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It is one thing to suggest to gay people that they should put their best foot forward, while understanding that given the diversity of the group in question, those best foots aren’t all going to look the same, and, once again, given the diversity of the group in question, not everyone is going to play the game so well, but it is quite another thing to tell gay people they should become sycophants like many successful politicians and beauty queens. You could call those who want to make such an effort the Sycophantic Sexual Minorities Party – SSMP. I don’t much care for this approach, so I won’t be signing up. I prefer people be themselves, even if they are unpopular. It’s been my experience that politicians and beauty queens may sometimes win their crowns, but a lot of people don’t seem to like many politicians and beauty queens. And I think that’s because they’re sycophants, i.e. phonies, and in time most can see them for the suck ups that they are.
What a great post Gary! It should be featured on the front page as post of the week/month or something. I love how you equate gays trying to get acceptance from (straight) society with beauty pageant contestants. As an out gay person I've often felt the burden of representing the "Gay Community". It leads to self-censorship, in both actions and words, which is basically just a different kind of closet.
As for Perez Hilton, I always thought he was an annoying twit, even back when he was a cute twink ;-). Because of his (inexplicable) celebrity status, a small part of me wishes he presented a more "acceptable" (ie: more manly?) image of gay people "to help the cause", but I realize that this comes from internalized homophobia. The same homophobia that made me cringe everytime the queenie one opened his mouth on Queer Eye.
Few of us raised in a patriarchal Christian society are immune to that unfortunately.