Eric Bach is an openly gay broadster for the Frericksburg Natnals. He has major league aspiratns, but his path has been much lonelier than he would prefer.
Contents:
- THE END OF GAY CULTURE
- THE QUEER/GAY ASSIATNIST SPL
- DO ASSIATN MEAN THE END OF GAY NEIGHBORHOODS?
- WHAT DO GAY MARRIAGE MEAN?
THE END OF GAY CULTURE
As a gay man and as a queer person, I do not want to be normalized. Instead, I want to be regnized and accepted for my difference as a humanizg qualy. To that end, I want to state that my… * gay assimilation meaning *
It has long attracted artists, wrers, the offbeat, and the bohemian; and, for many years now, has been to gay Ameri what Oak Bluffs Martha’s Veyard is to black Ameri: a place where a separate inty sentially f a separate place.
Men and women gather on the beach, drk ffee on the ont porch of a store, or meet at the Film Ftival or Spir, of urse, week after week this summer, uple after uple got married—well over a thoand the year and a half sce gay marriage has been legal Massachetts.
THE QUEER/GAY ASSIATNIST SPL
On a Saturday night on Wt Hollywood’s Santa Moni Boulevard, the siwalks, dance clubs, bars and rtrants are packed. The crowd is ma up of mostly men; mostly gay, joyfully, proudly and unapologetilly… * gay assimilation meaning *
East Village bohemians drift throughout the summer; quiet male upl spend more time browsg gourmet groceri and realtors than cisg nightspots; the predictable populatn of artists and wrers—Michael Cunngham and John Waters are fixtur—mix wh openly gay lawyers and ps and teachers and but unmistakably, gay culture is endg.
The distctn between gay and straight culture will bee so blurred, so actured, and so termgled that may bee more helpful not to exame them separately at many the gay world, this is both a triumph and a threat.
DO ASSIATN MEAN THE END OF GAY NEIGHBORHOODS?
In an era of gay assiatn, one man wants to remd why beg gay do mean beg different. * gay assimilation meaning *
Wh the growth of fundamentalism across the relig world—om Pope Benedict XVI’s Vatin to Islamic fatwas and Amerin evangelilism—gayns is unr attack many plac, even as wrts ee om reprsn others. This was the era of the post-Stonewall New Left, of the Castro and the Wt Village, an era where sexualy fed a new meang for gayns: of sexual adventure, polil radilism, and cultural fact that openly gay muni were still relatively small and geographilly ncentrated a handful of urban areas created a distctive gay culture.
Popular culture was suffed wh stunng displays of homosexual burlque: the mic of Queen, the stum of the Village People, the flamboyance of Elton John’s but; the advertisg of Calv Kle; and the toxitn of dis self, a gay creatn that beme emblematic of an entire heterosexual era. When this cultural explosn was acknowledged, when explicly perated the mastream, the rults, however, were highly unstable: Harvey Milk was assassated San Francis and Ana Bryant led an anti-gay csa. The history of gay Ameri as an openly gay culture is not only extremely short—a mere 30 years or so—but also engulfed and fed by a plague that stck almost poignantly at the headit moment of liberatn.
And those gay men and lbians who wnsed this entire event beme altered forever, not only emotnally, but also polilly—whether through the theatril activism of Act-Up or the fur anizatn of polil gays among the Democrats and some Republins. More ccially, gay men and lbians built civil stutns to unter the disease; they fed new ti to scientists and policians; they found themselv forced to more tense relatns wh their own natural fai and the fai of loved on. Unls the gay populatn was tied to the broar society; unls had roots the wir world; unls brought to s fold the heterosexual fai and iends of gay men and women, the gay populatn would rema at the mercy of others and of misfortune.
WHAT DO GAY MARRIAGE MEAN?
* gay assimilation meaning *
A ghetto was no longer an, when the plague reced the face of far more effective HIV treatments the mid-’90s and gay men and women were able to tch their breath and reflect, the qutn of what a more tegrated gay culture might actually mean reemerged. If the image of gay men for my generatn was one gleaned om the movie Cisg or, subsequently, Torch Song Trilogy, the image for the next one was MTV’s “Real World, ” Bravo’s “Queer Eye, ” and Richard Hatch wng the first “Survivor. Even more dramatilly, gays went om havg to fd hidn meang mastream films—somehow intifyg wh the agg, mpy female lead a way the rt of the culture missed—to everyone, gay and straight, regnizg and beg on the joke of a character like “Big Gay Al” om “South Park” or Jack om “Will & Grace.
So is the spokman for the most anti-gay senator Congrs, Rick new tolerance and tegratn—bed, of urse, wh the creased abily to nnect wh other gay people that the Inter provis—has undoubtedly enuraged more and more gay people to e out. If you pare data om, say, the 1994 Natnal Health and Social Life Survey wh the 2002 Natnal Survey of Fay Growth, you will fd that women are nearly three tim more likely to report beg gay, lbian, or bisexual today than they were eight years ago, and men are about 1. Unlike Lato or Jewish or black muni, where parents and grandparents and siblgs pass on cultural norms to children their most formative stag, each generatn of gay men and lbians grows up beg tght the heterosexual norms and culture of their home environments or absorbg what pass for their gay inty om the broar culture as a whole.
When I terviewed gay artist Jt Sayre last month about the prognosis for “gay culture” the age of mastream assiatn—pecially via gay... * gay assimilation meaning *
From the very begng of their gay liv, other words, they will have ternalized a sense of normaly, of human potential, of self-worth—somethg that my generatn never had and that prev generatns would have found unimagable. When I vised recently to talk about that very subject, the preppy, nservative stunt print was openly you be this generatnal plasticy wh swift mographic growth, you have our current explosn of gay civil society, wh a disproportnately young age distributn. The gay anizatns that epted to beg as aids killed thoands the ‘80s—om the Gay Men’s Health Crisis to the aids Project Los Angel to the Whman-Walker Clic Washgton—stggled to adapt to the swift change the epimic the mid-’90s.