By R.J. Beaumia
A couple of weeks ago when Roseanne Barr called gays and lesbians "narcissistic" on a California radio program, Jason Bellini of Logo News reported on it in one of those quickie "news farts" the network intersperses between its 30 daily repeats of out-of-sequence episodes of "Tales of the City" and commercials for pills that claim to naturally enhance your "maleness."
Barr was quoted in the report as saying, "Never once in my 54 years have I ever once heard a gay or lesbian person who's politically active say one thing about anything that was not about them. They don't care about minimum wage, they don't care about any other group other than their own self because you know, some people say being gay and lesbian is a totally narcissistic thing and sometimes I wonder…"
I was disappointed in Roseanne and hurt by her comments, but when Bellini finished the story, he segued into his next piece – a full report about the 2007 White Party in Palm Springs, scrumptiously rich in visual and narrative bacchanalia – and I began to have second thoughts. Whether or not Bellini's juxtaposing of these stories was a cleverly intended indictment of gay male culture or was just a sloppy journalistic choice, either way the effect wasn't very flattering and seemed to buttress what Roseanne said.
I've slagged off Logo in a past column, and since then my opinion of it has changed little. However, like the boyfriend who can't name one Supreme Court justice and picks his nose in public – but gives great head – Logo serves its purpose until something better comes along. Leave the news to PBS.
So, with that shallow assessment of my own in mind, and considering Barr's comments and Bellini's ham-handed editorial choice and the nugget of truth it exposed, I shall ask the question in the Carrie Bradshaw/Candace Bushnell style, which is itself the epitome of shallowness: Are gay people as shallow as Roseanne Barr thinks we are?
I cannot speak for lesbians here, and I won't claim to speak for all queer males, but I will say that I have concluded from my own experiences with a few gay men, and through some very brutal self-examination worthy of the Cultural Revolution, that Roseanne has proven herself a woman of some perspicacity on the point she so clumsily attempted to make.
Because I agree that some gay men are narcissistic and shallow, and that some of us are enslaved by body fascism and the pursuit of beauty at the expense of everything else, some might accuse me of being bitter. They would be correct. My earliest memories about the onset of receiving secondary sex characteristics, when reluctantly recalled, only force me to relive the disappointment, and then the deep depression, I experienced when I realized that I had failed to place a single numbered ping-pong ball in the hot body lottery. While many of the boys I knew got Krugerrands for sexual currency, I was forced to use wampum – made at home on a loom.
If I looked like those White Party guys, though, I would be right there along side them. They're young and beautiful, and they should be out there working their kangalangs. Not for a second do I begrudge them their place in the sun. If I looked like that my confidence would be limitless and I would never wear clothes; I would be unstoppable, and can picture myself as the first naked astronaut or president.
But while Roseanne Barr's comments were meant to point out that we in the gay community don't care about political issues that are not our own, what she said feeds into – and is founded in – the stereotype that gay culture is all about being white, rich, and male which in turn was, in essence, made flesh by the White Party news report on Logo. And, whether we want to face it or not, while there's nothing wrong with being a white, rich, gay male who goes to circuit parties, it's that stereotype that helps fuel anti-gay sentiment. Barr, Bellini, Logo, and other culprits who are in, or connected to, the gay community should know better.
Yes, we are strident about discrimination in the armed forces, about marriage inequality, about ENDA, about hate crimes law, etc. Why? Because when we get out of bed in the morning we don't know if we'll have it to return to at night: Will our landlords kick us out of our apartments because we're gay? Will we get the shit kicked out of us on our way to job, or while we're there, because we're gay? Will we be fired from that job because we're gay? Will our partners lose their health insurance because we're gay?
As I've said before, we here in America have no choice but to be full-time homosexuals. There is not one fact in our lives that cannot be altered, usually for the worse, but for the mere fact that we're gay in a country where it's the law that being gay "entitles" you to partial citizenship. Yes, we really do have special rights. And for all you people out there who claim that being gay is only part of who you are, that it's not everything you are: Fuck you. As long you're under these spacious skies from sea to shining sea, faggot is your full-time job.
Gay conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan, in his blog the Daily Dish, recently commented on a story he'd heard on NPR about some gay people complaining that we're losing our edge as we become more accepted and mainstream. Specifically, he said that those of us who are "[gay] leftists fear that without oppression, they will have no politics left – even though gay people are now far more openly represented across the political spectrum." He wishes.
Put succinctly, Sullivan doesn't know shit. He's nothing more than a motherfucker who doesn't want to pay his fair share of taxes, and he'd rather slag off his own people before he'd publicly allow that the world is a pretty lousy place if you've got to work for a living. Does he know anything of those of us out here fighting to organize workers, fighting for the rights of people to have safe working environments, fighting for living minimum wages, fighting for a fair health care system, fighting for the dignity of people like himself? And we're suckin' dick while we do it. So much for the emptiness of the gay left.
Sullivan drinks from the same homophobic well as the George Wills and the William Kristols and the Gary Bauers and the James Dobsons. He just adds a little fizz to it.
He's the privileged gay white male that the right wing loves to hate, the same one Roseanne Barr mistakes for the rest of us, the same one that Logo shows at the circuit party. So it's business as usual where, like in old joke, "What do you call a gay man when he leaves a room? A faggot." However, in today's America, it's still acceptable to call him that even while he's still in the room.
And one more thing. Jerry Falwell. Dead. Fantastic.
