Gays and the Harassment of Straight Culture

I grew up around gay pride parades. I went to my first one when I was twelve years old and I never thought twice about all the drunken debauchery that went on. To me, as a child, lechery and misbehavior seemed like an integral part of the gay community. It wasn’t until later that I would learn that straight people just can’t handle gay culture in the same way we can.

In San Diego a jury determined that four firefighters were sexually harassed for being ordered to participate in a gay pride parade. The jury awarded them combined damages of $34,300. The firefighters — Alex Kane, Chad Allison, Capt. John Ghiotto and Capt. Jason Hewitt — claimed they were subjected to sexually charged conduct and lewd comments while riding a fire engine in the July 2007 parade.

On the one hand I think that the boys should have known better. As a firefighter, going on a float in a gay pride parade, what did they expect was going to happen? On the other hand, can gay culture really assume that straight culture will or should understand the way we treat sex? The way we behave around ourselves? There’s a reason that historically gay neighborhoods reamain isolated from the public sphere, like beads of oil in a tub of water.

The article, published on Yahoo news read: “The firefighters’ attorney, Charles LiMandri, said during his closing argument that his clients were targets of vulgar gestures and catcalls while being forced to watch barely clothed men and women simulate sex acts and touch themselves and one another.” Of course they were not “forced” to watch anything, and of course the mere act of watching something “vulgar” does not constitute harassment in and of itself. Even still, is it okay to subject Good Country People to the ills of gayness?

It’s true. Subjecting unwilling straight people to gay acts of sexual misconduct is, in fact, harassment. I believe that the government should remain out of sexual culture. But then, sexual culture must remain in the privet sphere. Good Country People should be able to get off a subway in New York and not have to look at naked ladies. In the same way, we should be able to walk around downtown and not have to look at queers pretending to give eachother head. We have the right to simulate sex acts when and where we please. But we also have a responsibility to keep that sort of thing to ourselves.

But misbehavior has been a staple of gay culture since Stonewall. I think back to the ActUp protests in which “activists” threw condoms at Bishops at St. Peter’s cathedral. Gay culture has no respect for religion and decency, and it shouldn’t. They ought to remain separate. Gay culture derives its unique power from the ability to destabilize heteronormative culture. We shouldn’t be seeking the approval of a Judeo-Christian set of ideals. We never have gotten it, and we never, I think, will.

The fact of the matter is that if firefighters feel uncomfortable being in a gay pride parades, gay people need to Lighten Up and realize that the discomfort itself is not bigotry. I, for example, would NEVER ride on a gay pride float for the same reasons as these fire fighters, yet I do not consider myself a bigot.  Gay culture needs to be comfortable with society’s gay-discomfort. Accepting that we are cultural refugees will do us more good in the long run than demanding that normative culture as a whole accept us and all of our societal peccadilloes.

By forcing others to accept us we, in effect, participate in a kind of harassment. Gay culture is about isolated rule breaking, not forced interaction.