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Hitting Hard
by Michelangelo Signorile
Carroll & Graf
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Center-centric and irredeemably biased, the mainstream media has long required the relief the gay press provides. Often at the forefront of not only breaking stories but re-figuring how to report them, the gay press has always been an exciting place to work. In different ways, that was true of the groundbreaking homophile publications of the 1950s-- The Mattachine Review or its lesbian counterpart, The Ladder-- or the first gay-liberation newspapers, such as Fag Rag and the Detroit Gay Liberator, and it continues today in online publications the likes of Badpuppy and Planet Out.

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But as well, the gay press has been characterized by its inability to sustain and nurture its writers-- through underfunding and sheer insolvency, in part, and also because writers who've started in the gay press have moved on. Sometimes it's because of terrible pay-- it's still not unheard of for smaller gay publications to pay $50 (or less) for a story-- and sometimes because, for some writers, the gay press was a launching pad to bigger and better jobs in the mainstream. No surprise: writers have to get paid enough to live, and what writer doesn't want a larger readership? But whatever the reasons, the gay press has suffered enormously over the long run because it couldn't sustain and develop gay writers writing on topic.

There are some exceptions to this-- a few loyal writers and editors who've built and sustained gay publications over the past 30 years-- and foremost among them is Michelangelo Signorile.

Since the late 1980s-- when Signorile was involved with ACT UP and AIDS activism-- he's been a leading light of gay journalism. At Outweek Signorile essentially invented what was to be called (by Time, that great elucidator of gay politics) "outing"-- that is, the publishing of names of public figures who people know are gay, but who've not come out. Signorile then held gigs at The Advocate and Out, and has written extensively for a wide range of others, queer and mainstream. He now hosts a daily radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio's "OutQ."

Putting it all together

Although Signorile has published two earlier books on the media and gay life-- Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power and Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men his new book Hitting Hard is his most vital. This is a collection of Signorile's longer news- and thought-pieces from 1996 to early 2005, but it's also more. Signorile begins with an overview of "outing" in 1996 (after the initial shock had worn off and papers such as the Wall Street Journal were routinely reporting on the same-sex lives of public figures). He ends with "Honest Abe and Sapphic Susan," about how the media covered the news that Lincoln was "gay" and didn't cover the (obvious) news that the same was true of the late Susan Sontag. Along the way, readers get a provocative snapshot of the evolving state of gay politics over the past decade.

Signorile ranges far here: outing to the Defense of Marriage Act, hate-crimes international and domestic, AIDS, scandals within (and outside of) the Roman Catholic Church, safe-sex education, conservatives (gay and not), homophobia in the mainstream press, and incompetence in the gay press. Signorile's pungent and pugnacious style suits all these topics. There's hardly anything he doesn't have an opinion on, and we always know where it is. What's so refreshing about Hitting Hard is its unrelenting honesty and forthrightness: a provocative blend of investigative journalism and opinion.

Not that you'll agree with all of Signorile's opinions. Some readers will never get used to the idea of "outing." Or his stand (perfectly reasonable I'd say) that Catholic priests having sex with teenaged boys is not about pedophilia, but the normal attractions that adults have to adolescents (though such padres undoubtedly broke their vows of celibacy). Signorile was among the first journalists to understand the importance of the internet for disseminating queer news. And he writes about the unending hypocrisy of gay conservatives, who continue to work for governments and administrations that enact laws causing incredible harm to queer people.

Hitting Hard lives up to its name. But the book's lasting worth is that it gives us-- journalists, social chroniclers, readers-- a clear and unedited history of where gay and lesbian politics have been this past decade, and where it might go from here.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com