Being off the wall, weird and perverted is being equal and normal in the big picture. Do you have any idea the kinds of crazy shit straight people come up with? The concept of straight America
as Ward & June Cleaver belongs mainly to the real of fantasy television and more often than not those that cry foul are hoping the skeletons in their own closet are never exposed to sunlight. Does the name Ted Haggard ring a bell? Time to stop kissing the ass of the so called “moral majority” because the truth of it is that they are neither.

I understand what you’re saying, and to an extent I agree. Adam Lambert should certainly expect a backlash when he behaves like that – as should any performer. The blue rinse brigade and the religious nuts will always scream and shout whenever someone behaves in a way they disapprove of.

However, the backlash should be against Adam Lambert, not the entire gay “community”. We should not all be tarred with the same brush. I’m not naive. I know that there will be some who will use his actions to claim that we’re all depraved beasts, but I don’t think the gay “community” should be buying into that.

As another poster so eloquently put it (I’m paraphrasing here), if the actions of this one individual actually harm our quest for equality, we are further from obtaining that equality than we might like to believe. Let the bigots have their stereotypes, and let the rest of us embrace the diversity and individuality within the gay “community”.

There is good and bad in every minority and majority group. Rather than trying to suppress or condemn the bad in our own “community”, we should be defending it. Part of the meaning of equality, after all, is the right for any of us to behave just as badly as any straight person.

Adam Lambert has been, and will be, condemned for his behavior. There is a long line of people waiting to condemn him for that. While we shouldn’t necessarily stand by him or express support for him, we certainly shouldn’t be standing beside the bigots who deny us our rights in order to join them in their condemnation.

And this is your standard misreading of the Civil Rights movement. Not the protesting part, but anyone who thinks rioting is the reason why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed knows little about American history.

James

Actually no it’s not. It is the standard way of minority life in the United States.

James

What I’m saying, I guess, is not that everyone everywhere should unconditionally conform to whatever “normal” means, but I am suggesting that essentially antisocial behaviors color the way people look at us. It’s really, really hard for me personally to work out this concept because I see the value of both “being yourself” and having to live within a society of other people. I’m not suggesting that every queer dress in suits and ties or whatever, but I am suggesting that when we do shocking things (ie, shove dancers’ faces in our crotches during prime-time television performances) we cannot claim to be surprised at a backlash. That’s pretty much it.

ModernMystic, I think you missed my point, and I’ll concede that it was a poor way of making it on my part. I don’t hate any flaming queers or man-hating bull-dykes; but yes, fighting the stereotype that we are ALL like that, or that even a majority of this group *is* like that is what we need to do to advance our cause. I’m not claiming to have all the answers (if I did I would not be commenting on a website such as this), but I do want to discuss the state of our “community” for the sake of progress. We’re all in this together, right? And if we’re all so very diverse, why aren’t we using our diversity as a rallying point? Why do we rush to defend stereotypical people or personalities when they are attacked without attempting to examine *why* they were attacked? And yes, you are exactly right that equality belongs to everyone. That’s my point. We as GLBT people cannot stand on society’s outskirts and hope to reap all of its benefits. We cannot continue to stand against society’s most basic and long-held standards of decency while demanding to be protected and embraced by it.

The danger of the popularity of the negative stereotype lies in our mission and our message. What are we trying to accomplish? Removing the stigma from consentual adult relationships? Or are we trying to normalize libertinage and promote sexuality? While I believe that 99.99% of GLBT people, allies, and activists alike would agree that the former is the case, those actively homophobic or casually unsure of gay rights are receiving the latter message.