Post-GALA Posts: Part I of ???
Jason Kuznicki on Jul 26th 2004
“They have the power of description. And we succumb.” — Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Post-GALA posting: I’m home now from the Gay And Lesbian Association of Choruses festival just held in Montreal, Quebec. It was a week of great food, sightseeing, shopping, friendship, and–of course–music. I promise I’ll cover each of these eventually, but I can’t say how soon: I’m backed up on blogging material for at least a month now. In other words, it was amazing.
In a Word: But first things first; I’ve got to talk about the word. Yeah, that word. Gay.
As in gay marriages, Gay Choruses, gay neighborhoods, gay bars, ad infinitum.
When I mention that I’m in a gay men’s chorus, I often get a question: Why do you need a gay chorus anyway?
Or: Why not just be gay, and happen to sing in a chorus?
Or, with rising hostility: Why do you have to pin your sexual identity on everything?
For starters, it proves the homophobes so deliciously wrong: Again and again, we are told that gay people are undisciplined, and ugly, and shameful. We are told that gay people contribute nothing to society, and that we are creatures of passion, dissolution, and decadence. We are told that all we care about is sex.
We hear again and again that the bonds of society itself will be destroyed if homosexuality is given too great a presence.
And when nearly six thousand of us come together, from seven countries, to perform such exacting and difficult music as we have done–to say nothing of the awe-inspiring logistics behind the scenes–we know that the homophobes are lying. We know that we possess a creative and productive force in society just like anyone else, and that we are not any of the bad things they say about us.
We know that we possess discipline, and beauty, and even temperance. And we show it to the world.
But the question is still reasonable: “Why do you need a gay chorus?” It gets all the more reasonable in a place like Montreal, which is arguably the most gay-friendly city in North America.
Vincent–our gracious host at Montreal’s charming Castel Durocher Bed and Breakfast–asked my husband Scott about it, and Scott gave the best reply I’ve ever heard:
“It’s a social group. We like hanging out with other gay people.”
Fundamentally, it’s not political. It’s not even sexual. It’s social.
Sure, everyone understands gay politics, or at least they think they do. Everyone understands gay sex, even if they wish they didn’t. But virtually no one understands gay culture. Gay culture remains the great mystery of gayness, an undiscovered country even to those outsiders–like Vincent–who are entirely gay-friendly. Increasingly, gay culture consists not of the cultural icons of the past, but of the less visible and more useful cultural networks of the present, the ones that ordinary gay people themselves are forming with ever-greater candor and enthusiasm.
It’s probably quite hard for straight people to imagine being completely cut off from other straight people. I suspect that most of them would balk at living in an almost perfectly homosexual society, where straights were rare and often furtive about who they were.
I also suspect that most straight people would stage an open rebellion if they could only meet their own kind in dark, smoky, alcohol-soaked nightclubs. And right now, the gay community is staging precisely such a revolt. Quite often we want to meet in the fresh air, in the daylight, and sober.
Yes, many of us want to meet romantic partners under such favorable conditions, and that’s a laudable goal. But even those of us who are partnered take great pleasure in sharing our lives with people who have had similar experiences. Hence the gay choruses, the gay gun clubs, and those patriarchs of the non-bar culture, the Metropolitan Community Churches, a Christian denomination that welcomes and embraces the gay community.
Perhaps one day the unfolding of gay culture will be seen as the true core of the gay-rights movement. Indeed, our culture is becoming steadily more important than our politics. You might never guess from watching the news networks, but take my word for it: For many and possibly for most of us, the political is purely a consequence of something much, much more real, the everyday contacts we have with one another in innumerable social organizations.
I was two years old when the first-of-its-kind San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus was formed. Some of the earliest members of my own group, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC (GMCW), can still recall San Francisco’s first American tour. The night of their concert in Washington, a group of people came together from the audience and determined to make a group of their own.
Some of them are still with us, and I still hear it from them again and again: “The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus changed my life.”
And they did–and they have. San Francisco’s tour spawned dozens of imitators; now there are hundreds of gay choruses all over the world. Some groups are big; GMCW now has around 200 members. Some are small, like New Mexico, whose chorus sent just thirteen singers to Montreal.
There are gay groups, lesbian groups, and mixed groups. There is even the Transcendence Gospel Choir, made up of transgender singers from the San Francisco bay area. I will have more to say about them–and about several other choruses–in future posts.
Above all, these groups strive to be as welcoming and inclusive as possible, often going so far as to dispense with auditions entirely. Most of these groups would probably welcome straight members–and quite a few already have.
So… Why are we still “gay” choruses?
It’s because when we perform, we’ve got two things on our minds: Our purpose is to create great music, and here anyone may join us.
But our reason for being is to create a community. Putting “gay” in our name helps ensure that the gay and lesbian choral movement will always do both.
It says that whatever things may be like in the rest of the world, in our choruses, gay people will be welcomed, nurtured, and supported. It’s nice to have a reminder like that, and it makes a great foundation for the real work of our community.
In a name: Here is where things get difficult, though, because some of our choruses don’t call themselves gay.
A case in point is the Turtle Creek Chorale of Dallas, Texas. Turtle Creek is popular–and very, very good. Although it’s a member of GALA choruses, Turtle Creek’s official persona is gay-vague at best. The institutional closeting of Turtle Creek Chorale doesn’t end with its non-gay name:
So are they gay? Um… Yeah. They’re really, really gay. I’ve met them. I know.
What makes all of this timidity so puzzling is that in person, anyone will tell you that the Turtle Creek Chorale is a gay-identified chorus. No one denies it, and their failure to use the “g” word isn’t just because they welcome straight people. We all do that already.
I’ve heard it rumored that some advertisers and donors to the Chorale would be upset if that dreadful word ever appeared in the group’s name. This is Texas, after all. And yet where else would an explicitly gay chorus do the greatest good? Who needs more to be reminded that gay people are capable of forming open, supportive, and effective social organizations? If you ask me, the loss of advertising just doesn’t compare.
A little history is instructive: When the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus was formed, it was in a class by itself; no one had ever heard of such a thing. Best of all, they put “gay” in their name. The founding members of GMCW never fail to mention it: Saying that they were gay was the very key to the project.
It stunned people how open these men could be, and when they were done singing, the world had changed–a little, to be sure, but certainly for the better. Anything less than “gay” would have been a total disaster. If they’d been merely the San Francisco Men’s Chorus, we’d all have known instantly what they were about, but in a quiet, shameful sort of way.
“You know what men from San Francisco are like,” people would have whispered. Depriving the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus of this one syllable would have turned a revolutionary social movement into a shameful joke. They’d have none of it back then, and I will have none of it now.
It’s an open question, though, how much of this shame must fall on Turtle Creek. It would be easy–probably too easy–to attack them for making the mistake that San Francisco avoided so many years ago. The name game isn’t that simple for a number of reasons.
First, a name is often a remarkable exercise of power, whether that name is said or unsaid. And the power of “gay” cuts both ways.
Consider a man who says “I am gay,” and who thereby comes out to his family.
Now consider a boy who says “You are gay,” and who thereby heaps abuse on his peers.
The name is the same, but there is a world of difference. Only in one has the power been used affirmingly.
To refrain from naming is also an exercise of social power. To insist that one never hear about gay people, and that gay people not be named, is just as much an act of homophobia as it is to deploy the word “gay” for abuse.
Quite often, the two go together. Homophobia would call gay people “straight,” so long as it constrained them–and it would call us be “gay” so long as it hurt. Not fair? Such is life.
Turtle Creek–and many other organizations like it–can perhaps be understood as seeking a way out of that double bind. They are gay whenever they can be–and not-gay whenever they have to be. If homophobes can exercise an arbitrary and fundamentally unfair power over us by calling us gay only when it hurts–then why can’t we do just the inverse?
Turtle Creek isn’t the only one playing this game; there’s also the Cincinnati Men’s Chorus and the the Indianapolis Men’s Chorus–both of which have a slightly higher web-based gay visibility–and quite a few others along a fairly wide spectrum.
Are these quieter choruses glomming onto the success of more open groups like San Francisco or Washington? You bet. Am I going to criticize them for failing to be gay enough? Well… yes. But only gently.
Filed in The Basement
Okay, I’m just now finding your article on a Google search. But as a TCC member I feel compelled to respond. I find it interesting that we only ever hear complaints about the absence of the word “gay” in our name from people living at least four states away from us, and only around the time of GALA conventions. Otherwise it’s not even on the radar. I feel quite certain the Chorale will NOT be changing its name to please farflung outsiders anytime soon, since this sort of thing doesn’t come anywhere close to fulfilling our stated mission. We can do that with the name we have. And in the community we serve, the name Turtle Creek Chorale has considerable goodwill built into it after 25 years. I can just hear someone now asking, “why did you add the word ‘gay’ to your name?” and us answering, “oh, because some bitter queens in other states wanted to clip corners off our pink cards if we didn’t.”
But perhaps some more perspective is in order. Let me remind you that we are in Dallas. This is the city were John Kennedy was assassinated. After that, the whole world blamed our city for his death. I mean, when citizens of our town would travel and state where they were from, they’d get the most horrid reactions, as if they had pulled the trigger themselves. This eventually made already conservative Dallasites introverted in the extreme, and the gay community was not immune to this social phenomenon. The so-called “Dallas attitude”, which so many people believe is an unwarranted snobbery exhibited here is really nothing more than a hangover of this terrible introversion and anal retention. At one point in my living here, I was willing to swear that most residents had made appointments at Baylor Medical Center to have their rectums sewn shut!
In that kind of environment, you simply do not hike a thong up your butt cheeks and parade down Main Street singing “we’re here, we’re queer”, at least not in the 1980s. For Pete’s sake, Ronald Reagan came to Dallas for the 1984 Republican Convention as the first sitting president to visit this city since the Kennedy assassination. The city was still very uptight!
The Turtle Creek Chorale was born and grew up in that environment. And in the 1980s also faced some hard times that threatened its existence (like an IRS audit prior to having its 501(c)3 status correctly filed). To say nothing of the AIDS crisis which gripped all gay choruses. But when the chorus as a whole was “outed” in the Dallas Morning News as being “predominantly gay” (which the whole town already knew anyway), there was a moment of nervousness, and then a sigh of relief. And then a new era in the life of the TCC was launched.
And no, it was not like any other gay chorus. And that doesn’t make it wrong. Just different. And for people who are supposed to be all about embracing diversity, it strikes me as ironic to hear all these insistences that TCC be just like everybody else!! My way or the highway!! Why do you have to make everybody who differs with you wrong?
The TCC has had some amazing successes doing business in its unique way. By focusing itself as an arts organization, and achieving excellence in this arena, we’ve developed audiences and built bridges to other communities that might not have been reachable through a primary focus on gay activism. (And frankly, other gay choruses who’ve followed suit have also enjoyed similar success).
And while we have on occasion been rejected for being gay, we’re not out to collect such rejections as badges of honor. On the other hand, it warms our hearts immensely when someone who has no idea that we’re gay comes to one of our concerts or buys one of our CDs, falls in love with our music, and then finds out that we’re a gay chorus. And because of our music, they are forced into a conflict between two emotions — the love for our music, and by extension for the makers of that music — and whatever feelings they may have had about homosexuals, whether it be antipathy or apathy. We’ve received so many letters and testimonials over the years from people who’ve been “hooked” in this way. Hearts and minds are being changed that otherwise would still be on the other side. Do you still want to call that homophobic? The gay people know we are gay without us blaring it out through bullhorns. Back before I came out and was still in a heterosexual marriage, I knew the Turtle Creek Chorale was a gay men’s chorus. And I also knew they were very highly regarded.
In our chorus, we have men who’ve been married, who have children, for whom the very act of coming out to themselves takes immense personal courage. They want to sing. It helps to be able to tell their families that they are singing in the Turtle Creek Chorale, as opposed to a “gay” chorus. We serve OUR community.
In our part of the world, this is what works. Our outreach has extended to your part of the world, and I suspect this is what stings the likes of you. You want us to adopt your brand of in-your-face activism. If TCC had done this in Dallas, Texas, a “Gay Mens Chorus of Dallas” would have spent most of its life with fewer than 40 singers and might not have survived at all. We’d be singing in disreputable venues to small audiences with a third-rate conductor. Because that’s how things can be in Dallas. And GALA certainly would not have benefited from the leadership that TCC has offered it.
I will admit to being very selfish in my opinion about this subject. But I’m also just a little tired of the abuse. We’re supposed to respect and uplift each other. We all have to live in our own house and make it on the resources available to us. And from that, we can share with others. Can we put this one to bed, once and for all?
Wow, it’s clear I’ve touched a nerve.
As I said in the post, I understand why the decision was made. I don’t agree with it, but I do understand. And also as I said above, there are clear benefits to choosing what you have chosen, and you are right to point them out.
But these things being said, I find it telling that some of the old familiar anti-gay stereotypes turned up in your defense of the policy. Bitter queens? In your face activism? …thongs???
Please, think for a moment about what side you’re taking by stereotyping the rest of us. And then consider whether being a “gay” chorus, in name as well as in fact, is really all that bad.