Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

A fan recently sent Dawn a copy of Indiana Word, a handsomely produced tabloid purporting to be from Indianapolis's gay community.

After initial inspection, Dawn thought perhaps the rag was a parody: it had a front page ad from a local establishment boasting about their jammed parking lot on "drinking society Wednesdays" (calling attention to driving in a promo for a beer blast seems a questionable angle), it is full of affected British spellings ("colour," "honourable," "neighbour," "centre," etc.), contained a letter from a reader complaining that a previous issue's headline ("Walk It, Girls!" over a piece about a local AIDS fund-raiser) promoted the stereotype that gay men are effeminate, and had outlandish guidelines for their personals section: noting that you are single is redundant since if you're advertising, you must be single (really!?); banning anything "racist" (does looking for someone of a specific gender make you "sexist"?); and outlawing "anything rude, gross, or inappropriate." (The Word is, by its own admission, striving to be a tasteful fag paper.) They go on to add "exactly how well you might be endowed or what you like of a clinical nature is not going to see the light of day here!" and warn that "nothing that can be considered illegal is allowed" which is odd, because they do have what appear to be whore ads (along with a promotion for an "Indiana Gloryhole Guide"), and since Indiana still has anti-sodomy laws even "tasteful" solicitations from one gentleman to another to stick his engorged pecker up his pal's shithole (even in a "blissful, monogamous longterm relationship") constitute conspiracy to commit a felony.

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What really puzzled Dawn, though, was a column ostensibly about "civil liberties" signed by "Sheila Kennedy." Sheila poses as "executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union," and her column (in the issue Dawn saw) dealt with a right-wing sex abstinence training "programme" [sic] for teens. Sheila (and her husband-- Sheila seems to be straight-identified) wants her grandchildren to be taught that their "sexual identities are gifts to be shared only with someone very special, and only when they are physically and emotionally ready," that promiscuity is condemned be all right-thinking people, and that sexual "behaviour" [sic] should be "delayed" through the teen years.

Having a strait "civil libertarian" parroting stale sex dogma in a gay paper could be a hilarious send-up, but Sheila seemed too earnest.

Finally, it hit Dawn that none of this was intended to be funny-- that thruout its pages, The Word really was attacking gay sexual expression from a strait viewpoint. Dawn has long recognized that, alas, it is true that so many gay folk have internalized sexphobic thinking that even the broadest parody of Neanderthal thinking will be taken seriously by some; The Word proves that the reverse can also be true: writing intended to be serious can at first provoke chuckles....