I am happy to initiate our interview series where we share the ideas and opinions of some of the high profile people who are on the front lines working to help create a sex positive world. Our first guest, Jack Nichols has been an activist for gay sexual rights for almost forty years and is a noted author and editor. We are thankful that he has agreed to share his thoughts here.

Jack Nichols is senior editor at Badpuppy's GayToday (www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com) His latest book, The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists, was published in October 1996 by Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York. He is also the author of Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin); Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove & the Pines (St. Martin's Press); and is co-author with Lige Clarke of I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody (St. Martin's Press); and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male/Male Relationships (St. Martin's Press.)

Jack Nichols: First, about being an activist, that one learns to feel confident in public because of an integrity that could begin within oneself. It is an always-increasing integrity but doesn't ever have to be fully-developed, because there's always room for more personal growth-awareness expanding both inward and outward. This fluid approach keeps an activist from being too smug. It's what keeps us laughing and what separates us from our furious fundamentalist foes.

In public, a smiling, confident face is far more an effective activist tool than anger or self-righteous fury about oppression. People are too upset about too many things already. They want to understand, perhaps, but not to be preached at. They must be helped to see their own needs and their own parts in creating a saner world. They want to be for something good, not just against something bad. That's my strategy as an activist, anyway.

I've learned that gay rights is part of a larger movement toward human liberation. As a great voice of the 19th century once put it, "None of us is free till all of us are free." The late Paul Goodman, a famous bisexual neo-anarchist thinker, made a stunning point when he said, "There is no THEM, there is only US." This is an interconnected world. One living historian, John D'Emilio, noticed about my early writings, and those of my comrades, that we often "peppered them" with references to the 1950-60s civil rights movement of African Americans. We were learning from that movement.

Related Articles from the GayToday Archive: GayToday's Editor Earns 'Public Service Award' Jack Nichols Talks Back to the Fundamentalists I've Been Talking About You Walt Whitman Related Sites: Sex Positive Institute Prometheus Books GayToday does not endorse related sites.

In 1963's famous march and "I Have a Dream" rally in Washington, Frank Kameny, Paul Kuntzler, Ron Balin, Perrin Shaffer, myself and, I believe, Peter Wilson and John S. James, all marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to fulfill that part of our Mattachine Society of Washington's statement of purpose which stated that our lesbian and gay group would cooperate with others seeking their civil rights.

My writings in the early 1970s became more pointedly supportive of the equality of the sexes and how the liberation of males and females from their socially-assigned roles is as important as liberation from slavery. Our 19th century slave roles kept people just as surely captive as do the delusions-gender rulings-that there's a narrow, strict but acceptable way to show we're either 'proper' males or females.

Sex Positive Initiative: How has the Internet changed the sex positive community and how has it changed activism for sex positive rights?

Jack Nichols: We ran a story in GayToday this weekend originally reported by the Baltimore Sun, and that was about China's 150 gay sites-a couple of which have received millions of visitors in a short period.

It appears that governmental dictators and church authorities can no longer dictate to the minds of the many. Those twins, Freedom and Love and their supporters, are all growing in a brand new arena. India too has quite a few new sites. I just happen to write for Homan, the Iranian gay lib magazine which now has a web site too.

Aside from good sites like yours that put a very- much-needed positive spin on sex itself-to help folks realize that sex isn't only just good and moral and beautiful and natural- but people get to have private discussions on the Internet and to witness private discussions about their desires.

Sex gets demystified this way. It assumes its natural place. After all sex is very central to anyone who comes equipped with hormones and the Internet helps us-as a developing world culture-to see ourselves in an unembarrassed light. It helps us learn to claim our natural, spirited birthrights such as ecstasy, empathy and energy.

In the good old days we activists communicated slowly-by snailmail. Now, with as many as a third of all American Internet users being gay men or lesbians, we've been able to make known the things we hope for and to see them materialize faster than ever before. The uprising against Dr. Laura Schelesinger's anti-gay hate speech took place very quickly. Twenty-three years ago, when Anita Bryant was doing a Dr. Laura number, people did unite, but not within a week or two. It took months.

Sex PositiveInitiative: If you look back over recent decades, as a society (both domestically and internationally), we have made some terrific progress against a number of social injustices. Based on what you have seen in recent years, what predictions are you willing to make about the progress, not just for gay rights, but also for overall sex positive freedoms, that we can expect to see in the next five years and in the next twenty years?

Jack Nichols: We must be careful-as the Canadian poet Ian Young wrote in his book The Stonewall Experiment--not to confuse events like the Stonewall rebellion with an immediate growth of personal self esteem in our communities. It is happening, yes, and much faster than I could have anticipated in 1961 when we founded The Mattachine Society of Washington. I'm thrilled today, in fact, just as happy as I can be at the acceleration of change. It gives me faith in progress and in people.

The worst effect of slavery and discrimination was to make African Americans doubt themselves, according to the great black sociologist, W.E.B. DuBois. Donald Webster Cory applied this insight to gay men and lesbians in 1951.

But as long as gay and lesbian children-as well as children who are not gay are growing up in the homes of Baptist Bible thumpers or judgmental Roman Catholic fanatics-self-esteem in all matters sexual will have a tough row to hoe. I've been editing GayToday for three years. In that short time, I've been astounded at how gay rights have progressed and at how sexuality itself has blossomed even on the boob tube.

Sex Positive Initiative: John McCain recently came out with both guns blaring at Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Some have argued that this one attack killed his campaign, but it also put an important agenda item on the table. Do you think we are going to hear more about this issue in the campaign for the general election?

Jack Nichols: It was refreshing to hear a Republican speak so openly. And I think lots of people agreed with McCain's stance. But I think Al Gore is unlikely to attack the Christian Reich. They're attacking him perpetually.

Unless they get very pushy, he'll probably keep ducking low, he hopes, so as to be missed. But I see Gore as a moderate who probably feels that the lesson of McCain's loss is "Don't do that. Don't attack the Christian Reich." If he wins, their influence will wane significantly anyway.

Sex Positive Initiative: The Knight Initiative (Prop 22) outlawing any marriage other than that between a man and a woman recently passed here in California by a 2/1 margin. This is aimed directly at the gay and lesbian community. How do you think the community is going to respond to the defeat? And as a followup, certainly this will be a model for other states. How can its spread be stopped?

Jack Nichols: I am sorry, for reasons other than legalizing marriage, that Proposition 22 passed, but I don't see marriage-as Andrew Sullivan said he did-as our only significant or our final struggle. I'd like to see the remainder of the state anti-sodomy laws eliminated first, for example. They affect people, like me, who don't personally don't give a hoot about getting married.

I'd like to see Hollywood and HBO continue to provide us with human see, human do full-screen kiss shots, and heartthrob romances and the like. Freedom of expression. I'd like to see the Internet communities grow as they are doing. Then, same-sex marriage will be closer to peoples' sense of what's OK than it is now.

What some people were amazed about was that nearly 40% of California's voters were for same-sex marriage. Give us a few years and Proposition 22 will look to the majority like the barbarism it appears to us to be now. I think the marriage activists will return to the barricades of the struggle pronto. As the No on Knight activists put it, "We're disappointed, but not defeated."

Sex PositiveInitiative: Much of the hateful voice of intolerance comes in the name of religion. We know who many of the worst offenders are. On the other hand, many people of faith are potentially supportive of our fight against social injustices. What steps can the sex positive community take to solicit and enroll the support of well minded religious organizations and individuals?

Jack Nichols: Frankly, I see the Christian theory of original sin as a sex-negative one. Anti-human, in fact. I'm not convinced that most Americans are making up their minds on the basis of what the clergy says or does. I think we need to re-evaluate organized Christianity. The great wars of history have been due to religious wrangling.

I'd depend first for change on a free press, a free media, a free Internet. Ethical behavior, in my book, stands independent of church influences. It comes from reason, observation and experience. I recommend that anyone read one of our nation's founding fathers on this issue: Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.

Sex Positive Initiative: Like the religious community, the political world has its opponents and its allies. Can you tell us who you think are some of the strongest potential allies and forces for good in the political sphere?

Jack Nichols: The American Civil Liberties Union, the People for the American Way Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. P-FLAG, or Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Sex Positive Initiative: Let's talk about kids for a minute. Too many times, we hear about laws and unjust actions being undertaken for the protection of our (poor, innocent, unprotected) kids. Indeed, when we are dealing with sexuality and kids who may not have a fully developed facility for judgement, we must be very careful not to do anything harmful. That said, how do we teach sex positive attitudes to our children and at what age do the lessons come into play?

Jack Nichols: There's a wonderful new book out titled Queering Elementary Education. It's full of essays by educators answering your question more fully than I ever could in just a few words.

I have one thing I'd like to tell kids when I hear them using sex epithets for curses. I'd explain that people who call others "assholes" or say "fuck you" or whatever, are perpetuating very sex negative attitudes. My grandmother used to say, "Cursing is the effort of a limited mind to express itself." Using sex words or sex organs to curse is the effort of a negative sexuality in our culture to perpetuate itself.

Sex Positive Initiative: Where do you think we are in terms of increased tolerance and societal acceptance for sex workers?

Jack Nichols: The United States is such a silly patchwork of conflicting attitudes about sex work. Nevada, for example has legal brothels. That's good. Businesses like both restaurants and brothels should expect hygienic inspections and prostitutes and customers both should be able to work in safe environments.

SCREW magazine in New York sells on street corners and is filled with ads placed by sex workers. I only wish that these beauties could receive a sex-positive education-something better than they'd get in SCREW-before embarking on their career. I was SCREW's first managing editor in early 1969, so I feel as if I'm somewhat qualified to judge it as a newspaper today.

Sex Positive Initiative: How do you see the media treating the sex positive community in the future, and how has it changed in recent years?

Jack Nichols: If HBO's openness tells us anything about the future-in comedy-in documentaries-in dramas-there are some wonderful things in store for us attitudinally. The last two years have seen unimaginable leaps we could only have dreamed about in media in 1995. Free expression was on its way, yes, but now its arriving.