'Queers in History' Best Left on the Shelf

Written by Tom Kayser

Monday, 30 November 2009 00:59

Spangle often gets requests from authors to review new books. If, on occasion, those tomes have Cleveland or LGBT connections, we’ve decided to give them a once-over.

When the author of a new encyclopedia thanks Wikipedia in his acknowledgments, part of me wants to throw myself off a cliff — and the rest of me wants to take him with me over the edge.

Note to Keith Stern, author of the new Queers in History — and every student ages 5 to 95: Wikipedia is not a source for true scholarship. Period. And even if you’re just using it to fact-check, don’t mention it in your acknowledgments. If you do, your credibility is toast.

It’s one of several faults that make Queers an average read.

But first, let me say this — collecting the stories of famous and/or important LGBT people from human history is an honorable task. Too often, the queer parts of queer folks’ lives are relegated to alternative biographies and not mainstream history books. For instance, Eleanor Roosevelt’s political advocacy during her husband’s presidency surely was influenced by her same-sex relationship. Equally as fascinating is Michelangelo’s homosexuality, which surely would have been condemned by the Catholic Church but apparently didn’t affect his ability to get commissions from the Vatican. You don’t get those stories in high school textbooks.

But Stern is too often concerned with the inconsequential. Take his inclusion of Lindsay Lohan, who garners an entire page. Her contribution to society can be summed up in two words: Mean Girls. And her contribution to LGBT people can be summed up in zero words, as there hasn’t been one.

Lohan is included, as is Perez Hilton, who gets a page for himself. And transgender actress/performer Candis Cayne inexplicably has more than a page devoted to her.

I could live with all three of these inclusions, if not for the shabby treatment of other, more important, queers. Melissa Etheridge, perhaps the most outspoken of famous female performers in our community, gets a mere five sentences. Keith Haring, whose iconic work became an emblem of the equality and HIV/AIDS movements, gets just three.

But what’s more outrageous is who’s been left out. Despite more than 900 entries, there are some notable misses. Tammy Baldwin, first out gay non-incumbent elected to the U.S. House of Representatives? Snubbed. Renee Richards, perhaps the first and best-known transgender person in the country? Snubbed.

And Matthew Shepard, whose death sparked a decade-long movement to pass national hate-crimes legislation? Outrageously snubbed.

Yet there’s room to make suspect claims, such as labeling actor John Travolta as gay, relying on a National Enquirer story and a whole lot of gossip. Evangelist Jim Bakker also makes the book based on flimsy evidence (while Larry Craig and Ted Haggard are oddly missing, despite similar circumstances).

A lot of this could be forgiven if the book were written better, but it’s not. The writing is basic, and occasionally uses descriptors such as “recently,” which immediately makes the book out-of-date; or “big,” which means nothing without a comparison. And for a book that relies heavily on whispers and innuendo, it could be a heck of a lot wittier. It’s a dry read.

Author Keith Stern should be commended for his work compiling his list of queers over the years; it’s grown out of a project that began long before the Internet provided endless information at our fingertips. The book is most valuable when uncovering people from long-ago history, such as unknowns from early America.

Yet Stern’s at best a functional writer, and would be served better with a strong editor. Queers in History is a dud: acceptable for a newbie gay earning his rainbow stripes, but a miss for anyone long past the days of furtively sneaking a peak at the LGBT-section stacks at the nearest Barnes and Noble.

Available in major bookstores or at Amazon.com.

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