It’s Out & Out Unfair

Should gay men embrace stereotypes about themselves? According to some gay writers and activists, the answer is yes.

The new movie “In & Out,” (“Chance Remark Fuels Satirical ‘In & Out,’ ” Calendar, Sept. 19) embraces what might appear to be fairly benign stereotypes about homosexuality. Paul Rudnick, the movie’s openly gay screenwriter, is leading the charge in reassuring heterosexuals that, yes, limp-wristed, poetry-reading diva-watchers with good hygiene habits are homosexual, even if they don’t know it themselves. According to Rudnick, even heterosexuals catch on faster to “gayness” than some gay men. While “In & Out” is a lot of fun, a set of uniformly good comic performances obscure the fact that what Rudnick is doing should trouble heterosexuals at least as much as it should trouble gay men.

These stereotypes reinforce the idea that there are homosexual characteristics. Consequently, heterosexuals have to go out of their way to avoid them. This is one of the very reasons that heterosexual men are so nervous about homosexuality. It is not that they are afraid of homosexuals so much as that they are afraid of being thought of as homosexual.The episode of “Seinfeld,” where Jerry is “outed,” even though, as he implores, “I was never in!,” illustrates how heterosexual men have to become hyper-conscious of what constitutes “masculinity” because of the existence of these stereotypes.

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More ruinously, these gay stereotypes intensify the already marginalized position of the arts in our culture by compelling teenage boys in particular to have to reject them. Rather than the all-embracing vision of poetry (to take one example) in the Robin Williams film “Dead Poets Society,” a movie like “In & Out” sends the loud and clear message that gay men have planted their flag in poetry’s territory and heterosexual men (and boys in particular) who venture there had best think hard about what their real interest is.

Rudnick’s entertainment, though, endorses only nonsexual stereotypes about male homosexuality. In contrast, writers like Daniel Harris and Richard Goldstein, and emerging activist groups like New York’s Sex Panic, are out (you should pardon the expression) to reinforce more destructive stereotypes that have to do with gay sex.

According to them, everything the Religious Right is afraid of about homosexual sex is true--and so what? In a show of radical defiance of the social mores, Sex Panic asserts that gay sex should be subject to no law, policy or social sanction. The Sex Panic crowd says that there is a positive good in the liberty to have sex in public toilets, glass elevators and just about any other space that will accommodate two or more human bodies.

This is an extreme response to those of us who argue that the preoccupation with gay sexual activity distorts every other aspect of our lives in a way that no heterosexual has experienced. We are the sum total of our sexuality and seemingly nothing else. This is unfair.

But the new gay fascination with gay stereotypes suffers from the same internal illogic that was inherent in the heterosexual fascination with gay stereotypes--the corrosive effects of real life. For most of us who are gay, it’s just too hard to live up (or down) to the cliches. None of us is “typically” gay; all we can do is answer for our own lives. For me, Barbra Streisand is a great singer, but my loyalties went early to the Beach Boys and Elton John. My wrists are no limper than anyone’s, my hygiene passes muster but no more, and I’d just as soon leave sex in public to the Hugh Grants of the world who at least have the advantage of being cute and thus forgiven if they get caught.

The problem for the new stereotypers is that there’s no way to kick us nonconformists out. No membership can be revoked, no card confiscated. And the corollary for heterosexuals is also true--limp wrists do not a gay man make.

The irony is that the fate of the new stereotypers rests with their colleagues in arms, the old stereotypers. All that differs is the attitude toward the stereotype, not what the stereotype is. In this, Harris, Goldstein and Rudnick have far more in common with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Pat Buchanan than they do with mainstream lesbians and gay men like Ellen DeGeneres, U.S. Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) or state Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica).

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Perhaps “In & Out” and the Sex Panickers are the last gasps of a dying regime, comic because they are outdated. That would certainly be the good news in “In & Out’s” success. But only because it would also signal the death of the principles underlying military discrimination and the uninformed pronouncements of the 700 Club.

Neither the right nor the left can have it both ways. Whether you like them or hate them, stereotypes are stereotypes, and have to rise or fall together.

Speaking for myself, I deeply hope they fall. Otherwise I’ll have to ask Kevin Kline to help me with my wrists.