Headcase - The menace of love

Gay men and lesbians have never demanded anything from the dominant culture except the right to love freely.

Although the loony religious right has characterized guaranteeing gay people’s freedom to love as conferral of a special right, it is, of course, no such thing. Were the tables turned and we lived in a predominantly gay culture that outlawed and stigmatized the expression of heterosexual love, imagine the parade of Christian martyrs re-enacting the rebellion and passion of Jesus, who died, fundamentally, because he advocated a radical philosophy of love.

Last week, we witnessed the spectacle of thousands of gay and lesbian couples in San Francisco reciting wedding vows in defiance of California’s bigoted marriage law. It was enacted by referendum in defiance of the state constitution’s guarantee of equal rights. The sight of conservatives sputtering hatred and filing lawsuits to stop the ungodly and disgusting sight of people publicly declaring their committed love for one another was downright hilarious.

To my eyes, this was gay people acting their best. It is true that the marriage licenses granted by San Francisco city officials were in violation of the state law enacted by referendum. But the city’s good-hearted decision to issue the licenses and the response of thousands of gay men and women constitutes a classic example of civil disobedience.

It was a massive protest against a special law enacted by the majority to render a minority second-class. Americans — especially American politicians — seem unable to recall their high school civics class. The U.S. Constitution protects minorities from the tyranny of majorities. That is what the officials in San Francisco understand — maybe they remember the Civil Rights Movement — and why a law excluding some people from civil marriage will eventually be overturned as unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, the right, fully knowing that, has decided it must amend the U.S. Constitution — a process that will take years — to specifically bar gay marriage. After decades of posturing about the sanctity of the Constitution as conceived by the founding fathers (the right to bear arms, for example), conservatives want to amend the document to ensure that, to marry, your penis must be inserted in the proper orifice.

The civil disobedience in San Francisco brings this utterly ludicrous drama into sharp focus. It also demonstrates a way out of the classism I’ve discussed here in the last few columns.

The well-documented difficulty of growing up in a homophobic culture is that gay people often unconsciously adopt the very hostile values that oppress them. A primary example is the way gay men tend to sort themselves into a hierarchy of approval according to their replication of perceived masculinity and associated values in the dominant culture.

It is an oversimplification to say categorically that muscle boys are at the top of the pyramid (although in media culture that is certainly true). What happens is that those outside that group, say “bears,” can become as hostile toward muscle boys as the latter may be toward transsexuals. Since the hostility runs in all directions, it’s fair to say that this “looksism,” far from just an aesthetic sexual choice, is really a vehicle by which gay people replicate among themselves the broader culture’s intolerance. Desire itself becomes inscribed with intolerance.

The civil disobedience in San Francisco represents a complete overthrow of intolerance on behalf of love. Gay people need to more fully recover in their treatment in one another the motives of their activism: love and tolerance. It has become fashionable to claim that being gay carries no meaning other than the gender of one’s sex partner, but the scene in San Francisco demonstrates how much more being gay does mean. It means, like it or not, revolution.

As authors Michael Bronski (The Pleasure Principle) and David Nimmons (The Soul Beneath the Skin) have written, gay culture really is a menace to the dominant culture, precisely because it is so alternative at its best. The peaceful civil disobedience in San Francisco demonstrates a little recognized fact that Nimmons documents: Public violence in gay culture is virtually nonexistent. He also documents that volunteerism among gay people is far higher than among straight people — and for strictly gay causes only about half the time.

Bronski has written at length about the way gay sex exists solely for the purpose of pleasure and intimacy, and thus defies the conservative belief that sex is fundamentally procreative and should be confined within a monogamous relationship in order to preserve the family. Nimmons documents that gay people more often manage to conduct relationships with less jealousy and possessiveness, frequently making monogamy secondary to more substantial definitions of love.

Gay people’s bodies express something far more revolutionary than a desire for a sex partner of the same gender. When we remember this, the differences in the way we develop our bodies’ appearance become expressions of diversity instead of hierarchal barriers.

cliff.bostock@creativeloafing.com

Cliff Bostock will be speaking on “Gods and Geeks: Body Classism in Gay Culture” at 8 p.m. Fri., Feb. 27, at Outwrite Bookstore, as part of “Listen to Your Body Week” (www.edin-ga.org).