Word: madsen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...revolution has failed." To thousands of homosexuals who marched last weekend in the annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Day parades, the thought may be heretical, but it is exactly the argument put forth by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, two Harvard-trained psychologists, in a provocative new book, After the Ball (Doubleday; $19.95). As Kirk and Madsen point out, the revolution began 20 years ago last week in New York City at a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, when for the first time patrons fought back against police conducting a routine raid...
...authors, both of whom are gay, acknowledge that homosexuals' lives have improved since then, but they say the victories are limited because America's fundamental attitudes have not changed. "The gay movement hasn't got nearly so far as the black civil rights movement," declared Madsen in an interview. "Yes, our life-style is now 'public' -- in highly restricted urban areas -- but coast to coast, hatred and contempt for gays aren't far from where they were 25 years...
Kirk, 31, and Madsen, 34, put much of the blame for the revolution's failure on gays themselves. The pair argue that the movement for too long was wrongly focused on sexual freedom and self-expression, issues that they feel have antagonized the public. Instead, they say, the emphasis should be on civil rights and fairness, concerns that appeal to all Americans. AIDS, which has devastated the gay community, has helped shift the gay-rights agenda away from liberated sex to more mainstream values...
...Kirk and Madsen charge that the gay movement has been weakened by its insistence that self-hatred is a basic problem. "Learning to like yourself is an essential first step," Kirk told TIME, "that's all it is." It does not guarantee that everyone else will like you too, he notes. If gays are to achieve the ultimate goals of acceptance and assimilation, they will have to overcome America's hostility...
...that end, Kirk and Madsen assert, gays need to project an unthreatening, respectable image to the straight world. They advise curbing flamboyant excesses and keeping drag queens and butch lesbians out of the public eye. Explains Madsen: "If you want to stop the fire of bigotry, don't put it out with gasoline." The authors advocate a calculated national media campaign $ using clean-cut types, an idea they first suggested...