Out and Proud: How gay writers expressed their identities

We all know that homosexuals had to fight on until they were able to be treated as normally as they are today. Up until 1950s, gays and lesbians were overtly secluded from the society; in 1950, the reason for the dismissal of the majority of State Department employees was homosexuality. Conservative powers including Senator Joseph R. McCarthy accused the Truman government of not treating the homosexual government members severely enough. The national government's discrimination against homosexuals went on; Eisenhower, in his terms in the office, mandated the dismissal of all federal employees that were homosexual. In the years in 1950s, "Normal" people believed that they could cure lesbians and gays, just like Butter's father who mistakes Butters for gay and sends him to the treatment center in one of the episodes of South Park.

Groups fighting for gay and lesbian rights, such as Daughters of Bilitis and One, started to appear and form magazines that stood up for the voices of homosexuals. GLBT writers started to appear. Langston Hughes wrote a poem that criticizes a police raid on a gay establishment, speaking for the homosexuals. Allen Ginsberg, a gay poet who led Beat generation in the picture above, appeared in every single webpage that I opened to research for this blog. He was definitely the poet who discussed most openly about homosexuality. He was the poet who defined the homoerotic poetry. When the public still had the abstract fear and hatred of homosexuality, Ginsberg proudly wrote and narrated in his visual languages (and all those fruit metaphors!)

The voices of GLBT people forged until AIDS became such a societal issue. The society accused homosexuals of the spread of the disease. The few public figures like celebrities and politicians who came out shocked the public. Throughout the 80s, a very slow but desperate and constant movement for gay rights was in progress.


One writer and a movie star who was as well Out and Proud was Harvey Fierstein. In his most famous work Torch Song Trilogy, a life story of a gay drag queen named Arnold Beckoff, Fierstein develops relationships between characters and situations that seem to resemble his own. In the movie of the same name, Fierstein himself plays Arnold Beckoff, and most openly talks about the troubles and dilemmas of this character, rejected by the society and the family.