Skipping Towards Gomorrah

by Dan Savage

  For a group of people condemned as sinners—and some are understandably still sensitive to the charge, as it’s still made—it’s ironic that gays and lesbians should select a sin as our rallying cry. And not just any sin, but the sin Pope Gregory the Great unironically called, “the queen of them all.” But it made sense at the time: the whole world conspired to make gay people feel ashamed of themselves. It worked. Straight people viewed homosexuality as disgraceful and disgusting, and so did most gays and lesbians. Shame was the poison that kept gays closeted and prompted us to off ourselves at slightly higher rates. Clearly, strong medicine was called for, and pride was the obvious antidote. Being gay was nothing to be ashamed of, gay activists insisted. Being an openly gay, reasonably healthy, functioning adult was something that a person should be proud of! After all, any homo who survived a hostile family, homophobic employers, corrupt police departments, and hateful churches had accomplished something significant. So pride parades: Gay is bad, they said. Gay is good, we replied.

  Pride was tremendously meaningful and important and radical and revolutionary—thirty years ago. Back then, very few gays and lesbians were out of the closet, and the central metaphors of the pride parade—we have nothing to be ashamed of!—resonated with vast numbers of gays and lesbians still too scared to tell their parents what kind of bars they liked to hang out in. As an antidote, pride was effective: Every year, at each successive pride parade, more and more gays and lesbians showed up. We became less closeted and less fearful, which made it increasingly difficult for our families, employers, and elected officials to pretend we didn’t exist or talk us into offing ourselves.

  The funny thing about antidotes, though, is that they’re usually toxic themselves. If you’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake, you’re supposed to take the antidote, yes, but you’re not supposed to keep taking the antidote, day in, day out, for the rest of your life. Looking around gay neighborhoods (or looking in gay magazines, newspapers, and inside gay heads) thirty years after the antidote arrived, it’s clear that gays and lesbians are in renewed danger of being poisoned—only the poison threatening us now isn’t shame. It’s pride.

  The message at gay pride parades in the United States hasn’t evolved; it’s still, Gay is good! There are two problems with this: First, it’s misleading. Gay isn’t good or bad, it’s just gay. (Yes, yes—Michelangelo was gay. But so was Jeffrey Dahmer.) Second, what relevance does a “gay is good” message have to the vast majority of American gay men and lesbians who, like Kevin and Jake, don’t believe that there’s anything in the least bit shameful about their homosexuality? What relevance do pride parades have to hip, secure, handsome gay men like Kevin and Jake? What was in it for them? Why were they going? Why did they still need the antidote? Weren’t they cured? Or do they go to the pride parade to remind themselves how far they’ve come, like a former cancer patient who, despite having been completely cured, reminds himself he isn’t sick anymore by dropping by the hospital once a year for a little chemotherapy?

  Kevin and Jake assured me that, no, they didn’t feel any vestigial shame or guilt and, no, they weren’t any the worse for wear on those years when they missed the pride parade.

  So why do they go?

  The fourth time I asked, Kevin stopped what he was doing and looked right at me. I’m uneasy around extremely good-looking gay men; I like to look at good-looking gay men, of course, but I find it intimidating to be regarded by them. It always makes me feel like I need to go and do some sit-ups or iron my underwear or pluck my eyebrows or something. So I felt suddenly self-conscious when Kevin looked at me like he couldn’t quite bring me into focus. (Maybe it was the pot and not the question?) He turned away, shrugged, and sat down on a lawn chair. I asked again. Surely there are better ways for him to have fun? With his equally beautiful boyfriend? On a sunny Sunday afternoon? In a house with a sling? Why go to the pride parade?

  “It’s important for gay youth,” Kevin finally said, speaking to me very slowly. Perhaps he wanted me to take down every word. Perhaps he had concluded I was retarded.

  “Gay kids in their teens and early twenties come to the pride parade,” Kevin continued, “and so do other people who are just coming out. It helps them to see lots of different people there. It gives them hope.” Attending the parade is social work? “Yes, it has a component of that. Young people and people who are just coming out need to see that gay people really are every color of the rainbow. Hot and hideous; young and old; smooth and hairy.”

  We’re just doin’ it for the kids.

  That’s the party line these days—every party’s line. Right, left, and center, politicians run for office to make the world a better place for our children and our children’s children and our children’s children’s children’s children. The unwinnable war on drugs must continue so that we don’t send kids the wrong message about drugs; energy companies drill for oil in ecologically sensitive areas so that our children can live in a world with power; environmentalists fight energy companies so that our children can live in a world with caribou. One Seattle TV news show has the absurd motto, “For Kids’ Sake.” Nothing is permissible in the United States these days unless it somehow lifts up our children, who, in case you haven’t been paying attention, are our future. (So how come millions of American children live in poverty, lack health insurance, and don’t have enough to eat? Never mind.)

  Sadly, gay people are not immune to kid-mongering. Ellen DeGeneres didn’t come out of the closet to resuscitate a dying sitcom; no, she came out to help gay youth. Olympian Greg Louganis didn’t come out after his diving career was over to sell some books; no, he came out to give gay teenagers hope. Recently Chuck Panozzo, the bass player in the long-forgotten 1970s rock group Styx, came out of the closet. To get attention? To get laid? Sick of the closet? No, Panozzo came out, he said, “to make this a better world for the next generation.” Gay porn stars tell the fawning interviewers at porn magazines that they’re not making porn for the money or the thrills or the smack. No, no, no. They’re making porn to give gay youth hope. (Do not despair, O Gay Youth! There’s a place for you! A place where men shave their ass-cracks! Pierce their nipples! Gang bang!)

  When I tell Kevin that I’m not convinced that gay pride—the concept, the rhetoric, the parade—does much good for gay youth, he smiles at my cynicism. When I tell him that I think the current understanding of gay pride—Gay is good!—actually does more harm than good, he frowns at my heresy. One of the dogmas of modern gay life is that pride is always good for us, like vitamin C. And like vitamin C, massive doses can supposedly cure anything. HIV infections rising? Spend public health money to boost gay men’s self-esteem and feelings of gay pride. (Never mind the studies that show that the more self-esteem a gay man has, the likelier he is to take sexual risks.) Not convinced that hate crimes laws and employment protections for homos are good ideas? Clearly you suffer from a worrisome case of gay-pride deficiency. Think gay men over fifty look ridiculous with their bare asses hanging out of leather chaps? Take these gay pride supplements, and you’ll feel differently! The gay man who doesn’t take pride in all things gay—without question, without thought—has long been accused of self-hatred. These days they’re also accused of Demonstrating Insufficient Concern for Gay Youth. Gay pride isn’t a slogan anymore or a rallying cry. It’s dogma. Gay pride has become a sort of gay civic religion.

  A well-accessorized religion.

  No one has ever gone broke underestimating the insecurities of the gay and lesbian consumer. In every city large enough to have a pride parade, there’s a store dedicated to selling “pride merchandise” year-round. Gay people who don’t get their fill of gay-is-good at their annual pride parades can fill their apartments with bric-a-brack that reinforces the gay-is-good message any day of the year. Rainbow stickers for our cars, rainbow flags for our front porches and balconies, rainbow drinking glasses for our tables, rainbow Christmas-tree lights for the holidays, rainbow windsocks for . . . for our wind, I g
uess. Ye Olde Gay Pride Shoppe near my house sells rainbow-striped dog collars for men and women into bondage and S&M.

  It gets worse. A gay mail-order company that advertises in porn magazines sells a line of pride merchandise. Right under the Make Your Own Dildo Kit ($69.95) and the latest fuck-and-suck video, there’s a small box with a selection of pride merchandise. Feeling something less than prideful? You can order up a Pride Nuts Necklace (“Don your nuts as an everyday accessory and know that you’re doing your part for gay visibility!” $7.95), Pride Chrome Chain Anklet (“It’s elegantly masculine, and it will be noticed by all the right guys!” $7.95), Pride Teddy Bear (“Wuz Fuzzy Wuzzy Gay? Wuz he? . . . The perfect gift for your favorite Gay Teddy Bear Collector!” $29.95), Pride Pet Bowl (“Let your dog chow down with Pride!” $19.95), and Pride CD (“Take pride in hosting your very own circuit party!” $19.95). For those who want to feel proud inside and out, there’s—I hope you’re sitting down, Mr. Bennett—the Pride Plug, “a fulfilling anal plug in the classic sensual shape,” a steal at $17.95 (large) or $14.95 (small). Buyers are admonished to “wear your Pride Plug proudly!”

  First of all, you don’t “wear” a butt plug. You insert it. And how, I wonder, do the makers of Pride Plugs avoid selling their “fulfilling” plugs to people who might wear them with feelings of shame or despair? Perhaps they don’t ship to Utah. Or Vatican City. And what’s to stop jaded homos in Chicago or Los Angeles from wearing their Pride Plugs with feelings of indifference?

  All this pride pimping would be funny, I suppose, if it weren’t helping to create a gay culture equal parts intellectual vapidity and moral obtuseness. These days, the hurdles to coming out are so much lower than they used to be (in general—individual circumstances vary), and yet the insistence that we take pride in being gay grows stronger and louder with each passing year. Being accepted by your family and comfortably out at work are the rules now, not the exceptions. (A gay man I met who works at a viciously anti-gay right-wing magazine—he works in design, not editorial, he’s quick to point out—brings his boyfriend to company dinners.) Since gays and lesbians no longer have to struggle against outrageous levels of parental hostility, extreme social pressure, or toxic levels of homophobia, emerging as a relatively healthy gay person simply isn’t the accomplishment it used to be. That means, of course, that we have less to take pride in now than we used to. So perhaps it’s time to ratchet down the self-congratulatory “gay pride” rhetoric, retire the windsocks, and insert those butt plugs for pleasure, not pride.8

  Since the pride gays and lesbians are instructed to feel can’t attach itself to the struggle to overcome the ever-smaller obstacles to being openly gay, it simply attaches itself to being gay, period. In thirty years we’ve gone from, “You’re gay, and you should be proud of yourself for surviving the bullshit, overcoming the obstacles, and emerging as a reasonably healthy adult,” to “You’re gay! Be proud! Buy a butt plug!” Anything that can be construed as an expression of gayness—wearing anklets, using sex toys, dragging someone around on a leash—is something to take pride in.

  Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with anklets, butt plugs, and leashes. (Though there is something deeply distressing about grown men who collect teddy bears.) I’ve worn two of the three things on that list. If using a butt plug gives someone pleasure, well, he should be encouraged to pursue that pleasure. It’s his inalienable right, after all. Butt plug consumers harm no one and keep those butt-plug factories humming, which is good for our economy. But buying a butt plug or putting on an anklet that lets “all the right guys” know you’re gay isn’t something that should fill anyone with pride. Butt plugs, anklets, and dog collars may be a good time, but they’re not accomplishments.

  By far the biggest problem with “gay is good” is that so many gay people—especially those fetishized gay youth—fall for it. I don’t remember much about my first pride parade: I was eighteen years old, living in Chicago, and arrived at the pride parade drunker than I’d ever been in my life. There was lots of booze flowing at the pre-parade party I attended, and I was too young to know my limits. (I’m from a family of heavy drinkers and at eighteen assumed I must have the high-alcohol tolerance gene. Imagine how crushed I was to learn that two beers can do me in.) Clearly, I exceeded my limits that Sunday afternoon; I think I threw up in some bushes along the route.

  As embarrassing as my behavior was that day, I’m most embarrassed to report that I fell for it—and fell hard. The usual gay pride rhetoric was spilling forth from the stage at the post-parade rally: gay is good; gay people are your brothers and sisters; each and every member of the gay community cares about each and every other member of the gay community; it’s all about love and caring and respect. I had made it safely out of the closet and somehow managed to make it out of high school without getting pounded to a pulp. Still, it wasn’t until I made it to my first pride parade that I finally felt safe. I was in a huge crowd of gay people! My brothers and sisters! Michelangelo! Oscar Wilde! Gertrude Stein! No one could hurt me anymore! Not with all my gay brothers looking out for me! I bought some gay T-shirts and pierced my gay ears and put on some gay buttons. All in all it was a beautiful, moving day in June. I was proud.

  Come October, I was being stalked by one violent ex-boyfriend, pressured into sex by an older gay man I mistook for a friend, and taking antibiotics to clear up a sexually transmitted disease given to me by my recent ex-boyfriend’s soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. The scales fell from my eyes. Gay people—myself included—weren’t necessarily good. The realization that no one was looking out for me, that I would have to be as on my guard in the “gay community” as I had been in high school, crushed me. And while the homophobic jocks in school could only beat me up, gay men who took advantage of my youth and inexperience could break my heart.

  Gay men weren’t good—and they weren’t my brothers, like I heard at the pride parade. I should have known. I mean, I have two brothers, actual biological siblings, and neither one had ever given me a hickey, an STD, or a rope burn. Why was I told to regard other gay men as my “brothers”? We certainly don’t tell young straight girls to think of older straight men are their brothers. We tell them to be careful around straight men who take an interest in them, as their motives probably aren’t entirely pure. So why, as a teenager, was I being told that older gay men were my brothers? Why are gay teenagers still being told this appalling lie? Because telling young gay people the truth—lots of gay men are manipulative, horny abusers, just like lots of straight men—might give some people the impression that some gay men do things they should be ashamed of, not proud of.

  What gay youth need to be told is what I learned that bruising summer: It doesn’t matter that a person is gay, it matters how a person is gay. It’s a pretty simple distinction and, from an adult vantage point, a fairly obvious one. But I’ve never heard anyone make this distinction during a speech at a gay pride parade—which someone really should do if pride parades are for gay youth. All you hear at gay pride parades—and all you read in the dull gay magazines (which is to say, all you read in all gay magazines)—is gay is good, gay community, gay brothers and sisters. “Gay is good” is just as big a lie as “Gay is bad,” one that’s almost as destructive, a lie that would be self-evident if it were not for the gay pride idiocracy. John Wayne Gacy was gay; Jeffrey Dahmer was gay; Andrew Cunanan was gay. There are gay men out there giving other gay men HIV on purpose; lesbian murderers sit on death row; some gay men kick their dogs and beat their lovers and wear anklets. Once a gay kid comes out, the people most likely to fuck him over or harm him or take advantage of him are other gay men, not big, bad straight bigots.

  I learned all of this the hard way. I didn’t learn it reading gay magazines or attending gay pride parades or at the feet of HIV/AIDS prevention educators (who seem most concerned with maximizing the amount of sex a gay man has rather than minimizing his risk of contracting HIV). Going to gay pride parades when I was a kid didn’t help me. Gay pride
hurt me.

  Kevin and Jake were going to an all-night rave the night before the parade. I wanted to sleep. Despite the fact that they’d known me less than six hours, Kevin and Jake left me alone in their new house; the gay-is-good assumption was working to my advantage in this instance. The same assumption that got me into so much trouble as a young adult led Kevin and Jake to give me the benefit of the doubt. Since I was gay and I knew someone they knew, and the person we knew in common was also gay, Kevin and Jake assumed I wouldn’t rent a truck and empty the house or rummage through their porn collection while they were out dancing. And I probably wouldn’t have rummaged through their porn tapes if they hadn’t been stacked right on top of the VCR.

  The next day—pride day!—we drove to the home of Kevin’s business partner, Tim, who lived close to the start of the parade route. The plan was for all of Tim’s friends to park at his house, have a few drinks, and then walk (walk! in L.A.!) the seven or so blocks to Santa Monica Boulevard. An extremely attractive, short, athletic blond with an impossibly beautiful body, Tim was running around shirtless when we arrived. Tim was highly strung and a little effeminate—character traits that derailed his acting career. On the drive over, Kevin told me that Tim just spent thirty thousand dollars having all of his teeth capped by Britney Spears’s dentist.

  “Say something nice about his teeth,” Kevin instructed me.

  Tim was running around the house when we arrived, donning and doffing T-shirts in an effort to put together the perfect pride parade look. With the exception of the T-shirts scattered all over the living room, his house was immaculate (Architectural Digest was shooting it the next day), with examples of Kevin’s and Tim’s stylish and outrageously expensive light fixtures, floor lamps, and wall sconces dominating every room. The place was also packed with people when we arrived. Tim’s friends were mostly men, each one tanner and more muscular than the next, with the exception of the one fat-and-funny faggot cracking jokes from the couch and a butch/glam lesbian couple more at home with gay men than with other lesbians. As far as I could tell, there was no one in the house who needed a dose of gay-is-good affirmation; everyone seemed hip, secure, and successful. No one at Tim’s house looked to be racked with feelings of shame—least of all Tim.