Read Online For Frying Out Loud by Fay Jacobs - Free Book Online

Federal Marriage Amendment and same-sex unions, television news has started to clean up its act.
    We are now getting glimpses of actual, identifiable gay men and lesbians saying sensible things into the camera or being filmed in the (gasp) sunlight.
    In fact, over the past few years, LGBT images have become more, dare I say, wholesome? With every passing day, TV news, interview shows and sitcoms feature the everyday lives of the not rich and not famous homosexuals.
    Finally, television news images flash of gay men burping babies, mid-life lesbians in bridal lace and re-runs of those five fabulous gentlemen from Queer Eye giving grooming tips to disheveled straight guys. For a while, every time we turned on the tube we saw a gay and smiling Episcopal Bishop. It was a religious experience.
    These days, the gay community makes it especially easy for the slothful media. Our most recent pride parades becamebona fide wedding marches. Dykes on Bikes morphed into Brides on Rides. The largest, most flamboyant contingents included Gay Men with Strollers and the Metropolitan Community Church. As for the police, they traded rubber gloves and billy clubs for rainbow flags waving from police car antennae.
    Sure, there was still plenty of drag and drama, but the most astoundingly radical marchers included married same-sex couples – Ward and Ward Cleavers waving oversized marriage licenses. For once, PFLAG included fathers of the brides. It’s about time our image improved and our gay community was recognized for its own everyday diversity. Yippee!
    But wait. Does all this gay multiplicity wreck havoc with our traditional and I think, special gay culture? Our new TV image may, to borrow a well-worn phrase, “look like Gay America,” but does it now exclude the drag queen heroes and social renegades that gave rise to the Stonewall revolution? Have gay images been blended into a media food processor and come out as a middle – American smoothie?
    There’s no question that this homogenized version of the homo community is an image whose time has come. We exist in as many assorted, remarkable, dreary, wacko, and exhilarating subcultures as the straight community…we’ve got our fringe and they’ve got theirs. The only difference is that our fringe comes with lots of, well, fringe. And spangles. And leather. And softball players. And feathers.
    While the very real images of everyday gays are critical to our ongoing legal battles for state by state equality, I hope they don’t result in a disappearing act for our entire GLBT culture. As we fight for the right to marry, adopt, inherit and achieve the equality we are due as Americans, we should make certain that our vibrant community keeps its celebrated options open.
    After all, there are plenty of gay men and lesbians who don’t want to marry, raise a family, buy a minivan or be portrayed as (yawn) average. And there are LGBT folks who do want those things but who also enjoy standing along a paraderoute cheering for buff disco bunnies and topless women on motorcycles. I remember a group of women from New England what called themselves The Moving Violations. Hah! Truly, there are many facets of gaydom and it’s the mix that makes us special.
    We cannot marginalize the fabulous drag queens and brave bull dykes who not only wrote our history but forged our path – cajoling, prying and booting the rest of us out of the closet.
    Along with our fight for the inalienable right to life, liberty, partner benefits and the pursuit of happiness, we have to protect our inalienable right to rebellion and our very own special culture. It’s our tradition, part of our heritage and our roots.
    So for all the progress, I still sometimes long to turn on the TV and see a grainy shot of a half-nekked gal with a Harley between her legs. I hope the networks still humor us once in awhile.

January 2008
    OH COME ALL YE FRUITCAKES
    This holiday season took the cake