The Value of Unrespectability

The artists discussed in this book, from Paul Cadmus to Holly Hughes, could not transcend the homophobic constraints imposed upon their work.  They could, however, restage and resist those constraints within the space of their art.  Rather than defending their work as proper or decent, these artists drew upon the force of the improper and the indecent, the force of fairies, most wanted men, sadomasochists, AIDS activists, and flaming queers.  They used the outlaw status of homosexuality both to contest the threat of censorship and to propose other visions of social, sexual, and creative life. These artists offer a record of resistance within the history of twentieth-century American culture.  But they also do something more.  In the face of ongoing demands for decent art, they urge us to recognize the value, and to take the risk, of unrespectability.

--from Richard Meyer's Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (2002)

The Need for Sexual Exploration

While reading Richard Meyer's Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (2002), I found this quotation from Cindy Patton's Sex and Germs: The Politics of AIDS (1985).

AIDS must not be viewed as proof that sexual exploration and the elaboration of sexual community were mistakes. [. . .] Lesbians and gay men [. . .] must maintain that vision of sexual liberation that defines the last fifteen years of [our] activism (235-6).

I think this rings even more true today in light of the continuing conservative backlash against queers of all types at local, state, national, and international levels as well as the mainstream gay/lesbian movement's current emphasis on a liberal (as opposed to a radical) political agenda.