Nov 22, 2005
Your Gay Friend is Ugly
I'm going to beat this horse to death again.
A thought occurred to me this morning in consideration of the liberal activism in support of gay marriage. It recalls once again my insistence of the importance of 'The Legacy of Stonewall. Once again this afternoon, on Talk of the Nation, I heard a stereotypical conservative opinion that all gays are going to hell, and a stereotypical liberal opinion that domesticates gay life.
What I'm here to suggest is that gay life is not domesticated. This is a double edged sword.
When I think of 'gay', I only think of 'homosexual' for a brief moment. Gay is to homosexual as black is to African. You can be born African, but you have to act black. Gay is a cultural and political expression of homosexuality born of an intellectual and political movement. A man who gets raped in prison is not gay. Let's not draw too fine a line on it other to say that you cannot be born gay, you learn to be gay. This is not to say that you cannot be born homosexual any more than saying you cannot be born a pole vaulter. How do you know until you try to express your desire? There will be natural talents and proclivities. The question is, what to do with them? That is a social question with which all of us, het and homo, are involved.
In other words, everyone has a right to say what is or is not a proper expression of sexuality. Simply because you are born differently does not give you an excuse not to heed the will of society. Ah, but there's the rub. Part of what Gay Pride is, just as with Black Pride, is telling society to take a hike.
So let us, for the sake of clarity, confuse things again by adding another term. Let us call all of the homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals, transvestites and others who seek to politicize their sexuality as a thumb in the eye of society, queer. The question becomes, how many 'gays' as the object of liberal activism are actually queer?
I think more 'gays' are queer than liberal activists want to admit, and queers are not interested in marriage. The point of this title is that NPR hosts and other politically correct folks are thinking gay as in high school English teacher gay. They are not thinking male exotic dancer gay or prison guard gay. My nickel says that they are thinking timid quiet repressed people or odd creatives who need more than just a way to visit their friends in the hospital, but mainstream acceptance. They are not thinking about guys who look like Hulk Hogan or Tiny Lister or men who do actually very much hate and fear women.
I am not particularly put off by the idea of hot 40 year old guys who cruise for casual sex with hot 20 year old guys. I think I have quite enough understanding about male sexuality to understand the attraction of a zipless fuck. And I think it is a huge deception to say that the Gay Pride movement existed in its own world outside of the context of the sexual revolution in America, a great deal of which was spent in pursuit of just that.
So what I'm saying is that the extent to which people willingly submit their sexual desires to the discipline and scrutiny of the general public under generally understood conventions, as represented by thousands-year-old traditions of marriage, they are morally superior to those out for simple gratification. I am not convinced that activists for Gay Marriage care to make that distinction. Rather, they would have us believe that everyone's sexual gratification is equally amoral and what difference does it make who calls it marriage? Marriage that is blind to distinction is not distinguished at all. So instead only the most palatable gay stereotypes are being raised for the sake of this political assault and all the queers are being tossed aside. This is the height of hipocrisy.
The import of all this is that het and homo alike, in negotiating some terms for social equality both have interests in determining a socially acceptable code of behavior for gay partners. I am continually stunned that a civil union which is for all intents and purposes legally identical to a common law marriage, ie shacking up, is not acceptable to liberal activists.
Your Gay Friend is Ugly
I'm going to beat this horse to death again.
A thought occurred to me this morning in consideration of the liberal activism in support of gay marriage. It recalls once again my insistence of the importance of 'The Legacy of Stonewall. Once again this afternoon, on Talk of the Nation, I heard a stereotypical conservative opinion that all gays are going to hell, and a stereotypical liberal opinion that domesticates gay life.
What I'm here to suggest is that gay life is not domesticated. This is a double edged sword.
When I think of 'gay', I only think of 'homosexual' for a brief moment. Gay is to homosexual as black is to African. You can be born African, but you have to act black. Gay is a cultural and political expression of homosexuality born of an intellectual and political movement. A man who gets raped in prison is not gay. Let's not draw too fine a line on it other to say that you cannot be born gay, you learn to be gay. This is not to say that you cannot be born homosexual any more than saying you cannot be born a pole vaulter. How do you know until you try to express your desire? There will be natural talents and proclivities. The question is, what to do with them? That is a social question with which all of us, het and homo, are involved.
In other words, everyone has a right to say what is or is not a proper expression of sexuality. Simply because you are born differently does not give you an excuse not to heed the will of society. Ah, but there's the rub. Part of what Gay Pride is, just as with Black Pride, is telling society to take a hike.
So let us, for the sake of clarity, confuse things again by adding another term. Let us call all of the homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals, transvestites and others who seek to politicize their sexuality as a thumb in the eye of society, queer. The question becomes, how many 'gays' as the object of liberal activism are actually queer?
I think more 'gays' are queer than liberal activists want to admit, and queers are not interested in marriage. The point of this title is that NPR hosts and other politically correct folks are thinking gay as in high school English teacher gay. They are not thinking male exotic dancer gay or prison guard gay. My nickel says that they are thinking timid quiet repressed people or odd creatives who need more than just a way to visit their friends in the hospital, but mainstream acceptance. They are not thinking about guys who look like Hulk Hogan or Tiny Lister or men who do actually very much hate and fear women.
I am not particularly put off by the idea of hot 40 year old guys who cruise for casual sex with hot 20 year old guys. I think I have quite enough understanding about male sexuality to understand the attraction of a zipless fuck. And I think it is a huge deception to say that the Gay Pride movement existed in its own world outside of the context of the sexual revolution in America, a great deal of which was spent in pursuit of just that.
So what I'm saying is that the extent to which people willingly submit their sexual desires to the discipline and scrutiny of the general public under generally understood conventions, as represented by thousands-year-old traditions of marriage, they are morally superior to those out for simple gratification. I am not convinced that activists for Gay Marriage care to make that distinction. Rather, they would have us believe that everyone's sexual gratification is equally amoral and what difference does it make who calls it marriage? Marriage that is blind to distinction is not distinguished at all. So instead only the most palatable gay stereotypes are being raised for the sake of this political assault and all the queers are being tossed aside. This is the height of hipocrisy.
The import of all this is that het and homo alike, in negotiating some terms for social equality both have interests in determining a socially acceptable code of behavior for gay partners. I am continually stunned that a civil union which is for all intents and purposes legally identical to a common law marriage, ie shacking up, is not acceptable to liberal activists.
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