The Fear
When I was young, even before it was really clear what sort of things set them off from others, I saw how much venom was dealt out to those with a preference for their own gender. (In those days the most benign term applied to them was "queers;" "gay" had not yet come in.) I wondered if they were unlucky sufferers of a horrible mental dislocation or a weird disease like leprosy or vitiligo that I, too, could contract in spite of everything, and I found that possibility too terrible to accept. Being subject to all the nonsense and cruelty of Jim Crow was already more than I thought any person should be expected to bear.
At the same time, knowing how bogus it was for people to observe a million customs and laws designed to oppress a group merely because of their skin color and hair texture, it wasn't hard to conclude that the same kind of ugly thinking was at work against gays. But the fear still raced ahead of the logic, and I figured that even if homosexuality turned out to be just an affectation, I could see people indulging in all sorts of such behaviors that they thought were absolutely the last word in cool, but to me were other ways of thinking that I would have to take care to avoid, as I saw them in a totally different way.
For instance I saw men taking great pride in togging themselves out in expensive business suits and silk ties, when to my eye they had put on chimpanzee costumes and self-applied hangman's nooses. I saw people spending large amounts of money, labor, and time on their persons in order to go to fancy restaurants and spend other large amounts on strange kinds of food, when for me an equally sumptuous meal of just the right amount could be gotten from any Campbell's Soup can (except tomato). I couldn't understand how the ability to instantly identify the exact make, model, and year of any car made in the last 30 years was considered to be so down with it, when as far as I could see you couldn't do anything with that erudition unless you were an auto mechanic.
Things would have been better if I could have gotten a better idea of what causes a person to be "gay," and whether there's any voluntary element in it, and -- to borrow from a song about the blues, I think by John Lee Hooker -- whether it is even possible to get out of it alive. But even today, in weblogs, I have seen people who should know look as if they're about to give their idea of the real nitty-gritty, but all too quickly, before revealing much of anything, they start satisfying themselves with berating "straight" people for being so wrong-headed. The truth must be that they have no clear idea themselves.
My mind also produced objections on another ground, which was that, as I didn't have an all-controlling libido, it seemed spurious and vain to me that anyone should pursue a whole life ethic and thus differentiate themselves based solely on sexual practice.
It was the same as the way that my refusal to believe in things for which I couldn't see clear evidence led me to strongly question following a whole life ethic based mainly on religion. And similarly my refusal to have anything expected of me purely because of my melanin count caused me to reject all notions of following a whole life ethic based mainly on race.
Now that I'm well outside of passion's line of fire, that fear has largely vanished, and I can take a more detached point of view, and certainly we are assured by its numerous practitioners and defenders that being gay doesn't equate in any way with being evil or obsessed or (I can never resist getting this kind of shot off, as it so obviously belongs in any presentday listing of the Eight Deadliest Sins) voting Republican.
Not that I ever thought homosexuality was ever any of those things in the first place. Actually I rarely thought about it, period. Instead I just kept it safely esconsed high up there and nearly out of sight on that shelf of life's big mysteries.
It was similar to the way that I've shied away from all statements about how many stars there might be in the universe. My mind just can't absorb those fantastic numbers. I can't do anything with them.
At the same time, knowing how bogus it was for people to observe a million customs and laws designed to oppress a group merely because of their skin color and hair texture, it wasn't hard to conclude that the same kind of ugly thinking was at work against gays. But the fear still raced ahead of the logic, and I figured that even if homosexuality turned out to be just an affectation, I could see people indulging in all sorts of such behaviors that they thought were absolutely the last word in cool, but to me were other ways of thinking that I would have to take care to avoid, as I saw them in a totally different way.
For instance I saw men taking great pride in togging themselves out in expensive business suits and silk ties, when to my eye they had put on chimpanzee costumes and self-applied hangman's nooses. I saw people spending large amounts of money, labor, and time on their persons in order to go to fancy restaurants and spend other large amounts on strange kinds of food, when for me an equally sumptuous meal of just the right amount could be gotten from any Campbell's Soup can (except tomato). I couldn't understand how the ability to instantly identify the exact make, model, and year of any car made in the last 30 years was considered to be so down with it, when as far as I could see you couldn't do anything with that erudition unless you were an auto mechanic.
Things would have been better if I could have gotten a better idea of what causes a person to be "gay," and whether there's any voluntary element in it, and -- to borrow from a song about the blues, I think by John Lee Hooker -- whether it is even possible to get out of it alive. But even today, in weblogs, I have seen people who should know look as if they're about to give their idea of the real nitty-gritty, but all too quickly, before revealing much of anything, they start satisfying themselves with berating "straight" people for being so wrong-headed. The truth must be that they have no clear idea themselves.
My mind also produced objections on another ground, which was that, as I didn't have an all-controlling libido, it seemed spurious and vain to me that anyone should pursue a whole life ethic and thus differentiate themselves based solely on sexual practice.
It was the same as the way that my refusal to believe in things for which I couldn't see clear evidence led me to strongly question following a whole life ethic based mainly on religion. And similarly my refusal to have anything expected of me purely because of my melanin count caused me to reject all notions of following a whole life ethic based mainly on race.
Now that I'm well outside of passion's line of fire, that fear has largely vanished, and I can take a more detached point of view, and certainly we are assured by its numerous practitioners and defenders that being gay doesn't equate in any way with being evil or obsessed or (I can never resist getting this kind of shot off, as it so obviously belongs in any presentday listing of the Eight Deadliest Sins) voting Republican.
Not that I ever thought homosexuality was ever any of those things in the first place. Actually I rarely thought about it, period. Instead I just kept it safely esconsed high up there and nearly out of sight on that shelf of life's big mysteries.
It was similar to the way that I've shied away from all statements about how many stars there might be in the universe. My mind just can't absorb those fantastic numbers. I can't do anything with them.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 5:52 AM
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