Swelleganza

Walk Away: Donna Summer, AIDS, and a Queer Forgiveness

I have been weirdly moved today by the news of Donna Summer’s passing, despite her renunciation of her gay audiences in the early 1980s and her blithe dismissal of people lost to AIDS. And maybe precisely because of it.

Regardless of what happened later, in the mid- to late-1970s, nobody was hotter than Donna Summer. And nothing can undercut the power of her early recordings and the ways in which they continue to resonate. Not merely the soundtrack of an era, her songs — “Love to Love You, Baby,” “I Feel Love,” “Try Me, I Know We Can Make It” — permeated the entire culture and moved us in the clubs, in our bedrooms, and on the streets. Women and men, black and white, gay and straight and in-between. Pre-pubescent or hypersexual, it really didn’t matter. Donna Summer and composer/producer Giorgio Moroder literally pulled us along with their musical innovations. And nothing Donna did or said after that can ever take that away.

For what it’s worth, Donna’s representatives at the time repudiated claims that she had made disparaging and judgmental remarks about gay men (including that AIDS was God’s punishment upon them). But it took her at least six years to deny these charges herself and by then, the damage had been done. Her music was banished from gay clubs, and thousands of LPs, 45s, cassettes and eight-tracks were burned (although radical queer activist and pop singer Jimmy Somerville once said that he was never able to destroy his own copies of those records despite the furor of the times). 



Given her stature, it’s no surprise that glowing tributes to Donna Summer are flowing freely on the internet as I write this, piling up in the comments sections following obituaries in the New York Times and other news sites. They are peppered with occasional angry and bitter rants about how Donna Summer betrayed us. We lifted her to fame and she ditched us in our moment of need, a result of her having been “born again” as a Christian … a conversion that coincided conveniently with her rise to mega-stardom. I understand this anger very well, so I’ve surprised myself today by having to admit that her death makes me very sad. Sad for her and her illness. Sad for her loved ones. Sad for everyone we’ve lost to AIDS, and sad for every survivor who has endured so much.

Today I think I can take the gift of her music and celebrate it on its own terms. And forgive.