Queer breeding: historicising popular culture, homosexuality and informal sex education

Abstract

Through an analysis of gay protest music (1975) and an educational kit for students (1978), both sponsored by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in the UK, this paper brings into focus a history of gay rights activists' efforts to marshal popular culture in the development of informal sex education for young people in the second half of the 1970s. Through a reparative critique of prevailing therapeutic research methodologies, and through a theoretical deployment of notions of methodological reconciliation and queer breeding, it makes the case for the importance of historical methods in contemporary sex education research.

Keywords:

• history
• popular culture
• homosexuality
• queer theory
• methodological reconciliation

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge all of the staff in the Archives Reading Room at the LSE, London, for their assistance and advice in helping me access and use materials in the Hall-Carpenter Archives Collection, especially Sue Donnelly and Sinead Wheeler. I am also appreciative of the generous contributions made by this paper's anonymous reviewers who provided excellent comments, queries and encouragement in relation to earlier versions of this paper. Their suggestions have helped to strengthen this piece of work. I also want to acknowledge the work of Susan Clarke (at Deakin University) and Andrew Stanley and Helen Wheeler (from Taylor & Francis) who provided excellent advice and guidance in relation to copyright matters. Thanks are also due to Mary Lou Rasmussen and Peter Aggleton.

Notes

^1. This is a quote from Homosexuality: A Fact of Life: Students' Booklet (Friele and Heiberg 1978 [1972]) which was part of the Homosexuality: A Fact of Life. Tape/Slide Kit for Schools and Youth Groups published by the CHE in 1978. This booklet was written ‘by Karen-Christine Friele incorporating the professional advice of Astrid Heiberg, psychiatrist. First published in 1972 by Det Norske Forbundet av 1948 (the Norwegian organization for homosexual and bisexual people) with financial support from the Norwegian Department of Health and Social Security. English translation by Kenneth Barclay, Roger Depledge and Robert Rowe’ (Friele and Heiberg 1978 [1972]). See page 19 for the quote.

^2. In this paper, I concentrate attention on the Tom Robinson song ‘Glad To Be Gay’ released in 1975, which was later re-titled ‘Good To Be Gay’ to distinguish it from the more famous version of ‘Glad To Be Gay’ released by the Tom Robinson Band in 1978 (see http://gladtobegay.net/versions/good-to-be-gay/; http://gladtobegay.net/versions/rising-free/; the booklet insert in Tom Robinson's vinyl release Cabaret '79 [released in 1982] on Statik Records; and liner notes to the CD compilation Strong Love: Songs of Gay Liberation 1972–1981 [Chapter Music, 2012]). The 1975 song is attributed to Tom, Rose and Annie; the 1978 version was written by Tom Robinson.

^3. This paper uses a range of terms linked to sexuality, including ‘homosexual’, ‘gay’ and ‘queer’. In general, my use of terms is governed by an emphasis on historical specificity (although I acknowledge that this itself is an unstable practice). That is, at those points in my argument where I am describing or speaking directly of historical matters, I use the terms that were employed at the time to describe the matters at hand. Thus, in this paper when I am describing my historical archive from the 1970s, I use the words ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual’. In my discussion of the therapeutic research that gained prominence in the Global North since the 1990s, I use phrases such as ‘queer youth’ and ‘LGBTIQ’ (although, clearly, these are summary adoptions and other terms, such as ‘same sex attracted youth’ or, indeed, other orderings of the constituent letters of the umbrella acronym would better speak to this or that historical instantiation of the general historical period that I am describing in only a brief manner for the purposes of my wider argument). In contrast to the historical application of terms, I use ‘queer’ throughout when I am elaborating my critique beyond the specific situation of the various illustrative historical cases that I engage. In this usage, ‘queer’ should be read as referring to a wider and less stable array of subjects, practices and knowledges than are ordinarily assembled under identitarian terminological categories while also situating my argument within a post-structuralist philosophical tradition of critique which I pursue in this paper through my engagement with Tuhkanen's work on ‘queer breeding’.

^4. Robinson is referring to the original 1975 song called ‘Glad To Be Gay’.

^5. For example, please see http://gladtobegay.net/versions/rising-free/

^6. Clearly, it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a thorough historical account of the periods under discussion, and to engage their attendant literatures. Rather, this paper represents an effort to develop some critical resources for engaging the historical and the archival in relation to queer youth, and for acknowledging how these things are constituted through various methodological habits and heritages. The work here, then, points towards – and modestly hopes to make a small contribution to – those necessarily larger critical-historical queer studies projects that are yet to be undertaken.

^7. The show also features a young gay couple – Sue and Jane – although it focuses more on Dave's story. The Sue and Jane storyline requires its own analysis through which the questions it raises can be critically engaged.