Fred Phelps take a vacation, we got this one covered.

This is an old piece I had written for QBliss Magazine, written long before prop 8 or the massive resurgence of political activism in the gay community that it caused. As I read this piece I see the amount of arrogance and preachy ego that fall within its pages. My views on many things have changed, some slightly, some dramatically since this piece was written, but some things remain the same. I realize now the growth I have made as a person and I no longer fight with such tenacity to demand change in situations out of my control.  I have come to accept that differences exist for many a reason, while still feeling free to call out the many misconceptions and inequalities our community offers the world. We all know that I am no fan of the sterotypes that our community perpetuates, but I have found more successful ways of discussing this topic over the years.

Well, here goes nothing.

The Essay

I stand, waist deep in my own flaws, yet still question the validity of those around me. How are we to build a promising future, when the foundation of the present is eroding beneath us? It’s very possible my eyes are tinted in colors visible only to me, but I can’t change the world as I see it, only question its intentions.

As a young gay man, I can no longer idly watch such a potentially influential community of people circle the drain. I use the term community with a degree of cynicism, as its something I don’t feel we have fully earned.

As a boy, I spent much of my time escaping reality, jumping from one fantasy to the next. My mother told me I had an imagination that knew no limits – I was convinced it was A.D.D. I had always known I was different from the other kids and I was oddly accepting of that, it was a distinction that I wore with pride. At age five I came home from school and told my mom that I liked boys. I didn’t fully understand what that meant or just how immensely it would affect my life, but I knew it to be true. 12 years later I informed the high school world that I was gay by climbing atop a cafeteria lunch table, giving in to verbal diarrhea. There isn’t a single day that goes by, in which I don’t look back and wonder why everything got so hard.

Fresh out of High school, with a fledgling streak of depression that was quickly devouring my sanity; I stepped into the gay world. I had heard whispers of supportive families of gay men and women, groups of passionate individuals whom felt that our only hope of survival was to rely on each other. After all, no one else seemed to really care about us. Images of powerful, intelligent and proud men flickered in my head. I was convinced that the majority of us would have been so tired of being second class citizens, that we would openly accept one another under the banner of our shared discriminations. My head slowly emerged from the blinding lights of the world I was leaving behind, and this time I didn’t plan on being alone.

What unfolded before me was no paradise of intellectual minds, no wonderland of strong ideas or supportive expressions. The world flipped itself upside down and within a few short weeks I had begun to quickly watch my utopian ideals sink in the horizon.

I sat in this theatre for months and watched nothing but badly written dramas composed by some of the most self loathing authors I had never heard of. I often wondered to myself why it was that I had been so wrong about this “family”, this community of people. Eight years later the show is still running strong and I am so tired of the stage. To this day I have yet to fully understand the gravity of the situation, but I can clearly see the cancer that is eating away at our common goals.

Many of us in the gay community feel like we have been ignored, silenced and shut out for too long. This tearing of communicable fibers is responsible for so much of the self loathing, anger and overall feeling of frustration that plagues so many of us. What more could be expected? I don’t think any of us has ever been lucky enough to have been spared the sting of homophobia or a well placed hate crime. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t see the consequences of ignorance, religious intolerance or just plain old fashioned hatred.

It would be easily argued that many of us are furious at the current state of things. Gay issues aside, the world is on fire and we are all citizens of that flame. Yet for all our heralds of righteousness, our own camp is quickly becoming a hotbed of hypocrisy. Our inability to properly maintain our own collective dignity is the most destructive force rallying against our cause. There is no need to cry “homophobia”, for the enemy is within.

I know many of you will hiss and moan at the words dying to leave my lips. I acknowledge the ease of turning a blind eye to my own flaws, only to point out those of others. As a community we have become so ingrained with the idea that the enemy is outside ourselves that we no longer have the ability to take responsibility for our own actions. It’s so much easier to blame the cheating boyfriend than it is to accept that our own complacency has given birth to a world where sex is easily given away as a passing “hello”. Our dignity as a people is one of the few things we still control and its worth so much. So how is it that it sells for so little anymore?

When did we all become so obsessed with competing with each other? When did having a designer’s name branded on your ass elevate you to a higher level of being? When did selling out and being brainwashed by the media become so popular?

The world around us is constantly changing, its charges creating chaos and turmoil at every glance. No young gay man or woman should ever be forced to come to terms with such a tremendous concept, like sexuality, in an environment of such disregard. How many times are we going to watch as that gay teenager commits suicide to escape the world around him, before we give him a better world to hope for? How many of us will sit by and watch as he slowly descends into a culture rampant with drug abuse, sexual violence and moral ambiguity? I don’t expect many of us to cut up our “gay cards” in silent protest of the current situation. However, your more than entitled to mine, I won’t accept this anymore.

We should be fighting for our equality, demanding more of those in power, demanding more of ourselves. Yet so many of us can’t be bothered with such trivial matters when it’s far easier to sit back and complain about the world, than it is to actively change it. Who has time to build a better community, when gay.com can offer me a quick hand job and silent nod to my own hedonism? When did we sell our souls to excess and decide that self respect and morality was sub par to a great tan and a six-pack? How many of us have to be slaughtered by indifference before we collectively unite and actually accomplish something?

When Middle America lays witness to a gay pride parade, what thoughts go on in their heads? Here you have a large group of people dressed in a complex array of ridiculous costumes. Grown men walking around nude in the streets and proudly allowing strangers to come up and fondle them. Men and women dressed in S&M outfits whipping each other and imitating oral, vaginal and anal sex.  I couldn’t begin to count the number of people whom I’ve witnessed, flat out, having sex with one another in the alleys and sidewalks of the parade route itself. How are we ever going to garner the respect and understanding of the outside world, when we go out of our way to scare them off? How dare you try and pass off your one sided view of sexual liberation as the universal poster boy for homosexuality. My sexuality does not define me, nor does it perpetuate my actions. It is my actions that define my character, and I politely ask that the world be given a chance to see who the rest of us are.

How in the world are we ever to expect an outsider to take that bold leap and attempt to see things in our shoes, when we are doing everything possible to highlight or glaring differences?

I am confident that if Martin Luther king had used this particular avenue to express his desire for racial equality, the outcome would have been dramatically different. Gay or Straight, people are sexual beings and there is nothing wrong with fully exploring your own sexuality. However, if Dr King had explicitly focused his energy on his personal sexual habits in an attempt to bridge the racial gap, his profound words would have been lost in the crowd. There is a time and place for everything, and sexual liberation can be an amazing thing. Yet there is nothing to be proud of when we are throwing parades in honor of public nudity, pop culture idolatry and the extinguishing of any self respect we still have. There are a lot of positive things can come from gay pride parades and gay themed events, but if sex and alcohol are the main focus of any conquest, the mission has already failed.

It’s gotten so bad that outside companies have begun to assume that the only way to sell to a gay audience is to inundate us with naked men and blatantly boast about how much sex we’ll get if we employ their services. A current Travelocity ad depicts a statue of Poseidon with gay men passing by it and the fountain sprays up a gush of water from its crotch, as if it was climaxing. Lack of creativity aside, this is how we are being marketed. As if we were nothing more than a pair of disembodied testicles looking for our next fuck. There are so many of us whom feel ostracized by modern “gay culture” and that feeling of shame by association pushes us from those we should be connecting with.

Gay men come in all shapes, sizes, colors and points of view. We do not all have lisps, walk with a swish to our hips or gain the respect of our peers with a biting sense of fashion, as most the media would have you believe. A recent article in The Advocate expressed a writer’s opinion that if a gay man did not act feminine and flamboyant, he was essentially denying who he was on the inside. That in some way, because he didn’t conform to the time honored stereotype, he was living a lie. It astounded me that such a well respected magazine would even allow such a glaring misconception to be printed.

Many of us long for monogamy, a loving relationship and dream of kids and a home to one day call our own. We are frustrated with the comical archetypes that are constantly portrayed of gay men and women, in our own media. How many badly written gay movies have to sit on Blockbuster’s shelves before gay directors understand that a gay drama doesn’t have to center around casual sex and cheesy clichés?

We have the potential to be so beautiful and so powerful, not just as gay men and women, but human beings.  I hope for a time when young gay men can come out of the closet and pass into an environment of welcoming, where their peers are never forced into a world of alcohol abuse, in an attempt to escape their own unhappiness.

We all have something that demands more of us, and it’s time we answered the call. Many have fallen so that we could stand here today and live on in their memories. Don’t let their sacrifice be for not. It is in truth that the words of the deceased are past on to the living. Do not silence the dead, for they are the only ones that have truly seen the world.