Jon J wrote about cueers in quountry music:
>A lot of the old taboos have fallen in the last ten years or so, but
>that's still the Big One. The eventual emergence of the first openly
>gay country music star is going to be one of the more fascinating
>milestones in country music when it finally happens.
Not that I believe in polls exactly, but there was an interesting
survey showing last year showing that homophobia truly is the last
bastion of open intolerance in America. The authors did in-depth
interviews with hundreds of very average middle-class people across
the country, found them much more open-minded about race than anyone
expected (tons of them brought up family members who were in
interracial couples as a factor that made them reevaluate prejudice),
but quite virulent in opposition to homosexuality. Though most of them
stopped short of hate-mongering, or even saying it should be a crime
etc, they did honestly think it a sin. And disgusting too of course.
That'd pretty much be the soccer-mom demographic country radio aims
for, and I'd be pretty surprised if a gay or lesbian country star can
break through before this changes. (Which I foolishly imagine it will
by the time today's late-adolescents are grown, because no reasonably
educated kids I meet now seem to be shocked by homosexuality anymore.
But y'never know.)
Not that rock-based pop music or, for god's sakes, hip-hop are
terrifically open-minded on the matter either, but it is pretty hard
to imagine even a country equivalent of Marilyn Manson's level of
androgyny (a good example since he makes a big deal of being
straight), much less an out-and-proud pop twanger.
carl w.
