July 2003

My Thoughts about the Sodomites

A good man is hard to find…or so they say. Well, I SAY that if I had been able to find a good man, I wouldn't have married my wife (a girl, no less).

I kid, though. Really, I think I could have been happy as a gay man in America. I like the theater, and I kinda like some of Madonna and Cher's songs. But before this article gets out of hand, I should get to the point - being gay in America is no fun. That fact won't change for a while, I'm sure.

I started thinking about this a couple weeks ago when the Supreme Court struck down a bunch of anti-sodomy laws. Some people cheered. Some people groaned. Those who cheered did so not because they were waiting for the Supreme Court before they sodomized one another. No. They cheered because now, in every state in America, consensual sex between two men in the privacy of their own home was legal.

The people who groaned did so for pretty much the same reason.

I am not lying. Millions of dedicated anti-homosexual Americans were struck with fear that afternoon. Why? Because the TV and radio told them that this was just one more brick removed from the cultural foundations of the United States of America. I don't kid you one little bit. I listened to the radio and watched the TV. No network was lacking a white man or woman from some wholesome Institute or Foundation who promised the listeners that gay weddings were next, right after the fall of our civilization.

As I've stated before in this publication, I am not gay. I'm not gay, but I don't know why. I didn't have to think about it too much, and I will never be able to explain it, but I like the ladies. But unlike many people in this country, I do not associate evil or godlessness with homosexuality. The thought of gays getting married is OK by me.

What I saw on the TV and heard on the radio is just a part of the overt hatred towards homosexual people so prevalent in the world. I can't imagine what it would feel like to see people on the TV talk about how my sexuality, and my relationship with my mate, was immoral and contributes to the destruction of the so-called American culture. I can't begin to imagine.

Guests on FoxNews shows, and callers on talk radio could, and do, yammer on for days about the impending demise of America. After 9-11, the fundamentalists blamed the homosexuals and the ACLU for the terrorist attacks. To some, God is vengeful, and he takes his anger out on random people for things they did not do.

From the moment a person realizes that they are homosexual, their brain must start doing somersaults. The mere contemplation that your own preferences could get you killed, beat up, or only teased might make you wonder if you'd been cursed. Again, I really don't know how such a shunned person feels, but with all this media coverage, I can't help but try.

As a non-fundamentalist, non-'bring-back-the-good-old-days', non-'purity-of-marriage' type of person, I also don't know what it's like to actively hate all of a type of person. There are the 'hate the sin, love the sinner' types, but I don't know if it is possible to ever separate the two. All I can say is that I wish I could get into their heads for just a day. I want to know what Pat Robertson is really up to. Does he really believe that he knows what God likes and dislikes? Does he really know that he is doing God's work?

That's all too much wishful thinking on my part. The fact is that I am stuck in the middle of this issue. I watch gay people on TV talk about 'rights' and 'freedom' as if they are in the middle of a real struggle, and immediately see anti-gay people talk about 'culture' and 'immoral' as if they are on the opposite end of the same struggle.

Then I think about the gay people again. Unlike the suffragettes who marched at the turn of the century, or the blacks who marched in the middle of it, homosexuals cannot look forward to a constitutional amendment to ensure them any freedoms. Such a major action would be sure to set off one of the ugliest dirty-TV-ad campaigns ever. Homosexuals have nothing more than hope on which to continue their struggle. They hope that laws are overturned by appeals courts, and that 'full faith and credit' can be enforced throughout the land. Even then, they will still be looked at as 'degenerates' by millions of Americans.

Theirs is not a unique struggle. Blacks, women, and scores of immigrants are looked at by some portion of the population as the cause of America's ills. The difference for homosexuals is that they are discriminated against equally by every class, race and gender in the country. Who knows when their struggle will be over? As long as there are (fundamentalist) Christians, it won't be.

This all takes me back to my original thought: I think I could have been happy as a gay man in America. But what does it take for a person to be happy when so many people hate you for what you are, rather than for who you are (although the two may not be all that separate)? I've walked myself up to a big can of worms, one which I will not dive into just yet.

But that is no way to end an article, is it? I meant to write a pithy piece about gay people in the USA, but I turned it serious. All the time I've spent listening to Christians bemoan homosexual activity as part of the demise of our so-called culture made a pithy piece next to impossible. Fundamentalism is the enemy of freedom - an illogical tyranny of unfounded ideas. In our democracy, tempering the enemy is not easy. For some, I suppose it's impossible.