REJECTING NORMAL: From the San Francisco Chronicle

Some folks might find instigating cultural revolt from a tiny fifth-floor Tenderloin studio daunting.

Not "Mattilda," a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore. The 31-year-old radical queer writer, editor and activist-provocateur was in mid-rant recently about the rabid assimilation he is convinced has become the scourge of the gay struggle in America. ...

This is the unapologetic message of an anthology he's just edited, "That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation" (Soft Skull Press of Brooklyn) -- writings by "a bunch of freaks, fruits, perverts and whores dedicated to fighting homogenization, globalization and all other evils of this ravaging world."

That may be enough to make any suburban lesbian soccer mom wince, but it's exactly what Sycamore wants to do. ...

But a less visible, but no less contentious, debate is shaping up among gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities who opt for a mainstream lifestyle and those who reject trading in their battle-scarred outsider identity for 2.8 kids and a lavender picket fence.

"There's a long history of that dichotomy, whether false or not, between assimilation and radicalism," says Jim Van Buskirk, program manager at the library's James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center. "There are some who think we're just like everybody else and we want to get married and have kids. Others say, no, we're in a position where we want to break up that paradigm and look at things differently. And there's the continuum in between." ...

Indeed, the San Francisco weddings have inspired another book, "I Do, I Don't: Queers in Marriage," by Suspect Thoughts Press editors Greg Wharton and Ian Philips, who were also married at City Hall. A number of pieces from "Revolting!" are being reprinted in "I Do, I Don't," which is due out later this month. Its editors describe the viewpoints expressed as ranging from "Yea and nay, in between, neither and D), all of the above."

San Francisco sex educator Carol Queen, who has pieces in both books, notes that the issue of whether gay marriage is just a form of assimilating to bourgeois society is still "not being discussed enough. One of the things that's been frustrating to me is that right-thinking, non-homophobic people have felt the need to close ranks on this."

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posted by Eve at 8:11 PM | link

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