Stereotypes and Same-Sex Marriage

I think I must have led a very sheltered childhood. I know that any mention of anything sexual was strictly taboo. Even fart jokes were enough for a stern talking-to from an adult. I was ten years old when I noticed that a woman who had gotten married during the past year was very pregnant and it occurred to me to ask a friend:  “Is getting pregnant something that happens when you get married?” I was genuinely puzzled by the seeming connection. (To give you a better idea of the flavour of the 1950’s, Roman Catholics went to their own school and we never associated with them. They were strangers in the midst of our small village. Of course, there were only Catholics and Protestants, so we didn’t have to integrate other religions into the taboo system.)

The point being: I really didn’t know very much about the world. By the time I was fifteen and just starting to date I knew that the word “homosexual” meant someone who was a sex-crazed lunatic attracted to males. (There was no such thing as a “female homosexual.”) Once, when angry with a girl-friend who said she wanted to be free to date other boys, I called her a “heterosexual.” It was the only word I could come up with that meant a sex-crazed lunatic attracted to members of the opposite sex, in the sense that it was an apparent antonym of homosexual. Apparently she told her mother who thought it was hilariously funny.

When 17 I shared a house with two pairs of males. I knew that they were sexual active with each other, but, it never occurred to me that they were “homosexuals” as that word carried so many negative connotations to me that had nothing to do with my house-mates. They were funny, friendly, generous, and were enthusiastic about my interest in girls: lending me clothes and giving me friendly and helpful advice. We never talked about their sexual orientation; it was something that was irrelevant to our relationship.

And then I met John. He was a female impersonator. He would “do” Bette Davis, Ethyl Merman, Mae West, and other female stars for what seemed hours of continuous hilarity. There was no question of his sexual orientation. In fact, the student social workers I was sharing a house with at the time, asked him to find out if I was homosexual.  He breathed heavily and slobbered on my belly for a while, which left me completely cold and uninterested. He concluded from that experiment that I was straight as an arrow.

By the time I was in university I had know many openly gay men. I found their sexual interest somewhat odd in that it simply didn’t interest me and I couldn’t imagine the attraction, but that really had nothing to do with them as people and my relationship with them. Chacun à son goût, as it were. I suppose, looking back, that the reason I met so many gay men was that I was interested in art and theatre. Please don’t leap to any conclusions here: though many men in the artistic areas of life are gay, not all are, and not all gay men are artistic. That should go without saying, but when dealing with stereotypes I feel I have to be careful how I word what might be construed as generalizations.

In any case, I recall that in my second or third year of university I wrote an article for the student newspaper on some of the problems that gay men experience. Besides the blatant discrimination, I tried to focus on the less obvious areas: such as the struggle many faced with their negative self-image fed to them by the society around them. When children start to suspect that they might be “different” they sense it as something “wrong” with them. The struggles to suppress, avoid, and finally to accept can come with enormous psychological cost. Well-meaning friends and family often make the suffering worse by their own ignorance and naivety.

I once said to someone who had difficulty accepting gay men as deserving of respect as straight men that the only time someone’s sexual orientation should mean anything is when you’re in bed with them. I know that’s a fairly wild statement, but the point I wanted to make with that statement was that, frankly, it is none of my business who someone has relations with unless I somehow become involved in the physical side of things. That pretty much sums up my attitude.

When one of my children boycotted a homophobic teacher’s class until a full retraction and apology for some stupid and hateful remarks the teacher had made, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that a child of mine should take that attitude and be willing to put it on the line to defend a group of fellow citizens who were being treated less than fairly.

Personally, everything came to a head when the church I was an active member of began to debate the question of the “blessing” of same-sex marriage. I assumed, naively, that all Christians, at least of my brand, accepted everyone as equal before God and that it is not our place to judge one another. At least, that what I was taught and what I read all the literature to mean. When our congregation got together with members of another congregation to discuss the issue, I broke the awkward silence by saying, “If I were gay, I would not accept the ‘blessing;’ I would want full-blown marriage.” That got things going, but everyone, expect for a few gay members of the congregations, missed my point and continued to discuss “blessing,” priding themselves on their conclusion that blessing same-sex marriages was okay in their view. The entire question of actual marriage was not even discussed.

To make matters worse, in my view, the national church could not even agree to bless such unions and some congregations felt so strongly in the negative that they withdrew from the national body and set up independent churches. I couldn’t believe it. I wrote a letter to the national newsletter, which was published, saying I had no problem accepting my gay brothers and sisters as full equals, but my problem was in accepting those who opposed the full-inclusion of all church members. When I realized that the church was not going to even attempt to get past the “blessing” hurtle in order to face the real issue, I stopped attending church. I felt that the church had abandoned me. I find it odd that no one from the church community has asked me, though it has now been more than five years since I went from being a warden and assisting with communion to non-attendance, why.

When recently in the hospital after a heart attack, a nurse asked if I wanted to see a member of the clergy. I thought long on it and, in the end, refused. My reason was that I felt it would just end up as a pointless argument with me venting my frustration and anger on this bystander who I had no prior relationship with. It just didn’t seem right to blind-side this unsuspecting man or woman.