Minstrel, Play Those Gay Melodies

Yesterday I heard in my head a song I knew in the '70's. (Gather round, ye young ones!)

When I was a child the word homosexual was loaded with bad associations. Homosexuals (all of whom seemed to be men) were either bad, evil, or mentally ill; either way, they were not people anyone knew or sympathized with, let alone people any of us might be. Love songs were exclusively about heterosexual love. The gay world, once learned of, was portrayed in depressing movies like The Boys in the Band (which I got my mum to take me to at twelve years of age--Dad refused to drive us so we took the bus).

My interest in the subject eventually revealed itself to be more personal than theoretical. This complicated matters a great deal.

It was a lonely, scary, dangerous time, and opportunities for connection were very rare.

Then 1977 came along. I moved back to Vancouver from Ontario and discovered the women's movement, and a little known (entirely unknown outside of that community) record company called Olivia Records. They were women musicians and music producers, and feminists, and mostly lesbian.* For the first time in my life I heard songs--wonderful, often beautiful songs--celebrating women loving women. They touched my heart. They enshrined my identity as a meaningful, real, creative, joyous, worthwhile thing. And very rarely, they were really funny.

Such was this song, one of the two or three from that era that returns now and then and whispers in my ear.

Ladies, gentlemen, and humans of other gender identities, I give you Meg Christian’s "Here Come The Lesbians."

Finally, I'd like to offer you a more recent rendition of thesong, introduced warmly with some of the history I am touching on here and participated in enthusiastically by the attending crowd.

Enjoy, my friends. For we are all one.

*At the time, you were either one or the other. Bisexuals, once they surfaced onto my radar, were generally held in low esteem by gays and lesbians and were seen by most of the straight community either as untouchables, like homosexuals, or as kinky sexual opportunities. So I assumed I must be a lesbian, and over time had to go through an even more painful second coming-out, as bisexual. Bisexuals REALLY weren't okay among lesbian feminists. They slept with the enemy. They were blamed for AIDS. I lost a whole community when I came out as bisexual, which had not happened when I came out as a lesbian.

Related Article: "How Should We Archive the Soundtrack to 1970s Feminism?" by Bonnie J. Morris, Smithsonian Magazine, March 30 2018.

Image: Casey in 1977 (ish), by Vida Boyd Kindon.