Photo credit: skyguy414, licensed under Creative Commons license.

Greetings!

As gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, we remember the thrill of coming out and meeting people like ourselves. Most of us remember when we first went to a gay bar, made out with a stranger, or danced to Cher at a club with great fondness. However, as we grew more circumspect about ourselves as individuals in a larger community, many existing GLBT organizations and establishments lost their luster. Our backgrounds or interests limited our ability to feel welcome in these settings. Our lack of enthusiasm for dance music, the bar scene or other things that typify what people think of as the “gay community” left us feeling alienated and cynical.

Salt Lake City’s ready for this. Regardless of what people outside Utah may think of us, or how we perceive ourselves, we have a large, diverse and increasingly mature GLBT community. We represent diverse backgrounds: we are people of every color and shape; we are male, female and neither; we come from all socio-economic backgrounds and we value our growth as individuals.

Despite what’s clear to us, Salt Lake doesn’t provide much of what the gay community heralds as the principle that it holds most dear: plurality. For our social, intellectual and cultural lives, we see our choices limited to clubs or bars (all of which play the same Top 40 remixes), random hook ups or discussion groups that talk about sex, political organizations that throw galas and serve champagne or those that deal with safe issues and appeal to well-to-do gay men with picket fences. While all of these things provide a service to those who enjoy them and feel welcome in their milieus, many of us do not.

The point of TNG Salt Lake City is to expand the meaning of what it means to be a part of the “gay community,” its definition, and the places in which it takes shape. If you like the scene as it is, we salute you. Our purpose is not to denigrate the niche you’ve created, but to step out of it and define ourselves as individuals with divergent interests.

Here at TNG, we welcome you in our effort to foster another expression of our gay community–one that transcends the narrow confines of the mainstream–and create a subculture that finds common ground in the values of plurality, individual growth and engagement with the society around us.

Young
TNG Salt Lake City