Gay Cosmos

Preface

When I thought of composing Gay Cosmos, about ten years ago, most of these ideas seemed, even then, very old and familiar to me. For a long while I would never have thought of writing this material down—it seemed to me so obvious. I was immersed in the material, and I thought it was all perfectly familiar to everybody.

Gay Cosmos was inspired by a public television series and the book related to it. The series was a rather grandiose survey of human knowledge with particular emphasis on astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, and the prospects for space travel. A particular icon of the series was a reproduction of a plaque that had been affixed to a space probe. The plaque had various signs and symbols which some intelligent race that found the plaque might interpret to discover where the probe had come from, and it bore outline drawings of the male and female of the human species. In the closing scene of the series, the narrator, a very distinguished scientist and humanist, stood in front of a phallic rocket and invited viewers to imagine humanity sending its seed to the stars in such vehicles. It was a very heterosexual cosmos that was depicted in this series.

Another series of about the same time did at least acknowledge the existence of gay people, but the list of great gay men—for those listed were all men—seemed to be presented as examples of those who had overcome serious flaws to make their contributions, as if they were cosmic mistakes who could justify their existences only by becoming great.

I hardly knew what to make of these series. They seemed to consider themselves liberal and progressive, scientifically open-minded and humane. Yet theirs was a simplified and narrow cosmos. I discussed the matter with gay friends and only slowly came to realize that the ideas which seemed so self-evident to me and the sources and factual bases of those ideas were virtually unheard of by many gay people.

Of course I did not think I had formed any original ideas; I did not even think I had combined existing ideas in any particularly novel way. Scholarly works referred to the same sources I had used, but the material was not being popularized and was not making an impression on gay consciousness in general. Young gay people were exposed to the latest thinking on esoterica such as black holes, but learned very little of what was known of the function and meaning of their sexualities. We had slogans such as “Gay is good” and chants like “Two–four—six—eight! Gay is just as good as straight!” for them, and many of them had the sense that their sexualities were natural and innate. But we had not given them the reasoning to support any of that.

I began to revisit my sources in preparation for Gay Cosmos. As the prospect of homelessness loomed before me, I had to part with a considerable private library. Eventually I did become homeless, and my manuscripts and notes were lost several times. All the while, and even from the beginning, I hoped my task would be obviated by some author better qualified, better situated, and better organized than I. But I never found his book. So here, at last, is mine.

Gay Cosmos is not a manifesto, although in some places it is polemic, nor quite an outline of gay studies. It is an informal introduction to facts and ideas that every gay person should have access to for consideration. I have not attempted to answer in advance every possible objection to what is presented here, and I have avoided the overly defensive practice of footnoting every remark so that the footnotes exceed the text. I have aimed for a text as light and readable as the subject will allow. Although I believe everything I have written, the reader should understand that virtually nothing I have written is entirely free of controversy. I have not aspired to write the last word on any of the topics I have covered, but in literature accessible to general readers I hope I have in some cases written the first.

This, then, is the Gay Cosmos, and welcome to it.