Straight People Have Ruined Gay Rights

Straight people must be stopped – they’re ruining the one thing that was meant to be ours: gay rights. You may think you’re helping us, but you’re damaging the LGBT community. They’re your friends, work colleagues, neighbours and they’re also destroying radical elements of the queer movement and must be stopped.

Bringing bad shoes and awful social norms, you lot have damaged the fight for gay equality. It’s not our equality – the right to just be who the hell we want – it’s your normal, just repurposed. Instead of liberal sexual expression, it’s marriage and children: thanks for that. We’ll have beautifully dressed little children but live celibate lives. You only actually help us when it’s your world view being fought for, it’s why we had to suffer watching Facebook become a wall of Pride flags.

Their involvement in the LGBT rights movement has de-radicalised it, making it a clinical exercise of self-­congratulatory nonsense. Straight people get the benefit of feeling good by “helping” gay people and the liberal media convinces them that straights gave us equality. How benevolent of them: it makes them feel awesome when watching telly, but it’s bull.

Straight people have hijacked LGBT rights groups, and the ‘equality in the workplace’ initiatives have become controlled by a narrow definition of equality. A friend of mine was recently forced from the LGBT committee at his law firm because they wanted every “ally” to have a Pride flag on their desk. Questioning this bizarre exercise was unacceptable to the assimilating gays of the committee and he was thrown out of it.

Even Stonewall has allowed straights to jump on the bandwagon, turning equality into a full time job where million dollar companies are setting time aside in their offices to make sure everyone is feeling super about gays. The whole thing is so patronising to queer staff that you might wonder whether it’s an attempt to reinforce the myth that queer people are weak. But if the heteros have decided this is what equality in the workplace looks like, then pride flags will be draped on your desk.

‘Rad Fag’ politics has been drained from the movement and universities are gagging anyone that challenges straight involvement. A university LGBT association released a statement saying that everyone was welcome to anything gay, after the student newspaper dared to print my suggestion to ban straights at gay clubs. Queer spaces are becoming zoos for straights to stare at us, but these queers couldn’t question hetero involvement, so they silenced me.

The focus on these issues has led to a situation where gay men are dying because they’re ignored. HIV rates are rising in my generation, with 1 in 8 gay men in London, testing positive. We are totally ignored by queer groups because the focus has shifted to straights. It’s a scary situation where a real killer is being side-lined to make sure straight people are having the time of their lives in gay bars.

Straight people need to understand that that you shouldn’t try to understand something you simply don’t get. LGBT rights are something you should care about, but jumping on the bandwagon isn’t helpful: it’s a patronising, messy course to follow.