they should no longer be representing "the pride."

"They"

That is one part of the problem - that Mutchnick sees "Dykes on bikes, Tarzana Trannies, Jewish Leather Daddies and Kathy Griffin's mom." as "they" rather than "us".

He has bought into the same lie that anti-gay America has: there are us, and there are them.

As long as some of us refuse to accept other of us as part of us, we are part of the problem.

I can't say "INCLUDE US" and at the same time exclude "Dykes on bikes, Tarzana Trannies, Jewish Leather Daddies and Kathy Griffin's mom". If I am embarrassed by my brothers and sisters, how can I expect others to not be embarrassed by me?

"BUT", one might argue, "they are a minority that does not represent US!"

First, a minority within a minority needs even greater protection, and I'll argue that the most misunderstood and feared among us need the most protection and help.

Second, if you're worried about the minority being the face of GLBTIQSOE people, GET OFF YOUR ASS, OUT OF THE CLOSET, AND ONTO THE STREET.

• Stop showing up in the crowd at Pride and organize the GLBT CPA float, or the GLBT Firefighter float, or the GLBT Fast Food French Fryer float.

• Stop yelling at the television set, turn it off, go outside, and show up at protests in your Armani suit, Cavalli dress, or whatever you picked up at the GAP.
• Stop making up neutral stories and start talking about your real life, the one where your spouse or date is of the same gender, or where your kid is trans, or where you can't find the right person to be part of your ménage-à-trois. Act as if your love and/or family life is normal, because it is

Because, Mr. Mutchnick, the cause of your problem is you, and people like you. Until you stop dividing GLBT people into "us" and "them", others will find justification in how they divide people. And until you, and people like you, make yourselves the face of GLBT people, it will be the most courageous and daring among us who will speak for us.

For my part, I had hoped to be at pride this year as an out trans-lesbian pastor-in-training, but instead I'll be at my denominations biennial gathering.

I'll be there as an out trans-lesbian pastor-in-training.

But...but I liked Karen!

Seriously, though, the pointing out of the irony in his claims was on spot. Fine, he doesn't want exuberant airheads representing him; what was Jack? What was Will, besides some metrosexual sidekick once again to a woman? How did his unequal treatment of gay affection in comparison to Grace's countless exchanges with men enforce heterosexist storytelling?

I understand there's a difference in a news reporter interviewing some walking stereotype as a "representative" to the movement and a TV comedic sitcom. However, is the difference that big? W&G was a very popular show, and it definitely influenced perceptions.

I tire of telling straight women to fuck off; I don't want to be their sidekick. I don't want to design clothes for them, talk about THEIR fashion and dating. I don't want to counsel any straight men on their relationships with women; I don't give a shit, and I wouldn't have any experience to intelligently comment on heterosexual relationships, as my interest in romantic situations with women is nonexistent. I don't want to give anyone a makeover.

And yet this guy has set down guidelines that straight people follow when dealing with me. Who gave him that right?

I can see that Max Mutchnick is depressed when people like me, my friends, and my family "speak for" him. I can say I'm equally depressed when people like him speak for my friends, my family, and I. So what then? It seems like an impasse until we can learn to work together from the different cultural spaces we represent.

But when I hear the call for my community to please go away and stop being visible so he and his community can be our voice... it's just insulting. If there ever was an LGBTQ MLK, I'm sure Mutchnick would shudder, roll his eyes, and whine about why this person was speaking for him.

Whether it was "Will & Grace," "Six Feet Under," or "Queer as Folk" the audience the programs were written for were heterosexuals, not us. We were just fresh subject matter in what was no more than a soap opera or redo of "I Love Lucy."

Now, where it Norman Lear and "All in the Family?"
That was groundbreaking on every level in 1971. There you had antiwar, anti bigotry and even transexuality and Gay Rights on parade with poor white Archie as the constant foil.

Some of us watched certain episodes of the three I mentioned and liked them, but some of us hated them all. All of us loved seeing the GLBT or PFLAG character when they stood up on their hind feet and spoke with their own voice. But most of the actors portraying Gay characters were heterosexuals. "I am not a Gay activist, but I play one on TV." There are still even Gay people who are surprised to learn that most of these actors are straights.

Our lives presented as a minstrel show.

Like so many things in history we look through the rear view mirror and rewrite, dumb down and equivocate.

Still, our family needs to tailor it's message and a single leader need not appear, but many acting in concert with one another, rather than in competition. To do that it is high time that we ourselves became inclusive around all issues relating to GLBT persons, Including working for some things certain of us may not like.

ML King was a key leader in the fight for equality but he was not a revolutionist or socialist. For most of his time as a national leader he was a pacifist and a social democrat, a left centrist. He slowly moved left, becoming a important voice against LBJ's genocide in Vietnam. And most significantly he saw that absent economic prosperity voting rights and other civil rights were less than substantial victories. He turned the SCLC towards unions as a key to a better standard of living and he supported a guaranteed wage - both big steps leftward.

We’ll never know how far he would have evolved because - predictably - he was murdered in ‘68, three years after Malcolm X and only a few months before the FBI organized a nationwide campaign of police murders of leading Black Panther activists.

The main thing our movement lacks at this juncture is leadership. We have a plethora of self appointed leaders from the Democrat and Republican parties but they’re virtually all accommodationists. Blind to the fact that they have zero, nada, zip power in their respective parties they're consumed by the futile hope that they can reform them and ride the donkey or the elephant to victory. That’s plainly delusional.

So every four years they can be found marching down the aisle to wed (only later to divorce) the latest version of the lesser evil. They promised us that Obama would be our friend. Obama is, if anything, worse than Clinton. In fact, he seems to be sliding down the slippery slope to shrubhood.

Electoralism hasn’t been a important element in social progress since Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. The proven method of compelling change has been massive, militant movements that utilized mass actions, boycotts, mass education and mass organizing. Electoralism at best is just a tactic to aid those struggles.

That’s was true of the fights of early unions, the suffragists struggles, the rise of the CIO, the “Bring us Home” strike movement of GIs to blocking their deployment to China and the Balkans in 1945 and 46, the civil liberties campaigns challenging McCarthyism, the anti-Vietnam-war movement and the rise of feminism. It’s was also a key element in the strategies of Malcolm X, King, SNCC and the Panthers, north and south. And it’s been, off and on, a vital element in our own movements.

Right now the LGBT communities have no national leadership. The Log Closet types and LGBT Democrats are misleaders – they gave us a choice between McCain and Obama and the upshot is a series of heavy defeats from ENDA to Prop 8. These defeats in turn produced a radicalization that’s expressed in dozens of significant demonstrations against Prop 8, plans to undo it, a call for a national March on Washington and the militant Dallas Principles.

What's missing and desperately needed is a democratically run, nationwide, grass roots activist group combining the militancy of the Dallas Principles, independence from the bigot parties and a mass action perspective. Building that is by far our most important objective.

Bill, I don't disagree with you. I just worry about such a diverse group working together. I always think of the movie Braveheart. And we are the Scottish clans that fight each other instead of uniting to fight the British.

Across the board agreement are now DOA - we're too divided. In fact the polarizing splits between the left and the right in our communities is getting sharper. There are pro-war pro-enlistment and antiwar anti-enlistment wings in the fight to end Clinton's DADT. There are anti and pro SSM factions. There are those who's accept Barney's eviscerated version of ENDA and those who want the real deal, the first version.

Those general divisions are only just beginning to coalesce opinions. But as events drive people to pick sides we’ll see the formation of broad single issue coalitions keyed to persistent demonstrations, boycotts and campaigns to educate and organize our own communities, similar to the antiwar and pro-choice movements in the seventies. Both the Dallas Principles and the MoW are steps in that direction and sooner or later there'll be a call for nationwide grass roots democratic group.

The right wing of the movement will no doubt continue being an instrument of the Democrats.

Max Mutchnick seems to be suffering from a touch of that most pernicious of diseases known to strike many LGBT people: internalized homophobia. Sad.