Jun 25, 2004  |  By: KATHI WOLFE  | COMMENTS     

can work and support her lover,” says O’Toole, who has had a physical disability since age 1 and uses a wheelchair. If you’re disabled it’s hard to be seen as sexual, she says, no matter how out you are.

“If I’m in a bookstore, lesbians would just think I needed help getting a book from a shelf,” O’Toole says. “They wouldn’t ask me to have coffee.”

THERE ARE CULTURAL differences in the ways in which gay men and lesbians with some disabilities relate to the gay community, observers say.

For example, many hearing men make references to movies and music, says Raymond Luczak, a gay deaf writer in New York. “They toss off a line or two from a Broadway show for laughs,” he says, noting that humor for most deaf gay men is visual.

“Often someone’s mannerisms can be imitated very well in ASL [American Sign Language] for laughs,” he says.

Terry Galloway, a 53-year-old writer, director and performer for video and stage, is deaf but does not consider herself “culturally deaf.”

“I’m deaf with a small ‘d’ which means that, although I’ve studied [American Sign Language] at various times in my life, my [ability to sign] is on par with my Spanish, which is shitty,” she said in an e-mail message.

Culturally deaf people communicate using American Sign Language. Individuals such as Galloway, who is hearing-impaired, do not use ASL to communicate.

Galloway, who has been with her partner for 21 years, splits her time between homes in Tallahassee, Fla., and Austin, Texas. She has known that she is gay since her childhood. But, as with many people who are gay and disabled, she faced challenges coming out on various fronts.

“As a lesbian and as a ‘small d’ deaf woman I could always pass,” she says. “I could go out with guys and wear my hair long to cover up my hearing aids and pretend that my inability to understand was just some cute girl way of being attractively vague and vulnerable.”

When she is out about being lesbian and deaf, however, Galloway says she feels like a political target.

“[I am] the target of the stares and the ire of people who find anything sexual and anything different to be threatening and fearful,” she says.

Despite this harsh political reality, Galloway says she feels “perfectly at ease being an out queer” among her friends and her professional colleagues.

“The crips and deaf people I associate with are people with whom I share not just a disability but a profound life interest,” she says. “We are all interested in theater and many of us are interested in political activism.”

She and her associates try to change what it means to be gay and living with disabilities.

“Anyone who has any vulnerabilities — physical, sexual, racial, economic — ought to be able to recognize common ground,” Galloway says, noting that through her work in film, video and theater she strives to create “community.”

“I’m out to get people