Proceed at your own risk

BRAVE NEW WORLD

A VERY UNEXPECTED GAYBORHOOD

The Bronx, New York's only borough with a formal "The" in front of its name, is a queer place--and it's about to become even queerer.

The richest city in the world's poorest and most vulnerable residents are heavily concentrated in The Bronx.  More poverty exists in the Bronx than in all four of the other boroughs (Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island) combined.

But this same borough (or county) is also home to three of the city's most famous and fabulous attractions: The  New York Botanical Society, the New York Zoological Society (more affectionately known as the Bronx Zoo, the nation's largest metropolitan zoo) and the House that Ruth Built.  Surprisingly, The Bronx, which is most famous for crime, poverty and bad English has more park land than almost any other American city, dozens of up and coming art galleries and over 60 officially designated national and city landmarks and historic districts.  It's where people like Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain lived--and break dancing and salsa music were born.  But folks hear "The Bronx" and they still picture burned out buildings and gang shoot outs.

But who would have or could have predicted that The Bronx would one day represent an historic milestone in gay history?

Indeed, The Bronx is America's and New York's newest and most unexpected Gayborhood, and a brave new gayborhood with a twist.

In fact, The Bronx may have the highest concentration of same-sex couple families with children than any other county in the nation, not just in New York City, as reported earlier this week in The New York Times.

According to the Times, it's a surprising statistic.  After all, who can picture gays living there amongst all those Blacks and Hispanics?

The Times takes a look at the lives of some typical Bronx same-sex couple families.

First off, we struggle through the ethnics and find some nice affluent white boys to use as examples.  What a relief!  Real gays in The Bronx!  (But more about that later.)  And indeed the do tell part of the story.

For Ron and Greg Poole-Dayan, whose 7-year-old twins were born to a surrogate mother, it’s a matter of geography. Their home in the north Bronx keeps them in New York but puts them a bit closer to their suburban families, as well as the Berkshire Mountains, where they go hiking.

Ok, the Times trotted out our obligatory white gays, two, so now we can get on with the examples of the real Bronx gays.

For Carmen Quinones, a recovering addict and a substance abuse counselor with four children, the Bronx offered an affordable haven when she got out of prison 14 years ago.

For Julian Rodriguez, it was never a question: He has lived in the borough since he was 3. “I feel more comfortable because the demographic is more what I’m used to, with my neighbors playing dominoes and the Spanish music,” said Mr. Rodriguez, who has two daughters from a previous marriage. “I feel like I’m at home with my culture.”

There may be as many reasons for same-sex couples to settle in the Bronx as there are same-sex couples there — almost 3,000, according to a demographic snapshot by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. Forty-nine percent of those couples have children. Many said they chose the Bronx for similar reasons as their straight neighbors: affordability, space, racial affinity, familiarity.

The Bronx, home to 11 percent of New York City’s 26,000 same-sex couples--a fraction of the borough’s 1.3 million people spread across 54 square miles--is hardly known as a gay mecca. Gay and lesbian couples generally do not gravitate there, as they might to neighborhoods perceived to be more gay-friendly, like Park Slope, Brooklyn, or Chelsea in Manhattan. In fact, many say there are fewer support services, and more harassment, in the Bronx than elsewhere.

“The Bronx lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community has largely been a hidden community for a very long time because of very real homophobia,” Lisa Winters, executive director of the Bronx Community Pride Center, told the Times.

“The Bronx is a very machismo borough, and it’s a very religious borough. The religious institutions have a very strong foothold here, and they preach from the pulpit that homosexuality is a sin.

“But the world is starting to change,” she said, “and the Bronx is finally getting in line.” Indeed, a new church geared toward gays and lesbians, In the Life Ministry, recently opened at Tremont and Westchester Avenues, and there is a growing, if small, number of gay-oriented bars and businesses. Gary J. Gates, a demographer and a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute, said the Bronx stood out nationally as one of few places “where the percent of same-sex couples raising children is virtually the same as different-sex couples raising children.” In the Bronx, 55 percent of married couples are raising children under 18.

Manhattan has the most same-sex couples, 10,000, or 38 percent of the total in the city; 4 percent of them have children, according to the study, compared with 41 percent of the borough’s married couples. About 21 percent of Brooklyn’s 7,000 same-sex couples are parents; 53 percent of their straight neighbors are. In Queens, there are 5,200 gay couples, 22 percent with children, and on Staten Island, 29 percent of the 1,000 same-sex couples are parents; in both of those boroughs, 51 percent of married couples have children.

Mr. Gates attributed the high rate of parenthood among Bronx gays to other demographic trends: nationally, black and Hispanic same-sex couples are two to three times more likely to have children than white same-sex couples, he said, and the Bronx is 83 percent black or Hispanic. And given how expensive it can be to raise a family in New York, the Bronx offers relative affordability.

“Media images of gay and lesbian people are very much in the ‘Will & Grace’ mode--white, male, urban and wealthy,” said Mr. Gates. “One of the interesting things this report shows is that in places like the Bronx, absolutely none of those stereotypes hold.”

And that to me is one of the key lessons in this story.

The reason "we" are surprised by these revelations about The Bronx as a gay community is, of course, the result of the racist and arrogant White chauvanist notion that gays are all pretty white boys.

And you thought I wasn't going to rave and rant?  Ha!

"Our" view of gay America is the portrait stereotypically painted by the mass media, and the straight and gay press.  Everyone is white, everyone is affluent and everyone is beautiful. And did I mention skinny?

In fact, within a few years, thanks to demographic trends and immigration, white gay urban pretty boys will be in the minority and gay will--or at least should--have a very different face.

Julian Rodriguez, the facilities director at Bronx Community Pride Center, grew up in the South Bronx in a family of Dominican immigrants. At first, he thought himself bisexual, and married a childhood friend. They had their first child, Julie, 11 years ago, followed by a second daughter, Leanne, 9, who now spend about half their time with Mr. Rodriguez and his partner, Joel Jusino. Two years ago, he broached the subject of sexual orientation with his daughters.

“The curiosity started when she came to visit me at work, and Julie said, ‘You’re not one of them, are you?’ ” Mr. Rodriguez recalled. “I said, ‘What do you mean--one of them? They’re people.’ She said she was just curious. Once I saw that she was making pretty good observations, I told her, and then we both told the younger one.”

Now, the girls regard Mr. Jusino as a second father. “They always play with him, and he helps them with their homework,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “This summer we all went to Florida to visit his mom, and we took the kids to Disney. The fact that they are positive toward Joel is a blessing.”

The partners left the South Bronx this summer for Harlem, not because of gay bias, but because they got a deal on an apartment. But Rodriguez still spends much of his time in the Bronx, at work and his mother’s apartment.

“Harlem is very gentrified, and unfortunately there are not a lot of Spanish people in our neighborhood,” he said. “I miss seeing my neighbors on their stoop drinking coffee in the morning, asking me how I’m doing. It’s funny because it’s just a borough away. But everyone is so fast. People don’t know you the way they did in the Bronx.”

Ron and Greg Poole-Dayan were married in Canada, a union that is now recognized by New York State but in addition to being close to their suburban New York families, they value The Bronx because of its family atmosphere, not because it's a gayborhood.

Relations with their North Bronx neighbors, who are predominantly Jewish, have grown so close that a few years ago, the couple put a gate in the fence that separates their property from three other households (all with young children), allowing for more spontaneous play. Some of the neighbors attended a recent marriage-equality rally to show support.

“For us it has worked perfectly,” Ron Poole-Dayan said of the couple’s decision to settle in the Bronx. “We wanted a place that had a lot of kids, and that was more important than our finding a place with a lot of other gay parents.”

So, I suppose The Bronx isn't really the next gayborhood.  Rather, it is a fascinating example of  a brave new world where the face of gay men and women is some shade of brown and gay families are an intergral part of the community.  And it's happening where?  In The Bronx.  Let's hear a big Bronx Cheer for stereotypes!