Joseph Couture is a Canadian based Author and Freelance Journalist. Joseph's blogsite can be found here: [ Link ]
By Joseph Couture (London, Ontario) SEPT 19 | An acquaintance of mine, who could only be described as an old school homosexual liberationist was having a bit of a meltdown. He was mad because the one gay bar in the town where I live doesn’t call itself a gay bar; rather they bill themselves as “alternative.”
He said it was a disgrace that it had come to the point where we had assimilated to the extent where we would no longer call ourselves gay and we could only have a bar if we “let” straight people in.
At first I wondered if the guy had a point. Why couldn’t we call ourselves gay? And how come the heterosexuals were trying to “take over?” But as the night progressed, the reality of the situation began to dawn on me.
There were certainly lots of pretty young gay boys in the place. Too bad most of them were too drunk or stoned to remember your name even if you could get close enough to tell them. But there were also what appeared to be lots of very attractive young straight men and women.
There were guys dancing with guys, girls dancing with girls, and men dancing with women. But who they were dancing with wasn’t what defined them because there were straight men dancing with gay boys and gay boys dancing with straight women. It was all very confusing. I couldn’t tell who was who and what was what.
Over the course of the evening I saw a couple of very attractive guys making out in the corner. They didn’t mind being watched and I didn’t mind watching. Soon after, this hot little muscle dude was making out with an equally hot young woman. They were bumping and grinding and examining each others tonsils.
I noticed this one young man wandering about rather frantically. He looked a bit drunk and a bit panicked. I asked the man standing beside me if he knew who the guy was and if he knew why he seemed so edgy.
“Oh that’s Carl,” the guy said to me. “But forget it. He’s straight and he’s probably freaking out because it’s almost last call and he hasn’t picked up a chick yet.” I asked him why a straight man would be here looking for girls. ‘Think about it,” he replied, “Tons of horny fag hags and next to no competition.”
He said some of the other straight guys who frequented the place came because they felt safe here. “There are lots of fist fights in straight bars over stupid shit. You look at some guy’s girl the wrong way and you’ll get popped in the mouth,” he told me. So he said these guys come where they are likely to get what they want and keep the hassles to a minimum.
By the end of the evening I had concluded that my friend had it all wrong. We weren’t selling out by dropping the labels and mixing with the straight people. We were dropping the “us versus them” mentality and becoming one people.
It wasn’t assimilation at all. It was integration. We weren’t losing our identity to heterosexuals; we were sharing the best of what we had to offer with those who were willing to accept it.
This is not a sign we have lost ground. It is a sign we have gained it.
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2 comments:
How the cycle spins around to almost where it was.
1968, HAIR and unisex. We didn't care who we danced with. Straight boys went home with gay boys if the girls had all gone (mostly with each other.)
Gay boys woke up along side a girl and remembered that he didn't realise she was a girl until he got her home and unwrapped her.
It was all done in the name of love and peace, and we didn't need liberating, we were liberated.
Sex came first, politics came later if we had the energy.
It was the laws that needed liberating, but even more it seems today, the minds of the bigots need to be freed from their infernal indoctrination that threatens our human right to celebrate our love.
When the religions leave us alone, I'll consider integration, but I'd prefer free love even if I do have to play safely.
Intellectually, I can see both sides of this, but the problem is that society isn't represented by the bar scene, no matter how much some people think it is.
When we can walk down the street or into any business or even church, holding hands or displaying affection, without raising an eyebrow or getting sideways looks, then we will have integration.
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