Despite the over-saturation of rainbow flags everywhere you look — which are there to dupe the tourists into thinking The Castro is still a gay mecca — it’s nothing like it was during the Gay Mecca decades. Some say it’s not even a museum relic of its former self.

As my friend asked last week: Who is gay and who is straight? Well, you really can’t tell. You have no idea. Because pretty much everyone looks and acts the same way. This is the opposite of how things were during the Gay Mecca decades.

The night that gay marriage became legal, queers were ordered by those responsible for running The Gay Agenda to “assimilate”/blend in with the heterosexuals. I didn’t like the sound of that when I heard it. And many gay guys and lesbians interpreted “assimilate” to mean go back in the closet and begin emulating heterosexuals, which many (if not most) did. As for emulating heterosexuals, many gay guys started supporting corporate sports teams, buying their garb and going to “the game.” Before this time, most gay guys had little or no interest in sports. Some gay guys even got married to females to give the appearance they were heterosexual. It’s as if the gay so-called “community” flipped out after gay marriage became legal. My lesbian neighbour says, “Gay marriage ruined everything.” She is correct, but that was not something I ever expected her to say.

The Castro has always been conservative but I wasn’t aware of that until after gay marriage became legal. I had lived under illusions That Castro was “liberal” until I learned the history of the conservative merchants and homeowners and some of the things they did over the decades. But it was the night that gay marriage became legal that The Castro very much turned to the right and became very conservative. They even elected (for two terms) this conservative gay guy (whom many of the older gay guys saw as “Boy Wonder”) who was originally from New Jersey but moved to San Francisco and The Castro to change it as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was a piece of work. It’s because of him, the conservative merchants, the conservative neighbourhood associations, the conservative “Benefit District” (as it’s called), as well as the conservative Real Estate Industrial Complex that the gay Castro is gone.

In reality, the conservative merchants and conservative homeowners were sick/tired of the Gay Mecca and wanted to change the neighbourhood to heterosexual, and that is what has happened with their “Welcome to the Neighbourhood” campaign which was directed at heterosexual families.

Ugly class warfare was involved as well. Wealthy queer homeowners said they would prefer living next to wealthy heterosexuals rather than poor(er) queer homeowners.

The gay Castro has been gone for some time. It began to die the night that gay marriage became legal and queers were told to “assimilate.” What seemed like overnight, things began to change. Queers en masse removed their bling earrings that nearly everyone was wearing at the time. They removed any queer symbols from their person and backpacks in order to blend in/assimilate — go back in the closet — amongst the straights. And things have been down hill ever since. They still call The Castro “vibrant” — I guess to make themselves feel good — but it’s really quite a dead neighbourhood now with many boarded up storefronts and bars. There’s really nothing there but overpriced stores and restaurants, the ones still open.

I remember some time ago when a queer homeowner in the Castro — an acquaintance of mine — said to me as I walked by, “Welcome to the heterosexual Castro.” He was preparing to move to San Diego at the time having become disgusted with what the conservative merchants and the Gay Agenda had done to the Castro.

What sparked this article was that my friend was waiting for Muni (the public transport system in San Francisco) in the Castro yesterday and he watched as two guys hooked up for sex. He heard them telling each other, “All I’m looking for is sex and they both agreed.” They connected in the middle of the intersection he said. He told me: They both looked straight to me but they were not. They were either bi or gay. He said: These days you can’t tell who is straight and who is gay anymore because gays and straights look the same since the “assimilation” decree was ordered when gay marriage became legal. He said: It’s really sad that “an era is over” because of what the Gay Agenda has done. Again, many gay guys have gone back in the closet in the name of “assimilation.” Didn’t the corporate trash who dreamed up this “assimilation” nonsense see this coming? No, I’ve learned that they are extremely short-sighted and don’t think anything through to its ultimate conclusion. Then he talked about hair styles and how it used to be that short hair was considered “gay.” Not anymore. One of the guys who hooked up with that guy had a dangling left earring. The left ear was originally where heterosexual guys wore their earrings. Not anymore. That’s all changed as well. I’ve seen straight guys in the EU with a GF with a right lobe earring. Right lobe used to be gay. Not anymore. Things/queer symbols have been turned upside down by the consequences and outcome of gay marriage. But all of this is apparently what the Gay Agenda wanted: Queers back in the closet in order to “blend in” and appear to be straight. Do they also now laugh at faggot jokes that straights tell? Because the straight guy thinks that the queer guy is really straight?

As I’ve said many times, I don’t think that the corporatists of the Gay Agenda could have done a worse job of killing what queers had. And why did queers listen to these people and consider these idiots authorities on what they should do? Who were these people in a position to tell queers what to do? As I said at the time, queers were as “assimilated” as they cared to be when gay marriage became legal. If these idiots in positions of power of The Gay Agenda wanted to “assimilate” go right ahead. But speak for yourself and not for what “we must do.” When I first heard them speak about “assimilating” that didn’t make sense to me, but the queers gathered to listen to these corporate trash in the Harvey Milk Plaza at Castro and Market Streets were listening attentively and apparently heeded every word.