Gay Markets in UK and US - Continents Apart

TOPICS: Gay rights. Gay acceptance, gay tolerance. Lesbian and gay civil rights. Out magazine cover story identifies Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster as gay entertainment and media power people. Gay market. Jodie Foster. Gay marketing. CNN. Anderson Cooper. Gay celebrities. Lesbian and gay PR. US gay and lesbian community. New York. New York magazine. CNN. Anderson Cooper. Gay entertainment and media identities. Jodie Foster. US gay market. Lesbian and gay marketing. Gay market for civil unions. Civil partnership. Gay marriage in US market. Independent covers the Out magazine controversy late. US and UK are Continents apart now in terms of breadth of general mainstream social acceptance for gay and lesbian citizens.

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Out Now was asked by a journalist in the US recently to explain how the US and UK lesbian and gay markets differ, and how they are the same.

That media coverage will form the basis of another posting, but I spent some time last week in London, then now I am in the US again for meetings with some of our gay advertising and gay PR clients.

That rapid fire switching between continents lately has reaffirmed what we have been telling clients for years - the gay market is not homogenous, and that diversity is the key to getting gay marketing, gay research, gay advertising and gay PR right.

Out Now covered the recent Out magazine items on gay media celebrities Jodie Foster and Anderson Cooper twice already in Gay Market News last week, but the Independent newspaper in the UK only got around to it quite a bit late, on Sunday.

I read their editorial on the flight over and it reinforced the fact that despite our Gay Market News report on the US gay market in terms of social acceptance, about gay rights ground gained in the US recently, the US still has quite a way to go until the general mainstream US market learn to accept as equal their lesbian and gay fellow Americans.

The UK community has been in far broader general acceptance of gay equality increasingly in recent years.

London and New York may only be six hours flying time apart but when it comes to market acceptance of lesbians and gays as part of society as equals, the UK and the US truly are Continents apart.

The Independent editorial on the Out magazine gay celebrities story, makes these points very clearly.

(Independent UK) Leading article: Pride here, oppression there
Published: 08 April 2007

A flurry in the pink politics of America prompts an interesting reflection. As we report today, the US gay magazine Out has caused a stir by naming as gay an actress and a CNN newsreader, neither of whom has voluntarily identified themselves as homosexual. The editor of the magazine cheerfully acknowledges that he was inspired by The Independent on Sunday's annual Pink List to compile his own list of gay people who make a significant contribution to national life.

But it is the differences that are intriguing. Our Pink List is a celebration - albeit a kitsch one - of a struggle that is being won. It names only those who are already "out". Yet it is not so long ago that Peter Tatchell's group OutRage! threatened to name "hypocritical" homosexuals in public life on the grounds that they were complicit by their silence in the oppression of lesbians and gay men. It was never a good argument, although it had some force when applied to gay Conservative MPs who opposed an equal age of consent or who supported Section 28, the symbol of licensed discrimination in local government.

It is an argument that has lost its force almost completely in Britain. Not only have the past 10 years seen huge progress to the goal of equality, but the Conservative Party has accepted that progress. Matters remain very different in the US, with Republicans up to and including George Bush prepared to use discrimination against lesbians and gay men for political purposes. On this issue at least, the perception of British culture as more grown-up than that of America is now justified.
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