I have reread THE SEASON every year or so since I first encountered it in the early 1970s and even though it covers a season before I even visited New York. In fact, with the exception of the brilliant BUTCH CASSIDY..., I prefer Goldman's nonfiction to any other genre he writes.
I don't remember even blinking at his views on "homosexuality" when I first read the book a few years after it was published. I stumble over the word "progressive", but it is true that Goldman's views were generally liberal for 1968. Also his vocabulary: homosexual rather than "pervert", "degenerate" and the like. His suggestion that gays be allowed to write gay characters was not an idle proposal: although things were changing with THE STAIRCASE, THE BOYS IN THE BAND, etc., the subject had been generally unmentionable for several decades. (See how TEA AND SYMPATHY danced around the notion in the 1950s.)
What hasn't been noted is that Goldman's homophobia is rooted in his period sexism. The women in the Albee play are "obviously" drag stand-ins for homosexuals because they are promiscuous! In Goldman's world, real women apparently don't like sex. He mostly misses the point that the prostitution of the wives in the play is their move to take control of their sexuality, finances and personal power. To Goldman, such female characters are just another example of how homosexuals (i.e., ersatz transexuals) are writing themselves in female guise. Allowing homosexuals to write about homosexuals will presumably save American Womanhood from such libel.
But this was indeed the "liberal" position among heterosexuals pre-Stonewall. Even Tennessee Williams himself proclaimed, "I AM Blanche DuBois" in one interview, despite subsequent research that shows the character was closely modeled on his sister, Rose.
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