A DISTINCTLY QUEER FEELING Today I woke up with a weird feeling: I was feeling a little gay. Really. Don’t know how to explain it, don’t know what distinguished this day from any other, but you can bet your bottom dollar, it was most definitely a gay sensation. Gee, we’d all like to cause a gay sensation, wouldn’t we? Well we may just have our chance.
You know, this whole gay marriage thing has quite a few folks up in one big wedded wad. People who never once considered coupling on a permanent basis, queers who originally smirked at the hetero-normative institution, folks who never gave one whit about the body politic, gay or no, are suddenly paying attention. You want to take away what? Rights that courts already decided were rights? You want to vote on my status as a U.S. citizen? Well, you bitches started the fight back in 2004 with your plot to motivate your voting base with the most base tactic ever: Let’s scare ’em with a big pile o’ gay. Yeah, those same Bible-thumpers you jerks laugh at behind their pious pews. But you needed them to put into office the necessary idiots to move your plan forward. You used them. And to get them all hell-fired up, you sold us down the river. Not for one second does that absolve the Bible crowd. No, it simply points out that they would rather side with blood-thirsty, oil-chugging, water-boarding assholes than not judge lest they be judged. They had a choice, and they chose your path instead of paths of acceptance, forgiveness, and mind-your-own-goddamned-business.
So yeah, I didn’t care about gay marriage before. But now I do. Thanks to you. And thanks to every heterosexual American who sat on their ass through the Proposition 8 mess and did nothing to stand up for dignity and what’s right. I’ve tried to rationalize this whole marriage thing by making it personal, by distilling it down to I-didn’t-want-to-get-married-anyway sour grapes, but now I give a damn. Now, it really all boils down to this: Fuck you, I’m gay.
And this Wednesday, I’m calling in gay. You heard me: Gay. And I’m not spending one thin dime on anything unless it is gay. If I’m not good enough to enjoy the same rights as the rest of you hose bags, then you can do without my shining face around the office for one lousy day, and you can do without my cash. To quote A Day Without a Gay: “Our community contributes $700 billion a year to this economy (the same amount as the bailout), yet we are not given equal protections under the law that every citizen deserves.”
I can’t claim it as my idea, but I’m claiming it as my day: This Wednesday, Dec. 10. Yes, it happens to fall on International Human Rights Day. Join us? Call in gay: www.daywithoutagay.org. See Wednesday and the Gay Place Blog (austinchronicle.com/gayplaceblog).
This article appears in December 5 • 2008.