Promiscuity of the past: neoliberalism and gay sexuality pre- and post-AIDS

ABSTRACT

Scholars of LGBT advocacy often characterize the 1990s as a pragmatic and conservative era of activism – a time when neoliberalism “de-sexed” the movement and suppressed any lingering “liberationist” sentiment. AIDS, of course, figures prominently into this narrative. This paper explores the point of convergence between neoliberalism, sexual praxis, and political advocacy, making two primary contributions. First, I investigate how interest group representation serves the ends of neoliberal governance by mobilizing neoliberal citizens. This form of citizenship emphasizes not only a market-centered individualism, but it also promotes individual-level actions in the face of deeply structured social problems and encourages deference to strategy-minded professional managers and entrepreneurs. Second, I reintroduce pivotal leaders and organizations of the 1970s into the story of LGBT politics, arguing that these organizations laid the groundwork of a sexually conscientious gay citizenry before the AIDS crisis began. While a sincere concern over public health undoubtedly motivated activists throughout the 1980s, AIDS merely intensified (rather than initiated) community leaders’ policing of gay sexuality.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• gay and lesbian rights
• group identification
• interest groups
• LGBTQ
• minority representation
• queer theory
• sexuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The analysis in this paper follows the methodological approach of American political development (APD), which traces the development of political institutions over time. As this approach is fundamentally qualitative and historical, my “data” comes from primary source materials – including most notably gay newspapers, newsletters, and other ephemera – housed in several LGBT archives. In particular, I accessed archived copies of the Advocate at the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota, materials from the Human Rights Campaign Fund in the Cornell University Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, and the newsletter of the National Gay Task Force at the University of Wisconsin’s library.

2. NGTF changed its name to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) in 1985, and again to the National LGBTQ Task Force in 2014.

3. The Advocate was founded in 1967 as the Los Angeles Advocate and reworked in 1974 as a national magazine.

4. While the origins of public sex undoubtedly reach as far back as the origins of public spaces themselves, public men’s rooms – in libraries, public parks, subway stations, roadside rest areas, etc. – long served as venues for clandestine sex. Methodologies used to study public sex have been sources of great controversy within academia (Humphreys 1970).

5. “Tips on Lobbying Congress,” Accessed at Cornell University Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections HRC Archived Materials, Box 18. Accessed April 16, 2012.

6. Despite the New Right’s successes in the late 1970s, they also suffered defeats. Notably, California’s Briggs Initiative, which would have expelled lesbian and gay teachers from the state’s schools, lost by a margin of 58–42% in November, 1978. Although the initiative initially polled strongly, the lesbian and gay community received unexpected support from then-governor Ronald Reagan, among others. On the day of the Briggs Initiative’s defeat, Seattle voters decided to retain their gay rights law by a margin of 63–37%.

7. Formed in 1942, the NAE represents the first successful nationwide attempt to organize various isolated evangelical denominations. The organization established a Washington office and sent a delegation to President Eisenhower’s White House in the 1950s, more than a quarter of a century before similar evangelical organizations would rise to prominence.

8. In 2016, a team of researchers published evidence dispelling the myth of an AIDS “Patient Zero” (Worobey et al. 2016).