THE CASE FOR ACCEPTANCE: An Open Letter to Humanity, Part V

a work of fiction by Robin Reardon

FOREWORD

The only thing wrong with being gay is how some people treat you when they find out.

This blog entry is the fifth in a series of monthly installments that present the rationale behind Thinking Straight. The series is written from the point of view of a gay man—which I am not—so I'm labeling it as a fictional open letter to humanity, addressed to anyone who will read it and consider its points. My hope is that it will further understanding and acceptance.

The installments will be presented in logical order (Part I and the full list of installments was posted in April; see Archives to the right), and I encourage readers to start at the beginning and proceed through. The series will be highlighted each month on DREAMWalkergroup.com in the DREAMScene newsletter.

THE CARDS, continued: THERE’S NO NEED TO THINK; I FEEL INSTINCTIVELY THIS IS WRONG

Yeah, I know, this one’s kind of long for a card. But it covers so much ground that it will be worth it. Promise.

How much of this do we need to define? More than you might think. In fact, let’s start with that word: think. Thinking requires the use of our gray matter. Thinking is something most humans believe sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. There may be a few species we see as capable of thought on some level, but we’re sure we leave them in the dust. Our cerebral cortex is without peer. At least on this planet.

Thinking also requires reason. Reasoning. Rationality. It involves the progression of logical ideas, reflection, consideration. It’s necessary for analysis and synthesis. It raises the understanding of consequence above mere pattern recognition. It makes planning possible.

I could stop right here and point out that as long as we want to consider ourselves at the top of the food chain, we do need to think, and say that settles it. But there’s more thinking to be done about this. So let’s keep going, and let’s think.

Next we examine the phrase “feel instinctively.” Did you ever try to instinct? Can’t do it, can you? An instinct is something you react to, because it causes you to have some sort of feeling. Instincts are unlearned, unemotional, non-verbal and non-cognitive. There is some debate among scientists and others studying this phenomenon about just how many distinct instincts exist—the number seems to be somewhere between one and five—but there’s no debate at all that the most important one, the one to which all others yield, is survival.

An instinctive reaction typically causes us to feel something; that’s where the emotion comes in. Fear is the most common, given the priorities of our instincts. Being non-cognitive, instincts don’t live in our cerebral cortex. In fact, the seat of instinct is said to be the R-25 complex. The reptilian brain. I like to call it the lizard brain; it’s easier to say and to type. Our lizard brain is essentially not different from that of other creatures in the animal kingdom, which means that when we’re not thinking, we’re basically lizards. If we don’t want to be lizards, I suggest we think.

But thinking takes time and energy and focus. It’s a lot of trouble. It can be painful and complicated and frustrating. So much easier to be a lizard, isn’t it? Besides, caution is safer. If we think there’s a danger and there isn’t, that’s not likely to harm us. But if we think there isn’t and there is—you do the math. So Lizardhood is seductive.

Let’s try some application and see if we can get away with as little thinking as possible. Your lizard brain, the seat of instinct, has your survival as its prime directive; therefore, the more paranoid it is, the better it’s doing its job. Let’s give it a test.

Say I’m visiting London, where they drive on the wrong side of the street. I’m in the middle of a city block, and there’s traffic going in both directions in front of me. Directly across from is me is a sex toy store I’ve been hearing about. It would be a gas to bring back a certain item to a friend of mine, and all that fun stuff is in my head when I decide not to walk to the corner and press the button for a “walk” signal. I’m not thinking. Or, I’m not thinking about what I’m actually doing. So I look rather automatically to my left (not instinctively, since this is learned behavior; if I were merely following instinct, I wouldn’t look only to my left) to see if anything’s coming at me, and nothing is, so I step out.

Instantly there’s a blaring horn and the squeal of brakes coming from the red double-decker bus hurtling toward me from my right. My lizard brain, with immediate access to my adrenaline system, responds so fast that my body is back on the sidewalk before my cerebral cortex has any idea what happened. The R-25 didn’t waste time explaining to my human brain what was happening or what it was going to do about it. In fact, it had no way to do that. It just forced my body to react. It saved my life.

So now I’m back on the sidewalk, a little breathless from all the adrenaline, and my human brain scrambles to explain what just happened. I might say something like, “Holy crap. That stupid bus driver nearly hit me!”

Was the driver stupid? Maybe, maybe not. But my immediate need is to confabulate something that explains why I got into such a dangerous spot and justifies whatever I needed to do to get out of it. You might call this thinking, but it doesn’t go very deep. If I jay-walk again, will my lizard brain save me? It will do its damnedest, but maybe I’ll be farther out into the street before the horn sounds. Maybe I’ll trip before I can make it back to safety. Maybe the next bus’s brakes won’t be as good. Aside from never jay-walking again, which isn’t likely to be a reform I’m prepared to make for the rest of my life, what can I do to help avoid death in this way?

Well, I’m might think. Really think. I shouldn’t stop at blaming the bus driver. I need to apply my human brain, at which point I will realize that I’m in London where they drive on the wrong side of the street, and I’ll make a plan that as long as I’m here, I’ll take extra precautions. Maybe I won’t jay-walk until I’m home again. Maybe I’ll look both ways no matter what I expect from the traffic. But I need to think.

Was my lizard brain right? Absolutely. Can it do the task alone? Not as well as it can do it if I think.

Here’s another scenario. Let’s say I’ve never seen a little person (I’m talking about dwarves; apologies to anyone I’ve offended using that word). I’m half-walking, half-running along a city street in a great rush to get someplace. I round the corner of a building with no windows I can see through, and I nearly collide with a little person (LP). My wordless lizard brain screams bloody murder and force-feeds me adrenaline, just like with the London bus—much, much more adrenaline than if that person had looked like people I was used to seeing. The bus was about to kill me. Is the LP? If he’s not carrying a knife or a gun or leading a pack of wolves, is he a threat to me?

I hope I would have the grace to apologize, make sure he was all right, maybe explain that I was in a huge rush, and go on my way. Adrenaline is still coursing through my system. I won’t feel normal again for nearly an hour. I could dine out on that story for a month.

Was my lizard brain right this time? You know the answer; you have a cerebral cortex.

Here’s a scenario that actually happened. A few years ago, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court was debating whether or not the state constitution prohibited legal same-sex marriage, there was a lot of bru-ha-ha about it. One enterprising journalist took a microphone out onto the street and asked people what their position was, and why. I’ll never forget one answer given by an unidentified woman. She said she was against same-sex marriage, because—this is a direct quote—“If we allow men to marry men and women to marry women, pretty soon there won’t be enough children in the world.”

When I heard that, I began sputtering even more helplessly than our homophobic friend when I grilled him about what made sex natural. There are so many flaws in this absurd statement that it’s hard to know where to begin. I’ll start with the most obvious.

Children. How many children are on the planet today? How many of them are unwanted, or starving, or neglected, or all three? How many people would have to become suddenly barren for us to be in any danger whatsoever of running out of children? Whatever the number is, you can bet your ass it’s a hell of a lot higher than the number of gay people in the world.

Next, children. Even if this ridiculous person were correct about running out of children, her conclusion makes sense only if no gay people ever have children. Wrong. Very wrong.

Finally (though there are many more, I’m going to expose only three fallacies), no—not children this time. Nature. Her conclusion implies that if the law refused to recognize the union of the lesbians who brought the suit to court in Massachusetts, those women would wave wistfully at each other and go and find eligible men with whom to settle down and procreate. WRONG AGAIN! Why? Because although we could choose to live straight lives, that won’t make us straight. It would be unnatural. For us. Sure, there are those who make this decision, and in my experience some succeed better than others, but for most of us it would mean a life of lying. Lying to our spouses. Lying to our birth families and our families-in-law. Lying to our friends. Lying to our co-workers. Lying to our children (and weren’t children the most important thing?). Lying to ourselves.

Was that woman thinking? She thought so, but she wasn’t. (Even worse, she votes.) She got about as far as “That stupid bus driver nearly hit me!” Which is to say that she reacted to what her lizard brain dictated, confabulated desperately to try and make sense out of what fear drove her to conclude, and came up with something that makes no sense whatsoever when exposed to actual thought processes. To reason.

If you don’t have to make sense (and your lizard brain doesn’t expect sense), you can say anything at all. And that’s what she did.

You might be wondering about now what her lizard brain has to do with this particular example. After all, it’s not like the bus, or even the LP.

Her lizard brain sees her as the center of the universe. Its primary job is her survival, and it’s more efficient at this if it presumes that anything that’s different from her is a threat until and unless it’s proven otherwise.

Gay people are not forced to wear arm bands (this year). Therefore, many straight people are likely to say, “Oh, I don’t know any gay people.” Absurd. They just don’t know who the gay people are. That is, until something happens that forces them to acknowledge it. Take the example of me in the corporate conference room, answering questions about Hawai’I (see Part I). It could be that no one in that room knew I was gay, and they wouldn’t have known, if I hadn’t said that I had a male domestic partner. Then it’s WHAM! And suddenly they have to deal with it.

What I’m saying is that very often, when someone like this woman finds out someone is gay, either it comes as a surprise, or it is suddenly something she must deal with (like having an opinion about current events), or both. To her lizard brain, because this orientation goes against what’s natural for her, this phenomenon is a threat. It’s dangerous. It’s wrong.

This woman, for personal reasons I’m not privy to, evidently decided against going the religious route. She didn’t say anything about God or the bible or even morality. She based her entire response on something she obviously believed to be vitally important: children. No argument from me, in principle. But her lizard brain’s profoundly negative and fear-inspiring reaction to me sends her cerebral cortex into panic mode, screaming at it to do something QUICKLY! And that’s when confabulation begins. Her lizard brain forces her to react in a way that her cerebral cortex feels obliged to try and make sense out of. But it can’t make sense out of it, because I’m not a threat to her. Really. So she failed to make sense; she just didn’t know it.

Some of you may be demanding to know why homosexuals’ lizard brains don’t scream when we are surprised by heterosexuals, or when we suddenly have to deal with them. The fact is, we aren’t surprised, ever; not only are there more straights than gays in the world, so we’re used the encounters, but also most gay people spent some portion of our lives thinking of ourselves as straight because we weren’t presented with any other option. So our cerebral cortexes have already calmed our R-25 complexes out of a knee-jerk Eeeewww reaction to heterosexuals.

But back to the lizard in Massachusetts. While all of us, at some point or points in our lives, do and say things that are foolish or that don’t make sense, the worst possible times are when our foolishness has detrimental effects on others. This woman, voting as her lizard brain dictates, wanted to take away my civil rights. While I would agree that she’s as entitled to her opinion as I am to mine, I would insist that she not be allowed to deny me my civil rights without a damned good reason. As a start, she could try thinking. How would she react if I told her that what she does in bed is so awful that she shouldn’t be allowed to marry because the last thing I want to do is encourage that behavior, and that I was casting a vote to take that right away from her?

Once upon a time, white people reacted to black people in much the same way as many heteros react to gays today. Many white people still do. Something in their lizard brains goes berserk at this creature that is different from what is normal and natural for that particular lizard brain’s host, and all hell breaks loose. Don’t think it was hell? Ask a black person.

Thank God many of us white folks have done our best to quell this knee-jerk reaction to the “different” among us, and there are now laws to help us (though the work’s far from over). And although I’m sure there are some bigoted whities out there who feel otherwise, it would have been a stupid, narrow-minded, horrible thing if in the 1950s we had amended our Constitution to forbid a person of color to marry a person of—well, of what? Of no color? White people aren’t really white. Black people are seldom really black. What we all are is people. But it would not have been out of the question, not so long ago, to forbid a lawful marriage between, say, Isaiah Washington and Sandra Oh. Except that she—well, is she white?

Goodness, this is difficult, isn’t it? My point is that it would have been a huge mistake to have passed a law like that. But many fewer people would have thought so in 1955 than now. Many things seem less threatening if we just give ourselves a little time to get used to them. And when you consider that the gay rights movement didn’t even get started until June of 1969 (remember the Stonewall riots?), there hasn’t been a lot of time for heteros to get used to gays. But given time and frequent exposure to things that seem different from us, our cerebral cortex has a chance to influence the knee-jerk reaction of our lizard brains and calm the fear that it inspires. “It’s okay,” we can say to the reptile, “it’s just an LP.” “It’s just Isaiah Washington.” “It’s just a gay person.”

So in summary, there was the bus scenario. Would your lizard brain save you in that case? Maybe, but a second dangerous situation could be avoided if you apply enough brain power to figure out what really happened. There was the surprise encounter with the LP. Would your lizard brain save you there? From what? There was the blithering idiot in Massachusetts. If nothing else, she needs to be saved from blithering idiocy, at least in public. Her lizard brain not only didn’t save her from that, but it actually caused it.

Do we need to think? I’m going to say yes. And that’s the fifth one down.

Card Summary

Unnatural: shredded. It would be just as unnatural for me to force my unwilling physiology to have a sexual response to a woman as it would be unnatural for my homophobic friend to force himself to respond sexually to me. Plus, there’s the 1,500+ animal species with gay individuals among their populations.

Abnormal: shredded. The word is a statistical term, not a moral judgment, and it’s normal for some percentage of the human race (and other animal species) to be homosexual.

Promiscuous: shredded. If I’m gay, and I’m promiscuous, it has a lot more to do with the fact that I’m male than the fact that I’m gay. Being gay just makes me more successful at it—if I want to be.

Pedophile: shredded. There’s nothing about the definition of a homosexual that makes him any more likely to abuse children sexually than for a heterosexual to do so. Neither I nor my homophobic friend can have a biological, sexual response to a child. Pedophilia has no basis in sexual orientation.

No need to think when we feel instinctively about something: shredded. Shredded for so many reasons I’m not going to go over them again. If you need to, re-read that section. Trust me; it’s shredded.

Now it’s your turn. Here’s one way to go about it, if you don’t have a real live faggot-bag to work with. Take a piece of lined paper, the kind with a vertical line down the left to leave a small margin. Use a legal size—you’ll need the room. Go someplace quiet with your paper and a pen, and to the right of the margin on each line write something different that you’ve heard about how terrible it is to be gay. All those assumptions that some people try to use to support the conclusion that gay is wrong. Want me to get you started? How about “twisted” and “sick” and “just wrong” and “perverted” and “selfish” and “deluded” and “dangerous” and and and do I need to spell them out for you? You know what they are, whether you hurled them or had them hurled at you. Write down everything you can think of. When you get to the end, go ask a homophobe, and you’ll get a few more.

Now, go back to that quiet corner with your list and your pen. Start at the top with the first one—or any one, it doesn’t matter—and go through our process. Define it. Break it down to the teeniest pieces you can. Apply known facts and rational tests to it. See if you can reconstruct that assumption again so that it supports the fallacy that gay equals bad.

The last thing is to examine gay people in light of this thing. For each line, ask yourself, “Does this apply to any gay people that I know of?” Maybe the piece you’re examining is promiscuity. Does it apply? If not, leave the left margin on that line blank and go to the next line. If it does, ask yourself a second question: “Does it apply to them because they’re gay?” You already know the answer to that one. Again, leave the left margin blank and go on to the next line. When you’re finished, you shouldn’t have any check marks in the left margin. If you do, go back. Define again. Break it down again, and be creative in how you do that. Do some research. Apply science, apply psychology, apply anything that’s reasonably provable. Now try and reconstruct it again. I’ll bet you can’t. I’ll bet you’ll have to cross out that check mark.

The next installment will describe and demonstrate a system that we’ll need when we begin to examine cards that can’t be deconstructed with reason alone. It’s a system that underpins all accepted project management methodologies. It’s also a model for life. Think it sounds boring? Wait until you see how I apply it.

THE CASE FOR ACCEPTANCE: An Open Letter to Humanity, Part IV

a work of fiction by Robin Reardon

FOREWORD

This blog entry is the fourth in a series of monthly installments that present the rationale behind Thinking Straight. The series is written from the point of view of a gay man—which I am not—so I'm labeling it as a fictional open letter to humanity, addressed to anyone who will read it and consider its points. My hope is that it will further understanding and acceptance.

The installments will be presented in logical order (Part I and the Table of Contents for the installments was posted in April), and I encourage readers to start at the beginning and proceed through. The series will be highlighted each month on DREAMWalkergroup.com in the DREAMScene newsletter.

THE CARDS, continued: PEDOPHILE

I love this one. Really.

Define. My definition is that a pedophile is an adult who abuses children sexually. Further, I feel the need to define the words “adult” and “child” as well, so we can be really sure what we’re talking about here. So: an adult is a sexually mature individual; a child is a sexually immature individual. Further: sexually mature means physically prepared to procreate, so it also means both producing and responding to pheromones. Remember pheromones? The sex scent your hypothalamus detects and responds to according to how it’s programmed? So the child is neither producing nor responding to pheromones.

Some may argue that many young children are capable of sexual expression. While this may be true in a nascent kind of way, I would counter that what most of these children are doing is picking up on behavior patterns they see in adults, especially in cases where the child can create a desired result by acting sexual. I don’t mean to pick on girls, here, but picture the coquettish girl sweetly teasing Daddy for whatever it is she wants from him at any given moment. It could be another half hour of television viewing or a bicycle or going to a friend’s sleep-over. This method can be particularly useful when Mommy has already said “No.”

That little girl isn’t sending pheromones to her father, and even if he gives her whatever she asks for, he’s not responding to pheromones. The exchange may look and/or feel sexual to an adult, but for the child it’s just a learned means to get what she wants.

If my understanding of the psychological take on a pedophile is correct, it’s believed that he (let’s just talk about men here; it’s simpler) will have, to one degree or another, a phobia—an irrational fear—of physical and/or emotional intimacy with anyone who is his peer, whose needs must be considered, who expects some kind of exchange based on societal norms: that is, other adults. Most of us have some degree of fear of intimacy without it being a phobia. Some people with the phobia have it to such a minor degree that they can function more or less normally, and never know that it has anything to do with pedophilia. Think Peter Pan. And no, I’m not saying he was a pedophile (though he certainly had a few problems with intimacy). Typically the pedophile’s phobia is such that it creates a great deal of anxiety around people who expect him to interact in socially acceptable ways. So while it’s not necessarily true that a man with some degree of this phobia will become a pedophile, it’s probably safe to say that a pedophile has some degree of this phobia. And most likely it’s only the ones with extreme degrees of it who actually abuse children sexually, thus fulfilling the definition and becoming pedophiles.

Now, let’s define homosexual, since it’s gays who get blamed for this as a group. Gay men, usually. What? You’re gay, and no one has ever called you a pedophile? Really? Fine, but just don’t try to lead a group of cub scouts anyplace. And in many towns, if you had a job as a teacher and the school board found out you were gay, you’d be fired. Did they need to brand the word on your forehead for you to get the message? Oh, you’re a pedophile, all right, or at least very likely to be.

So. Define homosexual. A homosexual is an adult (remember what that means) who responds sexually (pheromones again) to other adults of the same sex. Define heterosexual: an adult who responds sexually to other adults of the opposite sex. Neither orientation indicates a sexual response to individuals not producing pheromones; and psychology specialists do not see the sexual abuse of a child as a truly sexual act, any more than they consider a man’s rape of a woman a truly sexual act. Both, although different in many ways, are acts of violence and are exhibitions of power.

So there’s nothing that makes a man (or a woman, but that’s less likely) of either orientation more likely to abuse children sexually. You might say, “But what about the gays being so promiscuous?”

No. Wait. Not only did we just say that pedophilia is not a true sexual response, but also we destroyed the Promiscuous card. If a gay man is promiscuous, it’s not because he’s gay. Does that mean that if a gay man is a pedophile, it’s not because he’s gay? What a concept. Let’s explore it.

Pedophile priests.

[Disclaimer: Please note that I am by no means implying that Catholic priests are necessarily pedophiles, or that they are even necessarily predisposed to be. I’m going to create a hypothetical situation that might apply only to some of these men.]

How many people do you think have heard about the problem of pedophile priests and assumed, right off the bat without rubbing two gray cells together about it, that all of these men were gay? “Ah,” you might say, “but after all, didn’t they abuse boys?” The answer is not all of them, but here’s where it gets interesting.

If you think back to all the stories you’ve read or heard about in the last ten years or so, how many of these priests were Catholic priests? Hmmmm? Maybe your memory is better than mine, but I don’t remember hearing about a Methodist minister, or a Jewish Rabbi, or an Islamic imam, or a Buddhist sensei, or even an Episcopal priest committing these acts. Does this mean all ordained pedophiles are Catholic? Probably not, but it would seem that the vast majority of them are. There’s got to be something in that.

What is it, remembering that we’re talking about sex, that sets the Catholic church apart? Maybe the fact that the priests (and the nuns, by the way) must take a vow of chastity? There are two or three other religions traditions that also require this vow, but their ordained numbers are far fewer than Catholic priests.

So. Here’s a scenario. Let’s say we have an adult, Catholic, heterosexual man who has a relatively high degree of this phobia that is typical of pedophiles. He’s anxious about social expectations. He hasn’t become a pedophile yet. Maybe he’s even a pretty nice guy. And if he is, there may be more than a few nice Catholic women who would be interested in—oh dear—emotional (and, eventually, physical) intimacy with him. They’re all around him, pressuring him, cornering him. His parents and friends see this and begin to express first thinly veiled expectations and then more and more pointed instructions about how to get himself married to the best possible of these candidates.

Can’t you just hear it? If you’re a gay man, it might sound very familiar. His friends ask what happened to that nice girl Meredith. Siblings point out that he never brings a girl to family get-togethers. Parents make plaintive noises about grandchildren. Every place he turns, there’s more and more pressure, and it only gets worse as he gets older and still hasn’t “settled down.” He’s made a few attempts, but by now all anyone has to hear is that he’s gone out with someone once and they want to know when they can meet her, will she be coming with him at Thanksgiving, what’s her family like.

And as for the women pressuring him? The older they get, the more likely they are to expect a relationship that progresses toward something. After all, their biological clocks are ticking louder each year, and they’re expecting him to act like an adult and make one of them a wife and a mother.

The pressure mounts. Depending on the degree of our fellow’s phobia, he might not get to the age of twenty-five before it gets to be too much for him. If his phobia and anxiety are extreme, he might feel overcome before the age of twenty. He backs away and backs away until he finds himself pressed against the cathedral doors.

Finally it dawns on him that if he were truly inside those doors, all of the marriage pressure would go away. In fact, not only would no one be asking him all those questions he can’t even answer for himself, but everyone would—dare I say it—revere him. He would be seen as having given up something every adult man wants. Okay, so he’d have to give up sex, too, but wouldn’t that be worth it, to rid himself of the panic, of the pressure and horrible anxiety? And isn’t sex—at least in part—what he’s trying to get away from? Remember that for a devout Catholic, sex means marriage, and commitment, and meeting the demands of someone who considers herself his partner—including revealing his feelings and all those other parts of himself that his phobia demands be kept hidden. And as far as ambition goes, in the church maybe he’d also have to take a vow of poverty, but his chances of climbing high on a corporate ladder are no greater than those of climbing within the church hierarchy, and Catholic bishops and archbishops often have very luxurious living conditions, as well as power and influence and—hey, maybe this really is a good idea!

So he takes the plunge, believing himself to have heard a call. Perhaps he did, or perhaps what he heard was the serenity on the other side of those doors. Or perhaps both. And he might be a very good priest. It will take a little time for him to be given his own parish, but it will all work out as long as he’s committed and keeps his nose clean. And one day he is assigned to a parish.

Who’s in his congregation? Everyone. He’ll see grandparents and single elderly people. He’ll see mothers and fathers and widows and widowers. He’ll see college students and teenagers and children. And he’ll be expected to love them all, to minister to them all, to get to know them all as well as possible. He can do this, from the safe distance of his ordained status, without having them place societal demands on him. He’s now above society.

But will he ever be in the position of being alone with a group of little girls? Will church policy ever in a million years put him alone with any one of those little girls? No. And no. Because it’s assumed that since he’s a man, he would be tempted by females (babes though they may be), and that would be wrong—especially if he gave in to that temptation.

However, will he ever be in the position of being alone with a group of boys? Sure. Will he ever be alone with one boy at a time? Frequently.

Remember our definition of a child? Sexual immaturity was central. So if a child of, say, seven is sexually undeveloped, what’s the difference between little Grace and little George? Precious little. They both have soft, pink skin. They both have silky hair. They both smell good when they’re clean and nowhere near as bad as adults when they’re not. And when they’re with our friend the priest, their voices are equally pure, and their eyes equally wide with innocence and reverence and trust. And they aren’t demanding, like those anxiety-producing adults who were trying to pressure him to marry. They aren’t like the women who expected to be treated as peers, as equals, as partners. Those women scared the bejesus out of our fellow.

No; the little boys don’t threaten our priest the way his own family, friends, and—gulp—potential wives did. No pressure at all. No social anxiety.

I’m not going to paint this picture any further; you know what happens. So although it’s no doubt true that many of these pedophile priests are gay, there’s no way in hell (sorry, Father) that all of them are. And this witch hunt that the Pope is carrying out? He’s shooting himself not in just one foot, but in both. Not only will he lose a lot of really good priests who just happen to be gay and not pedophiles (and it’s no secret that the church can’t afford to lose even one priest these days), but also he won’t solve his problem. He’s still going to have pedophile priests abusing little boys. They just won’t be gay.

So that homophobic bigot in Part I who threw at me the mucky card that said “Pedophile” on it—remember him?—he was wrong. Why did he think he was right? I believe it’s that he’s terrified of gays (that’s what homophobe means, right?), and being male he responds to fear and threats with aggression. It makes him feel better to hurl something at me. If he harms me physically he could get arrested. Maybe. But if he can think of an insult that has to do with sex, he’ll hurl that. What about “pedophile?” Yeah, he’ll hurl that, out of ignorance, fear, and not rubbing two gray cells together about it.

Being homosexual brings with it no more and no less disposition to abuse children sexually than being heterosexual. Sexual orientation is not a psychological disorder. Not even if you’re straight . (Check with any psychological organization in the country if you don’t believe me.)

And before anyone yells, “This doesn’t prove that those priests weren’t gay!”, let me point out that I’m not trying to prove that they weren’t gay. I’ve proven that they don’t have to be. I’ve demonstrated that it’s quite feasible, quite credible, that any one or any one hundred of these pedophile priests could be straight. So if anyone wants to say that a gay man is more likely to be a pedophile than a straight man? Prove it. The onus is on you now.

Another one down.

In the next installment, I’ll apply this process to the fifth card that I’ll address in this series, and then we'll go on to something else. The card: “There’s no need to think; I feel instinctively this is wrong.” This is the card that homophobic bigots hold up lots of times—but especially when they are trying to insist that they are not acting out of fear.

THE CASE FOR ACCEPTANCE: An Open Letter to Humanity, Part III

FOREWORD

This entry is the third in a series of monthly installments that present the rationale behind my second novel, Thinking Straight. The series is written from the point of view of a gay man—which I am not—so I'm labeling it as a fictional open letter to humanity, addressed to anyone who will read it and consider its points. My hope is that it will further understanding and acceptance.

The installments will be presented in logical order (Part I and the full list of installments was posted in April), and I encourage readers to start at the beginning and proceed through. The series will be highlighted each month on DREAMWalkergroup.com in the DREAMScene newsletter.

THE CARDS, continued: ABNORMAL and PROMISCUOUS

Abnormal

I’m going to let our homophobic bigot friend (from Part II) back into the conversation for just a minute. He says, “What you are is abnormal.” As with “unnatural,” he says this in a tone of voice that makes it sound like something worthy of Satan himself.

So, you tell me this time. What’s the definition of abnormal? I hear you saying, “The opposite of normal.” But you know I’m not going to let you get away with that. What’s normal?

If you take the insulting tone out of the word abnormal, it reverts back to its true meaning. It wasn’t coined to mean “perverted” or “sick” or “just plain wrong.” If we’re talking about the comparison of two characteristics (like—oh, I don’t know, gay and straight?), abnormal indicates the rate of occurrence of that characteristic, in a defined sampling of specimens, that is less than fifty percent. So, strictly speaking, homosexuality in the population of, say, the human race, is abnormal. But so is left-handedness. And blonde hair. And blue eyes. And being born in March as opposed to any other time of the year. So “abnormal” is not a judgment. There’s nothing pejorative about it.

I’m right-handed. Let’s say I’m a caterer, and I’m working this weekend at a convention for left-handed people. If the specimen sample is everyone in the convention center at its height, I’m abnormal. But just let me walk back out onto the street, and change the sample to everyone within several city blocks, and—presto, chango—I’m normal again.

There’s another way to apply a test for normality, too. You don’t have to confine your examination to a single point in time. So, for example, we can look at a characteristic as it appears in the human race over a period of time, and apply the findings that way.

When I was born, it was illegal to be gay just about every place in these United States. This was true when Dr. Alfred Kinsey was doing his research. It isn’t true today; at least, it’s not illegal in as many places. Today we have entire television networks dedicated to a viewership that accepts homosexuality in society. We have major gay characters in some very successful television shows. Depending on where you live, it can be viewed as edgy, as almost fashionable, to be gay. Or at least no big deal. (I did say “depending on where you live.”)

There’s a lot of controversy around the findings of Dr. Kinsey’s reports on sexuality, and there’s a lot of debate today over what the percentage is of people who are gay. After all, there are people who answer polls in the negative incorrectly, because they haven’t yet figured out that they’re gay, and there are people who won’t admit to themselves that they’re gay, and people who know damn well that they’re gay and lie about it. But one thing everyone has agreed on is that as far as anyone can tell, the percentage hasn’t changed. So if roughly the same percentage of people are gay over decades, regardless of law and fashion, that percentage becomes a statistical norm.

So it’s normal for a reliable percentage of people to be gay. And for that group of people, it’s natural to respond sexually to people of the same sex. Therefore, there is no rational support for basing the conclusion that “Gay Equals Bad” on the topic of normality.

Another one down.

Are we having fun yet?

Promiscuous

This card is almost certainly more often hurled in the faces of gay men than gay women. And the reason for that gives you a clue as to how we’re going to destroy this one.

Step one: define, in terms of sex (it has other definitions, too). I’ve heard it said that promiscuous is a word you apply to someone who has more sex than you. This one might be as tough to define as unnatural. Is someone promiscuous if he (notice the pronoun) has sex with two different people in a month? A week? A weekend? What if he knows them, and he sees them regularly? What if he doesn’t even know their names? What if it’s someone who is married, has promised monogamy, and has sex once a year or so with a prostitute or with someone he encounters casually?

Tricky, defining this one. Let’s just say it means having indiscriminate sex, which isn’t terribly specific, but probably each of you has your own idea of what this might mean, and that’s okay for now. And as long as we’re calling it indiscriminate, let’s agree that it would be committed by someone who had very little trouble treating sex as “just sex” when they wanted to. What’s “just sex?” Read on.

Apply it. Here’s a scenario: Heterosexual married couple, arguing bitterly. One of them says, “But, honey, it meant nothing to me!” The injured party replies, “Nothing? Does it mean nothing to you when you have sex with me?”

So, it’s pretty clear what they’re arguing about. One of them has been unfaithful. But which one? The husband or the wife? It could, of course, be either, but be honest. In your mind, didn’t you picture the first person who spoke as the man? Let’s face it: historically, it’s far more common for a husband to be unfaithful than for a wife. While I’m not excusing infidelity, I’m going to propose that there are two reasons men are more likely to stray. There may be lots more, but I’m limiting myself here.

One reason has a lot to do with how a man and woman experience heterosexual intercourse differently. If you think about it, the woman, who is probably smaller and almost certainly less physically powerful than her male partner, must trust him enough to allow the insertion of an object with which she may be more or less familiar, but that she does not in fact own or control, into an extremely intimate and sensitive part of herself. Over. And over. And over. And … you get the picture. So while there are certainly women who love sex for “just sex,” there are likely to be fewer of them than there are men who can see it like that and be comfortable with it.

The seeds of another reason men might be more likely to be promiscuous are in the first reason. We know that like many other aspects of life, women are more complex than men. Maybe it’s got something to do with the genes on the extra leg of that second X chromosome. And their sexual response to their partners is more complicated. It’s typical (always leaving room for exceptions, of courses) for a woman to start thinking about romance or intimacy on her way to thinking about sex. With many women, that’s the only way they want to get there. So it starts in her head and/or heart, with emotions, and works its way down to the physical pleasure centers.

In comparison, the sexual response in men typically begins below the waist. It can work its way up to his head, and he can get just as into the emotional and spiritual aspects of the act as any woman, but for him it can begin and end all in the same place without moving much more than however many inches he can lay claim to. He’s more likely than she is to get the concept of “just sex” and think that’s okay. Like our husband in the scenario above, he thinks that telling his wife that an act of sex meant nothing to him will make sense to her. In most cases, it doesn’t.

Not too long ago I heard a woman ask a straight man if he thought it was true that gay men are more promiscuous than straight men. His response was all male: “They’re probably more successful at it.” Think about it: if a straight man wants to have sex with a woman, he needs to do whatever it is that gets her in the mood. She might be easy, but chances are she’s going to require more warming up than he does. But if two guys want to go at it just for the sex? Well, not only do they not need to feel mushy about each other, they don’t have to wait for anybody to get in the mood, if all they both want is “just sex.”

So, can we reconstruct this thing in a way that helps it support an assumption about gay men as a group? I’m going to say no. I don’t believe your average gay man wants sex more than, or wants more sex than, your average straight man. But does he get more? Maybe; but if so, being gay is just a facilitator, not an indicator of an inherent trait. So if I happen to be a promiscuous person, it might help that I’m gay, but it’s not because I’m gay.

Another one down.

In the next installment, I’ll apply this process to the card that reads “Pedophile.”

THE CASE FOR ACCEPTANCE: Addendum, Part II.5

Oh goody, a new card! (See the Comments for Part I.) This post (II.5, or however Roman Numerals indicate halves) is an interim installment to examine it.

“Anonymous” says the following: “There is one other thing wrong with being gay - besides some peoples' reaction to it. This also supports the ‘unnatural’ argument. Though I don't use right and wrong I have a pretty simple litmus test for behaviors. If everyone in the world did it, would the world be a better place. In the case of homosexuality, if everyone in the world was [gay], the human race would have become extinct long ago.”

First of all, “other?” That implies I’ve said there was at least one thing “wrong.” I haven’t. The homophobic bigot did, and I disagreed with him.

Second, while there are people who would consider it a boon to the universe if humans were extinct (if anyone knows a tongue-in-cheek emoticon, please share), this “litmus test” strikes me as not only specious but also as thoughtless. Let’s use the process I’ve proposed and examine it.

Define. “If everyone in the world did it, the world would be a better place.” First, better than what isn’t clear. Setting that aside, it might help to think of this in practical terms. There are things that take up not much time (for most people, this would probably include sexual activity), and there are things that take up enormous amounts of time. But “Anonymous” has applied this litmus test indiscriminately. So while the definition doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever we’re examining must be something that everyone on earth does, it nevertheless does hold that IF everyone did it, improvement would be obvious. I think that’s all the clarity we can get, as it’s stated.

Now, Apply. Let’s select a few activities and see what happens. Consider winemaking, academia, politics, computer technology, physics, undertaking (as in caring for dead bodies), finance, teaching, day care… is that enough? None of these activities, in and of itself, would perpetuate the human race and/or guarantee that we wouldn't become extinct. And each of these activities takes up so much time that if everyone did any one of them, nothing else would get done; the world would come to a grinding halt. What would the world be like if everyone made wine? Or if everyone taught physics? We need someone growing vegetables and grains. We need someone distributing these foodstuffs. If we apply logic, we can see that we need different people doing different things. There are many activities that, if everyone did them, the world would NOT be a better place. The litmus test “Anonymous” proposes would demand elimination of these activities.

Perhaps even more important: What is the underlying assumption “Anonymous” must hold in order for his/her litmus test to condemn any sexual orientation? How about this: the assumption is that sexual orientation is a CHOICE. IT IS NOT. Winemaking and teaching physics are choices, but sexual orientation is dictated by nature. Therefore, saying homosexuality is wrong because it would be bad if everyone were homosexual implies that everyone who is homosexual should just – what, not be homosexual? And how would that happen, exactly? (See my first installment for how I shredded the “Unnatural” card.)

So. Can we now Reconstruct? Hardly. We can't choose the color of our eyes, the date on which we were born, our parents, or our sexual orientation.

“Anonymous” says this test proves the “unnaturalness” of homosexuality. Evidently he/she didn't read the part in Part II about pheromones and how Nature gets gays out of the way of heteros so they can perpetuate the species (even though the comment was left after Part II was posted). I can't remember the name of the gay comic who said something like this to heteros: "Hey, just let us be gay, and we promise not to marry any of you."

Now, it's true that "Anonymous" used the word "behaviors." And while one's behavior can be said to be a choice, I'm hoping "Anonymous" won't turn out to be as ignorant about what it means to be gay as the Catholic church, whose contemporary position is that while the church recognizes homosexuality to be an orientation rather than a choice, it expects gays to remain chaste. (Here I need an emoticon for "Are you sh***ing me?") And anyway, even if all the gays in the world refrained from expressing this huge, compelling, critical component of who we are, it still wouldn't satisfy "Anonymous." It's not like we're going to apply this test to our lives, see that the human race will become extinct if the 5-7% of us who are gay don't go out and procreate, sigh wistfully at our true identities and go out and make babies for the sake of making babies.

So this litmus test gives only a nod to nature and ignores much more compelling evidence. What it has much more to do with is Choice. That kills any valid application of the test to any sexual orientation, which is not a choice. I think this "test" is a smoke screen for someone who has deeper problems with homosexuality. In other words, "Anonymous" is holding the card "Would the world be better if everyone did this?" in front of the card "There's no need to think; I feel instinctively this is wrong." I'll shred that one in Part V.

As for this card? SHREDDED.

THE CASE FOR ACCEPTANCE: An Open Letter to Humanity, Part II

FOREWORD

This blog entry is the second in a series of monthly installments that present the rationale behind my second novel, Thinking Straight. The series is written from the point of view of a gay man—which I am not—so I'm labeling it as a fictional open letter to humanity, addressed to anyone who will read it and consider its points. My hope is that it will further understanding and acceptance.

The installments will be presented in logical order (Part I and the full list of installments was posted in April), and I encourage readers to start at the beginning and proceed through. The series will be highlighted each month on DREAMWalkergroup.com in the DREAMScene newsletter.

THE CARDS: INTRO AND CARD ONE (UNNATURAL)

I’m going to do only five cards for you in these installments. You can do the rest yourself. But when you see how I do them, I’m hoping you’ll get the process. You’ll need it, because you’re going to have to go through every last thing in your faggot-bag and destroy it. That means you. Whether you’re gay or not.

Here’s the process: 1. Define/Dissect and reduce to smallest elements. 2. Apply provable facts and repeatable, rational tests. 3. Attempt to reconstruct (you’ll fail, but don’t let me spoil it for you). As you’ll see, there are challenges, but that’s what makes this fun. Here’s how it works.

Unnatural

You know, I’ve actually had homophobic bigots say this to me directly: “What you are is unnatural.” Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have known how to respond to that without sarcasm. But I do now.

Define “unnatural.” If you look it up, you’ll find something along the lines of (paraphrasing, here) not according to the laws of nature or normality. This isn’t terribly helpful, because trying to get any two people to agree on what the laws of nature are—or on what’s normal—is rather tricky. In fact, I had a discussion about this with an ex-boyfriend before the “ex” part applied, someone with whom I share so many opinions that talking with him was almost like talking with myself. Wonder why we broke up…

Anyway, I was making the case that plastic was unnatural, because it didn’t come to us from nature as plastic. Patrick (oops… wasn’t going to identify him. Oh, well…) said, “It’s made from natural substances, and processes that exist in nature are used to make it.”

To which I countered, “But it doesn’t biodegrade!” Ha, I thought, I’ve got him.

But then he said, “Sure it does. It might take hundreds of years, depending on the type of plastic, but it does biodegrade. What parameter do you want to use? If it degrades in a hundred years is it natural, but five hundred—not so much? How about fifty years? Or fifteen? What’s the rule?”

He sounded rather like Abraham arguing with God about how many good people there had to be in the city of Sodom before God would agree not kill off everybody there. But more on the bible later. My point is that even two people who were, at the time anyway, agreeing on just about everything including who got which side of the bed were unable to agree on the definition of “unnatural.”

The cheating way, of course, is to say it’s the opposite of “natural.” But that doesn’t get us any farther along, really. So, how about if we just say that something that’s natural is something that we haven’t messed with since it came to us from nature? That would make anything we’ve messed with unnatural by default. You might not agree with that, but we need to start somewhere, and this is my letter, so I’m starting there.

Apply facts and/or rational tests to it. That’s next. So, rhetorically speaking, is it natural to wear glasses to improve the faulty sight that some of us have, or that comes on us as we age? What about hearing aids? Is it natural to fly through the air in a metal-sheathed behemoth at heights so great that if we fell we’d be nothing but a pile of atoms when we hit whatever was under us? Is it natural to heat and cool our living environments? Is it natural to cook food? What about microwaves? Is it natural to irradiate our food so that it doesn’t decay as quickly? What about having your heart cut out of your chest and replaced with one from a dead person? And are any two people going to answer all those questions the same?

Probably not. So instead, let’s apply the term only to the subject at hand. Sex.

What makes sex natural or unnatural? Let me turn to my homophobic challenger, the guy who told me that I was unnatural. In the spirit of seeking understanding, I might say to him, “Why? Seriously; why? What am I doing that’s unnatural?”

I’ll let you imagine his response, which is possibly going to be graphic and offensive.

So I take a different tack. “So, if you think what I do is unnatural, and if you say it in that insulting tone of voice, you must think it’s bad. That must mean that you think what you do is natural, and therefore good. So help me out, here. What do you do?”

He’s probably not used to having someone respond in good faith, which I’m trying really hard to do here (as opposed to sarcasm, of course), so he sputters and maybe even tries not to answer. Let’s say I get him to hang around long enough to work with me on this, since he thinks it’s so important.

He might say, “You know very well what I do.”

“Well, actually, I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ve ever done it. Wouldn’t you like to prove your point? Tell me. Really. What do you do?”

More sputtering, and then, “All right. If you insist. I put my penis into my wife’s vagina and ejaculate.”

Well, the first thing that goes through my mind is, “Eeeewww.” And then, “Why?” But I don’t say those things. I say, “Okay, and what is it about that action that makes it more natural than what I do? I’m working with natural body parts, too.”

[I’m going to ask you to imagine sputtering ahead of almost everything the guy says.] “Yeah, but you can’t get pregnant.”

“Ah, so reproduction is the objective of natural sex. How many kids do you and your wife have?”

“Three.”

“Planning on more?”

“No way; three’s more than enough.”

“So I guess you aren’t ever having sex again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well…,” I say, “you seem to have a pretty low opinion of unnatural sex. And you’ve just told me that what makes sex natural is reproduction. That means birth control is unnatural, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to do that. It would put you in the same boat as me.” And while he’s still sputtering I add, “By the way, you do know, don’t you, that if you put it in her mouth she won’t get pregnant, right?”

He doesn’t much like this line of questioning, as you can imagine, so I give him a break. I ask, “Is your wife the very first biologically efficacious female who would have you?”

“What? No. Of course not.” Swaggers a little. “She was hardly my first, after all.”

I refrain from reminding him that all sex previous to his wife was almost certainly unnatural by his own definition. “So why didn’t you marry and commit yourself for life to the very first one?”

“Well… she wasn’t the one. The right one. You know.”

“Why not? Wasn’t she pretty enough? Rich enough? Submissive enough? Strong-willed enough? Practical enough? Helpless enough? What was it?”

”I didn’t love that one, okay?”

“Okay. That’s fine. You’re telling me you shouldn’t be expected to marry someone you can’t love. Guess what. Neither should I.”

Truth is, we aren’t likely to get much farther with this Neanderthal, so let’s leave him behind for now. I think you can see what I’m driving at. He hasn’t given any thought to what it means for sex to be natural. Not thinking will be a recurring theme; see if you can pick up on where else it rears its ugly head.

There’s another way to approach this “natural” concept. It’s called Biology. So let’s take a look at what we know about that (provable facts), in terms of sex.

I probably don’t need to tell you that pheromones are sex scents. There seems to be some debate in the scientific community about precisely what constitutes human pheromones and how our bodies know what they are on a biological level, but there the debate ends. Our biological response can be measured. At least in men.

[Background biological fact: the hypothalamus is the part of the brain responsible for governing sexual response.]

Researchers, including those at the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, have done some fascinating studies. And while they may not be ready to declare some kind of foolproof litmus test for homosexuality in humans, they have shown this: the hypothalamus of self-identified homosexual men initiates a sexual response when it detects male pheromones, and a particularly strong one when exposed to the pheromones of male homosexuals. And there is no biological response whatsoever in the hypothalamus of these men when exposed to female pheromones.

So here’s how it works. A straight man meets up with another guy, and his hypothalamus takes a sniff. Nothing. Okay, fine. So the first guy raises his hand up to receive a high-five from the second guy and maybe make some comment about a sports team. And if they’re really glad to see each other, there might maybe just possibly be a hug, but you’d better believe it’ll be the hips-apart-two-slaps-on-the-back kind of thing. I mean, there’s a line, here, they’re thinking; we like guy things, not guys.

But if it’s a woman instead who approaches guy number one, his hypothalamus goes, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Could be a little action tonight.” Now because he’s human, if this is his mother-in-law he doesn’t feel compelled to jump her bones. He can put the kibosh on that. But what he can’t do, even if he were brave enough to try, is get his hypothalamus to generate a sexual response to guy number two.

Similar thing with a straight woman. If she meets another woman, her hypothalamus goes, “Oh,hi! How are you?... Listen, we could be friends, as long as we’re not after the same guy.” But if she encounters a straight man instead, her brain goes, “Oh, my. Yes; could be a little romance in the air.” Unless, of course, it’s that jerk who wanted to get to third base with her and didn’t even pay for dinner. Again, she can stop the process. But she can’t get her hypothalamus to respond sexually in a different way from how it’s programmed.

Guess what? Neither can I. So although I don’t necessarily feel compelled to jump into the sack with every gay guy I meet (I can stop the process as well as anyone else), what I can’t do, no matter how hard I might be foolish enough to try, is force myself to have a natural, biological, sexual response to a woman. Can’t get there.

But wait; there’s more. Most women responded somewhat negatively to gay male pheromones, even though they responded positively to straight male pheromones. And the gay men’s response to straight men wasn’t as powerful as their response to gay men. It’s like gays are getting ourselves out of the way of the heteros. Why don’t they appreciate this?

So when that homophobic bigot says, “What you do is unnatural,” all I want him to do is qualify it a little bit. He needs to add, “For me.” Then I would agree with him, because it would be unnatural for him. And that leaves the door open for me to say, “Okay, I get it. Because what you do is unnatural for me.”

One place homophobic bigots like to point to when they’re screaming “Unnatural!” at me is the non-human animal kingdom. They might say, “You don’t see animals doing what you do!”

But they’re wrong. In fact, shepherds have known since the year dot that between eight and ten rams out of every hundred are gay. They don’t talk about it, because it’s so much a part of their work. It wouldn’t occur to them to present it as news any more than they’re likely to say, “You know, only ewes can give birth to lambs.” It’s a given. And it makes sense for them to know; from a ram, they want pregnant ewes.

And it’s not just sheep. It’s giraffes, and ostriches, and zebra finches—the list goes on. In fact, it’s over 1,500 species long, and growing. I was particularly amused when the U.S. political right-wing contingent tried to adopt the penguin as its mascot not too long ago. It was the same year that “March of the Penguins” was big; remember that? It was tempting; it had everything associated with “family values” (with the exception of beating gays to death and imprisoning all the liberals). Well, two things happened that quashed that propaganda effort pretty quickly. One was that someone pointed out to them—probably one of those troublesome scientists who believe in evolution—that Emperor penguins are monogamous only to a point. That point is the end of the year. Then they’re on to someone new. The other thing? Gay penguins. New York, Germany, all over the place.

I got into a debate once with a guy who didn’t think this pheromone thing supported my position. To quote him: “Some people have genetic and physiological predispositions towards violence and addiction.”

It took me a few minutes to realize what he’d done. Can you see it? I mean, besides practically equating the gay orientation with criminals. To me, his response was so completely irrelevant that it threw me. And that’s because his starting point was “Gay Equals Bad.” And even though my starting point is the opposite, and even though I admit that I think his is utterly totally wrong, I wasn’t trying to use “natural” as a term to support my position as much as I was trying to say “You can’t use that card [unnatural] to prove yours.” I’m just killing cards, here, at the moment. So even if his starting point is “Gay Equals Bad,” he can’t say “Gay Equals Unnatural.” It just ain’t true. And, as I reminded him, he follows the dictates of his hypothalamus, too.

And as for the animals? He said, “We see [homosexuality] in nature, yes. And animals eat their young. Animals are amoral; humans aren't. We don't base our morality on what animals do.” Again, huh? WTF? Like, dude, kind of not the point. All I was trying to say was that the animals are not being gay to be perverse, to annoy their parents, to rebel against their church, or any other darn fool reason. They’re gay because they’re biologically programmed that way. So homosexuality is not unnatural. That’s all I’m trying to prove. At the moment. Animals eating their young is nothing more than a red herring. Smoke screen. Some dang fool thing to try and obscure the real point: Homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon. We aren’t talking about morality. Yet.

The conclusion I come to—tell me if you reach another—is that calling something “unnatural” is not only debatable, subjective, and difficult to prove, but it’s also relative. It’s not an absolute term. At least not when it comes to sex. And homosexuality, occurring as it does “in nature,” cannot be reasonably be called unnatural.

One down.

In the next installment, I’ll apply this process to two more cards: Abnormal and Promiscuous.

THE CASE FOR ACCEPTANCE: An Open Letter to Humanity, Part I

a work of fiction by Robin Reardon

FOREWORD

On April 29, 2008, my second novel will be released. Thinking Straight is about a gay teen whose parents send him to a summer camp designed to straighten him out. You can read more about the book, including an excerpt from Chapter One, on my Web site. What's important to note here is that the story is positive and inclusive. Not only does it respect religious belief, but also it takes a step toward creating a safe place for people of all sexual orientations within the religion called Christianity.

Starting with this blog entry, I’m introducing a series of monthly installments that present the rationale behind Thinking Straight. The series is written from the point of view of a gay man—which I am not—so I'm labeling it as a fictional open letter to humanity, addressed to anyone who will read it and consider its points. My hope is that it will further understanding and acceptance.

The installments will be presented in logical order, and I encourage readers to start at the beginning and proceed through. The series will be highlighted each month on DREAMWalkergroup.com in the DREAMScene newsletter.

The Installments

I. From Me to You

Expecting Acceptance
The Faggot-bag
The only thing wrong with being gay…

II. The Cards: Intro and Card One (Unnatural)

This is a systematic deconstruction of some major assumptions used by the ignorant and/or malicious to support the fallacious conclusion that “Gay equals bad.”

III. Cards Two and Three: Abnormal and Promiscuous

IV. Card Four: Pedophile

V. Card Five: "There's no need to think; I feel instinctively this is wrong."

VI. The I-beam Strategy

This is an extremely high-level business model, underpinning all accepted project management methodologies. Think it sounds boring? Wait until you see how I apply it.

VII. The Biggest Card: Intro and Objective

While there are many assumptions used by the ignorant and/or malicious to condemn homosexuality, this section addresses the one that is most resistant to logic, to rational examination. Can you guess what it is?

VIII. The Biggest Card, continued: Situation

IX. The Biggest Card, continued: Tactics

X. Acceptance: A few suggestions...

On Marriage
On Civil Rights
On Choice

Conclusion: The only thing wrong with being gay is how some people treat you when they find out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FROM ME TO YOU

I am a gay man. I am not a therapist or a scientist or a religious counselor, although I will draw on those and other disciplines and resources to prove my point, which is that the only thing wrong with being gay is how some people treat you when they find out. Presenting this conclusion is, in fact, the objective of this letter. And because my belief in this conclusion is so strong, I try to live my life expecting acceptance. I don’t always get it, and I don’t always have the energy to try. And I’ll take tolerance over hatred when I can get that, but who wants to be tolerated?

What does it mean to expect acceptance? For a gay person, it means having a tremendous amount of intestinal fortitude and a determination that would put a Pit Bull to shame. Here’s an example.

Say I’m in a conference room at the company where I work, sitting at a long table with maybe five other people. It’s a few minutes before our meeting is due to start, and there’s general chit-chat going on while we wait. The fellow directly across from me, who doesn’t know me, addresses the table in general.

He says, “My wife has talked me into taking our vacation in Hawai’i this year, but I can’t tell one of those islands from another. Has anyone here been there, and do you have any advice?”

So this guy has put his question squarely on a personal platform, and he’s mentioned his life partner. He says he’s confused about something very specific, and he asks for help.

So I say, “Actually, yes. My partner and I were there a couple of years ago. He and I went to three islands. I can tell you what we discovered about each of them. What do you and your wife like to do?”

He blinks at me. “Your partner? I thought you worked here.”

“Oh,” I say, “yes, I do. He’s my domestic partner, not my business partner. So, what kind of tourists are you? Do you enjoy hiking, shopping, beachcombing…”

Now, if anyone at the table has a big enough problem with my being gay that they create any kind of disturbance, they’ll need to be willing to look like an intolerant bigot. But if they’re willing to do that, I’ll have to have a very thick skin to get through it without some nasty comeback. In fact, I’ll need a thick skin just to smile at some of the faces around me, even if no one says anything. It takes guts to expect acceptance.

The hardest situations might be those in which no one says anything directly to me. I’ve had some heteros ask me why it is that gay men are so sarcastic, as though it’s something that comes with the territory, the way female secretaries are supposed to be genetically predisposed to working copying machines. While I would never agree that “gay men are sarcastic” any more than I would agree that “heterosexuals are blind and stupid,” I do have a personal theory for why sarcasm becomes the weapon of choice for many gays. If someone in my hearing, perhaps even very near me, says something about me that they consider to be uncomplimentary, but they never say it to me, that’s an indirect assault. This is perhaps preferable to being hit about the head and kidneys with a baseball bat, but it’s still very nasty treatment. It inspires either a total withdrawal or a response that can’t be any more direct than the assault. I mean, how can you respond directly when all you hear is someone saying to someone else, “Yeah, you were right. He is one of them, isn’t he? [snigger]”

Since “indirect” is part of the definition of sarcasm, it’s the nearest weapon. It takes guts to use it, but it takes perhaps even more guts to say, “I’m sorry, what was that you said?” and then wait patiently in apparent innocence. Especially since I'm never quite sure what will happen next.

Did I say this took guts? But back to expecting acceptance.

The first step is eliminating cards—those nasty, virtual flash cards that homophobic bigots will flip up at gays to prove how disgusting we are. You know the ones. You know a lot of them. I’m going to show you how I destroy them by deconstructing five of them, and then you can use the same process to destroy all the rest of them that you’re carrying around in your faggot-bag.

What’s a faggot-bag? Oh, come on; everyone has one. Every one of us grew up hearing insult after insult, smear after smear about how dreadful it is to be gay. I have one. And all the time I was growing up, all of the nineteen years before I realized I was gay, I would hear those nasty things and shrug; they didn’t apply to me, after all, or so I wanted to believe. But what was I supposed to do with them? Well, they went into my faggot-bag.

When I could no longer pretend I wasn’t gay, I knew I had to open that filthy, disgusting thing and dig around in there, review each slur and see what it was, really, because I sure as hell didn’t want to think all those pieces of crap applied to me. And I knew how nasty they were, because I’d put them in there myself. So I sidled up to it, glancing around cautiously to make sure no one saw me taking ownership of that yucky thing. Carefully, avoiding as much of the crap rubbed into the bag as possible, I opened it, looked around me once more, and reached into the slime until I could grab something and pull it out. Gritting my teeth, I shook the thing until enough muck came off it so that I could recognize it. And do you know what it was? Pedophile. It was a card that said Pedophile.

Well, this certainly didn’t apply to me! I’m gay, I said quietly to myself; I want a man, not a boy. So I threw the thing aside thinking maybe this process wouldn’t be quite as painful as I’d feared. That one wasn’t so bad; it was easy to get rid of. Feeling encouraged, I forgot to look around and see if anyone was watching as I dug in for the next bit of crap. This homophobic bigot saw me, saw the faggot-bag and recognized it, saw that I’d discarded Pedophile, walked over and picked it up and threw it in my face, sneering, “Here, faggot. This is you.”

This has happened to me many times, these nasty cards getting flung at me when I knew they weren’t who I was. And if I hadn’t taken steps to make sure I knew—I mean, really, really knew—that these things don’t apply to me, I might have bought into the idea that there was something wrong with being gay.

If there’s something wrong with me—and there might be, because I’m hardly perfect—it has nothing to do with being gay. And I’m going to show you how I know that.

Some people who read this letter will find fault with my logic. I expect that, because just as I’m no scientist, I’ve never studied logic as a discipline. But what I want to do here isn’t to write a treatise on logic; what I want to do is demonstrate that it’s perfectly possible for human beings of normal intelligence and education to use their brains in logical ways on a topic most people aren’t used to thinking about at all. In other words, I want them to think. So if you have a problem with some of my leaps of logic, fine; but I’d be willing to bet that infallible logic would reach the same conclusion I have: the only thing wrong with being gay is how some people treat you when they find out.

When someone asks me why I write, the easy answer is that I can’t not write; but that’s only part of the story. My objective in writing is to create connections that foster understanding and acceptance of each other. Tolerance is better than hatred, but who wants to be tolerated? Acceptance is my goal.

Some of the hallmarks of my identity as a writer are an extremely broad range of interests, an avid curiosity, and a very active imagination. Also, as it happens, my mother imbued in me a strong sense of justice. So when I began to write fiction as a means of encouraging acceptance, my imagination was caught by what looked like fascinating cognitive disconnects around the issue of homosexuality.

As science shows more and more compellingly with each examination of this characteristic, it is a natural and normally occurring phenomenon (in countless animal species as well as in humans), and it’s determined at least as much by biology as by any other influence. And it’s not changeable. Yet so many people, both straight and gay, hold onto the conviction that it’s “unnatural” and “abnormal” and “immoral” when it’s none of those things. So that led me to the conclusion that these convictions are based on something other than reason. Other than thought. Other than reality.

Which led me into the incredibly rich territory of areas such as psychology, social conditioning, and even brain structure (ever heard of the R-25 complex, the primary job of which is your survival, and which supports the conviction that something that’s right for you is right, in an absolute way, for everyone?) —all of which contribute to the perpetuation of the patently false conclusion that if someone is gay, there’s something wrong with them.

So maybe I won’t write homosexual themes into all my books—or maybe I will—but certainly it seemed like the perfect place for me to start. In A Secret Edge, you’ll find hints of themes having to do with religion and faith (do not confuse the two) that will carry forward into future books in ways that present my understanding of the relationship between existing religious institutions and homosexuality.

One of the primary concepts I hope to communicate is that we’re all in this together, and when anyone lives by the premise “It’s all about me” they’re hurting themselves as well as others. And since that applies to me as much as to anyone else, I welcome your comments about what you’ve read, here or in my books, and what you’d like to read. Tell me if you think I’ve missed an important point, or if what you’ve read has helped you understand yourself, someone else, or this human community as a whole any better than before.

And most of all, thank you for reading.