ALL in a DAY'S POSTING...

You can see where I was this morning down at the previous post [click here]. Well, today, Bigg over at East Overshoe [click here] posted this:

He shook his head, and I noticed that his cheeks were rather red. He wasn't just pretty upset, he was pissed. "You know what I think?"

"I bet you're going to tell me." Now, I regretted those words as soon as they were out of my mouth, but I said them. "Damn straight. I think you don't like her--hell, I think you hate her because you're so damn jealous of the time J spends with her and the fact that he loves her that it just eats you up inside. I think--" he said this part slowly, and didn't look at me--"I think you act sometimes like you're disappointed he's straight, and that's really shitty."

"You really think that." I in fact knew that he thought I was jealous over J and his attachment to her, but that last twist was news to me.

"Didn't you say to me that you wouldn't wish this on anyone? Didn't you tell me that you were glad J didn't even have to go through as much as I have--which isn't much--let alone some of the shit you've had to eat over it?"

Meanwhile, Jay over at Red State Gay Life [click here] posted this today:

Gay: Choice or not a choice? Can being gay be cured or not? Is being gay normal or not normal? These are all questions I’ve asked myself many times, and I’m sure that many (or most) other gay men have asked themselves at some point. I still ask myself these things all the time. I haven’t come up with any answers yet either.

The easiest one to come close to an firm answer is whether I chose to be gay or not. The answer is absolutely, positively no. I’m sure I’ve made it quite clear, that if I could make being gay go away, and make myself 100% straight, I would do it in a heartbeat...

I know I sure as hell didn’t choose to be gay, but was I made that way and if so why can’t I be “cured”. I can’t say that I was born gay. I wish I could, but too many things happened in my upbringing that may have messed me up. Did all those events combined may have made me gay? So if I didn’t choose to be gay, but it's more just a condition of my upbringing why can’t I get help to get over it? Lots of people see a therapist of some sort to help undo things that have happened in the past. Sometimes people even get medication to help them with these problems. So why is it that no one has tried to come up with a pill to cure being gay?

...Being gay is not normal (and I mean that by the literal definition of normal) so why aren’t there more traditional and acceptable means of getting over it. Why is it I have to look for something radical to try and overcome this? I don’t want to fight the craving to be with a man, I want it to go away. That may never happen I guess.

Sean commented:

Also, being gay is not “normal” because society treats it that way. If there are no preconceptions, religions, institutions, establishments, etc to make a pronouncement that favours the majority (because in nature, homosexuality represents the minority), I doubt that the normality of homosexuality will be questioned.

Manxxman commented:

I suppose while you are still struggling coming to terms with the fact that you are gay looking at gays from a hetro point of view seems logical.

Perhaps encouraged by the title of Jay's post,
"Warning: This Post May Piss You Off",
I waded in and left this comment:

Warning: This Comment May Piss You Off

Jay: If I had a dollar for every time I have heard people say: “If there are no preconceptions, religions, institutions, establishments, etc to make a pronouncement that favours the majority (because in nature, homosexuality represents the minority), I doubt that the normality of homosexuality will be questioned,” I would be a rich man. There has never been a human society without preconceptions, or value judgments about minority behavior of any sort; if anything, we live in the most minority-tolerant age there has ever been.

If I can say so without pissing the Manxxman off, or you for that matter, I personally find the comment “I suppose while you are still struggling coming to terms with the fact that you are gay, looking at gays from a hetro point of view seems logical,” profoundly offensive.

Since when has there been a single point of view on either side of the blanket? It is precisely that kind of thinking that CREATES phobias rather than acceptance. This is not to say that gay men do not have plenty of reason to distrust and fear the majority:

‘Gay men have until recently received powerful, general, uniform information on just how awful they were: not just from the way the Bible was used, but from the way secular law was enforced and interpreted. As a result, many of them stumble on the contradiction between what they are told and what they know to be true long before some other people. (Indeed, some people spend their lives avoiding the possibility that a contradiction might be staring them in the face.) The search for truth is just as likely, far more likely, to lead gay men away from all that has judged and outlawed them, than it is to lead them to seek meaning in confrontation between the “fact” of who they are and the demands of what is easily, and accurately, seen as a corrupt human institution.’
(http://trollatsea.blogspot.com/2008/05/dyslexics-ask-does-dog-exist.html)

But I repeat that the idea that because you accept one part of what being “gay” means, you have to accept a laundry list of things which you find uncongenial, is part of the problem.

Find out who YOU are, and build your life on that. Don’t think about what anyone else thinks you should be, your family or your Blog Buddies, but just WHO [and not what] you are. When you find that, you have really gotten somewhere. The rest of us just get in the way.

Of course, you need to do that in a way that causes as little suffering to other people as possible. But even Christ said that we should love our neighbor “as ourselves,” not “to the exclusion of ourselves.”

Hang in there. Time may very well tell.
T@C

Romach [click here] had also posted this:

I was afraid to be myself because of the amount of hate that was around but when I finally did embrace it in every way my life started to take off. I was at one with myself because I didn’t give a flying f**k anymore what anyone thought. I was me, I was happy and I knew I was a decent kind, loving, generous, honest person.

I suddenly realized that those things were more important to me that this label of being ‘gay’. I spent too long labeling myself as ‘gay’. Once you get past that label and start to accept yourself for who you are, You will be surprised at how easy and nice and great your life can be.

So I honestly don't know why I didn't just echo him and leave well alone. Maybe it's because I have never been able to. Maybe it was the heat.

But Jay is asking a serious question:

At what point does self-acceptance trump everything else?

Soon after the Brits had legalized homosexuality in 1967, Monty Python did a great sketch on the way it had been handled [a BBC report on "The Mouse Problem," click here] which featured Graham Chapman as a "psychiatrist" talking head who says:

Well, we psychiatrists have found that over 8% of the population will always be mice, I mean, after all, there's something of the mouse in all of us. I mean, how many of us can honestly say that at one time or another he hasn't felt sexually attracted to mice. I know I have.

I mean, most normal adolescents go through a stage of squeaking two or three times a day. Some youngsters on the other hand, are attracted to it by its very illegality. It's like murder--make a thing illegal and it acquires a mystique.

Look at arson--I mean, how many of us can honestly say that at one time or another he hasn't set fire to some great public building. I know I have.

The only way to bring the crime figures down is to reduce the number of offences--get it out in the open--I know I have.

[Chapman, whose "A Liar's Autobiography" was co-authored by his partner, David Sherlock, was John Cleese's close collaborator on "Python." He has long been one of my heroes, not only for being so deliciously funny, but for entertaining an entire (male) Chinese sports team for the weekend. Now there's a man who knows what he wants.]

At what point does self-acceptance trump everything else?
When does it become a crime not to accept yourself as you are?
And where do you draw the line?
It's not as easy as you think...

Hang in there.
C