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A day without a gay

I’m fairly certain Bush and Co. would love to kick all the mos–that’s short for gay–out of the good old U-S-of-A. Ha, I rhymed. His religious right company wouldn’t mind if the Muslims got the boot, too. But that’s for a different column.

Let’s pretend the Compassionate Conservative got his way. What would the U.S. be like if me and my sisters disappeared?

For starters, you can kiss off the only English-speaking employees of the hotel industry.

No one will bring you that extra pillow while you fly coach.

Forget about that five-course meal prepared by an executive chef at some swanky restaurant.

Women, simply, would be lost.

Hospitals would be short-staffed.

Our armed forces would crumble. That’s right, folks; there are gays in Army.

And you can say goodbye to softball.

To localize the issue a bit, Cherry Creek—both the mall and North—would become a ghost town for a couple of reasons. First, no one would be there to explain the aesthetics of jeans. Secondly there would be no clothes to sell. Kiss fashion goodbye.

My God, the 80s might just come back.

In all seriousness, today, the GLBT Community has some serious economic clout.

“The buying power behind the U.S. gay, lesbian and bisexual adult population is projected to be $610 billion strong in 2005, according to Witeck-Combs Communications, a market research company based in Washington. That number is up from $580 billion in 2004.

By comparison, the disposable income of Hispanic Americans—both gay and straight—was $686 billion last year,” The Indianapolis Star reported in June.

And we all know how many more Hispanic Americans there are compared to the queers. I mean, Texas—as in Bush’s Mother Ship—alone has more Hispanics than not.

If my math is correct, $610 billion is nearly 20 percent of this country’s Gross Domestic Product. Holy-Disposable-Income, Batman.

Suppose it’s true that one in 10 men are gay. That means of the 138,053,563 men living in the U.S. roughly 13,805,356 are gay. If the same is true for females that means, of the 143,368,343 women in America, at least 14,336,834 are lesbians. Moreover, the U.S. GLBT population is approximately 28,142,190 proud.

Think about it. If 28,142, 190 gays and lesbians are spending $610 billion a year, that’s a lot of glitter and plaid—respectively, of course. 

It is for of this reason big cities all over the nation are pushing to build “Gay Districts.” In some circles, Denver’s Stapelton neighborhood is becoming known as “Gaypelton.”

Still, Denver is far—we’re talking the 70s here— behind other metropolitans. The Gay Travel Guide listed Los Angles and New York as the best cities to visit or relocate if you’re family.

The rest are San Francisco, Washington, Miami, Dallas, Boston, Phoenix, Chicago and Seattle.

But the gays just aren’t impacting the economy today. Homosexuals have been leaving their mark on this world for many, many years. Can you say Plato? Yes, the creator of justice himself had a fancy for his fellow man.

So did Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Hans Christian Andersen, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Oscar Wilde, John—speaking of economics—Maynard Keyenes and Andy Warhol.

Famous lesbians include Margaret Fuller, Willa Cather, and Virginia Woolf.

And those nutty bi-sexuals have Alexander the Great to aspire to. Rumors have it he and Plato got it on.

Whether it’s Wall Street or Broadway, Ancient Greece or San Francisco, Studio 54 or Tracks, mos are, and always have been, leaving their impression on society. We may never have the right to marry, we may always face hate and oppression, but in America and the rest of the world, a day without a gay would just be queer.

About the Author

Nic Garcia is a gay 20-year-old college journalist.

He grew up in Pueblo, Colo. and currently lives in Denver. He attends the Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Nic has been published in six newspapers across the nation. He had already written for The Pueblo Chieftain, The Pueblo Business Journal, and was editor of his high school newspaper the Round-Up when he won the Dow Jones Scholarship for Minority Journalists. His article about Affirmative Action, written for The Urban Pioneer, a summer publication produced by the AHAHA summer work shop at the University of Missouri Columbia, was chosen as one of the best written that summer across the nation.

You may contact him at nic@nicandthecity.com