Gay and Un-Gay Relations, Part 5: The End

Continued from: 1, 2, 3, 4

I don’t know what I was aiming for with these posts. Maybe a peace summit? ;-) There are certainly serious contentions between both sides here, the sort that will never be resolved in my lifetime.

But, to me, there are also areas where we can easily improve, and, to be clear, I’m right there in with that needs-improvement crowd. I try and I’ve changed a lot from that angry 19-year-old kid, but in myself I still catch reflexive assumptions and hostilities every now and then that, when I think on it, are often not justified (oh yes, sometimes they’re justified, d*beep it! :-)).

I guess I look at some of the people I’ve met here and I think how they are regarded by some in my camp and how they too often get lumped in with those who are real malicious threats to our homes. It’s sad. It’s our face over there, under somewhat different situations of fate, and with good intent. While both sides must keep in mind our differences can make for a good deal of variation in ability and consequence for each gay man and woman, “they” are more like us and could better understand us than most. And we can do the same. We shouldn’t be taking the word of the self-styled experts on another’s life; we should cross those false lines and talk.

Of course, some of our differences will remain clear and some things may not be easily resolved, and we’ll have some contention. Everyone knows I’ll pick a fight, and I’m sure I’ll exchange argument with even some of the people I most respect before another week is up ;-) (heck, I’ll argue most with the people I respect; those are the best arguments). But all that can be done in good faith and it can be done with friendship, and I’m happy to say that’s what I most see around these digital parts.

In the end, in the gay debate, left vs. right, tradition vs. change, anti-family vs. anti-human-rights ;-), I see a great opportunity here to lower some of the weapons and progress. There is a point we could reach where those promoting gay rights do so without attacks on the gay men and women who have created a more traditional life. At that same point those inactively gay men and women can protect their families without the need to undermine ours. As I’ve written before, I can hardly think of a better ambassador to the other side of this large social debate than a person who knows both what it’s like to be gay and to care and worry deeply about their family under social pressures, and I hope the other side feels the same. That shared ground is where this fight between two often brash and entrenched forces can easily become a civil and productive conversation between people.

Gay and Un-Gay Relations, Part 4: Experts

Continued from: 1, 2, and 3.

Experts. The choices you make as a gay man do not make you an expert on any “gay lifestyle” but your own.

Some ex-gays admit to spending years having sex with any man they could, filling their body with drugs, and hurting every last person in their life who ever loved them. Then they sincerely want to be taken as an authority on living as a gay man?

It’s no surprise they ended up miserable and wanting to change. Of course they did, and, if that lifestyle is what being ‘gay’ means for them, I’d hope to help them to never be ‘gay’ again. It’s also no big surprise when they go from such a life to one of attacking other gays and lesbians, while riding the lowly repentant sinner’s high horse. It’s a continuation of certain personality traits, trading one drug for another.

But they did not make poor choices because they experience an attraction to men, or were intimate with men. They didn’t hurt others without much concern because they were gay anymore than they do the same now for being ex-gay. I mean, most women seem to get along just fine :-).

Now, I know there are reasons. They probably made such mistakes because of the social issues and beliefs that are regrettably often handed to gay youth. The admitted willingness to act in ways contrary to their sense of ethics didn’t help a bit either. But they were their choices. They wanted and helped form the worst aspects of the gay community, but the “gay lifestyle” they fashioned for themselves has nothing to do with being gay for many others.

Instead, many are chaste and cautious with sex, and focused on their loved ones. Many were out building relationships, and careers, not spending nights in clubs, or the other seedier places, as such ex-gays often describe. We all reap what we sow, but for many that’s our homes, our place as fathers, and our marriages.

I now have my family to protect, and I’ll do it vigorously (and sometimes rudely :-)). For such people to use their past against us would be comical, if it weren’t so effective, and so many of our straight opponents weren’t anxious to believe in such expertise on “the gay lifestyle”. Funny, it must be one of the few instances where the more mistakes you make at something the more you’ll be respected as an expert on it.

Once again though, that same finger must be pointed at the gay community. The mistakes and misery our members experienced and created in straight unions, cannot be rightly used to malign the families of those individuals trying to make it work, and maybe not even needing to try to near the same extent. Such people do not define the gay-straight marriage anymore than ex-gays can define the lives in the gay community.

Of course, this behavior too is understandable. It’s easy to see yourself in another gay man. It’s easy to extrapolate and use the barriers of orientation to generalize, in the same way ex-gays may use the barriers that hindered them, such as social pressure, to assume their experience into our families. But understandable is not a pass for us either.

There’s this insistence out there that both gay-straight unions and gay couples are somehow doomed to failure or are somehow illegitimate or unhealthy by default. Both types of unions are posed as a source of misery. And, sure, there is a lot of misery out there and we can see some of it in the data on both sides of the argument. I’ve no problem, of course, looking at the research ;-). But just as ‘anecdote’ is not the singular form of ‘data’, averages are not individuals. What is far worse, though, is the work of these experts, using personal anecdote against whole groups. It is yet another ironic chunk of common ground I see between the two groups, and an error we both must work to remedy.

Just one more post on this :-).

Gay and Un-Gay Relations, Part 3: The Gay Man

Continued from: 1, and 2.

The Gay Man: When people say they are somehow ex-gay or un-gay in anyway, it cannot be taken as equivalent to saying others should or could be as well. Even if you are gay, you have only a partial idea of what that means for another. That vocabulary doesn’t nearly address a whole host of important qualities: the strength of attraction, emotional vs physical attraction, general libido, and more. Very importantly, we have no idea how strong another’s revulsion is towards sexual action with a member of the opposite sex. Some straight men can be brought to nausea at the mere thought of gay sex, and gay men can feel the same for women. Yet others can perform the actions of coupling heterosexually without strong revulsion. We also have little idea how malleable, or how vital an individual’s orientation is to their happiness, and what it might mean to the happiness of those around them if they do try to suppress that part of themselves (or don’t).

In short, and as I’ve said before, one gay man is not the gay man. Even if a person thinks they were a flaming queen, now manly straight sex fiend, that does not mean they can make the leap to thinking even those less queer can or should make the same sort of steps in their lives. One gay man may be able to create a stable family with a woman, while another may not for his particular orientation; one may be able to create a stable family with a man, while the other may not for his particular beliefs. I think much tragedy can be avoided for a lot of people if more caution and attention to individuals were applied here.

Of course, this goes for the out and proud crowd too. Some gay activists do think all gay men should follow their path. And their path may be anything from simply in a gay relationship, to being “sexually free” without monogamy or obligations such as parenthood; which makes yours truly feel a good deal of common ground with the MoHos :-). They may also encourage gays to act long before they’ve worked out their ethics, and such can be a significant threat to their health and happiness (read the manual ;-)). Such folks on either side of this divide can do a lot of harm, and I do fear repeating their mistakes in my advice.

I can certainly admit, for many gays, my choices, though a great source of joy for me, may not be practical or wanted or best for others. I want a monogamous family life in a gay union to be clear as an option for those who might also want it, but it’s not necessarily the right choice for all gay men, particularly those holding strong beliefs solidified in their youth that gay relationships are wrong. You simply can’t build such a relationship with shame or guilt on your conscience, one of the big reasons gay couples have relatively recently gained the ability to do so in significant numbers.

To be fair, of course, there is an asymmetry here. I don’t have that specter of eternal threat regarding all gay action in my mind, and don’t experience it through near the same eyes of morality and faith. I can understand how that may change things for the other side. While some of the others may prefer all gay men resist their urges towards "evil", just as they’d never want another to steal, I don’t care to have more actively gay men in my camp, unless they can do it with health and happiness. The idea of the gay man may be less important to me as either sort of life for a gay man is not addressable by ethics on its own, to me. Regardless, I think it would be a help for both sides to keep in mind there are unique challenges and limitations for each individual gay man (and woman. Yes, please forgive not taking the trouble to always be gender neutral. The language is just easier, and I'm lazy, and think it can all easily be translated :-)).

Gay and Un-Gay Relations, Part 2: Tolerance

Continued from Part 1.

If only this were a one part series ;-). In reading through the material from ex-gay groups and by experience, it’s clear all sides have their real insults, cruelty, and attempts to damage others and their families. It’s not traitorous, by any definition, but it is hostile, often malicious, and a wedge between groups that could get along much better.

I want to be clear, though, I actually wrote this series of posts many months ago, with some personal experience and online articles in mind. I’ve found everyone around these blogs, from the bloggers to the commenters, to be reasonable and kind in this arena. Even for the strangers, I certainly can see such reaction may be understandable. Aside from matters of faith, some have a bone to pick with their past life or a life they don’t want to want. But it’s out there, unfortunately.

Tolerance. Numerous times I’ve seen such inactively gay folks say or write something horrible about our families, or advocate political harm to us, and then, once someone calls them on it or doesn’t want to associate with them, they go on about diversity and tolerance for their non-gay lifestyle. I’ve heard a guy go from calling our families “sad attempts at playing house” to bemoaning the hostility he gets back for “his lifestyle” in a couple breaths. It comes across as a purposeful misunderstand of justified anger.

I’m a gay man who volunteers in government to promote tolerance and diversity for all minority groups and those words even sound tired and anemic to me (a quick search of my blog reveals as much :-)). Neither are absolute goods else we’d have no need for prisons, and it’s disingenuous to pose tolerance of harming others as the tolerance the gay community typically goes on about.

And, of course, it does go both ways. No one in the gay community should expect those trying to change their orientation or those married to the opposite sex to be tolerant of their attempts to insult and undermine their choices or families. Choices for your personal life are one thing; attacks are another.

In short, it’s not about the gay man’s choices for his personal life, in this case (though, admittedly, it’s a problem elsewhere). It’s about their choice to harm others; it’s how they use their personal choices in politics to attack another. I’ll not be tolerant of that anymore than I’d tolerate being punched, and I’ll not lose sleep over my lack of interest in such diversity, as both a gay man and a father.

Lastly, I know it can be a fuzzy line and there is some leeway and debate to be had. There’s a delicate difference between stating facts about personal preferences or about research that reveals facts about the average of a group, and going after an individual. I bet I’ve crossed that line before, to my regret. I also, of course, see there is a completely benign and ethical desire for all sorts of gay men and women to speak up for themselves and for others who want to follow their choices. I’ve no debate with that, and if such speaking up gets twisted by others into an attack on my home, I know well enough who’s responsible. But when a person clearly crosses over into advocating legal harm to others or stands up purposefully as an example as to why harm is justified, they are going to get antagonism in return (be they gay, ex-gay, or whatever). No one could rightly expect anything else, and no one could expect it to be met with tolerance.

Gay and Un-Gay Relations, Part 1: Traitors

Very Early in coming out I learned not to expect, because a person is gay, that they are a person on my side of an issue. These lessons were not learned with the un- or ex- or inactively-gay crowd, but with the more radical elements in my crowd, such as the folks mentioned here. Being gay simply does not mean or imply you are bound in any way to be in a certain camp, even on gay issues, perhaps especially on gay issues ;-).

So, if we’re all deserving of our own conscience and choices here, why do gays in conversion therapy, and gay men marrying women and choosing celibacy sometimes feel treated like traitors by the gay community?

Certainly, because they are, sometimes and significantly, treated as traitors. It happens, and for nearly every case unjustly and with that certain cruelty that comes from dehumanizing “them”.

I believe the source of this is an imagined insult or threat.

Not as dramatic, but bear with me; vegetarians get this all the time. A fellow grad student and friend of mine was a vegetarian, for his family’s particular sort of Hindu faith. The first time we ate together that fact came out. He quickly went into a whole speech regarding how vegetarianism is the choice for him, as a result of his religion, and that he didn’t think it wrong if I ordered the animals off the menu. I was going to anyway :-) and assumed as much, but he’s right to worry. People do tend to react badly if they feel they’re being judged by another’s choice, particularly if that other believes they are acting for moral reasons or for the supernatural’s command. It’s tough to imagine people will treat you justly in tangible ways in this world when they think you’re going to their Hell anyway. I believe something very similar often occurs when gay men encounter gay men who’ll not meet their attraction in action (vegaytarians? Eh…).

But, if I’m merely promoting that vegetarian choice as the one for me, one not to be forced on or coerced into others, by lowering them or elevating myself by law or social pressures, certainly I could not be said to have any harmful intent.

For whatever portion of the gay community’s hostility that represents, it’s absolutely wrong and regrettable. If in the inactively gay man’s shoes, and with their beliefs about the way the supernatural works, such a choice might seem reasonable to all gay men. Besides, another’s personal choice for their life is simply not an editorial or assault; if it were I’d be worlds more offensive than I already am ;-) by the human pleasures which just don’t please for me.

I simply hope, with what I’ve learned by frequenting the blogs of gay LDS, I’ve been and will be helpful in quelling the mistrust and fear within the gay community. There are people worth knowing, supporting, and respecting in both their camp and ours.