• From Antisemitism to Homophobia:Laura Z. Hobson as Activist Jewish Writer
• Rachel Gordan (bio)

If Laura Z. Hobson (1900–1986) has any name recognition today, it is as the author of Gentleman's Agreement (1947), the quintessential anti-antisemitism novel of the post-World War II era, which became an Academy-Award-winning film starring Gregory Peck. What is far less well known is that a generation after her most famous novel was published, Hobson made a significant contribution to American gay literature. The story of Hobson's later career and turn to anti-homophobia has important implications for our understanding of postwar American Jews and the social protest novel in America.

Published in 1975, Hobson's seventh novel, Consenting Adult, told the story of Tessa and Ken Lynn, and their gay son, Jeff, who discloses his gay identity to his parents. In 1985, Consenting Adult became a popular made-for-television film, starring Marlo Thomas and Martin Sheen, who played the parents of a gay child; like the novel, the film portrayed these parents as admirable for their acceptance of their gay son.¹ And like Gentleman's Agreement, Consenting Adult was the kind of social message story suited for multiple media.

At a time when parents of gay children were beginning to organize—PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) was founded in 1973 in New York City—Consenting Adult reflected contemporary concerns about the specific challenges faced by parents of gay children.² As the anthropologist Kath Weston has noted, it was only in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the emergence of the gay rights movement that deliberately disclosing one's sexual identity to relatives became "structured as a possibility and a decision for self-identified lesbians and gay men in the United States."³ Prior to gay liberation, "coming out" [End Page 579] carried a different meaning, usually signifying "a person's entrance into the 'gay world,' which could involve frequenting a gay bar or revealing one's sexual identity to a few close friends who were also 'in the life.'"⁴ Until the 1970s, in other words, revealing gay identity in a heterosexual context was primarily associated with loss; the price of coming out to straight parents was assumed to include damage to, if not the demise of, personal relationships with straight family members, while potential gains seemed fraught and uncertain. By the time Consenting Adult was published in 1975, the idea that a new and positive relationship between parent and child could be forged in the wake of a child coming out was still new within mainstream culture. Hobson helped to make this idea more palatable through her popular novel. Hobson accomplished this, in part, as she had done in Gentleman's Agreement, by focusing on educated, liberal, upper middle-class characters, for whom readers felt an aspirational connection.⁵ She wrote the novel, moreover, at a moment when the cultural climate regarding sexuality was changing and greater openness in discussing subjects that had once been considered private was becoming the norm–what Rochelle Gurstein describes as the disappearance of a "reticence sensibility" among Americans.⁶ The postwar liberalism in which Gentleman's Agreement had landed and which that novel promoted through its portrayal of anti-antisemitism, had evolved, leading to a reconsideration of themes such as assimilation, religious and ethnic particularity, racism, and prejudice, in Hobson's 1975 novel.

In this essay, I examine how these two novels fit into Hobson's arc of writerly interests. The connection between these two topics can be broadly explained as Hobson's concern for marginalized groups in the US and their relationship to the liberalization of American culture. In the late 1940s, Jews were the first notable group in a series of marginalized [End Page 580] groups to be integrated into mainstream society. Members of the LGBTQ community would go through a parallel process of integration almost seventy years later. Historian David Sorkin refers to these post-WWII processes of equalization, which include the equalization of Catholics and African-Americans, as emancipation processes, suggesting that Jewish involvement in the fight for gay liberation was an extension of their own post-WWII...

• 从反犹太主义到同性恋恐惧症：劳拉·霍布森（Laura Z. Hobson）作为激进犹太作家
• 雷切尔·戈丹（Rachel Gordan）（生物）

如果说劳拉·霍布森（Laura Z. Hobson，1900-1986年）今天的名字是公认的，那它就是《绅士协定》（1947年）的作者，这是二战后最典型的反抗犹太主义小说，后来成为奥斯卡金像奖-格雷格里·佩克（Gregory Peck）主演的获奖影片。鲜为人知的是，霍布森在她最著名的小说出版后的一代人中为美国同性恋文学做出了重大贡献。霍布森后来的职业生涯以及转向反恐的故事对于我们对战后美国犹太人和美国社会抗议小说的理解具有重要意义。

霍布森（Hobson）于1975年出版的第七本小说《成人同意》（Consenting Adult）讲述了泰莎（Tessa）和肯·林恩（Ken Lynn）以及他们的同性恋儿子杰夫（Jeff）的故事，后者向父母披露了他的同性恋身份。1985年，《成人同意》（Concenting Adult）成为一部受欢迎的电视电影，由扮演男同性恋父母的马洛·托马斯（Marlo Thomas）和马丁·辛（Martin Sheen）主演；就像小说一样，电影将这些父母描绘成令人敬佩的，因为他们接受了他们的同性恋儿子。¹和《绅士协议》一样，《成人同意》是一种适用于多种媒体的社交信息故事。

在同性恋孩子的父母开始组织的时候-PFLAG（父母，家庭以及女同性恋者和同性恋者的朋友）于1973年在纽约市成立。“同意成人”反映了当代对同性恋孩子父母所面临的具体挑战的担忧。²正如人类学家凯思·韦斯顿（Kath Weston）指出的那样，只有在1969年斯通沃尔暴动和同性恋权利运动的出现之后，故意向亲戚披露自己的性身份才成为“结构化，作为对自我认同的女同性恋者的一种可能性和决定。和美国的男同性恋者。” ³在同性恋解放之前，“出来” [结束页579]带有不同的含义，通常表示“一个人进入“同性恋世界”，这可能涉及到经常去同志酒吧或向同样也是”一生”的几个密友透露自己的性身份。” ⁴直到1970年代，换句话说，在异性恋中揭示同性恋身份主要与丧失有关。假设与直系父母的生活代价包括对与直系家庭成员的个人关系的破坏（如果不是消亡的话），而潜在的收益似乎充满不确定性。同意成人的时间该书于1975年出版，在主流文化中，关于在孩子出世后可以建立父母与孩子之间新的积极关系的想法仍然是新的。霍布森（Hobson）通过她的通俗小说帮助使这个想法更可口。霍布森（Hobson）通过专注于受过教育的，自由的，上层中产阶级的角色，部分地实现了她在《绅士的协议》中所做的工作，而读者对此感到很向往。⁵此外，在有关性的文化氛围发生变化，讨论曾经被视为不公开的话题的更大开放性的时刻，她写了这本小说。罗谢尔·古尔斯坦（Rochelle Gurstein）形容这是一种“沉默寡言的敏感性”的消失。美国人 ⁶《绅士协议》登陆后的战后自由主义得以发展，该小说通过其反抗犹太主义的刻画而得到了发展，导致人们对霍布森（Hobson）1975年的小说中的同化，宗教和种族特殊性，种族主义和偏见等主题进行了重新考虑。

在本文中，我研究了这两部小说如何适应霍布森的文学兴趣。这两个主题之间的联系可以广义地解释为霍布森对美国边缘化群体的关注及其与美国文化自由化的关系。在1940年代后期，犹太人是一系列被纳入主流社会的边缘化[End Page 580]群体中的第一个值得注意的群体。LGBTQ社区的成员将在近七十年后经历并行的整合过程。历史学家戴维·索金（David Sorkin）将这些第二次世界大战后的均等化过程称为解放过程，其中包括天主教徒和非裔美国人的均等化，这表明犹太人参与争取同性恋解放的斗争是他们自己在第二次世界大战后的延续。