THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

His words influenced the U.S. Supreme Court. And not just a little bit. Whether they recognize the name or not, every gay person in this country owes him a huge debt of gratitude. He is Professor George Chauncey, a scholar of history at the University of Chicago's Center for Gender Studies. The amici curiae (friends of the court) brief, of which he was the lead author, was so instrumental in convincing the Supreme Court to overturn the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law in 2003 that the majority opinion by Justice Kennedy directly shadows the Historians' Brief's reasoning for 12 paragraphs.

While most of us have read numerous comments and editorials on the Lawrence v. Texas case by now, a significant aspect of the judicial procedure has remained somewhat less publicized. Alongside the fundamental due process and privacy arguments put forward by attorney Paul M. Smith and the Lambda Legal team, dozens of friends of the court briefs were submitted by groups representing a wide spectrum of views and interests. This feature of the legal system allows organizations, associations, sometimes politicians, to offer their own researched opinion on issues being pondered by the Court. The idea is to provide specialized information that is relevant and will enlighten the deliberations.

In the Lawrence case, the essence of the Historians' Brief was that, contrary to popular belief, or more precisely contrary to what social conservatives maintain, anti-gay discrimination has not always existed. The argument traces the history of sodomy laws; demonstrates how the concept of discrimination based on sexual status emerged in the twentieth century; and points to a marked increase in the social acceptance of homosexual people.

As one of the most influential scholars in the field of gay history, and the author of the critically acclaimed Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, And the Making of the Gay Man World, 1890-1940 (1994), George Chauncey was an ideal choice to lead the Historians' Brief. Moreover, having worked previously with Pat Logue of Lambda Legal, when he testified in the Colorado Amendment 2 (which prohibited the State of Colorado or any of its political subdivisions from ever again enacting any statute, policy, or ordinance aimed at protecting gay people from discrimination) trials, he was familiar with the demands and pressures of the legal system.

Also referred to as Romer v. Evans, the 1996 Colorado case constituted an important milestone on the road to full equal rights for gay people. It came 10 years after the Bowers v. Hardwick Supreme Court decision which had affirmed the right of states to criminalize same-sex sodomy. The historical argument put forward by Chauncey in Romer v. Evans contributed to an ultimately victorious claim. The Supreme Court struck down the amendment and declared it 'born of animosity toward the class of persons affected.' The controversial decision helped steer the judicial course away from the misguided and repressive stand in Bowers and is generally believed to have opened the way for last year's complete reversal in Lawrence.

Chauncey wrote the brief over a period of several weeks, which he says put him considerably behind in his course preparation and marking of student papers. Not that many of them would have held it against him. At least not the ones whose testimonies were obtained for this article. Teaching assistant Sarah Potter, who is in her third year of a PhD in American History, says, 'Professor Chauncey was the main reason I wanted to come to the University of Chicago for graduate school … . He is always delving into the meanings and assumptions embedded in the historical documents he has us read, pushing us to parse out people's worldviews and the cultural and social systems that informed them … . He has a million things going on and yet he still gets caught up in talking about ideas and history and loses track of time because he has so much he wants to share.'

This desire to communicate makes Chauncey a compelling speaker both one-on-one and in front of a group. On Nov. 5 he delivered the Gender Studies Distinguished Faculty Lecture at the University of Chicago to a riveted audience. Center for Gender Studies Director Rebecca West praised Chauncey effusively for his inspirational work as a mentor and an activist. On top of everything else, he is also Director of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Project, an initiative that fosters critical thinking on issues of sexual identity through courses, public lecture series, conferences and workshops.

Apart from the breadth of his knowledge on topics such as the history of discrimination, sexual politics, and queer theory, it is George Chauncey's humble demeanor that is most striking. Christopher Chitty, an International Studies student who is taking American History of Sexual Subcultures as an option, says, 'He is not at all arrogant for someone whose book put Queer Studies on the map.' Joelle Shabat, a second year student, agrees: 'In addition to his brilliance as a scholar and a professor, he is this wonderfully caring man. It is so important people realize what a rare and special combination of characteristics Mr. Chauncey embodies.' She goes on to add, 'Every student I speak to who knows Mr. Chauncey thinks he is phenomenal and nothing less.' While such hyperbole may sound slightly excessive, it is nevertheless encouraging to hear young people being so enthusiastic about their openly gay professor. To say nothing of the fact that this professor is getting them all excited … about history!

Marie-Jo Proulx: You're already an acclaimed historian-writer because of your book Gay New York. Do you expect now that your name will make it into future history books as the leading scholar who influenced the Supreme Court?

George Chauncey: Oh, no. It's been such a collective process. Of course Gay New York has gotten a certain amount of attention, but I think the more significant thing is that it's really a recognition of the arrival of the field of LGBT history as a whole and that the Court really took it seriously and actually took a position that I didn't really expect them to: the use of a social constructionist perspective. When I first became involved in some of these court cases, the lawyers were a little worried about that and they thought that it would be best to have just a very straightforward historical narrative … and that simply wasn't what my scholarship had led me to believe so I never argued that. But what was remarkable about the Supreme Court decision was that it really came to understand that argument and it saw how it really changed the way they should understand this history and what the meaning of sodomy laws was.

MJP: Do you think that before they actually read the brief, they knew more or less what was going to be in it?

GC: No, I don't think they would have had any reasons to know what we were arguing in the brief. Certainly, part of it they might have known because after they decided Bowers v. Hardwick they got a lot of criticism. There were a number of historical articles published in law reviews about their misinterpretation of sodomy laws. I think we pulled that material together in a way that was useful for them and also, probably the more useful and unexpected part of our argument was about the history of anti-gay discrimination. The fact that 17 years ago they thought it had always existed and we really showed that it was put in place only in the twentieth century and it's been dismantled, much of it, near the end of the century. I think even for educated gay people that's still a surprising thing to hear.

MJP: What would you have done if the Court had ignored your brief and upheld the Texas law?

GC: I decided to become a historian because it seemed to me that in an important sense knowledge is power. The more we know about our past the better we can understand our present situation, the better sense we'll have of what the real issues are, the alliances at stake here, where we're headed. And I think the work historians have done has really begun to educate people about that. I never expected this scholarship to have this kind of impact on public policy. Especially not at the level of the Supreme Court. When Lambda asked me to become involved, and that's because I had worked with them in a number of cases starting with the Amendment 2 trials in Colorado, so when they asked, of course, what greater honor as a historian than to try and have this kind of effect. But for me, it was just a total surprise. And that 12 paragraphs of their decision really followed the argument of our brief, who could have imagined it?

... I think they had to incorporate our material because it's very unusual for the Supreme Court to reverse a decision that's as recent as in Bowers v Hardwick. But it's always been a doctrine of the courts that when new knowledge becomes available that was unavailable to an earlier court, a court can revisit a decision. So they had to have some scholared rational for overturning that decision.

MJP: Justice O'Connor in her concurring opinion spoke of 'gay persons.' Was this the first time the Supreme Court used this term in relation to persons and not just as applied to choices or a lifestyle?

GC: Of course the majority opinion by Kennedy doesn't use the term 'gay people,' but it clearly has a concept of the homosexual as a person. I'd have to look again at Romer v. Evans but my guess is that it's somewhere in that decision as well.

MJP: Are you concerned about the imminent changes in the Supreme Court's composition?

GC: Oh, no. (He says with a hearty laugh.)

MJP: OK, to what extent are you? How bad does it really look?

GC: I think we all have to be really aware that our future is absolutely at stake in this next election. If Bush is re-elected, his history of court nominees shows that he will appoint the most conservative people possible. You can't filibuster Supreme Court nominees, it's so difficult to defeat them, and at this point we couldn't. The Republicans control the Senate, they probably will control the Senate after the next election. So the person who is nominating the next justices really has so much power. What's surprising is that even people like Kennedy who is a conservative, Catholic, Reagan appointee has come around on this issue. So one could hope for that, except that Bush is going to appoint people like Scalia and Thomas who will never be educated, who have such ideological biases … . I think that it's conceivable that in the next decade we'll lose the right to abortion. This is so serious. It's not a peripheral issue. Clearly, one of the things that my historical research has persuaded me of is that it's absolutely clear that the position of gay people as a whole follows the position of women in the 20th century in the United States. When there are retrenchments on women's issues, there are retrenchments on gay issues as well. When women advance, gay people advance. We're in such danger on both sets of issues, as well as race issues.

MJP: What do you see happening if Massachusetts or New Jersey legalize gay marriage? [This interview took place before the Massachusetts' marriage victory.]

GC: I think there's more of a campaign for marriage and I do think it will happen. Above all, I think when it happens in some places it will have a tremendous effect. It is happening in two provinces in Canada. Suddenly people see the sky doesn't fall, life goes on. The heterosexual family isn't destroyed overnight. Even for gay people, 10 years ago, or even five years ago, it was unthinkable that this would happen in our lifetime. To see it happening in several European countries and in Canada means that it's really imaginable here and once one state has done it, then obviously it will release an enormous debate on our society. It will both inspire many people to push more for marriage and I'm afraid immediately it will inspire many more people to do everything they can to suppress the possibility … . Before we have time to take our breath they will try to push [protection of marriage legislation] through and I really worry about how prepared we are to face that.

MJP: Do you think that discrimination based on sexual orientation eventually will come to be as politically incorrect as racial discrimination?

GC: It's certainly less acceptable to make racist comments in public. There are still obviously a lot of racist comments made in more private circumstances, more coded racist expressions. Likewise, things will change, I think they are already changing. Almost everyone says it's already unacceptable at the University of Chicago to say these [anti-gay comments.] In certain small groups they're said, but by and large, people know that they just can't say this. We're really seeing it among the youth, all the surveys show that young people are much more comfortable … I see it in the students taking my Queer History class. The first time I taught this class, which is probably about 10 years ago, the students were overwhelmingly gay or lesbian. Eventually, it was about half and half but all the straight students were women and the men were gay. And now half the men taking my class are straight and half the women are straight. That suggests a sea change in students' attitude. They're interested, they know it's an issue and they're not worried about being stigmatized for taking this class. They can't even imagine that 10 years ago they would have been. It's really one of the most thrilling things I've seen.

MJP: Who or what is our greatest threat?

GC: I think the real threat to us is how well organized the right wing is at the local level through the national level … . How extensive their communication networks are … . And I think the other threat is our own complacency. Things are so much better now and yet there is still such a long way to go. The right wing depends on our ignorance of history in order to make its case. They pretend like there is no history of discrimination and they are always drawing analogies with African-American history that are just completely misplaced. ... [The right wing] has lost in so many arenas, which is why I feel the marriage issue is going to be so important for them. They feel it's pushing it so far that they can win on that. And then what they'll do is set us back on so many issues as well if they get this [marriage] amendment through.