“Think
about what happens when gay means white. It makes gay a form of wealth and
privilege.”
John
D’Emilio, in his latest book, In a New Century: Essays on Queer History, Politics, and Community Life, is more
critical, reflective, provocative, and personal than his previous work. He
passionately points to the limitations and unintended consequences of the LGBT
movement – as illustrated in the above quote. The claims of rights and the
fight for acceptance has consolidated
the whiteness of being LGBT by ignoring the profound inequalities based on
social class and race and neglecting the diversity of expression of same sex
love and desire within and outside LGBT communities.
In
one of the best executed and most passionate essays in this collection, he
makes a solid argument against same-sex marriage. “Marriage simply confirms and
extends [middle and upper classes] already privileged status,” D’Emilio
concludes. He brings history, demography, politics, and economics to make his
case. His voice is deeply personal, scholarly, and persuasive. I, a married and
a father gay man, am on this side of the argument. Marriage does not open up
possibilities for all of us to pursue justice, happiness, and well-being,
rather, it reduces them. To be clear, I married the love of my life, but the institution
of marriage has little or nothing to do with our love.
D’Emilio
also critically reflects on the history and story we, LGBT scholars, have
created and told. The work we have produced around the lives of LGBT folks, he
proposes, has remained outside the large history of the US. While perhaps that
was needed in the 1960s and 1970s, we now need to bring in the national (and, I
would argue, transnational) forces that have shaped the LGBT movement: “If we
embed queer stories in a larger political economy, a larger national political
history, they will become lees separated and less self-ghettoized, and instead
become seen as integral to, more connected to, and more essential for
understanding broader narratives of US history.”
In
A New Century, I discovered
D’Emilio’s trajectory as a scholar and as a gay person-- both of which are
entangled. His writing is personal and insightful. As an academic and gay
person myself, I found in this book an inspiring colleague, mentor, and leader.
Students of history will see the inner and behind-the-scenes work of a
historian.
I
was surprised to read much of what D’Emilio writes about as “history.” The
moments that once were beyond my imagination and those in which I was living have
become history: AIDS and same-sex marriage. I was reminded of the marvelous
potential meaning of our present. Our daily lives, work and queerness in the
world and in our communities, in the center and in the margins, all becomes
part of history, our history.
