Janis Walworth:
The Gay Agenda, written by Jack Nichols, long-time gay activist and cofounder in 1961 of the Washington DC chapter of the Mattachine Society, and sporting a foreword by Dr. George Weinberg, the clinical psychologist who coined the term “homophobia,” attempts to make plain the pattern of religious fundamentalist assaults on the civil rights of lesbians and gay men.
Nichols spends most of the first chapter trying to convince his readers that gay and lesbian people are “just like” straight folks. Diversity exists within our community: we do not share a single political viewpoint, we belong to a wide variety of religions, there are many different gay and lesbians organizations meeting many different needs. All we want, he says, are equal rights, but we are purposely stereotyped and misrepresented by religious fundamentalists. The latter are defined as biblical literalists, television preachers, ranting evangelicals, and “any group marked by rigid adherence to a given dogma” (31).
Included in Chapter 2 are several quotes from America's founding fathers expressing their deep mistrust of organized religion. These serve to counter fundamentalist claims that the United States was founded on Christian principles with a government that was intended to reflect biblical morality. The main thrust of the chapter, however, is a critique of the doctrines of original sin and Christ's atonement. These, Nichols claims, undermine people's sense of self-esteem and foster irresponsibility. The idea that sins can be removed by Christ discourages the self-examination that might lead to enhanced awareness and personal growth. He calls those who have been saved “prime subverters of a morally upright world…” (47).
In Chapter 3, the author hits his stride as he focuses on fundamentalist hate mongering. He begins by mentioning the long history of violence on the part of Christians and departs from his rant about all the horrible things they are now doing only to describe briefly how the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom has been misinterpreted. There is no exploration here of the complex beliefs that motivate fundamentalists. They are simply portrayed as sadistic, wanting to make the lives of gay men and lesbians miserable.
The history and interrelationship of feminism and gay liberation are outlined in Chapter 4. The authors sees equality of the sexes as essential for the functioning of an ideal society and identifies the fear of the breakdown of the patriarchal system as one of the driving forces behind fundamentalist opposition to gay and lesbian rights. Beyond this, he reveals the limitations of his own understanding of gender identity issues. He cites transsexuals and transvestites as examples of men who reacted to being called sissies by making a political statement, namely wearing dresses. He cites “leather-wearing Dykes on Bikes” as the female counterpart to these activists.
In Chapter 5, Nichols identifies six fundamentalist arguments against homosexuality: it is unnatural, everyone would become gay if there were no taboos against it, youth are endangered by predatory gay men, the race will not survive if everyone becomes gay, gays are promiscuous and perverted, and it is against the Bible. Each of these arguments is answered in a short paragraph. Next, televangelist D. James Kennedy's video, The Gay Agenda, is examined. The soundtrack from the video is quoted and all the elements purported to be part of the national “gay agenda” are spelled out. Herein lies the greatest value of Nichols's book: we can find out what the fundamentalists are saying about us without sending them $25. Each statement from the video is addressed, some more adequately than others. He responds to the charge that the gay agenda would require taxpayer funding of sex change operations by saying that no responsible leader in the gay movement would ask for such a thing, and besides, transgender rights have nothing to do with gay and lesbian rights. Quick to embrace transgendered folks when he sees their actions as reinforcing his own ideas about changing gender roles, he is just as quick to drop them when they seem a liability.
Other fundamentalist claims are dismissed without even a coherent response. To the charge that the gay agenda demands tax funding of artificial insemination for lesbians, he says: “Please. I leave the reader to ask any American lesbian if that is what she wants. The very idea of such a demand, as part of the national movement's agenda, is a bad joke” (95). To a statement made by Christian theologian Dr. Howard Hendricks that many homosexuals became that way because they were recruited or seduced as teenagers or preteens, Nichols says, “Dr. Hendricks would be laughed out of any reputable researcher's presence” (98). Although good points are made with respect to some fundamentalist assertions, responses like these are of no value.
In Chapter 6, Nichols attacks the family. He appears to equate traditional families with jealousy, codependency, loss of individuality, and extreme restrictions on a spouse's movements and contacts. In a head-spinning tirade, the author implicates trouble-makers as diverse as monogamy and cell phones. At the root of the faltering of the family is, of course, fundamentalism. The solution seems to be free love—the maximizing of same-sex relationships both platonic and sexual—as a way of creating bonds between people.
Chapter 7 documents the overpopulation problem and discusses Catholic opposition to birth control and abortion. The fundamentalist belief in the imminent end of the world is cited as a reason for lack of concern on the part of conservative Christians. Chapter 8 deals with AIDS, recounting the blows dealt by fundamentalists to progress in combating the disease. Neither of these chapters offers much in the way of arguments to counter fundamentalist viewpoints. The main value of these chapters, and most of the others, is that they sound an alarm for members of the queer community who are not already aware of the threat posed by the Christian right.
Chapter 9 is a rant about how fundamentalist leaders don't want people to think for themselves. The author claims that worship of an external god encourages dependence, and he quotes Emerson on self-reliance. This diatribe seems to be tangential to the central theme of the book until one realizes that it is a lead-in to Chapter 10, in which the author reveals his ultimate answer to fundamentalism: Walt Whitman. The poet's vision of utopia is extolled: his emphasis on equality, democracy, autonomy, and introspection, as well as his celebration of the physical body and same-sex love and friendship.
In Chapter 11, “Winning Against Fanaticism,” the author returns to his rant against fundamentalists, listing important people who have opposed fundamentalism and a few examples of fundamentalist repression, in venues ranging from Iran to nudist beaches. The chapter is short on practical strategies for combating fundamentalism, however. The author mentions that the ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project has compiled “an arsenal of much-needed strategies for gay activists nationwide,” but he does not hint at what these strategies might be or even let his readers know how to obtain this resource. Nichols also recommends the use of humor in attacking fundamentalism (a strategy which he himself fails to employ, at least in this book). Last, he suggests an appeal to non-fundamentalist clergy to dissociate themselves from their more conservative counterparts.
In Chapter 12, Nichols takes up his cry that men's roles are too restrictive. We need a men's movement that will transform men's roles the way feminism did for women. Of course, the existing men's movement, with Promise Keepers the largest and loudest segment, is inadequate. Instead, Nichols calls for gay priests and preachers to come out. He issues an invitation to heterosexual men to leave behind the fears of same-sex contact that have stunted and maimed their lives, to realize their potential for brotherhood, and join in an orgy of homoaffection and even homosexuality.
Readers who have wondered about Nichols's use of the terms “homosexually inclined” and “heterosexually inclined” throughout this book are finally treated to an explanation in the last chapter. The author believes that everyone is born with bisexual potential. We become “inclined” one way or the other based on what we see other people do. (Of course, this theory cannot explain the millions of lesbians and gay men who have emerged from environments in which no homosexual role models existed, an inconsistency the author does not address.) Although he has given them only lip service in the first twelve chapters, the author now discusses bisexuals, whose existence supports his theory of inborn flexibility.
Although his “monkey see, monkey do” theory of sexuality is perhaps one step removed from the belief that sexual orientation is consciously chosen, Nichols leaves no doubt that, in his view, sexual “inclination” is malleable. Lesbianism has increased, he says, due to the influence of feminism, and he agrees with fundamentalists that without a strong taboo against it, homosexuality will spread like wildfire. They key to removing that taboo, he says, is the granting of equal rights to gays.
This chapter is a gay rights activist's nightmare. Far from providing ammunition against fundamentalist attacks on homosexuality, Nichols has delineated an agenda as alarming as anything they have imagined and has put assault weapons in their hands. Somehow in his backwards logic, LSD has become a tool for getting in touch with our inner bisexuality, and married men arrested at roadside pickup spots are the new political activists, refusing to be narrowly defined by the term heterosexual. His final word of advice to queers who would fend off fundamentalist infringement of our civil rights is that we should flaunt our sexuality in hopes that others will imitate us.
This is not an academic work. It is poorly referenced and lacks a clear, rational structure. The tone of Nichols's book strays far not only from objectivity but also from the world of brotherhood and love he is working toward. His rhetoric is hateful and inflammatory (he likens fundamentalists to Nazi henchmen and Puritan witch-burners) and is filled with nearly as many logical inconsistencies as fundamentalism itself. His attack on the character of God (portrayed in the Bible as angry, jealous and violent, says Nichols) and his condemnation of basic Christian doctrines are not likely to win any converts from fundamentalism or even from liberal Christian sects.
Jack Nichols was a pioneering activist in the 1960s and early 1970s. He challenged the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness, led dialogues between gays and the clergy, and took part in many key protests, as several black-and-white photos in the book attest. But where has Nichols been in the last 20 years? As a lesbian activist of several decades, this reader had a deja vu sense of being pushed to the sidelines. Although he talks about an inclusive movement, Nichols does not in fact address lesbian or women's concerns. He looks to male writers and poets for his vision and seems to think his reliance on both straight and gay men (even feminist men) constitutes diversity. He barely mentions bisexuals and demonstrates a lack of understanding of transgender issues. In short, he is not well equipped to write about a national queer movement of the ‘90s.
This reader, having taken the book's subtitle (Talking Back to the Fundamentalists) seriously, was disappointed. Although there are some amazing quotes from fundamentalist Christians and the occasional good comeback, there is little serious analysis of fundamentalist positions. The latter are astutely dissected, however, and inconsistencies in fundamentalist arguments exposed in a book titled, ironically, The Antigay Agenda (Didi Herman, University of Chicago Press, 1997), which in the eyes of this reviewer is a much better value for money spent.
commenting closed for this article