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“Stop feeling sorry for yourselves. Because I’m old…and I’m fat. Fat girls and gays is the definitive relationship of the new century.”

- at the [US gay-youth suicide prevention charity] Trevor Project [fundraising dinner].

Out.com Daily Gossip

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This like Ségolène Royal’s words, comes from the gay blog gayclic.com. It’s excellent stuff and slightly less politically charged than Andy Towle’s Towleroad.com The condom industry could really do with a bit of innovation and it’s interesting that it’s coming from a developing country. Link to Pront Condoms South Africa

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He winks and remarks to me, follownig my ‘Oooh, belle fleurs’ comment:

Une maison sans fleurs est une maison des pleures!

I thought that was cute. I’m leaving, so I don’t have to hear the rest of it though. Gross.

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I’ve been struck recently by an advice column. On the normally rather flippant and offhand website of the gay/lesbian themed magazine ‘Out’, there is an advice column, written daily by a fantastic woman called Cynthia O’Neal. Every day she answers, seriously and thoughtfully, the questions of boys (and perhaps girls – though I’ve never read one) who write in with their quandries. It’s fantastic because it is unswervingly serious. She directs her readers to respond to events with a cool eye, not jumping to conclusions, but to see that long term sustainability often comes from simply sorting out one’s life in the present. ‘Later’ will deal with itself.

She’s fantastic, and though there is suprisingly little about her online, she is, I believe, a star. She’s the founder of a New York charity called Friends in Deed which helps those who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. She founded the group in conjunction with Director Mike Nichols and uses it to help, with group support session and one to one practical aid, those who often come to a realization that they are going to die. Founded in response to many of her friends coming down with and dying from AIDS, Nichols and O’Neal created an organization that acts as a support network, a friend in tough times for those who need it most. From Oprah.com, a quote from Nichols’ wife Diane Sawyer: “They will never be without someone to lean on or call in the middle of the night… and so many of these people have no other family but Cynthia and Friends In Deed” I’ve never before read an advice column that doesn’t have jokey responses or witty repartee, and hers is all the better for lack of it. You read her advice to strangers to find wisdom, not to find a bitchy snap-back, and I love her work all the more for it. It is the best thing about the magazine and there is clearly no shortage of questions from the public.

www.out.com/advice.asp

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When they ask you ‘What’s this song?’ or, in fact even if they don’t ask, reply with in depth knowledge of Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy‘. Perfect! Awkward moment: arranged!

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The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and three hundred sixty two admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals. It’s just that they need more supervision.

- Lynne Lavner

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I’m sorry to cut and paste a block of someone else’s writing, but in the Seattle Weekly this week, there’s an excellent piece by Roger Downey discussing his separation from the events and celebrations of Seattle’s Gay Pride weekend, which is about to take place in Seattle. Having just seen Brokeback Mountain – yes, rather late – he sees the film from a different perspective from many people who criticised it and who loved it. He thought it was largely about poverty and class, and how being poor in rural America massively reduces your chances at sexual liberation. Long before the time of the events pictured in the film men and women of sexual minority groups were finding companionship with one another in major cities like San Francisco and Miami. By urbanising and grouping together they were strong. But it was and still is those gays and lesbians who are caught in the rural states, in areas detached from support mechanisms, that need help and still need our help. Downey says Pride is now more about celebrating how great we are and what we’ve got rather than what we have achieved. It was those that came before us that made today’s ‘tolerance’ if not acceptance possible. Now we have to do something to be proud of, help those minority groups and racial minorities who aren’t educated in the language of sexual politics to liberate those members of their communities who are still hiding.

I’ve been feeling more and more remote from the events of Gay Pride for years, but seeing Brokeback Mountain, even if I saw it differently than most, got me thinking hard again about what it’s for, about just what it is that’s being celebrated. Pride? Proud of what? Proud of our “difference”? Proud of our struggle to overcome fear, intimidation, and opposition? Twenty years ago, even 10, I could go along with that. But when I look at the Pride marchers today, if I see anything more than a sort of multicolored St. Patrick’s Day celebration, I see people celebrating being, on average, the most privileged people on planet Earth, free to do exactly as they please, absolved even of the implied injunction on heterosexuals to reproduce, to foster their offspring, to devote the best years of their lives and much of their income to providing for the next generation. I’m not saying that’s not cause for celebration. I enjoy the same privileges as they. What I don’t understand is why we call it “Pride,” and why the hets are willing to let us disrupt traffic with our boasting.

Seattle Weekly: The End of Pride

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