Post-Gay

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.

Pole-itics

As the media barrage me with mournful stories about the death of the Polish president, I wonder how much American know about this man and his twin brother, former child stars in Poland. Celebrating the life of this man is comparable to celebrating the life of President Botha of South Africa or Yasser Arafat of the PLO. As an American with Polish genetic roots, I am all too familiar with homophobia in Polish Catholic culture.

Lech Kaczynski and Theodore Kaczynski were not closely related, but, in the minds of gay rights activists, they might as well be. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the President's brother and former Prime Minister, is a well known closeted homosexual, who, like many Gestapo Gays before him, preaches against any legalization of gay rights in Poland. All this homophobia has been loudly supported by the too-powerful Roman Catholic Church in Poland.

Fascists always can depend on kicking gay people to gain popular support. And, it seems, the U.S. media continues to turn a blind eye to LGBT rights when it comes to reporting obits of politicians.

Hypocrisy

It occurred to me the other day while I was sitting in traffic. I was surrounded by SUVs and minivans, headed for a major artery which leads out to the suburbs. Most people live a lie.

I am a person who lives alone. I have no children. I recycle. I drive a fuel-efficient subcompact. I pay property taxes at the same rate as everyone else. I keep up my property. I did not overmortgage myself. And I am gay.

The people around me appeared to be affluent suburbanites. They were driving wasteful cars. They were disobeying the lane markers. They were driving one to each huge vehicle. I would be willing to wager than many were overleveraged.

I am perceived by a majority of the public as deviant, unworthy of basic legal rights, a threat to children.

I would ask: Who are irresponsible to children? Who are irresponsible to the planet? Who are deviating from that which is right and just?