The Power And The Pride

Two, four, six, eight, how do you know your grandma's straight?"the women chanted,many thousands strong, on the eve of the recent gay-and lesbian-rights march in Washington. There were, in fact, lots of grandmotherly types proceeding down Connecticut Avenue that spring evening, along with bare-breasted teenagers in overalls, aging baby boomers in Birkenstocks and bald biker dykes in from the Coast. Advertising execs strode arm in arm with electricians, architects with politicians. As onlookers pondered the stereotype-defying scene, the demonstrators reveled in their sheer numbers. It was, for once, an unabashed display of lesbian clout.

Lesbians have always been the invisible homosexuals. There are an estimated 2 million to 3 million of them in the United States-far fewer than the approximately 5 percent of the population represented by gay men. Activists believe that most lesbians haven't come out. But now, during the dawning of the "Gay '90s," these women are stepping front and center. From the studios of Hollywood to the hearing rooms of the Capitol, lesbians suddenly seem to be out of the closet and in your face. Last June, country singer k. d. lang came out to The Advocate, a bi-weekly gay magazine, giving new meaning to her hit "Constant Craving." Avowed bisexual Sandra Bernhard took her place in the "Roseanne" lineup, playing the lesbian co-owner of a sandwich shop opposite actress Morgan Fairchild. "We're like the Evian water of the '90s," stand-up comic Suzanne Westenhoefer says wryly. "Everybody wants to know a lesbian or to be with a lesbian or just to dress like one."

Why now? As conservatives are quick to note, the election of Bill Clinton contributed to this open atmosphere. Though many homosexuals feel let down by his waffling on the military ban (page 60), they give him credit for being the first president to acknowledge gays and lesbians, let alone promote them. Last month former San Francisco supervisor Roberta Achtenberg became an assistant secretary of housing and urban, development-and the first open homosexual ever confirmed by the U.S. Senate for political office. In the end, however, the new lesbian presence has as much to do with women power as gay power. "Sometimes I think it's like the year of the woman squared," says lesbian comic Kate Clinton (no relation to the president). "It's sort of like the year of the woman loving woman."

Yet lesbians are still struggling to define themselves politically and socially. "Are we the women's part of the gay movement or the lesbian part of the women's movement?" muses Torie Osborn, the head of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) in Washington. Obviously, they are both. Lesbian activists have toiled in behalf of issues-notably, AIDS and abortion-that are unlikely to affect them directly. "We have for years and years taken care of A Town Like everybody but ourselves," says Ellen Carton of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

Now lesbians are determined to cast off their role as handmaidens to other activists and stake their own claims. It won't be so easy. For all their new pride, lesbians face a lot of old prejudice. The emergence of openly lesbian couples-publicly affectionate or with their children-may test the limits of America's uneasy tolerance of homosexuality. Even many liberals who watched C-Span's unexpurgated coverage of the gay-rights march were offended by the spectacle of some women-albeit from the lesbian fringes-who were kissing or half naked. More mainstream lesbians themselves worry about the dangers of visibility. A look at some of the gains, goals and battles:

ACTIVISM: "I'm a little amused at this renewed interest in lesbians," says Urvashi Vaid, former executive director of NGLTF. Vaid, who is writing a book about the gay-rights movement, notes that lesbians have played a prominent role in many social fights, from abolition and temperance to civil rights. Like gays generally, they are better educated than the overall population. But they have operated, by and large, from the closet. And when some of them tried to come out, it was their straight sisters who slammed the door shut. During the 1970s, the NOW (National Organization for Women) leadership purged open lesbians, lest their presence somehow taint the movement. They still worked for the cause of ten under the nom de guerre "radical feminists"-but the rebuff caused a good deal of bitterness. Today lesbians can take some measure of vindication from the appointment of Patricia Ireland, who has both a husband and a woman lover, as NOW president.