Lenny Bernstein was many things -- driven, egotistical, often brilliant, often excessive and yes, flamboyant -- but a "gay hero?" That's how the Blade described him in an article about Equality Forum's monthlong tribute to gay icons.I think it's great that gay pioneers like Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings and some of the others are getting attention. But Bernstein? He was a closeted gay man who married and had sex with men on the side. If he did anything to stand up for the gay community or work for gay civil rights I've never heard of it.
Bernstein was a gifted artist and a legendary (in his own mind, for sure) leader of American music. He surely was not a leader in the gay community.
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According to William R. Trotter in "Priest of Music; the Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos," in 1949 Lenny outed Mitropoulos, who was competing with Munch for the Boston Orchestra, to Koussevitzky who promptly denied Mitropoulos the conductorship of the BO. This kind of betrayal doesn't speak well of LB who wanted the conductor's chair for himself. Of course LB wasn't European, was a leftist, was associated with Broadway, and was Jewish, to say nothing of being very young, though not yet commonly known as gay or bi. So he didn't get it either.
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