October 11, 2010: National Coming Out Day

Coming Out Day By Richard Read

Today is National Coming Out Day. Here at Gaywheels, we were planning to write an article about (a) the importance of coming out, (b) the importance of doing it every day, and (c) the special importance of doing it in the auto world, which hasn’t always been welcoming to LGBT folks. The tragic spate of teen suicides in recent weeks helps prove those points.

We also wanted to mention the curious overlap of Columbus Day and Coming Out Day — one about geographic discovery, the other about discovering who we are as individuals. We’re sure it would’ve been pithy and insightful.

But our colleague, Brett Berk, already did most of those things (minus the Columbus references), and he did them beautifully. AND he made his piece funny and tied it into the automotive industry (via the upcoming film The Dilemma). He also managed to deliver a well-deserved smack to Vince Vaughn in the process:

When I’m writing about gay cars–and I always am–I’m talking jocularly, facetiously, and farcically about them actually being gay, as in, homosexual: handsome, well-designed, predatory, promiscuous, virile, muscular, and/or likely to be the lust object of an male, man-loving autophile. In this frame of reference, calling a car “gay” is not only specific, sarcastic, overtly nonsensical, and rooted in a particular community (mine, the gay one), it’s also, generally, complimentary, and (hopefully) comical. An overhyped, underperforming, straight actor calling electric cars “gay” solely as an insult, in yet another pathetic and doomed bromance flick, doesn’t meet any of these criteria.

It’s everything you could want — a turducken of journalism. Go read it.