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In 1983 actor Harvey Fierstein bravely shared what it means to be gay in prime-time TV interview
If you want to know what it was like to be gay in the United States in the 1980s, an interview on ABCโs โ20/20โ where one of Americaโs prominent journalists, Barbara Walters, talked to 29-year-old Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein, is a great place to start. In 1983, Fierstein was the hottest thing on Broadwayโ with 2 hit shows: โLa Cage aux Follesโ and โTorch Song Trilogy.โ But even though he was the talk of the town, Walters treats his homosexuality as if it is something foreign and threatening.At the time, Fierstein was a rarity in pop cultureโan openly gay male celebrity and his โTorch Song Trilogyโ dared to do the unthinkable: humanize homosexual relationships. Fierstein later found mainstream success in films, starring alongside Robin Williams in โThe Birdcage,โ a movie version of โLa Cage aux Folles,โ and โMrs. Doubtfire.โ In 1983, Fiersten sat down with Walters for a prime-time interview where he made the case that homosexuality wasnโt a deviant lifestyle and that itโs much more prevalent than most people think, especially in the arts. โWhat's it like to be a homosexual,โ Walters asked the actor, writer and one-time drag queen, point-blank. โI don't know. I'm just a person. I'm a person who sees the world in the opposite light than you do, that's all. But I see the exact same world as you do. I assume that everyone is gay unless I'm told otherwise. You assume everyone's straight unless you're told otherwise,โ he told Walters and the millions of viewers watching at home.
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Fierstein went on to dismiss the myth that homosexuality was caused by a strong mother and a weak father by noting that his brother was straight. He added that people must be born gay because LGBTQ people are found in every part of the world. โI mean you have to you have to start from the basics, 10% of the world is gay,โ Fierstein said. โYou got to stop with the โthis is a sickness,โ โthis is an abnormality.โ This is a normal thing that has gone on through the history of man. It has always been 10% of the population has never been bred out.โIn the interview, Fierstein also debunks the notion that homosexual people canโt enjoy the same type of committed romantic relationships as heterosexuals. โThose are not heterosexual experiences and those are not heterosexual words. Those are human words. Love, commitment, family belong to all people,โ Fierstein said. "It is the norm in the homosexual community. It is not the norm in what you see on the news and all that. But what you see on the news and what you see in print are the bars.โFierstein added that when a happy lesbian couple stays together for 70 years, it doesnโt make the news. โMonogamy is as prevalent a disease in homosexuality as it is in heterosexuality. It's all the life choice that you make for yourself,โ he joked.The interview is a fascinating time capsule of a world right before the AIDS epidemic when LGBTQ people began coming out of the closet in increasing numbers to help fight the deadly pandemic. In the interview, Fierstein, as one of the few out and proud gay male role models, was forced to share simple truths about gay life that, 40-plus years later, most people have come to understand. It took a lot of courage for Firestein to speak his truth on such a big stage, and he did so fearlessly and with love and humor. You can watch the entire interview here.
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