Probably by now you've seen "I Hate Straights" or one of the similar documents hung on the cusp of the decade like theses (feces) on the door of the Wurtemburg cathedral. If you have, you know what I'm talking about. I'll sum them up: even though straight people support us & all that, they still are not perfect -- liberals patting themselves on the back -- "Sure, I have gay friends..." The rants are anti-assimilationist, and rampant in the use of the word "queer." They say, "We use the word "queer" because it's reclaiming a word, it's non-specific enuf to include all sorts of perverts, blah blah blah."

So anyway, what I wanted to convey in the title of this essay was both "Not another queer manifesto," meaning, enough already, no, this isn't another over-idealistic voice crying in the wilderness, and "not another queer manifesto" -- recognising, yes, this is another queer manifesto, and I've already tricked you into reading half of it.

So has the lesson of these manifestos sunk in? Most so-called queers are still duped, still wearing sweaters and getting $40 haircuts, so I guess not.

It boils down to this: you can't change herds of people. Those guys at the Gay Men's Chorus are still going to drive back home to the suburbs, get richer than any breeder could hope to be with a nest of rug-rats to slap around, and that faggot will still refer to women as "fish." But by screaming loud enough, we can reach a few. Some pre-teen fag's gonna see a real queer on a talk show, and realise there's more to life than interior decoration, and get "saved."

Do you understand the demographics? It's not like the 60's, when the target of the rebellion was the shorthaired parents of longhaired hippies. It was "All in the Family," unavoidable. But this time, the population lump is the so-called baby boomers, and they are an immovable mass. And they can choose to ignore us if they want, because they're not our parents; they're in between. Hell, this isn't ageist -- if you're in your thirties and truly hate yuppies, you're on our side, an honorary member of the beaten generation.

The final solution? Recruit their kids. Those teenage- mutant- ninja- turtle babies, weaned on Pee-Wee Herman, are the queer army of the future that's gearing up to fight the yuppies -- but they don't know it yet. Everytime you kiss your same-sex sweetie in a mall, and some kid sees you, it's another young mind corrupted, another step towards victory. So kiss away! Otherwise, looking at the mall mannequins will turn them into another generation of sweater clones.

Oh, and you're still stuck in your Outweek "everything- ends- at- the- Hudson-river" perspective. What about the fags and dykes stuck in small-town America. You don't expect Phil Donahue to instruct them in the proper ways of queerness, do you? It's time for traveling freak shows to every small town on the continent. Dress in bondage gear whenever you go driving cross-country, and stop at every "family" restaurant along the way.

Disrupt strip-mall fashion shows with do-it yourself glamour. People are ignorant -- they don't have any concept of what is humanly possible, and the shock will hopefully kill them. But remember, the primary purpose isn't to shock breeders -- who gives a shit about them, anyway -- but to wake up potential queers, who may be scared to death by you this week, but will be improvising their own outfits next week.

Victory is assured; we'll be the heros of a generation of queers, by which time we'll also be cynical enough to make a buck off them.