Did you hear the gay news? NBC has a new sitcom about homosexual men. Yes, grab hold of your head to keep it from exploding! Finally, Modern Family, but without all the geeky straight people. If you're a geeky straight person who loves homosexuals but frowns on homosexuality, this program (like all the rest) may just be for you!
The new show is about two blissfully monogamous gay men, Bryan and David. They are handsome, young, well-coiffed and professionally accomplished. Their near-perfect lives are missing only one thing: a bun in some lady's oven. The best part? The show is called The New Normal.
You would think, from the controversies surrounding the its launch, that The New Normal has done something meaningful to advance gays in America. You would be wrong. The first sex scene of the show is strictly hetero, 2:30 into the pilot. We get an eyeful of bouncing tits in a purple bra and a supposedly clever male fetish that is neither sexy nor interesting. Already, we see the subject treated with a sort-of post-modern, cynical detachment (see: Girls). I would give you the timestamp for the first gay sex scene, but it never happens.
This is the happy couple's first scene together: one comes home and describes a day spent shopping while the other, I shit you not, watches football on the couch with a beer and a large dog. Let's be perfectly clear about the message of the show: The New Normal is just the old normal... with dudes.
Like Modern Family before it, The New Normal's treatise on gay identity in american culture is "don't be afraid, they're just like you!"
And that message is bullshit.
I had hoped that a 21st century civil rights movement would be more about accepting difference than fitting in. "Fitting in" is a 20th century compromise, and what has it gotten us: women who have to act like men to get past the glass ceiling, and blacks who have to "act white" to get in the door.
How well do you remember 90s television? My favorite show that I
grew up with was the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It's a little campy in
retrospect, but the young Will Smith still has a lot to teach us.
What would he be if he just conformed? What would he be if he had said, "don't worry, white people, I am just like you?" He would be Carlton, and he would not have a show.
And we can blow this up a little and take a look at the the state of civil rights as a whole. This week I heard from a source in Dallas, TX that her city hall was hosting a national forum on saggy jeans. This is not a joke. Neither are club dress codes that explicitly ban "urban wear." You see, you can be black in America and be rich as God, but if you don't dress in a manner that bespeaks the wealthy class that preceded you (i.e. white-acceptable) you will encounter overt racism and told that you asked for it. If a white man speaks with a thick southern accent, he can call himself a gentleman, but if a black man speaks like a 2 Chainz song, they get to call him a thug. People in the media talk a lot about diversity, but when was the last time the smiling black family in the cell phone commercial wore jerseys, braided their hair, or looked like they vote Democrat?
It might be too late to save black people. This is what we get for winning acceptance by appealing to our similarities to the white, middle-class. I've had white women tell me that I didn't sound black on the phone like they were paying me a compliment. This is reality now.
But gays, come on, you don't have to go out like that! I know the struggle is hard and if progress were any slower, it may seem like time has stopped, but you will win the long game. Be patient, be fucking fabulous and win one for everybody. Win it for the gays who want to settle down with a family and do it for the gays who want to wear makeup and dresses or get their genitals transformed into someone else's, do it for the gays who want to fuck every man who lives and breathes or get ready to spend the rest of your "freedom" forced to look down on half of your population.
Then you can tell those children who "complete your lives" that they can be whoever they want to be.
Alright, enough ranting. Listen to some music:
