Nietzsche: 'I will not deceive, not even myself'; and with that we stand on the ground of morality.

Anita Bryant - "Paper Roses"

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'I will not deceive, not even myself'; and with that we stand on the ground of morality.

--Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

This sentence captured my attention about twenty-five years ago when I first read it, and it has stuck with me ever since. It is a radical departure from my earliest moral training. As a small child, I was taught that we were supposed to love our neighbor. Love is the cornerstone of Christianity, and many Christians put a great deal of effort into trying to love others. But I think because love in the Christian religion has so often been proffered as a commandment rather than a worthy but sometimes unattainable goal, it has lead to emotional dishonesty. And this is why I immediately noticed a disconnect between the Christian morality that I was brought up with and the morality Nietzsche was advocating.

I have met many real and genuine people who identify as Christian, but nearly all of my life I have felt a special kind of dread of a specific kind of Christian. When I was younger, I couldn’t quite explain why certain Christians disturbed me, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but eventually I figured it out. And no, I’m not talking about the hellfire and brimstone variety--although they can be most troublesome, too. It’s the smiley face Christians who make me feel intensely awkward, the ones who never admit to having negative emotions. They are never true, and when talking to them, I can’t help but hear false notes all over the place. Because they believe they are commanded to love, they can’t bring themselves to admit they fall short from day to day. They turn love into something that’s plastic and phony. I guess they think they can fake it and no one will notice, but I notice. I think that many of them have faked it for so long they don’t really know what honest love is.

I suspect that many gay Christians are susceptible to being sucked into “ex-gay” therapy because they were raised to lie about their emotions. To be “ex-gay” is to pretend to be something you’re not. To be “ex-gay” is to convince yourself that you can ignore your real emotions and substitute them with emotions you think you should have. For those who believe they’ve been commanded to love and are loath to admit that they fail in this task, pretending that they’ve overcome your homosexuality is just more of the same.

This great pretense of love can cause people to be passive in the face of injustice. I have seen how certain Christians will turn a blind eye to some terrible things, especially when those things are done by fellow Christians. I have also seen how some rationalize their hostility by defining it as love. If you’re an outsider caught between these two types of Christians, then God help you. On the one hand you have the passive, phony ones who offer you platitudes and large grins that mask their true feelings, and on the other, you have those who will gladly lash out at you and ignore your pleas for mercy and call what they do love. These two groups are part of a mutual admiration society. They have a vested interest in pretending to love when they don’t.

I don’t mean to lump all Christians together. As I’ve already stated, there are real and genuine, emotionally honest Christians, and I’m sure their numbers are great. They do not go through their lives fanatically insisting all they feel is love and everything they do is an act of love. But for others simply misapplying the word is good enough.

It might be a fine thing to aim to love your neighbor, but you always have to start where you are. Cheating will not help you get to your destination any faster. If you are in, say, Knoxville, and it’s your desire to stand on the coast of Oregon and lick the salty waters of the Pacific from your finger tips, it just won’t do if you only travel so far as the puddle in the road in front of your house and claim you have arrived.

The Simple Things We Want

We all remember what happened to the kids who were different. We all remember what it was like for kids who didn’t conform to gender stereotypes and those suspected of being gay. Many of us experienced the bullying that often goes along with not blending in. Many of us remember the shame and guilt. Many of us remember what it was like to believe that our tormentors might be right about us and that maybe something was wrong with us. Many of us remember what it was like to not have friends, family, teachers, ministers, neighbors we could count on when the world seemed to be against us. Many of us know what it’s like to be afraid our secret will get out and those we care about will turn against us. We know the loneliness. We know that the memories of it haunt us. It’s not a small thing. It’s not something that all kids go through or should go through. It does not build character. It serves no useful purpose. It is simply needless pain that sometimes never completely goes away. It slows us down. It keeps us from reaching our full potential. It kills some of us.

You can not call LGBT people abominations, you can not claim they have a diabolical agenda, you can not claim they can chose to be straight if they want to, you can not claim that they recruit and indoctrinate young people and then insist that you’re innocent when your campaign of hate filters down to the kids who are different. We did not spring fully formed into the world. We were young once, and the haters remember us when we were young even if they pretend not to. They aim to break our spirits. They want us to believe we are inferior. And they know they can’t successfully destroy our self-esteem unless they begin tearing us down when we’re young. They want us to grow up in a hostile environment. They want us to be told over and over again when we’re young and impressionable that people like us don’t measure up. They cling to their sense of superiority. They want to hold onto it so much they call it their religion. And they want everyone to believe that when we merely ask for fairness and respect, for ourselves and our youth, we are attacking their religion.

We are not out to destroy the world, or even anyone’s religion. What we want are very simple things. We want our families to love us for who we are. We do not want to have to figure ourselves out all on our own and then educate the people who are supposed to support us. We don’t want to be mocked and teased and ridiculed and threatened relentless. We do not want to live in fear of abuse if we slip and let the wrong person see a glimpse of who we really are. We want to be ourselves and not be afraid. We want dreams and hopes to be our birthright. We want to live…freely, openly, without shame or fear. We want what everyone wants.

　

Remembering A Room With A View

Merchant Ivory’s A Room With A View (1985), staring Maggie Smith and Helena Bonham Carter, was my introduction to E.M. Forster. It’s a story about youth and the sense of adventure that accompanies going out into the world as an adult for the first time and discovering possibilities you never even imagined. It’s also a story about the anxieties and self-doubt that generally plague us when we’re young. When I first saw this film as a young man, it was like a revelation. I felt very close to Lucy Honeychurch. She had led a rather restricted life. She was locked into a role, and she didn’t know how to free herself from it. I understood that. Lucy’s muddle was my muddle. I had hidden away my real self for the sake of blending in and going along to get along. I had done this for so many years that I didn’t fully understand exactly who I was or what I wanted. And I didn’t know how to pursue my goals because I was unsure of my goals. I was a tongue tied bundle of nerves, and if someone like George had come into my life, it probably would have scared me to death. I wasn’t even ready for Cecil, much less George. And the one I really wanted, Freddy, seemed so far out of my reach I was sure that I could only dream about having someone as lovely as Freddy. He was so cute, so pretty, so joyful and playful. And his hair… It was long in front so he could comb it back, but it was so light and feathery it never stayed in place. Every time he tilted his head forward his baby fine brown hair would cascade over his face.

Even though both Lucy and I couldn’t get past the strictures of our society, I envied Lucy. Her prison seemed to be a much more genteel prison than mine. I would have loved to have grown up in such a beautiful, stable home, surrounded by such loving, nice people.

This film meant so much to me that I watched it at least two or three times a year throughout my twenties. Seeing it always reminded me that the world was still fresh for me, still filled with possibilities. Watching it filled me with a sense of hope and optimism. While engaged in the story, I could believe my adventure was emergent and exciting things were about to happen. I could believe I could have a nice, comfortable honest life, a beautiful home, passion and love. The film made me happy to be alive.

I recently watched the film again after many years and discovered that it still had the power to make me feel good. I still adore all the characters. But I now see the story from the vantage point of someone who is middle aged and not young. I now more fully realize that, in its own quiet way, A Room With A View is a cautionary tale; if you want your view, you can’t be ashamed to ask for it and take it when it’s offered.

Lucy is surrounded by people who have led buttoned down lives, people who have allowed passion to slip by even when it was right there for the taking--her cousin, Charlotte Bartlett, the Reverend Mr. Beebe, the Miss Alans, Mr. Eager, Cecil Vyse and even Eleanor Lavish. Miss Lavish liked to present herself as a woman of the world who was open for anything, but she came off as a bit ridiculous, and the reason for this is because she was self-deluded. She was every bit the English tourist in Italy as those she chastised for going about the country with their travel guides in hand, and her racy novels were nothing more than schoolgirl fantasies. Eleanor Lavish was a woman of 50 who was still in the midst of adolescence. She could dream about passion, and she could imagine living a different way, but she never found the courage to realize her dreams.

The Reverend Mr. Beebe was a very sweet man, but when I was young, he seemed so scrubbed, polite and sexless. And of course that’s because he was scrubbed, polite and sexless. Freddy and George talked him into going skinny dipping, and it was only then that he was reminded that he had a body and that it could be used for something other than a clothes hanger for his clerical uniform. When I watched the film again the other day, I was struck by how young Mr. Beebe looked, and I was shocked to find out that Simon Callow was only in his mid 30’s--more than ten years younger than I am now--when he played Mr. Beebe. Back in my early twenties, I thought he and Denholm Elliott, who played Mr. Emerson, were about the same age. Mr. Beebe looked old to me because he acted old.

At this late date, it’s hard for me to have as much hope for the future as I did when I was Lucy’s age, and if Freddy seemed out of reach back then, it now seems as if he no longer even exists in my world. Maybe I’m doomed to play the part of Miss Lavish. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my days gushing on about my boyhood desires while pretending not a day has passed since my sixteenth birthday. If some find me foolish, then so be it.

   

The Unofficial Date

They both loved to shop, so Connor knew taking Hayden downtown that afternoon was perfect. It wasn’t officially a date, but Connor wanted things to go in that direction. And he wanted to buy Hayden something nice. Connor ditched his afternoon classes, but he could catch up. He also spent too much money, but he was sure his mom would send him a few extra dollars when he told her he met someone special. It was a great day, and even though Hayden will only be in Connor’s life a short while, he’ll fondly remember his unofficial date with him for years to come.

This story is fictional.



The Iron Lady

I came of age in the 1980’s, so Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are iconic figures for me. In 1980, I started high school, and at the time, I was still pretty naïve about politics. I didn’t know where I stood on the issues because I didn’t understand them in depth. And like a lot of young people, I was more concerned with my personal life than the affairs of state. The world, it seemed, had been getting on, for better or worse, without my input for a very long time, so who was I to butt in?  By the middle of the decade, I came to realize that these people weren’t looking out for my best interest. I didn’t come from money, I wasn’t driven to pursue money, and I belonged to a defamed minority group whose members were dropping like flies. Reagan and Thatcher, on the other hand, were rightwing ideologues who championed the privileged and the wealthy. Back when I was young, they seemed invincible.

In this film we see Thatcher, the Iron Lady, reduced to playing the role of a doddering old woman lost in a fog of memories, floating aimlessly back and forth through the decades. Sad. And we know that her American counterpart, Reagan, began his descent into the fog before he even left office. Despite all of their speechifying about how the mighty have earned their right to stand on the backs of the poor and how those who are shut out should be quite and stop being so uppity, they both ended up helpless and at the mercy of others on their way to the bone yard.

I used to think they were strong and formidable. Turns out they were just vain little peacocks headed for the same place we all are, oblivion.

A Review of J. Edgar: An Enigmatic Gay Man?

Many people are aware of the unusual relationship J. Edgar Hoover had with Clyde Tolson, his longtime associate at the FBI. But he had another longtime confidant who played an important part in his life, his personal assistant, Helen Gandy. Gandy was there beside Hoover from the start, and she was the one who was in charge of his personal files. Hoover’s secret files have become notorious. It is widely assumed that he gathered information--often employing illegal means to do so--on many powerful and influential people in America during his tenure as the head of the FBI, and it is widely believed that he used this information to bully those he didn’t like and those who threatened his authority. We’ll never know just how much dirt he had on people like First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, President John Kennedy or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That’s because Helen Gandy destroyed nearly all of Hoover’s personal files before they fell into the “wrong” hands following Hoover’s death in 1972. In a way, those destroyed files could serve as a metaphor for Hoover’s relationship with Clyde Tolson.

We know neither Hoover nor Tolson married or had long-term relationships with women. We know that they were very close for decades. They worked together, and they spent a lot of time together when they weren’t working. They ate lunch and dinner together nearly every day. They went to the racetrack together. They went to nightclubs together. They attended movie premieres together. They went on vacations together. And when Hoover died, Tolson inherited the bulk of his estate and moved into his house.

Of course there were rumors, and there may be people who claim to know for sure that the two men were lovers, but we don’t really know the details. We don’t know how Hoover and Tolson defined their relationship for themselves. Did they privately proclaim their love? Did they think of themselves as romantic partners? Did they ever have sex? Were they even consciously aware of the nature of their attraction to one another? In this respect, Hoover and Tolson are representative of the overwhelming majority of gay couples in history. If these two had a romantic relationship, it was never publicly proclaimed, never acknowledged, and little in the way of direct evidence was left behind. We can only speculate, and those inclined to do so in our heterosexist society feel justified in insisting that they were “just friends.”

When writer Justin Lance Black and director Clint Eastwood set out to tell the story of Hoover’s life in the film J. Edgar, they could have stuck closely to the facts. They could have presented Hoover and Tolson as two men whose lives were so intertwined it is more than likely that they were a romantic couple. Or they could have rushed headlong into fiction and shown us what they believe might have went on between Hoover and Tolson behind closed doors. But what they gave us is a rather unusual hybrid. J. Edgar is neither a factual biography or a fictionalized romance based on the lives of Hoover and Tolson. We get a story which leaves little doubt that Hoover and Tolson were in love. The film makes it clear that they were aware of their love. And in the film they acknowledged this love in private. They hold hands in the backseat of cars. Hoover admits that he needs Tolson and that he knew this from the first moment he met him. Tolson admits that he loves Hoover while holding his hand in a hotel room. Tolson flies into a jealous rage when Hoover suggests he might marry a Hollywood starlet, and he kisses Hoover on the lips following a scuffle. He then warns Hoover that he’ll never enjoy his company again if he ever mentions another lady friend. It’s all made pretty plain and obvious. But the two never cuddle, never kiss in a sweet, tender way, never directly talk about their relationship, and we’re left wondering if they ever had sex. I’m not sure why Black and Eastwood went halfway into fiction but decided to not go all the way, but it doesn’t seem quite right. I wish they had either told us a love story or let us come to our own conclusions.

J. Edgar is an interesting film. It’s well worth watching in my opinion. But the makers were neither true to the facts as we know them or bold enough to tell an unabashed love story of two closeted gay men.

　

　

Dark Shadows

Yesterday I finished watching the first of four seasons of Dark Shadows which are available for instant play on Netflix. There are 40 episodes per season, so I realize that a lot has been trimmed from the original series, but if any crucial details have been left out, I didn’t notice. Anyone who has ever watched a daytime soap opera in America knows that there’s a lot of repetition and plotlines and characters are introduced, hit dead ends, and then vanish without explanation. I’m guessing that this was the case when Dark Shadows originally aired back in the 60’s. If so, there’s a lot that can be cut without harming the integrity of the story.

I was too young for the series when it originally aired, but it ran in syndication a number of times while I was growing up. I caught stray episodes from time to time, and one summer when I was about ten or eleven, I watched faithfully nearly every day until school started again. But I’ve never had the opportunity to watch the show from start to finish in chronological order. I’ve always been fascinated by Dark Shadows, and I’m pleased to learn that the story itself--not just the setting, atmosphere, characters, and supernatural plot points--is very compelling.