(an open letter to Sky Gilbert)

Dear Sky,

When I read in the Globe yesterday that you're quitting being gay, I felt like the little kid in that old western:

But at the risk of sounding like Bradley Miller in his asinine reaction to your piece (falling back on the old "large generation of us" gambit), the last point I'll argue with you on is this statement:

"some are so pressed by the new, perfect, sanitized gay ideal that they end up drowning themselves in suicidal drugs and unsafe sex."

What ideal are you referring to?  The straight-enforced "married-with-Asian-baby" ideal?  Or the gay-enforced "Abercrombie-shirt-with-perfect-hair-and-abs" ideal?  You know as well as I do that the one thing all gay men want to be (besides rich!) is sexy, and there's nothing like a hearty helping of party drugs to wash away the inhibitions and let you fuck like a porn star for three days.  It's a powerful lure and I don't think pressure to "settle down" has all that much to do with it.

I will agree with you that a freer sex culture has been driven somewhat "underground" by all the respectability you're condemning (I've railed about that horrifying word "discreet" in the past) but Grindr alone shows that "sex for pleasure" is not dead -- far, far from it -- and gay culture will never die out.

As long as there those of us who love to get it in the face but fewer in number than the guys who just recoiled from that image (yet don't know what they're missing!), we will always be different. Hopefully no longer hated for it but always apart.  We'll think different and we'll act different and the glorious culture we'll create will be different.

As for monogamy, I'll refer you back to this space back in July when I argued that gay and straight culture are merging.  The straights, monogamous or otherwise, are kinkier these days and I think we had a lot to do with it.

The result may not be the culture you or I have wanted, Sky, but the gay rights movement has always been about our freedom to make choices. That freedom extends towards ESPs, drag queens, Grindrs, house-husbands and drips like Bradley Miller alike, no?

So I hope you'll change your mind and come back to the fold.  You're needed!  Besides, aren't you just a bit curious to see how it all plays out?  Sure, it's easy to look at those "kids today" and weep that they don't know about Harry Hay or The Body Politic or Paul Lynde or Christopher Peterson or even that there was a British Queer as Folk, but when they stream into Buddies on a Saturday night to grind on each other to pop provocateurs like Adam Lambert and Lady Gaga, it seems -- as we heard in the 60s -- the kids are alright.

And finally, just for kicks, I leave you all with a couple kids I love -- New York pranksters Jeffery Self and Cole Escola, who know that my favourite gay culture is silliness: 

42 years after Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously kicked the government out of the bedrooms of the nation, India has followed our lead in decriminalising homosexuality.  As one of the last ten countries to have such a law -- and as one of the most populous countries on the planet -- this is joyous news!

Now, India gets to continue openly building the gay culture that, as we discussed here yesterday, activists like Peter Tatchell fear we're now losing in the West:

"While straight couples are deserting marriage, same-sexers are rushing to embrace it: witness the current legal fight in California for the right to marry. Are queers the new conservatives, the 21st-century suburbanites?"

Only if they want to be, Peter, and yes, sadly, that is part of what we've all been fighting for -- the freedom for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender and yes, straight people to decide how they want to live their lives.  It's not the movement's fault if the lives they choose are boring!

I kid, of course -- watching movies on my boyfriend's big-screen TV at home, I'm as bourgeois as anyone -- but Yasmin Nair has some excellent commentary on why the fight for gay marriage is a big symbolic distraction.

Tatchell argues that gay culture itself is at stake but hasn't it been already?  "Will & Grace" made us cute and we're generally happy to play along.  Drag is rarely provocative anymore, leathermen are kind of adorable and part of me misses the days when non-threatening little me could tell someone I was gay and watch them recoil in horror (that was a fun week).

And, like I said, there's the melding going on:  we've got gay hip-hop and straight drag stars, metrosexuals and gay eHarmony, fey football fans and gay-for-pay fratboys -- all heading for a big bi world?  All that's missing is the sex.

In an interview with Ottawa's Guerilla magazine last week, Xtra's own Marcus McCann talked about his sexy poetry and slutty worldview:

"In a column at Capital Xtra, I described myself as a "slut in a loving, non-monogamous relationship," a term that I know raised some eyebrows at the time."

With straight people?  Or Xtra readers?  McCann doesn't say, but our cheerful "pro-polyamory, pro-sex work, pro-BDSM, pro-casual sex, etc." activist does admit:

"I would hate for all my discussion of threesomes, public sex, one night stands, the whole gay thing, whatever—I would hate for that to be read as a condemnation of more straight-laced people and how they live."

I find myself agreeing with everything McCann says but the more we activists roll around the fading distinction between "gay culture" and "straight culture," the more it seems to me that what we're really talking about is monogamy, no?  In our current social framework, straight culture is about settling down with one person forever and churning out babies, while gay culture is about testing the limits with a polymorphously perverse stew of lovers, fuckbuddies and tricks -- but has anything ever been that tidy?

No, I think McCann is dead on when he says:

"I hope by talking about things like casual sex, I can get some people to feel less guilty about what they're already doing. Because there's nothing worse than a self-hating slut."

"What they're already doing" is the point. Almost everyone has been, is or will be promiscuous at some point and gay or straight, married or not, many people have already decided for themselves on whether they're monogamous or not.  The only question now is whether to not to lie about it and it's a question that needs asking because the internet is rapidly making it moot.

But we'll have more on that tomorrow as I bring in a guest (!!) to help me do the heavy lifting...