ABSTRACT
My father once recounted to me that some acquaintances of his felt the need to drive off gay-male clientele from their family-style restaurant. The restaurateurs in question changed their establishment to a steak house because, as my father explained to me, “they [homosexuals] don’t eat meat.” He spoke as though he were citing the 1975 World Book encyclopedias we had as children: “Homosexual: … non-carnivorous.” To my father, the assumed lack of meat consumption was simply one more sign that homosexuals—especially, gay men—defied normality. In his understanding of the world, gay men had senselessly denounced their God-given right to social dominance by allowing themselves to become effeminized; as a matter of course, they also refused to eat beef products, if not all animal flesh.
