But if 'homosexuality is a part of society' sounds silly, then what kind of ring does 'heterosexuality is a part of society' have? And it's 1975 - you're just figuring out now that homosexuality is a part of society?Īnd then the title stars to sound more paranoid than anything else. We have explorers land on our native soil - Smokey's boys checking out the gay bars (some of the finest women hang out there anyway). when heard in the context of From the Closet to the Charts - Queer Noises 1961 - 1978, it comes off like the oppressive one-way flow of discourse that Said wrote about in Orientalism. Who could take issue with such a sweet, naive, gay-is-okay song? And yet, esp. I've been thinking a lot about this recently while obsessing on 'Ain't Nobody Straight in L.A.' by The Miracles. But pop and rock drop megatons of heteronormativity which can be just as dangerous as homophobia given how difficult it is to detect (and which is one of the reasons I started that heterosexual thread).

And in pop, you actually don't find much homophobia at all.