A nifty little website created by a Toronto graphic designer named Christopher Rouleau has gone viral, thanks to being plugged by uber-popular U.S. blogger Dan Savage.
The Official Gay Card lets you literally carry your sexuality around in your pocket with pride, but to qualify for one first you have to prove how gay you are by answering questions about Lady GaGa, Stephen Sondheim, and personal grooming routines. The predictability of the questions has led some online commenters to charge the Gay Card excludes anyone who doesn’t fit the prevalent gay stereotype (Savage himself only scored “gay-in-training”), but Rouleau says it’s all in good fun.
Who are you?
I’m a freelance graphic designer and type designer, originally from Saskatchewan. Now I’m living in Toronto.
Why did you create the Official Gay Card, and is there a message behind it?
I guess it was something I had always thought of doing for fun. There were some similar things out there but they were poorly designed and not very well conceived. It started out as the card and then I thought, well, you should have to earn the card, you shouldn’t just get one automatically, so I added the quiz.
I don’t want anyone to think there’s any message behind it. It’s all in fun. To do something like this, is just to get a positive energy out there, to start dialogue between people, to whip it out at parties and have people laugh. I also didn’t want it to be raunchy, or something my mom couldn’t read.
Are you concerned that you might be reinforcing negative stereotypes?
I think a lot of gay culture and humour revolves around stereotypes like that. I think gay culture is often rooted in camp. I’m not worried about it.
What’s the response been so far?
I have yet to run into someone who’s cut it out and actually had it on them. But Dan Savage picked it up on Slog, and from Tuesday to Friday it ended up getting like 50,000 hits on several different blogs. I’ve just been reading about it on all these blogs, I’m so happy about how people feel about it. At least 80 per of people are titillated. Some people are like “this is stupid” but it’s all good to me, it doesn’t hurt my feelings if people don’t like it. If you don’t like it, just don’t look at it, don’t use it.
Rob Ford has sparked controversy by refusing to attend Pride this year. Have you considered sending him an honorary Gay Card?
I haven’t. I’m not sure I want to stir that pot. I don’t want to take a political stance. If someone does that’s great, but I’m not going to be the one to do it.
