Myth of the 'gay lifestyle' justifies bias

On most mornings, my better half wakes up around 5:30, throws on some sweats and heads to the gym before work.

About a half hour later, I wake up my 13-year-old son, go downstairs to the kitchen to make his breakfast and pack his lunch. Once he's out the door, I brew some coffee and get to work.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the "gay lifestyle" -- run for your heterosexual lives.



http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/06/granderson.gay.lifestyle/

cause it seems to me that nothing justifies bias. Thanks for posting this. Good stuff.

I'm not getting up THAT early!

:evilgrin:

I am as sick of articles from gay people about how we're just like everyone else as I am about articles condemning the gay "lifestyle".

Our equality should not be contingent on straight America finally getting the point that, "Hey, that queer goes to work and comes home and watches TV...JUST LIKE I DO!" We were BORN equal, like everyone else, and our equality is being deliberately withheld by straight people. The leather daddies and the drag queens are just as inherently equal as the soccer moms and Shriners.

The gay community has a culture and a heritage that most straight people will never be comfortable with. I do not ask that every gay person go to a gay pride parade in assless chaps and a tiara. But I don't intend to let those of you who are stumbling over yourselves begging for America's love and acceptance throw the rest of us under the bus.

If you want to live a "normal" 9-5 suburban straight lifestyle, you go right ahead and knock yourself out. I fully support your right to do so. But if you feel it necessary to denounce the rest of us as abnormal in order to gain acceptance, you will not have my support. You are just as guilty of bigotry and judgmentalism as the straight people who are keeping us from equality.

I know that Granderson was trying to make exactly the point that I am making: that gay people are as diverse as straight people. But the take-away from that article is clearly intended to be: "Don't be afraid, straight people...we're just like you." No, we're not. Even those wanna-be suburbanites have one defining characteristic that some straight people will never accept: they're gay.

I deserve equality for who I am, not because I fit some straight person's version of "normal".

:applause:

...his or her basic rights. A lot of gay people like people generally are pretty mundane. Still, that's not an excuse to minimize the ones who are not. I see that nonconformist gay people as a subset of nonconformists generally. People should not be ostracized for being who they are rather than who everyone expects them to be. The impulse toward conformity is so bad that I have to be careful what kind of necktie I wear to the office or else be seen as "unprofessional" (which means being an indivudual.)

Still, I can't really objec to anyone's efforts in pointing out our common humanity to those who are ignorant on the subject.

Like his quoting Harvey Milk, "We need let the people know who we are." But Milk meant that we have to get them to see us as people. There is a difference between showing people your humanity and showing them how eager you are to conform to their standards.

I have never heard anyone debate the topic from your perspective,

I put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else.

Don't you?

simplistic stereotype. Though for the life of me, I can't figure out how or why.

I guess she doesn't deserve equality?

when gay people weren't so neurotic about being nonconformist. If anything, being eccentric and different was a plus. That was what was best about the 70's - it was a really great time to experiment and free yourself from boredom and suburbia.

But ever since Ronald Reagan, you find gay people try so hard to not be weird in any way. I suppose there have ALWAYS been gay people like that, but it just seems like for every Siegfried & Roy or Ellen Degeneres, there's dozens of closeted gay people who fight desperately to maintain the fiction that they are sexually attracted to the opposite sex.

Part of the reason I just don't connect with popular American culture anymore - it's very demeaning, IMO.

As a practioner of scat, I deserve equality for who I am, not because I do or do not fit some gay person's version of "normal".

Despite the fact that what you do is repulsive and unhealthy in the extreme, you deserve the same rights as everyone else. That does not mean that I can't voice my disgust at your fetish.

Straight life is just as diverse. Some gay people are just like straight suburbanites.
But, some straight folks live equally "different lives" as some gay people. I have a straight male friend who goes out every night, has about 8 girlfriends at once, lives in a real bachelor pad, hates god and religion, has more holes in his face and body than most anyone I have ever met, and I never have figured out what he does for money.
The point is, we are all diverse, gay or straight. There is no gay lifestyle and there is no straight lifestyle.

Gays like Granderson buy into the myth that straight people have used to deny us our rights, that straight people are "moral" and monogamous and square, when there's not any more truth to the "normal" straight person than there is to "abnormal" gay person. Straight America is setting a standard that THEY don't live up to, and they're telling us we can't be equal because we don't meet that standard. Articles like the ones Granderson writes completely buy into this mythology, and make unnecessary and disingenuous claims that we meet that standard.

NO ONE meets that standard. It doesn't exist. It's a hypocritical fiction used to oppress us, and buying into it will not get us our rights, especially if we have to lose our souls in the process.

Because when he was calling white LGBTers a bunch of racists, that wasn't fun enough.

Now he, yet again, has to declare to the world that he's not a swish.

Dude, we get it. Calm down. No one thinks you're a fag. Eesh.

Edit: Here's a nice little thread (with TSed homophobes and everything) where this columnist did his spiel:

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8532902

This isn't the first "I'm not like those other gays . . ." column this guy's written. I suspect it won't be the last.

I really wish he'd work through his internalized homophobia on a somewhat less public platform.

I'd have been TS'd for sure.

at all.

the tenor of the replies here are that the article only concerns itself with half the story, but I read that the half of the story that's the "stereotype" isn't the whole story.

POV I guess. I don't get the judgmentalism - there is nothing in the article that threatened my identity or threatened to redefine the norm for gays.

The bigger observation is that normal is not the norm no matter what you choose to do with your pink parts. To disallow someone who leads a fairly standard nuclear family life from being fully gay is a little myopic on our part; especially since I do that myself, plus I'm a bad ass full contact bloodsport kickboxing pretty boy who can cook, tear through a rachmaninov piano concerto during laundry, sew and knit and decorate like nobody's business, broken fingers and toes and all. Byotches.

:P

Do I cringe at assless chaps in the parade? Wince maybe, but only because I don't get it personally. Do I cringe at drag queens? Hell to the enno, I was raised by a pack of feral drag queens in the wilderness so I get that, even though it holds no personal allure for me. I accept all of it though without reservation, and strongly believe that all of our color belongs in a parade that exists to celebrate our amazing diversity and triumph of the spirit.

I am NOT concerned AT ALL with what "straight people" think about me either way though. Or anyone for that matter. I'm not asking anyone for anything, especially permission. More of us should internalize that.

BTW Streisand doesn't do anything more for me than Creed, but I will shake my moneymaker to anything in a dance club. ;)

I whole-heartedly agree...but I don't believe that's the message Granderson is attempting to convey. It seems pretty clear to me there IS a "normal" for Granderson, and it's defined by straight America. Or, perhaps more accurately (and more insidiously), he thinks that's what straight America thinks, and he's pandering to them.

Honestly, I have no problem with gay men and women who want to settle down with the white picket fence and the kids and the pets and lead what are commonly considered to be conventional lives of domestic bliss. My best friend and his husband are doing exactly that. Except here's a dirty little secret: they're not above inviting a third or a fourth (or more) into the bedroom when it strikes their fancy, something that would send most straight people into outward fits of apoplexy, with accompanying judgments of immorality on that "gay lifestyle". Never mind that straight people can and do indulge in all sorts of extra-monogamous hijinks, albeit generally with less mutual agreement, and (from my personal observations) with a great deal less maturity and perspective.

Now, obviously, there are many gay couples who are perfectly happy being monogamous, just like many straight couples. The point is, gay people ARE just like everyone else, in that everyone is different. Therefore, it's disingenuous to try and sell America on gays being "just like us", because there IS no "just like us". We shouldn't be bending over backwards to prove to straight America how we fit their hypocritical definitions of morality. We should be telling them to mind their own fucking business, because our rights have nothing to do with morality, except in the way that it's immoral to have one set of laws for group A, and a different set for group B.

So, I agree with you that "the normal is not the norm" is the message we SHOULD be delivering. But I don't believe that's the message that Granderson is trying to deliver.

and not the good kind of drag. Wasn't he "pro civil union" for a while or something ridiculous and ironic? I remember it was some hot topic about which I didn't think he should be speaking on behalf of anyone but himself.

I'm researching . . . I do remember something now that rubbed me wrong and got me dander up a long long time ago.

I'll let you know what I find. :evilgrin:

Honestly, dozens of these articles have been written before, and they're so rote that they almost don't merit much comment anymore.

However, this guy has a history of "I'm not like those other gays, so it's ok to like me. Promise. Unlike, you know, those fags over there." Seriously, just give his work a cursory glance. Once you realize it's a major psychological component of his thoughts, you'll notice it cropping up all over the place in his pieces. This whole thing is just him pounding away on one of his favorite themes - yet again.

Granted, he moves in the world of sports, so maybe that's how he muddles along and tries to be "just one of the guys". But I'm tired of him getting attention when he's just kind of an offensive, racist ass.

Nothing this writer says personally threatens me - I'm not much of a swish. But many people I love dearly are, and it's assholes like him who contribute to LGBT youth's low self-esteem.

Yes, we're all different. Yes, not all of us are effeminate, affluent white men. Yes, some of us are super macho sports writers who aren't gay-acting in the slightest and who have nothing in common with those effeminate, affluent white men (just sayin! . . . for the fortieth time!).

This guy's act is just tiresome to me. I feel like I'm watching self-loathing theater.

I've seen some of his stuff on ESPN, and he definitely has an Aunt Tom thing going on. And for ANYONE to suggest that white gay people are racist for their anger over Obama's betrayal of the gay community.... :grr:

pastel polo shirts with horse insignias, khaki shorts and topsiders (no socks). :rofl:

as is typical of those who go on and on about what big manly men they are, not at all like those sissies over there.

lol

:hi: