Normal as Folk
IT’S gay pride month again, and that means it’s time for the straight media to deliver its annual state-of-the-gay report.
If experience is any guide, this exercise will involve a lot of triumphalism about the progress of the gay movement, as measured by the increasing cultural assimilation of young lesbians and gay men into American society as a whole.
Gay men in particular, who used to frighten the horses with flamboyant displays of sexual outlawry, gender treason and fabulousness, have supposedly dropped their insignia of tribal belonging and joined the mainstream. Gay men, it seems, have become indistinguishable from normal folk. Now, that’s progress for you!
Back in the Bad Old Days, or so the story goes, there was such a thing as an edgy, subversive gay male culture. But it was an artifact of homophobia. Older gay men may still thrill to torch songs, show tunes, classic Hollywood melodramas and Lalique; they may still spend hours arranging the furniture just so.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/opinion/style-and-the-meaning-of-gay-culture.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120622
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