As Stonewall 50 Commences, a New Book Argues the Fight for the Ideals of the Rebellion Continue

Dr. Perry N. Halkitis’ inspiration for Out In Time, his upcoming queer generational history book, came about when he was writing his last book The AIDS Generation.

“It’s been 50 years since a group of transgender, queer, gay, and lesbian individuals fought for their rights at Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village New York, marking the onset of the gay rights movement in America” says Halkitis. “Since that time, much has changed in U.S. society — by 2017, 62% of Americans supported gay marriage. But despite these promising social trends, the LGBTQ community continues to face acts of violence, rejection from their families or religions, and daily discrimination. As we approach this historic anniversary, it becomes all the more necessary to record the struggles and triumphs of gay Americans.”

Halkitis told Towleroad in December that one one of the themes that emerged while he conducted his research, were the generational differences that exist between cohorts of gay men. “It become apparent that this generational divide was a missed opportunity for gay men of all ages to learn from each other. Also the men of my generation seemed to believe that coming out is substantially easier nowadays that it was in the 1980’s and before. But in working with many young people, member of the Queer Generation, and in my own lab the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies, I have come to understand that that the challenges of gay men coming out an negotiating their identity is fraught for all of them, albeit in different ways.”

The book seeks to show the consistency in the stories of the coming out process across time and space. While some social conditions have improved in the United States, there are still psychological realities to coming out that persist to this day for gay men.

By giving voice to three generations of gay men: the Stonewall gen, the AIDS gen, and the young Queer gen, it allows these men to share their stories and demonstrates the life experiences that tie us all together as well as the crisis experienced by each generation.

All of these ideas are explored through the life stories of 15 men ranging in age from 78 to 19.

Halkitis became the first openly gay dean at a major university, when he left New York University to become the head of the Rutger’s School of Public Health, the largest public health school in the U.S.

Gaynrd spoke to Dr. Halkitis on the eve of the books publication.

Gaynrd: All the stories in the book are compelling but what particularly jumped out were the tales from the gentlemen from Ghana and China because their experiences seem so fraught compared to the United States— was that something that surprised you?

Halkitis: The stories of Yaw, a 23-year-old Ghanaian American, who is part of the group I named the Queer Generation, was indeed powerful. What his story demonstrates so elaborately and clearly are the complex interconnections of identities — sexual, gender, race, faith, and the multiple other identities we as gay men hold.  I think too often non-LGBTQ people think of our population as a monolith, failing to recognize that within our population there is as much diversity as the rest of society. 

Similar themes emerged in the story of 42-year-old Huang, a Chinese American member of the middle cohort in the book, the AIDS Generation. What these stories also reveal are the acts of racism and racial objectification perpetuated by some gay men on other gay men. While nothing really surprised me, these stories upheld for me the social conditions which we all know exist in the gay community.

Gaynrd: Did it support any long held hypotheses?

I delved into this project with the belief that despite the advances of the last 50 years, the psychological process of coming out and of sexual identity development and integration is as challenging today as it was in years past; and that this reality takes its toll on our individual and population health.

This was based on my own observations of real-life stories — not the somewhat idealized version of a film like Love, Simon — more like the stories depicted inMoonlightand Beach Rats.

The 15 men across all three generations whom I interviewed all shared challenging stories of coming out. The challenges varied but there were always some difficulties in all the stories. Whether it was the story of 19-year-old Juan to 78-year-old Wilson who grew up in Baltimore in the 1950’s. 

What varied across generations was the main crisis that defined their coming of age. I have said time and time again that while social conditions are somewhat better nowadays as compared to the time before and around the Stonewall Rebellion, LGBTQ people continue to be subjected to the micro and macro aggressions of society including those perpetuated by the MAGA-fueled discrimination of the Trump-Pence administration and their shortsighted and hateful supporters. And this discrimination undermines our individual and populations’ health. 

Gaynrd: Yet you seek to find commonalities— what struck you in terms of that?

There are numerous themes that cut across generations. These include the idea that gay men do not come out once but their entire lives; that toxic masculinity is highly evident in the population; that gay men, are like all other human are beings with intersecting identities; that racism, body and bottom shaming are all too real experiences for so many gay men; that drugs and sex continue to be intimately linked in part as means of coping with social conditions, in part because of physical realities, and in part because this energy is normalized in out communities; and above all that intergenerational dynamics are less than ideal and that dismissing behaviors happen in both directions.

All of these conditions undermine health. But I also concluded that as a population, and despite these most adverse of circumstances, individually and collectively we possess, strength and grit—something known in the literature as resilience.

Gaynrd: And the differences? 

I was tired of hearing men of my generation claiming that young gay men nowadays have it so easy. The struggles of younger gay men are different from those of us — of older gay men.

The main struggle or primary present challenge of each generation is what is unique and what defines each one. Specifically for my generation the primary presenting problem was AIDS and trying to survive this viral and social disease; for the Stonewell Generation, the challenges were to live their lives without fear of persecution and prosecution.

For the younger generation, the Queer Generation, these realities of previous generations continue to persist and are compounded by the crisis of failure — the challenges created by economic conditions far less ideal than years gone by, as well as the challenge to expand the paradigm of what it means to be a gay man, moving away from the white, hypermasculine, hypersexualized archetype.

Gaynrd: What do you hope people come away from the book with?

My main take away is simple, as we commemorate Stonewall 50, we continue to fight for the ideals of the Stonewall Rebellion.

The ongoing challenges to the health of our population will not be fully defeated until the promise of Stonewall is realized.

It’s also about the broader challenges and solidarity we have with the larger, global, LGBTQ communities where battles wage on, even as we still fight for our equal place in society here in the USA.

In countries like my homeland of Greece, cultural hate persists leading to the arson that recently destroyed the main HIV  testing center in Athens, and where the murder of Zak Kostopoulos, a well-respected activist goes unsolved and unpunished. 

It continues in countries like Chechnya, where LGBTQ people are brutally victimized and murdered through government approved actions, and in countries like Abu Dhabi where HIV-positive gay men cannot enter the country and are deported when they are found to have seroconverted, and yet places where universities like NYU and the Sorbonne continue to do business. 

For five decades we have been working towards a society where discrimination and homophobia are eradicated, all with an eye to maintaining our well being — physical, emotional, and social. And all of this work is informed by social justice and equity.

Pre-order Out in Time: The Public Lives of Gay Men from Stonewall to the Queer Generation, due out June 3rd, here.

You can follow Halkitis on Twitter.

Photographs from Virginia Pride by Savas Abadsidis