Amen and amen. I think in many ways the struggle for queer rights over the past several decades has been fraught with tension over Respectability Politics.

So too in our personal lives do we struggle with that tension. The self-loathing queer person is not rare or mythical.

Both personally and on the public stage, it’s easier and seen as more productive to fight for respect on the grounds that we are just like everybody else. The trouble of course is that we are not just like everybody else.

I may or may not publish an article I’m working on about the president of the Human Rights Campaign, an eminently “respectable” lawyer implicated in helping Andrew Cuomo cover up sexually harassing and assaulting women.

This “respectable” gay man’s conduct raises an important question. At what point do we become so “respectable” that we cross over into the ranks of our own oppressors?