Gay lib: Televized fantasies, political realities

After a prolonged period marked by the inability to pay for cable television, I was first introduced to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on a trip to the Deep South. Having traveled to a suburb of Atlanta for the (heterosexual) marriage of a childhood friend, I sought refuge from the day’s cruel humidity and the night’s incessantly shrieking crickets in the air-conditioned TV rooms of my hosts. Expecting to find a clear and visceral Dixie homophobia to match the fossilized Jim Crow racism that surrounded me, the South was instead marked largely by the same paradox that we’ve seen crop up all across North America in this, the era of Will & Grace, wherein stock-and-trade characters like “Nerdy Neighbour” and “Sassy Black Woman” have been replaced by a host of exotic fruits while leaving society’s broader hatred of homosexuality wholly intact.

So while I was able, in the former Klan stronghold of Marietta, Georgia, to watch Anna Nicole’s queenish attendants cattily argue about the quality of throw-pillows, I was also able to find a more valuable contribution in the struggle to extend basic human rights to North American homosexuals -- the Southern Voice, a queer publication whose front page featured a full-colour photo of UPS workers protesting the company’s anti-gay policies. Picket signs read “UPS: We want our DP benefits” and “UPS Unfair to its Gay Workers” -- the word “fabulous” was nowhere to be seen. Inside the paper was an impassioned editorial about the importance of gay marriage rights -- now so heavily under rhetorical and, potentially, legislative fire in Canada and the United States -- which went so far as to shrink the importance of pop culture victories in the face of real political battles: “Whoa! Slow down there, homosexuals,” wrote Chris Cain ironically. “Yeah we’re enjoying a great gay run… Even pop culture is going gay… ABC’s ‘20/20’ declared ‘it’s in to be out’ and the cultural arbiters at VH1 last week debuted ‘Totally Gay!’ But let’s get real. Gay marriage? In this country? Now? You better think twice about that” [Chris Cain, “It’s all about marriage,” Southern Voice, August 22, 2003].


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