The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture

Contents:

• THE DOWNFALL OF THE EX-GAY MOVEMENT
• THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERIN GAYBORHOODS
• IS BEG GAY A DOWNFALL?
• MICHAEL OVZ BLAM HIS DOWNFALL ON ''GAY MAFIA''
• THE RISE AND FALL OF LAGUNA BEACH, A GAY CALIFORNIA HOTSPOT
• FALL GAYS KNOCKDOWN
• JAGUARS ASSOCIATE STRENGTH ACH OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR US-BASED PRO LEAGU

THE DOWNFALL OF THE EX-GAY MOVEMENT

Ex-gay lears traveled to church and appeared on televisn news programs cg a lany of exampl of happily married “former homosexuals” to monstrate that sexual orientatn is a choice and that change is Chambers would unrgo a radil change of heart. ”As a former Exod participant who once lived a “gay liftyle” but was able to achieve a succsful straight marriage, Chambers was the perfect ndidate to lead the anizatn. ”The movement tradnalists believed would be their savg grace the fight agast LGBT rights was quickly beg their Achill’ chosen to lead Exod 2001 was like beg the ex-gay Pope followg the Catholic sex-abe sndals.

Today, even top Southern Baptist lears have nounced ex-gay therapy, and the school newspaper for the Jerry Falwell-found Liberty Universy has edorialized agast . He has voiced his support for Print Obama’s effort to ban orientatn-change therapi for mors and celebrated the Supreme Court’s cisn to legalize gay marriage. “For those who nnot rencile their fah and sexualy, they n be affirmed their choice of celibacy and vote their liv to more life givg than ‘riddg themselv of the mon homosexualy, ’” Chambers says.

While many gay publitns have shared this survey and rang the alarm, I’ve yet to see anyone onle offer a measured opn of why this is occurrg beyond “ORANGE MAN BAD.

THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERIN GAYBORHOODS

To the sual eye, seems clear that the gay clters are "ls gay" — more moms at bnch and fewer leather shops — than they were when I was growg up the 1980s and 1990s.

Am Ghaziani, a soclogist at the Universy of Brish Columbia and thor of the new book There Go The Gayborhood?, noticed the same thg livg Chigo's Boystown the early ghts, and so did his iends. Ghaziani's rearch tells that between the 2000 and 2010 Cens, the number of same-sex upl livg key tradnal gayborhoods cled, often as larger trends urban life ma those neighborhoods newly sirable statns. Ghaziani explas that "gay men and lbians who were discharged om the ary for their real or perceived homosexualy remaed behd major port ci" rather than return home disgrace.

" Prervatn strategi n help hang on to some of those valuable gayborhood ntributns, as well as perhaps retag a cril mass that's necsary for polil mobilizatn. At that time, gay men and lbians who were discharged om the ary for their real or perceived homosexualy remaed behd major port ci and other urban centers rather than returng home disgraced. In other words, when we pare the 2000 US Cens to the 2010 US Cens, we see that there are fewer male and female same sex partner hoeholds ridg gayborhoods than there were 10 years earlier.

IS BEG GAY A DOWNFALL?

It also exclus those who do not live wh their partner, those dividuals who are not willg to self-intify as gay or lbian, those who self-intify as bisexual and those self-intify as transgenr. My ncern is that the natnal public nversatn surroundg gay neighborhoods tends to over emphasize enomic factors at the neglect of other important variabl as well.

MICHAEL OVZ BLAM HIS DOWNFALL ON ''GAY MAFIA''

I nnot quantify which matters more, but what I n say is that we should thk more crilly about the effects of acceptance and assiatn on the cisns that both gay and straight people make about where to live. In a siar way, non-heterosexuals have ed gayborhoods to build rich, diverse, dynamic muni, celebrate human sexualy, to spire artistic exprsn such as Armistead Mp's Tal of the Cy. To an secure gay teenager strand the uncivilized hterlands of North Carola, the grac ladi of Park Avenue and Sutton Place embodied a way of life more glamoro and ls provcial than his own.

pervasive among young homosexuals that suated self to our voic, weakeng the grip of our regnal accents, which were gradually overridn by the artificial language of this imagary ele. This strange act of ventriloquism reprents the hight form of diva worship and is the direct oute of my perceptn my youth that, as a homosexual, I did not belong the muny which I lived, that I was different, a staway. show others how out of place I felt, and, moreover, to fight back agast the hostily I sensed om homophobic rednecks by beltlg their cns through unremtg displays of my own polish and sophistitn.

to Hollywood stars bee of their femy, nor did my admiratn of them reflect any burng sire to be a woman, as the homosexual's fascatn wh actrs is ually explaed, as if diva worship were simply a ridiculo. For me and untls other gay men growg up small-town Ameri, film provid a vehicle for exprsg alienatn om our surroundgs and lkg up wh the utopic homosexual muny of our dreams, a sophistited "artistic" mimon.

THE RISE AND FALL OF LAGUNA BEACH, A GAY CALIFORNIA HOTSPOT

At the very heart of gay diva worship is not the diva herself but the almost universal homosexual experience of ostracism and secury, which ultimately led to what might be lled the atheticism of maladjtment,.

the gay man's exploatn of cematic visns of Hollywood granur to elevate himself above his antagonistic surroundgs and simultaneoly exprs membership a secret society of upper-class athet.

and Brish accents, reflects ls the homosexual's nate affy for lovely thgs, for bety and sensualy, than his profound social disntent, which we attempt to overe by creatg flatterg imag of ourselv as nnoissrs. as men women's clothg, honorary butch homosexuals as fearls as Joan Crawford Johnny Guar playg Vienna, a hard-boiled saloon keeper who guns down her rival, Merces McCambridge, or as Tallulah Bankhead Lifeboat playg.

FALL GAYS KNOCKDOWN

whose "actg has more than a whiff of the drag queen about "; of Vivien Leigh, whom gay thor Pl Roen intifi wh "for the simple reason that I know she's really not a woman"; or of Mae Wt, who was. Bee of our fiercely fetishistic volvement wh diva worship, the star even a sense trad plac wh her gay dience, who ed her as a naked projectn of their trated romantic sir, of their abily to exprs their sexual impuls.

JAGUARS ASSOCIATE STRENGTH ACH OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR US-BASED PRO LEAGU

her femy and beme the homosexual's proxy, a transvte figure, a vampish surrogate through whom gay men lived out unattaable longgs to ensnare such dashg heartthrobs as Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, and Gene Kelly.

Although at first sight gay diva worship seems to have been as giddy as an adolcent girl's moonstck fatuatn wh her teen idols, the homosexual's love of Hollywood was not an exprsn of flamboyant effemacy but, rather, a very. his ts "Eve" and "Channg, " the New York Native scrib how homosexuals fight back through imatn, through the often unnsc reenactment of Hollywood scenars the urse of real-life experienc:. Gone wh the Wd or Alexandra l Lago The Sweet Bird of Youth prepared the ground psychologilly for the polil ristance that was to e the 1960s and 1970s when the gay man's ternal diva was at last released.