(Warning: This op-ed concerns hate speech, which is impossible to discuss without using it. Reader discretion is advised.)
As America hurtles deeper into July, Pride Month shrinks ever smaller in the rearview mirror. This is the perfect time to wave goodbye to the word “queer.”
That word is at the heart of the identitarian letters that are strung together like a shabby pearl necklace, in all its blinding squalor: LGBTQQIA2s+
For the understandably baffled, this stands for (take a deep breath) “Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer Questioning Intersex Asexual 2-Spirit+.” While it is hotly debated, the + might represent a partridge in a pear tree.
As with many gay and bisexual men, my stomach turns at the Left’s hijacking of nearly one third of the alphabet to bulldoze into a giant pile everyone who is not 100% heterosexual—including (amazingly enough) some heterosexuals. The most rebarbative letter is Q, as in “Queer,” a hideous word that previously had sunk between the waves as Americans became more tolerant of homosexuality and less likely to hurl homophobic expressions at others.
These terms varied in their severity, much as “blackie,” “darkie,” “spade,” “spook,” and the N-bomb increased in direct relation with the animus that propelled those slurs from haters’ mouths.
Likewise, “homo,” “fag,” and “faggot” tend to erupt in proportion with a speaker’s anti-gay bias. Worst of all is “queer,” the ugliest anti-gay epithet. This always has been the term that made me think, “Uh-oh! Someone is about to get gay-bashed.” As a gay man, “queer” rubs me the wrong way, just as “n—–” hits me as a black man.
The former I hear far, far too often. The latter I hear almost never, save for fellow black people using “nigga” as a term of endearment that’s verboten to non-blacks. (Sorry! As John F. Kennedy once observed: “Life isn’t fair.”) The inter-black expression “Nigga, please!” may be the American language’s most potent delivery system for good-natured dismissal of someone else’s childish nonsense.
As for “Queer cinema,” “Queer studies,” “Queer history” …
Stop, stop, stop!
Gay rights radicals have argued that “reclaiming” the word “queer” somehow disarms a key arrow that anti-gays could fire at us. This reclamation is a bit like excavating an old, ripped, filthy college sweatshirt and proudly wearing it at an elegant dinner party. There are better ways to avoid mockery over one’s alma mater.
Other “marginalized” groups rarely, if ever, follow this idiotic example. Please forgive the inescapable ugly language as I reflect that Jews do not celebrate “Kike cinema.” Hispanics do not enroll in “Spic studies.” And the Smithsonian does not operate a National Museum of N—– History on the Mall in Washington. The public would deride any such endeavor as deeply offensive, and deservedly so. And yet normal gays are supposed to smile as the Wokistanis slam the homosexual equivalent down our throats?
No, thank you!
Not only is “queer” jarring and grating. It increasingly means little more than sexually unconventional, angry, and left of center—often tumbling-over-the-edge left. “Queer” has become amorphous to the point of incoherence.
“But today, the word Queer has been appropriated by mainstream (heterosexual) culture to mean absolutely everything and nothing,” Substack contributor Nevline Nnaji observed on June 18. “When someone says they’re Queer, you can never be sure if they mean that they’re into BDSM, Polyamory, Kink, or whether they’re just good ol’ bisexual.”
The invaluable Douglas Murray observed likewise in Great Britain’s The Spectator:
“Queer” is a strange one. Not so long ago, it was solely pejorative. But in recent decades some gays decided to reclaim it for themselves. Not everybody agreed. In time, though, it proved a handy divide. On the one hand were the gays, who just wanted to get on with their lives. On the other hand were the “queers,” who wanted to use their sexuality as a way to bring down everything in society—from the patriarchy to capitalism. Revolutionaries, in other words.
Any sensible gay person should want to keep a million miles away from these people. And the singer of the Irish Eurovision entry proved why. A hideously scrawny, mangy-looking swamp creature, she had a voice like sandpaper and a personality that was rougher. She was a self-declared “witch” and also “queer.” In fact, she is straight and has a boyfriend. Nevertheless, she kept poking her tongue out and screaming, “The queers are coming” and the like. Which is lovely for the actual gay teenagers and their parents.
To crank the “Queer” absurdity one notch higher, June 30’s Pride Parade in New York City featured the usual collection of revelers. They ranged from low-key gay guys all the way up to and beyond the motorcycle-straddling, self-proclaimed Dykes on Bikes. The flamboyance of some drag queens made Western wildfires resemble scented candles. Somewhere in between were the Queers for Palestine, an organization more confounding than Salmon for Sushi or Roaches for Raid.
(Screenshot: FreedomNews.TV)
Question: What do you call Hamas marching two male lovers toward execution?
Answer: The Gaza Gay Pride Parade.
The mere presence of Queers for Palestine was not good enough for pro-Hamas protesters. They attacked the Pride Parade as it rolled through the West Village. Behind a banner that read, “NO QUEER LIBERATION WITHOUT PALESTINIAN LIBERATION,” demonstrators sat down on Christopher Street and ground the procession to a halt. Other miscreants, clad in T-shirts that read “Queer as in Free Palestine,” sprinted forth and then vandalized the Human Rights Campaign’s float and the truck that dragged it through the streets. These criminals splattered both with red paint.
As Tucker Carlson frequently reminds us: “The revolution eventually eats its own.”
(Angela Van Der Pluym (@anjewla90) via X)
As for LGBTQQIA2s+, let’s dial this back to GB: Gays and the Bisexuals who love us (sometimes).
We have nothing in common with the other Alphabet People. Gay men enjoy men. Lesbians enjoy women. Asexuals sleep alone. As for TQQI2s+ … WTF?
In short, there is no overlap in this Venn diagram.
This does not mean that anyone should be abused or oppressed. Consenting adults should be free to live as they wish, especially behind closed doors.
However, the Transgender and “Queer” activists who seem desperate to sex up children must be watched as relentlessly and vigilantly as nuclear power-plant operators monitor reactor cores. Any of these freaks who so much as attempt pedophilia should be handcuffed immediately.
Also, vaginas, not penises, should fill female athletic teams, locker rooms, swimming pools, and playing fields.
And let’s stop pretending that there is some giant community in which gay men and lesbians hold hands and step out at night together to meet other gay men and lesbians who also hold hands and wait to meet us—all while the Bs, Ts, Qs, Qs, Is, As, 2Ss, and +s wave their pom poms.
This is a collective hallucination.
Fred Sargeant had it right. At a September 2022 protest in Vermont, the Stonewall Uprising veteran waved a sign that read: “Gay, not Queer.”
Excellent sentiment! Too bad Transgender and “Queer” extremists robbed and beat him for carrying that placard. Surely, they greeted him with fists of love.
Until the joyous day when “Queer,” once again, is just an old-timey word for odd or weird (and why aspire to either?), we all can amuse ourselves with this Venn diagram. It overlaps plenty and seems about right.
