But yes I’m worried this culture is going to be forgotten and done away with by Stepford gays who want to be just like the straights. And I can’t for the life of me understand why:

Honestly, look at the culmination of 2000+ years of straight-dominated society: mysoginy, sexism, racism, homophobia… That’s the 50s, the supposedly “golden years”. Then the “freaks” (feminist women, freaky queers etc.) came out and finally, 50 years later things aren’t perfect but the majority of the population is now being treated in a much, much fairer way.

Do you really think gay culture has nothing to bring? Nothing to be celebrated for? Maybe it has been created by exclusion and despair, but in the end it had something to bring. Just like Tchaikovsky composed some of the Western World’s best music ever, but probably wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been suffering from chronic depression (partly caused by his homosexuality actually…).

Because there’s his utter neglect of the other side of Liberation (c)1960+ to contend with.

Where is the discussion of short-haired women in comfortable (if unflattering) shoes who think they should be able to work for the same pay, get a home loan without a man’s signature, play softball in their 50′s if they wish, not wear make-up or a bra or a girdle, play pool in bars, ride motorbikes (repair them even!), make their own decisions about their bodies, etc etc etc?

Aah, but if one mentions all that Goldberg would surely think “but that’s feminism, per se, not lesbian/ism”. All stereotypes of both feminists and lesbians aside. And it’s all gone mainstream and assimilated and been the death of Feminist Culture. Boo hoo. Give it the last rites and stick a slab on it.

But he’d also be missing the point as to why so many early feminists were indeed lesbians: simple fact of the matter, they were bound to be feminists given the legal and social status of women at the time. All modern women have been touched by the actions of those few feminist freaks who could not and would not conform; be they lesbian or straight, or female or not-female.

So count me in as one dull half of a utterly mundane couple who is more than happy to not just recognise but praise all those who were too weird and too freaky and too outrageous to ever be able to hide; and who decided it was time to claim what rightfully belongs to themselves.

Few of us, the dull, the bourgeois*, the suburban, would EVER have had the courage or perhaps even the opportunity to be open except for their insane aspirations. Admit it: we’d have regarded ourselves as having too much to lose.

At the same time… I don’t mind it all when the too weird and too freaky and too outrageous can bring themselves to acknowledge our dull, suburban contribution to the changes over the years. Legal and social reform requires not just the getting of attention, but hard graft out of the public eye, and a steady destruction of harmful stereotypes and fears.

Those of us in grey flannel suits have also had a modest influence on this whole gay thingy. Sorry about that.

—————————

* Goldberg used the word “bourgeois”???

Good Groovy God, look who’s pointing fingers at people stuck in the 1960′s or whenever! Did he write that article curled up in a macrame egg-chair?

I’ve lived through a fascinating time, as I literally “came out”* in the summer of Stonewall (1969). I am in awe at the courage of those drag queens and other “freaks” who paved the way for all of us. Some may wonder what I did personally to help pave the way – well the answer is nothing, and that haunts me. But thankfully I never took the route of marrying a woman.

My partner and I would seem boringly normal to anyone, but I’m disgusted by the gays who want to rid the gay community of the non-conformist freaks.

In general, I’m happy for the gays now coming of age, but I’m sickened by GOProud/GayPatriot types who are essentially conformists that somehow mustered up the courage to come out as gay – thanks to all the freaks that paved the way. If these people would have come of age in 1969, they would have certainly followed the closeted fake heterosexual route. But now they don’t want to be seen as associated with a gay community that doesn’t conform to strict conservative social standards except for that one itty-bitty fact of being gay.

*Remember, “coming out” in those days primarily meant coming out to yourself and other gay people.

And that is the underlying base (in both senses of the words) assumption of Goldberg’s column.

thgank you, Jason. as always, my second favorite poster.

Rupaul is a world famous drag queen, was a MAC makeup model (the first EVER for the high profile brand, and DAMN did she work it!) and now has a handful of Drag TV shows that are doing well enough to keep more on the way. And she did this by being a big, happy, unapologetic freak.

I write scripts and jokes for a local drag revue group and it’s made me more money this year than any legit acting job has in 10 years.

I’m not the most fabulous of gays, but I wouldn’t change one hair on any drag queen’s head or begrudge a leather daddy his finest leather chaps. The first bricks at Stonewall weren’t thrown by “normal” looking gays. We’re here because of the freaks, not in spite of them.

IF that’s not your thing, no big deal, there’s plenty of people who enjoy the show, and are happy to see the freaks, but don’t you dare go all gestapo on us and start rounding them up. That sure as hell isn’t what I’ve been fighting for.

In reality I think older gays are a little jealous that you younger gays don’t have to struggle like we did at the same time they are really happy for you.

It’s no surprise that younger gays aren’t aware of the struggles of older gays what with the educational system as it is. But on the rare occasion I meet a younger gay person who does have some sense of GLBT history (and it does happen fairly often that a young person is interested in something that happened before they were born) I’m always interested in hearing from them.

But we’ve needed our share of them because although relegated to a limited definition, they helped us to laugh to keep from crying and share the burdens all the same.

Think it something like how black gangsta rap and the hip hop culture, defined a generation and how middle class and affluent white kids made it a part of THEIR rebellion against certain parental values to embrace it.
But these are also parts of the entertainment industry that’s defined by it’s self aggrandizement, violence, crassness, anti gay and anti woman expression.
But that’s nothing new.

Once someone of the bigger tribe embraced the same entertainment or could even IMITATE it, they didn’t have to expect to suffer damage from it.
After all, straight men with a drag persona, or white rappers and soul singers profit from those very cultures, that are rejected in the mainstream or perhaps bring it to the mainstream.
And straight men, gay for pay, get Oscar nominations.
I think what I’m trying to say here is that there have been similar concerns in other minorities especially. And family structure and mainstreaming have been under attack for so long, that the outside culture doesn’t seem to have a point in historical context in which to see how it happened and affected each minority.
How so many black women ARE unmarried, and are unmarried mothers. How the Jewish culture, not only diluted by pogroms against them in the world, but they are alarmed by extra cultural marriage and child bearing.
And gay men and women have been decimated by family estrangement and HIV/AIDS.’

How we HAD to reconfigure, as Tim points out, was based on factors of rejection and finding our own purpose while navigating in a society hard to trust who didn’t trust us.
That preferred us a perpetual children.

But there were ALWAYS those among us who went about that with a determined purpose to be essentially who they have been all along.
Hence the comments of those whose experienced wasn’t defined by high dramatic visibility, theatricality and tragedy.
I don’t think most of us would miss those extremes our groups have been defined by, and negatively so.
And the old guard of warriors who had different risks to bear, were never like that anyway.

There is more than sentiment we can share for a different time. There is still much noble work to do, just a different way of going about it.
Not everyone is cut out to be engaged in outright activism, but however way it’s done, especially in being so seamlessly integrated that it barely gets notice, can’t hurt.

We observe how the anti gay are going about THEIR work. Co opting civil rights analogies (even as they rejected ours), complaining of being persecuted and losing their rights, they look like people desperate to be and feel IMPORTANT to something.
That their ‘fight’ will have the gravity and influence that the civil rights era did.
That somewhere someone will record their efforts as having the highest moral calling EVER.
And that to them it IS a fight, and a hard one.

Tim has commented on the RESULTS of how, when and who’s life was changed by gay equality. Yes, there are some parts of it that are not needed or expressed the same way. But will always be relevant and worth committing to each memory.

Orgs like TVC and FoTF, have no record of participating in the civil rights movement. Indeed, Jerry Falwell was an active racist and supported segregation. And the WBC has white supremacists like Shirley P-Roper as outspoken on race and gender as she is about homosexuality.
They really are all of a piece, not just anti gay.

They aren’t people who can articulate what equality really means.
Note that Star Parker isn’t referencing ABOLITIONISTS whose moral standards and embrace of the values of equality and so on, are well documented.
She quotes a slave owner instead, whose morals are quite contradictory when it comes to the freedom of ALL men.

We’ll all have our memories and personal experiences no matter what to color our respective histories and what they meant.
No need to mourn.
That would be like mourning a new day.

So, the answer to LGBT acceptance is to further marginalize the already-marginalized members of our community?

Tim writes:

The more that the greater society rejects you, the more intense is your sense of belonging to your community. And, ironically, the more one takes on attitudes and attributes that further separate you from the oppressors.

If joining the Normal Club means taking on the mindset and tactics of oppressors, as Junius demonstrates, you can count me out. I’m a lesbian who one day wants to legally marry my partner and who lives a pretty boring life, but for the sake of all the members of our community we should do better than that “the radical freaks give us a bad name” bullshit.