An article in The Economist reports that gay life is getting more suburban and banal. Good for us, we can be boring and content, too.
The number of openly gay households is growing five times faster than the population as a whole. The last full census, in 2000, counted nearly 600,000 same-sex couples. Five years later, the American Community Survey (in which the Census Bureau quizzes a statistically representative sample of 1.4m households) estimated that that number had increased by 30%, to 777,000. Mr Gates reckons the bulk of the increase is because as tolerance spreads, more gay couples are willing to be counted.
The increase was most pronounced in the Midwest, with Wisconsin showing an 81% jump in the number of same-sex couples and Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri and Indiana also among the ten fastest-growing states in this respect. What this means, perhaps, is that gay America is becoming more like Middle America. “Much of the stereotype around gays is a stereotype of urban white gay men,” says Mr Gates. “The gay community is becoming less like that, and more like the population in general.” Gay couples are still more likely than straight ones to live in cities, but the gap is smaller than popularly believed, and closing. In 1990, 92% of gay couples but only 77% of American households were in what the Census Bureau calls “urban clusters”. By 2000, the gay figure had fallen to 84% while the proportion for households in general had risen to 80%, a striking convergence.
Yet, of course, there is still resistance. Ohio, where I was raised, has a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage.
And, the article mentions "A black preacher named Wellington Boone, for example, [who] has circulated a pamphlet entitled 'The Rape of the Civil Rights Movement: How Sodomites Are Using Civil Rights Rhetoric to Advance Their Preference for Sexual Perversion.'"
Rev. Boone might want to check out Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
While I think there's nothing more banal than sitting in a hotel room wanking to crudely edited heterosexual porn (when, if you're visiting, the point is to go out of your hotel room and get laid with a local, I always thought), there's nothing wrong with it, other than a matter of taste.
Romney criticized for hotel pornography
Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, who rails against the "cesspool" of pornography, is being criticized by social conservatives who argue that he should have tried to halt hardcore hotel movie offerings during his near-decade on the Marriott board.
Two anti-pornography crusaders, as well as two conservative activists of the type Romney is courting, say the distribution of such graphic adult movies runs counter to the family image cultivated by Romney, the Marriotts and their shared Mormon faith.
"Marriott is a major pornographer. And even though he may have fought it, everyone on that board is a hypocrite for presenting themselves as family values when their hotels offer 70 different types of hardcore pornography," said Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, an anti-pornography group based on Ohio.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a leading conservative group in Washington, said: "They have to assume some responsibility. It's their hotels, it's their television sets."
During a recent Associated Press interview, Romney said he did not recall pornography coming up for discussion while he was on the Marriott board from 1992 to 2001. Despite being chairman of the board's audit committee, he also said he was unaware of how much revenue pornography may have generated for the hotel chain.
Romney said his current concern is not about pornography per se, but children unwittingly stumbling upon it on the Internet or television.
"I am not pursuing an effort to try and stop adults from being able to acquire or see things that I find objectionable; that's their right. But I do vehemently oppose practices or business procedures that will allow kids to be exposed to obscenity," the former Massachusetts governor said.
Pornography is a lucrative business for various hotel chains. Estimates vary widely, up to $500 million annually industrywide by one opponent, John Harmer, who served as California's lieutenant governor under Ronald Reagan.
Marriott and other major hoteliers say they offer pay-per-view pornography because their customers demand it and entertainment service contracts require it to underwrite first-run movies and free television.
Romney also recently got exposed for having tortured his dog years back when he strapped the animal in a cage to the roof of his car a la National Lampoon's Family Vacation.
And speaking of perverted heterosexuals, music has-been Nick Lachey, despite having been quoted as saying he likes sex outdoors and always wanted to make a porn video, seems to be all upset that paprazzi got snaps (so far, edited and censored) of him boinking his new gal pal in a hot tub, outdoors.I don't know about you, but cynical folks are thinking this all to be just a PR ploy. Nick looks directly into the camera at one point, as if awaiting his "money shot" moment.
We're still waiting for the goods, but not holding our breath. As Aunt Ida says, "The world of a heterosexual is a sick and boring life."
Maybe Lachey can do a deal with Romney and raise funds for his election by letting people watch Nick boink women pay-per-view in hotels. Maybe they can torture dogs, too. I have no idea what these freaky straight people are into these days.
I'm just a boring homo.
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