That All Depends On Where You Are Coming From!

I really didn’t know if I wanted to respond to the recent article in the Hartford Courant, “A Welcoming Abode”, Sept. 7, 2007, about weather reporter Scott Haney and his partner Paul Marte’s new 9 room, 3,800 sq.-foot home in Canton. Two things happened over the past 3 days that prompted me and I said “what the hell”. One was on 4 different occasions people when remarking on the article all spoke about, “How far we have come,”  meaning that 2 gay guys and their home was a feature in the Courant, (they even showed the bed in which they sleep and their 3 cats) and the other was when I was at the doctors office a young women that I am friendly with was beside her self in telling me how much she enjoyed reading the article, and that didn’t I think it was something and didn’t I think it was a step forward for “gays” (lbt missing in action), that they looked as normal as everyone else (no lie) and she thought they were such a nice couple and on and on and blah, blah, blah. I wonder what she was really trying to tell me? Well after that, > STOP> let us pause here, get out of this posting, go to the Home Page, go down the right side of the QWB blog and click on QWB’s theme song by Adhamh Roland and take a listen. When you are done listening come on back here.  Now I don’t see anything wrong with the article about Scott and Paul and would have to admit that yes certain gays and lesbians have come far, the kind that we all know, those who can mimic and monkey,those who can hold up the straight ideal, those that are really missing some of the (more important) queer genes, those who have turned pale. Those who are not far out or those who don’t talk too much about QUEER. Richard Goldstein hit it on the head when he said, “In the wake of the gay and lesbian movements’ success, there is now a place at the liberal table for a certain hind of homosexual. These rehabilitated outcasts should look and act like the other guests. They must come as close as possible to expressing the heterosexual norm.” I would have to add here and be the right class and race. You all know as well as I that many of our people who are under the umbrella of lgbt or q, would never be accepted by the homonorms, the look how far we have come, gays and lesbians. I don’t think I need to list the rejected, our people, you can just refer back to Adhamh’s song. This all is a hard nut to crack. On one hand I don’t want any one to entertain the notion that I am jealous of the bourgeois or of the golden boys nor can I in the small sense deny how far some have come. Just a few years back the Hartford Courant would not post announcements of civil unions. Suddenly we have them doing articles about a gay couple in their home. 10 to 20 years ago no gay couple or single gay would dare be featured in an article in a very public paper especially if they were in the so called professional class. The door has been opened for some, a select few. (But let’s not forget, who first kicked down those doors, the fags, the dykes, the drag queens and kings, the nellies, the youth, people of color and the fighting mad activists. They made it safe for the “straight” g&l’s.) But as straight society lets a few homonorms in many more lgbtq people are still sitting outside.  I guess I have to go back to the slogan, “No One Is Free, While Others Are Oppressed. Or to Jean Paul Marat’s famous line, “Just when you think that you never had it so good, remember that is only the slogan of those who have far more than you and are willing and waiting to take what you have.” That should be a warning for the “Norms” and all of us to worry about. Laws come and laws go. Will their “norm” save them on the day the shit hits the fan? They certainly won’t stand up with us queers. Assimilation into the straight mainstream and Capitalism does strange things to people. I will leave this piece with these words from Harry Hay. Hay was speaking about the assimilationist group within the lgbt movement when he had this to say, “Don’t forget–they know you’re a degenerate and they’ve  never forgotten that. You won’t find out until push comes to shove. Then you will find out fast. Because they are respectable in the eyes of God and you are not.”

I send this out for discussion.