Gays: Assimilated and Asexual?
The courts have set in motion the real possibility of gay marriage in the United States. HIV treatment, at least for those with health insurance, has vastly improved. Gay characters are regularly featured on network television. It would seem that the golden age of gay life in the United States has arrived. However, there is a growing sense among progressive gay thinkers that these provisional victories have come with a high cost. What has the gay community given up to reach this point?
In its 2003 decision striking down sodomy laws, the Supreme Court ruled that private consensual gay sex was constitutionally protected. But by the time the court ruled, gay sexuality had already moved beyond privacy; it had become invisible to the point of extinction. Both in terms of portrayals of gay men in the media and the rush to embrace traditional relationships as defined by heterosexual marriage, the gay community is discarding the very sexuality that the Supreme Court has validated.
Yet gay history is built on sexuality. In the 1970s, gay men purposefully alienated both straight Americans and lesbians by pioneering a culture of radical sexual abandon. Promiscuity and sexual experimentation were not merely tolerated, they were seen as political acts, crucial markers of gay male identity. That separatist era of sexual radicalism has now been dismissed as merely a period of excess leading to AIDS. In the current rush to assimilation, gay men have become ashamed of what is a vibrant legacy -- which, along with revolutionary movements like feminism and civil rights, played a valuable role in expanding American culture -- replacing the role of sexual provocateur with nonthreatening, nonsexual stereotypes.
This sexual disavowal is clearly seen in television shows such as "Will & Grace" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." These are essentially homosexual minstrel shows, in which gay men excel at being "the best friend" and "the style-maker" but are stripped of sexuality. Gay sex is nothing more than a running joke in these scenarios. The handsome and successful Will of "Will & Grace" rarely has a date, let alone sex, and is presented as incapable of having a relationship with anyone other than his straight girlfriends. The "buddies" of "Queer Eye" mince in front of their straight objects of affection, carefully stroking their arms and offering up nonthreatening style tips that are presented as the core of gay culture. Apologists for these "step-'n'-fetch-it" routines remind us that it is, after all, only TV. Yet many gay people mistake what is a stereotyped visibility for an indicator of acceptance and respect.
