By Paul Varnell

During the late 1980s as an outgrowth of my gay and AIDS activism with the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Task Force, I wrote a handful of articles for the local gay newspaper. So when several staff members suddenly left the paper, the publisher asked me to write more regularly for him.

I had always viewed the gay press mainly as a way to get “the message”—at that point AIDS issues were particularly pressing—out to the community. And it is certainly that. But after working at the paper for a while I came to see the gay press as something more. In a way the gay press creates the gay community as a community: It is how the community can see itself as a community.

For in truth we are vast profusion of micro-communities—social clubs, religious congregations, advocacy, cultural and sports groups, regulars at bars who never meet men who go to other bars, all separated by geography, interests, age, gender, socializing style, political and social opinions.

What the gay press does is gather all the information it can about each of these micro-communities and put it together so people can see what other gay people are contributing to social advancement, community development or general cultural enrichment. Not everyone reads every story but each story is read by some people, expanding their awareness of the community.

After I had been writing for the paper for a while, I submitted a commentary column. Amazingly, it was published. So I wrote and submitted another. It too got published. Pretty soon I was writing a regular column. The first several were probably not very well crafted—I was still finding my way into the form.

The point of commentary is to explore alternative viewpoints, to expand the reader’s perspective as my own perspective has often been expanded while thinking about what I am going to write. I have sometimes said that I learn more from my columns than most readers because I have to mull over and evaluate a number of ideas about my topic before I write about it.

Over time I noticed other gay writers who shared my independent, skeptical viewpoint. We were all convinced that the clichéd press releases and/or left-partisan rhetoric of many gay organizations was not going to persuade open-minded but conflicted middle-of-the-road Americans, much less hostile but curious conservatives, of the virtues of gay equality.

So in the mid-1990s we decided to start the Independent Gay Forum to make our work more widely accessible. It now has more than a score of centrist, libertarian and gay conservative contributors as well as a blog by former “Christopher Street” writer Steve Miller, who describes himself as “a recovering progressive” It is probably one of the most thoughtful gay websites on the Internet (www.indegayforum.org).

A few years ago I realized that although I knew something about literature and music, to my shame art remained a near blank in my liberal education. So I began reading books about various artists and in due course wrote a few commentary pieces about gay artists I liked.

Then about 18 months ago my editor at Chicago Free Press, ruminating out loud about our coverage areas, said, “We should cover art more.” Then looking at me he said, “Paul, you will write about art for us.” That was it.

Since we are a gay newspaper I wanted particularly to cover gay artists. I knew of a few local gay artists and learned of a few more, thanks to helpful gallery owners. But how to find out about all the others I presumed existed?

Eventually it occurred to me that forming an organization of gay artists could be helpful to artists themselves as well as help me learn about more artists.

I floated the idea in a column and invited artists to contact me. Eventually some of the artists formed the Gay and Lesbian Artist Network/Chicago (catchy acronym: GLANCe). At this point I’ve managed to write about almost 40 local gay artists—as well as other gay and non-gay artists of particular interest.

My hope in all this is to increase art awareness in the gay community, which sometimes seems fixated on the latest trends in popular culture. I also hope the articles create an awareness of the contributions of gay artists to the community and to the city’s cultural life in general. And, frankly, I hope that an article about young or little-known artists might give their career a small publicity boost. Beyond that, I hope my articles might encourage people to go to art galleries and look for themselves. They might see something they like.

Some of Paul Varnell’s previous columns are posted at the Independent Gay Forum (www.indegayforum.org). His e-mail address is pvarnell@aol.com.