Sexes: How Gay Is Gay?

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The outstanding example of gay taste going straight is the popularity of disco lights, dancing and music, which swept the homosexual clubs of Fire Island and Manhattan long before they caught on among straights. Some gays feel that homosexuals especially long to lose themselves in the kind of glittery, dream-fantasy world created by discos. Says one gay editor: "To me, Studio 54 is the epitome of the gay aesthetic"-a sentiment that might startle many of that watering hole's patrons.

Music executives know that the songs and performers that most excite gay audiences have the best chance of selling nationally. Music indeed is one field in which being gay can be a benefit. Marc Paul Simon, vice president of Casablanca Record and Filmworks in Los Angeles, told a boss about his homosexuality his second day on an earlier job at Twentieth Century Fox Records. Says Simon: "I made it a selling point. I told him that I would be an advantage, since the best clubs are gay."

A male homosexual model, acclaimed as one of the world's best-dressed men, cites examples of fashion takeovers. "The first time I saw men wearing Adidas running shoes as part of casual wear was in the homosexual community on Fire Island several years ago. Now it has become a fashion staple in the straight world." Gays were among the first to wear baggy white painters' pants, though such garments are now being bought by heterosexual men and women. In more elegant ensembles, the wearing of silk scarves with sport coats or suits began among gays and is now catching on with dressy straights.

More generally, homosexuals adopted long hair before it became de rigueur for young males of all persuasions; once long hair was in, the gays led the swing to short back and sides. There is, in fact, a saying among homosexuals that straights will adopt a fashion just as avante-garde gays are turning to something new.

If the gays are split over fashions and lifestyles, they are splintered in matters of politics and strategy. Last February delegates to a national conference sponsored by a coalition of gay male and lesbian organizations in Philadelphia voted to stage a march on Washington on Oct. 14 to urge passage of gay-rights legislation across the country. But many gays shudder at the prospect of more militant and flamboyant homosexuals besieging Capitol Hill in full view of the TV cameras. The opponents of the march fear it will cause a damaging backlash. Says Doug Wright, a Washington, D.C., editor: "That's like handing Anita Bryant a victory she can't get anywhere else."

The movement is also split on ultimate goals. Most gays want only to be allowed to live openly and freely without suffering any penalty from society. But the radical fringe is agitating for the repeal of laws making sexual contact between adult gays and young boys a crime. The idea horrifies many homosexuals, who are well aware of the deep-seated fear among many parents that gays are out to seduce or enthrall straight children, a view homosexual leaders hotly deny.