‘Gay’ vs. ‘Queer’

2 Comments for “‘Gay’ vs. ‘Queer’”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Language morphs over time.

    The term “gay”, for example, although used within some homosexual communities (mostly in the South) since the 1920’s or 1930’s, didn’t become a common descriptor for homosexuals until the mid- to late- 1960’s, in my early adulthood, and the term “queer” was then a disparaging epithet, employed by many of us as act of defiance.

    I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m weary of the constant parsing about this term, that term or the other, and tired to death of conservative homosexuals using that parsing as a wedge.

    In the two decades I’ve been commenting on IGF, I’ve had a singular focus on “equal means equal”, that is equal treatment under the law. To me, that (rather than cultural acceptance) has always been the goal and the only goal worth pursuing. With a level playing field, without government-sanctioned discrimination, gays and lesbians will do fine.

    Barry Goldwater was (and remains) a hero to me because of his insistence on individual freedom and individual responsibility. Political conservatism (that is to say, Republican conservatism) no longer has any connection whatsoever to the principles espoused by Barry Goldwater and other conservatives of that era.

    Goldwater’s last address to the Senate condemned the Republican Party’s cynical inclusion of the “Religious Right” and predicted disaster for American conservatism as an inevitable consequence. To paraphrase Goldwater’s 1964 campaign slogan, “In our hearts, we know he was right.”

    For years after starting to comment on IGF, I urged conservative homosexuals to work to change the Republican Party, as those of us who were liberal or left-moderate did to change the Democratic Party.

    We put in the work and we succeeded. Conservative homosexuals did not put in the work, with predictable results. We have now arrived at a point where LCR is touting far-right, anti-LGBT loudmouths as “Outspoken Ambassadors“. That, in my opinion, is the absolute bottom and the end of any reason to try to find common cause with conservative homosexuals in a quest for “equal means equal”.

    By the end of his life, Barry Goldwater had essentially broken ties with the Republican Party. I think that time has come for me, too. The conservatism I knew, and supported, no longer has a place in the Republican Party, and hasn’t had a place in the party for a long time.

  2. posted by Edward on

    We have bigger fish to fry.

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