At Smithsonian, Gay Rights Is Out of the Closet, Into the Attic

Gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny, 82, and one of the protest signs he carried almost 50 years ago. It's on display at the Smithsonian. (Above: By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post; Below: National Museum Of American History)

It's difficult to know the importance or impact of the inclusion of this material in the Smithsonian's display. Smithsonian curator Harry Rubenstein says you can never be certain what will be controversial, but, "this is really mainstream in terms of our mission in political history."

But look around the display, at Rosie the Riveter, an early Teddy Bear, a pair of Keds sneakers and a Barbie doll, and gay rights signs seem like rather different objects. People may object to whether the museum gets the history of the labor movement right, or whether toys and pop icons are worthy to be seen next to Gen. George Washington's uniform. But gay stuff, whether it's a photograph in a newspaper or an exhibition in a museum, elicits a more visceral negative response. Rather than argue with the message, or the truth of the image or display, people tend to say, "I shouldn't have to see that." Or rather, "My kids shouldn't have to see it."

That reaction, if it comes, only reinforces the potency of Kameny's half-century-old strategy. It is still all about visibility. In that sense, the old picket signs that Kameny, a self-confessed "pack rat," stored all these years are still working (even in a museum) in their original way. Their presence there is the message.

We are an increasingly fractured and atomized society, and perhaps for that reason, there's an almost surreal power to canonical, culturally central, institutionally sanctioned displays such as "Treasures of American History." The authority and validity of institutions such as the Smithsonian (and academia and the mainstream media) are challenged on all sides, but inclusion in them is still assiduously pursued. The Smithsonian display of gay rights memorabilia is in that sense a major milestone -- even as the very idea of being gay tends to fade as a meaningful identity. Young people who would have called themselves gay a decade ago now announce that they don't like labels and will sleep with whomever they want, thank you.

If this had happened 10 or 20 years ago, one might have said that perhaps the open display of a "Gay Is Good" button (Kameny coined the phrase) in the nation's premier museum would help some confused or questioning youth to know that he or she is not alone. But that's just pablum now. Youth use the Internet, and except for gay kids from very conservative and isolated families, they don't lack access to information about sexuality. The genie that Kameny and others let out of the bottle will never go back in, and now people who object to (or hate) homosexuals are forced to fight tactical delaying wars on peripheral issues (keeping them out of the military, denying them marriage rights).

Curiously, the strategy of gay rights opponents is akin to Kameny's: He fought to make homosexuality visible in a positive way; they fight to keep it controversial, to keep it visible in a negative way. The success of his effort -- assimilation into society -- makes his memorabilia seem almost quaint; the success of their effort -- keep gay rights a subject that riles people -- reawakens the old power of his objects.

So if there's no controversy with this new display, perhaps the battle is over? Hard to say. Racism became taboo in public discourse, but it still functions in code words, jokes, attitudes and unspoken assumptions, so much so that people such as Don Imus, who insulted the black women on a basketball team, often act startled by their own seemingly unconscious channeling of the rhetoric. An anthropologist looking at our society would probably observe that hating people for their difference must be useful for some purpose, given the extraordinary lengths we go to preserve our animosities in elaborate and ritualized ways.

Homophobia will likely settle into the same marginal but powerful cultural habits, flaring into public controversy only when a superannuated comic uses a crude anti-gay slur, then repents, or a red-state senator is cashiered by his political party for the faintest whiff of homosexual desire.

It's a strange sort of progress. Perhaps people will pass by this little glass case in the Smithsonian, with children in tow, completely unruffled, maybe even amused. But in the middle school locker room and the U.S. military, symbolic lines will be maintained, and real cruelty perpetuated. The closet from which Kameny sought to liberate gay people gets smaller and smaller, reduced to a transitional stage in adolescence, or a canny career choice for emotive cable anchors and right-wing political operatives. But it, too, must be preserved if the demand of Kameny's sign -- first-class citizenship for homosexuals -- is to be deferred.