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Pen Points
Letters to Gay Today |
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Pariah and Parvenu, Revisited: An Open Letter to Richard Goldstein Richard,
Over the years I've admired many of your articles, and have been glad to quote some fine writing of yours. So your current article in The Advocate [2/15/00] is puzzling. At some points we may have a misunderstanding, and at others we may well have disagreements.
Hundreds of progressive and radical folks of many sexual persuasions signed on to the statement against the Millennium March on Washington [MMOW] which was published by the Ad Hoc Committee for An Open Process. Personally, I never had any illusions about derailing that train—moreover, if people pay for the tickets, they have a right to ride. But I was in thorough agreement with the essential statement, which concentrated on the top-down corporate structure of the whole event, and which noted that the MMOW broke from a tradition of more democratic consultation from the ground up.
The current MMOW makes only a pretence of democracy—like every other corporation reforming itself today, the MMOW has even chosen "representatives from every community" and done bogus internet surveys. Their methology was not worth a damn, and HRC & Co. have not yet truly mastered the fine art of tokenism. What is at stake here is not a matter of taste. This is a definite move to the right of NGLTF (itself abysmally compromised by playing dead for New Democrats. And not only in my opinion.) Like a law of nature, business folks are much more interested in this march as a capital investment than they were in previous marches. I'm not surprised, and said as much to Leslie Cagan, Barbara Smith, Bill Dobbs, and many other folks who signed the Ad Hoc statement. As a reminder of history and general principle, that statement served well enough.
The Ad Hoc Committee's statement was not "a typical movement hissy fit," which is your summary judgement of criticism against this march. You took care to be so general that anything so specifically oppositional as the Ad Hoc Committee went unmentioned. The issue here is not vanity but history: You could not be more mistaken about the real story. Malcolm Lazin, for example, is a local Philadelphia character you cannot know as well as we do-- over the years, he has seized every chance to turn a movement into a niche market. Now Lazin has executive authority with the MMOW. Generalizations about "infighting" (the editorial preface I assume you did not write) and your own later mention of "backbiting" precisely misses the point. The MMOW will happen, it will be a party, it will feature speakers even more boring than some we gathered earlier on the left, it will put a smiling face on pharmaceutical and liquor companies, and it will, of course (eternally) "get out the vote" for bipartisan bigots—including many who voted effectively for escalating military purges and for one of the most discriminatory pieces of legislation in years, the Defense of Marriage Act. Signed under cover of darkness by a Democratic President who can rely on our national organizations to pacify queer voters. None of this is surprising. This is, however, a legitimate source of public dissension and debate, a parting of the ways not only strategically but morally. Yes, I'm on the record stating that self-respecting queers do not "owe" our votes to a Democratic Coalition of that sort. That much dissent is not so queer. Many Americans do not vote for those people. They are not our leaders. We are not their followers. (At just this point there are usually cries of distress: What about Weimar Germany? What about the Supreme Court? Yes, what about them? Loyal Democrats and I do not chart the same course as we sail over these deep waters.) You mention gay radicals in general who value diversity but "rail against a march that features prayer." Atheists and agnostics do not get equal time at such events, so well we might rail. But your generalization was an evasion and a cheap shot. You know the issues have never been that simple, so I will attribute that sentence to ... what? Too much caffeine, too little sleep? Your reference to "backbiting" in the context of the GLF / GAA split is a piece of revisionist dumbing down that should make you ashamed. No movement consists uniformly of saints, nor even of Rosa Luxemburgs, but the issues then and now are irreducibly political. The background static of personality clashes will always be with us. Editors and many readers at The Advocate hardly need encouragement to reduce political disagreements to catfights. About Savage's careerism we agree, and substantially about Kramer, Rotello, and Signorile as well. If you lumped Rotello and Signorile with Bawer, that's worth reconsideration but not a confession of sin. You will recall that a number of queer radicals and writers took care at the height of those earlier polemics to distinguish the team spirit between Rotello and Signorile, and the team spirit between Bawer and Sullivan. Among other distinctions. What prompts you at this moment to write, "I'd forgotten that Rotello and Signorile were as motivated as I by a profound desire to save lives"? That surely begs all the pertinent questions then and now. You will recall that Rotello and Signorile were content to portray Sex Panic! as a nihilist organization, a notion eagerly taken up by certain journalists in The Advocate and even in The New York Times. Why not be so specific, Richard? At the level of social and medical "intervention," there was deep disagreement—but at an even deeper level, the disagreement then and now concerns the whole realm of ethics and the erotic. Not, indeed, about the value of gay lives, but about what makes life worth living—including, for some folks, risky sex. You will recall that Rotello and Signorile portrayed themselves as fearless dissidents, "enemies of the people", because they dared to meet with officials of the Giuliani administration in order to police gay sexual venues. Now, that was an act of heroism! In the summer of 1995 they helped organize Gay and Lesbian HIV Prevention Activists (GALHPA), whose documented actions they can defend in their own words to this day. Would they do so? Would you do so? The question is not entirely rhetorical: If they do not disown and regret such actions, what reason do we have to believe they or their admirers will not repeat them? We are talking about recent history here, not the Norman Invasion or the Punic Wars.
You speak for yourself. I find those sentiments no better than most any Unitarian sermon, no better than the windy ecumenical positions of the National Council of Churches. I am bound to Bruce Bawer, Andrew Sullivan, Larry Kramer, Gabriel Rotello, Dan Savage, and Camille Paglia by political necessities that are mostly negative. Not bound to them by what we have in common, but by how we have been legally and culturally set apart. And even on this last crucial point, disagreement runs very deep. It is a very old disagreement—ancient, in fact—and runs as deep as the distinction between parvenu and pariah that was noted by a fine company of dissident Jews, most notably Bernard Lazare and Hannah Arendt. In a more old-fashioned and prophetic spirit, the distinction between social climbers with bright ideas and others with fewer illusions was drawn by Asher Ginzburg, using the name "Ahad Ha'Am", or One of the People. A wisely chosen pen name, because it erases neither personal identity nor political solidarity. Yes, "we" queers of various sexual persuasions—and I do insist on the pariah term here—are commonly objects of popular suspicion and now of federal discrimination in the most intimate aspects of our lives. As Arendt noted in earlier debates about racist Jim Crow marriage laws, the right to choose home and kinship is even more fundamental to human rights than the strictly political right to vote. Sullivan quoted Arendt with respect on this very issue in more recent debates about gay marriage, but of course he failed to appreciate her real dissent. As Arendt never tired of insisting, if you are attacked as a Jew, you fight back as a Jew—you defend human rights in particular or they do not exist "universally" at all. Sullivan has no use for such specificity, nor does The New York Times Magazine, where he regularly genuflects before the idol of Humanity in General. Here, too, Are ndt stated plainly that she did not love "the people" or any other such abstraction, but only her friends and loved ones. A better defender of democracy than Sullivan, she also throws her own light on issues now dividing our own sexual and social communities. What binds me to other pariahs is certainly our common humanity -- or in the usual vulgarization of Bill Clinton, "our DNA" -- but not necessarily taste, nor ethics, nor politics, nor even any assurance of mutual solidarity. We owe respect not only to the witless punditry of Bruce Bawer, but also to the cynical sensationalism of Camille Paglia? Only in the pages of The Advocate would any serious writer drop such a curtsey, only in that dismal court of opinion would this pass as good manners. You knew better once, and if you repent of any past sins, why include common sense among them? The humanity of such people is not in question, except indeed by our common enemies. Solidarity among pariahs is an open question, but between pariahs and parvenus it is very questionable. Among those you name, all without exception have built their careers on denying reality, each in their own way. The rewards they reap for doing so, for being the approved ambassadors in literary and political courts, make nonsense of your claim: "If they cannot flourish, neither can I." Oh, but they do flourish, like very expensive orchids in a particularly stifling greenhouse. Bernard Lazare, writing in the midst of anti-semitic campaigns in France at the end of the nineteenth century, speaks more nearly and dearly to me than any of those persons you name among "my people." His words are not consoling, only clarifying—over all the century between himself and ourselves: "I am a Jew and I know nothing about the Jews. Henceforth I am a pariah, and I know not out of what elements to rebuild myself a dignity and a personality. I must learn who I am and why I am hated, and that which I can be."
Scott Tucker
Me thinks after posing 'nude' and 'converting' to fanaticism, while hustling mugs and tee-shirts, that every pathological phone call she gets from the 'normals', unable to make any decisions in their desperate lives, would give "Dr. Whora" an orgasm, she can't get otherwise. So she attacks us, missing what she fears in herself, while cashing-in on her 'physiology' degree everyone thinks is expertise in psychobabble, not to mention being guilty as 'sin' itself. Of course, "Dr.Whora", the "Shlepper" is desperately unhappy that America isn't listening nor is it changing from its exciting ways and means. So, she suffers all the way to the bank, while we are her 'special' tool to attack. Or is it all an 'act'? Thankfully, she is being attacked by all this 'perversion' on so many fronts, which is fodder for her show, but shows how desperate this 'loser' really is, or is it just another scam she flays with for entertainment purposes? Vermont will add to our evolution and "Dr. Whora" will wallow in frustration, being unable to change the inevitable. How delicious to see her struggle so, and if she really is performing, she deserves our Oral Majority 'golden finger' award for deceptions beyond comprehension. I always knew that posing 'nude' would make one find 'religion' in the first place. "Keep humping Dr. Whora", we appreciate your keeping us in the limelight so that our support system grows from your intolerance and phoniness, and we too prosper in self-worth and identity, as role-models to the alternative to your dishonesty.
Yours Faithfully,
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Urvashi Vaid 
Camille Paglia 
Dr. Whora ... um, Dr. Laura 
© 1997-2000 BEI