Ryan Dubnicek, "*Mad Men* and the 1960s Gay Liberation of New York"

“The Jet Set,” the eleventh episode of the second season of Mad Men is the first to introduce the viewer to early-1960s California, a setting in the show that operates partially as a literal Shangri-La—where the poolside bar is filled with ageless people of beauty whose life is consumed with pleasure—and one that takes the place as an alternative to the standard nuclear family that the men of Sterling Cooper have, at least in appearance, in New York. While this otherworldly location is introduced, another more local, but perhaps equally foreign world is introduced back at the office. While inviting Peggy to see the new (and recently renamed) folk artist, Bob Dylan, Kurt, the young, indeterminately foreign, member of the SC creative team casually mentions to the rest of the office that he is gay. While Sal Romano, art director at Sterling Cooper, who has been introduced as a closeted gay man, looks on, we are presented with the first mention of the momentous and growing movement of the gay liberation in 1960s New York.

Alexander Doty writes in his fantastic piece “The Homosexual and the Single Girl” in Mad Men, Mad World, that Sal and Kurt present a common binary of homosexual life in the 1960s—the closeted, married gay man and the openly gay man. Sal, with his passionless (and presumably sexless) marriage to his childhood friend coupled with his veiled and brief infatuations with the men around him, is a figure of repressed sexuality that embodies the socially functional homosexual man of the 1960s. In a decade when every state in the US, aside from Illinois, had criminal anti-sodomy laws with severe punishments ranging from a handful of years in prison to life imprisonment or commitment to a mental institution, there was only one socially acceptable way to be gay—to stay closeted.

As an openly gay man, Kurt is an example of a possibility that is only on the cusp of becoming livable, let alone socially acceptable, during his time. Despite the overwhelming disapproval of homosexuality in the United States at this time—as Doty also mentions, Mike Wallace reports in his 1967 documentary television piece “CBS Reports: The Homosexuals” that two-thirds of the US public view homosexuals through a lens of “disgust, discomfort or fear” (321)—Kurt’s casual, volunteered revelation is received with relatively innocuous responses. Harry Crane responds with the almost cutesy “so Kurt is a pervert… how about that?” Ken Cosgrove mentions that he “knew queers existed, [he] just doesn’t want to work with them.” While branding homosexuality as a perversion and expressing a desire to not work with gay colleagues are both harsh responses,, in line with the mentality of the time, neither is expressed in a particularly venomous way nor seems to have a lasting effect on Kurt or in the minds of the men or women who sit in judgment at Sterling Cooper.

During the first two seasons of Mad Men, Sal has taken painstaking care to hide his homosexuality through discretion about his desires and out-and-out abstinence in acting on them, along with his participation in all of the masculine sexist banter that other SC execs exhibit. Kurt’s nonchalant revelation of his homosexuality, and the calm reaction it provokes, stands in stark contrast to Sal’s assimilation to a wildly heterosexual work environment. Yet, coming out is not something that Sal sees as an option—why does it work for Kurt?

Initially being brought to Sterling Cooper in an attempt to integrate youth to its creative department, Smitty and Kurt are associated with the rising counterculture of the 1960s from their first interview, where they exhibit non-traditional clothing, explain their unique work as a duo and Smitty answers Don’s proposal to ask them a question he is asked in interviews with a hip “that is divine, man.” Kurt’s deep association with the beatnik counterculture of 1960s New York is thoroughly confusing to his peers at Sterling Cooper and operates as a smokescreen to allow his equally confusing life as a gay man to slip into the background of his identity. With Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, two of the iconic leaders of beat culture, themselves gay, and advocates of gay rights, the movement became a relative haven for young gays and lesbians of the time, allowing relatively unprecedented chances for openly gay individuals to interact and gather in ways that had been far more difficult in previous years.

Another Mad Men figure that hints at this connection is that of Paul Kinsey. His sexual relationship with Joan, which he spoiled by bragging about it in the office, and his relationship with Sheila, an African-American woman involved in the civil rights movement, seem to both be borne out of a desire for the benefits of the appearance of the relationships than of the relationships themselves. Kinsey takes pride in bedding the office sex symbol in Joan, and in the shocked reactions to what is seen as a startlingly progressive move to date Sheila. Both relationships seem to be performances for his male colleagues, and feature no real connection to each partner. While the other characters are busy starting families with their wives and pursuing sex with women who aren’t, Kinsey’s concern with how he’s perceived rather than how his sexual life operates is indicative of a queer character. Beyond his liberal views on racial relations and his initial encouragement of Peggy’s becoming a peer as a copy writer (“Ladies Room” 1.2), Kinsey also visually embodies some of the stereotypes of the beatnik figure—a beard-sporting, pipe-smoking man who lives in Greenwich Village.

Though Kurt has more exteriority in his sexuality in the work place, Sal still holds the upper hand in societal acceptance as a closeted gay man. Partaking in the same alcohol indulgences of the other Sterling Cooper executives both in and outside the office is nod to the contentious, and often times inciteful laws within New York that did not allow for the sale of alcohol in bars to gay and lesbian patrons or the issuance of liquor licenses to establishes owned by or directed towards such a customer base. While Kurt can enjoy the freedom of being openly gay in the office, he is pushed further underground in his public life, being forced to seek secret clubs often owned by the Mafia and operating due to arrangements with bribed police officers, as Martin Duberman points out in his book Stonewall.

The constant clash between being out and being closeted will come to mark the central theme of the culmination of the 1960s gay liberation in New York—the Stonewall Riots of 1969. With gay bars and clubs being often raided, New York police attempted to use public outing as a means to blackmail and persecute the gay, lesbian and transgender communities of New York, most notably the hotbed of both queer and beatnik culture, Greenwich Village. The police, having first forced homosexuals into underground venues in order to pursue the same activities heterosexuals were granted openly, would use the threat of removal from said underground into the surface of public New York life to control the queer subculture of the area. The physical dichotomy of closeted/outed gays, lesbian and transgender individuals in the Village directly mirrored the metaphorical.

The cycle of raids was famously broken up when the patrons of the bar and dancing hotspot, The Stonewall Inn, refused to present identification, be searched or taken to jail, and instead resisted arrest publicly, in front of a crowd of neighborhood onlookers. What was previously a practical threat of public shame through arrest, and, thus, of being publicly outed, and a metaphorical forced movement of their sexuality from their interior life to their public exterior life, became a point of pride for the queer subculture in the Village. As Stonewall participant Fred Sargeant points out, this initial incident, and the ensuing riots around the Stonewall Inn spawned the first instances of the gay pride movement—an embrace within the queer community of the public exhibit of their sexuality.