[LINK] "My response to Dawn of a New Gay"

[rfmcdonald]

This isn't my response. Rather, it's the response of Buddies in Bad Times theatre company director Brendan Healy to Paul Aguirre-Livingston's controversial article in weekly The Grid, the one talking about the death of gay as a meaningful identity that inspired most of my posts here on Saturday and Sunday.

The recent election of Rob Ford as mayor and the Conservative majority in federal parliament strike me as clear indications that our sense of collective responsibility and caring for one another is diminishing and is quickly being replaced by self-interest and greed. A vision of the Canadian social contract that is built on concepts of compassion, altruism and inter-dependence no longer seems to form the basis of our society. Instead, all I see is a political landscape that is dominated by selfishness, fear of difference and a rejection of inclusiveness.

I would describe Aguirre-Livingston’s article as yet another symptom of this societal shift. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Aguirre-Livingston’s own experience of being gay and he certainly has every right to live out his sexual identity in whatever way he chooses. I take no issue with that. What is disturbing is the article’s complete lack of awareness/acknowledgement of his position inside the broader world. The article does not speak to the context in which he is living nor does it place his experience in relationship to a broader community of homosexuals except in the most superficial of ways. His personal and extremely privileged position inside the gay experience is not the norm. Nowhere close, in fact. For a widely distributed media outlet to imply (or outright state) that it is the norm is outrageous. It is the equivalent to some posh Rosedale resident saying that there is no poverty because they do not directly experience it in their own lives and a newspaper publishing it as some kind of legitimate description of a social reality. It is self-centered, short-sighted and irresponsible. It denies our interconnected existence as a community – a community that is made up of a multiplicity of experiences. It feeds a growingly disconnected society of isolated individuals who have little understanding of the larger social realities that they are a part of. This is frightening to me.

For a long time, our identities as homosexuals were formed by adversity. Today, a select group of people from the community have grown up without these experiences of oppression. As a result, certain aspects of their identities are different from members of previous generations. This should be a good thing. This is an important thing for us to talk about as a community. It is unfortunate that this article did not live up to the task. The result is an apathetic, cynical and, often, contemptible piece of “journalistic” writing that further divides a community that has struggled and continues to struggle for equality, acceptance and basic freedoms. I appeal to The Grid’s and Aguirre-Livingston’s sense of social responsibility as they continue to define their role in the world and assess how they can contribute to the betterment of others.

The post came from Facebook here.