The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

If, like Rex Wockner recently did in his Wockner Wire entry, "Wrong, I guess"*, you find yourself struck with the sudden realization that we aren't quite as well situated with the American public as the popularity of "Will and Grace" might lead one to believe and that, in the secrecy of the voting booth, the real anti-gay America is raising its ugly head past a glossy veneer of tolerance in state after state, you should read Urvashi Vaid's book, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay Liberation that a decade ago warned us against being content with simple mainstreaming into a corrupt social structure that had all the cornerstones of homohatred as its foundation. The book encouraged us to seek real equality instead of settling for a virtual one and, more importantly, taught us how.

It's not a particularly easy read but you should distrust anyone who gives you easy answers to a problem so multi-layered and complex or who lets you off the hook of personal growth in the process. Urv does neither.

She knows whereof she speaks, having learned it all in the trenches. And it's as applicable to the middle-class and the Midwest as to anyone and anywhere in the U.S.A. -- perhaps more so as this is a book for those who are willing to face the monster head-on instead of adapting to either accommodate the monster or become the monster themselves. Nowhere is that head-on fight more pressing than in the states facing MIPAs (Marriage Inequality Protection Amendments) and DenialOMAs -- typically the southern and midwestern (and, like Oregon, New England-Midwestern extension) states. Thus nowhere is a sound foundation in the political understanding available in this watershed book more valuable.

Urv, in short, not only 'keeps her eyes on the prize', she's astute enough to know what the prize really is.

*Note: This link is time-sensitive. If the column has been replaced with a newer one, you can find it in Rex's archive.