"Look, goddamn it, I¡¯m homosexual, and most of my friends are Jewish homosexuals, and some of my best friends are black homosexuals, and I am sick and tired of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading bullshit about me and my friends." - Merle Miller.In 1970, two years after Stonewall, Joseph Epstein wrote a cover story for Harper¡¯s Magazine, Homo/hetero: The struggle for sexual identity, that came to chilling conclusions: "I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth." His incendiary language prompted author/journalist/writer Merle Miller to come out of the closet in the New York Times Magazine, with an angry and poignant plea for dignity, understanding and respect: "What It Means to Be a Homosexual." 40 years later, that essay helped inspire the launch of the "It Gets Better" campaign. Via
Epstein, now 75, is a contributing editor at the conservative Weekly Standard and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He was ¡°unavailable for comment¡± when I tried to speak to him, so I sent three questions by email. Did he stand by his original piece, or regret it or any aspect of it in hindsight? Had his views changed or evolved over the years? And would he write about the subject again, now that Penguin is republishing Miller¡¯s landmark essay? No answer.
One can tolerate homosexuality, a small enough price to be asked to pay for someone else's pain, but accepting it, really accepting it, is another thing altogether. I find I can accept it least of all when I look at my children. There is much my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make me ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual.I suspect a lot of modern-day homophobes, particularly those who are most active in trying to keep homosexuality marginalized, would speak along similar lines if they could ever bring themselves to be honest.
"If I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth," Epstein then declared. "I would do so because I think it brings infinitely more pain than pleasure to those who are forced to live with it; because I think there is no resolution for this pain in our lifetime, only, for the majority of homosexuals, more pain and various degrees of exacerbating adjustment; and because, wholly selfishly, I find myself completely incapable of coming to terms with it." That such an "admission" created an uproar is no surprise to anyone reading it today. But in 1970 it inspired an unprecedented protest demonstration in the offices of Harper's magazine by the Gay Activists Alliance, and that was followed in turn by a series of articles either in rebuttal and defense of Epstein and the protesters, some published as much as a decade after the inciting article. In fact, aftershocks of this contretemps continue to reverberate to this very day when gay and lesbian issues are taken seriously for the very reason that we are "out of the closet" that Epstein expected us to stay in when he first sat down to write.
"That is an essay that has followed me around," he recently informed Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times. "It was not meant to be an attack. But, in 1970, the subject of sexuality suddenly became politicized." Once that happens, all textured thinking goes out the window. I hope I don't have a reputation as a homophobe, which is really a stupid word."
"Morris¡¯ liberal outlook embraced outside-the-box views on race, gender, and addiction."Midge Decter was executive editor, which is not at all the same thing.
"There is much my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make me ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual. For then I should know them condemned to a state of permanent niggerdom among men, their lives, whatever adjustment they might make to their condition, to be lived out as part of the pain of the earth."This is honestly pretty much the worst thing I've ever read.
But it wasn¡¯t then. Merle Miller, who had been an editor at Harper¡¯s and who was a well-respected and best-selling author (and veteran of the Second World War), felt ¡°outraged and saddened¡± to read Epstein¡¯s language in ¡°one of the best, maybe the best, magazine in the country.¡± He called Bob Kotlowitz, the magazine¡¯s executive editor, to say as much.That may be wrong though, many sources say Decter was executive editor.
Between public tolerance and private acceptance stretches a wide gap, and private acceptance of homosexuality, in my experience, is not to be found, even among the most liberal-minded, sophisticated, and liberated people ... I am not about to go into a liberal homily here about the need for private acceptance of homosexuality, because, truth to tell, I have not privately accepted it myself¡ªnor, I suspect am I soon likely to. In my liberal (or Liberal's) conscience, I prefer to believe that I have never done anything to harm any single homosexual, or in any way added to his pain; and it would be nice if I could get to my grave with this record intact. Yet I do not mistake my tolerance as complete. Although I have had pleasant dealings with homosexuals professionally, also unpleasant ones, I do not have any homosexuals among my close friends. If a close friend were to reveal himself to me as being a homosexual, I am very uncertain what my reaction would be¡ªexcept to say that it would not be simple.
“None of my homosexual friends are any too happy, but then very few of my heterosexual friends – supposed friends, I should say – are exactly joyous, either.”This is a fair observation, I think. The fact is that those of us who aren't straight can have a rough time in the world sometimes. But if we come up right, and if we're strong, we can often be happy in spite of those external factors; we can even turn them into our pride. And that can be a fine thing. The love of those of the same gender is a joy to be celebrated, a brotherhood (or sisterhood) worth pointing up as an incredibly fine thing.
Homosexual appetites, tastes, and fantasies, one is reminded while listening to Elliot, appear to be every bit as various as heterosexual ones, with the range of homosex¡ªrunning from an almost Platonic love to sadistic lust¡ªbeing no less wide than that of heterosex. Now that the notion that heterosexuality is primarily for the purpose of procreation no longer has any real direct force in most people's lives, heterosex, being officially recognized as an agency of pleasure, has itself taken some very fancy turns. (All those marriage manuals describing all those new positions, tricks, little surprises! ) Certainly, nowadays it is not so easy to say, heterosexually speaking, what is natural and what is not. The only standards left us for determining what is not natural sexually are physical injury and lack of consent¡ªall else, apparently, goes. This being the case, one can't say with the same old confidence that homosexuality is unnatural, however deeply one might feel that it is. One cannot even any longer say that it is uncustomary¡ªit flourishes openly in America at the moment and, as every semiliterate homosexual will gladly inform you, it also had its day in the ancient world.but then for every such statement is another statement that is so odd, so twisted that...I just...can't.
Yet if heterosexual life has come to seem impossibly difficult, homosexual life still seems more nearly impossible. For to be a homosexual is to be hostage to a passion that automatically brings terrible pressures to bear on any man who lives with it: and these pressures, which only a few rare homosexuals are able to rise above with any success, can distort a man, can twist him, and always leave him defined by his sexual condition. The same, I think, cannot be said about heterosexuals. With the possible exception of prostitutes and heterosexuals driven by abnormal appetites, the general run of heterosexuals are not defined by their sexuality at all. Although the power of sex is never to be underrated, in the main for most heterosexuals sex beyond adolescence becomes a secondary matter, a pleasure most of the time, a problem only in its absence. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is a full-time matter, a human status¡ªand that is the tyranny of it.but this is contrasted with this belief that Epstein appears to have that homosexuality is a freedom from the "responsibilities" that straight folks have:
Do I secretly envy homosexuals, not their sexual pleasure, but their evasion of responsibility, for, despite all that I have thought about homosexuality, I am still not clear about whether homosexuals are truly attracted to men or are only running away from women and all that women represent: marriage, family, bringing up children. On those occasional bleak mornings when I should like to drive away from it all, and keep driving, do I hate homosexuals for eluding the weight of my own responsibilities?The thing that bothers me here is that it isn't a religious argument, really.
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