is
for Nostalgia. As the gay sensibility begins to collapse, a
tremendous amount of nostalgia is generated among certain homosexual purists
who want to protect their ethnic heritage from cooptation, from the pillaging
of grave robbers. They cling sentimentally to relics of their history
like curators and archaeologists bent on salvaging indigenous subcultural
rituals from their destruction at the hands of careless tourists. Sentimentalization
is a symptom of the subculture's decline. It represents the
wistful longings of a group witnessing the sunset of a sensibility, seeking
to intervene in its preservation long after the irreversible process of
its absorption by straight society has been set in motion. Our exasperated
cries of protest are a requiem for gay culture, an elegy composed by a
community in mourning for itself, lamenting its own passing, beating its
breast and tearing its hair as stately pallbearers carry the casket into
the mausoleum.
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