Starved of real enemies, many in the gay community are turning on their own. Among many queer types, the three words gay white men have become a euphemism for all that’s wrong with the world. Them, the LGBTQ web channel launched two years ago by Condé Nast, is a stew of resentments against this entire demographic group. Some sample headlines from a recurring column: “Dear White Gay Men, Black Panther Is Not About You,” “Dear White Gay Men: Stop Turning Yourselves Into Heroes,” “Dear White Gay Men: Labeling People of Color ‘Divisive’ Isn’t a Critique – It’s Racism.”
With his unabashed religious faith, military service, and bourgeois domesticity, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is the political embodiment of gay integration. For precisely this reason, the separatist, “queer” left despises him. “Buttigieg doesn’t seem terribly sold on the idea of gayness as a cultural framework, formative identity, or anything more than a category of sexual and romantic behavior,” complains Christina Cauterucci of Slate, assailing Buttigieg for understanding homosexuality by its literal definition. Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, a Yale professor sees a historic Time magazine cover of Buttigieg and his husband and bemoans how it represents “heterosexuality without women.” A culture that once preached individuality and personal freedom has become conformist and hectoring, its self-appointed queer commissars constantly policing the language and bringing pressure to bear on those who run afoul of their ever-evolving standards.
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