Pensive

How do you explain to a new generation what it means to yours to fight for your rights?
How do you communicate to them that the freedoms that they rightfully take for granted were hard won and often at the cost of peoples lives?
How do you make them understand that the fight is not over, that their time to take up the mantle has come, and that it is urgent that they do so?

I am of a generation that was forced through necessity to stand up.Through the tears of loss, and the anger at indifference, we stood our ground and demanded what was right and what was ours. We didn’t win every battle, but we did win quite a few. And we taught many people what was right. Yet we are not through.

Those of us who are entering our later years still have a job to do which we have not much prepared for. We have to educate our youth.

The other day I read a blog posting by Jay Brannan, a young folk artist who is also gay. It is his wish that his work not be identified as gay music. That he be thought of as an artist and that his music stand on it’s own. I completely understand that. In many ways I agree. My own artistic work explores all of the human experience and the universality of those stories that we all know, straight or gay. It’s that ability to look at the total experience of this life and be able to recognize what is universal about it for us all that makes me want to work harder and be a better artist.

But, I guess, due to my age, or the generation I hail from, I also realize I have a responsibility. To stand up and proudly proclaim that I am a gay man, who knows he is measured differently because of who he loves, and that there is a perceived difference between me and heterosexual men, and that that perception makes me less than heterosexual men in many eyes. Certainly a liability to some. I know that the part of my work that examines and portrays gay men is representative of my own experience in this world, and that my unique viewpoint bears a weight.

One of our biggest mistakes was to allow our history to be denied us. To allow the machine that is our culture to have systematically edited our contributions to this world. And they were many.

From the historically safe distance of Alexander the Great, to the silence that surrounds the existence of Bayard Rustin. From James Buchanan to Bertrand Delanoë. from Da Vinci , to Neil Patrick Harris, history has demonstrated the heterosexual willingness to ignore their repugnance over who some men and women love when it’s expedient for them to do so.

Proclaiming your sexuality shouldn’t pigeon hole your work, but it does. It shouldn’t preclude you from being considered for work outside your personal experience, but it does. It shouldn’t make people turn away from you on a professional level…but it does.

This battle is not over, far from it. We must educate those who will come after us as to their responsibilities and what they will face in this world. We must teach them that it is incumbent on them to face these battles and win as many as they can. And yes we must allow them to insist that their work be considered on its own merits not that of a gay artist, but as an artist who created something of beauty for us to enjoy, for us to learn from, for us to pass on to future generations, for us to be proud of.

So thank all the artists who represent us in that larger world who are willing and able to teach by example those that would deny us our history. Who will demonstrate through their art that the human experience is a universal experience and the way our heart tells us is right is always the truth.