This week (or maybe last week by now) we have (had) an incredible opportunity. The Advocate magazine published its 40th Anniversary edition, and on the cover was a photo collage of 40 of the most influential gay rights activists of all time.

You should get a copy of the issue and see if you can put names to all the faces.

I say that, because I’m worried about losing our gay culture.

If you don’t think GAY is a culture, just host a dinner party with seven gay people and a straight man or woman. It’s a good bet that dozens of the evening’s references, not in serious gay rights discussion, but casual conversation will buzz right over his or her head.

Not to say that inviting your straight friends to dinner is a faux pas. Au Contraire. I wouldn’t want to live in a ghetto, would you? That’s why I love living in Rehoboth, with its diversity—and by this I mean a vibrant straight community along with us homos.

It’s just that words or phrases like Stonewall Dems, show queen, "of course she bought a Subaru," and the ubiquitous "Did she bring a U-Haul on her second date?" are all in our lexicon and consciousness. It’s our culture.

Judy Garland, Daughters of Bilitis, HRC, Billie Jean King, Rubyfruit Jungle, Drag Kings, Harvey Milk, P-Town. Our history, our heroes, our catch-phrases, our culture.

And I’m worried.

Exactly a decade ago writer Daniel Harris wrote The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, a terrific discussion of those secret signals and shared sensibilities that allowed an underground gay society to flourish even as the larger population despised and discriminated against it.

The very act of showing up at a Judy Garland concert and seeing other gay men around the room, all sharing the vulnerability of Judy’s music together made the denigrated individuals feel less alone.

But even a decade ago, Harris worried that assimilation and acceptance of homosexuals by society at large would cause our gay culture to disappear. It’s the very same concern that different ethnicities, immigrants and religious sects have as they meet the great American, and now great global melting pot.

But it seems to me that gay people often don’t recognize gay as a culture. They do, of course, appreciate all the hard work that has gone into the fight for gay rights in order to make their lives better. We’re not ingrates. But I’m not sure most people see our heroes, safe havens and that elusive quality called "the gay sensibility" as something to learn about and celebrate. And I think that’s a shame.

While I’ve been mulling this over for quite a while, it really hit home this summer at the Christopher Peterson Eyecons shows. (Meanwhile, Christopher’s last show of the season, on Labor Day, was nothing short of brilliant. He absolutely channeled Judy Garland and, singing as himself, completely electrified the room with his rendition of "And I’m Telling You (I’m not Going) from Dreamgirls. And, if you haven’t heard, he’s NOT going. Finally, the Atlantic Sands came to the table and offered Christopher a contract for next season. Hearing the news, the room (straight and gay alike) erupted into a standing ovation. For folks who might think that his "final season" publicity was just that, publicity, please know that the new contract was a very real last-minute victory for both the Sands and Rehoboth Beach.

But back to my point. While Christopher’s shows always commanded cheers and ovations, I often looked around the room and saw blank faces on young gay people who really didn’t "get" Bette Davis, mentions of All About Eve, or the importance (and I really believe this, importance) of Judy Garland to our community.

While Eyecons has evolved luminously with dead-on illusions of Bette Midler, Reba MacIntyre and others, I think our culture suffers if young gay people don’t learn about early gay icons and cultural landmarks.

Okay, I know I’m an old fart lesbian and many of these things were OF my generation. But many were not.

There’s a terrific book by Delaware author Marcia Gallo called Different Daughters, which tells the story of the lesbian rights organization The Daughters of Bilitis, which began to raise lesbian visibility in the tragically closeted 1950s and 60s. The name of the group came from a story by the poet Sappho, and the late lesbian activist Barbara Gittings always laughed and admitted that Bilitis sounded like a disease.

But the story told in Gallo’s book is fascinating and inspires wonderment at the willingness of our foremothers to fight for lesbian visibility and rights when it was terribly dangerous to do so. Every woman sipping beverages, listening to the music of the very talented Viki Dee and dancing at Cloud 9 happy hour really should know about Del Martin. Phyllis Lyon, Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen, the aliases they had to use, and the crazy, determined chances they took.

If I’m being intolerably preachy here, I don’t mean to be. But I was fascinated when I learned that Bayard Rustin, an African-American gay man was the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington with the famous "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King. He was drummed from the activist ranks because of his sexuality. I was captivated by the tale of Harvey Milk’s rise to the title of Mayor of Castro Street, and I was mesmerized learning how Lillian Faderman rose from indigent sex worker to revered professor of lesbian studies and continues to be an influential writer today.

Our schools teach Americans about Thomas Jefferson, Betsy Ross and American social history—the rise of the railroads, the Gold Rush, the McCarthy Era.

While there are more Gay Studies curriculums every year, most Gay people have to learn our history and culture on our own. Pick up a copy of the 40th Anniversary Advocate and test your GBLT-IQ. And there are hundreds of books available at Lambda Rising,

Browseabout, Atlantic Books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the lending library at CAMP Rehoboth if you want to know more.

I do.