TV REVIEW : A Confusing ‘Why Am I Gay?’ on HBO

Psychologists fall into many camps--the clinical kind, the humanistic kind, and now, the filmmaking kind. The credentials of Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D., of Cornell University Medical Center, are doubtless why his hourlong quartet of mini-portraits of gays and lesbians, “Why Am I Gay?: Stories of Coming Out in America” (at 10:15 tonight on HBO; with repeats on Friday, Monday and Aug. 22, 25 and 31), is punctuated by statements from medical doctors and fellow psychologists arguing that gay identity is mostly bred in the bone.

The unanswerable title question is infinitely more provocative than the bland film Rosenberg has made. But then, asking about the source of gayness is less a concern here than allowing people to talk about their lives. This personal storytelling and self-reflection is especially fecund in gay culture right now, from the autobiographical workshops and performances at Santa Monica’s Highways performance space to the recent films of Marlon Riggs. Yet Rosenberg’s contribution to this trend is compromised in ways a rigorous filmmaker like Riggs would never allow.

You can feel, for instance, the desire to appeal to middle America--and not scare away HBO’s middle-American audience--oozing out of every frame. Thus, the representative from New York’s gay community is a cop named Edgar, the lesbian couple of Susanne and Judith are summery Texans running a gay and lesbian youth center and Christian fundamentalist Ira is a nice fellow trying to resist his gay tendencies and go heterosexual.

Only Michael, who’s a tad more militant about his gayness as a member of the all-male a cappella group the Flirtations, gives us a full account of his painful growing up--the teasing in the boys’ locker room, the fear of reprisals and his parents’ rejection--and his ongoing battle with full-blown AIDS. He never had the emotional and parental support provided kids at Susanne’s and Judith’s Houston center, which itself offers a watermark for how American attitudes toward homosexuality have grown more accepting in recent years.

But what are we to make of Ira’s seeming happiness with his anti-gayness, and the dismissal of his desires by psychologist June M. Reinisch, who says the Iras of the world can’t make themselves into something they’re not? What portion of this is self-denial, disturbed personality or pseudo-science can’t be known, and it points to the heart of the problems with Rosenberg’s attempt to humanize people so often demonized.