Assimilate Or Deviate?

A Facebook friend pointed to this funny, clever Onion piece:

Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA–The mainstream acceptance of gays and lesbians, a hard-won civil-rights victory gained through decades of struggle against prejudice and discrimination, was set back at least 50 years Saturday in the wake of the annual Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade.

"I'd always thought gays were regular people, just like you and me, and that the stereotype of homosexuals as hedonistic, sex-crazed deviants was just a destructive myth," said mother of four Hannah Jarrett, 41, mortified at the sight of 17 tanned and oiled boys cavorting in jock straps to a throbbing techno beat on a float shaped like an enormous phallus. "Boy, oh, boy, was I wrong."

LOL. While there's a lot of hilarious truth to the "article," it unintentionally brings up a tricky dichotomy within the gay community. Now, I'm reacting to The Onion, so I can't get too serious here, but I'll just say this:

There are many, many gay men who embrace and prefer to be considered outcasts and eccentric characters living far away from the mainstream. Not only do I respect them, but I relate and support their need to keep things "old school," for horrible lack of a better term. Part of being gay, however trivial and for better or worse, is rebelling against cultural norms and joyously accepting yourself as a minority. In essence, fuck you heteros for not giving us a seat at the table for all these years, we'll do our own thing and if it makes you uncomfortable, deal with it. (I don't speak for the gay community, and I don't begin to know the exact disposition of every gay activist, but this is my shortened take.)

At the same time, there are many, many others in the gay community who strive for assimilation. (Think gay marriage rights, ending DADT, groups like GLAAD and PFLAG and HRC, etc.) By normalizing and "mainstreaming" gay citizens (not to say that we aren't "normal" to begin with), we are creating a more tolerable, loving, safer environment for everyone, especially gay children (think Lawrence King, Matthew Shepard, etc.). I respect and relate and support this movement, too.

As someone who is not one of the wild and crazy gays depicted in the Onion piece, and as someone who is not in any way affected by the various civil rights or discrimination issues, and as someone who sees groups like GLAAD and HRC as silly vanity projects run by self-serving queens, I find myself strangely apathetic to both sides here. Assimilate, or deviate? I know which option will result in a greater good for a greater amount of people eventually, but there is something noble and true about another segment of people that should be preserved.

In the end, it seems full assimilation is the trending and likely future for gays. Is this good? Well, sure. Is this bad? I don't know. Did the men and women at Stonewall (40 years ago today) want to get gay married and be regular characters on sitcoms? Probably not, but that's only because the ideas were so completely impossible, they never would have occurred to them.

In a perfect world, we'd have it both ways: Keep our authentic and unapologetic parades with offensive shit, then get legally married and join the military to kill people in illegal wars.