Q and A with Shannon Gilreath
1. What is the most pressing issue facing the gay rights movement today?
Apathy—the apathy of straight and gay. In the preface to this book I quote Dr. King: “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change....But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.” So many gay people are remote from the struggle of their own equality—their humanity. I recently spoke to an openly gay Ph.D. student at a nearby university. He told me he had never been discriminated against and didn’t understand what all the “flag waving” was about. This denial isn’t as rare a sentiment in the gay community as one might think. It’s all very sad and infantile. More than that, it’s terribly dangerous. If gay people don’t care, how can we ask other people—straight people—to care about us or to fight our battles with more passion than we can muster.
2. Is there a particularly American component of homophobia?
Certainly, homophobia exists everywhere. But the American experience is different, I think. Americans have an almost morbid obsession with sex—a terror of it. This nation was founded, regardless of what clever revisers of history will tell you, to be a country where religious passion is kept separate from government. But somewhere along the way, our government became the opposite of what it was meant to be. Savvy politicians use the biblical fear of the flesh to their advantage. It’s a very effective control mechanism—make people afraid of their fellow citizens and they’ll forget that the Mideast is imploding, and the economy is faltering, and nuclear proliferation, and other real disasters. I am simply amazed at how otherwise intelligent people fail to see it. There is an irrationality about it.
3. Where does Sexual Politics fit within the scholarly dialogue of politics and gay life in America?
Sexual Politics is a plea—in the introduction, I call it a “love letter.” Perhaps that’s a bit romantic; nonetheless, the book is a plea to begin a dialogue about gay rights, about our common humanity. This book is specifically about the gay experience, but is more broadly about the human experience. It is about man’s responsibility to man and how that responsibility is and should be reflected in our law, our politics, our religion, our citizenship—our human rights.
Apathy—the apathy of straight and gay. In the preface to this book I quote Dr. King: “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change....But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.” So many gay people are remote from the struggle of their own equality—their humanity. I recently spoke to an openly gay Ph.D. student at a nearby university. He told me he had never been discriminated against and didn’t understand what all the “flag waving” was about. This denial isn’t as rare a sentiment in the gay community as one might think. It’s all very sad and infantile. More than that, it’s terribly dangerous. If gay people don’t care, how can we ask other people—straight people—to care about us or to fight our battles with more passion than we can muster.
2. Is there a particularly American component of homophobia?
Certainly, homophobia exists everywhere. But the American experience is different, I think. Americans have an almost morbid obsession with sex—a terror of it. This nation was founded, regardless of what clever revisers of history will tell you, to be a country where religious passion is kept separate from government. But somewhere along the way, our government became the opposite of what it was meant to be. Savvy politicians use the biblical fear of the flesh to their advantage. It’s a very effective control mechanism—make people afraid of their fellow citizens and they’ll forget that the Mideast is imploding, and the economy is faltering, and nuclear proliferation, and other real disasters. I am simply amazed at how otherwise intelligent people fail to see it. There is an irrationality about it.
3. Where does Sexual Politics fit within the scholarly dialogue of politics and gay life in America?
Sexual Politics is a plea—in the introduction, I call it a “love letter.” Perhaps that’s a bit romantic; nonetheless, the book is a plea to begin a dialogue about gay rights, about our common humanity. This book is specifically about the gay experience, but is more broadly about the human experience. It is about man’s responsibility to man and how that responsibility is and should be reflected in our law, our politics, our religion, our citizenship—our human rights.
posted by Jabberwocky at 2:32 PM
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