“If it were up to me I'd lock ‘em all away.”

“He's not one of us”

“Get out of my bar, freak!”

Sound familiar? Welcome to the wildly popular, science fiction/fantasy comic book/cartoon/motion picture world of X-Men.

As mutants, (genetically gifted human beings) X-Men are society's newest and most persecuted minority group. The ordeal of these fictional homo superior outcasts, surrounded and outnumbered by a world full of lesser, hostile homo-sapiens is a most powerful metaphor for the factual reality of homosexuals living among heterosexuals.

X-Men began in 1963 as a regular “super-hero” type comic book series. But from the start it was notably different than the genre's usual, simplistic, rock ‘em, sock ‘em type tales of good guys vs. bad guys.

The mutants of X-Men had a unique appeal to angst-ridden adolescents feeling different and alienated. Mutants did not gain their powers by accident or by manipulation. They simply are who they are. Their “gifts” come from nature. Their enemies are not wayward evil geniuses but “normal” everyday people.

Many of X-Men's plotlines appropriated the experiences of real minority groups struggling against real intolerance. In fact, any number of social, religious, ethnic minorities can rightfully claim the X-Men's story as being about them. Its message of discrimination and alienation is universal.

Yet the wildly popular films, as adapted from the venerable comic book series, resonate truest in their uncanny resemblances to the circumstances of gays. Queers, of all social groups, are most eligible to claim, “We are the real X-Men!”

As stated by X-Men's two main stars in the first film's DVD production documentary:

Patrick Stewart (Dr. Francis Xavier): “How do we live with people who are different from ourselves, who we are uncomfortable with; and how can we create a society where everyone can coexist happily and creatively and productively? (These questions) lie at the heart this film”.

Ian McKellen (Dr. Magneto): “The particular appeal of this comic book is that it has taken a fantasy look at what it is like to be considered so unusual by society at large that they are prepared to think of you as less worthy. I think that I, Ian McKellen, being a gay man, am often thought of as being dangerous, too unusual, too abnormal”.

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