Out Magazine editor Aaron Hicklin discusses how much things have changed for the better in just the last few years.

The perception that marriage equality was a poisoned pink chalice persisted up to the 2008 election, when even Obama was careful to clarify that he wasn’t in favour of gay marriage…Yet in this year’s debates between the ragtag pack of Republican presidential nominees, the usual rhetoric denouncing gay marriage has been noticeably absent….

What changed in those few short years? In many ways the transformation of attitudes has been ongoing for decades, accelerated in large part by the impact of Aids, which reconfigured gay identity around community and relationships. In TV shows such as Glee and Modern Family, gays are no longer comic stooges or punchlines, their relationships treated with the same respect as those of their straight counterparts. … To young gay men and women today the idea that they will be able to marry and raise kids no longer sounds outlandish or controversial. It sounds axiomatic. …

…Looking back it’s clear that this dramatic metamorphosis, from poppers to paninis, represented a broader shift in gay culture, or – if you believe the commentator Andrew Sullivan – the “inexorable evolution” towards the end of gay culture itself. …When I became editor of Out, it seemed pertinent to ask what function a gay magazine would serve in a world that, if not yet post-gay, seemed to be heading that way.

…One of those small internet anecdotes that suddenly go viral came to my notice. It was a conversation between a mother and her six-year old son about the TV show Glee that had been posted on her Tumblr account, and it went like this:

‘”Mommy, Kurt and Blaine are boyfriends.”

“Yes, they are,” I affirm.

“They don’t like kissing girls. They just kiss boys.”

“That’s true.”

“Mommy, they are just like me.”

“That’s great, baby. You know I love you no matter what?”

“I know…” I could hear him rolling his eyes at me.”‘

I find myself thinking about that conversation a lot, and how much it would have meant to me growing up to have role models that offered a template for what I might expect from life. And what it might have meant for the straight kids around me to see homosexuality not as something strange and peculiar, but as something familiar and equal. That six-year-old boy might grow up to be gay, or he might grow up to be straight. Either way, he will hopefully grow up without ever thinking it necessary to emphasise the distinction. Then we can truly talk about post-gay.

Remember the guy I wrote about the other day, Ben Shapiro?  He has a new pop-up book coming out where he exposes that people in Hollywood are liberals, which means conservatives are victims because nobody will listen to them.  Also, your teevee is indoctrinating you into liking gays and having abortions, he says.

Well, he went on Fox News with Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State, and they talked to Sean Hannity about how Big Bird and Elmo are pinko liberals, “pushing their agenda” on kids by daring to teach minorities how to read.  Then it takes a hilarious turn when Blackwell chimes in, grabbing for the smelling salts over the fact that a gay student was voted prom queen in Virginia.  This can be traced back to Big Bird as well, you see, due to more of that terrible “lib’rul indoctrination.”   Enjoy:

As awful as wingnuts are, and as awful as their influence on our culture, and on LGBT people, is, at least they are in-your-face entertaining.

[h/t Andy]

When pop singer and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Ricky Martin disclosed Monday that he is a “fortunate homosexual man,” responses ranged from sincere congratulations to “what took so long?” Christian Right organizations have been slow to respond; no doubt they will in the coming days.

Martin, 38, has been a celebrity since his days in Menudo in the 1980s, and since 1991 as a solo artist. That is a long time to endure the dilemma that confronts most LGBT public figures: Shall I be sexually honest — or concede to the twin pressures of a lucrative opposite-gender fanbase that wants to dream of romance with me, and a socially conservative marketplace that rewards secrecy or, worse, faux heterosexuality.

There are valid reasons (besides prosperity) for celebrities to preserve their private lives.

Sanity, for one — it’s difficult to carry out a healthy social and romantic life when it’s conducted under the glare of floodlights and the roaming eyes of TMZ, the National Enquirer, and countless gay gossips.

Avoidance of typecasting is another. Someone whose private life is unknown finds it much easier to secure and succeed with a wide range of different themes and audience demographics, whereas Ellen Degeneres and Elton John — successful as they are — have few options.

Some may argue that, for political reasons, celebrities who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender should come out for the benefit of the “community.” I, for one, think celebrities should take their time and come out on their own terms — not simply because activists like us might want them to.