"I mean, who cares if it's a racist apartheid state that terrorizes and aggressively dislocates indigenous inhabitants -- this place has the sweetest

From Electronic Intifada:

As a young person with a nondescript sexual identity, I always found myself on the sidelines around issues of homo-nationalism; Pride Toronto's decision to ban the term "Israeli Apartheid" from its festivities for 2010 has served as an important reminder as to why this has been my case, and why I fail to ascribe to any label of "gay," "queer," "lesbian," "bi-" or what-have-you.

Racism, as we should all know, is as prevalent in any gay community as it is elsewhere in the great west. This became clear to me in my earliest days of venturing out into gay clubs and villages as an adolescent, where familiar racist mentalities were unapologetically adorned, and novel terms like "curry queen" were introduced to my vocabulary. I felt it almost instantly -- that exclusion and invisibility that was familiar, but more heartbreaking coming from another "other." My wee little brown body hid behind my white girlfriend as she fit seamlessly with the community, and I desperately searched for some semblance to me -- my history, my culture, my experience. Little did I find, in those early days, but some bizarre colonial patriarchal portrayals of older rich white men and their kept younger "boys" of Color -- and though some might quite aptly assume based on this depiction, that I'm some "old timer," I should point out now that I was born in the '80s. At best, amongst the women I would see a white-dread unabashedly adoring her "Nubian Queen," holding her up on a pedestal of ethno-exotification to keep her own dreads intact stronger than any market beeswax could guarantee. This was the case ten years ago, and sadly, it still rings true today, though I'll happily admit that I have noticed some progress on these fronts in the "community," and there are more and more exceptions to the old rules, but exceptions they still are. A fringe community, albeit somewhat segregated, of Queer People of Color offers at least some alternative to gay-normativity.

Read more here.