Now I will tackle one more issue, gay people and bullying. I do not tell people, "look, I sleep with men and you better like it and not say a word about it. If you do, you need to go to prison or worse!" If I did, I would be facing multiple attacks daily. So for LGBT to feel that it's ok to wear who they sleep with on their sleeve and not have anything said about it, is a little ridiculous. I had a gay manager that went about what she did and did not make an issue out of who she slept with. We all knew but she wasn't ready to fight anyone who said anything about it, and for that reason to my knowledge, few, if any, said anything. If she had come in saying, "I'm gay now what do you have to say about it? You better flaunt and approve of me or you're screwed up in the head," the outcome would have certainly been different. Bullying has existed for years...but until LGBT...kids just suffered. I'm sure a law will eventually be passed for bullies of LGBT but as for the rest of the ugly, poor, disabled, African American kids, they will be lost in the shuffle and continue to suffer.
--Comment posted on my Facebook wall by a former friend
One of my earliest memories is an image of a man and woman in a brass bed riding down the street. It was a scene from the old TV series Love American Style. Those who remember it might recall that fireworks were used in the opening credits. Of course the big brass bed was the conjugal bed, and the fireworks symbolized orgasmic release. I didn’t understand this when I was five years old, but the iconography of heterosexual sex and romance were already being planted in my mind before I even started school. I’m not complaining about Love American Style. It was a fun show. I liked it. And I don’t think I was too young for it. But since I’m gay, I didn’t exactly relate directly to the heterosexuality on display. It would have been nice if I had seen some gay couples enjoying the comic bliss of romance, but they didn’t show that kind of thing on TV back in the early 70’s.
Of course Love American Style was merely the tip of the ice burg. Lots of TV shows, movies, fairytales and stories depicted heterosexual romance and courtship. I knew that my parents were married. I knew that the couple that lived beside us was married. I knew many heterosexual couples were married. And that’s fine. I’m not knocking heterosexuality. I don’t feel as though I was exposed to it too early. I don’t feel I was damaged by it. But I wasn’t being told the full story.
When I was ten or eleven, some of my friends discovered nudie magazines, and they let me look at the ladies with them. Some of the women posed in ways that were quite provocative, not just nude, but highly suggestive. I began to pick up on how certain clues--short shorts, tight blouses, etc.--were meant to convey that a woman might be sexually available. About the same time, I noticed how men indicated that they were out on the make. Some wore tight jeans, stuffed their t-shirts into their back pockets and swaggered about bare-chested. There was something about the facial expressions of these men and women that told me they were searching for special company. And when they found a date, they let everyone know by holding hands, groping and kissing their catch. How could I miss the heterosexual dance? Or the fact that it seemed to have been going on forever?
While in high school, our local cable company offered a porn channel, and for a couple of weeks, it was given to everyone free of charge. Being the curious and hormone driven teenager that I was, I tuned in late at night a few times after my parents had gone to sleep. One scene involved an older woman seducing a teenage boy. She had him strip and then gave him oral sex. Then she had him put his penis inside her vagina after she had inserted a vibrator in her anus. She talked to him and gave him instructions as if he were a small child. She asked him if he could feel the vibrator in her anus providing extra stimulation to his penis while he screwed her. He shook his head yes like a dutiful little boy, and she told him how lucky he was that a real woman who knew how to please a man was taking his virginity.
There was some homosexual porn on that channel, too, but it was fake lesbian porn that had been produced to turn on heterosexual men. One scene was a period piece involving a young girl who was to get married the next day. The girl’s aunt and mother had a secret talk with the girl so that they could tell her about the facts of life. The aunt explained that her soon to be husband’s penis would get hard like a finger and that he would want to put it inside her. When the girl failed to understand, the mother held up the girl’s dress, and the aunt took down her knickers and fingered her until she had an orgasm. Then the mother and aunt took turns going down on the girl.
These images and scenarios were streamed into my bedroom when I was about fourteen. I’m not complaining. We all have our fantasies, and some of them are wild and woolly. And I dind't mind seeing the women either. I think women are beautiful. I just don’t want to have sex with them. In a way, the porn films were instructional. I learned a few things about female anatomy and how women got off. I was curious about those kinds of things. But what bothers me is that while growing up I didn't have the pleasure of seeing two men happily living together, or holding hands or kissing. Where were my role models?
Of course things have changed, and now in certain parts of the country, some gay people are as bold as brass. You might see a bare-chested lesbian on a motorcycle or a gay boy stripped down to his Speedos if you go to a Pride Parade. You might see gay people holding hands and kissing right out in the open if you go to certain neighborhoods in San Francisco, Palm Springs, New York or Key West. Some may make drunken fools of themselves as many heterosexual kids did every single weekend night while I was living in the college town of Morgantown, WV.
My former friend whom I quoted above went to Key West a couple of years ago, and on discovering that I was gay, she felt the need to inform me of all the lurid homosexual shenanigans she saw there--she told me about peeking in at a bar where go-go boys danced in their skivvies on tabletops and about a lesbian who made a couple of passes at her in the street. She told me that “decent” people were put off by such things.
It seems she forgot that there is a so-called gentleman’s club less than twenty miles from her house where young ladies pole dance for those fine, “decent” heterosexual men who live around her. It seems she has forgotten that more than a few of those fine, “decent” heterosexual men can come on a bit too strong after downing a few drinks.
If you don’t like people dancing in suggestive ways in bars with few clothes on, then fine. If you don’t like it when people don’t know when to back off after having had too much to drink, then fine. But if you’re going to hold gay people to a different standard, and suggest that all of us or most of us are always out there partying like the world will end tomorrow, then you’re a bigot.
My former friend also felt the need to tell me that she thought homosexuality was a choice, and that older men or boys seduced young boys into it before they knew what they were getting themselves into. She expressed fear that a pervy older gay man or boy would get hold of her son and “make him go wrong.”
I did my best to explain that being gay wasn’t a choice and that you couldn’t “turn” someone gay. I figured that maybe she was confused about the issue and that she had gotten hold of some bad information. But rather than listening to me, I found out that she was clinging to this idea of choice and recruitment a year later. That’s what bigots do. They ignore the truth and hold onto their negative stereotypes. They’re not really interested in the truth. They’re interested in maintaining the fiction that they’re superior.
The final straw came when my former friend posted the above comment on my Facebook wall. It seemed to me that someone who would say such things is not my friend. Aside from the fact that her statement is absurd, it is devoid of respect or consideration. This is a person who doesn’t care one bit if she hurts me.
I find it ironic that she accused gay people, and I suppose me specifically, of flaunting our sexuality. I’ve known this person since we were in middle school, and she didn’t know I was gay until we were in our forties. And she still wouldn’t know even now if she hadn’t asked me to friend her on Facebook. I saw no reason to tell her. We now live on opposite sides of the country. However, I didn't want to deny her friend request. She had been good to me in many ways in the past. But I think of my Facebook wall as my space, so I decided if she wanted to be there, then she was going to see the gay related news stories I read and pictures of men I think are attractive. I guess she wasn't expecting me to be so open and direct there, but if she thinks I’m flaunting it after thirty years of discretion, then whatever.
As for her claim that she has always been discrete and that she could expect to be attacked if she were open about her sexuality… Please. This person told me about the man she was dating back when we were in high school. She told me about her subsequent boyfriends after that. And nearly everyone who knows her is aware of the fact that she’s married and has a son. She may as well have STRAIGHT tattooed on her forehead.
You really find out who your friends are when you come out to them. Some don’t care. Some are shocked at first but come around in time. And others show their true homophobic colors. I never felt free to be myself back in the conservative little town where I grew up. That is where my former friend lives to this day. If she ever wondered why I never had a girlfriend or got married, she certainly never asked. I imagine that she did suspect, but when she was confronted with the truth, she seemed to lose the ability to remain civil toward me. I guess she thought that if I was “that way” I should just keep it to myself even on my Facebook wall and when she was telling me how “decent” straight people found my tribe disgusting when they let their hair down in the handful of spots across the country where we go to be free. Never mind that straight people are allowed to do the exact same things everywhere, even in our small conservative hometown. I guess she was willing to be my friend so long as she could say whatever she wanted while I stayed silent and remembered my place. Um…no thanks.
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A bigot is someone who jumps to negative conclusions about a group based on incomplete or faulty information and ignores evidence that would contradict those negative conclusions.
A revolting bigot is someone who jumps to still more negative conclusions about a group based on incomplete or faulty information after their first negative conclusions were proven to be questionable.
A revolting bigoted jackass is someone who does all of the above while posing as a friend of a member of the maligned group.
They're going to think poorly of you no matter what you do because that's their goal. They can't go on thinking they're better than you unless they do hold onto their bigotry, so you may as well flaunt it.
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