ABSTRACT
During the New York City Gay and Lesbian Pride celebrations in the summer of 1990, a group of gay men and lesbians distributed a number of anonymous essays with the collective title, “I Hate Straights.” Although such pamphleteering had long been a feature of local gay and lesbian protests, in this case OutWeek magazine, at that time a New York-based weekly for lesbians and gay men, reprinted the text of the main essay, which subsequently appeared in gay community newspapers as far afield as Madison, Wisconsin, and the Twin Cities. This wider distribution of the text transformed it into a part of the general rhetoric of the American gay and lesbian movement. Its provocative argument reflects both anger and a number of then-current areas of political activism. The main essay of this collection follows.
