Gay Historian Dr. Eric Cervini Opens Up About 'The Book of Queer'

Chatting with gay historian and "Book of Queer" producer Dr. Eric Cervini, I couldn't help myself: As anxious as anyone else about the current push by state lawmakers to rush anti-LGBTQ+ laws onto the books, the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade (and quite possibly proceeding from there to attack marriage equality), and the vicious, slur-filled push from right-wing cultural forces to poison social attitudes with regard to LGBTQ+ people, I asked Cervini how much cause for alarm – or hope – our current moment gives us.

Cervini is the award-winning author of the best-selling book "The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America," a book that's won awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize last year. If you thought historians are a dry, fusty bunch, think again: Cervini has a bright, friendly, cheerful presence and a quick sense of humor, and our conversation was punctuated with gales of laughter. "The Book of Queer," airing now on Discovery+, is similarly energetic, featuring an array of guest narrators, distinguished scholars, and other commentators ... as well as a troupe of comedy writers and actors who illustrate the stories the show tells us about historical personages with bawdy, colorful romps filled with winking innuendos and anachronisms.

But even Cervini's sunny demeanor dimmed slightly at the question. "It's a very difficult time," the historian allowed. "I think if there's anything that I have personally learned from queer history, it's that we've survived much worse. The fact that y'all" – by which he meant my generation; I'm at least two decades older than him – "survived the AIDS crisis, right?" As a further illustration, Cervini added: "We" – this time meaning LGBTQ+ people throughout history – "survived the Inquisition, the Lavender Scare. We were lobotomized throughout mid-century America. We were driven to suicide, much as we are now, but at much higher rates. Our entire livelihoods were taken away from us.

"Yes, we are regressing right now," Cervini added. "I think what's different now is the broader fabric of American democracy is eroding. We have us at the fringes, suffering, but then something much more insidious is happening at the core. That's what personally worries me. But I think it just goes to show all of our struggles are interconnected." A hopeful strategy, he suggested, lies in building alliances: Marginalized groups coming together in refusal to be relegated to the role of convenient political scapegoats.

Challenging times, indeed; but Cervini's hopeful comments carried the same mix of erudition and optimism as "The Book of Queer." Each episode examines several figures from LGBTQ+ history, some of them well known (Abraham Lincoln, Josephine Baker, King James I of England ... and yes, you have heard of that last one, because he's the monarch who commissioned the King James bible), and some, maybe, not so much. Cervini mentioned the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten, the subject of a famous Philip Glass opera and known to have introduced sweeping religious reforms to ancient Egypt – but also, Cervini noted, "possibly non-binary".

Dr. Cervini regaled EDGE with his insights and anecdotes about educating the audience about meticulously researched historical facts while bringing the past to comedic life, and the enduring, inextricable place that LGBTQ+ people have always had in human history.

EDGE: Can you talk a little about how you came to create and executive produce "The Book of Queer," and how you brought it to Discovery+?

Eric Cervini: I come from the world of academia and spent eight years turning what began as a senior thesis in undergrad into a masters [thesis], and then a dissertation, and then a book. One of the first things you do when you enter grad school in history, or any other field, is you study what's already been researched. I was shocked, as a young twenty-something, learning about how much queer history had already been uncovered by so many scholars, whether it's Lillian Faderman or George Chauncey, John D'Emilio – so many who have really written seminal works, yet [those works] are not easily accessible outside of academia. The general public just isn't aware of how vibrant and exciting queer history really is, and also how joyful it is – how we didn't just survive, we thrive.

I started making little Instagram videos with a hunch that people would be intrigued and fascinated and shocked by it, and I think they were; and that is what eventually turned into "The Book of Queer." I partnered with a wonderful production company, and then eventually Discovery, to bring it to life. And now I'm partnering with some of those very same professors, whether it's Lillian Faderman or Susan Stryker. Some of my heroes came to help with this show and turn it into something that is academically rigorous, but also fun, comedic, music-filled. It was written by 12 queer comedians, and then also 18 queer historians, so it really is a queer history variety show. I don't think anything like it has been done before.

EDGE: I was shocked at gaps in my knowledge that "The Book of Queer" filled in, like King James I – the man the King James bible is named for – being gay. How is it that we don't know things like this? Is it because there are attempts to deliberately suppress or erase that queer history? Is it simply not-so-benign neglect?

Eric Cervini: I think a bit of both. I think that but not-so-benign neglect comes from systematic homophobia. I think there is – in 2022, more so than we've seen in almost 40 years – an attempt to hide our history and our existence, especially in schools. As I'm sure you know, before "Don't Say Gay" and Governor DeSantis, there was Anita Bryant. There was the Briggs Initiative. This was all tried before, and these efforts failed, largely because we came together as a community to say, "You cannot erase us. The cat is out of the closet. We're not going anywhere."

And I think that's what's so important about queer history, and also why it's so terrifying to the bigots out there, is because it disproves their central thesis, which is that this is a new phenomenon – a new, scary thing of people being trans, or non-binary, or queer. And what this show proves is we've been here, we've been queer since the dawn of humanity. What is new are the different forms of persecution and that systematic erasure.

What history shows us is how to fight back. How did we fight back Briggs and Bryant, and how was Harvey Milk successful? Our next episode talks about [Milk], but also in the context of all of queer San Francisco, talking about José Sarria, Gil Baker and the creation of the Rainbow Flag, and how these forces of oppression, these attempts to keep us down, is what resulted in so much of our success, so much of our art, and so much of our community today. We would not have [any of that] without this common enemy. I think finding that silver lining and using it to galvanize us and teach us about how we can fight back today is one of the central lessons of the show.

EDGE: There are other people the series covers, like trans pioneer Stormé DeLarverie, who was, it's thought, instrumental in Stonewall, and Major League baseball player Glenn Burke, who aren't so well known now; even the sports writer who comes on the show to talk about Glenn Burke says he didn't know about him. How did you even begin sorting through all the historic LGBTQ+ stories and personae?

Eric Cervini: We were so lucky that the research has been done. I'm a modern American historian, and so I did not know about a potentially non-binary ancient Egyptian pharaoh named Akhnaten. I had no idea! [Finding stories like that] took doing first the research of looking at, "Okay, we want to make sure we have diversity, not just geography, but also a time period. How far back can we go?" – and then partnering with an Egyptologist, Kara Cooney, who is based here in LA. [She] taught me so much.

My dream is that ["The Book of Queer"] encourages [the audience], especially younger folks who have this thirst for queer history, to then start mining their own communities. There should be a queer history of Austin, Texas, where I'm from. There isn't, yet. Someone needs to write that. I hope [the show] encourages people to do more digging.

EDGE: I do wonder about some of the figures that the LGBTQ+ community have wanted to claim for their own, like Abraham Lincoln. For someone like Walt Whitman, maybe that's a little clearer. But where do you draw the line when it comes to a historical figure we might love to have on our team, but the evidence might not be so clear-cut?

Eric Cervini: I'm not sure I would even think of it as having [someone] on our team. The very first thing we do when we talk about Lincoln is to make very clear we are not calling him gay. You may have noticed [that on the show] I pop in to define some important concepts in the study of queer history, and the very first one we do is to define a social construct and say, "How can we call Lincoln gay when that word didn't even exist, and when that concept didn't even exist yet?" That's why we use the word "queer," whether it's in the title of the show, or talking about long-ago times and very complex folks like Lincoln, because all it means is they deviated from norms of gender and sexuality in their time period. And that's really what we're trying to show: That even the most venerated folks in our history, a lot of their personal life, a lot of how they were queer, have been erased and are not talked about. Rather than labeling them and sticking on, you know, a gay sticker on these historical figures, we try to take a more nuanced approach.

EDGE: Being a historian, you know how history is also a matter of interpretation. The way the show presents the story of the Stonewall uprising, for instance – accounts vary quite a lot about what, exactly, happened. How did you decide which, among competing narratives, was where you were going to say, "This is what happened"?

Eric Cervini: That is where I think being a trained historian really helps. My book covers Stonewall, so I, of course, rely on my own research for that segment. I helped a lot with the writers, and how they constructed it. If you've read the two books out there on Stonewall, they're very different, very conflicting. It's [a matter of] finding the commonalities [between the accounts] and also using my own judgment and looking at my own research, and, frankly, coming to a conclusion, myself, of what happened – and even then, being very careful about the language. Talking about Stormé throwing the first punch, we're very careful. We spent weeks making sure that we're saying, "Onlookers believe..." or, "Some historians believe that it was them. Is it possible that it wasn't? Yes."

Using some of that judgment, I think, was important, but also acknowledging the uncertainty of such a historical event that is now transformed into mythology, more than it is history. I think the mythology is just as, or even more, important than the history itself.

EDGE: You seem so comfortable with the camera, and you have such televisual presence, that I wonder why you relegated yourself to the "footnotes" part of the show.

Eric Cervini: I think, with a topic like queer history that is just so diverse and has an infinite array of experiences, for one person to be the face of queer history is not reflective of how diverse and vibrant it really is. That's why we were much more excited about partnering with an array of narrators – literally different voices to be able to tell these stories.

I think there is something very powerful about Leslie Jordan, a guy from the American South, talking about how queer the Bible, and the man behind it [King James I], really is. Or Dominique Jackson, talking about Stormé and Marsha [P. Johnson] and [trans rights activist] Sylvia [Rivera], and [talking about] Stonewall as a Black trans woman. That is just going to be much more powerful and authentic than if it's me standing in front of a camera talking about Marsha P. Johnson.

I think it was amazing, also, to learn from these folks, from all the different writers, the narrators, the actors, the special guests, the drag queens. We want it to be as big and wild and queer and extravagant as possible. I'm a basic white guy at the end of the day; people would get bored of me. That's why I live very happily in my comfortable home, The Footnotes.

EDGE: You're clearly having a lot of fun in your segments, even to the point of how looks like bits that would be outtakes ordinarily are left in the show.

Eric Cervini: Yeah! We wanted to make sure that people understood we were not taking ourselves too seriously. I think there is an assumption that when you tell queer history, it has to be serious. It needs to make you cry. It needs to be tragic. Whether it's the politician, or the cowboy, or the scientist, he dies at the end and you cry. And that's true for many folks; we survived through the AIDS crisis, the Inquisition ... we have to acknowledge that. But joy and humor and music and camp is just as important.

I'm new to being on camera. There were plenty of gaffes and bloopers. I think it's kind of a wink to the viewer to say, "Look, we're trying to have a good time. We want you to have a good time, too, and we're trying our best. We hope you can laugh along with us, and we'll keep trying to get better and funnier and more informative, more educational.

EDGE: That being true, how do you calibrate the show to make it entertaining, but also underscore the factuality of the historical people and events you're talking about?

Erc Cervini: I'm sure you noticed every episode begins with a disclaimer saying that this is a comedic show. We are taking extreme comedic liberties – we have a fax machine in Nazi Germany; we have electricity during Lincoln's time, and he's wearing American flag boxers. That same disclaimer says everything that you hear from the narrator or historian is true. Everything! So, what you see on screen, and what the actors say when they're joking around, that's very much comedy. This was all written by comedians. But the story itself, what the narrator is telling you and what the historians say, that is all based in fact. For the folks who want to learn more or who are dubious of those facts, we put those footnotes up.

EDGE: You actually take a moment in one episode to say something like, "I'm using the word 'queer.' I'm reclaiming the word 'queer.' " You've done something similar before; the title of your book is "The Deviant's War." Is this part of your subtext – that we don't have to let these words have negative power over us?

Eric Cervini: Exactly. And I won't take credit for reclaiming it. It's been done, as I'm sure you know, since the early '90s, and even before that, in academia and among scholars, especially AIDS activists.

I think there is power in that word, and I know that folks who have been traumatized by it don't like it, and that's their prerogative. I am never going to say, "You must identify by this word."

What I will say is that as a storyteller, and as a historian who attempts to capture such a wide array of experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, it's a very easy word. It's just so convenient, especially because it transgresses time. We can use it to describe Lincoln. We can use it to describe Akhnaten. We just have to be very vigilant that the same thing [doesn't happen to the word "queer"] that happened to the word "gay," which used to function very similarly – used to mean the LGBTQ+ community, used to be an umbrella term. But then it transformed over time. As more gay activist organizations started focusing on the rights of gay white men, a lot of folks didn't feel like that word applied to them.

I'm sure there will be more words out there that eventually come along; we'll see if maybe they'll reclaim the F word at some point. I'm going to be super uncomfortable about it, but we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

EDGE: Could there be a second, a third, a ninth season of the show with fresh stories from LGBTQ+ history to tell?

Eric Cervini: I think the hardest part of this entire show was choosing which stories to tell. When we were first proposing the show, production companies and networks would always ask, "Is there enough? Are there enough stories out there?" Because they think, "Oh, well, we've done Milk. We've done Alan Turing. We're done. There is no more queer history left." And very quickly they realized in our research process, "Oh my gosh, how do we choose?" There are hundreds and hundreds that we found in just a few days of searching.

There will always be infinite stories about queer history. Every single community, country, and culture has a queer history that's just waiting to be told.

EDGE: What you might be working on that's coming up, that we might see later this year or next year or sometime soon?

Eric Cervini: I am working on another book, but it certainly will not be ready this year, next year, or the year after. It'll be a while. In the shorter term, I'm very excited about a newsletter called Queer History 101, where I sit down with scholars who are doing really groundbreaking work on topics that are similar to "The Book of Queer" all over the entire world. I'm trying to just show how exciting the field of academia is, and also give them a new audience because so often they're writing for their peers or they're writing for, you know, these academic journals or presses. That comes out every single week. So, stay tuned!

"The Book of Queer" airs on Discovery+.