Why Should Anyone Care if Cory Booker is Gay?
In an article today on the Philly Post, blogger Liz Spikol asks, “Why Should I Care if Cory Booker is Gay?.” She’s responding to posts on blogs like Gawker and Jezebel that are perpetuating rumors about the Newark mayor’s sexual orientation — rumors that she says do nothing but push us in the opposite direction of achieving a post-gay society. She explains:
I think it’s kind of tragic. The past couple years have seen tremendous strides for the GLBT community, culminating in the President’s mention of Stonewall in his inaugural address. It really does feel like the earth is shifting beneath our feet in a historic way when it comes to gay rights, and it’s easy to get carried away by the momentum. … We’ve all started to dream of a time when being gay will be just as boring and incidental as being straight. If the Boy Scouts can go there, who can’t?
It reminds me of the talk of a post-racial society after the election of Obama. As we soon discovered, that was an naive hope. We’re not living in a post-racial society, and apparently, we’ve very, very far from a post-gay society if the country’s preeminent feminist blog uses a college paper as a vehicle to probe into this question of Booker’s private life. Perhaps if he were a legislator who was pursuing an anti-gay agenda, there’d be some interest—justifiable interest. But that is not remotely the case here.
It’s a thought-provoking read, and I’m interested to hear what G Philly readers think about it. Click here to hop over to the article and leave a response in the comment section.
