For Frying Out Loud (7 page)

September 2007

ATTENTION MELTING POT: GAY IS A CULTURE

Recently I had an incredible opportunity. The
Advocate
magazine published its 40th Anniversary edition, and on the cover was a photo collage of 40 of the most influential gay rights activists of all time. What a gift this is for our archives.

I say that, because I'm worried about losing our gay culture.

Do you agree that Gay is a culture? Just host a dinner party with seven gay people and a straight man or woman. It's a good bet that dozens of the evening's references, not in serious gay rights discussion, but casual conversation will buzz right over the outsider's head.

Not to say that inviting your straight friends to dinner is a faux pas. Au contraire. I wouldn't want to live in a ghetto, would you? That's why I love living in Rehoboth, with its diversity – and by this I mean a vibrant straight community along with us homos.

It's just that words or phrases like Stonewall Dems, show queen, “of course she bought a Subaru,” and the ubiquitous “Did she bring a U-Haul on her second date?” are all in our lexicon and consciousness. It's our culture.

Judy Garland, Daughters of Bilitis, HRC, Billie Jean King,
Rubyfruit Jungle
, Drag Kings, Harvey Milk, P-Town. Our history, our heroes, our catch-phrases, our culture.

And I'm worried.

Exactly a decade ago writer Daniel Harris wrote
The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture
, a terrific discussion of those secret signals and shared sensibilities that allowed an underground gay society to flourish even as the larger population despised and discriminated against it.

The very act of showing up at a Judy Garland concert and seeing other gay men around the room, all sharing the vulnerability of Judy's music together made that denigrated community feel less alone.

But even a decade ago, Harris worried that assimilation and acceptance of homosexuals by society at large would cause our gay culture to disappear. It's the very same concern that different ethnicities, immigrants and religious sects have as they meet the great American, and now great global, melting pot.

But it seems to me that gay people often don't recognize gay as a culture. They do, of course, appreciate all the hard work that our gay pioneers did for the fight for gay rights in order to make their lives better. We're not ingrates. But I'm not sure our community sees our heroes, safe havens and that elusive quality called “the gay sensibility” as something to learn about and celebrate. And I think that's a shame.

While I've been mulling this over for quite a while, it really hit home this summer at female impersonator Christopher Peterson's show. While Christopher always receives cheers and ovations, I often saw blank faces on young gay people who really didn't “get” Bette Davis, mentions of
All About Eve
, or the importance (and I really believe this,
importance
) of Judy Garland to our community.

While Christopher does dead-on illusions of Bette Midler, Reba McEntire and others, I think our culture suffers if young gay people don't learn about early gay icons and cultural landmarks. Okay, I know I'm an old fart lesbian and many of these things were OF my generation. But many were not.

There's a terrific book by Delaware author Marcia Gallo called
Different Daughters
which tells the story of the lesbian rights organization The Daughters of Bilitis, which began to raise lesbian visibility in the tragically closeted 1950s and ‘60s. The name of the group came from a story by the poet Sappho, and the late lesbian activist Barbara Gittings always laughed and admitted that Bilitis sounded like a disease.

But the story told in Gallo's book is fascinating and inspires wonderment at the willingness of our foremothers to fight for lesbian visibility and rights when it was terribly dangerous to do so.

Every woman sipping beverages, listening to the music of the very talented Rehoboth singer Viki Dee and dancing at happy hour really should know about Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon, Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahausen, the aliases they had to use, and the crazy, determined chances they took.

If I'm being intolerably preachy here, I don't mean to be. But I was fascinated to learn that Bayard Rustin, an African-American gay man, was the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington with the famous “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King. He was drummed from the activist ranks because of his sexuality. I was captivated by the tale of Harvey Milk's rise to the title of
Mayor of Castro Street
, and was mesmerized learning how writer Lillian Faderman rose from indigent sex worker to revered professor of lesbian studies and continues to be an influential writer today.

Our schools teach Americans about Thomas Jefferson, Betsy Ross and American social history – the rise of the railroads, the Gold Rush, the McCarthy Era. And if we don't get it in school, I know that my Jewish parents handed down their culture and my friends of Italian heritage learned their stories from their families too.

It's a sure thing that heterosexual parents of gay youth are not teaching their kids homosexual culture! Lucky are our young gay people with two mommies or two daddies.

Gay people have to learn our history and culture on our own. There are hundreds of books available at our independent bookstores (although they are quickly disappearing), at the big chains and on line. And there's a wonderful lending library at CAMP Rehoboth if you want to know more.

I do.

November 2007

TUNE IN FOR THE
FRY BABIES

Since this is the last edition of
Letters from CAMP Rehoboth
for 2007 (where the hell DOES the time fly to?) I feel it's fitting to reflect on the year with some awards. Heck, everybody else does it. Whoopi and Hugh Jackman are booked so I'm presenting the awards myself. I promise to change t-shirts at least three times. The awards, in keeping with my literary theme, are the
Fry Babies
, for the things that got me frying in 2007.

Hope you don't mind, but I've cut the tacky opening production number (which had the cast of
Hairspray
singing and dancing “Come Fry with Me,”) so we can get right down to business.

The envelopes, please.

The
Best Tap Dance Award
goes to Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, for his airport bathroom production number, playing footsie with a cop and proving, once again, that the most rabid anti-gay legislators are often found cowering in the closet but having sex in public. And Larry, you got additional points for suggesting that your foot wandered into the next stall so you could retrieve a fallen piece of toilet paper. That's just disgusting. Go wash your hands and wash your mouth out while you are at it. I don't know where it's been, but I can imagine.

Similarly, the
Do As I Say, Not as I Do Award
goes to the dishonorable GOP Senator David Vitter for admitting he patronized DC area prostitutes as well as working girls in his home district down South. As another legislator who regularly rants against gay marriage, methinks he's the one who is single-handedly (who knows, he may have used two hands) defiling the sanctity of marriage.

The
J. Edgar Hoover Red Dress Award
goes to Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani who has disavowed all support for his gay friends and their equal rights. I guess he's forgotten just how many unattractive photos of himself in drag
have been printed in New York newspapers over the years. Now I'm not intimating that Rudy is, in any way, gay. Only a straight man could enrage two ex-wives with his serial divorce antics. (Oh, wait, I'm forgetting about New Jersey's ex-Governor McGreevy…) Well, Rudy ain't gay. But he sure loves to play dress up.

The
Three Ring Circus Award for Homeland Security
to Ft. Lauderdale Airport staff for clearing a man through security and onto an airplane with a monkey smuggled under his hat. The flight attendant discovered the Marmoset sitting on the back of a seat when she came through to offer it a complimentary beverage. The security folks must have been busy looking for Republicans tap dancing in the bathrooms.

The
Things Go Better with Coke Award
to Lindsay Lohan, representing all the starlets who are trashing their reputations and blowing through their careers (no pun intended) when other deserving actors who would value their reputations don't get a shot. Just because she starred in
Herbie Fully Loaded
doesn't mean she has to walk around that way. The woman actually entered rehab as a PR stunt. Didn't she get the Anna Nicole memo?

The
Road to Hell Award
to DelDOT for consciously but unconscionably starting Rehoboth's Route One construction in August so they could be finished by June. What were they thinking??? Around here, August is worth two Junes. There are people who set out for the beach in August who are living in Smyrna now because that's as close as they could get.

The
Unabomber Anti-Technology Luddite Award
to Delaware's Sussex County Council for not encouraging homeowners to conserve energy by installing windmills in their blustery back yards. Energy-saving companies are partnering with energy conscious homeowners and their requests to install residential windmills have been turned down. It happened to my neighbors and we're going to be next. There's so much hot air in my backyard you'd think I'd been pontificating on the porch.

The
It Would Be Funny if It Didn't Hurt So Much Award
goes to President Bush and the Culture of Corruptions (great name for a boy band). They block kid's health care, help the insurance lobby provide us with crappy private coverage, then decry the evils of Socialized Medicine – all while enjoying free, government provided doctors appointments and trips to the government pharmacy for free Viagra (see first two awards). If that's not a well-functioning system of socialized medicine I'm the uncle of that monkey who boarded the plane in Florida.

The
New Orleans Gumbo Dumbo Award
to FEMA for staging a fake news conference about the California fires and asking fluff ball questions like “Is FEMA doing a heckuva job here or what!?” Their own staff asked glowing questions and gave glowing answers in a post-apocalyptic FEMA attempt at looking competent in an emergency. We want Brownie back.…

And finally, the
Give Me a Reason It's not Treason Award
(also known as the
Go Take a Leak Award
) goes to Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, found guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury for outing CIA agent Valerie Plame. All smarmy obfuscation tactics aside, Mr. Libby, as fall-guy for Rove, Cheney, et al actually aided and abetted the enemy by outing Plame, and putting other operatives' lives in danger. For Homeland Security? No…politics, for frying out loud! Why aren't they all in jail?

And now, the
2008 Humanitarian Achievement Awards
are:

First, the
Windmills Of My Mind Award
to our local activists for marshalling the troops, making sport of the utilities, blasting us with e-mail, and fighting the electric and coal companies to push for off-shore wind power in Sussex County. You go girls…I hope that next year, when we're talking about offshore windmills we will give you the
Passing Wind Award.

And finally, the
You Can Keep Your Head When All About Are Losing Theirs Award
to CAMP Rehoboth's Steve Elkins and Murray Archibald for being calm, mature and
professional when faced with the Community Center construction delay. Although the request for the next variance had nothing to do with sex variance, Steve and Murray made sure that we remained focused and faced the issue with proper patience. In fact, this has been the hallmark of their management style as they have worked for decades, first to help build a diverse community in Rehoboth and now to help make sure our community grows and thrives. Thanks, boys and I realize the editor may want to cut this award out claiming it as too “self serving,” but I am serving these awards up, fellas, not you. Thanks for all you do…and so well, too.

In closing, we want to thank our
Letters from CAMP Rehoboth
advertisers, for making these awards possible. We're out of time, so we won't do our finale – Marie Osmond singing
Fry Me to the Moon
. See you right here next year.