Whenever Gay Pride rolls around, newspapers and news shows invariably focus on the most outrageous, flamboyant participants, and generic gays gripe that we're not all clowns. It's an annoyingly reliable development every year—the homophobic coverage, the homophobic (even from homos!) reaction to the coverage.

I can understand both sides in that the news is always going to cover whatever is most unusual—that is what catches the reader's consumer's eye, and "out of the ordinary" is what makes something news. Gay people who are not so colorful take the coverage personally because they have already had to struggle with hammering out their public and private identities to their own satisfaction, so any hint that an identity unlike their own is being presented as universal sets them off like a bottle rocket. (This is also why gay people will walk across a minefield in order to be able to criticize a gay movie or TV show they don't like—everything is personal.)

My friend and his partner get down to business.

But instead of hating on the drag queens—who, after all, are responsible for gay lib to begin with—I like my friend's approach. In Rome, he and his partner dressed as they see themselves and how they'd like to be seen by others, in shirts and ties. If everyone just dresses and behaves true to their own inclinations, that's really the important goal. The media will eventually be forced to catch up because at some point, gay men in drag and gay men in business drag will no longer be out of the ordinary. And that's when we'll have to rely on other attributes to be make news and to be extraordinary.