Spring Break
Pariah's plight: Past and present
John Bailey
Issue date: 2/19/09 Section: Focus
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Thomas Lawrence Long has an interesting thesis, however: our society's relationship to the outcast is a strangely symbiotic one - and perhaps, in some ways, the pariahs can find power in their plight.
Long advanced this thesis before a rapt audience in the Rainbow Center on Wednesday, in his lecture "Plague of Pariahs: AIDS, Queer Identity and the Rhetoric of Transgression."
With a quiet, measured energy and an airy sense of humor, Long charted the course of Western society's treatment of the homosexual pariah, from its roots in Christian doctrine to the sudden influx of cultural capital brought on by "Rent" and similar films.
Human society has always marked the outcast, Long said, putting a star on his forehead. He then proceeded to move about the room, placing a similar sticker on the brows of the audience.
"The star by itself is natural," explained Long. "It doesn't really mean anything. It's just a mark. But if I were to say: 'Everyone who bears this mark is important and special,' then the people with the mark become people of status.
"In contrast, if I said everyone with the mark should be hated and reviled - then the mark becomes a stigma."
Thanks to some interpretations of the Bible, said Long, homosexuals have long faced such a stigma.
He described the evolution of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah from an indeterminate, vague evil to a cultural indictment of homosexuality.
"[The story] was a blank slate," Long said. "And what do you do with a blank slate? You project on it - you project what is horrible... The things inside yourself that cause anxiety."
But, he went on to explain, gays, lesbians and other sexual outcasts have developed a complicated relationship with their invisible mark.
"What if I say 'I'm going to make myself a pariah'?" Long asked. "Say I'm going to do everything in my power to embrace this stigma. I revel in it, I embrace it."
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