Is 'Gay' a Bad Word?

And just what is 'Queer?'

The following post is a Comment by Ollie Parks. Since Substack tends to bury long Comments—and many readers don’t see them—I wanted to reprint it here in full.

You beat me to the punch on the travesty at the Tavistock - kudos! One wonders whether, when and how the straight, cisgendered trans "allies" in the local media will cover the story. Call me a cynic, but the lede will likely warn of yet another threat to "trans youth," this time from the Tories on the other side of the pond.

When Creationism was on the slouch, did the Oregon legislature ever pass a bill requiring that all school course materials dealing with the hard and social sciences be evidence based and scientifically supported? That would be one way to eradicate gender-identity indoctrination from Oregon's classrooms.

Time and space don't allow for a full essay on the subject, but unlike racial wokeness, gender ideology and queer theory are and have been under assault in the US by the forces of reason for quite some time. Opponents include gay men like me as well as lesbians who are veterans or thoughtful heirs of the 20th century battle for individual civil rights.

We have had it with the offspring of the irrational popularized postmodernism of the 21st century who have latched onto our coattails and won't let go. What L, G and B have in common is they are sexual orientations that have had, as the Old Testament shows, a documented presence in one form or another in humankind for millennia before the Queen of Queer Judith Butler was even a gleam in their penis-haver's eye. The other elements of the so-called alphabet soup are about as real as the "communities" that people such as Candice Avalos and Carmen Rubio purport to represent, which is not at all, in my opinion.

Take "queer," for example. I wish I were naive enough to object to the term because of its legacy as an insult against gay people. Ignorance would indeed be bliss. What "queer" is not is the latest, hippest synonym for "gay." It did not replace "gay" the way "Black" supplanted "African-American." Sadly, too many straight people who consider themselves "allies" make that mistake and throw the word "queer" around with abandon to show they're with it.

The reason "Q" is as out of place with "LBG" as a piranha among tropical fish is that "Queer" is not an innate sexual orientation at all. "Queer" is a posture, a set of learned leftist attitudes and beliefs most commonly held by the young, urban and college educated who strive to give off an air of radical sexual edginess to complement other affectations of the same political bent. Some queers are poseurs who were the Goths of yesteryear. Others, however, are true believers who have embraced Queer Theory and seek to advance its nefarious goal of breaking down not only sexual binaries but any and all norms and expectations pertaining to gender and sex. Doctrinaire queers are of necessity fervent proponents of all things trans. They have established beachheads in the language (boy howdy!) and in our institutions.

In closing, there is one sense in which "queer" is a replacement for "gay." It's that "Queer" is hegemonic in its quest to extinguish "lesbian," "gay," and "bisexual" as independent states of being (it would be unthinkable to call them identities). At a time when one of the bedrock principles of progressive woke ideology is the recognition of each and every possible minority, queers won't countenance the possibility that any human could maintain a stable and long-term attaction to members of their own sex. That's an impossibility under the laws of Queer Theory.

For proof one need look no further than the site of Portland State University's Queer Resource Center, where the term "gay" is shockingly conspicuous by its absence. (I am enrolled at PSU as a postbac and have picked this bone a time or two with the Center.) Unlike its counterparts at other West Coast universities, the Queer Resource Center (QRC) does not acknowledge the existence of gay people. To put it in other terms, it the word "gay" appears on the QRC's cite, my searches failed to uncover it. I would be relieved to know if I was mistaken.

Minorities of the sexual and gender variety come in only two flavors at the QRC and, by extension, in the officialdom at Portland State: queer and trans:

"Our Mission: The Queer Resource Center supports queer and trans students at Portland State University to achieve their educational goals through advocacy, community, and celebration. The Queer Resource Center prioritizes a racial justice framework to improve campus climate through education, policy change, and campus-wide organizing."

"Our Vision: The Queer Resource Center strives to provide students with the support they need to persist to graduation through increasing equity and access for queer and trans students at Portland State University."

https://www.pdx.edu/queer-resource-center/

Not only do I not want a future in which radical trans activists succeed causing parents and health care professionals to turn sissy little boys into little girls, I don't want a future in which gay America is occupied territory of the Queer hegemony.