Renahe Pride Center, this entity was formerly The OUTreach: LGBTQ+ & Ally Resource Center. (Photo UT Knoxville)
By David Tulis
State government’s university system is celebrating the claim of gay theory upon the rainbow, spreading under its banner a host of fruity programs affirming activists’ grip on reality.
Knowing the lingual limitations of the taxpaying public, a queer center on UT’s campus in Knoxville is changing its name to an old fallback. It’s now Pride Center. It had been since 2010 The OUTreach: LGBTQ+ & Ally Resource Center.
The center has been an “integral resource” for LGBTQIA people, and is moving from a drop-in space with sporadic hours to a “full-fledged office with a wide array of programs, services and resources. Their purpose has shifted from visibility to student development and campus education.”
LGBT, like gay rights themselves, is a term that has enjoyed a strengthening and a lengthening. Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender have added three more terms.
Q is queer.
I is intersex.
A is asexual.
According to a website “stopping abuse for everyone,” intersex refers to “someone who’s physical sex characteristics are not categorized as exclusively male or exclusively female.” And asexual refers to “a person who is not attracted to anyone, or a person who does not have a sexual orientation.”
Enough of the all-inclusive details. Pride Center it is.
‘Transpeople’ in subprime
Queer reappears in the gay lexicon for now. Shares in the gay market peaked in summer 2014, and they are overvalued though sagging slightly. Shares are in a bubble because the spitting epithet is in favor and has widespread pubic support.
Queer is
an umbrella term which embraces a variety of sexual preferences, orientations, and habits of those who do not adhere to the heterosexual and cisgender majority. The term queer includes, but is not exclusive to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transpeople, and intersex persons, traditionally, this term is derogatory and hurtful, however, many people who do not adhere to sexual and/or gender norms use it to self-identify in a positive way. [Italics added]
Like many securities in the financial markets, queer is buoyed as if upon a bubble. But I suspect it is really a phantom asset, worthless but held on the issuer’s books at full value, not minding the overall inflation that subsidizes its nominal value. The source of that inflation as the U.S. supreme court’s opinion, Obergefell v. Hodges.
Securing peak gay with indelible tattoo
The UT center wants queer and other terms to stick to the gay community, wants its members to stamp themselves with these labels because of their pride in homosexual acts and the power of these acts to change their identity into homosexuals.
Queer and other parts of the lugbutt ideology are like tattoos one has inked across one’s body in a moment of excitement that one believes will last a lifetime. Queer operates on the same theory as those who have some emotional attachment to a stock bought on the secondary market and which one refuses to sell in spite of many signals.
Pride Center will celebrate its exciting change at a grand re-opening and ice cream social in October in the Melrose Hall courtyard.
“There has been a collective shift in understanding — as a nation and an institution — of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression,” the group says in a release. “We want to remain inclusive to all the diverse identities and expressions within our campus community, and that starts with our name.”
— David Tulis hosts a show 9 to 11 a.m. weekdays at AM 1240 Hot News Talk Radio, covering local economy and free markets in Chattanooga and beyond.
Sources
“Name Change: Pride Center,” Aug. 10, 2015, http://diversity.utk.edu/2015/08/name-change-pride-center/
“What does LGBTQIA mean?” Tahoe Safe Alliance, http://tahoesafealliance.org/for-lgbqtia/what-does-lgbtqia-mean/
