I've been unlucky enough to come across Queer Theory classes. Incredible waste of time. As if the humanities needed more of their usual psychoanalytic hot air classes.

There's a clear distinction between History and faux-sociology classes.

However, Kramer does stretch it in his speech with his claims.

Edit: Not to mention he makes the egregious mistake of claiming Bayard Rustin was assassinated.

Factual errors like these making it into print is what probably killed his program.

I will sympathize with his disdain for the usual gobbling up of gay and lesbian studies by the gender studies and sociology departments, which in turn transform it into anything but what was intended.

Queer: to be different unusual, atypical, eccentric.

I'd expect someone versed in language to rise above connotation. Its so very anti-intellectual not too, eh?

Gay: content in the moment, in life, the happiness that come from being content in one's self.

Gay, however, in the current connotation, means Lesbians and Gay Men -- and loses the Bisexual and the Trans.

Just to be annoying:

Strikes me as yet another old, white, assimilationist era Mattachine whining about change and forgetting that for 100 years we've all been the same damn thing.

'Queer' is silly, it's court jester - what are we to expect from that?

Umm... you do know the origins of the Mattachine Society's name, right? I hope the irony of your statement is not lost.

Gay History is much like American History or any other history. It's factual records of time.

Hmmm, it's more like one (or several) person's presentation of what they believe to be factual or what they want you to believe to be factual. I have a feeling my Gay History would be vastly different from Larry Kramer's...

As much as I respect all he's done for us, he lost me after the "Tragedy of Today's Gays" lecture. And it's more than him coming off as a grumpy, condescending old man.

It's that I just don't believe his picture of some mythical gay yesteryear where every homo was politically engaged and fighting for equality any more than I do his erroneous idea that contemporary gay men have no time for political activism because they're too busy flitting from circuit party to meth orgy. It's always been a politically engaged few who get joined by the masses when a disaster occurs (e.g. AIDS, Prop 8, etc). Larry Kramer was just unfortunate enough to be a part of the movement when the worst disaster ever to hit us did, and now he's romanticizing that back then, gay men really cared.

Thank God that he and so many others did what they did, but I just don't believe that our community has become so callous and shallow that we wouldn't do the same in similar circumstances.

None of which has anything to do with what you wrote...except that, again, I respect what he's trying to do, but could do without his disdain for anyone younger than him and his peers.

Oh, and don't flame me for "(e.g. AIDS, Prop 8, etc)." I'm well aware that the two don't even begin to compare... Simply illustrating two shocks to the community that got people involved, albeit at totally different levels of direness...

Jonathan Ned Katz might have been squeezed out at Yale by obligatory emeritus rules - he's 70. Or he may have left on his own to pursue other projects in NYC at NYU and other places. At any rate, he's a true public intellectual, and unusual in that he never got a degree, just barged ahead and did the research.

Well, with all respect to Kramer, and his views wrt history vs. theory, the mainstream of gay culture has made it quite clear that there isn't room for me under their umbrella. The conditions set for inclusion from my perspective includes a rejection of my history and identity as a bisexual man, and the acceptance of second-class status for laws that would protect me and mine. Meanwhile the Advocate openly entertains the question that a feminine and self-identified bisexual middle school student incited his own murder by being too swishy in the classroom.

"Queer" politics developed as a reaction to the various forms of bias that were endemic within the gay community. I don't see that those biases have substantially changed.

My, how times change. "Queer", as it was used by members of "Queer Nation" in the early 90s, was the youthful, radicalized, non-assimilationist term we kids used to differentiate ourselves from the older gay and lesbian identified generation--who we thought were too rainbowy and too kumbaya.

I joined because Queer Nation included bisexuals and our fluid sexuality (no widespread usage of "pansexual" at the time). I DEFINITELY did not feel included, and sometimes felt outright hostility, from the larger gay and lesbian community. Inclusion of transgendered people in Queer Nation quickly followed after.

Imagine my surprise to read "Why I don't do bi" and realize, at least according to Jessica Hoffman, that bisexuals are not included in "queer" anymore--not queer enough, not radical enough. Where had I heard that before? Fascinating.

For you history buffs, Harry Hay was a founder of the Mattachine Society, organizing according to the methods he had picked up as a member of the American Communist Party. Harry viewed gays as radically, perhaps revolutionarily, distinct and different from straights. His presence would not be supported by gay activists like Ken Burns, however, who wanted the organization to secure its position in Cold War America by denouncing "subversive elements". Commie queero Harry Hay was thrown out of the organization he helped to start.

Not gay enough. Not queer enough. Too radical. Not realistic enough. Too left. Too Right. Too assimilationist. This argument has been going on for a long time now, people. Do you think we could have it in a smarter way?