Inside the circle: is gay culture taking on a frightening assimilationist role?

Whew! the year's almost over, and to hear some people tell it, it didn't end a moment too soon. If 1997 had lasted any longer, gay culture would have assimilated entirely into the great white-picket-fence Disney mall of oblivion that is modern America.

Or so some would have it. The big events of the year -- Ellen coming out, the president coming to dinner, In & Out packing them into theaters, marriage looming in Hawaii, the Sex Panic! debate -- have left some with the impression that gay culture is taking on a frightening assimilationist role. Those who cherish the traditional aspects of distinct gay and lesbian Culture -- from Judyism (Judy Garland worship) to lesbian separatism, from piano bars to leather bars, from drag to softball to sex clubs -- are afraid that this edifice of fabulousness is about to go the way of disco.

We've heard this all before. People have been arguing since the 1970s whether gay people should become just like everybody else (the assmilationists) or should strive to maintain a separate culture (the radicals). The more success we have, the more contentious this debate gets. But I think it's ultimately an empty debate, for at least two reasons. First, the historical record seems pretty clear that genuine cultural separatism occurs only when society stigmatizes a particular minority. In our case the need for a truly distinct gay and lesbian culture will exit only as long as we feel oppressed, and that will persist only as long as society makes a big issue out of being queer. The minute it stops being an issue, a primary purpose of separatist gay culture will largely evaporate.

What makes the debate so empty is that this is the ultimate goal of both the assimilationists and the radicals, whether they realize it or not. In her famous essay "Thinking Sex," Gayle Rubin describes the difference between the assimilationists and the radicals as follows: Society draws a charmed circle around the sexualities it endorses, mainly heterosexuality within marriage, and excludes from the circle those sexualities it considers bad and abnormal, including homosexuality, promiscuity, and so on. Assimilationists, says Rubin, want to bring homosexuality inside the circle and normalize it. Radicals want to smash the circle altogether and abolish all norms.

When it comes to assimilation, what strikes me is that the radicals and the assimilationists would obtain the same result if either were ever successful. If the assimilationists win and gay men and lesbians are drawn into the charmed circle, then homosexuality would cease to be a contentious issue, we'd stop feeling like a beleaguered minority, and -- poof -- there goes the need for a truly separate culture. Likewise, if the radicals succeed and the magic circle is smashed entirely, again homosexuality would cease to be a contentious issue, we'd stop feeling like a beleaguered minority, and again -- poof Despite the Sturm und Drang, the ultimate goal of both camps is to create the conditions that would abolish the need for a separatist gay culture. So everybody can just stop screaming, right?

The second reason the debate strikes me as empty is that assimilation is not annihilation, something I've learned from my own experience as an Italian-American. My Italian family long ago ceased being separatist in the old Little Italy fashion. We have kept what's good (the food, the family ties, links to the old country, in some cases the language) and dropped what's bad (the poverty, the powerlessness, the cultural isolation, the old stigma that we're all mafiosi). You can call this process assimilation or whatever you want, but we still feel pretty Italian to me. Indeed, the further Italian-Americans travel from the bad old days of isolation and stigma, the more we appreciate -- and preserve -- the best things about our heritage.

This hardly seems like a bad thing. In fact, it seems like the best of both worlds. We get to enjoy the fruits of full citizenship and compete freely in the mainstream world. And we get to keep the best of what makes us distinct and provides us with roots, heritage, meaning. I can't imagine anybody seriously arguing that my parents' generation should have cowered in some Little Italy somewhere, boasting that their reputations as Guineas and gangsters somehow ennobled them.

So despite all the sound and fury, this debate doesn't signify much to me. As an Italian-American queer, I feel as though I have seen the future, and it isn't assimilation or separatism. It's having it both ways. And the funny thing is, that's the direction gay people are inevitably going, screaming all the way.