AltBrothers

I look over my posts and I see so much about politics or the state of the world. I don’t see anything about being a black gay man, not outright. I don’t have pictures of gym-sculpted half-naked bodies, not posters for the latest gay street party, boat cruise or ski weekend. No sign of gay life at all. I don’t even have anything about the boogeyman “gay marriage”. I’m so un-gay here! As the gay duo Romanovsky & Phillips sang, “What kind of self-respecting faggot am I?”

There’s no gay sex, no buff male bodies in talking about real life issues and the pivotal role that politics plays in our lives.

In a way what I highlight or write about aren’t particularly “gay” issues, but almost if not all of them do impact gay people. Anything that has an impact on gay people should be “a gay issue”; it should be something that gay people should be interested in or concerned about.

I think “modern” popular gay culture has volunteered to be the dumbed-down, partied-out, shallow and fleeting-sexed version of its potential. School board issues matter. Employment and housing policies impact gay people beyond the usual focus on “equality”. Lending and repayment rules and options do matter for gay people. Sneaky “defense” and nuclear schemes matter to gay people. I say these things should matter to gay people not simply for the technical reasons of equality or justice, but for sappy reasons too… reasons that our popular culture holds near and dear: Fun, adventure, creativity, romance and even sex.

Foreign policy which is part of domestic economic/energy policies is making parts of the world even more socially, environmentally and economically harsh for gay people to live in. Militarism and violence ensure that many might-have-been creative gay youth and adults, intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic and cultural gay spouses, families and organized community all remain “never weres”. Politics-as-usual has not only kept us second-class in many respects but has simply kept us from each other. Real life bread and butter issues keep us stressed out and divided. We are the particles kept from uniting toward a more perfect gay world.

Is the glass half full or half empty? It’s both. One need not ignore the other. And while AltBrothers might not have the sex-appeal of our typical gay media, I hope that it can be part of waking up to greater potential in our gay lives and how seemingly unglamorous politics is at the core.