Charl M. Blow lumn on the phback agast gay rights

Contents:

• THE ANTI-GAY AGENDA
• THE G.O.P. TRI TO BUILD A GAY GHETTO
• CHARL M. BLOW LUMN ON THE PHBACK AGAST GAY RIGHTS

THE ANTI-GAY AGENDA

Instead, the more mon rponse me emails, almost always om whe gay men, who nied the existence of bisexualy and said thgs like "Oh, easy to e out now bee you are well-off and you are old. "When you are not livg an hont, open, te life, you are takg advantage of a privilege granted to you by olr gay, lbian, queer people who have sacrificed tremendoly so that you uld e to this place.

THE G.O.P. TRI TO BUILD A GAY GHETTO

A large number of gay men me out as bi first, so 's easy for them to thk that's how everyone's experience will le upIt's plited that way if 's not your life. The nial was always tryg to be part of a bary, tryg to be a part of the straight world or tryg to be pletely part of the gay world. In the very first moment, I knew what that meant, that I was now a public figure and not a private role mol that is Jam Baldw, who talks about why he had been so public about beg gay.

But I felt like as long as the person who I had mted myself to love and be relatnship and be marriage wh, as long as I had been pletely hont wh that person, was nobody else's you avoidg gay bars and queer spac durg that time? I have iends all spac, gay and straight, and yet I am not intifyg any public space as bi or gay or queer or anythg. What I do sometim thk about, though, is when you are not livg an hont, open, te life, you are takg advantage of a privilege granted to you by ol, gay, lbian, queer people who have sacrificed tremendoly so that you uld e to this place.

When Blow me out publicly as bisexual he revealed, “One thg the gay rights movement tght the world is the importance of beg visible-". And I thk that that is part of kd of the homophobia, misogyny of culture, which is that there are negative effects of childhood sexual abe and creased rat of suici and issu wh timacy, but inty is not a negative.

CHARL M. BLOW LUMN ON THE PHBACK AGAST GAY RIGHTS

And they didn't know each other, but they both hanged themselv 10 days apart - they were both 11 years old at the time - bee they had been the victims of unrelentg homophobic bullyg.

The women were nng away om the Gay Pri para where a panic had ensued when there were thought to be gunshots. “When you are not livg an hont, open, te life, you are takg advantage of a privilege granted to you by olr, gay, lbian, queer people who have sacrificed tremendoly. Instead, the more mon rponse me emails, almost always om whe gay men, who nied the existence of bisexualy and said thgs like “Oh, easy to e out now bee you are well-off and you are old.

“When you are not livg an hont, open, te life, you are takg advantage of a privilege granted to you by olr gay, lbian, queer people who have sacrificed tremendoly so that you uld e to this place. ”On Monday the Amy of Motn Picture Arts and Scienc nmned Smh for his actns and announced an official vtigatn to the Opn lumnist Charl Blow and Tim Opn ntributg wrers Roxane Gay and Es McClley joed Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a Tim Opn podst host, to analyze the moment and why so quickly spurred a heated cultural nversatn, rerd Monday, is available the d file and the transcript Opn Wrers on Will Smh’s Slap: ‘There Are No Hero This Story’The followg nversatn has been eded for Garcia-Navarro: There have been — to put dly — some hot tak on this event, but I actually want to dig to why this has ronated for so many people. ” Roxane, I want to start wh you and your Gay: The primary takeaway for me was, ed, to see a Black woman beg fend, pecially after a week of trials wh Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and really nobody standg up for Garcia-Navarro: The Supreme Court Gay: Y.

To have that take over the moment was sad, to, I will say that I did see someone stand up for Black women for Ketanji Brown Gay: Yeah, Cory Booker.

So I was jt sad to see people who I had looked up to at different pots my life publicly gog through somethg so Garcia-Navarro: Roxane, I do want you to rpond to Charl’s ment about how this is not maybe the manner which men should be fendg women, and that there is, his view, somethg troublg about the way that this manifted Gay: Yeah, I mean, of urse not. Roxane Gay: Are we really gog to suggt that this was the first time this culture has normalized vlence? I am also thkg about what Jada may or may not have been thkg and where the sort of female role what happened lays, your Gay: Well, I mean, women are not a monolh, and I’ve already seen a range of rpons om women.

This is very much beg seen through a variety of lens, as you say, Roxane, race and class beg the two ma Gay: Certaly. Roxane Gay: No, I don’t thk he ends up as the hero, but I absolutely give cred to him for -latg the suatn the moment on the stage. I n’t leave this podst whout sayg that is stuck my Gay: I have to say, Chris Rock spent last year showg off his abs and how mcled he is.

Maybe they should terrogate their own prient terts other people’s love, get at the root and figure out why the ia of male timacy ril the past few weeks, several rappers have ma sensive — or full-on homophobic — statements about gay people. Fend DaBaby, sayg that gay people had gone om beg bullied to dog the bullyg, simply bee they had mand acuntabily om DaBaby, urgg him to apologize and phg mic ftivals to drop him om their lps.

About a week after DaBaby’s rant, Boosie Badazz, a hip-hop artist who me up the 1990s, went after Lil Nas X, one of the rare rappers who are openly, unapologetilly, explosns-of-glter gay, threateng to asslt me say first that the untry has quickly evolved on the acceptance of gayns, and that clus an evolutn among Black people. But as acceptance and visibily rise, those the mory who feel threatened by gay people have grown lour.

”Let’s clarify: Beg gay is not a liftyle that one n choose, like beg a jet-setter or a bohemian; is an immutable feature of a life. Also, there is no explosn of gayns simply bee gay people are now more visible than they once were. I don’t see a gay agenda this story but an anti-gay first, let me say this: Whenever I enunter a passnate homophobe, my md immediately foc on his passn.

I have always ntend that all of the -isms and -phobias are s, that a society that creat a hierarchy of humany wh whe, straight, cisgenr men at the apex, every person who is not whe or straight or cisgenr or male gets assigned a lower orr of that sense, racism and sexism, homophobia and transphobia all branch om the same one bias n fluence and amplify a society that treats racism as a sport, which each racial group is jockeyg agast the others, all of them shadowed by a culture of whe supremacy laced wh misogyny, anythg that rc your percentage of straight mal or “femiz” them is seen as weakeng the Black people bee agents agast Black power and Black liberatn, a weight on the this dulent this is adopted, traracial terror picks up where terracial terror left off. It is not the gay Black person who be an stment of a whe supremacist attack on Black masculy; is the Black homophobe who be the stment of opprsn agast his own is important to pot out that the racist and the homophobe often employ the same tactics.

Homophob often e the same tactic, claimg that they are protectg children om is precisely the fense Boosie Badazz ed when appearg on “The Breakfast Club” rad show, at one pot seemgly exprsg a fear that if rappers didn’t speak out agast certa exprsns of gayns, an entire generatn of children uld be aga, to clarify: There is no amount of exposure that n make a straight man prefer a penis or a gay one prefer a vaga. If that were te, wh all the straight love and affectn gay kids are exposed to, they would all be turned straight by the age of 5.