There are many in the gay community who are neither left wing nor progressives. And there are many that are. And like Big Gay Al, there are many that just want to be left alone with their animals.
That’s cool.
But the problem – at least from this heterosexuals standpoint – is that the visible leadership of the gay community (and the community’s most outwardly visible members) are largely seen as being in lock step with the looney left.
Case in point. I had no idea there was a massive march going on this weekend in DC and so I decided to take my 7 year old and my 2 1/2 year old to the Air and Space Museum (really, is there any place cooler than a building full of fighter planes and rocket ships???). It was a heck of a crowd, while not as big as the Tea Party protest, the march was pretty impressive and had maybe 75% of the people the tea part did. For a single issue, that impacts 10% of the population, thats astounding and very impressive.
My office is basically at the Corner of 1st and Constitution. We parked in my garage and began walking over – sometime around 3:30pm.
As a father of two young children, I was shocked as I made it to the reflecting pool that the speaker started saying Fuck This and Fuck That and Fuck Fuck Fuck. I heard the F Bomb dropped no less than 7 times in the course of 2 or 3 minutes – at which point I stopped crossing the mall and decided to get as far away as possible. Mature, married people with children don’t haphazardly – especially over a loudspeaker – drop the F bomb repeatedly while within earshot of lots of children on the mall. It was very disheartening to hear (I’m not a prude – I’ve got a filthy mouth, just not in front of kids).
This though paled in comparison to the speaker I heard as we walked back (about 5:15 pm) who was shouting about standing arm in arm with the fellow members of the progressive cause. She then spent about 5 minutes reciting every fruity left wing group out there – from ANSWER and MOVE ON to La Cosa something or other, the labor movement, Cesear Chavez and the farm workers, the environmentalist movement, PETA and the animal rights movement, the anti war movement, the hippy movement, the peace movement, etc etc etc. She capped it off by singing the praises of the NAACP (which ironically, last time I checked, represented a membership that is far far far more hostile to gay rights than any other group in America).
In any case, it was very disturbing because it painted – to any one who heard it for just the 5 minutes I was on the mall – the gay community as being nothing more than toady liberals for the Democratic party.
This is a major gay problem. I don’t know who organized the march – but the organizers should have done (based only on the two examples I heard) a much better job of ensuring the speakers stayed on a non partisan, family friendly message. That’s what its about, right?? Gays could be normal just like you and me and make fine parents and have as stable (or more stable) relationships as anyone else. Yet to non gays who didn’t attend the rally but just overheard a few minutes of the speakers while enjoying a gorgeous day on the mall – that wasn’t the message projected.
What I was left with was the clear impression that GAY = Vulgar Foul Mouthed Angry Left Wing Crack Pot Lefty Democrat partisan kooks. Which was very disappointing.
