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In popular music, gay and straight sensibilities have intertwined as forcefully as they have collided. Lesbian artist Bessie Smith brought depth to ostensibly heterosexual blues compositions. Many of the finest pre-rock romantic standards were the work of gay songwriters like Cole Porter.

The queer component of pop music moved closer to the surface in the 1960s and '70s, when a climate of sexual freedom launched a performance tradition that challenged gender and sometimes signified outlaw sexuality. Contemporary heirs to that tradition include Marilyn Manson.

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In the late '70s, punk supposedly arose in reaction to both glam rock and the disco craze that may have reached its nadir in the Village People, an exercise in market-tooled gay iconography. In fact, punk was incubated by a sexually ambiguous music scene whose key artists included the Velvet Underground and the scrappy, transvestite, proto-punk New York Dolls. Malcolm McLaren, the Dolls' British manager, went on to create the definitive punk band, Sex Pistols.

The first overtly, defiantly gay new wave band, Bronski Beat, surfaced in England in 1983. Its vision was political; the inside sleeve of the group's 1984 debut album, Age of Consent, listed the minimum legal ages for gay sex in various countries. Bronski Beat's music fused elements of disco with the Euro-synth popularized by musicians like Giorgio Moroder. Its principal strength was its lead singer, Jimmy Somerville, whose vocal range helped make "Smalltown Boy" one of the most passionate gay anthems ever recorded. The band was unfortunately short-lived, losing power and acuity when Somerville departed in 1985.

As queer content asserted itself and queer performers gained visibility, moral guardians took note. In 1983, a flap erupted over the Smiths' song "Handsome Devil" when the British scandal sheet The Sun claimed it celebrated child molestation; the misreading was fueled by the widespread (and correct) assumption that Morrissey, the group's lead singer, was gay. In 1984, Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax" was banned by the BBC for its gay-tinged lewdness. In 1985, when Jimmy Somerville was arrested and fined for gross indecency, efforts were made to demonize both Bronski Beat and Somerville's subsequent band, the Communards.

Fears that music or the personal examples set by musicians will make kids turn queer exist across the political spectrum. Among GLAAD honoree Tipper Gore's concerns in her book Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society is the power of popular culture to encourage homosexual experimentation. On the right, Christian activists like Bob Larson regard all things gay with revulsion. To prove the Rolling Stones' degeneracy, Larson relates in his influential Book of Rock that Mick Jagger "admits that his first sexual experience was homosexual...." Discussing Queen and its leader, the late Freddie Mercury, Larson confides that group's name was "appropriate," and cites the band's promotional sponsorship of a nude bicycle race as evidence of its pouffy turpitude.

Faced with such broad-based homophobia, most gay male musicians have come out gradually or not at all. Elton John conceded bisexuality as far back as 1976, but waited for more than a decade before coming the rest of the way out of the closet. George Michael was outed by his arrest in an L.A. men's room. Culture Club's Boy George used to evade questions about his sexuality; R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe only recently confirmed longstanding rumors about his sexual orientation. Lesbian performers have been somewhat more forthright. Folksinger Holly Near came out early in her career; others, like k.d. lang and Melissa Etheridge, declared themselves after achieving success.

Lesbian musicians achieve acceptance more easily than their male counterparts, but some have encountered hostility. In 1998, the Indigo Girls, Emily Salier and Amy Ray, were banned from performing in Tennessee and South Carolina high schools because of their sexual orientation-- not because of their material. When right-wing demagogue Jerry Falwell campaigned against the feminist Lilith Tour, its alleged power to spread lesbianism was among his chief concerns.

Out of the lesbian-accented Riot Grrrl movement of the late '80s grew queercore alternative bands like Tribe 8, Fifth Column, and Pansy Division, the pop-punk trio (now a quartet) organized by John Ginoli in 1991. Combining skilled musicianship with pro-sex gay humor, Pansy Division unleashed songs like "Fuck Buddy," "Nine Inch Males" and "For Those About to Suck Cock."

In 1995, a Jupiter, Florida, record store owner was forced by local police to remove Pansy Division's "Bill and Ted's Homosexual Adventure" CD single from the open racks. Early in 1996, when the University of South Carolina's student radio station aired the band's "Homo Christmas," university officials forced WUSC's entire executive staff to resign. Perhaps what really made the authorities nervous was Pansy Division's considerable crossover success, especially following its 1994 tour with Green Day. "When fan mail started coming in, we found our audience was 75 percent straight," says bassist Chris Freeman.

Out gay musicians now range from cabaret pianist Michael Feinstein to rapper Dutchboy. On July 13, 2001, a collection of gay bands and soloists-- the Pet Shop Boys, Marc Almond, Rufus Wainright, and others-- will begin criss-crossing America on the 17-city "Wotapalava" tour organized by Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant. Wotapalava's message is, according to Tennant, "about the power to live as you want." It's also about using speech, not censorship, to counter homophobic speech both inside and outside the music industry.