What Is An Enclave?
Live Here And See!

Mark Pritchard

When my father found out that the Lutheran church I attend counts among its members a large percentage of gays -- even before he had a clue that I might not be straight -- he asked why I didn't see anything contradictory about such a moral place allowing perverts to enter. I said something about how I thought the church was supposed to be open to everybody. "Yeah," he said, "but why do you have to be among them?"

My father's concept of "being among them" captures a theme of middle class life, which is that if you have enough money you can insulate yourself from reality. When I was on my way to visit my parents in suburban Houston once, I passed a walled-in condominium complex on the freeway. It had a 15-foot concrete-block wall around it, and there were guards at the one entry gate. The development advertised itself with a huge sign that read: WHAT IS AN ENCLAVE? LIVE HERE AND SEE! My mother used the same word the next day to describe her own condo development: "It's so quiet here," she said, "like an enclave."

My parents' statements illustrate an attitude held, I think, by a lot of people in our society: they want to seal themselves off, not just from danger and misery, but from difference. Most straight people have little active animosity toward queers or the homeless or other marginalized people; they just don't want to deal with us. As Mrs. B.P.S. Campbell, a Victorian actress, said, "I don't care what those people do, as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses."

People in the rest of the country think San Francisco is some kind of weird Disneyland of flaming faggots, long-haired hippie dope smokers, pinko war protesters, and bleeding-heart liberals who "coddle" welfare cheats and the homeless. Not to mention the zombie-like cultists who, as my mother raved when I told her in 1978 that I was moving to San Francisco, would "reach down from the Golden Gate Bridge and snatch you up!"

And in a way, they're right. San Francisco is full of flaming faggots, etc. (although I doubt the homeless or anybody on welfare feel coddled). The city also contains every variety of yuppie, blue-collar worker, fundamentalist Christian, real estate speculator, strip mall developer and big-haired secretary that you could find in Bozeman, Muncie or Fort Lauderdale.

The difference is that we all coexist in the same city, riding public transportation, standing in line for unemployment, eating ice cream in the middle of the winter, and renting videos. Yes, there are neighborhoods where there are more queers and fewer straights, or more poor and fewer rich, but it's a small city, and people don't spend as much time in their cars as people do in the rest of the country. We share the sidewalks and streetcars. We can't ignore each other.

The concept of "coming out" also counters the isolationist impulse. It means that you tell somebody in your life -- your boss or family member or co-worker or neighbor -- that you are proud to be queer. You don't have to move to San Francisco to do it, you don't have to parade in the streets or block the bridges, you don't have to get a fabulous haircut. You do it on a very personal, one-to-one level. And ideally many people will do it. Imagine the effect on your typical straight office worker if three of his co-workers came up to him on Oct. 11 (National Coming Out Day) and told him they were queer. And then he goes to lunch and the counter worker at the deli is wearing a pride button too.

That kind of evangelism is very powerful. You can ignore or zap a bunch of protesters on the TV news, if they even get on the news, but it's pretty hard to ignore someone coming up to you and telling you, "I'm bisexual." There's almost nothing to say to that, unless you are an incredibly rude person, except "Well, that's nice." And you share an awkward moment. This is the essence of peaceful revolution.

Every time I leave my own comfortable enclave and venture into the heartland, I am confronted with difference -- people who are different from me, cities which are different from mine. I could make value judgments and say that San Francisco is a beautiful city, not an ugly suburb, and the people here dress in natural fibers, not polyester. But I think these judgments are really about me having trouble accepting that middle America, where I lived as a kid, is part of me. Just as straight people have trouble accepting that San Francisco and queers and women and people of color are part of America.

Both groups, the straights and the marginalized, have something in common -- the conviction that they are right. I believe that my abortion rights stance is the only correct position. My fundamentalist brother believes that his "pro-life" stance is the only correct one. Each of us distrusts and fears the other.

If it sounds like I'm now going to make some kind of plea for people to talk to and understand one another, I'm not. I don't have anything to say to my brother or the Pope or the fundamentalists, and I don't think they want to "understand" me. I think they want to eliminate me and everybody else who doesn't buy into their narrow little schemes, and make the whole world like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. This doesn't make me want to talk to them; it makes me enraged. We have to remember that rage, and angry acts, are not just reactions to our situation. They are legitimate alternatives to trying to reason.

For another thing, I don't think talking or trying to educate conservatives will work. When I was a kid, I tried talking to the people who were picking on me, but that didn't work; they just laughed and threw my hat in the storm drain. Next I tried running. That more or less got me to San Francisco, and San Francisco is pretty safe. You can find the community of your choice performance artists, yuppie investors, drag queens, even fundamentalist Christians -- and get the support you need to live as you wish.

But unlike that condo complex, there isn't a wall around my city. When I was involved with Queer Nation, the two actions I put the most energy into involved invasions of San Francisco by outsiders. In October 1990, some fundamentalists staged a "prayer army invasion" designed to "cast out the spirits of evil and perversion" that supposedly dominate San Francisco. In the other case, a Hollywood film company came to the city in the spring of 1991 to film the homophobic movie "Basic Instinct," an attack on lesbian and bisexual women. In both cases, we staged angry demonstrations that amounted (in practical terms) to minor disruptions of the religious or cinematic productions, but which garnered national publicity for queer rage.

In both cases, the opposing companies turned our efforts against us. Televangelists used tape of the demos to scare their viewers into contributing more money to fight queers, and the film company said we were trying to take away their First Amendment rights. When the film was released, it was a box office success due in part to the extra publicity. The mainstream media also misinterpreted the actions, picking up on the film company's press release that our protests amounted to "censorship." And we didn't really stop the filming of "Basic Instinct."

But subsequent news reports have said that because our disruptive demonstrations cost the producers hundreds of thousands of dollars in delays and legal fees, movie producers are now much more careful about scripts with gay stereotypes. They don't give a shit about our precious concerns about correct representations of lesbians and bisexuals in film, or about Constitutional principles, but they care a lot about money. So we spoke to them in their language.

An army of lawyers, uniformed and plainclothes security guards, city police and hostile media couldn't stop us from making our point despite the huge difference in resources. The financial impact on the film company, and the indirect impact on Hollywood as a whole, greatly exceeded the tiny amounts of money we spent, because we had a secret weapon: we were right, and we were angry.

Fear and rage drives the fundamentalist right. I don't think we're so morally superior that we can't make use of those motivations as well. Because angry reactions get attention and respect. Like pornography, the politics of rage may not be neat and clean -- but it's honest. Sex and rage liberate.

(This column is an adaptation of one I wrote for Frighten the Horses.)