“Sucking Nipples On The Subway”

I was listening to a Gay radio show the other day. I like the host a lot and love the show. Something has been sticking in my craw though about some comments the other day. It was the morning after the Kanye West incident on MTV. There was a discussion about people who perpetuate stereotypes and ruin it for the rest of us. The host mentioned two men he had seen on the subway making out and I think sucking each other’s nipples, hey it’s New York. He talked about how they are the kind of Gays that the conservatives point to when they make arguments against the Gay community. He said something to the effect that he wanted to go up to them and tell them to stop ruining it for the rest of us gays.

Herein lays my problem. What they were doing has nothing to do with them being Gay other then they were two men. A male female couple exhibiting the same behavior would be as inappropriate as a Gay couple. Conservatives don’t need a reason to rile against the Gays. Those men were not ruining it for the rest of us anymore then Kanye West was ruining it for other black people. The behavior was not about being Gay or black; it was about being inappropriate to the situation. If a conservative mind sees both behaviors and goes to the Gay and Black issues, it’s because they are homophobic, bigoted, racist and probably all three. We make a huge mistake if we confuse this issue.

It’s how we begin to discriminate within our own community. We judge those who we think are less acceptable to heterosexuals and wish we can hide them so as to make our community more acceptable. The Gay community needs to rethink this issue and go for equal rights based on acceptance of who we are as we are. The couple on the train and Kanye West were simply people exhibiting inappropriate behavior in a public situation. The bigots will have you think it’s about their orientation or skin color. It’s not; it has nothing to do with it…