Bradley Manning, c by Semino1e

or did that happen long ago? Or maybe it’s just been insidious over the years, like the proverbial slow cooking frog in the pot.

We’ve gone from being (mostly) afraid to talk about who we are to having the right to marry and the right to serve our country in the armed forces (and what could possibly be more boring and traditional than these two things?*).

The dark and dangerous area of town where the gay bars (mostly) used to be where I grew up is now a highly desired, yuppie loft paradise. (that’s Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

In recent years, my jaw has dropped further and further to the pavement with the appearance of professional street vendors, the type of guys who come to any public event in Los Angeles, with their carefully and artfully arranged carts of rainbow paraphernalia, no doubt all made in China or another far-away, lower-wage country.

Buy some Pride for yourself! Wear something with a rainbow on it, better yet, several rainbows! I was even given a rainbow Mardi Gras beads at a GLBT lit conference I was recently at. And we’re supposed to be the fashion trendsetters?

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Really?? I guess it’s the price of success, when you become, in so many ways, the status quo. I know we keep this up to show kids from Kansas and Oklahoma and Alabama and all the rest of the officially hateful places that there is an alternative, there is tolerance and acceptance and there is a place for them. And truly, I do remember, it wasn’t always like this.
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So it’s even weirder what happened in San Francisco — remember, this is the City Harvey Milk famously invited queer youth to come to if they wanted to be free — when they threw Bradley Manning under the bus.

I’m not sure if Bradley Manning is a hero or not. He very well may be. But we do know he is a gay man who had the guts to challenge power with huge, unimaginable consequences for himself for the rest of his life. Shining a light on something he felt was deeply wrong and immoral. Since his arrest, he’s been held in solitary. He’s been interrogated. I’m not sure how “enhanced” this was.

Yet he seems to have been met mostly with silence by the official gay community. Cause it might embarrass the somewhat cozy relationship we have with the current administration, or maybe it’s just embarrassing now that we have equality in this area of the military, this gay guy gives our secrets to Wikileaks for the world to know. Well, you knew that would happen once you let those queers in.

The thing of it is, the Gay Pride Movement was founded on the coattails of the civil rights, anti-war, and women’s rights movements of the 1960s, all which challenged the status quo and our definitions of what was right and what was wrong.

That we can’t even come to include Bradley Manning in our embrace of the issues really makes me wonder about the health of Gay Pride as a political force. It’s almost like, “don’t rock the boat, we’re this close guys” type of a thing.

But at what price?

(* by saying this, I’m not discounting that both marriage and the military have advantages, often huge ones, for those who participate in them. I believe everyone should have the right to marry or be in the military should they so choose. What I mean is that these two institutions have failed for many, many people over long periods of time and I question the push to assimilate in this direction, rather than being a beacon of hope and new direction for humanity, which is traditionally a gay role. )