This Hy-Art via Guido Reni and Lorenzo Lotto evokes something I'd like to talk about on this day of celebration here in California for gay people, as we can finally get married. I'd also like to celebrate all the marriages that won't occur now, marriages that gay men enter into with women in order to conform to societal and family expectations.
Some of those men think marriage will "cure" them, which is like assuming a heterosexual priest will not longer be attracted to women the moment he declares his vows of celibacy. It betrays a fundamental valuation of one kind of sexual attraction over another, as if one is a choice and the other is innate This myth has legs, but its repetition does not make it true, just propaganda.
Most, sadly, enter marriage fully aware of their true preference and end up leading double lives. I have met them in the bars and the baths, David met several on a gay cruise recently, I cannot judge them, because I did not grow up in a small town or rural area where my coming out would have entailed a complete ostracization or disinheritance or both. If they marry young, I can imagine they didn't have enough life experience to know for sure their urges would not ebb. And if their only exposure to "gay life" is to highway rest stops, of course they might think that to be representative of gay life as a whole, so they easily enough can tell themselves if they want anything resembling a "normal" life, they have no choice but to get married. Not alot of competition to that kind of thinking in Pocatello.
Some of these men fairly successfully bury their urges, taking great pleasure in family life that goes far in compensating for the loss of a undefinable but irrefutable connection that only comes when the person you're in love with is in love with you and no one's lying about it. Even if they're faithful to their wives, it doesn't make them straight, any more than men screwing other men in prison makes them gay. Left-handed people can learn to write well enough with their right-hand, after all. Doesn't make them right-handed.
I'm all for people having whatever kind of relationships they want. But I think they should be entered into honestly, that is the right of both parties. I think that if every bride was told by her prospective groom that he definitely preferred men, and that would not change, and he would continue to indulge his true nature after marriage, that the percentage of such unions would drop precipitously. I am appalled by how many married gay men seem to not take into account the rights of their wives to a husband who desires them completely. They often betray no disturbed conscience, will often insist that their gayness had nothing to do with the eventual dissolution of the marriage. As if it could not.
I am also quite certain that when a 13 or 14-year old boy who starts to become aware of his homosexual orientation has grown up with a gay couple down the street, who has classmates with gay Dads or Moms who go to the same school plays or little League games, that he will enter into adolescence with an entirely different idea of what the alternatives are that are open to him. He will be spared much unhappiness, and so will the woman he does not marry.
So, here's to all the marriages that will not happen, and all the marriages that will.
MCO 2008
P.S. I've come up with a new designation for a certain kind of person. "Socially Tone Deaf" or S.T.D. (not to be confused with Sexually Transmitted Disease) refers to those types who are constantly making off-color, off-center, or trying-too-hard-to-be-witty comments, whether on blogs or in real life, and then hiding behind the ever convenient "I was kidding!" or "Can't you take a joke?" -- as if you are the one with the crappy sense of humor. Haven't they noticed a pattern over the years, when they constantly provoke eye-rolling and a need to explain themselves? GET A CLUE. If people don't laugh, it's not funny, and it doesn't become funny because you insist it is.
P.P.S. Talking about unintentionally funny, I caught "The Oscar" on TCM last night, and it is the ultimate deliciously bad movie, a mish-mosh between "The Bad and the Beautiful" and "Valley of the Dolls." An instant cult classic, cheese extraordinaire.
P.P.S. Yes I know these P.S's are cutesy and make the blog annoying long, but I'm leaving tomorrow for New York, so I'll be hit and miss for 8 days. This will fill up your tank.
Even more funny is the story about the ex-meth dealer who claims he was an "ethical" dealer. Get a clue. Meth kills and ruins lives. No ethics are involved here.
You asshole. I have never defended dealing drugs as a good thing, and always used "ethical" in quotes or sarcastically, pointing out only that in my warped, high mind at the time, I used the fact that I spent most of the money I made on supporting other drug addicts as a great rationalizer. Anyone who reads me knows I am the first to cite the pernicious effects of meth, over and over again. But I have never known a dealer, including myself, who was not also an addict, and ultimately I think it makes it a public health problem more than a criminal one. I also think legalizing drugs is a far better way to move it into the domain of public health so that everybody who needs help can it. I in no way think there is an ethical way to deal drugs, but I don't think the dealer is any more morally evil than the bartender who serves the alcoholic.
But to imply I've ever defended dealing as a positive thing or meth as anything but a killer and a ruiner of lives is beyond fucked up. I sense a beef here, probably someone who'd like to blame the fact that there are dealers for his own drug problem.
alot of people remember you from before, do you think what you say in aa meetings doesn't get out? your the asshole.
Sounds like someone who can't stay clean has decided that the cause is all those who sell or even sold drugs. You seem incensed that I won't flog myself hard enough for what I did to maintain my addiction. Sorry, I did my time, and every day I keep my hand open to those who are still doing theirs, including you. If you can't get sober, I hope you keep trying. But neither I or the dealer you keep calling bears any responsibility for your inability to stay sober, past or present. I would suspect your biggest issue is your refusal to face the anger that evidentally drives you. If attacking me helps with that, have at it, but I would imagine all that it does is continue to feed the illusion that your problem is everybody else, everyone but the man in the mirror.
I read this entry two days ago and I just re-read it a few moments ago; it's still powerful. When I was a high school teacher, I had a front row seat to the permutations of adolescence, much of which centered around their raging hormones. Those who fit firmly in the boy likes girl or girl like boy slot had their own sets of issues, but they didn't have to hide their interest in the desired one. It was a totally different story for the girls who liked girls, the boys who liked boys, the ones who weren't sure who they liked, and the ones who felt alien and at odds with their perceived gender. What so many people forget or choose to ignore is that sexual identity doesn't wait until you are an adult to manifest itself. Many gay and lesbian people that I know tell me that they became aware of their sexual orientation at an early age; I don't mean that they announced that they were gay at age two, but that they had an innate sense that they stepped to a different drummer than what was expected of them by our rigid societal definitions of sexuality. A good friend, a gay man in his 60s, bravely addressed an audience at a local school board witch hunt, after he had been inadvertently outed. He presented a simple question to the audience, most of who were calling for his dismissal, vocal about their fears that he would somehow "turn" their children gay, "When did you choose to be straight?" I'd like to report that his words left the audience speechless and deep in thought, but regrettably, people love their bigotry and embrace stupidity more often than they listen to reason. I, too, hope that we are entering an era when young boys and girls will never feel the pressure to live a life of lies and pretense rather than simply be the person that they are.
PS Can't help but note the comments left by Just Laughing On. For the life of me, I can't discern what the comments have to do with this particular post, nor what they have to do with Marc in general. Clearly the commenter is delusional and has been reading another blog because I've never read anything in this one to support the childishly spiteful allegations dispensed by the commenter.