Growing up I only vaguely remember hearing about the gay rights movement, at least until college. As a Gen Xer, Ellen's coming out story was ground breaking and her ongoing success blows my mind despite the headway the gay community has made in recent years.
Still, that headway itself is sometimes frustrating.
Maybe it's frustrating simply because of my age. Unlike many before me, I came out in college and enjoyed much of my youth being myself. But unlike the Millennials after me, much of my youth felt like part of a secret society, a private club that didn't only embrace the gay community, but all societal misfits.
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| Take that, Society. |
While society has changed largely for the better, it's hard not to fondly reminisce about a time that was not just a thrilling escape, but often more inclusive behind the closed doors of our bars and nightclubs than our open community today.
On the rare occasion that a gay related story found its way to the media in the 80s and early 90s, my ears would always perk up. I'd be curious, angry, and happy all at the same time, pretty much like any teenager struggling with his sexuality.
But one thing I never heard about until well into the 90s was the notion of marriage equality. I remember a dust up over civil unions in Hawaii sometime in the 1990s, and at the time I thought, "huh, that's a neat idea."
While marriage equality is great for same sex couples who want to raise families and get married, it's one cause in a pantheon of rights leading to complete equality, and one that leaves behind the misfits that helped us through our wonder years.
Many in the campaign have struggled to show the world "we're just like everyone else." Our community arduously seeks parallels in heterosexual couples and past movements for equal rights.
But the difference between the gay rights movement and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s is that we are different. Regardless of certain cultural characteristics that create the same ethnic diversity amongst religions and ethnicity, those who fought for racial equality in the 1960s were mostly men and women who lived and continue to live largely within the mainstream construct of marriage and family.
They wanted the right to live without fear of persecution, to have equal access to education and jobs, and to be able to walk down the street without being harassed. The fight for interracial marriage was just one part of the crusade.
Meanwhile, the gay rights movement has left many of us behind.
The HRC wants the world to know that we all want to settle down and get married. They want mainstream society to know that "we're just like you."
The problem is, we aren't.
Sure, we'd like to be treated like everyone else and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities, one of which might be marriage, but what about those who may not be considering marriage, either now or in the future? What about bisexuals who may not want to choose?
The gay rights movement opened up a lot of questions about the traditional structure of our lives, and the organized politicos that hijacked the movement found it easier to shine by pretending to be someone else, and throw the misfits and unfortunates back in the closet.
HRC's fight for marriage equality makes it easy for mainstream society to accept us by bending to its mold. It's no surprise that the straight world has embraced the gay community now that our fight is focused primarily on traditions of straight couples.
Straight people are no longer burdened with accepting something they don't understand, but simply asked to accept the fallacy that we all wish to be lucky enough to live like them.
If marriage equality is the only right we're missing, then perhaps singling out this one cause is just. If that's the case, wonderful, we have little left to do.
But what about those abandoned by their families? Next time someone shares photos of their lavish Montauk wedding, think of the ones we've swept under the rug.
The marriage equality campaign has done something else. Singling out marriage equality and attributing it to the voice of all gay men and women casts an inadvertent prejudice on those who don't embrace it.
The gay rights movement portrayed in the media is no longer aimed at celebrating diversity, just those who want to get hitched. The rest who, for whatever reason, don't want to get married are left to toil with the same prejudice we've always faced, plus a prejudice from those within our own community.
Our champions of cause are fighting for the country to embrace gay couples pushing baby strollers through Ambler and Jenkintown, dining at Friday's, and joining suburban book clubs.
Meanwhile the trailblazers who fought for our right to be different are being shoved back in the closet, gay bars and burlesque houses are being shuttered, and the counter-cultures that once simply wanted to be accepted as they are, are being asked to assimilate, or treated like burdens of the cause.
In that regard, my fondness for the past extends well beyond the nostalgic excitement of slipping into a private club and wondering if I'll get caught. It opens up a valid double standard that we've created for ourselves.
When we were struggling with our identity as gay men and women, we turned to other outsiders for support, and they turned to us. We kept each other optimistic. We counseled each other. They housed us when our parents threw us out. We had nothing in common other than the fact that we were different.
But these misfits who joined us in our dorm rooms have been ignored. Gay homeless teenagers still linger on the streets of our major cities. And anyone whose sexuality doesn't fall into a specific bucket is left without relief, while increasingly synonymous gay and straight mainstreams treat them like deviants.
Now that the rainbow has been usurped by HRC's corporate logo, our community has been stripped of its diversity, and those represented by the blue and yellow flag have been told we're no different than anyone else, instead of being told it's okay to be different.
If you want to be part of today's gay community, suit up and play the part. Reject the decadence and defiance that paved the way for those who dare asked to be married.
The colorful drag queens who once mocked bigotry and were the most fearless of us all are now a black mark on the campaign's quest to be boring.
Act straight and be normal.
We were once the community that challenged the notion of normality and that's the diversity I choose to embrace.
