No, I don't mean identification with a scene. I mean self-identification as a member of the "othered" group. I mean things like understanding anti-gay pundits to be talking about you, as opposed to understanding them to be talking about them-that-you-are-not-part-of.
Ted Haggard was a high-powered U.S. evangelical, one with a fair amount of political clout; one of the things that he did (and does) with that clout was use it against gays. Then it came out that he'd been routinely seeing male prostitutes: Haggard is clearly not a Kinsey 0. I wouldn't say that he's "trying to be straight" -- he identifies as straight, period. He understands gay people to be them. He might use "us" to refer to straight men who are tempted into lustful thoughts/acts about other men, but he doesn't ever use "us" to refer to LGBTQ-identified people. To him, LGBTQ people are them.
:: How exactly does one earn the LGBT label? ::
By hearing yourself included in it, by hearing it as a term that means "us." The "earning" part follows automatically, from making your life in a society that you know thinks of you as lesser/broken/despicable.
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Ted Haggard was a high-powered U.S. evangelical, one with a fair amount of political clout; one of the things that he did (and does) with that clout was use it against gays. Then it came out that he'd been routinely seeing male prostitutes: Haggard is clearly not a Kinsey 0. I wouldn't say that he's "trying to be straight" -- he identifies as straight, period. He understands gay people to be them. He might use "us" to refer to straight men who are tempted into lustful thoughts/acts about other men, but he doesn't ever use "us" to refer to LGBTQ-identified people. To him, LGBTQ people are them.
:: How exactly does one earn the LGBT label? ::
By hearing yourself included in it, by hearing it as a term that means "us." The "earning" part follows automatically, from making your life in a society that you know thinks of you as lesser/broken/despicable.