The Attack of the Wealthy Queers

Manso’s homosexuals are, by and large, ignorant of good breeding and taste. One couple “plowed upward of 2 million into a one- thousand-square-foot fish shack,” he reports, and when they were through, “only the original roof boards remained.” Yet another couple—they of the Lalique sink— “had never given art a thought” and “let their decorators use their knowledge, or perhaps more appropriately, their color sense” to choose art; they are insulted when a knowledgeable local artist calls their Goya etching “schlock.” Their crime, along with being gay and wealthy, is being vulgar. 

Just as Ovitz blames gay men in Hollywood for all of the evil that has befallen him, Manso condemns the changes in Ptown as the handiwork of a uniform phalanx of “gays.” This presents something of a logistical problem because (as Manso notes) Province- town has a long history of knitting gays and lesbians into its culture from the 1920s onward. What arts colony and bohemian enclave hasn’t? He acknowledges that some gay residents are not at fault. However, he describes them as “gay but totally uncomplicated about it, like so many other longtime Ptown year-rounders.” He is unmerciful about the other, apparently complicated, homosexuals. 

Even after distinguishing between good and bad homosexuals, Manso characterizes all gay men and lesbians as a monolithic group. Terms such as “they” and “these people,” cast as walking clichés, are peppered throughout the book to remind readers of the common enemy. “They have a tremendous amount of talent [for fixing up and reselling homes]” notes one of Manso’s local informants. “I mean they can take a shithole and make it beautiful. It’s like they just say, ‘we’ll go in and sprinkle some fairy dust and make it look fantastic’.” 

According to Manso, gay home ownership has translated into institutional power: gays and lesbians have taken over building, zoning, and permit committees. “‘The gays,” another person tells Manso, ‘are by now the richest, most powerful people in Provincetown,’ he says, adding, ‘A lot of these people love being on these committees’.” Along with this “love” of power comes arrogance, bullying, and intimidation. “Who the fuck do you think you are,” screams a drunken lesbian at two straight men in a local bar, “this is my town.” So there it is, what Manso calls “the gay trump card.” 

There is no question that Provincetown has changed dramatically over the past 20 or 30 years—as has Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Hamptons. It is also true that once-depressed neighborhoods in many cities have been gentrified, including Boston’s South End and parts of Cambridge. High-rolling changes in the U.S. economy over the past two decades created new wealth. But what Manso doesn’t acknowledge is that the resulting cultural shifts are due to changing patterns in wealth and spending, not homosexuality. Does anyone go on about how WASPs from Connecticut have ruined the Hamptons? 

In Manso’s world it doesn’t matter how many wealthy gay people have moved into Provincetown, how many straight wealthy people, how many drag queens or men and women in leather are on the streets, or how many families with children come to town. Manso’s “proof” of the gay takeover of Provincetown is almost entirely anecdotal. There is no hard data and no demographic analysis. For in the end, the hard work of research might have punctured his self-enclosed, simple-minded explanation of why Provincetown has changed: it attracts affluent, obnoxious “gays” because there are too many “gays.”  

So why are these liberals attacking the “gay mafia” and the gay power elite at this moment in time? One reason is that the gay movement has been successful. Gay people are more accepted now, more integrated into society, less likely to be viewed as pariahs and social outcasts. But with this acceptance comes a confusion of endlessly changing social, political, and cultural boundaries. Much of the new gay and lesbian visibility that has come from this acceptance is enjoyed and encouraged by heterosexual culture. How else can you explain the overwhelming popularity of drag in films like La Cage aux Folles, Tootsie, and To Wong Fu, Love Julie Newmar, or the prevalence of gay-inspired leather and S/M fantasies in Madonna’s music videos and even on mainstream sit-coms? But the minute less-than- firmly-established boundaries are crossed cultural panic sets in. 

When gay people become too visible and too comfortable walking down the street, as has been the case in Provincetown, latent anxiety about queerness kicks in. Suddenly, as Manso so vividly captures in page after page of his book, there are more of them than us and all the traditional worries about sexual difference and corruption begin roiling up. 

Lesbians and gays have made some changes in Provincetown, not because they were homosexual, but because they had money. The lie at the center of Manso’s book is that gay people have taken over Ptown, they want to get rid of straight people, they use rainbow flags to intimidate and exclude heterosexuals, and they have all the power. 

Social acceptance or tolerance of gay people has taken place and it has been a slow and often painful process for both homosexuals and heterosexuals. The attacks on gay money and power in Ovits’s Vanity Fair interview and Manso’s Ptown: Art, Sex, and Money on the Outer Cape are one more indication that this new level of social acceptance is a thin veneer that can be easily scratched to reveal the fear, often expressed with loathing and disdain, that still lies underneath.                         Z 

Michael Bronski is a journalist, cultural critic, and political commentator whose writings have appeared in  The Boston Globe, Utne Reader, The Los Angeles Times, The Advocate, and Z Magazine. He is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility (South End Press; 1984) and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash and the Struggle for Gay Freedom (St. Martin's; 1998). He has edited Flashpoint: Gay Male Sexual Writing and Taking Liberties: Gay Men's Essays on Politics, Culture and Sex.