An open letter to my fellow whe gay cis men: there should be no "returng to normal" after this.
Contents:
- GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET
- SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
- THE GAY AGENDA BLUEPRT: A PLAN TO TRANSFORM AMERI
- ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
- “WHY ARE THERE SO MANY GAY PEOPLE THE DAYS?”
- AS MORE GAY PEOPLE E OUT, TOLERANCE WILL SPREAD
GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET
* the world is turning gay *
But even though the nversatns that muted this lumn for six weeks are nowhere close to beg over, I do feel like some thgs that me up durg that time of ntemplatn are worth sayg now — particularly to my fellow whe gay cis out more stori on LGBTQ+ ins and activistsHowever, the ghost of Larry Kramer very much remaed my own head as I ma my way through a Pri month unlike any other. I spent a few quiet afternoons readg his 1978 but novel Faggots, a satiril (yet clearly tobgraphil) look at the liv of gay men 1970s New York Cy that he wrote jt before AIDS ma him a figurehead of Amerin activism. Followg a man his late 30s (based on Kramer himself) who is seekg out a lovg, long-term relatnship a sea of hedonism, the novel has a clear msage: gay men need to start lovg each other stead of beg so obssed wh gettg fucked up and (lerally and figuratively) fuckg each other.
In mastream gay media, the phrase almost always refers to a fairly specific subset of the LGBTQ "muny" largely ma up of whe gay cis men — even though many of the battl won around queer rights were fought by people of lour, trans and genr-nonnformg folks, and queer women, and fact the morn Pri movement self was large part iated by Black trans women. If an imprsn of a monolhic "gay culture" fed by such a homogeneo mographic exists, is bee whe gay cis men have until very recently domated mastream reprentatn unr the LGBTQ umbrella and have, general, been hand a level of privilege the last that is wildly disproportnate to any other mographic unr said umbrella.
SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
Theory: Lbians get om their fathers, gay men om their mothers. * the world is turning gay *
In analyzg the show's pictn of young gay men livg San Francis, wrer Daniel Wenger diagnos what he terms the "new gay sadns": an entire generatn of urban, privileged gay men who seem to have no clue what they're lookg for or who they are. Largely born the 1980s, they are the earlit wave of a "post-Stonewall, post-plague, post-activist" generatn of gays — "too old to have brought a boy to the prom and too young to have nursed a fantasy of nng away to an urban gay utopia, " Wenger explas.
Queeri5 pneerg LGBTQ Canadian films you n watch for ee right nowI've seen many of my fellow whe gay cis men seemgly rise to the ocsn by retweetg Black and Indigeno voic, gog to ralli and vowg to te themselv on how to tly be anti-racist (though how performative that is some s is unclear). A group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexuals get that tra om their oppose-sex parents: A lbian will almost always get the tra om her father, while a gay man will get the tra om his heredary lk of homosexualy has long been tablished, but scientists knew was not a strictly geic lk, bee there are many pairs of intil tws who have differg sexuali. Scientists om the Natnal Instute for Mathematil and Blogil Synthis say homosexualy seems to have an epigeic, not a geic thought to have some sort of heredary lk, a group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexualy is lked to epi-marks — extra layers of rmatn that ntrol how certa gen are exprsed.
THE GAY AGENDA BLUEPRT: A PLAN TO TRANSFORM AMERI
The startlg shift Amerin attus toward gays and same-sex marriage is not the rult of chance or random events. More than a quarter century ago, gay strategists laid out a plan to transform the natn—wh astoundg succs. * the world is turning gay *
In homosexuals, the epi-marks aren't erased — they're passed om father-to-dghter or mother-to-son, explas William Rice, an evolutnary blogist at the Universy of California Santa Barbara and lead thor of the study.
"There is pellg evince that epi-marks ntribute to both the siary and dissiary of fay members, and n therefore feasibly ntribute to the observed faial herance of homosexualy and s low nrdance between [intil] tws, " Rice and his team created a mathematil mol that explas why homosexualy is passed through epi-marks, not geics. But bee the epi-marks provi an evolutnary advantage for the parents of homosexuals: They protect fathers of homosexuals om unrexposure to ttosterone and mothers of homosexuals om overexposure to ttosterone while they are gtatn. "The epi-marks protect fathers and mothers om excs or unrexposure to ttosterone — when they rry over to oppose-sex offsprg, n e the masculizatn of femal or the femizatn of mal, " Rice says, which n lead to a child beg gay.
Rice not that the markers are "highly variable" and that only strong epi-marks will rult a homosexual scientists have long spected some sort of geic lk, Rice says studi attemptg to expla why people are gay have been few and far between.
‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
" Homosexual behavr has been observed black swans, pengus, sheep, and other animals, he 's mol still needs to be tted on real-life parent-offsprg pairs, but he says this epigeic lk mak more sense than any other explanatn, and that his team has mapped out a way for other scientists to tt their work. Well-rearched surveys (as opposed to some wh markedly skewed sampl and/or methodology) have nsistently placed the homosexual populatn of Ameri at around 2 to 3 percent—yet the fluence of homosexuals on Amerin culture is vastly out of proportn wh their actual numbers.
A USA Today article last year reported 32 regularly appearg bisexual or homosexual characters primetime work scripted seri for the 2014-15 televisn season, wh another 64 appearg ble TV shows (Bill Keveney, “Y, You Really Are Seeg More LGBT Characters on TV, ” Oct. They then add this utn for those who would want to ph the gay agenda too far: “It almost go whout sayg that groups on the fartht marg of acceptabily such as NAMBLA [the North Amerin Man-Boy Love Associatn, which as s name suggts promot adult-child homosexual sex] mt play no part at all such a mpaign: spected child-molters will never look like victims... But an addnal theme of the mpaign should be more aggrsive and upbeat: to offset the creasgly bad prs that the tim have brought to homosexual men and women, the mpaign should pat gays as superr pillars of society.
To this end, they then suggted that those who oppose the homosexual agenda be lked wh imag such as the Ku Klux Klan, “bigoted southern misters droolg wh hysteril hatred, ” thugs and nvicts, and Nazi ncentratn mps. This strategy—aid and abetted by sympathetic news media and ernment agenci—has led to enterg a stage of aggrsive attacks by some the gay muny agast those who scerely believe that homosexual behavr vlat the laws, stctns and prcipl of God. Yet at the same time, they ma a statement showg that gays really aren’t the opprsed, victimized group Kirk and Madsen advote they be portrayed as: “Bee those gays not supportg fai ually have more discretnary e than average, they uld afford to ntribute much more.
“WHY ARE THERE SO MANY GAY PEOPLE THE DAYS?”
The impact of this is also beg felt the polil arena, where wealthy gays help bankroll mpaigns for sympathetic ndidat who will advance their terts and fund ads attackg those who stand for tradnal and biblil valu. “Bee most straightforward appeals are impossible, the Natnal Gay Task Force has had to cultivate quiet backroom liaisons wh broadst pani and newsrooms orr to make sure that issu important to the gay muny receive some verage. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.
But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup. Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. ” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy.
AS MORE GAY PEOPLE E OUT, TOLERANCE WILL SPREAD
”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns. ”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance.
“It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists. Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins. There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected.