The Accidental Activist: A Personal and Political Memoir.

AuthorCloud, John

By Candace Gingrich with Cris Bull with Chris Bull Scribner, $23

A good way to summarize society's stunning, if almost imperceptibly slow, transformation on the question of homosexuality is this: In the 1990s, one can be famous, not infamous, for being gay.

If you think I exaggerate the shift, consider that as late as 1988, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis turned down the offer of a $1 million lesbian and gay fund-raising campaign to be organized in part by a gay consultant and long-time left-wing activist, David Mixner. The Dukakis campaign's refusal went mostly unnoticed.

Four years later, Mixner's friend Bill Clinton would openly solicit gay and lesbian donations and would mention, for the first time ever, the word "gay" in his convention acceptance speech. And just last year, a Republican presidential campaign's refusal of a gay group's contribution became giant news, even before Robert Dole flip-flopped and personally directed his operatives to accept the money.

Before a few years ago, journalists rarely spoke of gays and lesbians who weren't "gay activists" Regular gay folks--even Hollywood moguls and members of Congress and corporate executives--remained in a closet they created and the media helped maintain.

AIDS would shove many from the closet--not just those who succumbed to it but their friends who felt guilty about remaining silent. For example, in his new memoir, openly gay Republican Rep. Steve Gunderson (Wis.) writes, "My friends and fellow gay men were dying, and here I was, a leader of the party of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, doing too little to combat their antigay rhetoric."

Now there is another openly gay Republican in Congress, Rep. Jim Kolbe (Ariz.), along with two openly gay Democrats. The cover of a recent Entertainment Weekly announced that primetime television will feature 22 gay characters this season. Famous gay entertainers and writers and businesspeople are coming out almost every day, it seems, a torrent that continues to normalize homosexuality in the American mind.

As the carapace of silence erodes, the rhetoric of activism is growing more foreign to the gay and lesbian experience. Just as today we rarely speak of "black leaders" in civil rights-era terms, the combination of social, political, and cultural forces building erratically toward gay equality surely can no longer be ascribed to any directed "action," however vigorous, for gay "rights." It owes much more to parents discovering that their...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT