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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE JUNE 11, 1993

ENTERTAINMENT

Gays, the tabloids, and the scandal of success

An interview with Michelangelo Signorile, author of Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power

by Timothy Robson Michelangelo Signorile was born into a working-class family in Brooklyn. He went to Catholic school until he was dismissed for fighting, his reaction to being taunted as queer. He went to journalism school at Syracuse University and subsequently became a professional gossip columnist and party-goer in New York. In 1987, chance attendance at an ACT UP-New York meeting caused Signorile to refocus his attention on AIDS and gay activism. He put his knowledge of the media to use as media chairman for some of ACT UP's most famous actions.

From 1989-91 Signorile was a columnist and editor at OutWeek magazine. It was there that he achieved national attention by outing Malcolm Forbes, Liz Smith, and other prominent figures. In 1991 he outed former Defense Department spokesman Pete Williams in a cover story for the Advocate. In his new book, Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power (Random House, $23.00) Signorile describes the closet and what it does to gays and lesbians.

I spoke recently by phone with Signorile, shortly before he left on a promotional tour for his book, and the morning after he was interviewed by Katie Couric on NBC's Today Show.

Robson: Your book is about what you refer to as the Trinity of the Closet: the Washington political system, the New York media industry, and the Hollywood entertainment industry. Why these three, as opposed, say, to the Church, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, or academia, both of which have great influence over many people?

Signorile: In general, for the past three years my own work has been constantly focusing on those three institutions, and so much of the community's work of the new generation of queer activists was focusing on portrayals in Hollywood films, on politicians in Washington, and on the media.

When I looked at why we were focusing on those institutions, it became very clear to me that it was all about the closet. And as much as the other institutions are incredibly powerful, they all have to work through these three institutions. Academia and the Church need the media, the political system, or Hollywood to reinforce their agendas. I see these three as the gatekeepers.

Your childhood was not particularly unusual for a young queer. What role did

your early experiences of being bashedand being a basher yourself-play in becoming later a very aggressive activist and one of the most notorious queers in America?

Well, I think that those experiences leave vivid memories that come back to haunt you and, at least for me, force me to action. Some people react to being called a queer by just sitting there and taking the abuse. I reacted to it by going out of my way to try to prove that I wasn't a queer by beating up other people. I went into therapy in my teens, repaired my stunted personality, later came to terms with my homosexuality, and realized what I had been doing and how I had hurt people in order to prove I wasn't gay.

Then it dawned on me-years later, of course that this is what's going on on a massive scale in our culture. But

these are not children

beating up

children, they're adults voting against us in Congress or making anti-gay films or allowing homophobia to persist-all in order to protect their own closets. It became so real to me, an experience that I broke out of, that I felt it was my duty to help break this down in our society.

You describe the double-standard of media reporting for straights versus gays. What has to happen to make "equalization"-the term you prefer to "outing”— take place?

I think it's going to be more gay people in the media urging their editors to stop having a blanket knee-jerk reaction, "Oh, this is their right to privacy, we can't do it." It's going to take gay people to say, No, it's very pertinent to the story that we talk about this person's homosexuality, or that we ask this official about his secret homosexuality.

I see that already occurring. It's the gay people in newsrooms who have come out of the closet who are challenging the status

quo. It's going to follow the same course as how rape is now reported-which went the opposite way of not using the name. It took women in the newsrooms to confront editors and say, Wait a minute, this is about us, and this is how we feel it should be covered.

I think that in ten years we're all going to be shocked and surprised not only at how much people are out of the closet, but how the media is going to report very honestly and openly about gay people.

Have you had subsequent contact with people you have outed-Pete Williams, for example?

No, I never really have spoken with any of them personally, except for [New York gossip columnist] Billy Norwich. We have a very good relationship. He completely has come out and he completely understands why I did what I did. [Columnist] Liz Smith still is very angry,

still closeted in a way, although she admits that she's been "outed by professionals." I was told that Pete Williams was very happy that all of this finally had happened, that he always knew it would, and he was just glad that it happened, and he got through it and didn't lose his job. It was relief to him, in other words.

[Pete Williams' position at the Pentagon was terminated following last November's election. In March 1993 he became a Washington-based general assignment editor for NBC News.-Ed.]

In the book you discuss the role of the tabloids the Star, the National Enquirer, and such—in outing. These are the same papers with stories about Elvis advising Hitler in Bolivia—absolutely ludicrous things. Why should anyone give their celebrity outings any credence?

I think that a lot of the people who read the tabloids differentiate between the six or so of them. The "three-headed space-monster" whatever is usually in the Globe; you wouldn't find that in the Enquirer or the Star, which tend to focus more on celebrity.

If you read a story carefully, there is always truth somewhere in the story. They may embellish, they may sensationalize, but those particular papers actually do investigate and uncover things.

The thing about the tabloids is not necessarily their accuracy in reporting about homosexuality. It's more simply that they're writing about it. Instead of seeing it as a negative, I tend to look at it that these papers are part of our culture, and now we're included in part of that culture.

We have gone from being unspeakably scandalous to being acceptably scandalous. And, yes, they're still going to be off the wall and homophobic at times, but from the perspective of a cultural critic, it's a plus that we are now part of the dialogue, part of the discussion, part of the sensational aspects of the tabloids, because we

were previously unspeakable.

And I think that we have to pass through that scandal phase the way so many other things have-having a child out of wedlock, for example. It will wear down over the next few years. The tabloids will actually help do that, because they burn things so much into the ground that it becomes so blasé nobody's going to care who's gay after a while. I see the tabloids as a necessary evil. And I see their relationship with gay activists. The activists always keep an arm's distance, but they understand the interplay of the tabloids in our culture.

I'd like to talk about sexual harassment of gays. You describe several instances where people who have been harassed have come forward and tried and tried to press cases against celebrities. The cases have been thrown out of court. Why should people come forward if they don't have a reasonable expectation that their cases will be heard?

I think that's very difficult. I don't know what it's going to take. Through the court system it's incredibly difficult, especially when you're dealing with people like Merv Griffin, who has batteries of lawyers who engage in all sorts of ways to make sure things don't happen. It's virtually impossible when you're dealing with these powerful people to go through the court, and then you're out in public, and your name is going to be completely smeared.

This is why I talked to quite a few men who had been sexually harassed and abused both in Hollywood and New York and refused to come forward. They have average, everyday jobs and lives, and they feel that [coming forward] would be a major thing for them-it would change their lives forever, in the way Anita Hill's life was changed forever [after her accusations of

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