If I were gay I would not march in parades. Instead, in an act of reflecting a truer expression of pride, I believe I would march quickly and resolutely back into the closet. And I would slam the door behind me.
We have entered an era, fostered and nurtured by the great racial and sexual liberation movements of the 1960's, when gay people are now no longer non-existent or hounded, murdered and tortured as they were in previous generations and centuries.
Instead gay people are now tolerated. No, more than that. Instead of being objects of societal revulsion and scornful contempt, they have now become a source of entertainment and good-natured contempt.
Hollywood and the gods of television now present gay people to us as one-dimensional objects of good fun, the peripheral figure, the silly clown in nearly every sit-com cast since the early 1990's. Gay people, Hollywood assures us, are flighty, hyperactive, non-reflective – and as non-athletic Hollywood writers constantly assure us that all straight American men are obsessed by sports, these same straight writers hammer home again and again that all gay men are obsessed by Broadway musicals. And Hollywood producers, in their effort to make sure that these stereotypes are sufficiently hammered home, more often than not, cast straight men in the role of gay men, as if gay men cannot somehow give a convincing enough portrayal of these quirky and laughable creatures, and deliver today's equivalent of Al Jolson in black face.
Hollywood producers and writers haven't gotten where they are by being stupid. They occasionally, as a matter of politically correct necessity, feature a gay figure showing some back-bone, standing up for himself against prejudice.. for about 15 seconds, before lapsing back into mindless obsession with fashion or some other cliched frivolity.
And when Hollywood decides to milk homosexuality for drama, the love between men must be offered to us with as much macho angst as possible as in Brokeback Mountain. No simpering limp-wristed figures here mincing around the campfire. For how could straight audiences be expected to sympathize with forbidden love if the lovers are made to seem silly and pathetic? Hollywood moves us from one extreme to the other, from the prancing fairy to the repressed Republican without ever showing a hint that gay men and women are anything but flamboyant or castrated cartoons.
Minorities have all been through the wringer, Jews, blacks and now gays have all made the transition from the hated and the persecuted to the comical and contemptible. Hooray for progress. I suppose it's better to be poked fun at than poked with spears and other sharp objects.
But it would be heartening to detect some sign that we are approaching the end of a hopefully transitional phase. But sadly I see no sign that Hollywood and society in general are growing tired of portraying gay men as anything but ludicrous objects of condescension.
The closet may have been a confining and claustrophobic place, but at least it was safe and free from Hollywood's “tolerant” help-mates.
