Gaze: What Goes On

If I say the words "gay culture"', what do you think of? Pride parades with muscle boys in leather hot pants? Kylie Minogue? Antiquated drag queens miming to Shirley Bassey? 
A recent piece in The Huffington Post described Grindr as an example of "gay culture". For those unfamiliar with modern gay dating rituals, Grindr is an app which enables men to track the locations of potential sexual partners. First launched in 2009, it now claims to have four million users worldwide...
Is this what passes for gay culture these days? An app which offers the quickest, easiest way to arrange sexual hook-ups? If Grindr really is an example of gay culture then is dogging an example of "straight culture"? And if not, why not?
Britain's lesbian and gay community has made massive strides in recent years. We have an equal age of consent, employment rights and a whole raft of legal protections we didn't have a decade ago. Soon the UK will even follow in the footsteps of countries like Spain and South Africa and grant same sex couples the right to marry.
So where does that leave gay culture? For many people, gay culture begins and ends with the gay scene. There are gay magazines devoted to it, and gay people who devote their lives to it. And compared to many countries, we have a gay scene we can be proud of. But all is not well in this rosy pink world. The impact of drugs like GHB has led to numerous deaths on the London gay scene. Next month, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in the capital is hosting a panel discussion to address the problem. The fact that it's presented by someone called Sleazy Michael gives some idea of the target audience...

Paul Burston on Guardian online launching his new online magazine, Gaze.
Haven't see it yet, but hope it's not just more of the usual "anti-gay" sniffy gaybore queens expressing their contempt for ordinary gay men.
Does sound like it from this, though.
The scene!
Ugh!
Sex!
Ugh!
Drugs!
Ugh!
Gay men!
UGH!!!
How terribly, terribly common and vulgar.
Hurrah for high culture and cultural elitism and snobbery!
At last... a magazine where silenced and side-lined homophobic, trans-hating journalists like Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill are given a voice!
They've also been boasting in pre-publicity Andrew Pierce, the Daily Mail's house-trained gay Uncle Tom is onboard.
FFS!
What are any of these people beyond reactionary controversialist fame-chasing over-inflated egos?
Paul Burston - an ego so big it could cancel out the Sun - says; "We wanted to tackle issues one doesn't generally read about in the lesbian and gay press. For too long, gay people were defined by the expectations of heterosexuals – and we ended up in a ghetto, with a narrow view of the world beyond."
Erm, do you want a list of articles in the gay press saying this?
It'd be pretty long - and rather boring - and they date back to the dawn of the gay press.
And in-no-way is that cover above childishly provocative and suggestive that this mag might be Islamophobic.
(Edit: Admittedly the article could be another "On being gay and Muslim" one - as much of a gay media cliche as all those "the last taboo" ones about - shock - gay rappers).
Anyway, hurrah for bourgeois hegemony masquerading as dissent!!!

"What’s culture? Culture is just a general term for everything that goes on" - Noam Chomsky.

"Culture is ordinary" - Raymond Williams.

"Gay culture's not an oxymoron, you moron. Cause culture's just what people do" - Richard Smith.

PS "Sleazy Michael" - Michael Peacock - bravely fought and won a landmark libertarian case on gay porn last year, so why's he being slagged off?
And the number of deaths related to GHB is tiny - so why bang on about them, unless you want to fuel Daily Mail-style drugs hysteria?