Losing Our Identity

The answer:  "Homogenized milk, Cultured Sour Cream, Chain Restaurants".....

The question:  "What is the same every time you get it?"

So my last post called for awareness of your own internal prejudices.  Use them to celebrate our differences and be able to utilize them to play upon your own strengths.  All very important points.

However, today I realized a quandary of what happens to a group of people when they get the "acceptance" for which they so diligently have fought.

I was in a National Chain Bookstore today looking for literature of a specific nature.....a specific genre.....ok, ok...The Gay & Lesbian section.  Here is the conversation I had with the young help desk clerk:

Me:  "Excuse me, I have been wandering around your store for the last 20 minutes and I can't find your Gay & Lesbian section.  I am on vacation and need a new book."

20something female Clerk:  "What section?"

Me:  "The Gay & Lesbian section.  I would like some new gay fiction"

20something:  "There is no Gay and Lesbian section"

Me:  "You mean you don't sell gay themed books?" (Obvious ire welling up)

20something:  :::Rolling her eyes::: "No, they are all mixed up"

Me:  "You are telling me that gays and lesbians are mixed up?!?!?!"  (about ready to blow a gasket)

20something: "NO! (duh) That fiction is in with the other fiction.....no special section for Gays & Lesbians"

Me: "Oh....well.....ummmm.....thanks."

Ok, so all the gay authors are now in the same stacks as the regular authors.  Cool!  We are getting treated like everyone else!  No special section!  No more back-of-the-bus, at least in the world of literature!  Tony Kushner is no longer relegated to a dark dismal corner of some shop living in fear that someone may find him.  Armisted Maupin can come out of the closets and into the world of real literature!  Michael Thomas Ford needn't worry about prying straight eyes in his "Queer Life".  Cool!

Hey....wait.... That means that I have to look through the regular stacks for the stories I might identify with?  No more standing in the Gay and Lesbian sections perusing the books while watching someone fidgeting and trying to get the nerve to pull a book off the shelf and through their actions admit that they may have homosexual tendencies?  No more secretive glances at the cute guy who has pulled gay erotica off the shelf? 

While I relish the thought of Suzie Bible-Thumper selecting what she thinks to be the latest Harlequin Romance because there is a hot guy on the cover only to find that both main characters have "throbbing members"......I am not so sure this desegregation this is a good thing.

I was having a discussion with another 40 something bartender in a gay establishment.  He was talking about a downturn in clientele.  When asked why the decrease, he stated that many gay patrons were now going to local straight bars.....and finding many other gays there as well.  He said this was the death knell of the gay bar as we knew it.  Acceptance is up and people don't find the need to seek out their own specific bar anymore. 

Have we made it?  Has homosexuality begun to see the light of day? Will this wave of political fear mongering about the "homosexual agenda" finally be put to rest? 

Wow.....from Stonewall to Suburbs......we have always been here.  Acceptance would be great.  But there was a certain feeling when we walked into a club that was meant for us.  A sense of belonging when we found people who were just like us.  Now we have to wade through the rejection of straight AND gay men just to find "the one"? 

Can I change my mind?  
I think I want to be special again.