Earlier this year, the LGBT/Queer Community violently protested outside the Mormon Temple on Santa Monica Blvd after it was revealed that the LDS had paid for damning, dishonest advertisement that scared the general public into voting against gay marriage in the state of California.
People felt compelled to march on the streets. It was a heartening sight. Bringing the city and traffic of LA to a roiling standstill.
Governments are filled with fear when people march on the streets. It is very effective.
Weeks after the event, hope that a young, fearless leader would emerge from the attacks on the LDS did not materialize.
Another missed opportunity to parley genuine outrage into political leverage.
The gay community lacks any kind of secular leadership. The politics of invisibility reign. Sadly, the invisigays determine the political landscape and are as unwavering and intransigent as any Born Again.
Ridgid, dogmatic…blind to other possibilities. Hung up on the notion that if gays can get married, have babies and retire behind a white picket fence THEY might not notice we exist.
President Obama has left the door wide open if the gay community wants to accept Civil Union as the way forward but the invisigays have set their sights on Marriage and nothing less will do. The invisigays arm themselves with the lackluster ‘separate but equal’ argument against civil union. They hook their marriage cart to hate crimes and refuse to engage with any other argument for change.
As dozens of young gay men and women, inspired maybe by Dustin Lance Black‘s film about Harvey MILK, leave their communities…escaping from people like Rick Warren (and Christians like him) flock into their local big cities in search of cherubic Dustin Lance Black (and boys like him) what can they expect?
They can expect gay bars and nightclubs and happy hours and gyms and free condoms and? And what else? A gay church maybe? What If they are looking for political leadership where do they look? If they are looking for moral guidance or evidence of who came before them or what battles were fought..what can they expect to hear?
Currently LA invisigay aspirational thinking is this: Abandon negative ideas and anger, keep your abs hard and after a few well placed naked pool parties, learn to ape straight culture by buying a baby.
Max Muchnick, creator of Will and Grace is very rich and ‘married’ to attractive lawyer Erik Hyman and as well-connected as any gays can be in Hollywood. Max recently penned an article for the Huffington Post about his motherless daughters. Children made thus: eggs from appropriate donor (white women can charge more for their eggs), womb donor, sperm from either or both of the gay couple = a $300,000 baby and Mother/women erased permanently, effortlessly from the picture.
Max complains that at LAX he had to explain to a security guard that his daughters had no mother. No mother? The security guard asked politely. How did the babies..happen? Max is outraged. Isn’t it evident to you that my husband and I are GAY.
There are pictures of Max and Eric awkwardly holding their babies in the LA Times. ‘There is no mother.’ Max boasts. Therefore, no hope of either of those little girls understanding where they came from or what kind of woman could rent room in their womb or sell their eggs. No one to explain how that could have happened. Would Eric and Max want their own girls to sell their eggs and wombs or be written out of their grandchild’s history?
Other gay men with motherless children explain patiently to me that because their children will be so loved they will not have to ask such uncomfortable questions like: WHERE’S MOMMY?
Gay men are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to create ‘families’ regardless of the outcome. The marriage/baby aping of straight society smacks of the’ politics of invisibility’. If we get married, have children ‘they’ might not realize we are here, ‘they’ will have to treat us ‘normally’.
What are we meant to aspire to in 2009? What are we teaching the next generation of gay men and women?
At a West Hollywood party recently an invisigay father made a pass at me. It set me to wondering if his marriage meant anything at all-a marriage that others had fought so hard to get. Newly married, surrogate babies on the way and making a pass at a comparative stranger. When I put this to him he was visibly shaken. He told me that he felt bad, that I was making him feel bad. Worse, I said, than having had sex with me then going home to his newborn? He said, well, straight people do it. I laughed. What kind of straight people do we want to be? The kind that cheats or stays loyal? The kind that blows his family apart with infidelity, or the sort who honors the vows of his marriage? Do we, in fact, just want all the trappings of marriage and babies and behave like we always did?
Duncan Roy's Blog 
Are you familiar at all with Kathy Griffin, the self-proclaimed “D-list” comedian? She ran into flop-level awkwardness just by a mention of not understanding “this whole thing with the gaybies.” Ouch! Bummer since “her gays” make up a huge part of her fan base – one reason people love her is cause she’s willing to go ahead and risk life, limb and lawsuits to say out loud what “everybody’s thinking.” So offending people is nothing new for her, but this was like having the door slammed in her face by the people she counts as friends. Anyway don’t know if you know Kathy, but this post reminded me of her.
I find this “invisigay” phenomenon you describe interesting, in that it seems to be a mirror image of the fear many who vehemently and actively oppose gay marriage/civil unions express. “If homosexuals get married, raise families, etc.,” “THEY” say to themselves, “we will be forced to deal with these people in our neighborhoods, at PTA meetings, at playgrounds and soccer practice and fireman’s carnivals. We will have to explain to our children that ‘yes, Evan’s fathers seem perfectly nice but you are not allowed to go to their house because they are evil.’ And our children might not believe us because they will think it is normal to be gay.” But I think I understand that the hope is that, after the shock, “THEY” will simply embrace their homosexual neighbors as no different. But the neighbors are different. And I think pretending all is homogenous is in some ways as dangerous as putting a wall up. But I may be misunderstanding. I have very lofty, leftist ideals in my heart that are difficult to reconcile with reality.
Dunan: I am a single gay guy who is also a parent to a wonderful son by adoption. I adopted my son when he was 8 years old through the foster care system. Personally I find the idea of gay male couples spending thousands of dollars to have a biological baby to be egotistical. Granted I have never met a gay couple with a child who think that by having a traditional family life they will be invisible. Quite the opposite most of them are very “out there” so to speak. Think about it-these are men who spend thousands to have a baby, the last thing they are going to do is try to be invisible!
My choice to become a parent came from my life long desire to have a family. Knowing I was doing something very untraditional I have had to think about how I would address with my son the fact that we are a non-traditional family, why he will never marry a woman and about the homophobia he will encounter one day.
I share this with you because I want to be visible, I want people to know that not all gay men with children can be grouped together, nor do we even have many similarities. I choose not to attend the gay father’s get togethers in my area because I’ve found very few guys I can connect with. Most of them don’t know what to make of my story, it’s uncomfortable for them. Luckily there are other single guys and couples who chose the same route to parenthood as myself that I am able to connect with.
Thank you for doing the show, and for speaking out on this blog. It’s a shame that an articulate gay man who has the visibility you have recieved and who speaks brutally honestly about the problems with gay culture can’t be seen by the gay media. Sadly it’s no surprise though.
Thank you for your bravery and for being a positive role model in a world filled with few for gay men.
Dunan: I am a single gay guy who is also a parent to a wonderful son by adoption. I adopted my son when he was 8 years old through the foster care system. Personally I find the idea of gay male couples spending thousands of dollars to have a biological baby to be egotistical. Granted I have never met a gay couple with a child who think that by having a traditional family life they will be invisible. Quite the opposite most of them are very “out there” so to speak. Think about it-these are men who spend thousands to have a baby, the last thing they are going to do is try to be invisible!
My choice to become a parent came from my life long desire to have a family. Knowing I was doing something very nontraditional I have had to think about how I would address with my son the fact that we are a non-traditional family, why I will never marry a woman and about the homophobia he will encounter one day.
I share this with you because I want to be visible, I want people to know that not all gay men with children can be grouped together, nor do we even have many similarities. I choose not to attend the gay father’s get togethers in my area because I’ve found very few guys I can connect with. Most of them don’t know what to make of my story, it’s uncomfortable for them. Luckily there are other single guys and couples who chose the same route to parenthood as myself that I am able to connect with.
Thank you for doing the show, and for speaking out on this blog. It’s a shame that an articulate gay man who has the visibility you have recieved and who speaks brutally honestly about the problems with gay culture can’t be seen by the gay media. Sadly it’s no surprise though.
Thank you for your bravery and for being a positive role model in a world filled with few for gay men.
Duncan, what you’ve written here is very powerful. Assimilation by any minority is often, ironically, the trigger of persecution. Aping the majority can be very dangerous. There also always needs to be a distinction between the law and personal morality. Everybody should have the same rights and protections under the law. And children of gay parents, like adopted children, should have the right to trace and contact their unknown biological parent or parents. With new freedom comes new responsibility.