The fruits of our labor

We're so busy being successful that we hardly have time to be gay anymore. That's where Pride comes in.

by Dorie Clark

THIS JUNE MARKS the 31st anniversary of the Stonewall riot, the showdown outside a West Village bar between a ragtag bunch of homosexuals and the New York Police Department that inaugurated the modern gay-rights movement. Just as judges come back to the Constitution and ministers to the Bible, the gay community keeps coming back to the moment of Stonewall. We loosely commemorate it each summer as the first time we stood up for ourselves en masse.

For a community haunted by the question of masculinity -- too much? not enough? -- Stonewall was a triumphantly butch call to arms. The bar's very name evokes the military image of General Stonewall Jackson. We fought back against the police, who were unfairly targeting a gay establishment, and we won. We defeated the uniformed agents of oppression -- and, thanks to three decades of activism, we're now free to date anyone in a uniform, provided no one asks and no one tells. Pride celebrations -- marches, usually capped off with rallies featuring speakers, musicians, and street venders -- sprang up quickly after Stonewall. This year will be the 30th anniversary of Boston's first Pride march. These celebrations continue today for many of the same reasons they started. Visibility is a top concern. "There are actually people in this country who still think they don't know any gay people," says Meryl Cohn, author of Do What I Say: Ms. Behavior's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Etiquette (Houghton Mifflin, 1995). "The only gay people they see are on TV."

At the same time, Pride is a party -- and a safe haven. "It's one of the few times when you can be accepted in public, and you're truly not on display," says Eric Little, the owner of JR's Bar and Grill, a popular gay hangout in Washington, DC. It's a chance for people to realize they're not alone, an important revelation for the newly out. "It's just like feminism," says Jane Moyer, a human-resources consultant from San Francisco. "Lots of women go to school and take their first women's-studies class, and they think they've invented feminism. I did that -- I invented feminism in 1984, because nothing had ever happened before that, right? We have to keep doing Gay 101 because people keep coming out." The self-esteem boost was important to Toni Deann Bell of Malden, Massachusetts. "My first pride was last year, and I had just come out," Bell says. "It was a big unity party, and it made me feel good about who I am."

These parallel purposes of Pride -- to promote visibility and provide a good time -- inform the continuing debate over what Pride should look like. In 1965, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis picketed the State Department in Washington, DC, in suits and ties (the men) and skirts and dresses (the women); four years later, a scrappy band of drag queens, fags, and butch dykes took on the police at Stonewall. The faces are different, but the question lingers: should Pride be a time to present ourselves respectably to passers-by and TV viewers? Or should we take our one day a year of public gay space and be as randy as we want?

At the turn of the millennium, the gay movement has come a long way, but the gains are spread unevenly. "I'm sad you had to move up North to find happiness," says my 62-year-old mother of my flight from Jesse Helms country. Now I live in a region where, though we still can't get "married," beginning July 1 we can get close to it in Vermont. Massachusetts has sent two openly gay congressmen to Washington. All of New England save Maine prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, and the issue is on the ballot there this fall. "I'd love to have you live around here," my mother says, "but that means you'd have to live in Pinehurst, and there either wouldn't be that many gay people or they'd be in the closet. There are gains -- I can see them -- but in my own life, my daughter has to live 800 miles away in order to have a social life and feel comfortable."

For all its backwardness and homophobia, though, the South boasts extremely tight-knit gay communities: you're forced to stick together, because no one else understands. New England's problem, I'm discovering, is one of plenty. Gays are so well accepted by straight society that there's no reason to surround yourself with a band of fellow travelers. But the price of mainstream achievement is having to live in the mainstream. Trapped by the pressure to seem perfect so heterosexuals don't make unfavorable extrapolations, many successful gays are increasingly lonely. Whether this pressure is a self-inflicted remnant of internalized homophobia or a valid fear, it's evident that true equality isn't here yet. Pride is a once-a-year chance to reclaim what we've lost by living in the mainstream: the feeling of truly fitting in, and -- most important? -- the ability to find a date.

AS ACCEPTANCE for gays and lesbians trickles down, some hardy souls have begun moving into towns and neighborhoods long considered off-limits. Kerry Regan lives in South Boston, an Irish Catholic stronghold best known for its stand against school busing in the '70s, its refusal nowadays to let gay groups march in the St. Patrick's Day parade, and its title role in a Donnie Wahlberg gangster movie. "It's not exactly a gay mecca," Regan notes wryly, but she enjoys living there. Elliot Marks didn't hesitate to go suburban when he was offered a job at an investment bank in posh Stamford, Connecticut. "Stamford is rather dull," he says, "but I've been reasonably content here." His sexual orientation has never been an issue.

Being out in the workplace is also less of a barrier than ever. A number of major consulting firms have begun initiatives to recruit gays and lesbians. Kathy Levinson, an out lesbian who recently stepped down as president and chief operating officer of E*Trade, made headlines last August when she pledged $300,000 to fight an anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative in California. Regan, meanwhile, just completed her second year at Harvard Law School, and when she graduates next June, it will be with a six-figure salary offer in hand. "In terms of practicing law," she says, "I've had a lot more opportunities because I'm gay and out on my résumé."

But with the holy grail of societal acceptance within reach, many gay men and lesbians are grappling with new problems. "I feel like with straight people -- maybe this is my own problem -- I kind of candy-coat things," Regan says. "If I'm in a relationship and having problems, I don't want them to think that of course lesbian relationships are doomed. I don't want to worry about emblematizing things. I feel like I have something to prove around being normal, whereas with gay people, I can be flawed and human, just like anyone else."

Discrimination may have lessened over the years, but we're still a little gun-shy. Even Melissa Etheridge still addresses her love songs to a genderless "you." It gets depressing after a while, having to explain who Edmund White and Harvey Milk and Rita Mae Brown are. You realize you're different when straight people haven't even heard of your heroes. When my ex-girlfriend was first coming out, she watched the movie The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love 11 times. She kept a review of it from the newspaper in her underwear drawer and read it every morning as a talisman to get her through the day. How many heterosexuals have actually even seen it?

GAY-PRIDE CELEBRATIONS are the places we go to stock up and refuel our reserve of gay culture for the year. Attendance is massive because small-town gays make the pilgrimage, but also because big-city queers still find Pride useful and necessary. "There are so many gay people who don't do anything in the community except go to Pride," says Democratic activist Joe Kaplan. "It's become almost our tradition, our Christmas -- you want to try and carry that spirit from year to year." Many urbanites, like Jane Moyer, skipped April's Millennium March on Washington -- it was too far to travel, she was too busy at work, and she'd already marched on the Capitol in years past. But she refuses to miss her local Pride this month in San Francisco. Even in her heavily gay city, she still feels the need "to breathe gay air." She says, "I remember going to my first Pride march in 1987, and I realized I wasn't the only one like me in the world. . . . I've created a world where I'm safe and happy, but I still go back because it's a nice reminder."

Hearkening back to the '65 protest staged by the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, some see attending Pride as a civic duty of sorts. "I mostly go to be a number for a political statement," says Elliot Marks. "I think it's my responsibility to go so there are lots of gay people. If only one person went, it wouldn't be very meaningful." Joe Kaplan agrees. "No matter when you go," he says, "there are always going to be people who are there for the first time, and it's important to support them." He also hopes he can nudge his fellow homosexuals into a different form of civic participation: he'll be traipsing throughout New England this summer rallying support and recruiting volunteers for Al Gore. Other political and advocacy groups will also be working the crowds, from the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies in Washington for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and hate-crimes legislation, to the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians.

But I suspect that a greater number of marchers are hoping to make the adage "The personal is political" work both ways. They'll be looking for love at Pride. Or sex. Or both. In other words, the political is personal. Friends tell me they "can't wait!" for Pride this year so they can meet babes or pick up hot guys -- but then they quickly add, "That's off the record, of course." Eric Little gets angry when I bring this up. "I'm horrified at the thought that it's about people getting dates," he fumes. "Sexuality is not the only part of our lives, just as it's not for other people. You wouldn't expect people to go to a county fair to get dates or find sex partners. It's like a county fair for gay people."

But why the outrage? Perhaps it's because as we move up the career ladder, we have more to lose by being bawdy and not pulling punches. Trying to make our way in the mainstream, many gay men and lesbians put on the veneer of perfect, "candy-coated" lives. But finding love or romance or -- yes -- sex is an important part of gay life. The way we express sexual desire, after all, is what's caused all the trouble in the first place. And we remain skittish about expressing it because of the backlash that often ensues -- there's a reason Will's only same-sex kiss on Will and Grace has been a non-romantic political statement with his buddy Jack.

But as we spend more and more time with family and straight co-workers, we have fewer chances to meet Mr. or Ms. Right if we're not already partnered. Meryl Cohn, a/k/a advice columnist Ms. Behavior, should know. "A lot of the letters I get are about how hard it is to meet people," she says. "I've been doing it for nine years -- they say, I don't want to meet people in bars or I'm shy and I don't know how to meet people. The issues are the same." Pride -- which Cohn describes as "a very big party with a pool of prospective dates" -- is one of the chances that remain.

Like a lot of little girls, I used to daydream about my wedding. I shunted this aside when I came out, discouraged by the pre-Vermont legal impracticalities and the apoplectic angst it produced in many heterosexuals. But at the Millennium March on Washington, 3000 gay couples tied the knot in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and in other cities, couples holding signs that tout the longevity of their relationships draw deafening cheers at Pride events. These celebrations are places where we can reconnect with the most human of impulses: to find a soul mate. "I know many, many people who have found long-term romance because of Pride," says Andre Davis of the Boston Pride Committee. "It's an excellent opportunity to meet your future husband or wife." Or at least make a stab at it.

Several years ago, I brought my mom along to a Pride march in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Winston-Salem was, incidentally, where she got her hair done, so we split up in the morning: she went off to the hairdresser, and I did a few slogan-chanting circumnavigations of downtown. We had a plan to meet up at the merchandise tent. Mom got out of her appointment a few minutes early, so she started browsing. "I was going to buy something at one of the booths," Mom recounts. "It was a T-shirt that said BAD GIRLS HAVE MORE FUN. I thought it was cute and wanted to buy it. It wasn't necessarily a gay thing, but something I thought would be fun to wear to the gym. I was waiting to be helped, and the clerk assumed that I was with the woman standing next to me. I kept waiting, so finally she asked if I was with the other woman, and I said no. She asked, `Are you single?' I said, `No, I've already been spoken for,' and she said, `All the good ones are taken!' " Mom adds, "It didn't matter that she thought I was gay. I just liked it that she thought I was one of the good ones that was taken!"

Of course, some people's flirtatious intentions are more ephemeral -- and more controversial. One woman who requested anonymity described a colorful post-Pride party: "It would have been very easy for me to have sex with a woman that night. It makes you feel good to have all these beautiful women coming up to you, whether you take the proposition or not." On the heels of a scandal in which a right-wing activist surreptitiously (thus, illegally) taped the proceedings of a sexuality workshop for teenagers held at Tufts University and disseminated the contents as a way to smear gay-youth programs, no one wants to talk about queer sex. Protections against job discrimination? Fine. But the mere mention of "gay" and "sex" in the same sentence is still off-putting to many straight people, and embarrassing to gays who'd like to keep up our image -- or at least keep us out of trouble.

DAVIS ADMITS that sometimes "people get a little carried away" in the fervor of Pride. Three years ago in Boston, a ruckus of monumental proportions ensued after the parade featured a float on which sex acts were simulated. Davis is adamant that state and city laws regarding nudity, public decency, and the like will be followed closely this year, but earlier lapses have caused some observers to wonder whether Pride marches are simply a juvenile vestige of the days before the movement had gained credibility. Others, of course, insist that Pride isn't worth having if free expression is tempered.

But Pride will continue -- in fact, it's more indispensable than ever for a gay community being beckoned into the mainstream. It's important and fun to share the culture that feels like home, the world where people get excited at Minnie Bruce Pratt sightings or know the complete soundtrack to Evita. It's a chance to relax and stop watching people's reactions every time you use a personal pronoun. But it's also an annual state-of-the-movement event, a snapshot of where gay America is at the cusp of a new millennium.

And that is: without a date. Gay America may not want to go on the record, but I am not alone: I am going to Pride in hopes of meeting a babe. We've come a long way from Stonewall, but we're certainly not liberated yet -- not when it's hard simply to talk about queer sexuality for fear of offending our straight brethren. And as we spend more time in straight culture, it's definitely harder to find cute, intelligent gay people to date. Perhaps what the rowdy topless women and sexual-act simulators are trying to show us is a slightly misbegotten vision of full equality. We won't have to be perfect little gay people. We can be sexy, and we can be real.

Dorie Clark is liaison to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities for Somerville mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay. She can be reached at DorieClark@aol.com.