Walking around the streets of Madrid, I’ve heard many queer twenty-year-olds decrying the gays that can’t stop talking about being gay and constantly present their sexuality as an issue. “You’re gay! Get over it!” they say. “No need to advertise.” And I understand this. In the same way I don’t want to have to come out every day for the rest of my life, people don’t want to be a walking social issue. A funny Rolling Stones article recently declared queer people are finally gaining acceptance and equal representation on television because they finally have gay reality TV characters as trashy and pathetic as their straight “Jersey Shore” counterparts. True acceptance embraces both the best and worst of a people, and so it’s great it is finally acceptable to have a complementary force to balance the ultra-familial and stereotypical “Modern Family” pairing. But just because being gay doesn’t have to be an issue as life permeating as many make it to be, people can’t turn their backs on the queer issues that persist. Not everywhere is as gay and accepting as Madrid or New York City or San Francisco.
In pop-culture news, Richard Chamberlain recently recommended gay men who want leading roles in Hollywood should stay in the closet, with the idea that a gay actor cannot realistically play a straight character because the audience will always be thinking about his being gay. The fact everyone thinks their straight while they are in the closet shows how easy it is. As for audiences focusing on an actor’s sexuality, it might be true about Sean Hayes whose entire shtick is acting effeminate and cannot get a laugh doing much else, but other than him, it is a ridiculous notion about acting yet confronts the widespread presumption of an American and worldwide audience that is by nature homophobic. It’s the same understanding of and response to an audience as Dr. Phil had when recently advising a mother whose son plays with Barbie dolls to present him with more masculine toys, presumably GI Joes and planes and trains, to help steer him in the straight direction. I mean Dr. Phil is a bastard even without such a prescription, but in this he is just responding to the heteronormative familial preferences of the public that somehow believes you can steer kids away from the gay. And that is an issue that must be confronted. The status quo here is not acceptable, so even if being gay is not an issue to you, get over it and help move things in the right direction. I’m not even talking about issues of countries like Iran or Uganda or Jamaica where queer issues are actually issues of life or death. Even in the United States or Spain or any democratic country, until the queer issue is not an issue, it remains an issue, and should be talked about as such. Maybe not every passing moment of every day of every week of every year, but we still have a while to go before being queer doesn’t seem so queer.
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