Bad Queer, Good Gay?

The Endless Game Between Homophobes and Assimilationist Gays

[via AlterNet]

By Clarence Patton, Movement Vision Lab.

Queers need to reframe the struggle away from assimilation and back to sexual freedom.

Back in the late '80s and early '90s, when I was just a baby activist in college, there was ongoing tension between two sects of "The Gays": those of us who felt it was important to be accepted given -- or even because of -- our differences and those who believed that it was important to emphasize the idea that we are just like straight people, with just a smidge of difference, and should be accepted despite our differences. In essence, the debate was between the "Queers" and the "Assimilationists." I was part of the first group. At one point, the tension between the two groups reached such a crescendo that the Queers copied images from lesbian and gay porn, bordered it with lines from the Declaration of Independence and wheat-pasted it all over campus with the tag line: We are not just like you. The Assimilationists were both incensed and mortified. We Queers were just tickled ...r

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One of LifeLube's favorite passages:

Anti-Queer arguments based in religion, culture and the creation of children are all smoke screens to cover up something that's really very base: disgust. Trying to rationalize and cover up disgust with other excuses merely serves to justify the perpetuation of political, social and physical violence against Queer communities. But if we pay attention to the messages from the LGBTQQI movement-- particularly the messages we send ourselves -- it would appear that we have forgotten that our marginalization is based in others' discomfort around our sexuality, and we've responded by not talking about our sexuality and instead talking about love.