Is LGBTTQQIAAP enough letters to include all sexual minorities and allies? NO! We need more! Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, and pansexual people are acknowledged by educated progressives while there are still a lot of people that don’t feel included in these communities. Some also prefer LGBTQQTY or even LGBTQQIP2SAA. Just because people are tired of this never ending “initialism” doesn’t mean I am. In fact, I think we need more letters!

For years, there have been sexual minorities that exist on the other side of the political, religious, and cultural canyon of what we call the left and right wing. These people have wanted to be added to our ever-changing verbal jargon and yet, we still close our doors to them. Who are they? Space aliens? Neo Nazis? No. Keep reading, or cheat and skip to the end if you just can’t wait – I’ll forgive you…

After growing up in urban educated 1980’s hyper-politically-correct communities, that’s when queers became really cool. It was also weirdly pushy. It’s also when we suffered a devastating healthcare crisis and were just starting to get normalized in a lot of institutions since the Stonewall movement. To make a long story short, there were enough things about my life that made me actually feel quite unwelcome in the gay world, and that was one of the biggest reasons why I went deep into the closet, in addition to the AIDS crisis. I found that communities that had a fierce anti-gay position were motivated to welcome all kinds of people, even unpopular, antisocial, nutty people like me. It’s obvious that fundies (Fundamentalist Christians) make insane efforts to grow their worldwide family and keep their followers as long as they try their best to fit into their narrow cookie-cutter-mentality of their culture and ideology. They offered me everything I needed and wanted, including what seemed like a way out of being gay.

 

Fast forward a decade and I’m wanting to kill myself because being straight turned out to be something that couldn’t be changed. Such a disappointment. Fast forward another decade and I found another disappointment: the tolerant and affirming labeled communities were rarely tolerant nor were they very affirming and also not very diverse. There are a handful of mentally and physically disabled queers, although they seemed to have enough privileged to remain accepted in the LGBTQ Community, like having popularity and influence. There is also quite a lot of weird nonverbal pressure to conform to a lot of very complicated cultural ways of talking, dressing, and behaving; and that’s probably another thing that made me an outcast, in addition to my disability status.

 

But aside from being mental, and politically incorrect, it’s really surreal to go into some kind of LGBTQ event or establishment, and tell people that I  am closeted. I do that sometimes because I identify “publicly closeted” and it’s so funny to see how non-funny that is to so many people. Another thing is that I am a sort of “conservative sympathizer”, but with mostly liberal views. Heck, my boyfriend is quite the Trumpie, and some people hate me because of that. When I came out in 2006, I was a republican and that didn’t go over well either; however, there’s something way more sinister than being some kind of queer closet-case…

 

The EX-GAYS!!! We despise them so much we don’t even really acknowledge they even exist! We treat them like shit. Yeah, maybe they really are just gays in denial, or gays that either don’t fuck, or don’t admit that they do fuck; but here’s the thing: they identify as ex-gay. In educated culture, as we all know, when you identify as something, it’s sacred, and everyone around you has to respect that, and allow you to piss in whatever room you identify with. Yay! So what’s so wrong with identifying as an “ex-gay”? After all, they are “people of faith”, and we try to respect Muslims and Jews as well. Not only that, they want to be included. Pups and Pup Handlers are included as well as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence – how’s being an ex-gay any more weird than that?

But what about their views? Isn’t it ironic that a big thrust of the ex-gay world is to deny the existence of gays. Yeah, they do this a lot. In that world, I heard it said frequently that there are no homosexuals, just people that choose homosexual behavior. So check this out: ex-gays believe there are no gays and gays believe there are no ex-gays. So, who’s going to be the first to reach out their hand and say, “hey, you are not only welcome at my party but I’m going to also tell you: you exist!” The sad thing is that in my experience, and from what I’ve researched and heard from certain kinds of people, is that if you are some kind of gay, and also some kind of christian, chances are you’re going to have a lot more opportunities to be invited to churches than you would be at gay events. That makes anti-gay stuff more welcoming than gay stuff, when you look deeper into this, especially when it comes to the kinds of people that feel unwelcome at a lot of gay stuff.

 

Fundy churches are also extra-super-welcoming for gays (especially for those who are a tad bit open to not being gay) while gays that are in similar situation might find the LGBTQ Community not as much of a safe and welcoming place for them, unless they have certain characteristics. Churches offer free groups, supportive mentorship, and often a warm family oriented environment. Although most folks in the LGBTQ Community and the educated world would argue with this viewpoint, from my perspective based on my experience, and from what I’ve observed in a lot of sexual minorities that could exist equally in both worlds, I don’t blame them for choosing the Bible-Based-Church world.

That is why I am proposing a new term for LGBTQ, if we keep on insisting on adding more letters. But before we proceed, why am I starting at LGBTQ? Good question, thanks for asking. LGBTQ seems to me that it’s the shortest thing we can use to acknowledge an many sexual minorities as we can, or in other words, more bang for your buck.

L – The epic “L” Word! Why are they first? It’s because men came first for a long time, and even in the LGBTQ community, men were mostly mentioned first. Women deserve it, but honestly, when it comes to bringing more exposure to those who come in last (unless it’s a drag show) is the T. The T also gets way more shit than all of us. But L is first, the way I see it. Go girl.

G – God love the gays. The thing about the word “gay” is that there can actually be gay women. Kinda like when you can say to a group of men and women and it’s perfectly okay these days to call gals “guys”, and saying “she’s a good actor”. The term Gay Community often is actually shorter way of referring to the greater LGBTQ Community, although can be offensive (like being careful to shorten African Americans as Blacks) so be careful, gays. In this case though, the G refers to us homosexual men, and sadly we are the ones who insist on dominating the face of the LGBTQ image.

B – We only use the B to acknowledge the bisexuals, although we actually don’t think they exist just like ex-gays don’t exist. We brush them off at our fabulous parties and tell them that they are just “questioning gays” that are on the fence and we get really nervous if anyone in out circles talks about being into someone of the opposite sex. Ew. Even though we treat the Bi Community as shit, heck, at least we put a B in it.

T – Trans-everything. The T, in my opinion, can be forms of being transgender and transsexual, including everything from gender-bending to drag queens. We also treat them like shit, except drag queens – we like them. They’re on all our recruiting material. There’s also the term “gender queer” which can be applied to straight people that are non-gender-conforming (like Joyce Meyer) and not only that, Gender Queer can also go under the Q; so they can totally flip!

Q – The dreaded mysterious Q. Besides the word Queer, you might come across another Q that stands for “questioning”. After all, a lot of people identify as agnostic for the later part of their long confusing lives fell okay with with that word. (I might be agnostic, but I’m questioning that.) I suppose a guy can have sex with guys his whole life and still question his sexual orientation, so this isn’t necessarily a temporary term (like “bisexual” because eventually we are going to talk them into being entirely homo because that’s part of our sinister Gay Agenda). See note below for the word I should have used in this paragraph.*

 

Queer, in my slightly offensive opinion, is a word that can get away with, in my slightly offensive opinion, encompassing “all the rest”. But that never lasts long. “The Professor and Maryann” didn’t take long to replace “and the rest”; so I’d imagine Q is going to mean less when all the other sexual minority groups that are left out are going to stage a revolt. Omnisexual, intersex, non-binary, asexual, hetero-flexible, homo-sensual, and pansexual folks can identify as some kind of “queer”. After all, in the 90’s, queer became a good word, not a bad word: “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping”. Q can also stand for Gender Queer, those lucky dawgs.

LGBTQEC? Nah.

But what next? E for “ex-gay”? Well, let’s look at them… I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of PFOX? Of course not. They don’t exist, I forgot. My bad. Anyhoo, it’s Parents and Friends Of eX-gays. Yeah, they use an X. I like that. It’s kinda kinky. Let’s call them X. They are X kind of people. (Note: they now actually call themselves “Parents and Friends Of eX-gays AND GAYS”. Kinda like Jehovah’s ‘Christian’ Witness or the ‘Beefy’ Burrito at Taco Bell. Gotta put a little something else in there so we don’t scare everyone away. So, we might as well call PFOX “PFOXAG”.)

 

The other thing that will make the LGBTQ Community cringe is our beloved closet cases. Do we treat them like shit? No, we abolish them. It’s easy. Just tag them publicly on Facebook with a picture of them doing something queer and “out” them. For example: “Dear Facebook friends, Kyle is gay. Happy Pride!” They’ll thank you for it, or they’ll kill themselves. Hopefully not the latter. I don’t judge myself for going into the closet. I’ve gone in and out about four or five times in my life. It’s actually kinda fun. I also don’t judge people that are in the closet. All you have to do is meet some of them who would have to sacrifice their family, career, and in some countries, their freedom or their lives; and you’ll realize that not everyone is willing to take those kinds of risks for what? Cocktail parties?

 

What’s my proposal? LGBTTQQIAAPCX? Nah, I’m not into that one either. Here’s my best attempt at honoring as many sexual minorities with as few letters as I can while acknowledging those who might need a sort of “political hug”. It’s a gesture of peace! Let’s add the C for the closeted, and an X for those who call themselves ex-gay! After all folks, a whole bunch of C and X people end up joining us out of default anyway, unless they die for whatever reason (I don’t want to mention suicide again – this is depressing enough.) Another thing to note is that the C and X communities are typically more on the conservative and right wing side of politics, religion, and culture; which makes it sadder that these folks aren’t very openly included. Maybe if we do something really super nice like this they can join our agenda even sooner?  So, here’s what I’d like to see our sacred lettering changed to:

 

The LGBTQCX Community!

The LGBTQCX Movement!

If there’s one thing every LGBTQCX person wants, it’s to be heard. If we want them to listen to us, perhaps we can consider listening to them? I dunno, just an idea. If that doesn’t work, maybe we can actually make friends with each other, and in ways where we don’t try to influence each other. Can gays and ex-gays and closeted gays hang out with each other? The only place I can think of that this actually happens is in a bathhouse.

 

*Note: the word I should have used to describe those questioning was “mugwump”. I asked my partner today as I was writing this what would be a good word to describe someone who was “on the fence” in some aspect of life. I honestly don’t remember ever hearing that word, so I didn’t use it. Then, later today, it was one of the questions on Jeopardy (or answers, rather). So, I thought that was destiny. But I never did really use it in the body of the article, so whatever.

I’m Fake Zappa, and I endorse this message.