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Monday, 27 October 1997
ANN NORTHROP

The Radical Debutante
From Making History by Eric Marcus

 UNTIL 1987, Ann Northrop’s resume reads like that of a journalist on her way to the top: “ABC Sports,” Ms. magazine, Ladies Home Journal, “Good Morning America,” and “CBS Morning News.” The impressive list of national media ends with 1987 because it was in that year that the silver-haired, Vassar-educated Boston debutante abandoned her career.
Ann Northrop jumped ship and became an educator on AIDS and homosexuality. Along the way, she also joined the ranks of the new wave of direct-action AIDS and gay rights activists. Today, Ann is an outspoken member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and has been arrested twice while participating in public protests, including the much publicized and controversial disruption of Sunday services at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989. She’s also an active member of Queer Nation, the highly visible and very vocal rights group that has spread to cities across the country. At forty-two, two decades older than the average Queer Nationalist, Ann is an energetic late bloomer who is determined to make up for lost time.

All through my teenage years I tried to convince myself, These feelings will go away. They’re not real, because I’m not one of those awful people. I can’t be one of those weirdoes, those Martians, those horrible disgusting perverts. The image I had was of limp-wristed men and women who looked like truck drivers and wore motorcycle boots–unattractive, disgusting people, fairies and bull dykes. I said to myself, That’s not me. I’m a nice upper-middle-class blue-blooded Boston debutante.
So I hid throughout my teenage years. I dated boys. I sometimes say I’ve dated half the men in the world twice, including people like Pete Coors, now president of Coors Beer. This amuses me. I actually went out with Pete for quite a while in high school. I went to high school in Denver with all the Coors girls and that kind of crowd. As a teenager I didn’t see any positive gay images. I wasn’t able to find them. And they certainly weren’t in my high school curriculum. But I remember getting excited by characters in books who were marginally alluded to as gay. I also went to Rock Hudson and Doris
Day movies and spent my time focusing on Doris, putting myself in Rock’s place. I was thinking about kissing Doris, rather than kissing Rock