LGBTQIA Pre-Y2K, As Told by TV

LGBTQIA Pre-Y2K, As Told by TV

The right to lead a life without prejudice from others has been a long fight for the LGBTQIA community. We set out to determine what life was like, according to Peabody Award nominated television, for LGBTQIA people before the year 2000, when the movement for acceptance began to gain momentum in the United States. The movement began with the Stonewall Riots in 1969, which marked the beginning of the gay rights movement in New York City. From that time on, the media became increasingly open about sharing information of “homosexual” lifestyles. We discover that the prejudice ran deep in the early years of the movement, with discrimination from not only common neighbors but also leaders in the community. The following clips are evaluated together to examine the different types of prejudice the LGBTQIA community has experienced since the struggle came to light in the late 1960s.

In 1972, the public service documentary Coming Out focused on educating its audience about gay people and their culture by trying to convey the motivations and thoughts behind being gay. A large part of the PSA was footage of men in drag at the Miss Gay America Pageant in Nashville, blatantly and immediately displaying the lack of concern for desertion among the different types of LGBTQIA people in the 1970s, long before the term existed. This grouping details the lack of concern addressed to differentiating between the types of gay, lesbian, transsexual, bisexual or in-between orientations that existed.

The documentary interviews priests, doctors, and police officers which all frame the topic of homosexuality as something that is scientifically explainable, curable with religion, or manageable with jail time. Many of the gay men interviewed chose to do the interview in shadow so that their families will not be offended or shamed. The lack of acceptance in society at the time called for the men to literally hide their faces when talking about issues of homosexuality.

This specific clip of the PSA features commentary from gay men themselves. The men explain that they are not harmful to society, as many people believe they are. The men have honest intentions and explain they have no control over their sexual orientation and no intention to do anything but live their lives and be happy. The man featured at the end of the clip, Tony, explains to the interviewer that he does not identify as gay and rejects societies labels, claiming he is just “Tony” and nothing else. We then see her, Tony, lip-syncing to a song about freedom of self-expression and love, symbolizing the slow yet steady strength that LGBTQIA people were gaining in the early 70s.
 Throughout the remainder of the 1970s, the LGBTQIA population continued to face discrimination from society at large. Often misunderstood and feared, the LGBTQIA population was routinely excluded from positions of power and importance within the community. A champion of the gay rights movement, Harvey Milk broke though the ceiling imposed on the gay community when he became the first openly gay person to be elected to a government position in the U.S. Although he shattered boundaries, the pushback from a largely unaccepting society shadowed his term in office.

The following clip exposes internal tensions as Harvey Milk and John Briggs, the leader of Proposition 6 an initiative that aimed to strip openly gay schoolteachers of their jobs, fought over the bill. The clip contains a news scene from 1978 where Briggs and Milk argue about the proposition. The argument arises because Milk makes a jab at Briggs regarding the statements Briggs made,

saying there was a positive correlation between gay schoolteachers and child molestation. Milk then continues to corner Briggs into admitting that he assumes that gay schoolteachers are child molesters, and that the only way to lower the number of child molesters, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is to take out the homosexual group.

The scene expresses the bias against the gay community during the 1970s. Even in a “progressive” city, such as San Francisco, the news stations still felt Briggs’ argument was substantial enough to air. In his argument, which continues to equate gay people to prostitutes, Briggs voices the concerns of the conservative population who are afraid of allowing gay people to interact with their children.

By 1981, the societal acceptance of the LGBTQIA population had not vastly improved. Many of the religious biases against LGBTQIA people that are still present in some groups today were prevalent in the 1980s. As evidenced in the documentary All God’s Children?, the difficult and often painful relationship between homosexuals and religious institutions were still prevalent. The clip provides a succinct summary of the tensions between the homosexual population and the church, incorporating several interviews with various clergy members, medical and psychological experts, and professors who offered contrasting outlooks on homosexuality and its place in religion. The exposition of different ideas from both sides of the tension aids in presenting the topic in an unbiased, purely educational fashion. However, dramatization is still present in the contrast of the expressed beliefs; some believe homosexuals feeling shamed by the church are unfairly mistreated, while others insist there is no place within the church for homosexuals choosing to be open with his/her sexuality.

The exposition of these contrasting views lends meaning to the program by educating the viewer on aspects of homosexuality, including their treatment by many religious institutions. The analysis of this sector of society casts a wide range of understanding about how the gay population is treated by society—the shame they are often made to feel, the contrasting, but mostly negative, reactions they are often met with, and the struggle they must endure in order to live contently within their identities.

As evidenced by the media, the LGBTQIA population faced years of discrimination from society, religious groups and political institutions. As the LGBTQIA population continues to gain momentum, it gives gravity to those who stood at the forefront of the movement when discrimination was at its highest, allowing the LGBTQIA population today to push new boundaries into complete acceptance. The fight for equal rights has been long, but well worth the many years of struggle. Most recently this effort culminated in the 2015 victory of Jim Obergefell in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal. The media pre-Y2K contributed to shaping the history of the LGBTQIA community and undoubtedly had an impact on the modern day movement.  

Post by: Charlotte Burney, Emma Demint and Christin Wade-Vuturo