Enough Already

Ok, so I’ve been adamantly preaching the importance of supporting establishments and events that cater to the gay community. I’m sure you’re tired of hearing me talk about it. I have to admit, I’m a little tired of talking about it. While I do think it is important to support each other, I think there is a limit at which point it becomes too much.

Let me try to explain what I mean. It shouldn’t come to the point that you are going to a bar, buying a movie, or eating at a restaurant just because it is gay owned, gay friendly, etc. If the food is no good, or the movie sucks, or the bar has horrible service, it doesn’t deserve the patronage. The simple fact that something has a gay character in it or waves a rainbow flag outside its door doesn’t automatically translate to something worth experiencing. It should have to earn its reputation just like anything else.

I am not sure quite what has brought this sudden “over it” feeling. I was watching a movie on the Logo channel the other day about a bisexual man and his two lovers, and I couldn’t hardly get through the whole thing I found it so, well frankly, unentertaining. Perhaps it’s the recent over-saturation of gay characters on television that has overloaded my capacity for the subject. I sat down to watch several of my favorite programs a few evenings ago, and 3 out of the 4 of them included a major gay issue in the plot line ranging from gay marriage to gays in the military and on and on. And these were not “gay” programs, but programs that are widely watched by the general public in this country. Not that that’s a bad thing. These are important issues and I am glad to see mainstream media and programming featuring such topics; but at some point it’s like, enough already!

At some point, after you’ve gotten through all the issues and dealt with being who you are, it sort of falls into the background and you realize you’re just one more of the billions of people on this earth. It doesn’t really matter who you sleep with. I just want to be me. I want to like what I like and do what I do because I enjoy those things. They don’t have to be gay friendly. They don’t have to be about gay people. They don’t have to be about sexuality at all.

I guess I can’t expect everyone to have gotten to that point, though. There is still a lot of progress to be made on the issue of acceptance, and it’s good to see gay characters as abundant as any other on television and in the movies. The eventual goal would be that they eventually just become characters, though, not just gay characters; that restaurants just become restaurants, not gay restaurants; that bars just become bars. Eventually, ideally, we’ll all just be mixed in together in a giant pool of humanity and our sexuality, race, religion, or gender won’t make the slightest bit of difference to anyone.