I knew to the moment when the ‘60’s counter culture died. It was an ad in Newsweek for ripped, worn-looking jeans worn by an obvious hippie. I realized that once the hippies were being marketed to, the real counter culture they were a part of had turned mainstream. Overnight, people who had maintained the button down collar and good looking dresses during the hippy movement were now all dressed as hippies.
When I saw more or less straight-laced parents virtue signaling by dressing their kids up as drag queens, I got a similar feeling. The LGBT culture was on the cusp of vanishing. Like the ersatz hippies who became stock brokers, but dressed like hippies all through college the stupid parents subsumed the real gay culture into irrelevance. I noticed some time ago that butch lesbians were no longer fashionable. Now, they mostly identify as “queer” to make room for the new “trans” women. (Trans women can’t be lesbians because that would make them heterosexual men in stupid clothing. So, something had to give and it was old-fashioned lesbians who had to convert to something else.)
There have always been homosexuals. But instead of forcing bakers to bake their wedding cakes, they’ll just go back to being regular men who occasionally hook up with other men. Lesbians will be much quieter, not because they don’t like other women anymore, but because the loud, in-your-face brashness is just no longer new or cool.
You probably won’t see many more gay weddings or gender reveal parties either. The feeling of being part of a social movement has faded into irrelevance. Something else will come along, but it’s not here yet. Enjoy the respite.
“The hippies won’t come back you say? Mellow out or you will pay!”