When a 17-year-old Judy Garland first sung “Somewhere over the Rainbow” in 1939, the practice of coming out as a gay man could get you fired from your job, beaten, and evicted. Flash forward 75 years, and being out as a gay or lesbian or queer or, in the past few years, even transgender isn’t quite as physically dangerous in the first world. During those 75 years, what started in black and white cornfield traveled, was infused with a vibrant spectrum of shades, and then at the behest of the wizard and the good witch, has been returned to black and white.

This month — June — is marked as a transnational LGBTQIAA pride month. From Tel Aviv to San Francisco, it’s marked as the time of the year to make our community visible. The purpose was originally for the sake of initiating political action, but now that gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights are becoming part of the universal set of heteronormative rights will the parades just become just another cultural heritage festival? Will it lose its mass appeal? Will it fall prey to complete marketization?

(Note: The exclusion of transgender from the above question and for the rest of this article is deliberate. While the transgender community has made a lot of strides in the past few months, their fight for acceptance and human rights isn’t nearly as far along as those mentioned above.)

There was a time, from what I’ve heard, where being an openly gay or lesbian was a political statement. It was against the status quo. It was taken as an overt rejection of heteronormative, family culture promoted by multi-million dollar companies. Now it’s an apolitical statement. It is the status quo. It’s a potential capitulation to the heteronormative, family culture promoted by now multi-billion dollar companies.

Our inclusion in to this, at its best, is damaging to that vibrant and veritable rainbow of non-traditional lifestyles we created along the way to get where we are now. At worst, it’s a farce. It’s a farce because instead of subverting the mainstream culture, we opted throw ourselves into the figurative burning building of institutionalized and taxable love. Instead of embracing the greener pastures of Oz, we slipped back into a barren dustbowl. We could get married, come out of the closet, acquire children, and become defined as relatively successful within our personal lives but in truth, we have assimilated.

Don’t get me wrong, the past is past and for what it’s worth, it’s legitimately easier to be gay than ever before. Widespread cultural acceptance of homosexual relationships is one of the greater cultural strides the United States (and many other post-industrial societies) have made in the past decade (side note: it’s honestly hard for me to think of any other positive cultural changes that have happened in the past ten years). What’s gotten harder is to be queer.

Queer

“a non-gender specific rubric that defines itself diacritically not against heterosexuality but against the normative”

Andrew Parker, “Foucault’s Tongues,” Meditations 18:2

In a sense, being a gay man and leading the lifestyle that follows it is easier than it ever was in the past (for most first world countries, at least). But, with all of the acceptance and legal condolences handed out in the past 20 years, comes something a little more sinister. That sinister, wicked thing is assimilation.

What makes this assimilation so seamless is the reality that the core economic unit of capitalist society is the family. This is especially true for capitalism, where products are marketed as “family-friendly” or for “mom/dad/daughter/son” thus, for the most part, and reinforcing patriarchal gender roles. By having access to the core unit capitalist society, we become a part of it. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t love someone who you want to love, or who may love you, but awareness of the larger structural and systematic processes at play.

But with that, I have to say something. It’s this: in a culture where independence and (um) a fierce survival instinct have reigned as norms for so long, the additive of a potential to focus on a personal future not only increases our own selfishness as individuals, but deteriorates a community whose strength lied in solidarity against oppressors and marketers.

What seemed like a quixotic pipe dream — acceptance — for so long has become a reality. Bills have been signed and white picket fences have sprung up in the minds of future gay men. We finally have, in some sense, an idea of what our personal future may look like.

Through bills that have been signed, white picket fences have sprung up in the minds of future gay men because, for once, we can lug around the idea that our personal futures are assured. We could get married. We could be open about our personal lives in the workplace. We ­could have children. We could be successful, wholehearted, well-rounded individuals. According to the law, at least.

By no means is this meant to be a definitive opinion, but I think pointing out the implications of our fight for rights and acceptance is a dialogue worth creating.

Happy pride!