About the LGBT Generation Gap

“Is there truly an antipathy between younger and older gay men? Are there conflicting interests?” Raymond M. Berger may have been the first scholar to consider the existence of a gay generation gap in Gay and Gray: The Older Homosexual Man. Berger reached no conclusion in 1982 when the book was published, but did cite that older gay men of the time were deeply marked by “the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the anti-homosexual witch hunts of the McCarthy era.” He also stated that the AIDS crisis would likely shape generational relationships between gay men in the future, noting, “It is intriguing to speculate about the dimensions this social phenomenon is likely to take.”

Over twenty years later, on the eve of Gay Pride 2009, New York Magazine published Mark Harris’ article “The Gay Generation Gap.” In the essay, Harris answers Berger’s question by detailing the friction between gay men in their twenties and gay men in their forties and fifties.
Harris sharply illuminates the silence generated by the gap, predicting that during the coming days of Pride, men from both sides of the gap would find themselves together in the same space and, “We will look at them. They will look at us. We will realize that we have absolutely nothing to say to one another. And the gay generation gap will widen.” Harris makes a heartbreaking conclusion noting that young gay men have no need for older gay mentors in modern times:

"For decades, gay men functioned as unofficial surrogate parents to the newly out and/or newly outcast … Today, though, the notion of a quasi-parental gay mentorship feels ancient, a trope out of Tales of the City."

Maybe a “mentorship” is not what is needed today as researchers have called for a new type of intergenerational relationship between LGBT generations. In their article, “Gay Youth and Gay Adults”, Scholars Janis S. Bohan, Glenda M. Russell, and Suki Montgomery investigated the gap not just between gay men, but between all LGBT youth and adults. Their research profiles the lack of understanding between LGBT teens and LGBT adults, stating that both adults and youth do not have a clear picture of each other’s life experiences and they have not had the opportunity to cultivate a means of communicating with each other in a meaningful way, concluding that “the absence of such an understanding hamstrings individuals in both age groups as well as the community and the movement as a whole."

In a later, condensed review of this research, “The Gay Generation Gap: Communicating Across the LGBT Generational Divide”, Russell and Bohan issue a call to action outlining both the assets and needs of LGBT youth and adults.