Under the Rainbow: the Interview

[Under the Rainbow cover]

An Interview With the Author

Arnie Kantrowitz is the author of Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay. Kantrowitz is the co-founder of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and was a Vice President of the Gay Activists Alliance in 1971. He now teaches creative writing at The College of Staten Island and is a widely published gay journalist and essayist.

Conducting the interview is Lawrence D. Mass, M.D., a co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and the the author of Dialogues of the Sexual Revolution, Vols I & II and Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite: Being Gay and Jewish in America. Mass has lived with Arnie Kantrowitz for 14 years.

Q: Four quotations from Under the Rainbow were utilized in the New York Public Library's exhibit "Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall," and the book is being republished by St. Martin's as a "gay classic." When you wrote it, in the mid-1970s, were there "gay classics"? Any that inspired you?

A: There were novels available, most of them seriously unhappy, like Rechy's City of Night. For inspiration, I had to reach back to the pre-gay era to Walt Whitman, who told the truth that men loved men. What didn't exist when I wrote was the honest autobiography of a gay activist, tracing the journey from suicide to self-acceptance. My first publisher (Morrow) tried to get me to turn it into a novel, but I stood my ground. The truth was and is the first principle of gay liberation.

Q: In the new afterword to your book, you bring us up to the present. To what extent do you think we as a community are still "under the rainbow" (in terms of self-acceptance, our families, socially, politically)?

A: By "Under the Rainbow," I was referring to accepting the real world with its challenges, as opposed to the fantasy world that Judy Garland sang about. Things are changing very quickly for us, but we still have a long way to go. At present, most young gays and lesbians continue to grow up feeling isolated and confused. Until we can accept ourselves, society won't accept us. And until families are less hysterically homophobic, self-acceptance will remain hard work for our young people.

Q: How has your Jewish identity figured in with your gay identity? Has it been pretty much the same over time? Or has it changed in ways worth noting?

A: Most of my gay readers feel that I am writing about their lives as well as mine, despite the fact that few of them are Jewish. Belonging to two minority groups (both of which are largely invisible -- unlike African-Americans) showed me that all minority individuals have to confront the forces that belittle them. I chose to make myself visible as a gay man and a Jew. In both cases, my identity grew out of anger at the unfair ways my groups had been treated historically, but I have learned to be more than just angry because my sense of worth comes from within. I celebrate my life, and strangely, that often disarms both homophobes and anti-Semites.

Q: Some gay critics say that gay marriage shouldn't be a priority now. What do you think?

A: Is that a proposal? I think we're moving so fast we can't set the priorities any longer. Marriage should be an option for those who desire it. We don't need to imitate heterosexual life patterns, and we don't need to oppose them dogmatically.

Q: What movie do you want to go to on Saturday?

A: Stonewall, of course. It's like old home week.

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