I was recently invited by a major alternative newspaper to write an essay about diversity. At first, I declined. Liberal editors, especially straight liberal editors, tend to take a dim view on my opinions about race, ethnicity and homosexuality. They usually want people holding hands singing “Kumbayah” while eating plates of platitudes in “We shall Overcome” fake-a-thons.

And I’m just not that type of guy.

So imagine my surprise when the editor proposed the question he wanted me to answer: “Why don’t you guys just shut up and stop wearing dresses?”

Now THERE was a question with some teeth. Offensive? Yes. But I’ll take offensive and honest over inoffensive and inauthentic anytime.

I told him I’d accept the assignment on one condition — he couldn’t edit my answer. He agreed. I took an extraordinary amount of time writing it to make sure that I answered diplomatically. After all, this was an enormous opportunity to change people’s minds.

Thank God I came to my senses. Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!”

Here’s how I answered: “Why don’t we just shut up and stop wearing dresses? For the same reason straight people can’t shut up and stop making fashion mistakes on the scale of industrial accidents — because we can’t help it.

Well, at least some of us. The rest of us wear jeans and T-shirts. We’re the ones who kick your ass in sports, like my tennis team did when we won the city championship.

But don’t let facts get in the way. We’re all limp-wristed, loud-mouthed gender-benders who never saw a dress we didn’t want to cross, right? We’re so gay we walk with a lisp, right? We’re so obsessed about our sexuality that we only go to restaurants that serve openly gay food, right?

Oh, we’re obsessed about our sexuality, all right. Know why? Because you make us obsessed. You poke, prod and punch us every chance you get. You constantly remind us that we don’t fit, we don’t deserve, we don’t belong. If you’re not hanging us on deserted fences, you’re deserting us for our differences. You kick us out of the Boy Scouts, the Army, the Marines, the Navy, the Air Force, the Church, your families, our jobs. You string us up, you dress us down, you slap us sideways. And then you have the nerve to ask why we won’t shut up?

We’ll plug our pie holes when you stop making such a fucking big deal about who we sleep with.

Hearing straight people complain about bellyaching gays and lesbians is like hearing jailed rapists complain that their victims outside won’t shut up. Can’t these women get on with their lives? Why do they have to form victim rights groups? Why are they trying to change laws to protect future generations of women? The worst has passed, they’re making good money, they’ve got safe spaces. Why are they always bitching and moaning about justice and humanity?

Why don’t they just shut up?

Besides, if they hadn’t been parading around in tight skirts the way those queers prance around in dresses, nothing would have happened to them. If everyone just obeyed the laws straight men laid down nobody would be raped or found dead in a ditch.

Shut up and stop prancing? Yeah, when you wise up and stop bashing.”

I don’t know who was more stunned — the editor, his readership or me.

In some ways I knew I was wrong. If the intent was to build goodwill I botched it but good. I completely failed to win the hearts and minds of conservative straight people. You can’t insult your way into acceptance.

But every once in a while it feels good to say things that’ll make people feel bad.

What I said was a complete failure in terms of fostering a climate of respect, tolerance and acceptance. But to most gay people I completely succeeded in voicing their frustrations, their rage, at a society that wants us to shut up and go away.

Communications experts were proved wrong that day. There really is a value to preaching to the choir.