A letter in The Independent today.
Let's cross the cliches off one-by-one...
'Peter Tatchell calls on the coalition Government to get up do date with public opinion regarding same-sex civil partnerships. Mr Tatchell might take a leaf out of his own book and drop his liberal use of the dated and now largely derogatory term "queers" when describing, in his article, the people he is supposed to be supporting.
Mr Tatchell comes from a self-defeating school of thought that favours deliberate provocation rather than the vigorous intellectual championing of a cause. The militants like Tatchell have actually stunted their own initial plan to gain total equality for people who are not exclusively heterosexual with thoughtless outbursts in the national press, annual pantomimic parades where it's hard to join in if you're not wearing or at least cheering on the hot pants and angel wings, and the constant labelling and categorising of people solely because of a private sexual act into fully-fledged identities where you can't just say you're a man or a woman without prefacing it with the word "gay".
Civil partnerships should of course be legal and should be held in exactly the same regard as the marriage of two people of opposite sexes. But I ask you, what young person thinking about "coming out" or indeed having a civil partnership would want to end up being breezily referred to as a "queer" by Tatchell's very own "community"?
Eugene O'Hare, London N8'
Who said satire is dead?
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Sadly this isn't satire - but this is.
ReplyDeleteThe Onion's 2001 "classic" 'Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years'
"WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA–The mainstream acceptance of gays and lesbians, a hard-won civil-rights victory gained through decades of struggle against prejudice and discrimination, was set back at least 50 years Saturday in the wake of the annual Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade.
"I'd always thought gays were regular people, just like you and me, and that the stereotype of homosexuals as hedonistic, sex-crazed deviants was just a destructive myth," said mother of four Hannah Jarrett, 41, mortified at the sight of 17 tanned and oiled boys cavorting in jock straps to a throbbing techno beat on a float shaped like an enormous phallus. "Boy, oh, boy, was I wrong." etc etc
http://www.theonion.com/articles/gaypride-parade-sets-mainstream-acceptance-of-gays,351/