Beyond Roy Cohn: The Queer-Conservative Alliance

Tuesday, cigarette #1

From Gay Metropolis: A Landmark History of Gay Life in America:

Fifty years laters, Reynolds was nostalgic for the understatement of the thirties and forties. "People didn't shove it down your throat," he remembered. "When I see two boys walking down the street holding hands, it doesn't offend me; I don't care if they walk around naked. But liberation carried to such an extent to where there's no law at all, I don't see how you can get the full enjoyment of it. It seems to me that there are no rules today at all. You can pretty much do what you want. Thank god there are a few people who have a little sense of manners and decency. But, by and large, people are sleeping together when they're fifteen and sixteen. I mean, that was unheard of in my day. If you had a girl who spent the night, you practically put a maid in the same room with her. I just wonder whether the kind of fun we had would be gone if you're just permitted to do anything you want to."

From the same chapter:

"I think it was a little bit like that thing Mrs. Patrick Campbell said: 'My dear, I don't care what people do as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.' I think a lot of people in New York felt that way about their homosexual friends. I think that meant: don't be a roaring faggot and don't be a roaring bul dyke because that's offensive. Not because of the direction of the sex drive, but because it's not subtle."

Further thoughts on Gay Metropolis in the context of urbanism (which is, apparently, all the rage) may be forthcoming: Gay Metropolis, like Gay New York, paints a detailed picture of how gay subcultures colonize urban areas, i.e. a gay man walking into a strange city can find the cruising spot within a few hours, if he knows how to follow the signs. It's strange to say that family-values conservatives should be more like gay cruisers, but being able to use symbolic clues to navigate urban landscapes (like some kind of postmodern Natty Bumppo!) is a good club for your movement to have in its bag.

I'm not sure what's left for a conservative to say about gay urbanism except "Isn't it awesome how groups can make urban spaces their own?", but if I can visualize what it would mean for urban conservatives to take a page from the gay playbook, I'd be Living the Dream. Imagine standing in the middle of the New Haven Green, seeing a guy in tweed walk by, and knowing that if you followed him you'd find the conservative dive bar where everybody goes to talk about Hayek...