Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power by Michelangelo Signorile

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Synopsis

What's it like to be queer in America? Ask Michelangelo Signorile. Called a "sissy" and a "faggot" while growing up in the working-class Italian-Catholic neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Staten Island, he is one of the new breed of lesbians and gay men who decided to bash back. Signorile's signature upper-case invective expressed the anger of a generation in his columns in OutWeek magazine. Queer in America is his story - and the story of a new gay generation that is taking on the American institution known as the "closet." Signorile first came to the media's attention in March 1990, when Time magazine coined the term outing - revealing the homosexuality of public figures. Queer in America is about the enormous controversy that ensued when Signorile reported on the life of deceased multi-millionaire Malcolm Forbes. It is about how, as the author sees it, the media has covered up, and continues to cover up, the truth about lesbian and gay public figures. It is about what Signorile contends is an unconscious conspiracy to keep all homosexuals locked in the closet. Here too is the story behind the expose Signorile wrote for The Advocate in 1991 in which he revealed that then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Pete Williams is gay. The story was the Fort Sumter of the gays-in-the-military debate: It drew the battle lines, defining the issue from then on as one of governmental hypocrisy. The story also forever changed the way outing was viewed by straights and gays alike. But Queer in America is not so much about outing as it is about the closet - the men and women who are forced into it and those who are forced out of it, those who hide within it and those who escape from its destructive clutches. Here are the actors, the casting agents, the studio moguls, the legislators, the editors, the columnists, the government officials, the lobbyists, the congressional staffers, and their painful, often anger-provoking, and occasionally triumphant stories. Through hundreds of inter

Annotation

Signorile came to the nation's attention in 1990 when he broke a long-standing media taboo by revealing the homosexuality of such individuals as the late Malcolm Forbes and then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Pete Williams. In this national bestseller, he issues a call-to-arms which refuses to allow "the closet" to endure.

Publishers Weekly

Gay activist, Advocate and Out columnist Signorile, a pioneer of ``outing,'' has exposed the homosexuality of public figures like Malcolm Forbes, Assistant Secretary of Defense Pete Williams and record producer David Geffen. In this combative, powerful, gutsy book, he charges that three power structures--Washington, Hollywood, the media industry--conspire to keep gays and lesbians in the closet. Without divulging names, he asserts that several high-ranking Pentagon officials are closeted gays, as were key figures in George Bush's reelection campaign who put forth the ``family values'' theme. Among the lesbians and gays he profiles are Anne-Imelda Radice, acting head of the National Endowment for the Arts; Chastity Bono, daughter of Cher; and Sheila Kuehl, formerly a star of TV's Dobie Gillis and now a radical feminist attorney. Signorile also tells the anguished stories of still-closeted people in power; describes his guilt-ridden childhood in working-class Italian Brooklyn; and surveys Silicon Valley's ``gay-positive'' computer firms. Author tour. (June)