A bad...queer..?

We've all heard the expression: " I'm a bad Jew". A self-admonition (if you're Jewish), yes, useful for avoiding prolonged explanation of dietary choices/not going to synagogue/hilarity. But is there an equivalent for a bad...queer? The closest I've felt the need to use such a phrase came yesterday, when I was blind-sided by a phone call from the HRC. A nice voice on the other end, (male, probably young, very articulate, says he's from the Harvard GSD!) asked me if I could volunteer for November 8th election push, basically, hang out at voting stations with the HRC crew and try to convince voters to vote against the gay marriage amendment. It sounds innocent enough, and it's a righteous cause. They're apparently in desperate need for volunteers.

I haw and hemmed through the entire phone call, not wanting to hang up, fully knowing that this nice man's spiel will be wasted when I ultimately have to say no. November 8th is also the day of the BGLTQ panel that I'm organizing. Deep down though, I'm not the activist type, and I shy away from such in-your-face campaigning, even if it's a cause I hold dear. The nice guy on the phone even gave me his own telephone number to call back in case I changed my mind. And he apologized several times for disrupting my dinner, probably because of several instances where he probably heard me chewing--I had food inside my mouth when I picked up the phone--even though I tried really hard to hide it. The fact that he was so sweet on the phone--with delayed silences and appropriate inflections indicating emotional states (a professional?) made it agonizing to say no.

I'm sure they're all a bunch of swell folks, and I really should try to squeeze in some time to help out. In the meantime though, I can't help but feel that I'm a bad queer for turning down the HRC, but more specifically, the nice boy on the other end of the line, who sounded so darn nice. Bad queer, bad queer.