I first got thinking about the state of gay culture back in May last year when I read about cartoonist Alison Bechdel saying that she was going to stop drawing her comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For after a 23-year run to concentrate on her next graphic novel; the strip was a regular mainstay in gay papers in the late 80’s and the 90’s, Bechdel said the income from her strip had taken a drop in the past few years due to newspapers either closing, dropping the strip, or were having trouble paying. Later that same month I was down in Baltimore and I went by the local Lambda Rising Bookstore and I found out that they were closing their doors. They could no longer take the competition with the big-chain bookstores in the area and the internet. (Fortunately at this time there are currently no plans to close the Lambda Rising bookstores in DC and Rehoboth Beach DE.) These two events inspired me wrtie about the state of gay culture in my blog last June.

A couple additional events happened since that initial blog. Back in December Crusin’/The Circuit, a bar and dance club that was one of three gay bars in Asbury Park, New Jersey closed their doors due to the declining economy and lack of business. When I was at that club two months prior for the Mr. & Ms. New Jersey Leather Contest, I knew the writing was on the wall when I heard that the The Circuit dance club portion of the establishment was hardly being open. And last month the Oscar Wilde Bookshop, New York’s legendary gay bookstore, closed their doors last month due to rising costs and the economic downturn.

Here in the Philadelphia area the threat of gay culture dying is starting to be seen here as well. Attendance in the area’s gay bars are down, and gay bookstores like Giovanni’s Room have been losing business (not only Giovanni’s have to deal with the usual suspects like competing bookchains and the bad economy, the city’s water department is a proposing that a good portion of Pine Street be dug up to replace the sewage pipes which would involve a long and massive process that could drive even more business away from the store if done). Okay, nothing is closing here at this point, but that could change in the near future if the bad economy and apathy continues.

The internet for better or for worse has had a big effect on gay culture. Thanks to social networking websites from gay.com to MySpace and Facebook to more adult-orienteed Recon and Manhunt, people can get in touch with each other without necessarialy going out of their home. It definitely is a help for people who don’t live nearby an urban gay area. People have doing more shopping online instead of going to stores. And instead of going into records stores to get music like in the days of old (maybe like ten years ago), people download from the internet instead, sometimes it’s through legal channels (like through iTunes, etc.), sometimes it’s illegal ones.

With all these changes it worries me that gay culture as we know it may be dying, and that gay kids today are thinking that we don’t need gay-only culture like gay bars anymore. They may feel that way since mainstream society has been paying some lip service in accepting gays; you see coporate-backed gay channels like Logo springing up, gay-positive shows on regular cable and broadcast TV shows like The Real World, and celebrites speaking out for gay rights and equality. But I fear that those kids have a false sense of security, considering that there are still a lot people in this country that will do anything to deny us gay people our rights, many which we still do not have. We still don’t have any national anti-gay discrimination laws, nor on the state level in both Pennsylvania and Delaware as of this writing. And this past November ballot iniatives in California, Arizone and Florida have passed, thus anti-gay marriage laws are written into their state constitutions. Conservative Republicans use “gay marriage” as a bogeyman to whip up their supporters into a frenzy. With that in mind, there’s no way to think that we have won just because a couple of queens are allowed compete on a “reality” show on MTV where they could end up as the BFF of a certain Stupid Spoiled Whore.

Gay media and culture has been in the forefront about talking about gay issues, long before mainstream media have picked up on them, and have being doing it on their own terms. I’m afraid that if gay media and culture goes away, then the coporate cultural gatekeepers will end up deciding that they they won’t feature gay people in the mainstream media anymore, and then us gay people will end up being gas-lighted culturally and nothing left to see the reflection of our lives. Or that coporate media may be afraid to touch an issue that’s deemed as “too controversial” such as Logo’s rejection of a gay-positive United Church of Christ TV commercial that featured a gay couple three years ago. And every couple of years Hollywood pick up one gay-themed movie like Brokeback Mountain or Milk and trot it out at the Oscars to score liberal browine points, and then the studios will still pass up a number of gay-themed projects that are deemed as too squeamish for the hetero public, such as Jim Carrey’s I Love You, Phillip Morris, where film buyers passed up on the film because it featured gay sex.

One also has to realize that while there is some effort today in America to accept gays, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be moving forward in a continous line in the future. Throughout history there have been enlightened cultures that accepted gay people and then they collapsed. In Germany during the 1920’s, homosexuality flourished and was tolerated in Berlin with Magnus Hirschfeld’s trail-blazing work in human sexuality. Then the Thirties came along and the Nazi rose to power, practically shut down gay culture there and sending thousands of gay men to the concentrations. There’s always the possibility of a homo-hater like Sarah Palin taking the presidential spot from a more permissive Barack Obama in the future, and then where can the American gay and lesbian population go if that happens?

This why I think that gay culture still needs to be supported. We really can’t rely on the mainstream media all of the time; us gay people need to learn to do it ourselves and create and support our own media and venues to service and reflect the gay community. The internet is a great tool but that can’t be the be-all and end-all; do get off the net, go out, and meet up with your friends at your local watering hole every now and then. Do take a look at your independent bookstore like Giovanni’s Room instead of a nearby chain bookstore; even something simple as buying a birthday card at Giovanni’s instead of a chain drugstore can make a difference by further insuring that bookstore’s survival. Do support gay and gay-friendly musicians by buying their music either on CD or through legal online download outlets like iTunes and Amazon (as well as merchandise at their concerts) instead of illegally downloading them; the majority of musicans do not live a MTV-Cribs lifestyle of the rich and famous like Madonna and Britney—they’re likely earning their living through a “day job” that has nothing to do with their music. Do check out what films that will be playing at your local gay film festival (like the one here in Philly) instead of just relying on the local suburban cineplex.

In a nutshell, if you want to see and hear an honest relection of the gay community, don’t just rely on the marketplace and just let coporate-driven culture dictate it, do go out and support it yourself. Since we still have not achieved equality at this point of time, to be apathetic and let our culture just fade away would be tragic and self-defeating. For if that happens, where will future gay generations turn to when they go looking for who they are and where they belong?