One might indeed expect that if one hadn’t been paying attention for the past couple of decades, that is. When Friends first debuted, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” was a common gay rights chant. But by the time the show was cancelled a decade later, the movement had undergone a dramatic transformation. Leathermen, stone butches, drag queens, kinky queers, transpeople, HIV patients and sex workers were slowly and gradually ushered back into the closet so vanilla picket-fence gay men and lesbians who wanted to get married, adopt kids and/or join the military could say to the Establishment, “Look, we’re just like you!” and thereby attract corporate donors to Pride parades and “marriage equality” drives that are perfectly happy to demonize polygamists, kinksters, whores and others who aren’t so interested in begging the government to license their sexuality. Wait your turn, we were told; don’t worry, we’ll get around to you. Except that once middle-class white mostly-monogamous gay men & lesbians won their place at the big table, what happened? Whitewashing Stonewall, which was started by black transwomen and drag sex workers. Siding with the fascist establishment against a transwoman who exposed government wrongdoing. Participating in the demonization of “sex offenders”. Vomiting out “it’s illegal” as an argument against sex work, though gay sex was illegal in many states only 13 years ago. Pretending that promiscuous stranger sex isn’t a major part of the lives of many queer men. Forgetting that sex workers were the only partners available to many closeted gay men for much of the 20th century. Promoting anti-whore crusades to cash in on rescue industry dollars. Ignoring anti-queer persecution which doesn’t affect bourgeois gays.
Gay, Inc has thrown sex workers and other “undesirables” under the bus for over a decade now; in their view, the “rainbow” only properly has three colors (and they ain’t too sure about that third one). The Rentboy raid was the direct result of this bigotry; had the GLBT “community” devoted its energies to securing the basic rights of all sexual minorities instead of wasting them in trying to force Christian fundamentalists to bake fucking overpriced cakes for their fucking bourgeois weddings, we’d be well on the way to decriminalization by now. Ray Bradford and GLAAD aren’t anomalies; they’re typical of what passes for “gay rights” organizations these days. And principled GLBT folk should take their vile, disgusting, hateful, bigoted attitude as a wake-up call.