New Republic: The Intimate Story of a Gay-Marriage Pioneer
In John Waters’s film Female Trouble, Aunt Ida (played by ex-barmaid Edith Massey) reveals a sentiment that, I suspect, she has in common with many queer people: “the world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life.” It’s not so much that marriage is incompatible with being queer, so much as it seems to interfere with all the fun parts: prolific sexual relationships negotiated outside an established set of mores, staying out late instead of running home to pick up children, living with your friends and lovers until everyone had died or moved away, the wholesale rejection of Red-State America. The world of John Waters is, after all, vivid portrayal of queer life as the antithesis of the neat, moral, and prudish side of America.
By: Malcolm Thorndike Nicholson
Story Date: 2015-12-16T05:51:00+00:00