Obligatory Onion link:
Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years
It really isn’t. People who are still on the fence about this don’t like gay people, and nobody needs to worry about them.
I can’t agree with that. I used to be on the other side of the fence entirely, and my mind was changed. I was influenced the most by kind people who challenged me without being condescending or assuming that I was hateful.
I’m glad that there are people working to educate people like me who are genuinely trying to do what’s right, but are too steeped in one perspective to see another without some prodding. It would have been sad if that hadn’t happened for me before my little sister met her wife.
How long ago was that?
Why does it seem the majority of straight people use overt displays of sexuality in situations that clearly don’t call for it? I really don’t feel this helps bridge any gaps. I mean, these types of displays aren’t likely to offend those of us who are already on straight folks side. But it sure does seem likely to alienate those who might be on the fence. Or, is it they’re already out there and I just don’t know it because the mainstream media never gives airtime to such people?
You missed John Barrowman.
Hard to say, since it was over a period of years. Some conversations I had with a kind and intelligent atheist when I was a Christian and fairly conservative in the mid-nineties stuck with me.
I think it was the early 2000’s when my sister came out to me. My response was “It is my understanding that this goes against God’s will, so I can’t approve. You know the Bible as well as I do, so I’m not going to say anything more about it unless I come up with some new information. That’s where I stand on the subject.”
I still interpret the Bible as being generally disapproving of homosexuality, so I had to seriously question whether the rules I was trying to live by came from any real authority. At the same time, I had to look at what biases I had picked up along the way and whether I was more judgmental about “sins” that I was not tempted to commit (big surprise, I was!).
By the time my sister met her wife (four years ago, I think), I was ready to greet her enthusiastically.
Not that I know, or care much, one way or another, but the most recent thing I saw him in was the Peter Davidson thing for the 50th anniversary of Dr. Who, wherein Barrowman was begging the 3 Doctors not to reveal his secret (he has a wife and kids). I’m not sure if the joke is funnier if he’s actually gay, bi, or straight, but I chuckled.
And the more the public gets exposed to drag queens, the less scared they become. The outrageous becomes more accepted and as that happens, the more mundane types seem seem positively normal. Far from shooting themselves in the foot, this helps the cause.
And, as previously stated, being allowed to be themselves is kind of the point.
I was just talking about gay rights with a colleague yesterday and we both were marveling with the huge leaps that have been made in the past few years. If you remember the Bush/Kerry campaign, the GOP was using gay marriage as a wedge issue and now 10 years later it’s not even a blip on a lot of people’s radar.
Which is the other thing that’s annoying about the OP. The gay rights movement has been phenomenally successful, in an incredibly short period of time. And we still get these terminally ignorant straight people lecturing us about how we’re fucking up the gay rights movement by being all gay all over it. Gay marriage was just legalized in Utah. Fucking Utah! How much more successful do we need before we stop getting all this “well meaning” advise on how to get our rights?
I am struggling to think of even one gay activist known for “sashaying about” wearing nothing but a pair of chaps. Who exactly are you referring to? Do you know something about Barney Frank, Vic Basile, or Elizabeth Birch that I don’t know? Even It Gets Better project co-founder Dan Savage – who writes a pretty raunchy sex advice column and has in the past also performed as a drag queen – does not, to my knowledge, make a habit of wearing revealing costumes in public.
You obviously have no idea what is predominantly being put out there now. Even if your only source of information about gay men was sitcoms currently airing on network television, you’d be seeing mostly guys like this.
Barrowman’s gay as the day is long. (He just recently married his partner, Scott Gill, though that only eliminates ‘straight’.)
The conversation started when we were talking about our older relatives, where we grew up and the prejudices we carried as kids and struggle with today. He is admits he has a hard time with gay marriage and was marveling how in a few short years he had become a dinosaur and his attitudes are a source of embarrassment to his niece. He’s 52 I’m 47, neither of us recall other social change happening so quickly in our lifetime.
Very publicly gay; he’s married to his partner of over twenty years and has fronted anti-discrimination campaigns:
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
To this end, Barrowman is active in his community supporting the issues that matter to him most. He worked with Stonewall, a gay rights organisation in the UK, on the “Education for All” campaign against homophobia in the schools. In April 2008, the group placed posters on 600 billboards that read, “Some people are gay. Get over it!” Barrowman contributed his support to the project asking people to join him and “Help exterminate homophobia. Be bold. Be brave. Be a buddy, not a bully.”[5][67] That same month, Barrowman spoke at the Oxford Union about his career, the entertainment industry, and gay rights issues. The event was filmed for the BBC programme The Making of Me, in an episode exploring the science of homosexuality.[68] He was voted Entertainer of the Year in 2006 by Stonewall[69] and placed on the Out 100 list for 2008,[70] an annual list of notable LGBT people compiled by Out magazine. In June 2010, Barrowman met with the current Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron as a representative of the LGBT community.[71]
[/QUOTE]
Not too surprising that gay men are offended by the suggestion that they “tone it down”. Gay men are a synthesis of male and female characteristics. There is the female tendency toward physical exhibition to acquire the desiring “male gaze” and the male tendency to be very aggressive about it. Packaged together you get the sort of flamboyant behavior you reference across entire swaths of gay culture devoted to celebrating and indulging in this sort of overt celebratory display. It’s part of the package of being a gay male to enjoy this sort of thing, if not in yourself at least in others who can pull it off.
Asking gay men to tone this down and be less aggressively flamboyant in exchange for greater mainstream acceptance would be like asking blacks to be “more white” to have greater social acceptance. It’s not a useful perspective.
This is utter nonsense that borders on being offensive.
I will assume you just had too much eggnog tonight to realize what you are writing.
Otherwise, what you have written is more homophobic, bigoted and stupid than anything even FOX News would have the balls to say.
Are you a relative of the Duck Dynasty clan?
I’m unclear as to what you are harrumping about. I’m basically saying to the OP’s question let gay people be gay and don’t hold them to conservative mainstream expectations of behavior. It’s not a useful perspective or a useful conversation to ask flamboyant gay people or the larger gay culture that embraces this behavior to tone it down in order to be socially accepted. It’s an oppressive expectation.
That’s not the part that’s offensive. It’s the “synthesis of male and female” stuff that’s pretty outdated and obsolete as a theory. Some segments of gay CULTURE emphasize gender ambiguity in appearance. A larger segment of gay CULTURE emphasizes gender ambiguity in demeanor. But to suggest that being gay is inherently about gender ambiguity is a huge exaggeration and stereotype. Gay men are male. Lesbians are female. (Both assuming there is no actual transgender/transsexual issue involved.) We are not some “synthesis of male and female”. Frankly, it’s more likely that the strict separation of male and female appearance and demeanor is an artifact of the larger culture rather than any perceived blending being an artifact of homosexual orientation.