Gay Power, Gay Politics
Encyclopedia
CBS Reports: Gay Power, Gay Politics is a 1980 episode of the American documentary television series CBS Reports
. It was anchored by Harry Reasoner
with reportage by George Crile
. Crile also produced the episode with co-producer Grace Diekhaus. He conceived the show after becoming aware of the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
and took as his focus the 1979 San Francisco mayoral election. After intermittent shooting over several months in 1979 with the cooperation of prominent members of the city's LGBT community, CBS aired Gay Power, Gay Politics on April 26, 1980.
Although described by CBS
as a report on the growing influence of the LGBT
community in San Francisco politics, Gay Power, Gay Politics focused largely on the supposed sexual practices of the gay
male community, especially sadomasochism
. The documentary sparked outrage in the city and CBS was roundly criticized for its journalistic tactics. The National News Council
, a media watchdog organization, found that CBS had violated journalistic standards through misrepresentation purposely to reinforce stereotypes and through deceptive editing.
Gay Power, Gay Politics was used as a tool of the religious right
to block or repeal anti-discrimination ordinances. Its reportage is still used to support views on homosexuality that are outside the mainstream of current psychological thought. LGBT writers and theorists have continued to criticize the documentary, although some have suggested that there is some truth to its assertions.
scheduled for October 1979. Crile had earlier produced a piece on assassinated
San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk
that ran on the program CBS Magazine. For this new program, he intended to focus on the 1979 San Francisco mayoral election and the political strength of the gay voting bloc in the city, which the several candidates were courting. He brought Grace Diekhaus in to co-produce with him and secured approval from CBS.
Filming began in the summer of 1979 and continued periodically through November, with the production team shooting in several intervals for a few days each. A number of prominent gay activists, including Armistead Maupin
, Cleve Jones
and Sally Gearhart, assisted Crile and Diekhaus with the project, although Gearhart and fellow activist Del Martin
began questioning their motives, coming to believe the network "was out to do a hatchet job". Crile interviewed Gearhart for the piece but by the date of her interview she was so mistrustful of the producers that she took measures to try to prevent herself from being misrepresented. "I would lift my voice at a certain point so what I said could not be cut. He seemed to want me to vilify Diane (sic) Feinstein in some way and set her in opposition to the gay community....During one of the breaks I told him that I didn't feel good about it...I felt I had been twisted and manipulated." Ultimately Gearhart's interview was cut entirely, for which she was "ecstatic". When Crile began his interview with then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein
by asking "How does it feel to be the mayor of Sodom and Gomorrah
?" Feinstein threw him and his crew out of her office.
Crile's report, rather than exploring the thesis laid out by Reasoner, instead focused in large measure on sexual activity, including men cruising
in Buena Vista Park
and interviews with so-called sadomasochism
consultants. He reported that one out of every ten deaths in San Francisco was attributable to gay men participating in BDSM and that one gay-oriented BDSM establishment's clientele engaged in sexual activity "so dangerous that they have a gynecological table there with a doctor and nurse on hand to sew people up." He compared San Francisco to the Weimar Republic
, asking Cleve Jones, "Isn't it a sign of decadence when you have so many gays emerging, breaking apart all the values of a society?" Crile also included footage of Feinstein, in the midst of a run-off election to retain her mayorship, appearing before the Harvey Milk Democratic Club
, an LGBT Democrat
organization. The program as aired showed Feinstein apologizing for remarks she had made in an earlier Ladies' Home Journal
interview, followed immediately by applause.
Following footage of Jones at a candlelight vigil for Harvey Milk and additional footage from the March on Washington, Reasoner closed with:
, a media watchdog organization. Gay Power, Gay Politics, Alfred said, relied on "a systematic use of hearsay, oversights, exaggerations, distortions, inflammatory buzzwords, leading questions, and misleading and deceitful editing" that had as its result "patterned distortion". Of particular note was the scene of Feinstein at the Harvey Milk Democratic Club. The editor had inserted applause immediately after Feinstein apologized for her earlier Ladies' Home Journal comments, which Crile had described as Feinstein's "groveling to atone". The applause had in fact come after her condemnation of anti-gay violence and a promise to appoint a gay or lesbian member of the police commission.
In response to complaints before the episode even aired, CBS had flown the producers to San Francisco, where in an interview with local CBS affiliate KPIX the pair acknowledged that the material for the show was selected for its likelihood to be shocking. Two months after Alfred's complaint to the NNC, CBS defended its people. Network vice-president Robert Chandler
dismissed the bulk of Alfred's complaints as "trivial, irrelevant or clearly represent[ing] matters of opinion or judgment". Chandler went on to acknowledge that the applause was broadcast out of sequence but denied that it was intended to deceive. "Whatever the motivation, it is clear that our producers indicated the applause out of its actual time sequence and therefore misled our viewers. This, then, constitutes an acknowledgment of error and an apology for a breach of our own journalistic standards." Regarding the program as a whole, Chandler denied any bias.
The NNC met on September 18, 1980 to consider Alfred's allegations. After dismissing many of them as without merit, The NNC found by a vote of 9–2 that CBS had unfairly misrepresented a number of sexual issues, including in the BDSM scenes. "By concentrating on certain flamboyant examples of homosexual behavior the program tended to reinforce stereotypes... The program exaggerated political concessions to gays and made them appear as threats to public morals and decency." CBS was also found to have offered distorted coverage of the city's annual Beaux Arts Ball and to have manipulated the soundtrack by adding the applause. The network later apologized for this on the air, the first time that the LGBT community had received an apology from a major news organization.
Many in the city were angered by the broadcast. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors
was outraged and sent a letter of protest to CBS. Feinstein wrote to the station manager of KPIX denouncing the episode. She compared the program to "doing a documentary on Italians and only showing the Mafia". She asked for three minutes of national airtime to respond but CBS denied her request. Armistead Maupin, who had worked closely with the production team, repudiated the program, saying "I had no idea they were doing a hit piece." Jeff Jarvis
of The San Francisco Examiner
wrote, "It's shocking that CBS News, home of Walter Cronkite, would partake of such bigotry." Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle
, Terrence O'Flaherty labeled the documentary "a dreadful little program... deadly for everyone it touches". Nationally, a spokesperson for the National Gay Task Force
condemned the documentary for its premise of gays wanting political power for purposes of having sex in public, for ignoring lesbians and for failing to address issues of anti-gay discrimination.
sub-culture. CBS used BDSM to discredit the LGBT community by implying that an increase in gay political power would correspond with an increase in BDSM and BDSM-related deaths. The program also miscategorized BDSM as an exclusively gay male activity, despite the fact that most of the BDSM material filmed for the documentary was shot at a location called The Chateau, which had a heterosexual customer base. Reporter Crile interviewed San Francisco coroner Dr. Boyd Stephens, who stated that 10% of homicides in the city were gay-related and that some of those were related to the BDSM community. His words, which Stephens would later acknowledge were based on hearsay, were widely and inaccurately reported as meaning that 10% of all homicides in San Francisco were related to BDSM.
, in its successful campaign to repeal a San Jose, California
gay rights ordinance, used an image from the program along with the slogan "Don't Let It Spread!" on billboards. In 1985, a Houston group opposed to a proposed LGBT rights ordinance for the city used clips from the program in its commercials and voters overwhelmingly rejected the ordinance. Controversial psychologist Paul Cameron
, on behalf of the right wing Family Research Institute
, has used the 10% homicide figure to support his views on homosexuality, views which have been repudiated by a number of professional psychological and sociological associations.
attacked the program for its presentation of gays as "sexual hedonists, privileged powerbrokers, and arrogant men scheming to force their 'lifestyle' on a recalcitrant public". She further castigated the show for excluding lesbians and people of color (although she acknowledges that this to an extent mirrored the state of gay leadership at the time) and noted her belief that anti-gay attack videos produced in the 1990s were modeled on this broadcast. Gay cultural critic Frank Browning
, while agreeing with the criticism of the tone of the documentary, nonetheless found the dudgeon that many in the community expressed to be "layered with disingenuousness". Browning wrote:
While echoing criticism about the exclusion of lesbian concerns and the distortions contained in the broadcast, Browning went on to note that sexual freedom has always been part of the gay male agenda and that it would be absurd to pretend otherwise.
CBS Reports
CBS Reports is the umbrella title used for documentaries by CBS News which aired starting in 1959 through the 1990s. The series sometimes aired as a wheel series rotating with 60 Minutes , as a series of its own or as specials. The program aired as a constant series from 1959 to 1971...
. It was anchored by Harry Reasoner
Harry Reasoner
Harry Truman Reasoner was an American journalist for ABC and CBS News, known for his inventive use of language as a television commentator, and as a founder of the 60 Minutes program.-Biography:...
with reportage by George Crile
George Crile III
George Crile III was an U.S. American journalist most closely associated with his three decades of work at CBS News.-Personal:...
. Crile also produced the episode with co-producer Grace Diekhaus. He conceived the show after becoming aware of the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
The National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C. on October 14, 1979. The first such march on Washington, it drew between 75,000 and 125,000 gay men, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people and straight allies to demand...
and took as his focus the 1979 San Francisco mayoral election. After intermittent shooting over several months in 1979 with the cooperation of prominent members of the city's LGBT community, CBS aired Gay Power, Gay Politics on April 26, 1980.
Although described by CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
as a report on the growing influence of the LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
community in San Francisco politics, Gay Power, Gay Politics focused largely on the supposed sexual practices of the gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
male community, especially sadomasochism
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
. The documentary sparked outrage in the city and CBS was roundly criticized for its journalistic tactics. The National News Council
National News Council
The National News Council was a non-profit media watchdog organization. It investigated complaints of media bias and unfair reporting. The NNC formed in 1973 with a grant from the Twentieth Century Foundation, the Markle Foundation and other sources...
, a media watchdog organization, found that CBS had violated journalistic standards through misrepresentation purposely to reinforce stereotypes and through deceptive editing.
Gay Power, Gay Politics was used as a tool of the religious right
Christian right
Christian right is a term used predominantly in the United States to describe "right-wing" Christian political groups that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies...
to block or repeal anti-discrimination ordinances. Its reportage is still used to support views on homosexuality that are outside the mainstream of current psychological thought. LGBT writers and theorists have continued to criticize the documentary, although some have suggested that there is some truth to its assertions.
Production
George Crile became interested in making Gay Power, Gay Politics after learning of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay RightsNational March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
The National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C. on October 14, 1979. The first such march on Washington, it drew between 75,000 and 125,000 gay men, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people and straight allies to demand...
scheduled for October 1979. Crile had earlier produced a piece on assassinated
Moscone-Milk assassinations
The Moscone–Milk assassinations were the killings of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, who were shot and killed in San Francisco City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White on November 27, 1978...
San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk
Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors...
that ran on the program CBS Magazine. For this new program, he intended to focus on the 1979 San Francisco mayoral election and the political strength of the gay voting bloc in the city, which the several candidates were courting. He brought Grace Diekhaus in to co-produce with him and secured approval from CBS.
Filming began in the summer of 1979 and continued periodically through November, with the production team shooting in several intervals for a few days each. A number of prominent gay activists, including Armistead Maupin
Armistead Maupin
Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. is an American writer, best known for his Tales of the City series of novels, based in San Francisco.-Early life:...
, Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. He conceived of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2009...
and Sally Gearhart, assisted Crile and Diekhaus with the project, although Gearhart and fellow activist Del Martin
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin and Phyllis Ann Lyon were an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists...
began questioning their motives, coming to believe the network "was out to do a hatchet job". Crile interviewed Gearhart for the piece but by the date of her interview she was so mistrustful of the producers that she took measures to try to prevent herself from being misrepresented. "I would lift my voice at a certain point so what I said could not be cut. He seemed to want me to vilify Diane (sic) Feinstein in some way and set her in opposition to the gay community....During one of the breaks I told him that I didn't feel good about it...I felt I had been twisted and manipulated." Ultimately Gearhart's interview was cut entirely, for which she was "ecstatic". When Crile began his interview with then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein is the senior U.S. Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992. She also served as 38th Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988....
by asking "How does it feel to be the mayor of Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....
?" Feinstein threw him and his crew out of her office.
Overview
Anchor Harry Reasoner opened the hour with the following narration, over shots of the 1979 March on Washington:Crile's report, rather than exploring the thesis laid out by Reasoner, instead focused in large measure on sexual activity, including men cruising
Cruising for sex
Cruising for sex, or cruising is the act of walking or driving about a locality in search of a sex partner, usually of the anonymous, casual, one-time variety...
in Buena Vista Park
Buena Vista Park
Buena Vista Park is a park in the Haight-Ashbury and Buena Vista Heights neighborhoods of San Francisco, California, United States. It is the oldest official park in San Francisco, established in 1867 as Hill Park and renamed Buena Vista in 1894. It is bounded by Haight Street to the north, and...
and interviews with so-called sadomasochism
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
consultants. He reported that one out of every ten deaths in San Francisco was attributable to gay men participating in BDSM and that one gay-oriented BDSM establishment's clientele engaged in sexual activity "so dangerous that they have a gynecological table there with a doctor and nurse on hand to sew people up." He compared San Francisco to the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, asking Cleve Jones, "Isn't it a sign of decadence when you have so many gays emerging, breaking apart all the values of a society?" Crile also included footage of Feinstein, in the midst of a run-off election to retain her mayorship, appearing before the Harvey Milk Democratic Club
Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Club
Based in San Francisco, California, the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Club is a chapter of the Stonewall Democrats, named after LGBT politician and activist Harvey Milk. Believing that the existing Alice B...
, an LGBT Democrat
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
organization. The program as aired showed Feinstein apologizing for remarks she had made in an earlier Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States...
interview, followed immediately by applause.
Following footage of Jones at a candlelight vigil for Harvey Milk and additional footage from the March on Washington, Reasoner closed with:
Representation of the gay community and journalistic standards
Crile and CBS were sharply criticized for the reporting and editing practices used in the documentary. A gay journalist named Randy Alfred, who had covered many of the same campaign events that were included in the episode, spent some 300 hours researching what he believed to be factual errors and misrepresentations within the broadcast. By July 10 he had prepared a 20-page complaint outlining 44 alleged instances of misrepresentation which he filed with the National News CouncilNational News Council
The National News Council was a non-profit media watchdog organization. It investigated complaints of media bias and unfair reporting. The NNC formed in 1973 with a grant from the Twentieth Century Foundation, the Markle Foundation and other sources...
, a media watchdog organization. Gay Power, Gay Politics, Alfred said, relied on "a systematic use of hearsay, oversights, exaggerations, distortions, inflammatory buzzwords, leading questions, and misleading and deceitful editing" that had as its result "patterned distortion". Of particular note was the scene of Feinstein at the Harvey Milk Democratic Club. The editor had inserted applause immediately after Feinstein apologized for her earlier Ladies' Home Journal comments, which Crile had described as Feinstein's "groveling to atone". The applause had in fact come after her condemnation of anti-gay violence and a promise to appoint a gay or lesbian member of the police commission.
In response to complaints before the episode even aired, CBS had flown the producers to San Francisco, where in an interview with local CBS affiliate KPIX the pair acknowledged that the material for the show was selected for its likelihood to be shocking. Two months after Alfred's complaint to the NNC, CBS defended its people. Network vice-president Robert Chandler
Robert Chandler (network executive)
Robert Chandler was an American television executive who helped create and oversee the television newsmagazine 60 Minutes during his 22-year tenure at CBS News....
dismissed the bulk of Alfred's complaints as "trivial, irrelevant or clearly represent[ing] matters of opinion or judgment". Chandler went on to acknowledge that the applause was broadcast out of sequence but denied that it was intended to deceive. "Whatever the motivation, it is clear that our producers indicated the applause out of its actual time sequence and therefore misled our viewers. This, then, constitutes an acknowledgment of error and an apology for a breach of our own journalistic standards." Regarding the program as a whole, Chandler denied any bias.
The NNC met on September 18, 1980 to consider Alfred's allegations. After dismissing many of them as without merit, The NNC found by a vote of 9–2 that CBS had unfairly misrepresented a number of sexual issues, including in the BDSM scenes. "By concentrating on certain flamboyant examples of homosexual behavior the program tended to reinforce stereotypes... The program exaggerated political concessions to gays and made them appear as threats to public morals and decency." CBS was also found to have offered distorted coverage of the city's annual Beaux Arts Ball and to have manipulated the soundtrack by adding the applause. The network later apologized for this on the air, the first time that the LGBT community had received an apology from a major news organization.
Many in the city were angered by the broadcast. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the legislative body within the government of the City and County of San Francisco, California, United States.-Government and politics:...
was outraged and sent a letter of protest to CBS. Feinstein wrote to the station manager of KPIX denouncing the episode. She compared the program to "doing a documentary on Italians and only showing the Mafia". She asked for three minutes of national airtime to respond but CBS denied her request. Armistead Maupin, who had worked closely with the production team, repudiated the program, saying "I had no idea they were doing a hit piece." Jeff Jarvis
Jeff Jarvis
Jeff Jarvis is an American journalist. Previously he was a television critic for TV Guide and People magazine, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner.-Career:Until recently Jarvis was...
of The San Francisco Examiner
The San Francisco Examiner
The San Francisco Examiner is a U.S. daily newspaper. It has been published continuously in San Francisco, California, since the late 19th century.-19th century:...
wrote, "It's shocking that CBS News, home of Walter Cronkite, would partake of such bigotry." Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, Terrence O'Flaherty labeled the documentary "a dreadful little program... deadly for everyone it touches". Nationally, a spokesperson for the National Gay Task Force
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force builds the political power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community from the ground up. The Task Force is the country’s premier social justice organization fighting to improve the lives of LGBT people, and working to create positive, lasting...
condemned the documentary for its premise of gays wanting political power for purposes of having sex in public, for ignoring lesbians and for failing to address issues of anti-gay discrimination.
Representation of BDSM
Gay Power, Gay Politics has also been criticized for its negative portrayal of the BDSMBDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
sub-culture. CBS used BDSM to discredit the LGBT community by implying that an increase in gay political power would correspond with an increase in BDSM and BDSM-related deaths. The program also miscategorized BDSM as an exclusively gay male activity, despite the fact that most of the BDSM material filmed for the documentary was shot at a location called The Chateau, which had a heterosexual customer base. Reporter Crile interviewed San Francisco coroner Dr. Boyd Stephens, who stated that 10% of homicides in the city were gay-related and that some of those were related to the BDSM community. His words, which Stephens would later acknowledge were based on hearsay, were widely and inaccurately reported as meaning that 10% of all homicides in San Francisco were related to BDSM.
Anti-LGBT backlash
Following the airing of the report, the Community United Against Violence (CUAV), a San Francisco group dedicated to addressing anti-gay violence in the city, reported a 400% increase of reported violent incidents against LGBT people. This marked a reversal of the decrease in violence reports to that point in 1980. Right-wing groups used Gay Power, Gay Politics as a fundraising tool until CBS forced them to stop. The Moral MajorityMoral Majority
The Moral Majority was a political organization of the United States which had an agenda of evangelical Christian-oriented political lobbying...
, in its successful campaign to repeal a San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
gay rights ordinance, used an image from the program along with the slogan "Don't Let It Spread!" on billboards. In 1985, a Houston group opposed to a proposed LGBT rights ordinance for the city used clips from the program in its commercials and voters overwhelmingly rejected the ordinance. Controversial psychologist Paul Cameron
Paul Cameron
Paul Drummond Cameron is an American psychologist and sex researcher. While employed at various institutions including the University of Nebraska he conducted research on passive smoking, but he is best known today for his claims about homosexuality...
, on behalf of the right wing Family Research Institute
Family Research Institute
The Family Research Institute , originally known as the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality , is an American non-profit organization based in Colorado Springs, Colorado which states that it has "...one overriding mission: to generate empirical research on issues that threaten...
, has used the 10% homicide figure to support his views on homosexuality, views which have been repudiated by a number of professional psychological and sociological associations.
Continued criticism
Gay Power, Gay Politics has remained a target of criticism by LGBT community leaders and authors, although some have acknowledged that the program included "more than a few kernels of truth". Former National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director Urvashi VaidUrvashi Vaid
Urvashi Vaid is an American activist who has worked for over 25 years promoting civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons.- Political activism :...
attacked the program for its presentation of gays as "sexual hedonists, privileged powerbrokers, and arrogant men scheming to force their 'lifestyle' on a recalcitrant public". She further castigated the show for excluding lesbians and people of color (although she acknowledges that this to an extent mirrored the state of gay leadership at the time) and noted her belief that anti-gay attack videos produced in the 1990s were modeled on this broadcast. Gay cultural critic Frank Browning
Frank Browning (author)
Frank Browning is an American author and correspondent for National Public Radio. His books include The American Way of Crime: From Salem to Watergate , The Culture of Desire: Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives Today , A Queer Geography: Journeys Toward a Sexual Self and Apples: Story of the...
, while agreeing with the criticism of the tone of the documentary, nonetheless found the dudgeon that many in the community expressed to be "layered with disingenuousness". Browning wrote:
While echoing criticism about the exclusion of lesbian concerns and the distortions contained in the broadcast, Browning went on to note that sexual freedom has always been part of the gay male agenda and that it would be absurd to pretend otherwise.