From Free Times (Columbia SC)
October 9-15, 2002
page 5
Gay Kids And Popular Culture
by Ed Madden
It was 1984, maybe 1985. I was hanging out in the college newspaper office, proofreading, gulping coffee, gossiping. And then someone put in a cassette tape. Even now, as I recall that moment, the words to the song stun me. "Contempt in your eyes as I turn to kiss his lips." His lips. This was a song sung by a man, about kissing another man.
The album was Bronski Beat's Age of Consent. The song was "Why?" Years later I would discover that the song was an anthem of gay liberation in Britain at the time, with the chorus, "You and me together / Fighting for our love." But I didn't know that then. All I knew was the shiver of recognition, fear, and power (this seems the best word) that I felt listening to the song.
Friday is National Coming Out Day, which is celebrated every October 11, to commemorate the 1987 march on Washington, D.C., for gay and lesbian rights. It also draws attention to the need for gay and lesbian people to come out-- to their families, neighbors, and elected officials.
Coming out as a gay or lesbian person not only changes your own life, it changes the culture around you. Studies have shown that people who know someone gay or lesbian are more likely to oppose discrimination against gays and lesbians.
The Human Rights Campaign has announced "Being Out Rocks" as the theme for this year's events, to celebrate the importance of musicians as role models for youth.
The theme is not just a celebration of pop stars. It is an affirmation of the power of popular culture to reach gay and lesbian kids who may have no other positive messages--kids who don't live in urban areas, who don't have the resources we have in Columbia, like the Gay and Lesbian Community Center or OutSmart, a support group for sexual minority youth.
Growing up in rural Arkansas, I had little information about homosexuality, and no positive messages about gay or lesbian people. When I heard Bronski Beat singing about a gay kiss, I was sitting on the campus of a small fundamentalist college in rural Arkansas. I was vice president of my fraternity, beau for a sorority, and president of the College Republicans. In that hotbed of male privilege, heterosexuality, and conservative politics, I was struggling with my own sexuality.
It would be several more years before I would have the courage to come out, to be honest with myself and my family. But those songs offered a message that was for me, at that moment, transformative.
Coming out takes courage. As Michael Haigler, former president of the SC Gay and Lesbian Business Guild says, "It doesn't take courage to blend."
But when you live in a hostile culture, courage can be hard to find.
For many gay and lesbian kids, popular culture offers a lifeline of affirmation. Politicians like U.S. Rep. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Rep. John Graham Altman (R-Charleston) might deny the rights of their gay and lesbian constituents. The Horry County School Board might remove gay-positive books from the school libraries as they did last summer. Your school, your community, your church, even your family might offer only negative messages, but the voices of popular culture still get through.
Whether it's "Will and Grace" and "Rosie" on television or Melissa Etheridge and Rufus Wainwright on the radio, the message gets through--the message that you are not alone, that you are not evil, that your life is valuable, that there are communities of support out there for you.
On Friday, I'm going to be playing Bronski Beat and the Pet Shop Boys and Pansy Division, the music that let me imagine a different culture and a different version of myself--my own personal soundtrack for coming out. If your office is nearby, please forgive me if you hear me trying to sing along. "You and me together / Fighting for our love."
Madden is an associate professor of English at USC and a volunteer at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in Columbia.