All eyes on us - gays in mainstream magazines - The Year in the Arts 1996

From Newsweek to Seventeen, mainstream magazines have begun to see lesbians and gay men as we really are

It was a week before the 1996 presidential election, and Newsweek had to decide what to run on its November 4 cover. Yet another Bill Clinton-Bob Dole pairing? No, thank you. Newsweek chose a more marketable couple: lesbian moms-to-be Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher. There they were, snuggled cheek to brow, beaming from the cover at 4 million-plus readers under a headline loudly heralding WE'RE HAVING A BABY.

If there's a trend to watch as the millennium draws to a close, it is the regularizing of gay culture. For gays and lesbians still reeling from the passage of federal legislation banning same-sex marriage, Newsweek's bold display - including a 7 1/2-page inside spread on gay families was nothing short of astonishing. Those with a sense of history marveled at the distance traveled in media light-years since the days, a mere generation ago, when headlines spoke of "homos," "queens," "lezzies," and "perverts," when they spoke of us at all.

The most remarkable thing about the magazine's treatment may have been its unremarkableness. True, the public seems to remain insatiably curious about us, much of it having to do with loving to hate us. But a random sampling of media images in just the past year confirms that as gays and lesbians become more visible in the mainstream, they are being depicted as more a part of the mainstream. If the straight media is a reflection (or harbinger) of our nation's cultural topography, there is no denying that a profound change is happening.

You might recall that Newsweek "discovered" lesbians just three years ago with its overhyped and somewhat naive LESBIAN CHIC cover. That article read like an archeological expedition to exotic Lesbos. Now we have Etheridge and pregnant mate Cypher telling Newsweek readers about wanting a whole passel of kids and how Cypher's father is building a cradle for the baby and Cypher's mother is crocheting a blanket.

Then you pick up the November issue of Life magazine and find a seven-page color-photo spread about a gay male couple in Dallas, leading off with a double-page photo of middle-American "marrieds" Mark Sadlek and Steve Habgood engaging in pillow talk, their frisky poodle on the bed between them. In other views we see Sadlek and Habgood trimming the lawn in front of their lovely detached colonial, holding hands in church, and smiling for the camera amid Sadlek's straight fraternity brothers and their female spouses at a reunion. For those of us who remember the hauntingly similar Life spreads of the '50s showing postwar hetero couples setting up housekeeping in the expanding suburbs, the depiction of Sadlek and Habgood carries a sense of triumphant deja vu.

There on the stands not far from Newsweek and Life is the November cover of Harper's magazine showing a mixed-race male couple accompanied by the legend WEDDED TO AN ILLUSION: DO GAYS AND LESBIANS REALLY WANT THE RIGHT TO MARRY? Inside is a 5,000-word take on the subject by the brilliant gay novelist Fenton Johnson. He argues that the gay-marriage issue is subversive because it brings into question the essential inequality of the heterosexual marriage model, which is based on property rights and male domination. Thus, Harper's readers are being told, gay marriage is not a gay issue; it's about everyone.

Suddenly it's not surprising to find Elizabeth Birch and Hilary Rosen amid a 12-page layout on "America's Most Intriguing Power Couples" in the October issue of George. Birch is head of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay lobbying group, and Rosen is president of the Recording Industry Association of America. As a couple they fit the George mode seamlessly, along with hetero U.S. representatives Susan Molinari and Bill Paxon, political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin, and broadcast news stars Steve and Cokie Roberts.

Nor does it seem strange to see ourselves in People magazine, which in July casually snapped Elton John "and his beau," David Furnish, at a fashion show. In September, under the headline FAMILY VALUES, the magazine featured Barry Goldwater's gay grandson, Ty Ross, and his lover, Gary Ragadio, in a "candid" at-home shot.

You might say that's par for the course for celebrity magazines and general-interest Publications. Since The Wall Street Journal broke the story about Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner's fling with a male Calvin Klein model and nobody so much as curled a lip, the door was opened to increasingly intimate glimpses of the gay and lesbian rich and famous.

But the trend is showing up in niche publications that are traditionally far less hospitable to gay subjects. Most surprising, it is happening in youth magazines. The November issue of Seventeen promotes on its cover a piece titled "I Can't Tell Anyone I'm Gay." Inside is a balanced and sensitive five-page account with pictures of the experiences of eight teenage girls (first names only) in various stages of coming out.