Gay Rites

TNG is taking a much needed break from Dec 19-Jan 4. TNG will return with new content on Jan 5. Until then, please enjoy this post from the past year. Original publish date: 4/28/08.

I'm fascinated by an article called "Gay Rites," which appears in this week's New York times Magazine. It tells the story of how Massachusetts gay couples in their 20s are increasingly making the choice to marry.

What's compelling is the idea that because younger gays and lesbians are coming out in more accepting environments, they feel as normal as their straight counterparts, and like heterosexuals, they are more willing to make marriage commitments and start families (with children). The article mentions that this change in acceptance has happened so quickly that even gays in their early 30s are left out of this paradigm shift. I'm one of them.

Most of us don't escape the closet unscathed. Wounds are inflicted that scar our self-esteem, and these wounds don't heal easily in a mainstream culture that is rooted in oppression. We don't know how to relate to one another outside of a culture that primarily esteems image and sexual babylon, and we quickly arrive at a pragmatic understanding that mature love and committed relationships are not acheivable...at least not as long as you're plugged into the matrix of mainstream culture. After years of repairing the damage from internal and external homophobia and negotiating a gay culture that chases its own ego across the pages of a designer underwear catalog, I've finally found peace of mind, perspective, and balance. However, while the wounds are no longer open, I still have visible scars, the most prominent among them also being one of the newest--cynicism.

While I don't make a bitter show of my cynicism, it's in my heart. I commonly recognize its subtle form in frequent conversations among my peers, our mutually reinforcing common experiences making hope the target of a mutually reinforced threat. "Don't you dare trust," it warns with the knowledge of one too many foolishly broken hearts. "Don't you dare believe you can have what straight people have," it implies with an understanding of the inherent limitations of deeply flawed faggots. "Straight people don't even have what straight people have," we say in acknowledgement of their institutional failures, as if the image of satisfying relationships are not only an illusion for us, but for everyone. And monogamy? That's just impossible.

Yet in spite of these beliefs that have cemented our identity as if they were incontrovertible laws of nature, the next generation of gay people are starting to prove us wrong. My own boyfriend, who is 22 (10 year difference) is doing a particularly fine job of this. In spite of my latent cynicism of what's possible between men (particularly with an age difference) and my own socialization as a gay man who has accepted the culture of "find em, fuck em, and forget em" as normal, his love for me has been nothing short of transformative, and I've had to reconsider everything that I've learned to think of as true.

It's true that straight marriage, at least the way that many straight people do it, doesn't hold much appeal to me and many other gay people. There's also the possibility that my cynicism is well founded, and these many gay couples will be broken on the rocks of pragmatism. I hope not. In fact, I'm trying hard to be a believer. For every old queen that sneers at the idea of marriage and family and every young(er) queer that doubts the veracity of commitment, I hope these couples prove us wrong. I'm watching them. Many of us are, and we're ready for them to show us how it's done.