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The leather daddies and lipstick lesbians, the drag queens and diesel dykes, the purveyors and marketers of camp and irony, [these] extraordinary products of a long history of isolation and marginalization are marvels of revolt, of invention, and, often, of beauty. Insofar as they are inventive products of a culture of energetic difference, symbols of a determination to survive against considerable odds, they merit an intense admiration and defense. But insofar as these cultural expressions are also products of deep and searing anxiety, of the inability to be a publicly gay man or woman except as a caricature of one gender or another, then they are no more to be clung to than excruciating racial stereotypes. There is a difference between a culture of difference and a rationalization of pain. And clinging to the manifestations of isolation is no substitute for abolishing the isolation itself.
-- Andrew Sullivan
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