Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 18:14:34 -0500 (CDT) From: Kevyn Jacobs To: "Kansas Queer News [KQN]" Subject: PITCH WEEKLY (KC): MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE ON THE CLOSET FROM PITCH WEEKLY (METRO KC) NUMBER 363 APRIL 27-MAY 3, 1995 ============================ OUT OF THE CLOSET, INTO THE MAINSTREAM by Hugh Curran Closeted gays and lesbians who claim to be straight not only hurt themselves but make possible an age-old societal and media conspiracy to keep the gay community invisible to the world, author and outing activist Michelangelo Signorile asserts. "We can't ask for equality while asking for special treatment from the media," Signorile said in a recent interview from his home in Manhattan in NYC. "To seek out that kind of invisibility sends a message to gay kids that there's something shameful about who they are." In the introduction to his 1993 book "Queer in America: Sex, Media and the Closets of Power", Signorile states, "There is no question that the institution of the closet must be broken down. One logical way to do that is to vigorously assault the trinity of the closet and take on those individuals, gay and straight, who are part of the unconscious conspiracy." Only two years after his book was published, Signorile said he's seen a surprising change both in the willingness of lesbians and gays to come out, and the way in which their coming out is treated in the media. "I think there's been enormous progress," Signorile, 34, said. "In Hollywood, we've seen an improvement in the way gays and lesbians are portrayed in films, such as Philadelphia. You have entertainers like k.d. lang coming out, as well as gay Hollywood power players like David Geffen. I think we've seen progress in New York and D.C. as well. There was a ripple effect that occurred when Clinton got in office. Congresspeople and those who work for them are more willing to come out these days. I think it's largely due to activists who worked to break down the closet and the gays and lesbians who have had the courage to come out." Less than 10 years ago, however, the media and Signorile himself ignored or lied about the private lives of lesbian and gay power brokers and celebrities to help them remain in the closet. Signorile described his metamorphosis from gossip columnist to outing activist before a crowd of 80 during LesBiGay Awareness week in Lawrence earlier this month. The annual event is sponsored by the University of Kansas' gay, lesbian and bisexual student group. After graduating with a journalism degree from Syracuse in 1982, Signorile returned to his native New York to work as a publicist and later, a gossip columnist. Signorile said his job was to get a client's name in the papers by offering columnists gossip on other celebrities. If the tidbits were accepted, the publicist's client would get his or her new movie or book mentioned. "It was all great gossip, but it was all heterosexual," Signorile said. "You simply did not mention anything about a celebrity's homosexuality. We never questioned why it was. It was simply off limits and if you tried it, that columnist might not work with you again. Lies were common in the columns. "Publicists would get together and match a gay star with a lesbian star for the columns to heterosexualize both of them," he said. Compounding the hypocrisy was the fact that so many publicists and columnists were themselves gay, lesbian or bisexual. "We were all working for our own collective invisibility as a group," Signorile said. The intoxicating whirlwind of parties and gossip mongering might have gone on indefinitely for Signorile and others in the super charged atmosphere of New York in the '80s if it hadn't been for the sobering, impossible to ignore tragedy of AIDS, and the toll it was taking on the fields of art and entertainment. "One day I woke up and realized that everybody was dying while I was going to parties," Signorile said. "There had been a lot of denial about AIDS in that world for a long time. Publicists and columnists were hiding the cause of death of a lot of people. By 1988, anyone in the worlds of fashion, art or gossip had to decide if they were going to continue their denial or do something about it." It was then that Signorile joined ACT-UP, the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power. "These guys came up to me and a friend in a bar and told us we should join," he said. 'I told them I thought it seemed like an odd group, but then they said, 'Yeah, but the guys are really cute!' So we said, 'Okay!'" Signorile said the anger and honesty he found at the ACT-UP meetings opened his eyes. 'I was jolted by the information I was hearing," he said. "I realized how much we had distorted everything. I saw what we did as a cover for our own homophobia." Signorile quickly became ACT-UP's publicist, writing opposing press releases and columns each time a public gay or lesbian figure was lied about by the mainstream media. "I tried to show the double standard of the media in its treatment of heterosexual public figures and homosexual public figures," he said. Both for ACT-UP and later, as a founding editor of the controversial "OutWeek" (now defunct), Signorile outed politicians and public figures including an assistant sectary of defense, a Pentagon Spokesman, and shortly after his death, millionaire Malcolm Forbes. "The mainstream press was already working on the angle that he had been dating Liz Taylor," Signorile said. "Please. But it was one of the first times that the mainstream media went back and picked up the story and began reporting the reality." Signorile said an example of how far the mainstream press has come in its coverage of gays and lesbians is evident in the reporting of Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner leaving his wife and family for a male lover earlier this year. "It was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal," Signorile said. "Every other media picked it up as well. The same press people that demonized me for outing are now calling me for intellectual stimulation for their own outing stories. We've come a long way." There are times, however, that the press slips back into old, less-enlightened ways of covering the HIV or lesbian and gay communities, he said. "Where the media slips is when some kind of crisis comes that they don't have time to think out," Signorile said. "Take the Greg Louganis story. All they could report about was, 'Blood in the pool! Blood in the pool!' It was a knee jerk reaction. With HIV, if there's ever a chance that someone outside the gay HIV community might be exposed, it suddenly becomes a story about how they might have given it to 'us,' and they get hysterical." Signorile said another example of continuing problems with coverage was the reporting of the murder of a gay man after he was revealed as the secret admirer of another man on the "Jenny Jones" talk show. "All they could do was crucify Jenny Jones and other talk shows, and few examined the inherent homophobia," Signorile said. But with overall improvements in coverage and more people willing to come out of the closet, the struggle for gay rights is set to enter a new phase, Signorile said. "In general what the community needs to do is organize a grassroots movement across the country, something that doesn't rely only on the activists in big cities. What we need is what the Christian Right was able to do during the gays in the military debate with mass phone calls, letters and faxes, I see just that kind of coalition starting to form now, but it may take 50 to 100 years. We have to look at the long term." After a stint as a columnist for the national gay magazine The Advocate, Signorile now writes a column for Out magazine titled, "Signorile in America." In June, Signorile's new book, "Outing Yourself", will be released. "It's a 14-step guide to coming out," he said. "I think a planned, step-by-step guide will help make coming out less daunting. It tells how to check your anger and how to understand the pain that you and your family might experience. I think anybody willing to make the difficult choice of coming out is a hero." --------------------- FROM PITCH WEEKLY LETTERS TO THE EDITOR MAY 18 - MAY 24, 1995 ===================== OFFENDED BY OUTING Dear Editor, I write concerning the article by Hugh Curran about Michelangelo Signorile in the April 27-May 3 issue of Pitch Weekly. While I can empathize with the impatience and urgency of the gay and lesbian community in their struggle for basic rights that people like me tend to take for granted, I must confess to great reservations about the practice gay and lesbians call "outing." I can admit that the world would be a better place if every gay or lesbian in the closet would come out, but I still feel that it is a decision to be made by each individual. Coming out of the closet is not something one person should have forced upon her or him by another. I have yet to read Signorile's book, "Queer in America", though I shall make it a point to do so soon. I doubt it can change my attitude toward outing. Until the remote possibility that my mind is changed, I must say that outing seems to me an entirely cynical, self-serving practice. Indeed, what is not cynical and selfish about the exploitation of another's private life to further one's own political agenda? What has happened to the right of the individual right to privacy? I fail to see how anyone's sexual preference is public business. It is the sort of sanctimonious minding of thy neighbor's business rather than thine own I have come to expect of the Christian Right, not from progressive groups like those involved in the gay and lesbian liberation movement. I have never read OutWeek, not that it would have interested me any more than a supermarket tabloid or celebrity gossip rag. I can't see that it served any high moral purpose, and it is quite likely its success was merely due to the fact that its content was titillating. (Oh my, lookee at who else is gay, teehee, teehee). Clearly, Signorile has not thought through the contradictions of his position. I quote from Curran's article in which he quotes Michelangelo Signorile as saying, "I think anybody willing to make the difficult choice of coming out is a hero." (Italics mine). I couldn't agree more. However, it is difficult to miss the hypocrisy of this statement from Signorile. Choice implies that one has the freedom to select from at least two distinct alternatives. That someone is willing to choose implies that they do so of their own free will. What choice is there when a self-righteous thug, calling himself a journalist, cowering behind the First Amendment, threatens: Out yourself or I will out you? (Serve my cause or I will serve you to it). Whose will is being exercised here? Anything positive that comes from the practice of outing will happen in spite of rather than because of the process. Lofty ends are not achieved by questionable means. Thank you. Keep up the good work. --Chris Clowers Manhattan, KS