Intolerant Tolerance. There has recently been a major backslide on television toward antihomosexual bigotry, this time in the guise of acceptance. Gay men are accepted only if they act like flaming faggots who accept being called "queer". This is akin to 'accepting' blacks only if they are content to fit themselves to Steppin Fetchit stereotypes and to be called "nigger".
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Cable station TV Land is promoting a special week in June 'celebrating' gay (and lesbian) characters on classic TV sitcoms under the rubric "Tickled Pink". Get it? Pink! Gay men are feminine, not masculine; imitation women, not real men.
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June, you see, is "Gay Pride Month" — or, as it has been renamed by some lesbians, "Gay and Lesbian Pride Month". I am the man who in 1970 coined the term "Gay Pride" as it is used today, and I am indignant about the 'special programming' some broadcasters are putting together for this month, focusing on AIDS (as tho it is indeed "the gay disease", even tho the great preponderance of people with AIDS around the world are straight) and on "lesbian and gay" this and "gay and lesbian" that. "Gay" must never be uttered without "lesbian" lurking somewhere, and gay men's manhood must never be accepted as a thing in itself but always equated with lesbianism. That's the New Homosexuality: same sex = both sexes = sexless. The raw male sexuality that really characterizes homosexuality is always to be hidden and denied.
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As part of its "Tickled Pink" promo, TV Land employs blond superfruit Carson Kressley of the odiously named Bravo series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to say he tried for a long time to twitch his nose like Elizabeth Montgomery of Bewitched, but couldn't. That same repulsive fruit is currently to be seen on some other promo, for an upcoming movie or TV show, in which women are talking about looking for the perfect man, whereupon he pipes up, in his best queeny accent, that he's been looking for yearssss! Another TV spot features the flamboyantly campy comic Mario Cantone acting the bitch, as 'one of the girls' in a promo for Sex and the City. A Tonight Show rerun this week showed Jay Leno sneeringly calling Budweiser Select 'by its right name, "Gay Heineken"'. And on, and on.
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No sooner had I finished this blog and told three friends about it by email, than I go downstairs to watch some TV, and find that Jay Leno's second guest is the very-queer comic "Ant", who rose to modest fame in the TV contest Last Comic Standing.* Ant pulls out his (anti)gay stereotypes, and recounts that when he was a flight attendant he once worked the first-class cabin when some European princess, whose family had bought out the entire first-class section, presumably so she would not be bothered by commoners, was being very snooty and imperious. Ant wearied of her attitude. When she remarked that in her country she was a princess, Ant retorted (he says), "In America I'm a queen. I outrank you."
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As Laugh-In mockingly quoted another 'queen', Victoria, many years ago, "We are not amused."
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Everywhere on TV, homosexuality is attacked as unmasculine, effete, effeminate. If a gay character is to be cast, do they hire a Rock Hudson, a strong, handsome, manly man with not a trace of effeminacy about him (who really was gay), or a flaming faggot (who might actually be straight)?
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The extremely rare gay roles that are not to come off as fruity are almost invariably given to straight men (like Eric McCormack of the hideous, antihomosexual pile of crap Will & Grace), who then go out of their way to tell the world that they're not really gay — because, of course, that would be a disgrace. Actually-gay actors like Sean Hayes (of that same piece of crap) camp and flame like lunatics on speed, completely out of touch with their basic, masculine nature, and don't understand themselves to be enemies of gay men.
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I'm tired of it.
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Why is there no gay TV? I recently upgraded to digital cable so get something like 140 channels, not one of which is gay! Not one. Oh, there is apparently a gay — or "lesbian and gay" (that is, heterosexual: men-and-women-together-now!) — on-demand service called "Here", but it requires a separate subscription, which I'm not about to buy. I pay quite enuf for cable, thank you, and gay programming should be part of readily available services. Do black people have to pay extra for UPN, BET, or other stations of special interest to blacks? If not, why should gay men have to pay extra for some piddling, tiny bit of programming for their interests? I don't even know if what is offered at "Here" is worth my time or is more of the same insane "lesbigay" crap that gay men have been attacked with for decades, in which one must never speak of men without also speaking of women; we must always spend all our time with women, identify with and support our "sisters", and never, never ever want to be alone with men, because that would be wrong.
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I assume that "Here" derives its name from the noxious chant, "We're here. We're queer. Get used to it." Of course, that chant is always intoned by mixed groups of men and women, because, of course, lesbians have always been called "queer". Oh, wait. That's wrong. Lesbians have NEVER been called "queer". They can't let men have ANYTHING of their own. They get their own word, "lesbian", but steal our words too. So if we call ourselves "gay", we're calling ourselves, in essence, male lesbians. If we call ourselves "queer", same thing. Never are gay men ever to think of themselves as unique, special, different in a good way. No, we are always to be subordinate to lesbian women, and ride at the back of our own bus.
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All this must change. There are so many talented gay men with infinite networks of other talented gay men in media and music, but there is no gay television, essentially no gay film (except some porn), and no gay music. The soundtrack in gay bars is all-straight, all the time. Why?
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And why do gay men consent to be stereotyped and attacked by our ostensible friends? Why do they gladly play the simpering, effeminate buffoon so agreeably, reinforcing destructive stereotypes rather than challenging them? Don't they realize they are role models from whom young boys just coming to terms with their sexuality take cues as to how to behave? Don't they realize they are pushing kids to deform themselves at least psychically and perhaps even physically, as to have themselves castrated in "sex-change" surgery, to conform to the vicious slander that they aren't real boys and will never be real men?
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A couple of weeks ago I was talking, in my favorite New York gay bar, with a South American whom my friend Don introduced me to, a guy named Gabriel, from Uruguay. He says there is a sizable gay community in Montevideo, and even a gay-friendly resort outside the city. But it is friendly only to flaming faggots. If a man walks down the street in a dress, Gabriel says, he is "accepted", because such a psychosexually castrated loser is no threat to macho Latino culture. But if two perfectly masculine men should try to walk down the street holding hands, they will encounter bristling hostility and perhaps even be physically attacked.
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Almost 36 years after Stonewall, we in the United States are scarcely more advanced than that kinky Uruguayan town. Even Hollywood-based TV accepts gay men's right to be different only if they renounce their manhood and play the role of drag-queen nellies, flaming like a barn afire.
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That's not tolerance. That is bigotry. And we must neither inflict nor consent to suffer bigotry.
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Hollywood, cut the crap. Media must stop telling gay men that they must be nelly fruits to be accepted — as harmless queers. That's not acceptance but psychological warfare against gay men's acceptance of their full, masculine nature.
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Gay men are being killed by friendly fire.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,665.)
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* That show was hosted by the adorable Jay Mohr, who was born in Verona, in Essex County, New Jersey. My city, Newark, is the county seat. Ant also made a lewd remark about Willie Aames, who is to appear on a TV show Ant is associated with, about fat celebrities losing weight. I won't repeat the remark except to say that he found Aames very hot, even when fat. I know that Aames was stunning in the classic sitcom (set in New Jersey) Charles in Charge. I later saw him on one of the classic religious dramas, Insight or This Is the Life, where he still looked good but not as good.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:26 PM