A recent Boston public radio program hosted a discussion about Boston as a "post-gay" city. As a native of the Boston area, who has lived here most of my life, I found the discussion revealing and somewhat confirming of suspicions I have had about the political views of those who are currently steering the LGBTQ politics here through media and lobbying.
I do not cling to the past by any means. I do feel that the current political leaders of our local LGBTQ community represent the new (downtown) Boston population of marriage-oriented, conservative and high-income professionals. This is a matter of simple economics. The Menino administration's development policies have purged the city of single, low-to-mid-income, young gay men and lesbians, who once made Boston's gay community one of the most vibrant in the U.S..
Many have moved to Providence, where there is a gay street life and night life, similar to the Boston of the past. Others have moved to Dorchester and have developed a new, active gay community there, which is out of sync with the less-unified downtown community. Boston Proper has become the Gay Marriage Capital, a bastion of more conservative LGBTQ values.
While I take a certain pride in my own small contribution to the development of gay rights in the U.S. through my participation in our liberation during the past four decades, I do not acknowledge the current post-gay LGBTQ's as my successors or heirs. I accept their choice to pursue bourgeois, Reaganite bliss. However, our rights were not secured, nor will they necessarily be maintained, by pushing baby carriages and acting just like heterosexuals.
I am not post-gay. I will die as an openly gay man with self-respect for my intrinsic, natural difference from heterosexuals or bisexuals or transsexuals. I have worked hard for that self-respect and for the rights of all homosexual people to live in peace with equal rights. I feel a certain implicit disrespect towards me and others like me coming from those who have the money and propensity to act straight in a socioeconomically privileged Boston. While they may relegate me to "pre-post-gay" history, I assure them that I and many others like me will be absolutely necessary to maintaining their rights into the future.
