Everybody’s all gay now, Mark Morford

[madokie]

If you don’t think it’s a big deal, you aren’t paying close enough attention.

If you don’t think the cover-story coming out of Jason Collins, the currently active, black, veteran, mostly-unknown NBA player, is still historic and all kinds of pioneering, particularly in light of the fact that both big-league pro sports and its slightly skeezy neighbor, hip-hop culture, remain the most homophobic and dumbly macho of all American industries next to NASCAR and maybe professional bass fishing, you gotta check your Twitter feed.

While I don’t watch pro sports or have the slightest interest in the lives of its players or teams, I do delight when the open palm of raw history slaps an excessively masculine, long-repressed institution across the face (Catholic church, US military, Republican party), and I certainly recognize the awesome refrain currently being blared out far and wide right now in regard to gay athletes in pro sports in general: “It’s about goddamn time.”
Dear NFL - You're next

No kidding, right? I wrote about the obvious, closeted existence of gay pro athletes in this very column way back in 2005 (and again in ’11), how they must exist, in statistically significant numbers, back when such a possibility was complete cultural anathema, back when the big gay sporting news of the day was Sheryl Swoops of the WNBA announcing, to no one’s surprise, that she was a lesbian. Yawn.

The rest: http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2013/04/30/everybodys-all-gay-now/

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. Meh. Here's what its about:

Gay people were always here. I remember hearing my grandmother's accounts of navy service, about certain other women on the ship. References hidden behind thin innuendo. Thin innuendo, you see, was enough back then. It was enough to distract - deceive the judgemental eyes. It was simply enough the people not know what those women, or those men, who lived together were doing. The majority of smart people knew, but didn't care to take up their (rainbow) flag. They simply didn't need to, a little concealment was enough, and it really didn't effect them.

But no more. Why? Because we're living in the surveillance age. We're living in the age where information technology makes it possible to know just about anything about everybody. And all the sudden some verbal concealment is no longer enough. We need to either halt what we're doing in private, or stand up and defend it. That means people who are gay taking a stance to defend, in public who they are.

And yes, its an unstoppable movement, even though only about 10% are gay. Why? Because the vast majority have something they fear would also be unacceptable to the restrictive norm about their sexuality. Maybe they like to watch, or dress up. Maybe they like to rub feet, or pretend like they are enslaved captives to their lovers. Whatever, they don't wish to be judged, and gays have become a symbol of this movement for people to defend their own sexuality in an age where so many demand the right to know everything about everyone.

So that's the core of what's going on here. It really isn't about a huge cultural shift about gays, the majority is now, and has always been pretty indifferent about what gays do in their own homes. Its about taking a stand to defend who you are in the privacy of your sex life are... Something which gay Americans have become symbol of.

PEace