Conference, that they had solid allies in the trade union movement. This iSeanother example of cross-fertilisation within our movement the

UK‘ aspect to the event was not a success.

 

 

There was also a very widespread purge by the police all over the region we printed a guide to what not to do while in police custody. This was re-printed three times over the next twenty yearSeand produced as a bust card’ in A1 fold over format. As demonstrated in 2006, even the most widespread and regular activity is not always successful. 1984 was also the year the NI AIDS Helpline was set up after a conference in the Carpenter Club. It used the Cara-Friend men’s line for most of the year, until the Helpline got its own premises.

 

 

The publication had a number of titles, Belfast Gay News, update (which developed into a printed sheet with a rather elegant masthead designed by Gary Ho. upstart was a serendipitous slip of the tongue by a reader it seemed very apt at a time when the people producing it were out of office’ and could write what they liked. This is what we hope to do with this e-zine’

 

 

(part II of this article to follow soon, covering areas about our sponsers, links to other publications etc.)