As gays enter the mastream, do the muny cle importance?
Contents:
JT WHAT IS 'GAY CULTURE' IN 2013?
* gay 2013 culture *
One kd of “gay culture” domated the years and, ed, centuri before the 1969 Stonewall rts New York; another was s ascendance durg the brief but extremely by and lorful uple of s that followed; and a third began to take shape the early 1990s. The book reprented a challenge both to anti-gay prejudice and to the monolhic, margalized notn of gay inty that was promoted – and enforced – by the gay cultural and polil left of the day, which sisted that gays who, say, wanted to jo the ary, or attend church, or who lived mted relatnships were apg the straight majory and betrayg the queer natn, probably bee they were “self-hatg” or “sex-negative” or both.
HOW 2013 BEME THE GREATT YEAR IN GAY RIGHTS HISTORY
This fact has long sce been nveniently dropped down the memory hole, but 1993 virtually all of the lears of the gay polil tablishment were fiercely opposed to the ia of gay marriage, and they vilified as sellouts those of who supported . My book – and I am only sayg this to make a pot – was for several months nng the #1 btseller Ameri's gay bookstor, those by, vibrant templ of gay cultural life that thrived durg those uple of s after Stonewall.
The book helped set off an tense and urgent bate wh what was generally known as the “gay muny” (a term that I have always risted, and that I thk most young gay Amerins nowadays also react to wh skepticism).
The book was arntly discsed – and, most s, vigoroly attacked – natnal gay magaz such as The Advote and Out and Ten Percent and such lol gay publitns as New York's Native, which I had ced the book as a sort of totem of the official gay culture of the day. I still remember walkg halfway across San Francis one eveng wh an terviewer for a lol gay paper who was as passnately engaged his qutns as I was my answers. At the same time, mt be add that gay culture, sce a time long before any of were born, had been, even for s foremost creators and champns, a ncept ght wh ambiguy and paradox.