So, I’ve never even been in Seattle, but I have vastly enjoyed every single Pride Issue that their alternative news weekly, The Stranger, has put out with all their various themes: The Seven Deadly Sins, in 99, my favorite articles being Gluttony and Pride; Assimilate, Dan’s Summary piece from it, is probably the best; Enough about me, Let’s talk about you. What do you think about me? was all heteros writing about the homos. I expected it to be lame, but it wasn’t. It’s a subtly different perspective, they are after all, still people writing for an alternative newspaper, and I really got into that; What we know now, this occurred in the midst of my preparations for my move to CA and fell off the radar. Good stuff there, too. =) Still haven’t finished it. It’s more about the lessons the authors have learned over time, being queer & all that; Appropriate This! notes that straights have taken alot of the ‘good’ of being gay, but mostly left the ‘bad’, and here, you should take this. Some of what they’re supposed to appropriate is funny but totally non-applicable like toilet trolls, for instance, and some of it pointed, stinging, and quite accurate, like gay youth and some like appropriate everything else are both mixed together.
This year, they did something else. They point out that we’ve built some homo-hospitable nests in every major city in the country. And even occasionally in the backwaters. But that in many places around the country, we are very much not wanted. And, We Know Where We’re Not Wanted. Dan once again does a good job with the big picture in Always Migrants, Now Refugees. In Give Federalism a Chance, Andrew Sullivan gives an eloquent argument for a pragmatic political approach, which I hate. I think the most poinant, though, is the last. In If You’re Feeling Persecuted, You’re Not Paying Attention, the situation for queers outside the industrialized world, and inside several parts of the industrialized world as well, is spelled out pretty clearly, and it’s not pretty.
I started reading The Stranger for Savage Love, as that was where Dan got his start, as I understand it. Their monorail coverage got me to stick around. And I found their pride issues insightful, thought provoking, and amusing. Sadly, I haven’t kept up with the monorail v light rail saga, or The Stranger at all, really, since I moved to Berkeley. Though I do wonder how it’s going/gone.