Is Perez Hilton a problem for the gay community?


An excerpt from a great Queerty article:

In fact, if you are a social conservative frustrated by the advance of gay rights in the past few months, you're probably thanking Perez right now. In singling out Prejean, Perez chose a beautiful, all-American (by definition!) girl who has the whole "I care about gay people, but I am entitled to my opinions" shtick down. Perez may have wanted to make her into a poster child for homophobia, but instead, he's transformed her into a doe-eyed Anita Bryant, in the worst sense of the term.

Furthermore, does anyone think that Perez's name-calling is actually in the service of gay rights? In 2006, I wrote a story for Salon about Perez's tactics of forcibly outing people (mainly by drawing cum stains on their photos) and argued that "Spreading gossip is just your average pedestrian variety of immorality. Claiming that you're doing it to further civil rights is an outright sham."

And here's where the quandary with Perez's latest foray into the realm of gay crusader lies. It's not that he's genuinely interested in helping out gays and lesbians, it's that he's looking for attention. Sometimes, his talent for drawing the spotlight onto him actually does some good. I think the question he posed to Prejean was a good one, but the subsequent 'angry gay man' routine he's been doing since then may have spiked his site's traffic, but it's only served to hurt the cause of equality.

Comments

Viewtiful_Justin said…
I think he's somewhat despicable, honestly. He's the stereotypical example of the catty, hateful, unfunny gay man that makes me not want that label.
April 28, 2009 at 2:29 PM
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