Posted on 11/20/2006 2:50:43 PM PST by madprof98
A few months ago I persuaded one of my oldest and best gay friends to invite his lively, articulate heterosexual neighbours to dinner. The meal was, as I had expected, a great success. Conversation was amusing, flowed naturally along with the wine, and covered an impressive range of subjects. Like any good dinner party, it left a warm afterglow. I have had a long and, many would say, complicated relationship with my host, and later that night I asked him to admit that the party was far more successful than his many all-gay evenings. He did so, somewhat wistfully, and then fell back into a 'what's-a-chap-to-do?' fatalism. 'The trouble is, we have to live in the gay world, ' he said, and by no means for the first time. 'We have no choice.' If we believe the media and our own wishful thinking, this is the best-ever time to be gay. Through civil partnerships and an equal age of consent, we have achieved near-parity with heterosexuals. It is illegal to discriminate against us at work, and this will soon be extended to the provision of goods and services. Anti-gay legislation has been swept away and acceptance is at levels undreamt of even ten years ago. These advances are not to be sniffed at and there is much to be thankful for. I know this from my experience of emerging into adulthood in the 1980s, which seems a radically different era. Yet the public face of gay male life, noisily hedonistic and self-consciously triumphalist, glosses over the reality of personal unhappiness and collective callousness.
As far as gay rights are concerned, the culture war is largely won, but we are still fleeing from our inner demons. It is this flight, more than residual prejudice, that helps us to understand why levels of depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug dependency and suicide remain so high among gay men, young and old. We are faced with the paradox of a highly effective legislative lobby allied to a culture that is ever more narcissistic and heartless. This situation is compounded by a political movement based on outdated notions of blame and victimhood.
Since the dinner party I have talked to gay male friends of widely varying ages and backgrounds. Admittedly it is an unscientific poll, but I have found reserves of unhappiness with the much-celebrated 'gay lifestyle' that confirm my sense of a deeper malaise. There are many familiar complaints: the shallow commercialism of the 'scene', the petty emotional cruelties that dog so many of our friendships and even long-term relationships, the ageism, the embarrassing glibness of the activists.
Behind all these problems is the sense of stress involved in so many of our social interactions. They are not relaxed but self-conscious affairs, at which competition and jealousy, rivalry and sexual intrigue always bubble beneath the surface. Unlike the ethnic and religious minorities with which we compare ourselves, gay men have failed to create a community of shared values and mutual support. The word 'community' is trotted out for political purposes, but the stereotypes of bitchiness and backstabbing remain all too prominent features of gay men's lives.
Thus the defining myth of gay liberation has been turned on its head. Rather than finding security and support from each other, we seek relief in our relationship with the outer world, our dealings with 'straight society'. This is admitted with great reluctance and spoken of in hesitant whispers.
For at a time when the mainstream is more welcoming than ever before, the ethos underlying gay life still militates strongly against integration. While demanding equality, it stresses separateness, holding up the idea of the gay community as part ghetto, part laager, a defensive subculture demanding our loyalty on quasi-ethnic grounds. To admit that all is not well in the gay world, that we express ourselves better with our straight friends than with each other, is considered tantamount to blasphemy. As I type these words, I experience a twinge of guilt akin, perhaps, to that of the Jewish critic of Israeli policy. This mentality arises out of the collective historical memory of prejudice and our personal memories of coming to terms with our sexuality. It has become an insidious intellectual constraint, stifling self-criticism and imposing even on the least political among us a straitjacket of conformity.
Today, the most striking feature of gay politics is its lack of nuance. Feminists increasingly acknowledge the complexity of women's (and men's) lives, the anti-racist movement passionately debates multiculturalism, but the gay movement remains remarkably unreconstructed. Our problems, it maintains, do not arise from within ourselves, or from the choices we make, but from oppression by heterosexual society and anything perceived as traditional values.
That simplistic narrative holds sway across the spectrum of gay organisations, from the most radical to the ostensibly conservative. It at once denies us our individuality and absolves us of personal responsibility.
We can see the results of this approach in the gay press. Pick up a magazine like Gay Times, for instance, and you will not find a spectrum of social attitudes. Instead, politically correct victim culture is allied with rampant consumerism. Freedom is identified with a shopping list, whether of possessions or political demands. Throughout the gay media, consumerism is extended to the human person, who is reduced to a disposable item. Just as the ideology of victimhood is pervasive, so is the low-grade pornography, criticism of which is taboo. Any notion of self-restraint is condemned as oppressive.
Any spiritual aspiration any hope for anything beyond material and sexual satisfaction is derided as irrelevant. The vicissitudes of gay life, notably the culture of promiscuity, are alternately ascribed to the legacy of oppression (and therefore not our fault) and celebrated as a form of 'liberation'. Gay activism, which angrily expects our gratitude, perpetuates the idea that heterosexuals, especially heterosexual men, represent a hostile force. When I reveal that many of my closest friends are straight men, this is viewed as unusual, even slightly suspicious, as if to integrate were somehow to be letting the side down. This is despite the fact that homosexual law reforms have been enacted by parliaments consisting largely of heterosexual men.
The result of all this is a male homosexual culture that is simultaneously turned in on itself and unable to address its own shortcomings. It confuses morality and conscience with moralistic repression. Through this confusion, we become afraid to question the casual acceptance of promiscuity and pornography, and the shallow materialistic values that underpin it, lest we be accused of hypocritical puritanism. When we criticise the gay lifestyle, we are accused by activists of self-oppression, but the true oppression comes from within that lifestyle rather than from hostile external forces. In an age of equal rights, we have become our own victims, devoured by the movement we created.
I do not, in any sense, wish to suggest that I possess superior insight. Indeed I have committed all the lapses of judgment and taste that I have touched upon above, because I, like my dinner-party friend, have had to 'live in the gay world'. That world is failing to recognise that true liberation starts with the individual. Equality is worth little, ultimately, without compassion, responsibility and conscience. Now that the political battles are won, we should start to put our own house in order. This is much harder than repeating scripted slogans about rights, but at least it will mean better dinner parties.
I believe many gays are children who were neglected by a same sex parent; they're always looking for that parent's love and approval that they never got as children.
And God changed his heart and his sinful nature when he became born again.
I don't observe the "girls-are-icky" factor as my two best gay friends love women and appreciate the female form (curves, not the supermodel sticks), even they are definitely sexually attracted to men rather than women.
Immaturity is exactly the ailment that gays have. None other.
Cure that, and they will move on.
As a female, how does it feel to be envied and sexually ignored by such men? They are as much your friends as any girlfriend... ie. they are cut-throat competitors to be Queen.
Useful for the moment, but hardly friends.
"I was flattered but that I was a happily married man, in love with my wife"
Hard to understand how any person would be flattered for attracting a sexual deviant. Incidentally, most male homos are pedophiles and were molested themselves as kids. In today's intolerant society, homos will never admit their wish to molest young boys to normal (aka, straight) people. Their desire for sex with children is still in the closet.
Attracting a homo is not unlike attracting a dog to hump your leg or attracting a sibling to the bedroom. Sexual deviancy crosses species lines and has no boundaries when it comes to age and close relatives.
Wow, great story Joe. What is funny is that as I was reading your post, I was really thinking that this poster was a truly cool FReeper, then as I finished and saw that it was you that posted it, well, my suspicion was confirmed.
Have a great Thanksgiving.
"I am from the camp that people ARE born gay."
I was almost convinced of the same, until the gay lobby started fighting for adoption rights and started finding ways to have babies (i.e. sperm donors or egg donors). At that point, their natural desires are made known. If a gay person is naturally gay, then it would make sense that their internal drive to procreate would not exist. The fact that they have the internal drive to be parents, tells me that they are not "naturally" gay. If their natural state does not allow them to become parents, then then why would they have such a desire to procreate?
LOL, so true.
Like I said to wagglebee, I would tell anyone that was sexually attracted to me, male or female, that I was flattered, but I would also tell them firmly that there was NO chance.
Yes, self-destructive, abhorrent behavior is usually a sad scene. Homosexuality is a bad choice.
Pretty interesting piece. Thanks for posting it.
I don't think these two particular friends envy me - they are not in "cut-throat competition" and they are true friends rather than "useful-for-the-moment."
I do see a lack of hope in their lives, however, partially explained by the article being discussed here and partially because they are on an endless, hopeless, multi-city search for a relationship that is out of alignment with the way we are created (male + female union). One of these friends, in his early 40's, has expressly advised me he is in a fight with God, and he was brought up in a Christian church and is very clear about creation and God's clear opinion about homosexuality. The other is younger - mid 20's - and less honest with himself and not willing to consider the statements in this article or the truth of the bible.
I am less convinced of that. All my gay friends have had strong mothers and non-existent fathers. It has often been months before they mention their fathers and I usually assumed by then that he wasn't in the home. I have often been wrong about that. It seems they have never made the natural break between mother and son which occurs around 3 - 5, and wanted to be 'like daddy". Just an observation.
That sums the issue quite nicely. Thanks
Your welcome!
You know what's really sad? I thought the title said 'Mike' Douglas......
"I am from the camp that people ARE born gay."
There are many inborn tendencies in people, including all manner of criminal and deviant behavior, but sometimes you must do what is right. Clearly, the inborn argument can be used as an excuse for any behavior. This is such a transparently idiotic argument it pains me to address it.
"Like I said to wagglebee, I would tell anyone that was sexually attracted to me, male or female, that I was flattered, but I would also tell them firmly that there was NO chance."
I have always found it more honorable to just tell the truth.
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