On the other hand, a friend of a friend called him up when he was in New York, and Quentin Crisp invited him round for tea, and they spent about an hour chatting; I think my friend's friend found him charming.
Peter Tatchell continues:
The true icons and pioneers of the modern British gay community are heroes like Allan Horsfall and Antony Grey. They were the driving forces of the first gay rights organisations in Britain – the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee set up in 1964 and the Homosexual Law Reform Society, established earlier in 1958. These two men, who are still alive and have never received the public recognition they deserve, have done far more for gay dignity and advancement than Quentin Crisp.So yes, let's celebrate the real heroes and heroines of LGBT liberation:
Crisp is a pale shadow of US gay rights trailblazers like Harry Hay, Frank Kameny, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.
- Harry Hay - founder of the Radical Faeries; came up with the theory of subject-SUBJECT consciousness
- Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, co-founders of the Daughters of Bilitis
- Allan Horsfall, co-founder of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality
- Antony Grey: In 1958, Grey started voluntary work for the Homosexual Law Reform Society (HLRS). He became the Society's Honorary Treasurer in 1960 and its Secretary by the end of 1962.
- Frank Kameny, astronomer and gay rights activist
- Edward Carpenter: poet, Pagan, vegetarian, pacifist and socialist; and apparently the catalyst for E M Forster to write Maurice.
- Dudley Cave, co-founder of the Lesbian and Gay Switchboard
- Radclyffe Hall, lesbian novelist (yes her theory of "inversion" was a bit off, but her novel was an inspiration to generations of lesbians)
- Peter Tatchell - human rights campaigner extraordinaire
- American LGBT rights activists
- British LGBT rights activists
- and many more who can be explored at the GLBTQ encyclopedia, the LGBT Religious Archives Network, and many another LGBT history website.
The trouble with Tatchell (I've had dinner with him btw, so am in a position to know) is that he has absolutely no sense of humour. He lives in a Manichaean world of terrifyingly complete ideological certainty. He has done a very great deal of excellent work for which he deserves much credit; but he's also frighteningly naive, especially about home-grown islamists, who after all are no friends of homosexuals. (In astrological terms he is, ironically, powerfully Uranian!)
ReplyDeleteWell it takes all sorts to make a world.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Quentin Crisp was trying to be ironic - he certainly had a flair for it. And he will be neither the first nor the last gay person to regret the days when being gay was edgy and transgressive. One only has to behold the phenomenon of "Gay Shame" (ironic antidote to Pride) to realise this.
Absolutely. *Of course* Crisp was being ironic, taking the piss out of the kind of decorous speech-codes which minorities tend to erect. I must prefer Gore Vidal's learned, aristocratic style of being-a-homosexual[ist]: wide reading, a certain ironic distance, self-reliance and intellectual independence, and a determination to say whatever he damn well pleases. (I cheered when he called Edmund White 'a vulgar fag author' (!), because that's exactly what the infintely-less-talented-than-Vidal White is, as well as being very amusing.)
ReplyDelete