On gay identity

A couple of young adults I know asked me for my opinion on this story: “I am Not Gay . . . I am David.” Here is what I wrote:

I’m sure you have some expectation of my response, given it’s no big secret that I’m fairly liberal. You may also know that I have a hard time giving a short answer to a lot of questions. So… be careful what you ask for, you might get it…

But before you read my rather lengthy response (and I hope it doesn’t become a TL;DR because I did take a while to think about it and write it!), you might find this story interesting – it presents quite a different perspective:

www.dallasvoice.com/true-romance-finding-love-midst-antigay-reparative-therapy-1064412.html

That story is a true life story, as opposed to a bunch of thoughts and opinions, so it’s worth a fair amount more in many ways than the scads of words I’ve written below. But you asked for my thoughts, and here they are, or at least some of them.

This certainly isn’t a short-answer question, and it heads into questions of identity, sociocultural identifications, and personality – and, of course, theology.

Prosen is right that there is a difference between the identities one takes on and one’s inclinations. A person may be inclined to a given thing but may not take on as part of his identity this or that group identification that is related to that inclination. We see this in many areas; for instance, among deaf people, there are some who are part of a Deaf culture that defines itself against hearing people and has a strong in-group identity, and others who prefer to take a more integrative approach, while at the same time still not being able to hear – and not necessarily thinking less of themselves for it.

But there is no such thing as a person who does not take on any identities at all. Ask a person to describe themself, or describe someone you know, and you will find the description will include the group identifications they are associated with – groups that come with certain sets of assumptions and norms and so on. We’re Canadians, and we’re Christians, and we’re geeks of one sort or another, for instance; I’m also a runner and a choral singer and an editor. Some of these are things I like to do, and there are things that come with that; others are things I believe in, or geographical and cultural associations. I am not absolutely and only what the groups I identify with dictate, and you will not find anyone who is entirely like the stereotypical member of this or that group. It just happens that humans are social beings and tend to find sets of people to be with and to be like.

Adolescence and young adulthood is a time when people are trying to find their way in life, and it is a time when people are really seeking groups to identify with, to give them ways ot belong and patterns of behaviour to guide them. No church group is as fervent as a church youth group, for instance. It’s always a time of diving in. High schools are famously cliquey; even in university, you have the artsies and the jocks and the gears and so on, and you have subgroups such as the ones who play role-playing games or do salsa dancing or or or. Some people are more towards the periphery of these associations and take them more lightly, and some, especially those who find themselves in a conflicted or uncertain and insecure position in life, dive full-on into a particular group identity. The kids who go all goth or all punk or full-on metalhead are generally the ones who have always felt like misfits for one reason or another – there are a lot of geeks among metalheads, for instance. They find a group that they can identify with and they throw themselves into it with intensity. And then later they may ease off, or they may abjure that group entirely if they find that they’re not exactly like it either but they haven’t gained a secure sense of self such that they can exist with it without feeling they have to go all the way with it.

This is certainly the way it is with many young exceptionally intellectual people; I’ve seen that story enough times. Some are lucky enough to sort out their misfittingness and get a good grip, especially if they have a supportive environment and one that doesn’t make them feel abnormal and rejected for being intelligent. Others never really manage to carve their own way with a judicious mix of this and that, because they don’t feel stable and accepted enough. You will have smart kids who find the only group they find to hang out with are anti-intellectual toughs, and it can be a long time – or never – before they find that they can just follow their intellect and pick and choose among the identifications to make their own. And of course not deny their intelligence!

Naturally, the same goes – and often much more so – for young people who are homosexual rather than heterosexual. If they’re in an environment where that’s reasonably accepted and seen as not problematic – and such environments do exist – then they are able to live lives as balanced and happy as straight kids. They’re not needing to go out and prove themselves one way or another. They still have the emotional ups and downs of life (especially life in youth), but they aren’t constantly looking at every emotional inclination under a magnifying glass; they aren’t, with every romantic act, pushing against one side or another. But it’s hardly surprising that someone in Prosen’s circumstance will find himself feeling he must choose between a very strong, overt, thoroughgoing version of a “gay” identity and an identity that rejects homosexuality as wrong. It’s a false dichotomy – there certainly is a middle way between extreme and not at all – but think of what it would be like if you were surrounded by people who condemned use of the intellect, any sort of mental inquiry or inclination, etc., and the people you met who were interested in the use of the brain were computer hackers. Some choice, eh? You might at first join the hackers, and then, recognizing how empty and harmful what they were doing was, reject use of the intellect because you didn’t think there was any other option.

Proser makes a big mistake in thinking there is one gay identity. It’s no surprise that he would reject shallowness and promiscuity – most people straight or gay do eventually if they ever go in for it in the first place – but the all-or-nothing approach he has taken has kept him from seeing that there are gay people whose lives are as simple, consistent, caring, deep, and constant and, well, normal as those of the straight people he knows. He might as well have concluded there is one “straight” identity on the basis of watching behaviour at singles bars on Friday nights. Not all straight people are interested in one-night stands and crappy game-playing; not all guys only care about sex and sports, and not all girls only care about looks and money. But it’s not too hard to be a part of a social set where in fact those are the norms.

And if, like Proser, so many of the people you know and have grown up with stigmatize and anathematize “gayness,” you will certainly come to doubt your judgement rightly or wrongly, and your desire not to have a permanent rupture with your family and friends will make you feel bad about doing something they disapprove of. There have, in history, even in our society up to somewhat less than a century ago, been many young women who have wanted to have careers of their own and follow their intellectual pursuits, but who have met with so much opposition and condemnation that they have concluded that it was wicked and wrong of them to want to do so in defiance of their place in the home. They felt guilty for following their natural inclinations, and they suppressed their dreams because they concluded that they had been wrong and had followed a path of waywardness. I’m not making this up at all. So the fact that Proser feels guilty does not mean that what he was doing was actually wrong or sinful, just that it was creating a social-emotional rupture for him that he could not bear.

I have quite a few gay friends, and they really come in as many different sorts as my straight friends. There are actually a lot of “gay” types and identities. In general the ones who are past their mid-30s are pretty bored with the bar-hopping scene, if they were ever into it at all, just like straight people around the same age. Two of the most stable and loving couples with well-raised kids I know are lesbian couples. One of my closest friends is a gay man who really can’t be bothered with practically anything about the stereotypical “gay” identity – he doesn’t dress in tight pants or muscle shirts (he’s not a body boy), he doesn’t use a “gay” inflection in his speech, or any of the other things people might expect. But he still likes to drink at gay bars sometimes because they’re friendly atmospheres that he feels at home in. Other gay male friends I have still do take on more of the identity, because it gives them a sense of validation and belonging (and likely because they really feel more themselves!). But, then, I have a Russian friend (not gay) who’s been in Canada for 30 years and still plays up the Russian angle, complete with speaking towards the bottom of his vocal range as many Slavic men will do. Some people just happen to like this or that bit of an identification and its pattern of behaviour. That’s true everywhere.

But one thing doesn’t change for my gay friends, and that’s that they’re still attracted to who they’re attracted to. That’s true for everyone. And your inclinations are an important part of your personality. We all like certain kinds of music and certain kinds of art and certain sports and so on, and those are things that help define us. And sexual attraction is a big thing that defines us! Think of the people you’ve been attracted to. They’re probably fairly similar one to another not just in their gender but in more particular details – certain kinds of personalities, certain kinds of appearance, and so on. You will have no problem thinking of people of the opposite sex whom you do not find in the least attractive. You would certainly not want to be told that if you were to be attracted to anyone, you had to be attracted to those people you find unattractive. It really is a part of who you are that you are inclined this way and not that way in any particular regard.

In some societies, young girls are married off to much older men. On the other hand, it used to be the case in China, at least among certain classes, that barely adolescent boys were married off to women twice their age. Do you find these ideas unappealing? Would you accept that? And yet in many cultures people simple marry as they’re told. We generally like to think that love and attraction are a better basis for marriage than simply being told you have to marry this person, although in some cultures that’s still just the way they do it. We see that physical attraction is an aid to the romantic an emotional attraction that allows two people to form a bond that leads to building a life together. We consider it more holy to marry for love, and I think we’re right about that. There’s more to it, of course.

But think about if you were to spend your life together, not married but in a domestic arrangement equal to marriage minus the sex, with your best friend. Someone the same sex as you, someone you really like as a person but are not attracted to. Say you were told that sex is wrong and sinful and the best thing to do is to live in a chaste long-term emotional relationship with a good friend. Well, that’s better than being in a forced marriage with someone you don’t like, but is it as good as marriage? Would you like to be given only that option? And is that something that’s just a question of behaviour or inclination and is incidental to who you really are?

This hypothetical case may be just hypothetical for you, but there are many who have taken very seriously the idea that all sex is sinful and that, as Paul says in I Corinthians 7, it’s better to be unmarried because all romantic relations distract one from serving God. There are other Christians who believe that it is precisely through marriage, the deepest bond one may have with another person, that one is able to open oneself up the most, and serve God through serving another – fully expressing love for another member of God’s creation. Indeed, in the Orthodox Church, while there are monks, it is expected that priests will be married and, if I recall correctly, it is required that bishops be married.

Of course, Paul’s word is not gospel. Paul was a man full of the spirit and dedicated to spreading the good news, but it’s not simply that not everyone thinks that the words from Paul’s pen came straight from God; even most modern Catholics disregard Paul’s advice on some matters, for instance whether women should cover their heads in church. Likewise modern Christians disregard many of the laws set down in the Old Testament – women wear “men’s clothing,” we all eat pork and shellfish and wear mixed fabrics, we do not think it right to keep slaves, men do not avoid contact with women who are at “that time of the month” (well, not for religious reasons, anyway), and so on. So we must recognize that we are already choosing, on the basis of spiritual discernment (and perhaps other reasons too), which parts of the Bible other than the words of Christ to believe. And, for that matter, there is a lot of argument about how to understand the words of Christ, too. We turn to the Holy Spirit, and we heed above all the commandment to love, and we understand that we know people by their fruits: that which leads to love of God and to love of other humans is consistent with the spirit of Christ, and that which leads away from either would seem to be inconsistent with the spirit of Christ.

Now, Catholics, of course, have, beyond the scripture, also the authority of the church and its ecclesiastical tradition. Adherence to that might seem to be a matter of divine ordination, but in fact acceptance of its authority is contingent on acceptance of its authority – the interpretation of scripture on the basis of which the apostolic succession in the line of Peter gives authority to the popes and from them to the church as a whole is disputed by non-Catholics, and the authority for the interpretation rests on, well, the authority of the Pope and the judgement of the person choosing to accept that authority.

If you happen to accept the authority of the Catholic teaching, then of course the matter is easy: a person who is not attracted to members of the opposite sex has the door forever closed on one of the great deep emotional (and, many say, spiritual) experiences of humanity. The same goes, of course, for anyone anywhere who simply never meets a person he or she is attracted to, but that’s a bit different from meeting someone you want to spend the rest of your life with and being told that it is evil and wrong to do so.

If you want to look for reinforcement outside of Catholic teaching, you may find that it is problematic where it comes. The argument from design falls apart quickly for a couple of reasons: first, God obviously does make some people who are attracted to the same sex and not the opposite sex, just as God makes people who are left-handed (which was once looked at askance too). I find it ironic that anyone would say that a creation of God is contrary to the creative wisdom of God; that’s like when people said the platypus must be contrary to God’s will. God is consistently more creative than humans, and some humans really put a lot of energy into trying to put limits on what of God’s creativity is deemed acceptable. To say that the human body is not designed for homsexuality is not exactly correct; it is not designed for homosexual reproduction, but love really is about more than reproduction, and there’s no impediment to all the rest of it by design. And all that “rest of it” matters. We are not photocopiers; humans are obviously designed to engage in sexual behaviour even when conception is not possible (most of any given month for any given female, just for starts), and are designed to be inclined to do so too. People who can’t have children, even people who don’t want children, still have legitimate loving relationships. Two people who marry past the age of bearing children still have a legitimate spiritual bond and a legitimate marriage. And adoption is also not an abomination. As I mentioned, I have friends who are lesbian who have children – one of each couple is the mother of a given child, and the other is an adoptive mother biologically but is as much a parent as anyone who takes a full parental role in raising a child.

In order to say homosexuality is harmful, you have to identify the locus of the harm. Homosexuality does not equal promiscuity, so while we can see promiscuity as problematic, that has no specific bearing on homosexuality. To say it is harmful because it violates the body, you have to say how it does so. We’ve already looked at the question of design; in terms of permanent damage to the body, tattoos and ear piercing are obviously viewable as damage, and even cutting hair and shaving would seem to be more direct violations of the integrity of the body. Homosexuality does no such damage. If we say it is harmful because it is sinful, we have to ask how it is sinful and why. Jesus said nothing one way or another about it, so we have to draw conclusions from what he did say and the spirit of his words, and we have to determine whether we want to follow other laws and judgements in the Bible – remembering that if we want to appeal to Leviticus as an authority, for instance, we are doing ourselves out of a lot of ham-and-cheese sandwiches, just to start with. And if we say it is sinful because it is harmful, we have a circularity problem because we are saying it is harmful because it is sinful.

For me, the matter is simple: some of the nicest, most spiritual, most caring, most sensible people I know are gay; some of the most stable, loving, exemplary relationships I have seen are between two people of the same sex. To be sure, others of the caring people and loving relationships are heterosexual; I don’t mean to cast aspersions on heterosexuality! But, while David Prosen has his own choices to make and his own issues to deal with, and while he will undoubtedly find his life a lot easier and simpler if he happens to fall in love with someone of the opposite sex after all this, I must say that he’s missing some important details, and I do hope he gains a fuller view over time. He may believe that he is separated from God if he pursues a same-sex attraction, but this has no basis; first of all, God is always everywhere and one is never truly separate from God, even if one acts against what God would have one do; second, he only thinks same-sex attraction is separatin from God because he has been told so over and over again. It’s like Huckleberry Finn fretting over helping a slave because he’s been told it’s wrong to do so. David Prosen feels with his whole heart that he has been created this way, then asks, quite rationally, how a loving God could make him that way and condemn him to hell, but from that he draws quite the wrong conclusion: he figures that God didn’t make him that way and that God will condemn him to hell for being that way.

Unfortunately, David Proser is setting himself on a path of doing quite a lot of hurt and damage. He has his own course to follow, and I hope he is able to follow it honestly and not run into a lot of repression and emotional upheaval. But I would also rather he not enfranchise those who aim to force others to live lives that are not natural to them, or to restrict them from expressing love truly and honestly.

OK, it’s late, and I’ve spent rather a lot of time on this and, if you’ve gotten this far, you’ve spent rather a bit of time reading it. So that’s a short (!) extract of my thoughts on the subject…