Band of Thebes

"Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture" in DC

The first ever Roman exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington is indeed a convincing trip back in time: to the McCarthy era. The wan written commentary seems designed to reinforce what viewers already believe rather than educate them about what they don't know. Many, many artifacts have no commentary at all. Although the show's subtitle specifically promises the culture of the ancient world, nowhere do the curators acknowledge the prevalence of same-sex relationships. The exhibit is packed with male subjects who exclusively or enthusiastically loved men, yet this aspect of their lives is  whitewashed: Plato, Alexander the Great, Epicurus, Julius Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and Achilles.

Of course the statues, busts, frescoes, pilasters, vases, cups, jewelry and other artifacts are ravishing. [Photography is not allowed.] Their ennobling beauty conveys its own truths, but as for academic enlightenment, you're on your own. Even Carol Mattusch's pretty, 360-page catalog does not have index entries for gay, homosexuality, or sexuality. 

Is the enormous painting above Vesuvius erupting or my mind exploding? The curators' decision to degay their exhibit was twice as painful coming a week after the British Museum's superlative, superior Hadrian show. Just as it was doubly disappointing that this screaming omission was ignored by art critics at the Washington Post and the New York Times.

You must go. It's free, no tickets required, in DC until March 22. Then it's in Los Angeles, at LACMA, from May 3 to October 4.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Gaylist

 
How can you not feel protective and nurturing about a movie that in its first minute gives you Michael Cera saying to his cute bandmates [The Jerk-Offs], "You guys have no idea what it's like to be straight. It's AWFUL!"

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist was originally a YA novel, the lovechild of a great gay YA writer David Levithan and Rachel Cohn. The movie has the highest Metacritic average of last week's new releases at a solid 64. During one long night in NYC, high school indie rocker wannabe Nick and daughter of famous producer Norah, fall in love despite being thwarted and re-tempted by their exes. In the first third, their story is paralleled by the buff twink lead singer [above left] and his budding romance with "Beefy Guy"  [right]. The big, blond Beefy Guy is played kind of brilliantly by Jonathan B. Wright who was the predatory gay student who seduced his classmate in Duncan Sheik's eight Tony winning musical Spring Awakening. The lead singer is played by Rafi Gavron (Breaking and Entering) who sings "I want to screw you, man! I want to screw a man!" ripping his tank top off with bravado and throwing it into the crowd where two young guys fight over it. Although the movie disappointingly drops the gay hookup plot, with the other gay bandmate [Aaron Yoo, Disturbia, center] the new gay couple reappears at intervals to maneuver Nick and Norah together. Later, Andy Samberg, as delectable and irrepressible as ever, shows up briefly as a homeless guy who's very, very into Michael Cera.

Apparently, life has changed for sensitive, stagestruck high school gay boys since the days of the suicidal mess in Fame.

And evidently nothing has changed in the movie marketing departments: The trailer, tv spots, and all YouTube sample scenes are 100% degayed. Nothing here for you, gay viewers. Move along. Do they think people don't remember anything from trailers? Because below you will see Nick saying, "We go to the same dentist." And Norah gamely adding, "Yeah. He's good." In the actual movie, you'll see Nick standing silently while Nora stumbles over, "We go to the same dentist... Dr. Mann... Man oh man."

True 10: Gay Australian Diver Wins Olympic Gold

Earning four perfect 10s on his final dive, 20 year old Matthew Mitcham, the only openly gay male athlete at the Olympics, won the gold medal in men's 10m platform diving. Via Brian, Outsports, and Queerty, here's the delightful video of him talking to the Aussie press and alongside his mother and his partner in Beijing.

Despite their love of background stories on the athlete's personal lives, NBC entirely degayed Mitcham in their coverage. Think Progress and Daily Kos weren't happy.

Meanwhile, a lesbian athlete who competed in judo at the Sydney Olympics told gay people to "shut up." Outsports has the quote:

The GLBT community should let gay athletes deal with gay issues off of the podium. In the name of the Olympic spirit and humanity… shut up and let gay athletes focus on the endeavors that they have worked so hard to reach.

In honor of Mitcham, and all openly gay athletes who give it their best, here's a handsome devil ready to bestow laurels on the winners at the Olympic stadium in Athens, a beautiful 1920s replica the exact size and location of the original.

Mamma Mia! Here I Go Again

If Manhunt is the third horseman of the apocalypse destroying gay culture, isn't the fourth and final horseman the straightening of ABBA? The movie Mamma Mia ought to feel like Sydney's Mardi Gras filmed like Moulin Rouge. In 2008, wouldn't the freshest way to handle lyrics like "Does your mother know that you're out?" be as an ode to young closet cases? Yet at every turn the film chooses the safest, straightest path. 

Look, it's summer, the movie is fun, the second half is really enjoyable, you should go; Meryl, Christine, Julie, and Colin all have terrific nanoseconds; but I sat in the theater dismayed that the gayest pop hits this side of YMCA were being played out in a story entirely devoid of gay content. Except for Pierce Brosnan, there's not even good eye candy. Pretty colors yes, but the camera seems terrified of flesh. In his swim trunks the fiancee is mainly shot from the shoulders up (the cocky bastard from The History Boys). The dock dance is shot too far back, the guys are thirty-five and wearing flippers so they can't dance and some are cloaked in hideous Tommy Bahama short sleeve shirts unbuttoned. In Greece! I was on several Greek islands last summer and, happily, I can report that at beach dances everyone was shirtless and no one was over twenty-four, except my partner and I who moved invisibly through the crowds like Scrooge (me) and the Ghost of Christmas Past (him).

Then, in the movie's final moments, one of the girl's three potential fathers announces he's gay. It's extremely muddled but apparently he only realized his orientation the night before. He's almost fifty. At least he chose a very attractive man with whom to make up for lost time, but again the camera hurries past them.

It's disappointing because the director is an out lesbian, Phyllida Lloyd. Making her feature debut with a global franchise property she obviously wouldn't have had much autonomy, yet it's also clear given her background in English opera, she's closer to Wagner than HSM.

But, you know, The history book on my shelf is always repeating itself. No surprise that timid Hollywood still lags behind America on gay issues. We haven't had a major gay movie since Brokeback, and the next one, Milk, is another historical pic in which the main out character gets murdered for being gay. The tired lie that multiplex moviegoers "aren't ready" for the gays is refuted on this week's newsstand: The main cover of middlebrow, middle America People is Ellen and Portia's wedding, not the straight, goldenboy swimmer's eight Olympic medals.

If you need further proof that ABBA has been irrevocably usurped by the straights, help comes from John McCain. Blender asked both candidates for their top ten lists. (Worth the click to see all ten.) McCain's number three is Take A Chance on Me, and his number one favorite song of all time is Dancing Queen. Gay culture, we loved you; now, RIP.

John McCain's Top Five Songs

1. Dancing Queen, ABBA
2. Blue Bayou, Roy Orbison
3. Take a Chance On Me, ABBA
4. If We Make It Through December, Merle Haggard
5. As Time Goes By, Dooley Wilson

Barack Obama's Top Five Songs

1. Ready or Not, Fugees
2. What's Going On, Marvin Gaye
3. I'm On Fire, Bruce Spingsteen
4. Gimme Shelter, Rolling Stones
5. Sinnerman, Nina Simone

Yves Saint Laurent Obits: Degayed Again

One of my favorite fashion love stories is that of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. Bergé rescued Saint Laurent by financing his own line of couture after he was replaced at Dior following his breakdown during military service. Perfectly matched, Bergé was the business brains to Saint Laurent's designing genius, and they lived together for twenty-eight years. Even after they separated romantically, they remained partners in work for another twenty-six years. The ability to stay close after the end of a sexual relationship is one of the many extraordinary, mature, respectful aspects of gay life completely undervalued by society. Compare Dolce & Gabbana or Siegfried & Roy with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger or Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards.
    Bergé announced Saint Laurent died at home, according to the BBC, which identifies Berge at the top of the story as his "former business and personal partner." You wouldn't know any of their fabled romance or much of their fifty-four year connection from the major American press. The Washington Post's front page obit by Martin Weil completely degays Saint Laurent and never mentions Bergé by name, saying merely, "A longtime friend said his death followed a long illness." How is it a comprehensive summary of a man's life to omit so central a relationship? Weil ends with Saint Laurent's drug and alcohol addictions. Even more bizarre is the Post's Style section appreciation by Robin Givhan, which states

He was one of fashion's first personalities to be defined as much by his own sexuality and extracurricular activities as by his work.

but never identifies him as gay and never mentions Bergé. So much for being defined by his sexuality.

    The Los Angeles Times, which offered by far the best gay-inclusive obit of Robert Rauschenberg last month, inexplicably calls Bergé "his longtime friend and business partner" at the top of the story, then five paragraphs later re-introduces him as "Pierre Bergé from the Yves Saint Luarent [sic] foundation in Paris." Buried much, much deeper in the piece is "with the help of Bergé, an enterprising businessman who was by then his lover," and later still the writer says, "He and Bergé also shared a Normandy chateau, a New York penthouse and a house in Marrakech, Morocco."

    The New York Times obit finally mentions Bergé more than halfway through,

In September 1961, Mr. Saint Laurent announced plans to open his own haute couture house in partnership with his lover, Pierre Bergé. Mr. Bergé remained his lifelong business partner and was responsible for the company’s financial success, although they split up as a couple in the early 1980s.

(Not "early" 80s. According to Jane Kramer's 1994 New Yorker profile of Bergé, they split in 1986, but that's quibbling.) What makes the Times piece just as nonsensical as the other obits is the way it too erases gay relationships.

All his homes — including famous ones in Deauville, France, and Marrakech, Morocco — which he shared with a succession of French bulldogs, always named Moujik, were lavishly decorated...

Saint Laurent's ashes will be interred in the restored Majorelle Gardens in Marrakech, adjacent to the home he shared with Bergé, site of the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation. He didn't name it for his bulldog.

Rauschenberg Obits: Shades of Degayed

People seem to love controversy and attacks, but let's start with the good news: Christopher Knight's Rauschenberg obituary in the Los Angeles Times is exactly what all the other write-ups ought to be. Knight immediately makes clear that Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns were lovers, he acknowledges that Rauschenberg's companion Darryl Pottorf also collaborated with him on his work, and he naturally cites the gay aspects of Rauschenberg's art and why they are important.

The candidly titled "Monogram" is also an unconventional declaration of identity. Western art has used goats as a symbol for priapic sexual energy ever since the Dionysian satyrs of ancient Greece -- half man and half goat, always merrily drinking and dancing. The outrageous interlace formed by the goat and the tire astride a landscape of cast-off debris dates from the conformist social atmosphere of the Eisenhower years, when an anti-Communist "Red Scare" was accompanied by an anti-homosexual "Pink Scare." Critic Robert Hughes described the unforgettable "Monogram" as "one of the few great icons of male homosexual love in modern culture" -- the complement to Meret Oppenheim's famous Surrealist sculpture of a phallic spoon in a fur teacup.

Unfortunately, Knight stands alone. At the other end of the spectrum is Matt Schudel's obit in the Washington Post. Schudel includes Johns but degays their relationship, omits homoerotism in his flat analysis of Rauschenberg's work, and only cites "companion" Pottorf in his final sentence. Yet while ignoring Rauschenberg's homosexuality, Schudel does discuss the artist's alcoholism, writing, "he consumed more than a bottle of whiskey a day for many years." (No other paper stooped to that.) Likewise, although Mark Feeney writing in the Boston Globe does say Rauschenberg and Johns "became lovers," he disregards the ramifications of that fact and spends more time on Rauschenberg's dyslexia than his homosexuality. In the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman mentions Pottorf midway but disingenuously dances around sex with Johns:

The intimacy of their relationship over the next years, a consuming subject for later biographers and historians, coincided with the production by the two of them of some of the most groundbreaking works of postwar art.

At least Kimmelman has the sense to examine how an artist's private life informs his work:

The process, used for works like “34 Drawings for Dante’s Inferno,” created the impression of something fugitive, exquisite and secret. Perhaps there was an autobiographical and sensual aspect to this.

But, really, in 2008 being closety about gay art isn't postmodern, or po-pomo, nor is it understandable or excusable. It's a disgrace.

Brokaw Still Doesn't Get Gay History, Charles Kaiser Responds

Like a drug-resistant staph infection, the story of Boom!'s gay exclusion won't go away. After objections here and elsewhere, Frank Kameny's letter to Random House, and CNN's soft criticism, Tom Brokaw answers five questons in the current issue of the Advocate saying:

Gays have never been denied the right to vote. They're not told to go to a separate drinking fountain. They were not told they couldn't stay in a motel if they crossed the state line.

Did he not understand his own newscast in June 2003 when the Supreme Court finally decriminalized sodomy with its 6-3 decision on Lawrence v. Texas and for the first time made it legal to be gay anywhere in America?

Brokaw also tries to excuse his ignoring gay rights by citing Charles Kaiser's book 1968 and its sole gay reference. (Kaiser reviewed Boom!, unfavorably, in the Washington Post's Book World.)

Here is Kaiser's response, with permission.

Tom,

         It is true that I make only one reference to gays in my first book. That's because 99 percent of the book takes place in 1968. As I wrote in the preface, my goal was "to make reading the book as much as possible like living through the year." To accomplish that, I almost never jumped ahead, except to mention something as important as the impact of the '60's on gay people. You, on the other hand, were writing twenty years later than I was, and you asked everyone you interviewed to look back and explain the eventual impact of the decade.

        You said to the Advocate, "I mean, we had institutionalized, legalized discrimination against the fundamental rights of citizenship. Gays have never been denied the right to vote. They’re not told to go to a separate drinking fountain. They were not told they couldn’t stay in a motel if they crossed the state line."

        I'm not sure what form of institutionalized discrimination is more fundamental than a legal prohibition to be the person that  you are. Any gay man who had sex with another man in the 1950's could be and very often was deprived of every right as a citizen, since sodomy laws in every state in the 1950's made his very existence illegal. Except for Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal and Frank Kameny, there were almost no openly gay people in America for that reason. Blacks were never banned from employment by the entire Federal government and all of its contractors, as gay people were in the 1950's  (with the support, I might add, of the ACLU.) Whatever the barriers blacks faced--and they were huge--they never included an outright ban on being who they were in every state of the union. In the '50's and the '60's any gay person who wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, or a journalist--or just about anything else--knew that he or she could only succeed by hiding his or her true identify, for life.

        I'm glad you're adding Stonewall to subsequent editions of the book. If you're making other changes, you might also want to modify your libel of the Columbia students who occupied five buildings in 1968. In Boom! you write that student demonstrators at Columbia in 1968 “occupied and trashed the library and administration building.” [118] Actually, they occupied five buildings, one of which was called “Low Library.” However, Low had ceased to be a library several decades earlier–when Butler Library was built and Low become the administration building. And Butler was not one of the occupied buildings. So no library was ever trashed during that protest. And after the buildings were emptied of the protesters, several professors gave affidavits asserting that it was impossible to know whether it was the students occupying four of those buildings or the New York City policemen who evicted them, who caused most of the damage that was discovered afterwards.

Charles

Really, you must own Kaiser's The Gay Metropolis. Buy it.

Hadrian in London This Summer

Well, it's taken 1,870 years, but the Emperor Hadrian and his beloved Antinous are finally getting their first exhibition, from July 24 to October 26, at the British Museum. Curator Thorsten Opper told the Telegraph, "Hadrian was gay--we can say it now, but the Victorians had problems with it." If only those "problems with it" had vanished with the Victorians a century ago. We know the long list of American museums that would de-gay similar subjects, but even the British media seems to be having some difficulty in reporting the facts. While it's terrific for the museum to cover all aspect's of Hadrian's life accurately, their inclusion of his homosexuality is not an outing. Hadrian was openly gay, the first Emperor to publicly celebrate his male lovers, and because of the dozens of busts he had made to commemorate Antinous, historians have always known their relationship, though of course a few have whitewashed them as "friends." Marguerite Yourcenar's modern classic Memoirs of Hadrian is centered on their love, and has been widely read and studied in schools throughout the U.K., Europe, and the States for more than fifty years. A classics scholar since childhood, Yourcenar is believed to have had the idea for  the novel after seeing the British Museum's massive bronze head of Hadrian, which will be a prominent among the more than 200 loans from 31 countries in the show this summer.

Obviously, firsts and controversies are what make news. That might be one reason why no one reported that the total number of complaints the Smithsonian received for displaying the Kameny gay rights picket signs alongside such family fare as Kermit, R2-D2, and C-3PO was zero. Maybe this, at last, will help American curators become more honest in representing rather than erasing gay lives. One great chance is that British Museum director Neil MacGregor is in the running to replace the retiring Philippe de Montebello at the Met.

Brokaw Defends Degaying Book Because He Covered Aids on TV

Appearing on CNN's Reliable Source with Howard Kurtz, Tom Brokaw denied trying to "downplay the rise of the gay rights movement" in his Boom. Although his book's timeline extends to August 1974, he claims the movement "came later."

KURTZ: I have heard some criticism of the book saying that you deal with civil rights, you deal with women's liberation, as it was called then, but you don't devote any time or space to the burgeoning gay rights movement. Is that something...

     (CROSSTALK)

BROKAW: I don't, because the gay rights movement came slightly later. It lifted off during that time and I had to make some choices about what I was going to concentrate on. The big issues were the anti-war movement, the counterculture.

I do make some reference to it, but it is only fleeting. And it wasn't any attempt on my part to suppress it. It is just that the gay rights movement really came later after the '60s, it really began to take hold in the '70s.

I did the first television documentary on AIDS in America, and it was because my friend Larry Kramer (ph) had stopped me on the street and said, there is something going on in the gay community that you need to pay attention to. So in this book it was not an oversight on my part to try to downplay the rise of the gay rights movement, which did come later.

Kurtz did not follow up. He did not, for example, press him on his usage of "later" by pointing out that Brokaw includes the movie Dreamgirls and the Duke lacrosse team scandal, both from 2006, while he excludes the White House picketing of 1965, the Stonewall riots of 1969, and the fact that by 1974 cities coast to coast held annual gay pride parades.

Shouldn't someone ask Larry Kramer how he feels about Brokaw using him as his gay cred while deleting our history and making us invisible?

Frank Kameny's Letter to Tom Brokaw and Random House

Yesterday, Charles Kaiser panned Tom Brokaw's "bloodless" Boom in the Washington Post's Book World, and, among other criticisms, cited his ignoring the gay right movements and its heroes like Frank Kameny. Today, Kameny has sent a letter to Brokaw and his editor and publisher at Random House. (Band of Thebes is cc'ed, along with the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, media critic Howard Kurtz, and historian Dudley Clendinen.)

                                                                                 November 26, 2007

Mr. Tom Brokaw
c/o Random House Publishing Group

Ms. Gina Centrello
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group

Ms. Kate Medina
Executive Editorial Director
Random House Publishing Group
1745 Broadway
New York, New York,  10019

Dear Mr. Brokaw and Mmes. Centrello and Medina:

     As a long-time gay activist, who initiated gay activism and militancy at
the very start of "your" Sixties, in 1961; coined the slogan "Gay is Good"
in 1968; and is viewed by many as one of the "Founding Fathers" of the
Gay Movement, I write with no little indignation at the total absence of
any slightest allusion to the gay movement for civil equality in your book “Boom! Voices of the Sixties".  Your book simply deletes the momentous events of that decade which led to the vastly altered and improved status of gays in our culture today.  This change would have
been inconceivable at the start of the Sixties and would not have
occurred at all without the events of that decade totally and utterly
ignored by you.  Mr. Brokaw, you have "de-gayed" the entire decade. "Voices of the
Sixties"??? One does not hear even one single gay voice in your book. The silence
is complete and deafening.

     As a gay combat veteran of World War II, and therefore a member of the
"Greatest Generation", I find myself and my fellow gays as absent from
your narration as if we did not and do not exist. We find Boom! Boom!!
Boom!!! in your book about all the multitudinous issues and the vast
cultural changes of that era. But not a single "Boom", only dead
silence, about gays, homosexuality, and the Gay Movement.

     The development of every other possible, conceivable issue and cause
which came to the forefront in that period is at least mentioned, and is
usually catalogued: race; sex and gender; enthnicity; the environment;
and others, on and on and on -- except only gays.

     In 1965, we commenced bringing gays and our issues "out of the closet"
with our then-daring picketing demonstrations at the White House and
other government sites, and our annual 4th of July demonstrations at
Independence Hall in Philadelphia.  The Smithsonian Institution displayed these original pickets last month, in the same exhibition as the desk where Thomas Jefferson drafted The Declaration of Independence.  The name of the Smithsonian’s exhibition?  “Treasures of American History”. In your book: No Boom; only silence.

    About 1963, a decade-long effort commenced to reverse the psychiatric
categorization of gays as mentally or emotionally ill, concluding in
1973 with a mass "cure" of all of us by the American Psychiatric
Association. No boom in your book; only your silence.

     The most momentous single Gay Movement event occurred at the end of
June, 1969, when the "Stonewall Rebellion" in New York, almost overnight
(actually it took three days) converted what had been a tiny, struggling
gay movement into the vast grass-roots movement which it now is. We had
five or six gay organizations in the entire country in 1961; fifty to
sixty in 1969; by the time of the first Gay Pride march, in New York
one year later in 1970, we had 1500, and 2500 by 1971 when counting
stopped. If ever there was Boom, this was it. In your book, no Boom,
only your silence.

     About 1972, Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts state House of
Representatives as the first elected openly gay public official. I had
run here in Washington, DC, the previous year for election to Congress
as the first openly gay candidate for any federal office. Harvey Milk
was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. No boom in
your book; only your silence.

     Mr. Brokaw, you deal with the histories of countless individuals. Where are the
gays of that era: Barbara Gittings; Jack Nichols; Harry Hay; Del Martin
and Phyllis Lyons; Randolfe Wicker; Harvey Milk; numerous others? No
booms in your book; only silence and heterosexuals.

     Starting in 1961 a long line of court cases attacked the long-standing
U.S. Civil Service Gay Ban (fully as absolute and as virulent as the
current Military Gay ban, which actually goes back some 70 years and was
also fought in the 60s) with final success in 1975 when the ban on
employment of gays by the federal government was rescinded. In your
book, no boom; only your silence.

     The assault on the anti-sodomy laws, which made at least technical
criminals of all gays (and most non-gays for that matter, although never
used against them) and which was the excuse for an on-going terror

campaign against the gay community through arrests the country over,
began in 1961 and proceeded through the 60s and onward. In your book,
no boom; only your silence.

     In 1972, following up on Stonewall, the first anti-discrimination law
protective of gays was enacted in East Lansing, Michigan, followed by
the much more comprehensive one in D.C. in 1973, starting a trend which
now encompasses some twenty states, countless counties and cities, and has
now reached Congress in ENDA. In your book, no boom; only your silence.

     The Sixties were a period of unprecedented rapid social and cultural
upheaval and change. We gays were very much a part of all that. A
reader of your book would never have the slightest notion of any of
that. In your book, no boom; only your silence.

     At the start of the Sixties gays were completely invisible. By the end, and
especially after Stonewall, we were seen everywhere: in entertainment,
education, religion, politics, business, elsewhere and everywhere. In
BOOM our invisibility remains total.

     The only allusions to us, in your entire book are the most shallow,
superficial, brief references in connection with sundry
heterosexuals. Where are the gay spokespeople? We are certainly there
to speak for ourselves. But in your book, only silence.

     Mr. Brokaw, I could go on, but this should be sufficient to make my point. The
whole thing is deeply insulting. As I said, you have de-gayed an entire
generation. For shame, for shame, for shame. You owe an abject public
apology to the entire gay community. I demand it; we expect it.

     Gay is Good. You are not.

     Sincerely,

     Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D.

UPDATE: As of noon, the story has been picked up by Queerty and Galley Cat.

Tom Brokaw De-Gays the Entire Boomer Generation

Two days ago, Random House published Tom Brokaw's Boom!: Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today, which purports to explain that decade's "profound social, political, and individual changes" and "the impact of the 1960s on our lives today" in exhaustive detail throughout nearly 700 pages. Readers who eagerly anticipate how Brokaw will weave the story of the birth and explosive growth of the gay rights movement into the larger narrative fabric of the times, as well as wondering how he will convey the Boomer generation's catastrophic losses from aids, will be disappointed. He doesn't. His book about the social upheaval of the Sixties, and the Sixties as midwife to emerging and enduring political movements never mentions the Mattachine pickets of the White House (1965) or Stonewall (1969) or annual gay pride parades that began on the first anniversary of Stonewall in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and now span the globe, or any gay political group. No. Instead, 1969 is noted for Woodstock, and 1970 is highlighted as having the first Earth Day. In the context of shifting mores on sex and the changing dynamics of what makes a family, gay life is ignored. Gay death is ignored too, because the index has no entry for aids. The emergence of gay visibility in entertainment, education, religion, and business is completely erased. The book virtually never even  acknowledges gay people. No Harvey Milk, no Frank Kameny, no Barbara Gittings, no Larry Kramer. David Geffen is mentioned, once, simply as a friend of Berry Gordy's. Oh, but there is a recap of Dick Cheney telling Wolf Blizter he was "out of line" to mention Mary.

Where there ought to be an index entry for gay or gay rights it says see homosexuality--a Victorian, not a Sixties, term--whose thirteen subcategories are shown above. Study the names: Buchanan, Cheney, Fallows, Greenhouse, Huerta, and Webb. They're all straight. (Imagine, for a moment, a sweeping social and political history book in which all the names beneath the entry for black were Asian people, or if the entry for Jewish listed only half a dozen Catholics.) Even these arbitrary six heterosexuals offer no true analysis of gay issues; usually their references only include gay rights in a list of political issues or cases before the court. The other subcategories refer to passages that are equally meaningless.  "And the women's movement" might be a springboard for a fascinating, complex comparison of the two movements but in fact page 195 only gives the subject half a sentence, saying, in addition to dealing with tensions over the race, the women's movement was "also divided along ethnic lines and by sexual orientation." Every reference is that shallow. Even for Brokaw's brand of History Lite, the omission is appalling. Gay Boomers, what happened to you? And what are you going to do about it?