Gay Left-Coast Kookiness

I'm sure there are more such reports to be found in California alone, but a casual perusal of blogs this afternoon helps underscore the dogged determination of some gay liberals to alienate the rest of us who might otherwise support them on issues that concern us all.

BoiFromTroy writes about a trip to his local gay bookstore, during which he had hoped to find a copy of gay American Mary Cheney's new tome.  But the shop was good enough to carry plenty of copies of straight American, and frothy socialist, Noam Chomsky's new book.

Perhaps these are wise business decisions for someone with a West Hollywood clientele.  But why, then, call yourself a "gay" bookstore?  Answer: Because a disturbing number of gay Americans naïvely consider ultra-leftist politics part and parcel of the homosexual experience.  For millions of the rest of us, this just doesn't compute.

In a somewhat related story, Queerty reports that the California State Senate has passed a bill "that would require textbooks in public schools to instruct students on contributions by gays and lesbians in the state's development."

Normally I would decry the balkanization of education by officious politicians.  But the bill already reads like a laundry list of aggrieved groups — "men and women, Black Americans, American Indians, Mexicans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and other ethnic groups, and people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender" — so gays might as well join the hit parade.  (It's similar to my thoughts on hate-crimes laws: They're stupid and pointless, but as long as we have them, gays should be protected by them.)

But why can't they just teach students about Californians' contributions to the state, regardless of whatever preferred group to which they belong?

Comments

[H]

you choose your conservative gay ways, and the rest of will choose our own liberal gay ways. don't Republicans and unquestioning capitalist sycophants support an unfettered marketplace that caters to its audience, or imagined audience, and succeeds and fails on its own merits without government intervention? I'm sure the WeHo book store knows what it's doing by boycotting a book from such a self-loathing, greedy, hypocritical Uncle Tom.

[zach]

At the end of the day, Mary Cheney being a lesbian is trumped/superceded by the fact that she is simply a partisan hack with (undoubtedly) some serious emotional problems. (Hellooo? how would you feel if your father was Dick Cheney?!)

[Dan]

Yeah. Damn crazy Californians don't know what the hell they're doing. World's eighth largest economy, the best higher education system in the nation, home to the world's most innovative companies.

What a bunch of left coast loonies.

[Aatom]

lol. in his own obnoxious way H has a good point. Let the free market decide...

In my experience, gay bookstores carry two types of merchandise: porn and left-wing fringe academic journals. You'd think there would be something in between to choose from. But very little. Which may explain why, in an unfettered marketplace, gay bookstores usually shut down due to lack of business. there's only one real one left in New York, on 8th Avenue, and it specializes in porn.

[Aatom]

and by "porn" i am including all of the soft-core touchy-feely "relationship" books with gauzy pics of naked men in them.

[Tommy]

Geez, NYC suffers from a dearth of porn and left wing academic journals? How unexpected.

[Dan]

Besides, right wing ideology aside, it's a pretty sorry excuse of a book. Just think about this from a business perspective: you've got a book written by a woman reviled by most gays and lesbians (it's most promising demographic), has been trashed in just about every major review, and the initial sales are looking pretty abysmal... it's not exactly shocking that any bookstore (much less a gay one) would pass on this book.

[Tim]

not like they would just carry the book because it's written by someone that's gay, no far better to select what one wants to carry. Aatom is right most of these places shut down because they are too specialized. Let's not call it self censorship though, these places are free to carry whatever they want.

[Tommy]

Did he ask them to order the book? If they refused they're just morons.

[anapestic]

In my experience, gay bookstores carry two types of merchandise: porn and left-wing fringe academic journals.

Typical right-wing oversimplification. You totally left out the lube and sex toys.

This post seems as good a place as any to rant about the sorry state of contemporary gay erotica, but I'll do you all a favor and forbear.

[Aatom]

of course an independent business has a right to choose its own inventory, but let's not be naive. if you are a self-styled "gay bookstore" there's really no logical excuse to not carry something like the Cheney book, regardless of how you feel about her. is it so presumptuous to expect actual diversity from gay people?

[Aatom]

i also left out big candles. they love big smelly candles and esoteric blobs that are supposed to be vases I think.

[Aatom]

here's what they ARE good for though: greeting cards. gay bookstores have the sassiest, most unique greeting cards in the marketplace, hands down. i'm not kidding.

[kc]

Oh you know, the book is just a cover for special interests to contribute money to the Cheney clan. Or, maybe it's a down payment from the publisher for Dick's own book to come. Mary should have written a novel under a pseudo-name if she is keen on becoming a writer. It doesn't even have to be a lesbian romance. That's been done already. A political thriller about a close election would be nice, since she can go out all hard-boiled and use frequently the treasured family-value Cheney phrase "Go f*ck yourself". Alas, the Cheney women salute, sticking out of the tongue, would be too lesbian romance for inclusion in the novel.

[Jeol]

the bookstore should be allowed to carry whatever it wants......but maybe the store should have a tiny section inside the store "GAY REPUBLICANS" for those few of them. lol.

BUT maybe the BOOKSTORE isnt necesssary cateroring to leftists.....maybe its just that the owner personally DISAGREES/DISLIKES with MARY CHENEY and doenst want HER BOOK in the store.

MARY CHENEY is a disgrace to gay community in my view.

[el polacko]

can't argue with the lefty slant of stock in certain bookstores (make that ALL bookstores here in the ess eff bay area) however..
mary said on 'hannity & colmes' that there's MUCH more interesting stuff in her book, like how much she admires bush and her dad, than any of that "other stuff that people insist on asking her about"
which is practically like BEGGING a 'gay bookstore' to not carry her thin tome. i haven't read it, but it doesn't exactly sound like a gay manifesto... at least not according the authoress.

[el polacko]

oh.. and it's not just california history but history textbooks in general that would include references to contributions by gay folks. can't see the harm in letting the kiddies know what happened to oscar wilde and why.
..and california is very influential in the textbook arena, so gay history would begin a slow entry into common knowledge and that's a good thing, no ? the big question is whether arnold will let it pass as the no big deal that it is or choose to make a political 'stand' against encroaching homo-ism like his party would prefer for the up-coming election season.

[Malcontent]

I love the smell of moonbats in the morning!

[PatrickP]

If Boifromtroy wants to buy a real book he should probably have tried somewhere else besides A Different Light bookstore. He is just making his life difficult by living in that damn ghetto anyway. Let them have that it BTF, it's not as if any of the liberal homos there will ever actually accept anyone who thinks differently. Why drive yourself crazy like that? Move to Pasadena BFT. It's nice here and there are plenty of bookstores and homos galore as a bonus.

RE: Textbooks - el polacko is right, California is influential with regard to textbooks, which means your children will soon be as fucking stupid as the children here! Get ready for your 55% high school drop out rate! WooHoo!

[Tommy]

Mal - sorry but your criticism of the law history law above makes no sense.

[Tommy]

just like my comment

[kc]

I guess the Christian (i.e. right-wing fundamentalist) bookstores won't stock Mary's book, either. Poor her. Maybe she needs to open a gay Republican bookstore just to sell her book.

[Another Gaymer]

I'll have to check A Different Light here in San Francisco, in the Castro. I'd actually be surprised if they *didn't* have it, but I've been surprised before. We'll see if I'm giving too much credit where it's not due.

That said, I'm afraid He Who Must Not Be Named has a point. I'll even accept that she's been too busy helping her dad, but at the same time, it makes what she has to say harder to take seriously.

But, y'know. Welcome aboard, Mary. You've got some catching up to do.

P.S. to Dan/3:36pm . . . shhhh!

[drdanfee]

Ah, gee. The simple reason that gays get mentioned explicitly along with all the other groups that are supposedly just good examples of major figures who might have made contributions to the Golden State is that gay people have been erased and intentionally disguised in curriculums, starting in kindergarten, and reaching up to and including graduate school. You either encounter a studied silence about somebody being gay in most curriculum materials. Or those LGBTQ somebodies are presented glibly as generic straight figures in the curriculum materials. It has only been about three or four decades that Tchaikovsky's homosexuality began to be mentioned in context in CD booklet comments that mingled news of his life with introductions to his music.

Since many LGBTQ and other contributors made new waves in their work, and thus gave us all something new and helpful, you gotta wonder why their sexual orientation difference in its life contexts is still treated like potty words in kindergarten, or radioactive data photons that will disrupt the normal straight body's value as the only type of exemplary human being.

If you are the rare LGBTQ person who never, ever needs really to mention it; you are either highly blessed and living in the most tolerant venues among good neighbors who are almost telepathically in tune with you, or you know better than to speak up because the venues in which you live will sour and go downhill when people with power now officially know you are not straight.

Even in these supposedly jaded days, what school classes do you think, in which local settings, are very comfortable noting that Walt Whitman's love life was directed mainly at men? Or that mixed signals point towards Lincoln being something besides regular vanilla straight? Or even that this or that more recent Nobel prize winner happens to be gay or lesbian? Or that Alan Turing who helped the good guys with white hats win WWII was queer, and contributed to the development of computer sciences in the earliest days? Well, the list of gay people who have made significant contributions at all levels is actually quite long. If a contributor is straight, you always get to hear in passing how important their spouse and children were to them, not to mention how caring for those people played a major role in certain life decisions that affected their work. If that straight person partied lots and had huge numbers of mistresses, guess what? You will easily find that out, too. Just think of the Renaissance popes.

Until we can simply presume equal time, equal weight for LGBTQ folks, I say we have to emphasize telling the truth about them, because we just are not in the truth habit yet.

Contemporary religious right leaders are now pushing, in fact, to build barriers against speaking truthfully about the existence of LGBTQ people of whatever era, until after a student has at least graduated from high school. They would silence the facts and biographies in college curriculums if they only thought they could get away with it.

And as to Mary Cheney's new book: Put it on your reading list according to your own views. She is probably getting looked over by the religious right/Republicans who don't like her talking about being lesbian; and by the overlapping LGBTQ communities who hardly feel infatuated with her father's role in making our current national government the fiasco it now seems to be. Yes, that is my personal view; but the most recent poll figures give President Bush a 29 percent approval rating, and in any job review I've ever sustained as employee or supervisor, that is low enough to have folks looking around for somebody to replace you.

[Craig Ranapia]

El Polacko:
...can't see the harm in letting the kiddies know what happened to oscar wilde and why.

I reply:
Of course, all properly sanitised as a "gay martyr" victimised by a homophobic society, and quietly failing to mention the spectacularly unwise libel case against his psychopathic lover's pugnacious father, who defended himself by pointing out that Wilde wasn't merely "posing as a Somdomite [sic]" but patronising working-class male prostitutes. Now that would make a fascinating chapter in a high school textbook.

Jeol wrote:
BUT maybe the BOOKSTORE isnt necesssary cateroring to leftists.....maybe its just that the owner personally DISAGREES/DISLIKES with MARY CHENEY and doenst want HER BOOK in the store.

I reply:
Well, fine. But please spare me the bitching and whining about nasty bigotry when some retailer decides they personally don't want to stock 'Boreback Mountain' or 'Heather Has Two Mommies Who Used To Be Two Daddies' or whatever...