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I was thinking about sumptuary laws the other day-- laws put in place by the reigning authority to curtail certain kinds of human activities. Usually they've been applied to behaviors involving attire and food. I live in Boston, and I ponder on the sumptuary legal history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The earliest settlers in Boston were not all as down-at-the-heel as the Pilgrims and their companions who landed at Plymouth. Some of the English dissenters were well-to-do. Mr. William Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts and an old Yankee-type, often reminded us that his ancestors landed in Boston with a footlocker of gold. The dissenters arrived in the New World for many reasons; one was to escape the corruption of the Stuart court-- its Star Chamber, its pomp, its hierarchies.

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Sumptuary laws were put in place in this new order to check tendencies toward social stratifications. Fancy dress in public was banned. Feasting and gluttony banned. This banning tendency itself can get out of control. The Goodys even got around to banning Christmas celebration-- too vulgar, too pagan, and too full of room for temptations. Hawthorne wrote that heartbreaking story wherein the town elders take down the May Pole and forbid the dancing. For The Saved, life was not supposed to be much fun. Which is what has made Boston such a dowdy old city for so much of its history-- despite an occasional flourish.

But isn't there some utility in checking extravagance? My experience in the world is that the slightest class differentiation, the slightest social or financial or sexual success, breeds resentment, one of the uglier of emotions in the human catalogue. I am lucky to be largely devoid of resentment and jealousy. But these are common feelings and not pretty. I think the Puritans wanted to create a social order which minimized incitements to resentment, a destabilizing force.

As it turned out, the large public culture of Amerika today is nearly the antithesis of ancient Boston with its sumptuary laws (excepting some forms of sexual behavior). People dress as they want, gluttony is the norm (thus all these obese children), the state authorities run the largest gambling operations, popular culture celebrates insults and violence, etc. The gay community now plays the role of the English dissenters, civil while amidst a general disorder, decorous in the face of wretched excess. Tell me: is there anything more repulsive than the sight of thousands of drunken sports fans (presumably heterosexual), and let's make them football fans, "having a good time" at a game? The raunchiest gay circuit party must be leagues above the rituals of the straight world.

Differences cause resentments. Class, money, achievement, and sex. Class is easy enough to understand. I think of the petroleuses, during the Paris Commune, as they rather brazenly went about the city, setting swank joints ablaze. Money-- well, resentment over money is self-evident. Achievement, well this is a fabulous lie, our great meritocracy, where talent and grit will get a person as far as he or she can go, our current President being the splendid example. I've always thought people should get what they want in life-- all the fame, all the wealth, all the spouses, all the food, whatever-- because, for a narrative, that's just the setup; the real story is "what happens next"?

Then there's sex-- which blends in with class, money, and achievement. Some peoples' resentments are perhaps easier to comprehend than others. Black people in Jim Crow Amerika had plenty to resent. Persons denied opportunity and access can become cauldrons of resentment. What I find curious is how resentments are used. The right-wingers accuse Democrats and progressives of making "class war" when the talk turns to issues of social equity. In 1980, that hideous dingbat Ronni RayGun ran around the country, talking about "welfare queens," inciting resentment among middle- and working-class taxpayers against the poor and the black. It's the same strategy used against gay men and lesbians. When our community talks of fairness, equity, social justice, the frothing right-wingers spew out "special rights," "special privileges," and attack homosexuals for already having all the money, opportunity, best jobs, whatever. When Lee Badgett was at my bookstore discussing her new book Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men, I brought up the business of resentment, that with minority groups, racial groups, immigrants, it is only towards the Jews and the same-sexers that the charge is made by reactionaries that Jews and gays already have all the money and demand special rights. This is not said about the Irish, the blacks, the Italians, and others, which makes it a particularly vicious smear.

But when it comes to gay men, I think the right-wingers harbor an especial resentment, and it's about sex. Since right-wingers and cultural conservatives are obsessed with gay sex-- and either do or don't participate depending on the level of their individual hypocrisies-- they see gay men as "getting away with it." What that "it" is, I'll never know. Something about avoiding marriage and children and traditional arrangements and reveling in a sexualized culture-- ignoring, nay, defying, authority! But their tactic of stirring up resentments though lies and slanders is an old one and can do great damage-- their goal.

My hope? That while stirring up their vile brew, they fall in and get to eat it all. The fit and proper thing to do, because, as we said back in the 60s, "Payback is a Motherfucker."

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com