I think Kluwe’s letter is stunning. (I was posting it everywhere and defending his specific rhetorical style most of the day Saturday.) I think he’s a model both for refusing niceness and politeness in defending progressive causes, and also in how to be an ally. And, he’s also hot.

As to the comment about people of color recognizing the similarity between the struggles for racial equalities and the struggle for sexual liberation, I completely agree that there are important analogies. There are also exceptionally important disanalogies. Just as queer people want people of color to understand the connections, I think queer people need to be caustious not to too quickly equate the two struggles, or commodify the earlier struggle for our own ends, or not be willing to recognize significant differences in history and contemporary contexts.

Really? The *only* people? Um, sure. Tell that to fat people, women, the disabled, the mentally ill, immigrants, people on public assistance. Bigotry and hatred of gay people is real and socially sanctioned, but trying to make it exceptional (or worse, or better) doesn’t get us anywhere. It’s not a competition.

Oh look, the righteous voice of gay progressivism calling out social conservatives for their narrowmindedness. The same voice which has silenced internal dissent; the same voice which has ignored or downright opposed the legacy of forefathers like Harry Hay Jr. and Larry Kramer. The same voice who is against punishing victimless activities, but has nothing to say when men and women throughout the US are put on a public criminal record for life because the sexually aware, post-pubescent person they had consensual sex with wasn’t old enough to be in the army or to vote.

The righteous voice which climbed the ladder of recognition along with those other voices back in the 70s, then kicked it away so it could glue itself to the mainstream political centre-left and join the Moral Majority’s bandwagon of ‘protect the children’, pushing for heteronormative benefits instead of pushing to divorce itself from heteronormativity.

Oh look, the righteous voice of gay progressivism calling out social conservatives for their narrowmindedness. The same voice which has silenced internal dissent; the same voice which has ignored or downright opposed the legacy of forefathers like Harry Hay Jr. and Larry Kramer. The same voice who is against punishing victimless activities, but has nothing to say when men and women throughout the US are put on a public criminal record for life because the sexually aware, post-pubescent person they had consensual sex with wasn’t old enough to be in the army or to vote.

The righteous voice which climbed the ladder of recognition along with those other voices back in the 70s, then kicked it away so it could glue itself to the mainstream political centre-left and join the Moral Majority’s bandwagon of ‘protect the children’, pushing for heteronormative benefits instead of pushing to divorce itself from heteronormativity.

Oh look, the righteous voice of gay progressivism calling out social conservatives for their narrowmindedness. The same voice which has silenced internal dissent; the same voice which has ignored or downright opposed the legacy of forefathers like Harry Hay Jr. and Larry Kramer. The same voice who is against punishing victimless activities, but has nothing to say when men and women throughout the US are put on a public criminal record for life because the sexually aware, post-pubescent person they had consensual sex with wasn’t old enough to be in the army or to vote.

The righteous voice which climbed the ladder of recognition along with those other voices back in the 70s, then kicked it away so it could glue itself to the mainstream political centre-left and join the Moral Majority’s bandwagon of ‘protect the children’, pushing for heteronormative benefits instead of pushing to divorce itself from heteronormativity.

I completely agree with your critique of the marriage equality movement, Byron, as well as your critique of an incredibly staid and milquetoast LGBT (I intentionally omit the Q here) political mainstream. To me, though, the element to celebrate in Kluwe’s letter is the outrage. Not just saying to the narrowminded that they are narrowminded, but in an incredibly forceful rant to call bullshit (almost explicitly). Although the political goal being articulated is not one I care that much about, this specific political rhetoric is one I think the drag queens, trannies and dykes at Stonewall would have appreciated.

I completely agree with your critique of the marriage equality movement, Byron, as well as your critique of an incredibly staid and milquetoast LGBT (I intentionally omit the Q here) political mainstream. To me, though, the element to celebrate in Kluwe’s letter is the outrage. Not just saying to the narrowminded that they are narrowminded, but in an incredibly forceful rant to call bullshit (almost explicitly). Although the political goal being articulated is not one I care that much about, this specific political rhetoric is one I think the drag queens, trannies and dykes at Stonewall would have appreciated.

I completely agree with your critique of the marriage equality movement, Byron, as well as your critique of an incredibly staid and milquetoast LGBT (I intentionally omit the Q here) political mainstream. To me, though, the element to celebrate in Kluwe’s letter is the outrage. Not just saying to the narrowminded that they are narrowminded, but in an incredibly forceful rant to call bullshit (almost explicitly). Although the political goal being articulated is not one I care that much about, this specific political rhetoric is one I think the drag queens, trannies and dykes at Stonewall would have appreciated.

I don’t disagree with you; I just fail to see the relevance of it. If characteristics of rhetoric alone were the criteria, the hard left and hard right would get along just fine. I simply have no patience for hypocrisy.

I don’t think it’s right to condemn bigotry, then present homosexuality as the mirror image of the heteronormative mold, except with two adult, preferably urban professional people of the same sex, with enough disposaible income to make the movement politically viable.

I don’t think it’s right that, were their beautiful love story to have started today instead of 50 years ago, Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood would have been spat upon not only by people like Emmet Burns but by ILGA and GLAAD as well.

I don’t think it’s right that to most gay people – particularly those fortunate enough to be addressed by gay rights as they are today – the West’s (and particularly America’s) draconian sex offender witch hunt is irrelevant. ‘I’ve got mine, screw you’.

If gay rights can afford to have what are generally considered to be progressive views on economics, foreign policy and other issues of political concern, they can afford to speak out for the legal rights of transexuals. They can afford to not cater to an existing social mold. They can afford to point out how ridiculous it is to brand mentally ill child rapists and guys who fooled around with high school sophomores in the back of their car under the same category.

It’s akin to the Civil Rights movement denying black culture and wishing merely to live peacefully with the same personal characteristics as their former slaveowners.

Again, I agree with everything you’ve just said. (Although, to be fair, Larry Kramer has had some fairly awful things to say about “gay culture” and practices that you might want to celebrate/defend as a broader vision of sexual liberation.) In fact, all civil rights movements are complicated. There were plenty of advocates for racial equality that thought Black Power critiques were simply too radical, or impractical. While certain Black Power voices critiqued the model of integration in just the ways that you (and I) would critique mainstream political movements.

Insofar as we’re thinking about this particular intervention, however, Kluwe makes no *positive* case for anything in particular. I don’t know what Kluwe’s case for a good relational-erotic economy is, and it might be more like the one you’re describing than anything else. (Although language about how if lesbian and gay people get their “rights” nothing fundamental will change always worries me.)

In some ways, you’re quite right that the left and the right might be more similar than different when we start looking at rhetoric. What I would suggest–and why I like Kluwe’s letter–is that it is a liberal (not a progressive, or radical left) voice that is finally willing to trade in the vilifying rhetoric of even the moderate right. I actually think that progress is made when we realize that the battle is not going to be won through rational discourse–whatever end game we want to champion.

And I think the marriage equality debate makes it incredibly difficult for progressive queers. Given that it is the conversation that the mainstream media will actually pay attention to, how does one enter the conversation, interrupt the conversation, use the conversation to one’s own ends. After all, given the kind of vitriolic ugliness that is spewed by homophobic douchebags as part of this conversation, staying silent can’t be an option. And, simply taking up the “we’re just like everyone else and we just want a chance to skp off into the sunset too” also doesn’t work. I think it’s a *genuine* challenge.

How about some props for the man who started all of this, our Baltimore Ravens ally Brendon Ayanbadejo?

http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/style-points/201209/nfl-new-nike-uniforms-pants

Chris and Brendon are both my heroes.