I guess I should belatedly comment on the much-cited piece about gay intolerance toward straights and others in Provincetown. My main response is: duh. Why would anyone think gay people would be any less prone to bigotry or intolerance than any other human beings? They’re … human. Prejudice is ugly wherever it comes from, and gays are no exception. Toleration is a difficult virtue. It comes no more naturally to minorities than majorities – although minorities have often had to master it in self-defense.
All I can say is that as a longtime summer resident of this little town brimming with award-winning fudge and mannish women (in Dina Martina’s immortal words), it’s full of personal feuds but remarkably tolerant of group differences. We’re talking Jamaican laborers, post-drag drag-queens, bearded ladies, senior transgendered people, interracial couples, straight families, Portuguese-American clans, Irish cops, circuit queens, jolly bears, cross-dressers, rabid racoons, bustling skunks, countless dogs, power-lesbians, Bulgarian students, gay families with kids, Russian entrepreneurs, ancient eccentrics, nocturnal painters, bad musicians, cult film-makers, elegant novelists, excitable pundits … well, you get the idea. Cram them onto two streets, add summer heat, and all you get is a few random slurs? If only they could be so "intolerant" everywhere else.
The Dish 