with Stephen Meyler

#PrideControversy

#GayGentrification

YOUR LABELS ARE SHOWING

Ahead of the pope’s shindig for some kinds of families, a colleague was interviewing Mary McAleese. He had interviewed her before many years ago and was a little puzzled when he was covering her involvement in the struggle for gay rights. In the earlier interview, people were demanding LGBT rights, whereas now, we are reportedly concerned with LGBTQIA+ rights.

Like some unwieldy Germanic language, the praiseworthy urge of the politically correct to be as inclusive as possible has made an uncomfortably agglutinative acronym out of how ‘we’ describe ourselves. guess the hope of whoever decides these things (Who are they? What do they want?) is in some small way to soothe the centuries of prejudice aimed at every one of these groups. But at what point in ‘our’ journey to a hopefully accepting and celebrating future should we acknowledge that just maybe this one size fits all method might not be helpful? Right now, the moral imperative for cis gay men (the G or even Q bit of the acronym) is to maintain a hard solidarity with the female and female-identifying members of the spectrum. If gay men are further along the road to total acceptance, then we should be looking back and waiting, and helping the others to catch up.