What's the Next Queer War?
Notes for a short presentation in Toronto for the Fab Magazine panel discussion on
"The Next Queer War"
March 4, 2005
When I was asked to come out here to Toronto to talk about the "Next Queer War," I did what I expect all of you did. I sat down and wondered, well, what is the next big battle? What is our community going to take on as The Next Queer War?
And until last night at midnight, I would have said that the next queer war was this:
To FREE Martha Stewart!
But as of last night, or rather as of early this morning, Martha is out.... of jail.
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I wondered about other potential queer wars. I thought about... freeing the cartoon characters!
We live in a world where the only thing more ridiculous than accusing SpongeBob SquarePants of being gay... is getting a press release the next day DENYING that SpongeBob SquarePants is gay.
The folks at Sesame Street have denied that Bert and Ernie are anything more than just friends. Heck, in the second live-action Scoobie Doo movie, Velma goes het.
They are petrified that we are going to turn their children gay. They are petrified that we are going to seduce their children.
Gays and pedophilia are still linked in the brains of so many heterosexuals... Perhaps our next battle will be over our children, will be about showing the world that we care as much about the physical and mental health of children as much as heterosexuals do.
Perhaps the next queer war will take place in our schools.
Then I thought about local activist and businessman Peter Bochove [sitting right over there], and his Committee To Abolish the 19th Century. He's fighting to repeal Canada's ridiculous sex laws. Those remnants of Victorian British colonial rule that criminalize our sex lives. Laws wherein the state strives to regulate morality.
They still infest our Criminal Code, and the cops can -- and DO -- use them whenever they fell like it. They raid bathhouses every so often, just to harass us. Just to screw the faggots.
And then I thought: Enough.
I thought that someone here tonight has to be practical. Someone here has to be pragmatic and say what needs to be said.
I believe -- I greatly fear -- that gay marriage will be the LAST queer war.
That this fight for same-sex marriage will be the last show of gay power, or of gay lobbying strength. This is it. This is the last queer war.
With the passage of same-sex marriage, we will become full citizens of this country, productive and accepted members of the mainstream. Our identity, our sense of who we are, will shift dramatically.
Because, as much as we have worked to create an identity that sees itself as based on positives -- on the many good things about being gay -- much of our sense of community is still understood to be based on being discriminated against. And when that's how you create a community, there's not much left when that discrimination seeps away.
And further, when you define your community as one based on the search for attaining legal rights, which is what we have done in the last few years, then when those legal rights have been attained, what's left? What do you hold onto?
Marriage, for many, was and is the ultimate fight for full legal equality. With the end of marriage discrimination, a large portion of our constituency will "retire." They are going to settle down and live happy and normal, regular lives.
There will still be pockets of homophobia, of course -- but they will be fewer and fewer. There'll be a school bully over there... the occasional police bust in Toronto... another Aaron Webster being beaten to death in Vancouver.... But these will become exceptions. Not the rule.
We'll react to each problem, of course, but each time, there'll be less of a reaction.
Our entrance into the mainstream means that a large portion of the gay community is now -- or will soon be -- happy and comfortable.
There'll be a small group left to fight ongoing battles, but they will be so few that they will have little impact.
That's my view of the Next Queer War. There is none. This is it.
Now let me tell you that I hope I'm wrong. And let me tell you what I hope the Next Queer War will be.
We need to fight for gay rights around the world. Because many of us are being killed and harassed outside of North America.
But there's something else we have to do first.
The next queer war must be a war against poverty. And I'm not talking about the kind of poverty we find a few blocks away.
I don't want to be misunderstood here -- I'm not saying I'm okay with poverty in Canada. But I'm specifically talking here about the kind of abject poverty we find in refugee camps. The kind of poverty you find in post-tsunami Asia. I'm talking about the kind of poverty where a drought starves thousands.
I think that talking about gay rights to those living in a refugee internment camp is pretty stupid.
"That's a very nice idea," they'll say to you. "Now, do you have any food?"
Gay rights are pretty irrelevant to people who are just trying to live through one more day. If we want to spread the word around the world about gay rights, we need to work on other things first. On fighting poverty. That is the Next Queer War.
Thank you.