For shame

by tommi avicolli mecca

HOW APPROPRIATE THAT the documentary about the Cockettes, the outrageous '70s drag troupe that genderbended its way to infamy, was showing just a few feet from the corner of Castro and Market where the Gay Shame Awards were being given.

A relatively new phenomenon that has sprung up on both coasts in recent years, Gay Shame is an outgrowth of a younger generation's disgust with overcommercialized Pride celebrations that are more about corporate sponsorships, celebrity grand marshals, and consumerism than they are about the radicalism that gave birth to our post-Stonewall gay-liberation movement, radicalism such as that displayed by the Cockettes.

Every movement undergoes changes in three decades, but Pride, especially in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, transformed a street protest into a multimillion-dollar extravaganza that has no political through line. How could it, when gay cops march next to Lesbian and Gay Insurgents and gay atheists follow Dignity, the gay Catholic group? Except for the open displays of sex and flesh, Pride is not much different from any other parade. Thousands stand along the sidelines and cheer PG&E's contingent, despite the fact that we're paying outrageous energy bills and many of us are working on putting them out of business via a municipal utility district. For progressives, participating in the march requires a kind of political amnesia: ignore the Coors contingent and the bad politics ahead of you and keep your banners high.

Organizers of the Gay Shame Awards, which were given this year for the first time, want no part in this amnesia. They won't stand with liquor companies or gay Realtors and landlords who evict low-income queers, seniors, and people with AIDS. That's why they gave awards to those individuals and organizations that make them feel ashamed. It's a way of drawing attention to what they see as hypocrisy in the queer community.

They honored Dick Cheney's daughter Mary for her work as a liaison between Coors Brewing Company (a big contributor to right-wing groups) and the LGBT community. Rosie O'Donnell was dubbed a celebrity "Who Should Never Have Come Out of the Closet" for coming out "after years of fiercely denying she's a lesbian and professing crushes on numerous straight celebrities ... right as her talk show ended and just in time to sell her new autobiography."

Other honorees included the Golden Gate Peace Officers Association (gay cops), for refusing "to sign the Law Enforcement Pledge for transgender rights," and Zephyr Realty, for "Making More Queers Homeless" through the sale of tenancies in common and by advising its members on how to get 20 percent more for their buildings by evicting the tenants first. Sup. Gavin Newsom tied with President George W. Bush (in the "Straight Allies for Reactionary Gays" category), for believing "that homeless people are a disease" and promoting "the criminalization of homelessness."

Many in my generation will find Gay Shame a hard pill to swallow, not unlike the word queer. I understand that. I helped organize the first Philadelphia queer march in 1972. Pride was, for me, at the heart of the work I did, fighting to pass gay rights bills, heading up several queer organizations, and editing the Philadelphia Gay News. But I like Gay Shame. It challenges us to ask a lot of important questions about what we've become as a community. Not everything we did was wrong; obviously queers are an important part of San Francisco, thanks to the efforts of those who gave their lives to make it easier for all of us to live here. But no one back in the '70s could've imagined what a market niche we would be.

The Gay Shame folks will most certainly be dismissed as p.c. leftists who want to knock everything. Such a characterization will not make their criticisms go away. Others have raised the same issues. Remember the "We're a Movement, Not a Market" contingents in past parades? The questions have been asked before, though perhaps not with the same theatricality and outrageousness as the Gay Shame Awards. They've been asked before, but they've gone unaddressed, and that's a shame.