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Gay Jokes 4 Progress!

March 3, 2021
by: Jay Collinwood

David Marcus in The Federalist writes a keen essay on the more subtle harms that cancel culture (yes, it’s a thing) can do to our shared cultural achievements. It’s worth a read. He hits on a few points that are missing almost entirely from the public debate on censorship in general, and makes one very important observation about comedy: “by laughing about…stereotypes [we can] diffus[e] them.” This is a concept as old as comedy itself, and it has a special place in the history of gay rights and gay acceptance generally, which we should not want to be erased.

In the Nexflix era people who were born in the late 90’s and early 00’s (how is that even possible?) got to discover TV shows and movies older millennials and Gen Xers grew up with. Friends is the most celebrated example, since it had a “moment” in 2017 and 2018. But its resurgence was also met with controversy over the *gasp* problematic jokes, especially insensitive gay jokes that peppered its decade-long run.

The 90’s were a weird time. Pants were too big, hair was out of control, and most of the country thought gay relationships (not marriage, relationships) should be illegal. in 1996 Congress sought “to express moral disapproval of homosexuality” by passing the Defense of Marriage Act by 342-67 in the House and 85-14 in the Senate. It’s shocking today to even consider this. And in the midst of a national controversy about gay people and civil rights shows like Friends and Will and Grace flourished.

Tensions about cultural norms were high back then as they are now. No one had satisfactory answers about how much the government should be involved in dictating gay rights. Republicans and democrats took the position that the world would end if their preferred policies weren’t enacted. And while the “very political” class was engaged in blood sport, the rest of us did what normal people do: we laughed about it. In an environment where your elected leaders overwhelmingly disapprove of you, just being a part of the culture was liberating and life-affirming. Sure, a fair critique is that we were treated as two-dimensional objects and not three-dimensional subjects, but we couldn’t even discuss this “problem” if we had been left as zero-dimensional non-entities.

“Doesn’t it make sense to place ourselves in the continuum of what came before us and what will come after?” Marcus asks. Of course it does. No society springs fully-formed into perfection. We are, after all, flawed human beings, not demigods. Erasing the culture of the past deprives subsequent generations of guideposts to measure the achievements of a more just society. Acceptance comes as a result of changing hearts not by diktats or censorship that force the changing of minds. If we were to declare a new starting point, a year before which all cultural content would be obliterated, how would we know if we were progressing at all? It would be left to the whims of those who think they are our betters to tell us.

Not every positive change in society needs to be the result of some dour theory cooked up in a faculty lounge or in a Queer Theory seminar. As Aristophanes said “comedy too can sometimes discern what is right.”

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Filed Under: Constitutional Issues, Gay America, Gay Conservatives (Homocons), Gay Culture, Gay Marriage, Gay Politics, News and Politics

Continue Gayly Forward

February 11, 2021
by: Chad Felix Greene

The first gay-topic book I ever read was titled, The Homo Handbook: Getting in Touch with Your Inner Homo: A Survival Guide for Lesbians and Gay Men, 1996 by Judy Carter. It was a humorous book, typical of the era, that approached the reality of being gay in the late 90’s with optimistic charm and energy. One of the memorable passages which today would read as proto-woke humor was about changing everyday language to be more gay and fun.

‘When giving directions, instead of saying, ‘Go straight ahead,’ say, ‘Continue gayly forward!’

25 years later the message seems more relevant than ever. When I think on what it means to be a gay person on the right, conservative, Republican, libertarian or wherever one finds themselves on the spectrum, it has become the very nature of gay identity itself that has become necessary to reaffirm. Long past are the days of American Dad style Log Cabin Republican ubiquity with the larger gay world, separated only by views on taxes and gun rights. Today we find ourselves considering an entirely new kind of gay rights movement.

Gender Identity has overtaken the LGBT world to such an extent they can no longer remember what being gay means. Being gay for modern privileged gays seems to mean activism for trans identity and rights, mixed in with a healthy dollop of intersectional racial identity. To be gay is to be a progressive activist and to be anything other than a progressive activist is to be guilty of bigotry, self-hatred and community shame.

Of course, that has always been an aspect of the gay community, long before it became the LGBT community and longer still before it deformed itself into the LGBTQQIAAP+ Federation of Identities. However, being progressive in 1996, as Carter lovingly described, was about personal acceptance and using that inner sense of love to encourage creative tolerance in those around you. It wasn’t about ideological domination, but merely a seat at the table.

Today we have the whole table and have mean girled everyone else away, as long as the BLM kids don’t need it to stand on for a protest.

Somewhere along the way being gay on the right moved from ‘I’m gay but that isn’t why I’m here’ to the last place in American society a person can freely and proudly be gay without judgment. Ironically its the conservatives who seem to be holding up the last remnants of 90’s gay flamboyance, drag culture and the golden rule of individuality and freedom of expression. The gay movement has come to rely on the conservative movement for survival.

In many ways I think we have mutually benefited one another. When looking across the conservative spectrum, we see many more prominent gay people than you’d otherwise expect, several trans people too. Many of the most vocal rightwing voices are gay voices. We offer access to the contemporary world in a way conservatives have struggled to sustain, even if that world is becoming less and less hospitable.

So when I begin to wonder what purpose gay conservatives have any longer, considering every policy goal from the early Log Cabin movement well into the 2000’s has been accomplished, it comes down to the idea of survival of the individual. In many ways there is no gay community any longer. Only gay people exiled from the Cyber Punk 2077 dystopian wasteland of LGBTQIAP/BIPOC misery and fear. There is no conservative movement either, only what’s left of humanity that still believes individuality and freedom mean something more than symbolic equality or positive statistical social outcomes.

We find ourselves stranded outside the city together, not wishing to return, but having nowhere else to go. Our ‘movement’ is one of personal liberation from Puritan progressive authoritarianism and it doesn’t matter who we are married to any longer. We just want to be free and we need each other to rebuild a society that values freedom over safety and superficial social equality.

My message for all of us has come down to ‘Continue Gayly Forward,’ as we all must refuse to be personally or publicly forced back into a closet of hiding who we really are. Whether that means feeling safe to homeschool your child to attending church to declining to participate in gender identity madness, we are all fighting for our right to free expression and independence, together.

Continue Gayly Forward, my friends. If I have to put on a wig and heels and march down the street waving the new flag of freedom to get us there, I’ve already got the perfect dress for the occasion.

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Filed Under: Gay Conservatives (Homocons), Gay Culture Tagged With: Conservative Introspection, Conservative Movement, Conservative Positivity, Gay America, Gay Conservatives (Homocons), Gay Culture

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