Related: 30 Pride Month Memes to Celebrate LGBTQIA+ Identity, Culture and Representation “There are worst things in life than kissing boys.” - Benjamin Alire Sáenz “Love is never wrong.” - Melissa Etheridge We are ordinary people, living our lives, and trying as civil rights activist Dorothy Cotton said, to ‘fix what ain’t right’ in our society.” - Sen.
We are no more-and no less-heroic than the suffragists and abolitionists of the 19th century and the labor organizers, Freedom Riders, Stonewall demonstrators, and environmentalists of the 20th century. “All of us who are openly gay are living and writing the history of our movement. Accept no one’s definition of your life define yourself.” - Harvey Fierstein Never allow yourself to be made a victim.
The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts.” - Barbara Gittings “What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.” - Tennessee Williams Everything bad that’s ever happened to me has taught me compassion.” - Ellen DeGeneres “I learned compassion from being discriminated against. “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why Gay Pride Month is June tell them, ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.’” - Brenda Howard
And so instead of blushing, we laugh.“If you help elect more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised a green light to move forward.” - Harvey Milk This video introduces us to a fellow queen who is hurting, and on some level we realize we can offer little succor without doing violence to other aspects of his personality. In the end, I wonder if we are not so much embarrassed for Caldwell as we are embarrassed that people like Caldwell may see so little of value in current gay culture that denying themselves in order to find acceptance where they can is an appealing option. But considering his effeminacy, his faith, even his blackness, would the mainstream gay community be any more welcoming? Given what we know about the historical treatment of those issues “over here,” I am not at all sure of that. Nor, it should be said, can he find shelter in the church queen archetype the success of the gay rights movement has had the consequence of making those kinds of previously tolerated roles increasingly untenable. The church community appears to be important to this man, and it is clear that he cannot be openly gay and remain a part of this particular one. But Caldwell’s case reminds us that many people feel they cannot follow that model for a range of legitimate reasons. However, it has tended to require that queers model their self-expression and negotiate their relationships in very specific ways in order to be included in the progress. The formula of “visibility equals political progress” has been wildly successful for the LGBTQ movement. (That’s as far as I’ll get into processing the racial politics of this video’s popularity, but suffice it to say they play a part here.) Remix parodies of the testimony arrived right on schedule, and the standard response has converged on an “oh lord, look at this queen” head shake. Caldwell’s specific example is all the more potent, given his sartorial boldness and the effervescent worship style common to many predominately African American churches. His open-secret, self-sacrificial lifestyle choice reads as pathetic from the (secular) out point-of-view, and so giggling at him is easy.
And why not? The “church queen”-the closeted gay man who sublimates his sexuality in service of the church, often in an artistic capacity like choir director-is a familiar and oft-derided figure. When the gay blogs initially covered the video’s viral breakout, most posted it with little commentary other than a general suggestion that this object was patently risible. Tellingly, most seem to have gone with their guts, and the laughing option seems to have been the most popular.