Leave the Gay Sandwich Alone

In case you're straight and/or love yourself too much to sign up for Twitter, a buncha gays are mad at a sandwich.

British retailer Marks and Spencer have started selling a pre-made BLT with guacamole on it (or at least some kind of unverifiable, chunky green spread) and calling it an "LGBT" sandwich (Lettuce + Guacamole + Bacon + Tomato...) in honor of Pride. News of the bad gay sandwich has spread worldwide thanks to some British, gay rage-tweeting, and now thousands of queers from London to Palm Springs have taken to Twitter to voice their disgust at seeing yet another brand commodify and exploit queer identities during our annual commemoration of the Stonewall riots of 1969.

I understand their anger, but I think it's misplaced -- not because I think the commodification of queerness under late capitalism is good (it's bad!) or because Marks and Spencer's plan to donate nearly $15,000 of the sandwich sales to charities that serve LGBTQ+ youth (the retailer generated over $13 billion in revenue last year, $15,000 is nothing), but because gay sandwich is fine. It's fine! Fine.

Looking at gay sandwich purely in sandwich terms, devoid of gay outrage, it's really not so bad. I mean, it's abhorrent by New York standards, where the local deli culture outside of Greenpoint (dry, sliced weird, wrapped in Saran Wrap... Why are your sandwiches so weird and bad, Greenpoint?) has spoiled me over the past eight years I've lived here. But it seems OK by everywhere else's. I mean, sure, guacamole probably doesn't go with bacon, but as a white woman, I don't actually know what good food tastes like and would easily be overwhelmed by the multisensory experience of a sandwich that boasts two flavors.

Did gay sandwich strap you to a chair, make you sit in it like a straight person, and force you to watch Roland Emmerich's Stonewall? Did it tweet that Kendall and Kylie are camp icons? Eyedrop some Tabasco sauce into your electric douche? Call Pete Buttigieg hot? No. It didn't. Gay sandwich is fine. Leave gay sandwich alone.

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