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Post subject: Advocate Heroes
 Posted: Aug 02, 2007 - 05:28 PM
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Joined: Sep 06, 2006
Posts: 1754
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More fun with lists.
Quote:
For our 40th anniversary issue, The Advocate is honoring 40 gay heroes...and we need your help.
The list below features 100 of the most notable gay people from the last four decades—politicians, artists, activists, and more. We're asking you to help us rank them by voting for the people you feel have made the most significant impact. You can select up to 40 names. We will determine rankings based on your votes plus editors' input, and the top 40 heroes will be featured on the cover of our anniversary issue.
What do we mean when we say "greatest gay hero" of the past 40 years? First, the person must be entirely out. Second, it's not enough to be supremely talented or superbly competent--that person must have done something significant to improve our LGBT lives.
If we've missed someone you'd like to nominate, go ahead and write them in under "OTHER." This is not a scientific poll, but a snapshot that reflects the awareness of our readers and editors at this pivotal moment in history.
I think we can stop right here. After all, it's but a snapshot reflecting the awareness of both readers and editors. Looking at the list from which I am to choose... what are these people doing on it? Surely many of them have made significant contributions to Gay culture... but that would be something along the order of talent or competence (and we are agreed that neither is enough -- this is about heroics, not achievement). Fewer, but still some, of these people can be argued to have improved Gay life. I'm not sure how many (if any at all) can be said to have improved LGBT life.
As a snapshot of the awareness of the editors of the Advocate, the mere wording of the question posed is more than enough.
By the by -- did I miss a memo? This is a "pivotal moment in history"? REALLY? How grand -- I've always wanted to witness one of those. In which direction is this pirouetting history spinning about?
For what it's worth, Betty Berzon and Tim Gill are the only people offered on the list who fit the criterion of having significantly improved Gay life. Broadening my definition of "significantly", I would add authors Rita Mae Brown and Patricia Nell Warren. Were I to completely ignore the proper definition of "improve," I would also include Harry Hay and Larry Kramer. The rest of the people on that list are, I am sure, very nice people (except for the ones I know are not) and/or really quite good at what they do (except for the ones who don't seem to be all that good at anything). I'm a great fan of the work of several of them, but sorry Harvey -- while I loved Torch Song Trilogy, I cannot say that redecorating a room amounts to remodeling a room. Many of the people the Advocate has nominated are fabulous ornaments to Gay culture, but while ornamentation may be an improvement, it's not a significant improvement. |
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"If you want the freedom, the abilities, you have to find a way. Just don't be so passive. We are capable of so much more." -- Larry Kramer
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Post subject: RE: Advocate Heroes
Posted: Aug 02, 2007 - 07:03 PM
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Joined: Apr 12, 2007
Posts: 472
Location: NYC
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I don't know about Harry Hay...he may be the so-called "father of the modern gay rights movement", but I fail to see how he accomplished this on his own. Larry Kramer I'm more inclined to accept due to his pioneering efforts with ACT-UP and bringing about the accelerated availability of life-saving HIV drugs. True he didn't invent them...but he and his organization forced the government's hand and speeded up their development and availability.
These drugs not only have saved the lives of many gays, but of many heteros all over the world. |
_________________
Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless - each of us with his or her right upon the earth; Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth; Each of us here as divinely as any is here. ~ Walt Whitman
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Post subject: RE: Advocate Heroes
Posted: Aug 03, 2007 - 05:22 AM
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Joined: Sep 06, 2006
Posts: 1754
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I would credit Harry Hay on the Radical Faeries alone.
Quote:
Hay introduced the idea of merging spirituality into gay liberation, recognizing the isolation and disconnectedness that Gay men grow up with as a spiritual wound needing spiritual healing. The goal of the co-creators of the Radical Faerie movement was to make this spiritual healing possible through various means.
Some Radical Faeries ask what kind of society emerges if Queerfolk are together by themselves, set apart in order to investigate the inner voice in a completely Gay culture. Such seeking led to Faerie Gatherings lasting from a day or two to a week or more where new and spontaneous ways of relating could emerge.
However, while he clearly merits being called a 'hero' by the adherents of that movement, I'm not so sure the Radical Faeries have yet accomplished much that could be said to have "improved" life for the Gay people at large. |
_________________
"If you want the freedom, the abilities, you have to find a way. Just don't be so passive. We are capable of so much more." -- Larry Kramer
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Post subject: RE: Advocate Heroes
Posted: Aug 03, 2007 - 06:09 AM
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Site Admin
Joined: Aug 26, 2006
Posts: 440
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Oh, Harry Hay should not be underestimated... He was among the "Greater Thinkers" of the past century, for us. The Fseries might have not accomplished thus much directly, but much of Hay's ideas are still important. There is a book "The Gay Spirit" where some interesting works are collected, among them a lengthy piece by Harry Hay. The title for the book was probably unfortunately choosen, since it is more about Gay culture and politics, and not that much about <i>spirituality</i>.
Larry Kramer is most certainly a hero, too.
Most of the names on that list do not say much to me, but that's not a greate wonder - most of them are US citizens. I always must lough about the naivité of US guys who speak of "gay people" or "humanity" where they indeed mean only the landstrip between Atlantic and Pacific.  |
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Post subject: RE: Advocate Heroes
Posted: Aug 03, 2007 - 11:45 AM
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Joined: Apr 12, 2007
Posts: 472
Location: NYC
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It's the typical American parochial attitude of the "world". Like Giovanni says in "Giovanni's Room"...
"Ah! If it had only made you a different people!"..."But it seems to have turned you into a another species. You are not, are you, on another planet? For I suppose that would explain everything." "The Americans are funny. You have a funny sense of time--or perhaps, you have no sense of time at all, I can't tell."
I would also add that Americans have a funny sense of spatial reality. The world is composed of bits of some countries orbiting the great churning center of the cosmos that is the lower 48 United States. It reminds me of the famous New Yorker Magazine cover where New York City is depicted large and looming and front and center while the rest of the states are shown behind it as desolate wastelands. That mentality is very much the view of the world for many Americans. |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Advocate Heroes
Posted: Aug 03, 2007 - 11:59 AM
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Joined: Sep 06, 2006
Posts: 1195
Location: Valhalla Mountains, British Columbia, Canada
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Rain wrote:
I would also add that Americans have a funny sense of spatial reality. The world is composed of bits of some countries orbiting the great churning center of the cosmos that is the lower 48 United States.
The world according to the United States of America... |
_________________
"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Post subject: RE: Re: RE: Advocate Heroes
Posted: Aug 03, 2007 - 01:20 PM
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Joined: Apr 12, 2007
Posts: 472
Location: NYC
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| It was only a few centuries ago that most of our malnourished and lice-infected ancestors disembarked on leaky, wooden rafts on these shores. And, boy, if you weren't malnourished and lice-infected before you left, you certainly were after that long Atlantic cruise. That voyage alone must have been enough to put the Old World solidly behind most of them. I think the very thought of the distances involved fostered that insular mentality in most Americans. Couple that with an assembly-line educational system actively trying to produce "Americans" and hellbent on eradicating all memory of ethnic and national identities...and you get the American view of the "world". |
_________________
Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless - each of us with his or her right upon the earth; Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth; Each of us here as divinely as any is here. ~ Walt Whitman
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