Michelangelo Signorile
Encyclopedia
Michelangelo Signorile is a gay
American
writer
, a national talk radio
host whose program is aired each weekday across the United States and Canada. He is a political liberal, and covers a wide variety of political and cultural issues. On November 22, 2011 Signorile was named Editor-at-Large for the Gay Voices vertical of The Huffington Post
.
Signorile is noted for his various books and articles on gay and lesbian politics, and is an outspoken supporter of gay rights. Signorile's seminal 1993 book Queer in America explored the negative effects of the LGBT closet
, and provided one of the first intellectual justifications for the practice of outing
public officials, influencing the debate and treatment of the issue among journalists from that point on. Signorile has argued in favor of outing from a journalistic perspective, calling for the "equalization" of reporting on homosexual public figures and heterosexual public figures. He has argued that the homosexuality of public figures—and only public figures—should be reported on when relevant, and only when relevant. In 1992 Newsweek
listed him as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite," and he is included in the 2002 book, The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present, which begins with Socrates
at number 1 and ends with Signorile at number 100.
Signorile has been an editor-at-large and columnist for The Advocate
, and a columnist for Out
magazine. He has written for many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times
, USA Today
, and The Los Angeles Times, and has appeared on many American television news programs, including Larry King Live
, The Today Show, and Good Morning America
. His magazine articles, newspaper columns and website
, which "offers his always-intriguing take on the state of gay rights and other political and cultural
topics", champion the cause of gay rights. In particular, Signorile has advocated that gay Americans come out
, and has talked about the deleterious effects of the closet both on the closeted individual and on society as a whole. Signorile has been a long-time champion of the right to same-sex marriage
.
Currently, Signorile hosts a radio
program, The Michelangelo Signorile Show, which can be heard exclusively on Sirius XM Radio's OutQ channel (SiriusXM 108) —each weekday 2–6 ET. The show airs on satellite radio across North America and is streamed worldwide on the Internet
and to the Android, BlackBerry
, and iOS (iPad
, iPhone
, iPod Touch
) handheld devices to over 20.5 million Sirius XM subscribers. Signorile interviews politicians, activists, journalists, authors and other public figures, analyzes news and cultural events, and takes calls from listeners from coast-to-coast. Often, Signorile brings on those who are on America's right-wing or are opponents of gay rights, with whom he engages in energetic debates.
In August of 2011, Signorile was inducted in the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
LGBT Journalist Hall of Fame.
, New York
and spent his early childhood in the 1960s and 1970s in Manhattan and Staten Island
. He attended the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University
, where he majored in journalism. It was in those years that he came to realize his own gay sexual orientation, but still remained closeted to many friends and to family.
In the mid-80s, shortly after graduating from college, Signorile moved to Manhattan
. Among his first jobs, he worked for an entertainment public relations firm that specialized in "column-planting"—getting clients, which included movie companies and Broadway shows, into New York City's gossip columns, such as the popular Page Six at the New York Post
and Liz Smith
, then at the New York Daily News
. This required collecting and trading in gossip, often about celebrities' private lives. Later, he became a gossip columnist himself, attending parties and movie premieres and reporting on nightlife for the now-defunct New York Nightlife magazine. It was in that world in the mid-80s, as Signorile describes in his book Queer in America, where he saw a double standard regarding how the media glamorized heterosexuality among celebrities while covering up homosexuality. But Signorile was not political at the time. He was somewhat open about his own homosexuality by that time, but he had not looked at it in the broader context of politics and culture in America. His political awakening came as the AIDS epidemic expanded in the late 80s and more friends were getting sick and dying.
Signorile became a gay activist in 1988, after attending a meeting of the controversial grass roots protest group, ACT UP
, in New York. Within days of the meeting he was arrested at a protest at St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church at the Citigroup Center
, where the Vatican
's envoy and the author of much of the Vatican's recent positions against homosexuality, gay rights and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was to give a major speech. (Ratzinger would go on become Pope Benedict XVI
, succeeding Pope John Paul II
upon his death in April 2005). Signorile has explained that he went to the event solely to watch the protesters who were planning on standing up among the attendees and letting their voices be heard. But he became filled with rage while watching Ratzinger speak, thinking about the homophobia he'd experienced as a child and the Catholic Church's decrees. (He was raised as a Roman Catholic). "Suddenly," Signorile wrote in Queer in America about the protest, "I jumped up on one of the marble platforms, and looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted, 'He is no man of God!' The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: 'He is no man of God—he is the devil!'" Signorile was pulled down, hand-cuffed and carted off by the police.
Signorile soon became the chair of the media committee of ACT UP, organizing publicity for major, theatrical AIDS activist protests of the time, and taking on the Food and Drug Administration
, the National Institutes of Health
, New York's City Hall and other government agencies in the media, criticizing them for what AIDS activists saw as their foot-dragging while people were dying. Though controversial, ACT UP and its tactics have been credited with bringing more attention to AIDS among politicians and the media, and speeding the development and approval of HIV drugs in 1990s. Signorile also was a co-founding member, along with three other ACT UP members, of the in-your-face activist group Queer Nation
, as he describes in Queer in America.
though has contended the discussion has often been distorted by the media and he has been opposed to using a violent, active verb to define the phenomenon Signorile was a co-founding editor of the gay magazine OutWeek
, which launched in June 1989 and which was quickly at the center of heated debates inside and outside the gay community, including the controversies over outing
. Signorile became the features editor at OutWeek and eventually officially stopped working within ACT UP and Queer Nation, though, like most of OutWeek's staff, maintained deep ties to the groups.
Signorile saw his role at OutWeek as one of taking on the media and the entertainment industry. From the start of the magazine he wrote a weekly column called "Gossip Watch," which was just that—a watch of the gossip columns. He began writing about the media's double standard in reporting on homosexual and heterosexual public figures, and how he believed it made gays invisible in the midst of the health crisis. Among those whom Signorile outed at that time included the Hollywood producer David Geffen
(who has long since acknowledged that he is gay). Geffen, as a record producer, was promoting Guns N' Roses
, the rock group which had been attacked for antigay lyrics ("fa**ots...spread some f**kin' disease") and other performers, such as the comedian Andrew Dice Clay
, whose comedy routines in the late 80s were seen by many as homophobic and misogynistic. Clay had said in a 1984 stand-up act that in Hollywood they have "herpes, AIDS and fag-itis," crudely mocked desperate pleas for AIDS funding as thousands died and while many saw the government as negligent ("get a job, buttfu**a"), and used antigay slurs. "They don't know if they want to be called gays, homosexuals, fairies," he said. "I call them c**ksuckers." Signorile saw it as relevant to discuss Geffen's closeted homosexuality in that context. Signorile also outed the gossip columnist Liz Smith
(who also eventually acknowledged her bisexuality), whom he maintained helped celebrities and others to present themselves as heterosexual when they were in fact gay.
The very media and celebrity culture that Signorile vilified soon took notice of his work. The chic fashion industry bible, W magazine, put OutWeek on the "In" list, calling it a "must-read" because of its mix of "culture, politics and vicious gossip" (Queer in America, p. 73), and Signorile would eventually be profiled in New York Magazine and in The New York Times
. Signorile was both praised and attacked for his column. He was called "one of the greater contemporary gay heroes," while his work was also called "revolting, infantile, cheap name-calling" (Johansson & Percy, p. 183). New York Post columnist Amy Pagnozzi compared him to the right-wing, anti-communist 1950s senator, Joseph McCarthy
, in a column headlined "Magazine Drags Gays Out of the Closet" (Queer in America, p. 73). It was Time magazine that coined the term "outing" at that time, something Signorile has always contended was a biased term. He saw what he was doing as simply "reporting."
The outing controversy amplified dramatically in March 1990, when Signorile wrote a cover story for OutWeek revealing the homosexuality of the publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes
within weeks of his death, headlined "The Other Side of Malcolm Forbes." In a subsequent article in The Village Voice
, Signorile charged a media cover-up of his Forbes story, claiming that various news outlets were going to report on it but later decided against it. Eventually, over a period of months, the story was reported on, but The New York Times still refused to name Forbes, only referring to him as "a recently deceased businessman" who was outed. (It wasn't until five years later, during coverage of Forbes' son Steve's run for the Republican nomination for president in 1996, that the Times finally reported on Malcolm Forbes' gay life).
Soon after OutWeek folded in 1991, Signorile joined the The Advocate
with a cover story that put him at the center of a firestorm over gays in the military as well as outing: he outed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Pete Williams (Williams has since gone on to become a television journalist for NBC News). The outing caused Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney
to call the gay ban "an old chestnut" during an interview with Sam Donaldson on ABC, while then presidential candidate Bill Clinton
, citing the outing, promised at a gay fundraiser to overturn the ban if he were elected president.
magazine, which was founded by his friend and OutWeek colleague Michael Goff
and former OutWeek editor Sarah Pettit. In 1995 Signorile published his second book, Outing Yourself, a 14-step program for coming out as gay or lesbian.
At that time, as an Out magazine columnist and editor-at-large, Signorile soon was at the center of often-heated debates among gay activists, sexual liberationists and HIV prevention experts about gay male sexual culture and the prevalence of unsafe sex and HIV transmission. Signorile wrote a column for Out that sparked much discussion, titled "Unsafe Like Me," in which he addressed the issue by admitting to have slipped up himself, having had an incident of unprotected sex, and discussed what may have led someone like him—a prominent AIDS activist, immersed in the issues of prevention—to have such a lapse. The column was adapted to the op-ed page of The New York Times and inspired a CBS "60 Minutes" treatment of the issue in which Signorile was profiled. Signorile followed up that column with several others that focused on what he saw as some unhealthy aspects of gay culture that contributed to low self-esteem and risk-taking. This eventually grew into his 1997 bestseller Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men: Sex, Drugs, Muscles and the Passages of Life, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. The columns and the book created controversy among some activists; Signorile was criticized by the group Sex Panic!
which believed that he and other writers had inspired government crack-downs on gay sex through their writings. Many other commentators and activists disagreed with Signorile's critics, and fierce debates broke out in both gay and mainstream media. Signorile also inspired much discussion and debate with pieces in Out on pro-life gays, animals rights vs. medical research, gay marriage and high-profile antigay hate crimes.
In August 1998, Signorile left Out magazine abruptly in a disagreement with the new editor James Collard. Former Out editor and co-founder, the late Sarah Pettit, a long-time colleague of Signorile's who was also an editor at OutWeek, had been ousted from Out that year in a shake up (Michael Goff had been pushed out earlier) in which she had charged sex discrimination. The new editor, from the UK, had been a promoter of the "post-gay" sensibility, which seemed to eschew activism. According to Signorile, speaking to gay journalist Rex Wockner, Collard wanted him to tone down his writing. "We had a heated discussion and he insulted my sensibilities and it made me so angry I threw water in his face," Signorile told Wockner. "They did not want me to write biting commentary and opinion. They wanted me to do more feature-driven work and I refused to do that because my column in Out has always been a space where I could do commentary, political analysis, features, whatever I wanted. I think it's important to have commentary and solidly researched journalism in the same forum."
Signorile and much of his work over the years were featured prominently in Outrage (2009 film)
, directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick
and which focused on closeted. antigay politicians, making the a case for why media should report on their sexual orientation.
He now hosts a daily talk show on SiriusXM satellite radio on the OutQ channel (channel 108) from 2-6 ET. The Friday show is re-broadcast on Saturdays from 8PM until midnight EST on SiriusXM Left, channel 127.
Signorile was inducted in the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
LGBT National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association#LGBT Journalist Hall of Fame Journalist Hall of Fame in August 2011 at the group's annual convention, in Philadelphia.
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, a national talk radio
Talk radio
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...
host whose program is aired each weekday across the United States and Canada. He is a political liberal, and covers a wide variety of political and cultural issues. On November 22, 2011 Signorile was named Editor-at-Large for the Gay Voices vertical of The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
.
Signorile is noted for his various books and articles on gay and lesbian politics, and is an outspoken supporter of gay rights. Signorile's seminal 1993 book Queer in America explored the negative effects of the LGBT closet
The Closet
The Closet may refer to:* The Closet , Chinese film* The Closet , French film* The closet, referring to undisclosed homosexuality- See also :* Closet* Closet * In the closet...
, and provided one of the first intellectual justifications for the practice of outing
Outing
Outing is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's true sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. Outing gives rise to issues of privacy, choice, hypocrisy, and harm in addition to sparking debate on what constitutes common good in efforts...
public officials, influencing the debate and treatment of the issue among journalists from that point on. Signorile has argued in favor of outing from a journalistic perspective, calling for the "equalization" of reporting on homosexual public figures and heterosexual public figures. He has argued that the homosexuality of public figures—and only public figures—should be reported on when relevant, and only when relevant. In 1992 Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
listed him as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite," and he is included in the 2002 book, The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present, which begins with Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
at number 1 and ends with Signorile at number 100.
Signorile has been an editor-at-large and columnist for The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
, and a columnist for Out
Out (magazine)
Out is a popular gay and lesbian fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle magazine, with the highest circulation of any gay monthly publication in the United States. It carries itself in a similar editorial manner to Details, Esquire, and GQ. Out was published by PlanetOut Inc...
magazine. He has written for many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, and The Los Angeles Times, and has appeared on many American television news programs, including Larry King Live
Larry King Live
Larry King Live is an American talk show hosted by Larry King on CNN from 1985 to 2010. It was CNN's most watched and longest-running program, with over one million viewers nightly....
, The Today Show, and Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
. His magazine articles, newspaper columns and website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
, which "offers his always-intriguing take on the state of gay rights and other political and cultural
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
topics", champion the cause of gay rights. In particular, Signorile has advocated that gay Americans come out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
, and has talked about the deleterious effects of the closet both on the closeted individual and on society as a whole. Signorile has been a long-time champion of the right to same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
.
Currently, Signorile hosts a radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
program, The Michelangelo Signorile Show, which can be heard exclusively on Sirius XM Radio's OutQ channel (SiriusXM 108) —each weekday 2–6 ET. The show airs on satellite radio across North America and is streamed worldwide on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and to the Android, BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
, and iOS (iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
, iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, iPod Touch
IPod Touch
The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
) handheld devices to over 20.5 million Sirius XM subscribers. Signorile interviews politicians, activists, journalists, authors and other public figures, analyzes news and cultural events, and takes calls from listeners from coast-to-coast. Often, Signorile brings on those who are on America's right-wing or are opponents of gay rights, with whom he engages in energetic debates.
In August of 2011, Signorile was inducted in the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association is an American professional association dedicated to unbiased coverage of gay/lesbian issues in the media...
LGBT Journalist Hall of Fame.
Early years
Signorile was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and spent his early childhood in the 1960s and 1970s in Manhattan and Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
. He attended the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
, where he majored in journalism. It was in those years that he came to realize his own gay sexual orientation, but still remained closeted to many friends and to family.
In the mid-80s, shortly after graduating from college, Signorile moved to Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. Among his first jobs, he worked for an entertainment public relations firm that specialized in "column-planting"—getting clients, which included movie companies and Broadway shows, into New York City's gossip columns, such as the popular Page Six at the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
and Liz Smith
Liz Smith (journalist)
Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Smith is an American gossip columnist. She is known as The Grand Dame of Dish.- Early life and career :...
, then at the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
. This required collecting and trading in gossip, often about celebrities' private lives. Later, he became a gossip columnist himself, attending parties and movie premieres and reporting on nightlife for the now-defunct New York Nightlife magazine. It was in that world in the mid-80s, as Signorile describes in his book Queer in America, where he saw a double standard regarding how the media glamorized heterosexuality among celebrities while covering up homosexuality. But Signorile was not political at the time. He was somewhat open about his own homosexuality by that time, but he had not looked at it in the broader context of politics and culture in America. His political awakening came as the AIDS epidemic expanded in the late 80s and more friends were getting sick and dying.
Activism
In his book Queer in America and in numerous articles and interviews, Signorile has discussed how he began to see that many in the media, among his circles as well, were either sensationalizing AIDS in the 80s or running away from it. He also began to believe the government was negligent in the face of the epidemic.Signorile became a gay activist in 1988, after attending a meeting of the controversial grass roots protest group, ACT UP
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is an international direct action advocacy group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS and the AIDS pandemic to bring about legislation, medical research and treatment and policies to ultimately bring an end to the disease by mitigating loss of health and...
, in New York. Within days of the meeting he was arrested at a protest at St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church at the Citigroup Center
Citigroup Center
The Citigroup Center is one of the ten tallest skyscrapers in New York City, United States, located at 53rd Street between Lexington Avenue and Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan...
, where the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
's envoy and the author of much of the Vatican's recent positions against homosexuality, gay rights and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was to give a major speech. (Ratzinger would go on become Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...
, succeeding Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
upon his death in April 2005). Signorile has explained that he went to the event solely to watch the protesters who were planning on standing up among the attendees and letting their voices be heard. But he became filled with rage while watching Ratzinger speak, thinking about the homophobia he'd experienced as a child and the Catholic Church's decrees. (He was raised as a Roman Catholic). "Suddenly," Signorile wrote in Queer in America about the protest, "I jumped up on one of the marble platforms, and looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted, 'He is no man of God!' The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: 'He is no man of God—he is the devil!'" Signorile was pulled down, hand-cuffed and carted off by the police.
Signorile soon became the chair of the media committee of ACT UP, organizing publicity for major, theatrical AIDS activist protests of the time, and taking on the Food and Drug Administration
Food and Drug Administration
The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments...
, the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
, New York's City Hall and other government agencies in the media, criticizing them for what AIDS activists saw as their foot-dragging while people were dying. Though controversial, ACT UP and its tactics have been credited with bringing more attention to AIDS among politicians and the media, and speeding the development and approval of HIV drugs in 1990s. Signorile also was a co-founding member, along with three other ACT UP members, of the in-your-face activist group Queer Nation
Queer Nation
Queer Nation was an organization founded in March 1990 in New York City, USA by AIDS activists from ACT UP. The four founders were outraged at the escalation of anti-gay and lesbian violence on the streets and prejudice in the arts and media...
, as he describes in Queer in America.
The outing controversy
Signorile has been considered a pioneer of outingOuting
Outing is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's true sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. Outing gives rise to issues of privacy, choice, hypocrisy, and harm in addition to sparking debate on what constitutes common good in efforts...
though has contended the discussion has often been distorted by the media and he has been opposed to using a violent, active verb to define the phenomenon Signorile was a co-founding editor of the gay magazine OutWeek
OutWeek
OutWeek Magazine was an influential gay and lesbian weekly news magazine published in New York City from 1989 to 1991. During its two year existence, OutWeek was widely considered the leading voice of AIDS activism and the initiator of a radical new sensibility in lesbian and gay...
, which launched in June 1989 and which was quickly at the center of heated debates inside and outside the gay community, including the controversies over outing
Outing
Outing is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's true sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. Outing gives rise to issues of privacy, choice, hypocrisy, and harm in addition to sparking debate on what constitutes common good in efforts...
. Signorile became the features editor at OutWeek and eventually officially stopped working within ACT UP and Queer Nation, though, like most of OutWeek's staff, maintained deep ties to the groups.
Signorile saw his role at OutWeek as one of taking on the media and the entertainment industry. From the start of the magazine he wrote a weekly column called "Gossip Watch," which was just that—a watch of the gossip columns. He began writing about the media's double standard in reporting on homosexual and heterosexual public figures, and how he believed it made gays invisible in the midst of the health crisis. Among those whom Signorile outed at that time included the Hollywood producer David Geffen
David Geffen
David Geffen is an American record executive, film producer, theatrical producer and philanthropist. Geffen is noted for creating Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, and DGC Records in 1990...
(who has long since acknowledged that he is gay). Geffen, as a record producer, was promoting Guns N' Roses
Guns N' Roses
Guns N' Roses is an American hard rock band, formed in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, in 1985. The band has released six studio albums, three EPs, and one live album...
, the rock group which had been attacked for antigay lyrics ("fa**ots...spread some f**kin' disease") and other performers, such as the comedian Andrew Dice Clay
Andrew Dice Clay
Andrew Dice Clay is an American comedian and actor who played the lead role in the film The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.Clay has been in several movies and has released a number of stand-up albums...
, whose comedy routines in the late 80s were seen by many as homophobic and misogynistic. Clay had said in a 1984 stand-up act that in Hollywood they have "herpes, AIDS and fag-itis," crudely mocked desperate pleas for AIDS funding as thousands died and while many saw the government as negligent ("get a job, buttfu**a"), and used antigay slurs. "They don't know if they want to be called gays, homosexuals, fairies," he said. "I call them c**ksuckers." Signorile saw it as relevant to discuss Geffen's closeted homosexuality in that context. Signorile also outed the gossip columnist Liz Smith
Liz Smith (journalist)
Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Smith is an American gossip columnist. She is known as The Grand Dame of Dish.- Early life and career :...
(who also eventually acknowledged her bisexuality), whom he maintained helped celebrities and others to present themselves as heterosexual when they were in fact gay.
The very media and celebrity culture that Signorile vilified soon took notice of his work. The chic fashion industry bible, W magazine, put OutWeek on the "In" list, calling it a "must-read" because of its mix of "culture, politics and vicious gossip" (Queer in America, p. 73), and Signorile would eventually be profiled in New York Magazine and in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. Signorile was both praised and attacked for his column. He was called "one of the greater contemporary gay heroes," while his work was also called "revolting, infantile, cheap name-calling" (Johansson & Percy, p. 183). New York Post columnist Amy Pagnozzi compared him to the right-wing, anti-communist 1950s senator, Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
, in a column headlined "Magazine Drags Gays Out of the Closet" (Queer in America, p. 73). It was Time magazine that coined the term "outing" at that time, something Signorile has always contended was a biased term. He saw what he was doing as simply "reporting."
The outing controversy amplified dramatically in March 1990, when Signorile wrote a cover story for OutWeek revealing the homosexuality of the publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes
Malcolm Forbes
Malcolm Stevenson Forbes was publisher of Forbes magazine, founded by his father B. C. Forbes and today run by his son Steve Forbes.-Life and career:...
within weeks of his death, headlined "The Other Side of Malcolm Forbes." In a subsequent article in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, Signorile charged a media cover-up of his Forbes story, claiming that various news outlets were going to report on it but later decided against it. Eventually, over a period of months, the story was reported on, but The New York Times still refused to name Forbes, only referring to him as "a recently deceased businessman" who was outed. (It wasn't until five years later, during coverage of Forbes' son Steve's run for the Republican nomination for president in 1996, that the Times finally reported on Malcolm Forbes' gay life).
Soon after OutWeek folded in 1991, Signorile joined the The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
with a cover story that put him at the center of a firestorm over gays in the military as well as outing: he outed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Pete Williams (Williams has since gone on to become a television journalist for NBC News). The outing caused Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
to call the gay ban "an old chestnut" during an interview with Sam Donaldson on ABC, while then presidential candidate Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, citing the outing, promised at a gay fundraiser to overturn the ban if he were elected president.
Gay culture debates
Signorile wrote columns and feature stories for The Advocate for several years, including the groundbreaking two-part cover story "Out at The New York Times"—in which the paper's gay and lesbian staffers, its top editors and its then-new publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., spoke for the first time, to Signorile, about years of homophobia at the paper of record and how they were charting a new course. In 1994, Signorile left the Advocate for the then new glossy, OutOut (magazine)
Out is a popular gay and lesbian fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle magazine, with the highest circulation of any gay monthly publication in the United States. It carries itself in a similar editorial manner to Details, Esquire, and GQ. Out was published by PlanetOut Inc...
magazine, which was founded by his friend and OutWeek colleague Michael Goff
Michael Goff
Michael Goff is a publisher, executive and entrepreneur who founded Out magazine and was its first editor in chief and President. The child of diplomats, Goff himself was rejected by the State Department for being gay....
and former OutWeek editor Sarah Pettit. In 1995 Signorile published his second book, Outing Yourself, a 14-step program for coming out as gay or lesbian.
At that time, as an Out magazine columnist and editor-at-large, Signorile soon was at the center of often-heated debates among gay activists, sexual liberationists and HIV prevention experts about gay male sexual culture and the prevalence of unsafe sex and HIV transmission. Signorile wrote a column for Out that sparked much discussion, titled "Unsafe Like Me," in which he addressed the issue by admitting to have slipped up himself, having had an incident of unprotected sex, and discussed what may have led someone like him—a prominent AIDS activist, immersed in the issues of prevention—to have such a lapse. The column was adapted to the op-ed page of The New York Times and inspired a CBS "60 Minutes" treatment of the issue in which Signorile was profiled. Signorile followed up that column with several others that focused on what he saw as some unhealthy aspects of gay culture that contributed to low self-esteem and risk-taking. This eventually grew into his 1997 bestseller Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men: Sex, Drugs, Muscles and the Passages of Life, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. The columns and the book created controversy among some activists; Signorile was criticized by the group Sex Panic!
Sex Panic!
Sex Panic!, sometimes rendered SexPanic! or Sex Panic, is a sexual activism group founded in New York City in 1997. The group characterized itself as a "pro-queer, pro-feminist, anti-racist direct action group" campaigning for sexual freedom in the age of AIDS...
which believed that he and other writers had inspired government crack-downs on gay sex through their writings. Many other commentators and activists disagreed with Signorile's critics, and fierce debates broke out in both gay and mainstream media. Signorile also inspired much discussion and debate with pieces in Out on pro-life gays, animals rights vs. medical research, gay marriage and high-profile antigay hate crimes.
In August 1998, Signorile left Out magazine abruptly in a disagreement with the new editor James Collard. Former Out editor and co-founder, the late Sarah Pettit, a long-time colleague of Signorile's who was also an editor at OutWeek, had been ousted from Out that year in a shake up (Michael Goff had been pushed out earlier) in which she had charged sex discrimination. The new editor, from the UK, had been a promoter of the "post-gay" sensibility, which seemed to eschew activism. According to Signorile, speaking to gay journalist Rex Wockner, Collard wanted him to tone down his writing. "We had a heated discussion and he insulted my sensibilities and it made me so angry I threw water in his face," Signorile told Wockner. "They did not want me to write biting commentary and opinion. They wanted me to do more feature-driven work and I refused to do that because my column in Out has always been a space where I could do commentary, political analysis, features, whatever I wanted. I think it's important to have commentary and solidly researched journalism in the same forum."
The radio years
Several months after leaving Out, Signorile joined The Advocate once again, in December 1998, as a columnist and editor-at-large; his first article was a cover piece taking on the notion of a "post-gay' society as espoused by Out editor Collard. (Within a year after Collard took the post and six months after Signorile left Out, Collard left Out amid reports of a drop in circulation and negative response of a focus group to the magazine.) In 2000, Signorile left the Advocate again, and became a columnnist for global Internet site Gay.com, which had just merged with the pioneering LGBT site PlanetOut.com. Signorile traveled around the U.S. and around the world, writing online columns. He covered the controversy surrounding the Millennium March Washington for LGBT Rights, which divided many in the community regarding its time and purpose and at which a theft occurred at the festival. Signorile reported from Australia and New Zealand, where his partner had taken a position as a professor, and reported on World Pride in Rome in 2000, which activists butted heads with the Vatican, which tried to get the event canceled. During that time he Signorile also pioneered Internet radio, webcasting a weekly show on GAYBC.com beginning in 2000, covering the global LGBT community. In an interview he has described a machine called a "vector" that he would plug into a phone outlet and which allowed him to webcast live via Gaybc's studios in Seattle.(Media Bistro Q & A with Signorile 2002)Signorile and much of his work over the years were featured prominently in Outrage (2009 film)
Outrage (2009 film)
Outrage is a 2009 Emmy Award-nominated American documentary film written and directed by Kirby Dick. The film presents a narrative discussing the hypocrisy of individuals purported in the documentary to be closeted politicians who promote anti-gay legislation...
, directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick
Kirby Dick
Kirby Dick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for directing documentary films. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith...
and which focused on closeted. antigay politicians, making the a case for why media should report on their sexual orientation.
He now hosts a daily talk show on SiriusXM satellite radio on the OutQ channel (channel 108) from 2-6 ET. The Friday show is re-broadcast on Saturdays from 8PM until midnight EST on SiriusXM Left, channel 127.
Signorile was inducted in the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association is an American professional association dedicated to unbiased coverage of gay/lesbian issues in the media...
LGBT National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association#LGBT Journalist Hall of Fame Journalist Hall of Fame in August 2011 at the group's annual convention, in Philadelphia.
Books
- Queer In America (ISBN 0-299-19374-8)
- Life Outside (ISBN 0-06-092904-9)
- Outing Yourself (ISBN 0-684-82617-8)
- Hitting Hard (ISBN 0-7867-1619-3)
Sources
- The Fales Library Guide to the Michelangelo Signorile Papers
- Gross, Larry. Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing. University of Minnesota Press, 1993 ISBN 0816621799
- Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A. Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press, 1994.
- Signorile, Michelangelo (1993). Queer In America: Sex, Media, and the Closets of Power. ISBN 0-299-19374-8.
- Gross, Larry & Woods, James (1999) "The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics " ISBN 0231104464
- Media Bistro Q & A with Signorile 2002
- The Ethics of Outing by Gabriel Rotello
- Signorile and Ratzinger, Advocate.com 2005
- Salon Media Circus, Liquid Lunch Salon.com 1998
- Rex Wockner's "Quote UnQuote" 1998
- Sarah Pettit, 36, NY Times Obituary 2003
- http://books.google.com/books?id=am37yVCaQXAC&pg=PA376&lpg=PA376&dq=Signorile+%22Out+at+the+New+York+Times%22&source=bl&ots=XsL-wuXwEh&sig=OKEimo1XSWp0TM7iQAg-tGqBmY4&hl=en&ei=rgPmS6fmF8L48AbP7aGGDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCYQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Signorile%20%22Out%20at%20the%20New%20York%20Times%22&f=falseSignorile's Advocate piece, "Out at the New York Times," reprinted in The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gays in Media, Society and Politics 1999, Larry Gross and James Woods]
- Bumiller, Elisabeth 1996, New York Times article on Malcolm Forbes, citing that the multimillionaire was indeed gay