Being gay is like being left handed.
Left handed people just are. It’s how their minds work. And NO, I’m not saying that left handed has ANYTHING to do with being gay or that left handed people are gay, so don’t write me crazy letters about it. What I am saying is that being left handed is not a choice. It is a function of the brains of left handed people. Maybe it’s structural or genetic but, whatever the case, it is a natural state of being.
Those with primitive religious beliefs have subjected the left handed to suspicion and derision. The word sinister, which we use to mean evil, untrustworthy and “underhanded,” is actually the Latin word for left. Left handed children have been forced to use their right hands, often to their mental detriment and never in their best interest.
Such old ideas seem silly and ill informed in this era. The President is left handed, for heaven’s sake, and clearly no one feels prejudiced against him! Right?
Our primitive beliefs about the left handed have abated, though systemic bias still exists. The world is literally designed for the right handed majority.
In much the same way, gay people live as a minority in a world designed for the majority. The primitive religious beliefs of some, have been used to push gay people outside society. Simple social customs like dating, the prom, going steady and marriage, around which society is designed, have been denied to gay people. Attempts to participate in these normal social rituals from a same sex perspective have been punished by further exclusions in work, housing and the rights of citizenship like peaceable assembly and the pursuit of happiness.
As a result, our resourceful, creative and gay little band developed a shadow society within the boundaries that second class citizenship forced upon us. The rituals of pair bonding were replaced by furtive outlaw sex not necessarily because it’s what we wanted but because we had no other choice. We were not allowed to participate in the personal sexual evolution that leads to the expression of the pair bond through marriage.
If you are forced to live outside society, your behavior becomes anti-social, not by design but by necessity. In this way, we became antisocial, not by choice but for want of choice.
Enter the 21st Century.
After forty plus years of civil rights struggle, gay people are beginning to attain the rights of full American Citizenship. We’re not there yet, but with the fall of federally institutionalized discrimination and the rise of marriage rights, gay people are getting closer to getting what we asked for and what we said we wanted.
The news is great and getting better, but the response in some quarters is surprising.
Like the people in Plato’s cave, many gay people have come to believe that the shadow life of second class citizenry IS being gay. People in and outside the community have confused and conflated the anonymous hook ups and cover-of-darkness-sexuality that has long been our only option with what it means to be gay. That is no more true than saying that S&M is what it means to be straight even though the Marquis de Sade and the majority of those who follow in his path are straight.
Gay people are ten percent of everyone – every group. We are not all the same save for the one relatively minor shared trait of our sexual, same-gender preference. It would be a mistake and an extreme form of discrimination to try to describe all gay people in such limited terms. We don’t all want to hang out at bath houses. Some of us don’t like gay bars. Some of us like to get up in drag and some are happier in a sports stadium. We are not any one thing, though who we are allowed to be has been severely limited for a very long time.
But as those limits fall away, surprising new oppressors are emerging.
We have an election coming up in my little town with its big gay population. I’ve been thrown by the way this issue has arisen. The same people who fought and marched for the rights of marriage, whose bumpers are stickered with slogans about hate not being a “family value” are now opposed to including gay people into the mainstream.
A local gay politician here is actually campaigning against our being a “family oriented” community. His Tea-Party tactics are whipping up fear in gay people who have lived as second class citizens so long they seem to have forgotten that the battle against Proposition H8 was a battle FOR gay families.
Now, no one is saying that any rarified sexual tastes should be denied anybody, or at least I’m not. Hell, gay people can’t hold a candle to what straight people get up to sexually. There are 8 billion people in the world and gays had nothing to do with it. Sexual behavior neither defines nor characterizes anyone’s participation in society as a whole. What’s more everyone has the right to opt out of participation in social norms. I hope what we’ve fought for is to make that right one of our choices, not our only option as it has been for too long.
Gaining admission to the mainstream means letting go of our second class status. Equal rights doesn’t mean that I can do whatever I want to. Equal rights means taking equal responsibility. Saying “I Do” comes with a whole host of duties, whether it’s taking an oath to defend my country, become a citizen, or show up for my partner no matter what. It means growing up. For a very long time we have been forced to live outside society. We have embraced and come to love the antisocial behavior that was forced upon us. We have lived like lost boys, excluded from the rights and privileges of becoming men and women.
We can still live the Peter Pan life if we choose to, but that is not equality. That is a choice.
As we gain our rights after this long, hard fought struggle — a struggle that is far from over — I hope we will not lose sight of what it is so many have sacrificed so much to achieve.
African Americans endured and survived years of discrimination but it would be a mistake to allow slavery to define what is it to be black.
I do not want to lose the cultural identity of our gay community. Neither do I want an identity forced upon me by those who claim to be on my side. Victory is taking our place at the table, not demanding a table of our own.
You say “The President is left handed, for heaven’s sake, and clearly no one feels prejudiced against him! Right?” Now I understand why republicans are so vile in their hate for our president. He’s left-handed. It so totally makes sense now. Here I was thinking it was his skin and his respect for gay people that upset them. How could I have ever thought it was that?
I agree with what you say here, but I would even add that there are a lot of gay people who really don’t want the responsibilities that come with being more included in society. There is a group of intellectual, upper middle class gays in this country who really don’t want to have to honor their obligations. It’s just too constricting for them, even if a lover saw them through medical or law school, to do right by that person if the relationship ends. Not being able to toss people out like last night’s left over trash from dinner is just too constricting. They like the fact they didn’t have to serve their country, split property equally acquired in a break up, or be responsible for others’ well being in long term relationship breakups .
Through many a conversation over the years, I have discovered this is exactly the case. And my response is always the same to them. So sorry to hear it upsets some that we as a gay community are having to wake up and accept that with more freedom in our society as gay people, there’s more responsibility, too. Too bad we all have to actually be responsible for our actions.
These people who are against a family oriented community, I am afraid, are just more of these people I have encountered over and over who “want their cake and eat it, too.” They can’t imagine taking any responsibility for their actions. That fact is obvious from the trail of used up relationships they leave behind in the dirt.
I think they have got their ideas of cultural heritage and sense of responsibility mixed up, and unfortunately these are many of the ones who run things in the gay community. Yes, some are going to be kicking and screaming into our new found civil rights and liberties. They just hate it.
Thank you, Eric for the enlighten essay of what is going on in West Hollywood. It really shows me it is the same story in many cities, and not just an isolated L. A. thing. If you are any of your readers are on Melsrose Avenue on a Friday night, please stop into the Bodhi Tree Book Store for me. how i miss that street, book store, and part of town.
Blessings.
It’s like Adam [Lambert, hello] says: “It’s like with the straight community… It’s not One Dude!”
And I totally agree and couldn’t have said it better myself: “Sexual behavior neither defines nor characterizes anyone’s participation in society as a whole. What’s more everyone has the right to opt out of participation in social norms. I hope what we’ve fought for is to make that right one of our choices, not our only option as it has been for too long.” It’s actually perfect timing for this. I’m writing a “research paper” on a social injustice, so I’m writing it on the ban on same-sex marriage. I’ve had to give a lot of thought to the “opposition’s point of view”. It makes me think basically what you’re saying- it’s like, when people say that people FOR gay marriage are actually trying to “destroy” marriage, it’s like, What planet are you living on? People who are fighting for the right to get married are doing this out of respect for the union that marriage is, etc. You’d think this is the first thought that’d come to people’s heads, but I guess not.
What can I say? The same discrimination, whether it’s applied to a racial group, gender, or anyone else, has occurred in different ways throughout history… they all reek with the same ignorance and/or hate. Anyhow. I could go on forever.
I hope you had a great weekend- Heads Up, look out for a band called Bromley! I saw them Friday night and I swear they’re going to be the next Led Zeppelin…
Love,
Miss B
PS: I don’t dislike the president because he’s left-handed or black, that’s ridiculous. I’m also not Republican. I’m Libertarian. I just plain don’t like him.
To bad to here you don’t like Obama, Miss B. I love him. I think he has done an outstanding job, considering the shit pile he was handed. What am thankful for is that that idiot we had for eight years is completely gone, minus the garbage he left in the way of an unspeakable deficit and the biggest recession since The Great Depression, and that we are blessed not to have that bigger idiot, Sarah Palin one heart beat from the presidency. Palin’s solution to the Egyptian crisis was so laughable, everyone around her is doing everything they can to bury it, but I think it is she who has bury her political career. And in staying within the context of Eric’s essay i must ask where all the gay people are now that were raising hell that Obama didn’t use a court mandate to kill “don’t ask, don’t tell”? Obama knew the best way was to have congress vote on this, which they did, and now all these cry babies can go on to their next bitch-fest, now that Obama has taken care of that campaign promise. Yes, I am very thankful we have Obama, who has finally brought some sanity, respect, and class back to the White House.