I was at Orphan Andy's today, the diner in the Castro where my roommate and our mutual friend Jeff works, and we got into a somewhat heated discussion about the tension between the desire to create and nuture gay male communities vs. the desire to create and nuture radical social justice movements. Can we engage in the process of building identity-based communities while also hoping to build a politics that moves beyond identity categories?

This tension is somewhat difficult for me to navigate. As a young man who came out as gay in the South, the marginalized experience I had there created my own radically queer political perspective. That is to say, because I was nelly boy in a deeply and often blatantly heterosexist culture, I was radicalized politically from an early age.

Now I live in San Francisco, however, where being gay is no longer radical. It has lost almost all potential to produce an interesting or transformative political consciousness - especially for wealthy white gay men. Perhaps this is not true for men of color; the poor; and gay/bi/queer women. But, for gay men, the potential to create subversive and radical politics here is largely dead.

I have long been hoping to see a new radical politics emerge that sat at the crossroads of racial justice / feminist / and queer political discourses. That is, a movement that was just as interested in tackling racist and sexist prejudices and inequalities as it was in ending heterosexist / homophobic ones. This kind of organizing has begun to emerge in places like the South, where organizations like Southeners on New Ground (formerly headed by Mandy Carter) and Tennesee's Highlander Institute (formerly headed by Suzanne Pharr) have long been pushing for this vision of radical political organizing.

The tension, then, is how to move forward as a activist and organizer hoping to build healthier and politically conscious gay men's communities, while also hoping to build a multi-issue justice movement. Is such a thing possible? My growing up in the South as a gay man has made me attached to my gay identity and my gay brothers in a way that prevents me from dropping my hope for doing gay men's community building. I think there are still places where this can produce radical and feminist consciousnesses - as it has clearly done for me.

Are these projects necessarily seperate? Must I choose between them, or can I find someway to further both agendas? These are the questions that are on my mind, and have been for some time now... Any ideas?