Andrew Sullivan and Camille Paglia can be summed up in one phrase:
"I got mine."
There's a good article, offering an opposing view in the 1 July 2001 issue of the Nation Magazine, "Fighting the Gay Right" by Richard Goldstein. Here's a snippet:
All pariah groups that seek to rise must enact a kind of kabuki in which the difference they embody is simultaneously denoted and denied. It's a painful, warping performance, but the reward is "progress." And for the large contingent of gay people who were middle class before they were queer, acceptance even on these stilted terms is a seductive offer. The gay right is a broker of this deal. It provides a training manual in assimilation, complete with lessons on how to make straight people comfortable, how to present your gender properly and how to distinguish yourself from others of your kind by attacking their failure to conform.
The queer community is an impediment to this agenda, because it nurtures the difference that liberal society can't abide, and passes along this difference as culture. What's more, the community insists that a wide variety of queer identities be honored. Retreating liberals aren't ready for that. They're looking for a few good gays, not a tribe. Homocons abet this recruitment drive by urging gay people to qualify for membership in an assimilated elite, and that means leaving the tribe behind. By pitting personal ambition against communal values, they hope to wean gay people from the institution that has played a major part in their rise. The queer community still ties its members to the left, which is why it has been targeted by homocons.
Thoughts? |
