How Latinos Feel About Gays According To The Past Two Weeks

There’s been a lot of news regarding Latinos and gays lately. But what can we glean from it all? Let’s take a look back and see what we get.

Exhibit A- The Burger King Texican Whopper International Incident

In Mexico, you basically live with your parents until you get married, so the cowboy-luchador “roommate” concept in this Burger King campaign from Spain did not fly with the Mexican government. The ambassador to Spain himself got involved. Sure, he said it was about the flag, but we know the real issue is that the Mexican wrestler is surely the bottom in this relationship. And God forbid, Mexican men should ever take it in the ass.

Exhibit B-The Ahorro Cel Commercial

The original story we ran on this outrageously homophobic Mexican cell phone ad got only a humored response from one of our readers, (not to mention hundreds of laffs on YouTube), but it was picked up by every major gay blog in the U.S. illustrating that Latino standards on political correctness are much looser than American ones.

Exhibit C-La Perrucha

Case in point, on the heels of the stereotypically gay cell phone ad, comes the U.S. introduction to Juarez’s La Perrucha. A humorous, gay musical talent from Northern Mexico who has his own radio show where he charms women with, in his words, his “joterias.” La Perrucha’s dance number, “La Cumbia de La Perrucha” is like the Mexican version of RuPaul’s “Supermodel,” tearing up the clubs in Mexico. This week he appeared on every major Latino gossip show on television. He’s basically the next big thing, proving that if a gay Latino man is willing to be self-deprecating, his public can be more accepting.

Exhibit D-Angie Zapata’s Murder And Allen Rae Andrade’s Trial

The historic, landmark trial of Allen Ray Andrade, 32, who murdered transgender 18 year-old Angie Zapata last year in Colorado, was a boon for gay and transgender Americans’ rights. Law enforcement and judicial authorities acted swiftly and emphatically giving Andrade a life sentence without parole, convicting him of murder in the first degree and a hate crime on the basis of sexual identity against Angie, a separate offense. Evidence submitted by the prosecution during the trial, like a dildo found at the scene with only Andrade’s DNA on it, paints a man so consumed by his own homophobic self-loathing that he felt compelled to kill his lover after the act.

Exhibit E-Perez Hilton vs. Miss California

The talk of this week has, without a doubt, been Perez Hilton’s question for Miss California Carrie Prejean at the Miss USA pageant on Sunday. The question, about whether or not Ms. Prejean believes in legalizing same-sex marriage in America, resulted in her subsequent honest, but discriminatory response that, “in her country,” she thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman. Perez’s outrage at being relegated to second class status resulted in him calling her “a dumb bitch” on a video on his blog and the media calling him to task for hate-mongering against women. Wow. Really?

In the same week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper raised the issue that, these days, if a kid is bullied in school over his ethnicity or race, he is supported by the faculty and the establishment, but if he is bullied based on perceived sexual orientation, people look the other way. This, after news of the second eleven year-old boy in two weeks, Jaheem Herrera, hung himself because other students were continually calling him, “gay.”

So it seems that a large group of Latino and non-Latino people fail to see homosexual status on par with ethnic status. And while the general population is willing to accept gays as a sort of clown figure, they don’t appreciate being challenged out of their old ways of thinking. On the other hand, Colorado. Wow. Did they surprise us. Things are changing. People are being shaken out of their old paradigms. The important thing is that there is a dialogue going on and that is the quickest way to evoke a new way of being.