It was much better to be gay in the alley way back when

So says a "straight" conservative columnist in the Daily Caller:

Gays have become totally boring, this reporter has learned.

Although gay Americans were for decades popularly identified as daring, transgressive, flamboyant, colorful and sometimes menacing (though also intriguing) mavericks, self-styled advocates have managed to rebrand the gay community as a bland, tedious, grievance group eagerly seeking government approval....

Gayness used to be pretty awesome, according to alternative literature from the period 1954-78. Back in the day, gays were subversive adventurers, trolling the city streets at night on a lustful quest for experience and with an outlaw mentality not seen since the days of the Wild West. They were decadently-dressed sexual superheroes, daring Middle America to condemn them as they pranced their corseted, high-heeled bodies around to midnight screenings of great American movies like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” “Pink Flamingoes,” and “Mommy Dearest.” They had an ingrained creativity, a patented sense of irony. They had a brand. They had an identity....
The progressives hosed all of that activity down. The progressives have filled the back-alley glory holes with MoveOn.org petitions. They have condemned clubs named “The Toilet” and erected phone-banking operations for Media Matters. They have taken away your leather costumes and dressed you in Obama-Biden T-shirts. They have taken away your poppers and your molly and handed you $14 apple martinis."

I wonder what "alternative literature" He's been reading!


Patrick Howley

Updated On: 11/8/13 at 04:06 PM

I don't understand his point about male bank tellers and bottoms?

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I wish that were a piece for The Onion -- then it would be kinda brilliant. But from checking it out and his other pieces, it actually seems sincere. Wow.

But his rant did have a link to this commercial for Man's Country Baths which IS kinda awesome.

I remember Man's Country.

Ah, yes, I remember it well...

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"They have taken away your poppers and your molly"

What's molly?

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Thanks. I was hoping it wasn't drug slang using the orphan names in Annie.

Gimme three Mollys, two Peppers, a Duffy and a July.

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Not that it matters, but Molly is not street slang for LSD. It actually is the slang for pure MDMA but as of late it's pretty much been slang for all ecstasy and not just it's purest form.

I was just about to write that. But people do combine "molly' with lsd for a bigger high

I'm waiting for the followup about how much more exciting blacks were during segregation.

The issue isn't exclusive to gay men. Every minority group struggles with how much of its unique identity it will sacrifice in return for assimilation. (See all the Chicano literature of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly the plays of Luis Valdez. Very ambivalent about what is sacrificed when "Chicanos" become "Mexican-Americans" (terms from the literature of the period).)

I remember clearly that when I moved to NYC in 1977, many if not most gays took pride in challenging social norms, including marriage and especially monogamy. My partner (now husband) and I were told by more than a few friends that we "weren't really gay" because we have a monogamous relationship. (We figured that was our own business. We don't demand that anyone follow suit.)

AIDS may have had something to do with making promiscuity less attractive to some.