I know that many of you can’t shake a sense of déjà vu since your vote—you know, that feeling that you’ve witnessed or been part of something before. Certainly, your vote had an eerie metaphorical familiarity—someone standing at the doorway of a great institution, protecting it from people who shouldn’t be there. But if the rest seems a little fuzzy it’s probably because you’re confused about the role you played.
See, you thought you were God’s warrior defending the institution of marriage from gay people. But really, you were George Wallace blocking the entrance to the University of Alabama.
In 1963, Governor George Wallace stood at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in a symbolic attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling at the school. He used the same arguments to keep you out of school that you used to keep us out of marriage. He used the same logic. He even used the same language.
I’m sure many of you are looking for a way to shake that awful feeling you’ve revisited a shameful part of history. I think there is, but it requires going further into that awful feeling, further into that history.
As many of you know, George Wallace, one of the biggest racists who ever lived, at some point, stopped, and saw your humanity. At some point he stopped and thought, “I have no right to take your rights away.” At some point he stopped and said, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” And devoted his life to undoing his deeds.
My guess is that if you want that unsettling feeling to go away, you probably need to complete your experience of deja vu and act more like the guy who once stood in the doorway of a great institution to stop you from coming in.
Hillary Duff and Wanda Sykes star in a series of public service announcements dedicated to getting teens to stop saying the phrase, “That’s so gay!” The idea is to discourage anti-gay language after the latest student climatereport shows nearly 90% of gay middle and high school students reported being harassed, sometimes violently.
. . .
The first time I heard a teenager say, “That’s so gay,” she was referring to a vacation she took with her parents. I got that look ostriches get when they hear two whistles: WHAT? It was completely out of context to anything I know about being gay.
I asked a nineteen-year-old friend for a reality check. “Yeah, I got a brain fart the first time my younger brother, who’s 17 and straight, used it,” he said. “I couldn’t understand the context–there was no connection to being gay.”
That’s because teens don’t really say, “That’s so gay” to refer to gay people or our perceived characteristics or activities. Not only is it pretty much divorced from the offensive gay stereotypes-like being campy or effeminate-it doesn’t even reference the positive ones-that we’re all hip, stylish trend-setters. Teens use it to tag objects, places or activities as lame, tired, or silly. There’s no venom in the phrase-it’s just the updated 50’s version of, “That’s so square.”
Yet, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is using Hillary Duff and Wanda Sykes as spokespeople on national TV to stop middle and high school students from saying the phrase. (see below)
GLSEN is rightfully worried about the latest student climate report that shows almost 90% of students have suffered some form of harassment in school. But they should be more worried that they’re adding fuel to the fire. By trying ban the phrase for a meaning it doesn’t have, they’re just going to rile up straight students.
Teens, who have an unerring sense of when they’re being manipulated for no good reason are going to seize on this campaign and use the phrase even more. Try telling a teen not to do something he knows is harmless and see what’ll happen. GLSEN should stop doing the new math and go back to basics:
Best of intentions + worst of tactics = More of what you don’t want.
GLSEN should be discouraging students from saying incendiary words like Faggot or Dyke, not banning some kitschy phrase. It’s noble to discourage language that sets up an environment for harassment or violence, but as somebody who’s been attacked on the street by a bunch of homophobes, I can promise you when they swung their bats and tire irons they weren’t yelling, “That’s so gay!”
There are better words to discourage teens from using.If you want to stop a fire, douse the matches, not the pin lights. If I were a teen, I’d take one look at this campaign and say, “That’s so gay.”
American Idol’s 2003 runner-up Clay Aiken came out in a People Magazine cover story.I’ve got mixed feelings about this.On the one hand, it’s a good thing for Middle America to see that many of the people they like and care about are gay.
On the other hand, there’s a certain “Duh!” factor that makes you think the editors hit the cooking sherry a bit too hard.Clay Aiken coming out as gay in People Magazine is like Gordon Ramsay coming out as a chef in Cooking Magazine–completely unnecessary.
Still, I’m glad Aiken came out.If homophobia is a brick wall, then every falling brick helps.I just wish we could get rid of the bricks faster.Imagine how many would fly off the wall if a conservative right winger like Idaho Senator Larry Craig or the Reverend Ted Haggard came out on the cover of People Magazine.
I guess that’s my only hesitation about Aiken’s cover story.It used up a lot of ink telling people what they already know.To shed new light, reach new people and change more minds we need to have unexpected people gracing the covers of magazines.
As Lewis Black once said (I’m paraphrasing), “Gays are a serious problem confronting this country, but it’s on page eight, right after ‘Are we eating too much garlic as a people?’”We need to put “Gay” in its proper place—on Lewis Black’s page eight.But, for too many people it’s on page 1.And for that, millions of gay men and women have to lie if they want to serve their country, lie if they want to serve God and lie if they want to stay in their families.And for the growing number of us who don’t have to lie, we still have to measure everything we do or say in relation to the risk it brings.Just ask somebody who’s completely out how that adoption search is going.
Bottom line:Thanks, Clay.Even if your news came out of the Department of Redundancy Department.
People have a phobia about age.Whatever you say after forty they hear as a communicable disease.So if you say “I’m forty-three” they hear “forty-leprosy.”
That’s why ya gotta lie if you wanna get laid.
Yes, yes, I understand that’s not being true to yourself, that you’re just perpetuating ageism, that you’re not accepting who you are, that you’re not growing old gracefully.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
It’s not that I disagree with all that. It’s just that I want to get laid. And if the only thing standing between me a Category 5 blow job is a number, then I’m going to say that number and deal with the consequences later.
I’m a man, after all.
Okay, now let’s get into some sound lying strategies.Always take ten years off yourself.When you’re drunk and he asks you what year you were born you don’t have to deal with complex mathematical formulas.And believe me, when you’re drunk, simple subtraction can leave you paralyzed.My 10-year strategy makes it a simple equation:
Let’s say you were born in 1959.It’s 1959 + 10= 1969.You were born in 1969!
I don’t care how drunk you get, you can do that kind of math. The kind that can help you stop using your right hand as a sleep aid.
Sometimes I wonder if my feelings about women would be any different if I were straight.
Would I really think they couldn’t run a Fortune 100 company because they weren’t bright enough? Would I really think they shouldn’t be on a battlefield because they’re not tough enough? Would I be part of an old boy’s network that would keep them out?
A long time ago, Roseann Barr told lesbians in her audience,
“What do you know about hating men? You don’t have to fuck them!”
Is that the missing piece to understanding misogyny? Sexual attraction? Does sexual tension create that love/hate ping-pong? If I wanted women the way I want men would my opinions of them change?
I doubt it. If sexual tension was necessary to create opposite feelings about the object of your desire, then why isn’t it a phenomenon in gay circles? Few could say there’s a woman-hating fog in lesbian life or a serious man-bashing theme in gay life.
Whatever the answer is I often think about how I’d treat women if I were straight. Would my attitudes change? I doubt it. I think I’d just be a pro-woman horn-dog. You know, the feminist in the tittie-bar.
Aiken visiting a North Carolina summer camp affiliated with his charity.
Clay Aiken got his gal pal producer pregnant. Jewelry may have been involved but a pearl necklace was not.
I’ve always dismissed “Gay” Aiken as a lightweight. His singing made me long for a shot of insulin. His flaming gay denials made me long for a can of lighter fluid.
But his pending fatherhood changed all that. He could have faked a girlfriend to throw people off his scent. He could have gotten married to cover his tracks. He could have gotten his “wife” pregnant to make the hounds go away.
But he didn’t. Instead, he artificially inseminated a woman who wasn’t his girlfriend or wife and got two for the price of one: He came out without any speeches and lived out a dream without living through a nightmare.
Good for him. I still don’t like what he’s done to music but I love what he’s done to his character. You can just tell he’s going to be a great parent. Anybody who goes through the hellish machinations of IVF to bring a child into the world is doing it because they want to devote their lives to something bigger than themselves.
Do gay guys have as much sex as everybody thinks? Are we walking mattresses? Do we take a case worker approach to men? (”Next!”)
Yes.
About 2% of us. The rest of us WISH we were having that much sex. But we aren’t. Here’s why: Most of us want to do the deed with a dude that we dig, not just a dick we digged up. Getting sex is easy; getting sex with somebody you want is not.
There’s a fundamental truth about being single: Most of the people you’re attracted to aren’t attracted to you. Hence, most of us, most of the time, don’t get laid.
Anecdotal proof:
The U.K.’s Attitude Magazine asked a couple of good-looking gay writers to try their hardest to go home with a guy. The only rule: It had to be somebody that turned them on. The first writer spent four hours online. Nothing. The second writer spent three hours at a bar. No dice. This is the reality for most of us, most of the time.
If sex is the gay handshake most of us need a new hand.
Co-host of HBO's The Sex Inspectors, author of Men Are Pigs But We Love Bacon, columnist for Manhunt.net and principal passenger on the Grey Goose bus.
