pornegrafo

visions of movement:
the fight for difference

’ … it’s not a matter of people, it’s a matter of ideas, and the ideas that are happening now are very establishment ideas. we’re becoming  the people we’re fighting. and i think that it’s inevitable that we’re gonna get swallowed up by the larger culture. it’s gonna be safe to be gay, because gay is just like straight. and that’s what disturbs me more than anything else. because i really think that this is a fight for the right to be different, and what we should be fighting for is  the right of every person in this country to be as different as they want without hurting anybody else, but to look different, to act different, to dress different, to behave different. and that’s what those straight people out there are fighting against. they don’t care what you are in the privacy of your own home, but they’re fighting you looking different in front of their children, so that their children would think it’s ok to be gay. and the essence is that it is ok to be gay and those children are gonna have to learn that.

the difference is that we have a chance to lead them. and i think that this is insufficiently realized. i think because gay people have never had that kind of marriage contract, those kinds of restrictions on not only their sexual lives, but on their emotional lives, that gay people have a real opportunity to teach everybody else that they can do without those restrictions, they can create their own kinds of relationship from scratch, they can define their relationships as they go along, they don’t have to go by any rules that were laid down for them - and that opportunity is being lost. the difference between living a gay life and living a straight life, as far as i’m concerned, is really only in choice. and if you’re free to be really gay and do what you please, you don’t have to pay attention to the rules. ‘
vito russo, 1979

_refs: vito russo (1946–1990) answer to the question ‘where do you think the movement is going?’ from ‘army of lovers’ (1979) by rosa von praunheim (1942- ).  for more info about vito russo watch the recent documentary ‘celluloid activist, the life and times of vito russo’ (2011) by jeffrey schwarz.
+ vito russo (undated)
+ 3 unidentified men from old zines

ps:
vito russo died 2 years after he gave the famous speech ‘why we fight’ (1988) where he brilliantly says: ’ … someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. remember that. and when that day comes — when that day has come and gone, there’ll be people alive on this earth — gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free. ’  let’s never forget that.