Here’s a list of some top ten LGBT news worthy items from 2012.
You can read the article here.
I posted about a few myself, like the Frank Ocean story, which focused on gay rappers breaking stereotypes. As a huge fan of rap music, I follow this sort of thing with interest all the time.
R&B artist Frank Ocean, best known as part of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, made waves in the music world when he used a Tumblr post to reveal that his first love was another man. While the critically acclaimed Channel Orange artist hasn’t elaborated on his specific orientation, the revelation rocked the hip-hop world, drawing largely supportive responses from fans and insiders (including Jay-Z and 50 Cent).
I think I posted about this one with Kirk Cameron, too, but I could be wrong. All I know is I used to like him when I was a kid; not so much anymore.
Kirk Cameron’s “Unnatural” Bigotry Lest he fade into obscurity, former Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron reaffirmed his antigay opinions, calling homosexuality “unnatural” in a CNN interview. While Stephen Baldwin thought Cameron was on point, other celebrities, including Debra Messing and Cameron’s Growing Pains costars Tracey Gold and Alan Thicke, heartily disagreed. At an October speech at conservative Liberty University, Cameron played the victim card, saying that he seemed “to have blasphemed the god of political correctness, and [my critics] tried to drag me out into the public square and crucify me.”
In any event, it’s an interesting article that covers some of the most publicized LGBT news items this year. Not all, but it’s worth checking out.
Don’t Call Me Queer
One of the things I spoke about this year that I didn’t like was how I started seeing LGBTQ turn up everywhere instead of LGBT. At first I didn’t even know what the “Q” stood for. This happened a lot in publishing, especially in blog posts. It also happened a lot on the fringe. And I never considered myself on the fringe in a social sense. In publishing, yes. My fiction is on the fringe. But not in my daily life. And I don’t intend to start doing that now.
And while I never said I was against it and I believe anyone who wants to be referred to as “Queer” has every right to be referred to as “Queer,” if you call me a “Queer” you’d better start running. As a writer I believe in the power of words. And I do get why people believe that if we all start using the word “Queer” it will remove the stigma. (They say the same things about the “N” word, but I didn’t embrace that either.) However, words are powerful and can affect us in ways we don’t even know…subconsciously. And for anyone who has ever been called a “Queer” in a negative way…most of us…it conjures up all kinds of fresh hells they don’t like to revisit.
So if you want to be called “Queer,” I think that’s great. More power to you. But don’t expect me to embrace it. And, so far I haven’t seen it catching on all that much. In fact, I haven’t seen it used in a while.