What is gay business doing to our community? It coopts us and promotes a narrow stereotype of gays as white-collar, fun-loving, men with discretionary incomes able to live the good consumer life, but otherwise middle-of-the-road or mainstream in our outlook and business. It is assimilationist. It does not want to make waves or discern the strange differences among us. Advertising is based on stereotypes and reinforces stereotypes. It is a marketing person's conception of what gay life should be. I call this the "Advocate Culture" because it has been promoted by that magazine longer than any other gay publication, although it is widely copied.

Now that big businesses are going after the gay market they also target those of us who fit the "Advocate Culture" - upscale consumers, and by that they will promulgate a stereotype of us that younger gays and lesbians just coming out will attempt to emulate, just as many of us emulated the effeminate Drag Queens and faggots of years past because we mistakenly thought those behaviors were the essence of being gay. This action leaves many of us out in the cold, invisible, unwanted and it narrows the possibilities of acceptable beliefs and behaviors open to gay people. Too, it promotes a false picture of gay life, that we are all priviledged consumers having great discretionary incomes and therefore do not deserve equal rights, thus providing fodder for the right-wing homophobes in their attacks against us.

There have long been in the gay movement the assimilationists who promote as fact that we are like everyone else, except perhaps what we do in bed, and even that could be described in terms of no discernable difference other than the plumbing. Then there are those who believe gays are fundamentaly different from straights - that we think, perceive and feel differently - and that what we do sexually is the only thing similar to them.

How much we gays differ from heterosexuals is a matter of debate, belief, upbringing and perhaps genetics. Whether there is something inherently different about us or that we learn to be different in reaction to stereotyped beliefs about us to survive is an important question. The oppressed always understand the oppressor better than the oppressor understands the oppressed and even themselves. For whatever reasons, the fact remains that many of us consider ourselves different and feel we are different, whether inwardly or outwardly, from heterosexuals.

In tribal societies that had shamans the qualities looked for in children to be potential shamans were often what we recognize today as gay. Not all shamans were exclusively homosexual, some were even exclusively hererosexual, but many were bisexual. The other qualities are ellusive - perhaps a sensitivity, empathy, a gift for healing or spiritual vision, artistic talent, but perhaps most of all a talent to see and feel otherness, to look beyond the society, to seek the new and unusual. These differences have been pounced upon by some gay theorists, anthropologists and sociologists to define gayness. Yet this stereotype about inherent differences in gays persists, especially as to occupation and dress. But in a society that does not recognize a shamanic role, we have no place, we are outcast.

We are sensed by the hetero populace to be different, but their sense of it is to be disgusted and afraid, not to appreciate differences and find value in them. Thus those belonging to the subcultures of gaydom - the faeries, leatherfolk, drag queens and other radicals - are not acceptable for public consumption, according to the assimilationists, and should be hidden away as embarrassing, black sheep, relations. This strategy could spell death to the gay movement, which from its inception saw the need for radical social reform that would create an inclusive and diverse society, respectful of differences.

What many of the assimilationists fear is loss of social status and priviledge. So many of them are conservative, white, professional males who have higher incomes and properties they want to protect. That status breeds a conservative attitude and a timidity counterproductive to the advancement of freedoms and recognition of alternative lifestyles. This attitude perfectly fits the Republican "Don't ask, don't tell" philosophy. Business culture is too comfortable and uncaring of the wider social contract. When this business philosophy predominates in society, society suffers because business concerns are too selfish. It should never be the most important concern of any society. Overall, social consciousness is now at a low point. How the rest of us can persuade them that their freedoms depend on the freedom of all citizens to live as they individually see fit is the task before us. We need a dialogue of inclusion that will infuse new life into the ideal of the social contract - of freedoms tempered with responsibilities - or else society as we know it will continue to disintegrate.