Back to "queer"

"Honey, you're not gay, you're miserable," said a dear friend when her son told her in tears he was gay.  She was the Doyenne of New Orleans, the daughter-in-law of a former governor to whom everyone paid homage, very rich and one of the most charming women I have ever known.  Dead now, Betty was very old-school, so "gay" didn't mean to her what it had morphed into.  I too was brought up in the era when "gay" was "happy" and "queer" meant homosexual.  We didn't refer to someone as "queer", we referred to them as "a queer".  Back then, something or someone could still be "queer", such as the colour of a car or the shape of a dress, but a homosexual was "a queer". 

But all that changed a number of years ago and G-d help you if you dared use the word "queer"!  Now I see it's shifted back to "queer" for some unknown reason??  What's that all about?  Owning your "queerness"?  I have no clue? 

The Pride parades this season have brought this to the fore.  I don't care what people call themselves, or what their sexual orientation because it's all a one to me.  However, what I continue to be perturbed about are the outrageous outfits participants wear, which means I cannot bring my grandchildren to watch.  As the sister of a homosexual man who committed suicide 35 years ago, I would like to be involved, but the sexual bumping and base grinding on the floats is abhorrent and not fit for little eyes.

I also think it wrong to have excluded the police from the parade in Toronto this year.  The police have made enormous progress in how they treat "LGBTQXYZLMNOP" people (I've become so confused about categories) and it is too bad parade organizers have seen fit to kick them out.  I also think the organizers have been negatively influenced by the aggressively in-your-face "Black Lives Matter" gang of hooligans who have busted into every issue they can glob onto and shoved their single-minded agenda down everybody's throats. 

I'm for inclusion.  Get over yourselves.