Yes, You Could Be Both Openly Gay and Conservative in the ’80s

The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983–1994, by Thomas Mallon, Knopf, 592 pages, $40

Writing in 1985, arguably the worst year of the AIDS crisis, the leftist columnist Christopher Hitchens attacked closeted gays who preached right-wing politics. Once “out” (or in many cases “outed”), Hitchens argued, these onetime conservatives would “evolve politically” and renounce the Moral Majority and President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. Opening up about their sex lives meant veering to the left.

But openly gay and right-wing were not always mutually exclusive in this era. Thomas Mallon—acclaimed novelist, prolific essayist, professor of English literature, and self-described “gay neoconservative”—provides a perfect example. On coming out, he didn’t evolve politically so much as become more of what he already was.

The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983–1994 is compiled from 30 notebooks written at a time when the world in general and New York City in particular were witnessing “the relentless spread of AIDS.” It might be difficult to recall the climate of this era. About 30,000 people died of AIDS in America from 1981 to 1987. Many social conservatives regarded the disease as a Biblical plague for the sin of homosexuality: In 1983, Pat Buchanan—soon to be hired as White House communications director—wrote, “The poor homosexuals. They have declared war on nature and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.” The conservative columnist William F. Buckley called for tattooing people with AIDS.

Mallon’s diaries capture the nightmarish flavor of an era when gay sex could kill you. (“My mind…keeps running towards the Ultimate Horror, Killer AIDS,” he wrote.) His diaries are replete with times he inspected his body for signs of the disease: Swollen glands, bruises, even freckles could be cause for alarm. Every day he lived in fear and was emotionally devastated by it: “I had my worst AIDS scare in months. I saw a reddish patch on my leg….I was convinced i

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