Friday, June 27, 2003
Gay is the New Black
No more anti-gay sex laws, gay marriage in Canada, actual sun on Pride Weekend… it seems that the gods are smiling down on my queer brethren. The gods themselves were mostly queer of course, Apollo was a gym bunny chicken-hawk, Zeus leaned toward bestiality, the Furies were the first angry lesbian folk trio… and then old man Yahweh moved into the neighborhood with his German Shepards and started waving his cane around yelling, “Get your sodomy off my lawn!” So fell Greece, and the rest of the Western world with it.
As part of my continuing rant about the end of modern culture as we know it, I’d like to point out that the legal acceptance of gay people is yet another sign of the fall. I place no value judgment on the fact… the instance of legal equality of queers definitely rates a ‘good’ stamp from my Moral Relativism meter… however, I’d like to point out that the demonization of sodomy is a staple of our society, deeply rooted in literature, politics and the Catholic Church. After the legal barriers fall, which they are doing with eye popping swiftness, the moral objections will also crumble within a generation. There will always be fringe groups who fight it, but just like birth control and miscegenation, it will become terribly gauche to speak out publicly against gay rights.
Headline from the future: “Cyber-Senatrix Trent Lott III Resigns After Expressing Nostalgia for ‘Good Old Gay Bashing Days.’”
Oh my, the civil rights struggle is not over by any means, but I can see the eventual surrender of the right on this issue. Once the Atom Bomb of gay marriage is dropped on Washington, they’ll sign the armistice and the overt war will be over. A covert war will begin, but barring a new fascist state, they’ll only earn themselves ‘you know you’re a redneck if…’ type caricatures for their wacky bigotry. Because the sad fact is that the public face of The Queer is depressingly middle class, unrepentantly white, male, fiscally responsible, powerfully sexual and virile. Even the queenliest queen gets tons of sex, and even Rick Santorum secretly envies him. Once homosexuals go mainstream, the country will blink its eyes and wonder what the hell the big deal was in the first place… ‘they’re just like us… they like to shop at Bed, Bath and Beyond too! They drive SUVs and raise spoiled screaming brats… and my husband and I buttfuck all the time… it’s fun!’
Which brings me to my real point. The civil rights struggle is not over by any means. Earlier this week, the Supremes also handed down a split decision about affirmative action. It got press at the time, but has since dwindled into the background… I suspect because it didn’t contain the words: sodomy or sex. Essentially the ruling stated that race can be used as a factor in college admission, but it cannot be the deciding factor. As the University of Washington can tell you, affirmative action is still a necessary tool to assure that campuses aren’t solely white and Asian; since Washington State repealed affirmative action, black enrollment has plummeted in state schools.
The covert war against blacks in the United States is winning, and here’s why: because African Americans refuse to be assimilated into the larger white culture, and as a result, market forces have sharply defined and promoted a separate black culture which is distinct, frightening and alien to the white middle class. Powerful black leaders on the left, are extremists or have been politically crippled (Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson respectively) and black leaders on the right are non-entities, tokens who have no real power or voice (Clarence Thomas is a ventriloquist dummy with Scalia’s hand up his ass). Colin Powell is a tragic figure. There were times that I saw genuine pain on his face, and sadness in his eyes when he was sent to the UN to tell lies and bully for the Bush Administration… someone’s gonna find him hanging from a ceiling fan in an anonymous hotel room one of these days.
So while gay activists bask in this new time of hard won freedom… a freedom won in the courts and not at the lunch counters… there are darker days ahead for those with darker skin and who choose to live outside of drive thru culture (Arabs… I’m looking at you). Assimilation is power.
