July 2002

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

Greek Proverb

In case you missed it, last month marked one of the greatest marketing opportunities in the capitalist world: Gay Pride. What was born as a political rallying cry from the marginalized and dispossessed denizens of a persecuted Manhattan bar has become a party celebrating consumer culture and our place as one of the most sought-after markets in America. We are a pink market consisting mostly of well-educated, sophisticated, moneyed, ready-to-buy-the-latest-anything, hyper consumers.

My gym celebrated gay pride by selling us insecurity and low self-esteem, as if we don't already have that in bountiful measure. A dry erase board proclaimed: "Pride is here. Will you take your shirt off?" Oh, that's what pride's about. It's pec pride. Of course, I can't take my shirt off. My God, I don't even wax. An axiom you learn quickly is that one type of diversity that is not celebrated among most gay men is diversity of body type.

What happened? Coming out used to be a political statement, now it seems it's little more than a promise of allegiance to a particular consumer demographic. "Yes, I'm gay and I prefer Absolut Vodka." We look for "positive" gay images in advertising as if they serve as some affirmation that we are worthwhile rather than recognizing, as Madison Avenue does, that cheap sentiment and emotional manipulation merely sell products.

Is there a distinctive gay culture? Is it worth preserving? And, if so, how will we pass it on to the next generation? Or, like the Beasty Boys, are we just fighting for our right to party? Where are our intellectual leaders? Victims of AIDS or casualties of our obsession with Falcon Studios?

At Stonewall, we gave American society an image of us that we had shamefully hidden away for decades. But in the intervening 30 years, two forces coincided to lead us down our present path: we grew more politically powerful (in part by selling the idea that we are just like straight people) and concomitantly increased our economic might. Corporate America took notice and merely repackaged the assimilationist political image and sold it back to us for two reasons: heterosexual looking gays wouldn't offend middle America and it seemed to play into the images of ourselves that we were proffering. Thus was born a consumer demographic.

And we have embraced our ascendancy into the firmament of mainstream consumer culture. We have celebrated becoming an important market in the same way we have celebrated important legal/political/social victories as if they are all equivalent. But what has it cost us in real terms? Our self identity? Our position as a lucrative consumer market has had a deleterious, pernicious effect on our community. I see the new cult of masculinity in gay culture - one that has been brought to you courtesy of a dozen different purveyors of consumer goods - as tantamount to a resurgence in self-hatred. Straight-acting-no-fats-no-fems taglines should be a cultural relic instead of a contemporary personals mainstay. Now we cloak our homophobia in euphemism. Many gay men assert their disdain for other gay men by advertising their desire for a masculine male, as if masculinity can be (or should be) easily defined in a post-feminist world.

So if we are now largely indistinguishable from the over-consuming greater society, what is the source of our pride. Ten years ago in Atlanta, I participated in my first Pride march. We strode up Peacthree Street between downtown and midtown right past the First Baptist Church, whose pastor never failed to seize an opportunity to deride and denigrate homosexuals the world over. Every year that I marched up Peachtree Street, the First Baptist Church served as a potent symbol of why we were there. Why we needed to be over 100,000 strong and proud and not afraid.

Last year, my partner's hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, held their first gay pride. In a climate of hostility, a few hundred citizens of Pocatello and surrounding communities did what thousands of us have done ever since Stonewall: marched and made their presence known. There were no corporate sponsors or marketing surveys.

We could learn a great deal from those who are newly proud, those who are proud of their difference. Because we ARE different, not necessarily in an intrinsic gay-spirit sort-of-way, but our history of discrimination - and the culture that grew up around it - makes us different. I will return to pride celebrations at some point in the future when we've sent Budweiser packing, tamed our over-consuming urges, and, once again, have something in which to be proud.