CONTEXT
Although “coming out” can never be defined as easy or ideal, Fierstein did so in the most easy and ideal conditions possible. He came out first to his family at age thirteen to a liberally-minded mother, father and brother as a Jew, in the center of gay America, New York City.
.....Presently, the Jewish faith is the most open and accepting religion of gay rights. Unlike Christianity, Judaism, especially since the gay rights liberation movement in the 1970’s, has adopted a very open-arms policy in certain places, such as New York, by opening a number of gay churches and synagogues. According to United Sates public opinion polls, “the United States shows assimilated Jewish respondents as far more willing to abandon the traditional negativity toward homosexual behavior and gay rights than Christians of similar class backgrounds” (Patai).
......This is very key to Fierstein, as his “Jewishness is very important to his writing” (Gray). For a man of devout faith, acceptance by his religion was crucial and although, “the gay synagogues…[s]truggle to gain acceptance and understanding from the House of Israel,” (Patai) having the resources and hope for true acceptance is more than most religions can say for themselves of homosexual integration. Today, many of Fierstein’s’ character actors are a “stereotype of the Jewish mother” (Gray).
.....New York City may have been the most ideal place for a young homosexual such as Fierstein to flourish in his alternative lifestyle. New York City, as Jeffery Escoffier, an GLBTQ author claims, is “the capital of homosexual, transgender, and queer life in America,” a place that has “frequently provided an environment in which homosexuals, transgender and other queer people have found their niche (Escoffier). New York is home to the modern gay culture, being the birthplace of the gay renaissance of the 1950’s and the location of the Stonewall riots of 1969, not to mention, the current home of approximately one million glbtg people in the New York City proper alone (Escoffier).
12 As far a being a artist, New York provided a perfect incubation for Fierstein’s talent as a drag queen, actor, performer and writer to flourish, as New York is commonly know to be the home of the arts. Given these conditions in the home, the faith and the location, not to mention type of work, Fierstein may have escaped the more violent discrimination other homosexuals face, as he rarely comments about having to struggle for acceptance, focusing instead on helping others embrace their identity without fear through literary and activist work. So, although being gay is never an ideal or easy lifestyle, Fierstein experienced a rather ideal coming out, which seems to have complemented his work, allowing him to explore issues within the gay community itself, rather than the issues of being gay within the larger community.
|
