After a prolonged period marked by the inability to pay for cable television, I was first introduced to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on a trip to the Deep South. Having traveled to a suburb of Atlanta for the (heterosexual) marriage of a childhood friend, I sought refuge from the day’s cruel humidity and the night’s incessantly shrieking crickets in the air-conditioned TV rooms of my hosts. Expecting to find a clear and visceral Dixie homophobia to match the fossilized Jim Crow racism that surrounded me, the South was instead marked largely by the same paradox that we’ve seen crop up all across North America in this, the era of Will & Grace, wherein stock-and-trade characters like “Nerdy Neighbour” and “Sassy Black Woman” have been replaced by a host of exotic fruits while leaving society’s broader hatred of homosexuality wholly intact.

So while I was able, in the former Klan stronghold of Marietta, Georgia, to watch Anna Nicole’s queenish attendants cattily argue about the quality of throw-pillows, I was also able to find a more valuable contribution in the struggle to extend basic human rights to North American homosexuals -- the Southern Voice, a queer publication whose front page featured a full-colour photo of UPS workers protesting the company’s anti-gay policies. Picket signs read “UPS: We want our DP benefits” and “UPS Unfair to its Gay Workers” -- the word “fabulous” was nowhere to be seen. Inside the paper was an impassioned editorial about the importance of gay marriage rights -- now so heavily under rhetorical and, potentially, legislative fire in Canada and the United States -- which went so far as to shrink the importance of pop culture victories in the face of real political battles: “Whoa! Slow down there, homosexuals,” wrote Chris Cain ironically. “Yeah we’re enjoying a great gay run… Even pop culture is going gay… ABC’s ‘20/20’ declared ‘it’s in to be out’ and the cultural arbiters at VH1 last week debuted ‘Totally Gay!’ But let’s get real. Gay marriage? In this country? Now? You better think twice about that” [Chris Cain, “It’s all about marriage,” Southern Voice, August 22, 2003].

A tiny minority, made up of people like PopMatters TV critic Terry Sawyer, dismiss television’s ‘new’ spin on homosexuality: “I suppose that minstrelsy is the sincerest form of insult. If television can be reliably held to reflect the evolution of a minority's status in culture, then gay people appear to be at the What's Happenin'? stage.” But despite the enormously apt charges of minstrelsy offered up in the face of network TV ’s Fairy tales, conventional wisdom holds that Will and Grace and the Fab Five and their smiley, well-dressed ilk mark a new and unprecedented acceptance of homosexuality. Shows traditionally aimed at middle America such as Entertainment Tonight and the Tonight Show have become flame-retardant, recruiting very gay reporters to approach male celebrities non-threateningly while simultaneously flirting (Harmlessly! They’re fags!) with the ladies.

And yet for all this San Fran cultural sensibility, the suburbs still rule the politics surrounding gay rights on this continent. Parties like Canada’s Canadian Reform Alliance for Conservative Progress (or whatever) have tried to score points with their constituents by extolling the eternal sanctity of penis-vagina matrimony. Conservative populists like those who run websites like NoGayMarriage.com -- as the Lord said, “When it comes to domain names: Keep it simple, sinner” -- give equal celebratory billing to their over one million petition-signers as well as the announcement that president Bush has “thrown his support behind a constitutional amendment” banning gay marriage.

It seems we may be treading familiar ground. Commentators such as historian Manning Marable and filmmaker Spike Lee have observed the 1980s zeitgeist that saw the unprecedented rise of black superstars such as Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Eddie Murphy, Magic Johnson, Prince, and Webster coupled with an enormous cultural and legislative assault on African-American communities in the guise of a “War on Drugs,” Reaganomics and the attacks on Civil Rights legislation such as affirmative action. While white, middle class North Americans were free to laugh calmly in their gated communities at the confused grimaces of Gary Coleman and Mr. T, they were simultaneously offering electoral support to whichever candidate could talk toughest to the blacks.

The cultural prominence offered to African-Americans in the 1980s and to homosexuals in the early years of our current century is manifested from what some have seen as the ‘liberalizing’ forces of capital. The theory runs contrary to the popular Leftist understanding of the way in which the world works, offering the unlikely premise that not in spite of, but because of its unquenchable thirst for profit, capitalism is best suited to liberate marginalized sub-cultures. Because the drive for profit so far outweighs any moral considerations, a hypothetical businessman endlessly disturbed by, say, mental images of male-male fellatio will still sell his house to the highest bidder or market his product to a bigger-spending demographic.

By this yardstick, one must admit that gay liberation is in full-swing; the childless combination of male incomes has produced an ideal mascot sub-culture for post-industrial consumer capitalism (which also explains why no Dyke Flannel for the Lipstick Spinster pilots have accompanied the televised Gaynaissance). But the problem with this market-based liberation is just that -- as it may be set into motion by the forces of profit-making, it is also limited by them. Once a gay rights demand is articulated which stands in the way of the long or short term interests of capital – like the UPS workers’ demands for same-sex benefits, or the current campaign for gay marriage -- it becomes anathema.

It serves us well to remember that neither the government of George W. Bush nor the ruling class that it represents actually bears any interests in preserving the ethereal “sanctity” of American marriage. The U.S.’s enormous incarceration rates and military adventures based on economic conscription break up countless working class relationships every year. Washington exports this disregard to the rest of the world, supporting governments such as that of Israel, whose policies of mass arrests, apartheid marital laws and restrictions on movements have made Palestinian marriages nearly impossible to maintain happily.

Bush’s interest in marriage lies in maintaining a division of labour which has served private property for centuries. Marriage has long been a contractual obligation binding women to a subservient social role, effectively reproducing labour power and new markets in child-rearing and housekeeping, and giving working class men a domestic outlet for violent aggression which might otherwise be directed against their boss. Each step towards democratizing marriage as an institution, such as the attainment of unilateral divorce and reproductive rights for women, helps not only to redefine marriage as a union based on love and solidarity, but to render matrimony as a less effective social unit from a ruling class perspective. Gay marriage marks such a step.

Because of the latent homophobia which runs through much of our working class and ethnic constituencies, coupled with the eagerness with which some gay figures have embraced their consumer-mascot role, the Left has generally taken on gay rights only rhetorically, and quietly at that. I am not suggesting, by this, that working class and ethnic communities possess any more toxic a homophobia than the largely-white ruling class; it’s just that we have no interest in appealing to the latter, while the necessity of reaching out to the former has led some of us to camouflage our feelings on this explosive issue. Our moral obligations and humanistic heritage make of this an abomination. Equality for queers is, at days end, a humanitarian issue part and parcel of our movement towards a more generally emancipated society, free of racial, class or gender discrimination and oppression. Principled social and political struggles such as those led by UPS’s gay workers or those working towards a full democratization of marriage rights are, in this regard, infinitely more important than the appearance of well-manicured bit players on our sitcoms, however fabulous (!) that development may be.

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