the Great White Hope of San Francisco

I don't update much because I don't have a lot to say.

This is not to say that I don't have opinions. I have a lot of those.

Opinions about gay folks, for instance. I am one. Hopefully you know this.

That said, I've noticed that "gay issues" in recent times comes down to two things: fags wanting the right to serve openly in the US war machine I mean military and how a gay teenager can't go to prom with her girlfriend.

Fact: Fags are butching it up army-style! Oh I know it's not just fags who want to play army - the dykes want all up in there too. Wanting to do their patriotic duty. Military service is a career option for people who otherwise might not have many options. It's kind of like the Roman Empire, where the disenfranchised or completely unenfranchised folks can get themselves some social mobility by killing for a country that hates them and is all too happy to let them get themselves maimed and killed in straight white people wars. Patriotism! Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is sweet and proper to die for one's country. Even when that country is always looking for ways to make sure you're as irrelevant as possible because your very existence offends a small minority of your fellow citizens!

Fact: It sucks to be a gay kid in America! Not news, people. Stop the gum-flapping and the arm-waving. Jesus Christ Superstar, do you know how many teenagers don't get to go to their prom with their homo significant others? Why the fuck is this a big deal now? What is so special about this one particular case? Why is everyone surprised this has happened? In Mississippi, for god's sake! Has the American South become some bastion of progressivism and I just haven't noticed at all? Because let me tell you, I live here and it hasn't exactly been an overnight metamorphosis of tolerance for the homos up in here, even in liberal-ish North Carolina. It does blow my homo lady brain cells that local parents would have an entirely fake prom just to psych her out and humiliate her. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that the parents who organized this two-prom event were the ones who spawned the kids who are giving this girl a bunch of crap! It's almost like homophobia is a learned set of attitudes!

I'm not saying that this is something that can safely be ignored. All I'm saying is there are a few pieces here that show a bigger picture of what it means to be a homo to mainstream people, and that picture is not really illustrative of what happens in real life. I'm also saying that facebook status slacktivism is not the way to keep this from happening. What will it accomplish when you change your facebook status to "let Constance take her girlfriend to prom!" All that will say to straight folks is that once people finally come around and get over this prom bullshit, they'll pat themselves on the back and say to each other, gosh look what we've done.

And the homo kids who are homeless? Well no one really thinks too much about some hoodlum street kids. For that matter, what about all the rest of those kids who are homeless? Hoodlum street kids.

It's not a secret that the Homosexual Lobby (by which I mean, the Gay Rights Movement, sponsored by Bud Light) has limited itself to a very exclusionist agenda. 1. Spend time with family. 2. Be treated equally. 3. Buy milk. 4. Assimilate into respectable straight society.

Assimilate. There are lesbian couples and gay couples and we're just like you straight folks! We're white, and attractive, and wealthy and have cable and we read all the right magazines and if you would just let us get married we'll shut right up.

Meanwhile the rest of us fags and dykes and people who are outside fags and dykes are just shit out of luck because we don't have all those pretty white people speaking up for us.

Marriage can suck my asshole. I don't want it. I never have. I understand that some people do and I can respect that, because my way of being does not have to be your way of being. It probably isn't a lot of people's way of being. Of course I'm for equal rights. Of course I want that. Who doesn't want to be treated equally?

But y'all is suckas if you think that selling out to the straight people is going to make it all better for all of us homos. When I said marriage can suck my asshole I meant the HRC can suck my asshole. I meant the Courage Campaign can suck my asshole. What a fucking joke. Did I ever tell you about the time Equality NC invited me to their annual conference/banquet? This was when I was just coming into it as a queer kid. I'd read some books. Wore some rainbows. Went to Pride. It was awesome.

They wanted me to give them $150 for the privilege of listening to some rich homos talk about what great work they were doing for equality. Listen homos, I thought to myself, I'm 19 years old. I don't have half that much money. I live with my dad, for chrissakes. I felt excluded.

Listen homos. You have got to snap out of the post-Pride afterglow. It's awesome that Obama gave us our own month. It's in the middle of summer and as we all know, homos love a parade.

He's hoping we'll all die of heatstroke. He's hoping we'll shut up and take to the streets and melt into a fabulous puddle of glitter and feather boas.

He wants us to settle. They all want us to settle. There is so much more than marriage that we need. It just so happens that the things we need are the things that everyone needs.

I keep coming back to this whenever I think about the Gay Rights Movement, sponsored by Bud Light. It was some gay youth org that published this. 48% of homeless youth are homeless because they got kicked to the curb for being homos or trans.

Gavin Newsom, the Great White Hope of San Francisco, cleaned up San Francisco in the 1990s. By "clean up" we mean gentrify. We mean get the riffraff off the streets and make it nice and shiny and safe for the rich people. The poor people will find somewhere else to go. They're like cockroaches, we'll never really get rid of them.

Homeless kids. Street hoodlums. Instead of helping these people we sweep them under the rug. Or throw them under the bus. Get them out of the way so the rich folks feel better.

That's what the Gay Rights Movement is about. Making homosexuality nice and shiny and safe for the rich people. The ones we're trying to convince to let us get married. Because once we can get married, and protect our health insurance and estates, we'll finally have arrived. That's equality.

There's that weird hobo on the corner again. Should we call the cops?