Bruce Bawer - Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society

Praise forA Place at the Table

COURAGEOUS AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING.

Margaret OBrien Steinfels, The New York Times Book Review

If there is one book about homosexuality and gay rights that everyone should read, it is probably this one.

John Fink, Chicago Tribune

The most significant book on gay politics and culture that Ive ever read.

Gregory King, communications director, Human Rights Campaign Fund

Powerful and important the blockbuster of the season.

Steven Petrow, The Advocate

Bawers well-reasoned, articulate arguments are of inestimable value.

Publishers Weekly

Challenging and compulsively readable tightly reasoned and responsible with a provocative viewpoint that has rarely, if ever, been so effectively in print.

Bob Summer, Lambda Book Report

COURAGEOUS.

Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

A quiet, dispassionate voice trying to be heard above the din.

John Heidenry, The New York Daily News

Bruce Bower brings cool reasoning to the heated battlefield of gay rights. Rigorous, eloquent and full of good sense, A Place at the Table is a timely arrival in a debate that needs more reason and less rancor.

Steve Murray, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Eloquent. This could be the crossover book many have been waiting forplain and sane talk about a complex issue [that] should be the starting point for all future debate.

Kirkus Reviews

Books by Bruce Bawer

The Middle Generation

The Contemporary Stylist

Diminishing Fictions

The Screenplays the Thing

The Aspect of Eternity

Coast to Coast

A Place at the Table

A Touchstone Book

Published by Simon & Schuster

New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore

Bruce Bawer

The Gay Individual in American Society

Bruce Bawer

TOUCHSTONE

Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1993 by Bruce Bawer

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.

First Touchstone Edition 1994

TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks
of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Designed by Karolina Harris

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bawer, Bruce, 1956

A place at the table : the gay individual in American society /
Bruce Bawer.

p. cm.

1. HomosexualityUnited States.

2. GaysUnited States.

3. Subculture.

I. Title.

HQ76.3.U5B39 1993

305.389664-dc20 93-5798

CIP

ISBN: 0-671-79533-3

eISBN: 978-1-4391-2848-0

ISBN: 978-0-6717-9533-7

0-671-89439-0 (pbk)

FOR CHRIS

Let us build an American home for the twenty-first century where everyone has a place at the table and not a single child is left behind.

President-elect Bill Clinton January 17,1993

This book is a reflection on the theme of homosexuality. I have written it because the current debate on homosexuality and gay rights has generated a lot more heat than light. Most of what is being said on the subject seems to me terribly wrong, and many of the people who are doing the loudest talking appear to have a vested interest in perpetuating discord and misunderstanding.

Because my sense of what it means to be gay derives largely from my own experience, this book is, in part, autobiographical. Furthermore, since it is essentially an attempt to correct the misperceptions that underlie certain widely held beliefs and oft-repeated arguments, it contains many quotations from recent magazine articles, newspaper op-eds, and television interviews in which those attitudes and arguments have been presented.

The books first section offers an overview of recent social and political developments relating to homosexuality and gay rights, and puts those developments in historical and moral perspective. The second section scrutinizes the positions of those who criticize homosexuality or gay rights; the third examines the gay subculture and its premises; the fourth considers the dilemma of the gay individual and his problematic relation to both the mainstream culture and the subculture.

What word to use? If to many gays homosexual sounds like a clinical diagnosis, to many heterosexuals gay sounds like a political statement. Simply for varietys sake, Ive chosen to use the two words interchangeably, both as nouns and adjectives. When speaking of homosexuality in pre-modern times, however, Im inclined to refrain from using the word gay, because it reflects a contemporary awareness of sexual identity that seems anachronistic when one is referring to, say, Socrates or Caravaggio or Richard the Lion-Hearted. I also tend to favor gay when discussing subculture-oriented individuals and homosexual when discussing individuals who are more mainstream-oriented. Ive chosen not to use the word queer, which is favored by some gay activists and academics but turns off almost everybody else, gay and straight.

Though much of this book will be seen to apply equally to gay men and women, a great deal of what I have to say will not strike many lesbians as being particularly relevant to their lives. This cant be helped. One reason is that there are, I think, innate differences between male and female sexuality, and consequently innate differences between male and female homosexuality; another reason is that for many lesbians the issue of homosexuality is tangled up with the issue of feminism, which is another ball game entirely. In any event, my emphasis on male homosexuality certainly shouldnt lead anyone to think that I dont feel lesbians also deserve places at the table.

Nor, in criticizing the monolithic aspects of the gay subculture and pointing out that the most easily identifiable gays are not representative of the homosexual population at large, do I intend to suggest that those particularly visible and identifiable gays are any less deserving than anyone else of respect and equal rights or to suggest that those who conform in one way or another to the subcultures prescriptions should be considered thereby to have forfeited their places at the table.

For their advice and moral support, I am grateful to several friends: David and Linda Attoe, Gloria and Will Brame, Stephanie Cowell, Rhoda Croft, Marge Danser, Tom DePietro and Dorothy Heyl, Dana and Mary Gioia, Lenny Hort and Laaren Brown, Brendan McEntee, Sally McGaughey, Carol Saltus, Judy White, and Harriet Zinnes. Thanks also go to these family members: Charlotte Davenport, Carol Bawer, Marsha and Aldo Greco, Ruth Cook, and Helen Sicora. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with an extraordinarily gracious and sensitive editor, Elaine Pfefferblit; with her delightful assistant, Laura Demanski; with a marvelous agent, Molly Friedrich; and with Seale Ballenger, to whom I am indebted for his valuable comments and suggestions. My greatest debt is to my companion, Chris Davenport. This book grew out of countless conversations that weve had over the last few years and is almost as much his as it is mine. Finally, I thank my parents, Ted and Nell Bawer, for their unwavering interest in this project and their envelopes full of clippings. More than anyone or anything else, their love and support have animated my hope in the ultimate triumph of reason over irrationality, acceptance over estrangement, love over loathing.