The world is on fire. That’s no exaggeration, as The Times Opinion section’s recent canvass of the effects of climate change around the globe demonstrated. We are speeding — or should I say sizzling? — toward disaster. That prospect has instilled a kind of existential dread in the globe’s younger denizens, and understandably so.
There’s a fierce and terrifying attack on democracy underway in the United States, in which ideological differences grow ever sharper, tribal rivalries get ever uglier and a pandemic that should have brought us together drives us farther and farther apart. Our political leaders seem either lost or at a loss. We lurch from one crisis to the next.
There is, in other words, a glut of grim. So why don’t I feel entirely glum? Why don’t the feelings within me precisely match the chatter around me, which is that everything is getting worse?
One reason is the course I taught during the just-concluded fall semester, my first at Duke University, and another is the thematically related book that I finally had time to start reading after the course’s end. Both remind me of darker days — and of how far, at least in some respects, we’ve progressed toward the light.
The course was called The Media and L.G.B.T.Q.+ Americans. It mingled an analysis of journalism with gay history, so the students and I looked at the Lavender Scare, which was contemporaneous with the Red Scare and led to the firing or forced resignation of thousands of gay and lesbian people from government jobs in the late 1940s and the 1950s. We looked at the prelude to the Stonewall rioting in 1969, which, no matter its immediate trigger, reflected profound anger at prolonged oppression and marked a turning point. We looked at the AIDS epidemic, the first chapter of which cast gay men as degenerates to be gasped at, lepers to be feared.
To revisit all of that was to be schooled anew in the advances since. And that education is being amplified by the book I referred to: “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington,” by James Kirchick, an advance copy of which I’ve been slowly and raptly making my way through. (It’s scheduled to be published in May.) “Secret City” is a remarkable, hugely impressive accomplishment — exhaustively researched, skillfully told, erudite, heartfelt — that speaks not only to the impact of double lives on our nation’s life but also to the individual toll of veiling your soul. It makes me sad. But more than that, it makes me grateful, for all that has changed since those days of lies and whispers.
Part of the dedication written by Kirchick, who is gay, says it all. He thanks “all those who unburdened themselves of their secret, so that I did not have to live with mine.” Amen.
When I graduated from high school in 1982 and then college in 1986, I wouldn’t have guessed that I’d be living now in a country where gay and lesbian couples can be legally married coast to coast. I didn’t foresee this many gay dads, this many lesbian moms. I didn’t expect a career in which I would never minimize my sexual orientation and never feel penalized for my forthrightness.
There are still instances and pockets of cruel discrimination, even violence, especially toward transgender Americans. There’s no guarantee that the arc of the past 75 years will continue to bend toward justice. And it’s a jagged arc. The past five years made that clear.
But most Americans are conscious of inequities in a way that we weren’t before, and that’s true when it comes not only to gay Americans but also to other marginalized groups. We’re attuned to details that once escaped us, and while we disagree bitterly about how to address them, we have the discussion — and having the discussion matters. It doesn’t get us where we need to go; it doesn’t excuse how short of that mark we are.
But it gets us closer. And to examine certain aspects of our past is to feel significantly more hopeful about certain aspects of our future.
Words Worth Scrutiny
Usually, this recurring feature of the newsletter is devoted to a matter of language that one of you has brought to my attention, such as the unwarranted judgment inherent in the phrase “broken family,” which I addressed several months ago.
But today I want to look at a phrase of my own obsession, one that increasingly bothers me, though I used it frequently and without pause in the very recent past: “openly gay.” It’s a fitting segue from the first item in today’s newsletter.
You still read “openly gay” in newspapers and hear it on television all the time. It comes up often in conversations. In large measure, it is, or has been, an attempt at clarity: You’re telling your audience that you’re not violating the privacy of the person you’re discussing. He is not in denial about being gay. She is not furtive about being lesbian.
And you, the dispenser of the “openly”? While you’re emphasizing that you’re not being indiscreet, isn’t it possible that you’re unintentionally communicating more than that? That the inclusion of “openly” connotes something noteworthy, optional and even confessional about owning up to being gay? It arguably suggests that being closeted is just as natural and casts simple honesty as an act of daring. “Openly” carries vestiges of “admittedly,” traces of “unabashedly,” glimmers of “boldly.”
When did you last hear someone called “openly straight,” by which I mean did you ever hear anyone called that? Or, to trot out another adverb often tethered to us gay folks, “flamboyantly straight”? There are straight men and women aplenty whose investments in their sexual orientation and crowing about their heterosexual currency neatly fit the definition of “flamboyant,” but they’re just considered confident. Or, in the case of a certain 75-year-old Floridian, presidential.
Richie Jackson, who produces plays, television shows and movies, forcefully made the case against “openly gay” in an essay published in The Advocate in March, brilliantly calling it a “backhanded merit badge.” But some of the objectionable examples he cited underscored a problem with retiring “openly,” a reason it sticks around. He noted, for example, that Pete Buttigieg was described as “the first openly gay cabinet secretary” to be confirmed by the Senate. In that case, though, “openly” wasn’t really or primarily about Buttigieg; it was a way of acknowledging that there had surely been gay and lesbian cabinet secretaries in the past but we didn’t know them as such because they concealed or downplayed the fact. “Openly” was arguably necessary, even essential.
Jackson suggested replacing it with “out,” a term that gay people popularized and often use. I agree that it’s an improvement — but it, too, frustrates me. There are no “out” heterosexuals, after all.
When milestones are being chronicled and a succinct qualifier is in order, I indeed vote for “out” over “openly.” And otherwise? If a person’s sexual orientation or identity is specifically and indisputably relevant to a given article or conversation and isn’t a secret, call that person simply “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “trans” or such. Let the “openly” be implicit.
And if a person’s sexual orientation or identity isn’t immediately pertinent? Don’t name it, with or without an “openly.” We’re all people in the end. The less codifying and categorizing, the better.
“Words Worth Scrutiny” is a recurring feature. To suggest a term or phrase, please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence. You can also email me at that address with nominations for “For the Love of Sentences,” which will return in the next newsletter.
More Mercantile Mischief!
We’ve had some fun this past year — at least I hope we have — sharing and showcasing imaginative, clever or witty business names, but I don’t want to push a good thing too far. This edition of “More Mercantile Mischief!” will be the last. I’m confident, though, that we’ll find new semantic adventures next year. In fact, I began one last week, inviting you to nominate favorite song lyrics of yours. The response was robust, and I’ll parcel out bits of it every four to five weeks or so in 2022.
Before I present the final batch of wordplay-minded merchant monikers to which you’ve drawn my attention, I want to mention a business name that many of you mistook for a witticism — for obvious reason. Each of a chain of mortuaries in western New York is called the Amigone Funeral Home, which you thought was a bid for levity amid the ultimate gravity, a laugh in the face of death:
Amigone. Am-i-gone. Am I Gone?
Why, yes, yes, you are.
But no, no, there’s no joke there.
Amigone is, in fact, a surname, presumably an Italian one. And according to the chain’s website — which, if a prank, is an astonishingly straight-faced, intricate one — Anthony Amigone Sr. is the chairman of the board. Vincent Amigone Sr. is the chief executive officer. Anthony Amigone Jr. is the president. I include “presumably” because my email to Anthony Jr. — to verify a few details, ask if family members are aware of this misimpression about their surname, etc. — went unreturned.
Onward! As I’ve noted before, hair cutters, pet services and bakeries seem to be especially prone to flights of verbal fancy, and the following batch of standouts reflects that. They are:
I thank the many of you who, during the “More Mercantile Mischief!” era, sent me suggestions. Please forgive me for not using all of them. I had an embarrassment of riches — which is a tribute to your faithful and deeply appreciated readership.
On a Personal (But Sort of Political) Note
Another week, another round of bad news for President Biden. Coronavirus infections are surging, thanks to the contagiousness of Omicron. Build Back Better is sinking, amid reciprocal recriminations between White House officials and Senator Joe Manchin that make Washington look as hopeless as ever.
To which I say: I’m glad we have Biden. I’m really, really glad.
That’s because I haven’t forgotten whom and what he replaced. It’s because I remember how we started the year — with an amoral, would-be autocrat in the White House — versus how we’re finishing it. It’s because I don’t measure my presidents solely by the price of gas, the firmness of their grip on their political party or their odds of re-election. There is more to life, and to leadership, than that.
Is Biden’s performance in the presidency superior to what another Democrat’s would be? I can’t say. It’s indisputably flawed, the most recent example being the game of catch-up that the country is playing when it comes to Covid tests. But that doesn’t change the fact that what our country needed a little over a year ago was an end to President Donald Trump, and what Biden provided was just that.
With his election in November 2020 and his inauguration in January 2021, our country got better, and it got better because it replaced a president who deliberately and gleefully stirred hate with one who, whatever his shortcomings, has a discernible heart. It got better because it replaced a president whose regard for democracy — for anything, really — is determined by the treasures and pleasures that it confers on him with one who can see his place in a grander, nobler picture.
It got better because it traded limitless hubris for palpable humility. Biden pointedly praised the Trump administration in his speech to Americans on Tuesday, rightly giving it some of the credit for the speedy development of coronavirus vaccines. That’s a combination of classy and smart.
To go by polls, Americans are judging Biden harshly, and many have soured on him. There are understandable reasons for that. And it could mean that Biden has provided not an end to Trump but a pause. It keeps the door open a crack. That’s not OK.
But that doesn’t erase Biden’s fundamental decency. That doesn’t eliminate his capacity for empathy. Did his predecessor possess either? Not that I could tell. And as I try, in the spirit of the holiday season, to point you away from gloom and toward something, well, merrier, I urge you to keep at least that much in mind.
I look forward to reconnecting with you in 2022. And I thank you for spending time with me in 2021.
