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This article
comes from the February 2006 issue of New Oxford Review.
There was a "gay" bookstore called Lobo's in Austin, Texas, when I was
living there as a grad student. The layout was interesting. Looking
inside from the street all you saw were books. It looked like any other
bookstore. There was a section devoted to classic "gay" fiction by
writers such as Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and W. H. Auden. There
were biographies of prominent "gay" icons, some of whom, like Walt
Whitman, would probably have accepted the homosexual label, but many of
whom, like Whitman's idol, President Lincoln, had been commandeered for
the cause on the basis of evidence no stronger than a bad marriage or
an intense same-sex friendship. There were impassioned modern "gay"
memoirs, and historical accounts of the origins and development of the
"gay rights" movement. It all looked so innocuous and disarmingly
bourgeois. But if you went inside to browse, before long you noticed
another section, behind the books, a section not visible from the
street. The pornography section. Hundreds and hundreds of pornographic
videos, all involving men, but otherwise catering to every conceivable
sexual taste or fantasy. And you would notice something else too. There
were no customers in the front. All the customers were in the back,
rooting through the videos. As far as I know, I am the only person who
ever actually purchased a book at Lobo's. The books were, in every
sense of the word, a front for the porn.
So why waste thousands of dollars on books that no one was going to
buy? It was clear from the large "on sale" section that only a
pitifully small number of books were ever purchased at their original
price. The owners of Lobo's were apparently wasting a lot of money on
gay novels and works of gay history, when all the real money was in
pornography. But the money spent on books wasn't wasted. It was used to
purchase a commodity that is more precious than gold to the gay rights
establishment. Respectability. Respectability and the appearance of
normalcy. Without that investment, we would not now be engaged in a
serious debate about the legalization of same-sex "marriage." By the
time I lived in Austin, I had been thinking of myself as a gay man for
almost 20 years. Based on the experience acquired during those years, I
recognized in Lobo's a metaphor for the strategy used to sell gay
rights to the American people, and for the sordid reality that strategy
concealed.
This is how I "deconstruct" Lobo's. There are two kinds of people who
are going to be looking in through the window: those who are tempted to
engage in homosexual acts, and those who aren't. To those who aren't,
the shelves of books transmit the message that gay people are no
different from anyone else, that homosexuality is not wrong, just
different. Since most of them will never know more about homosexuality
than what they learned looking in the window, that impression is of the
greatest political and cultural importance, because on that basis they
will react without alarm, or even with active support, to the progress
of gay rights. There are millions of well-meaning Americans who support
gay rights because they believe that what they see looking in at Lobo's
is what is really there. It does not occur to them that they are seeing
a carefully stage-managed effort to manipulate them, to distract them
from a truth they would never condone.
For those who are tempted to engage in homosexual acts, the view from
the street is also consoling. It makes life as a homosexual look safe
and unthreatening. Normal, in other words. Sooner or later, many of
these people will stop looking in through the window and go inside.
Unlike the first sort of window-shopper, they won't be distracted by
the books for long. They will soon discover the existence of the porn
section. And no matter how distasteful they might find the idea at
first (if indeed they do find it distasteful), they will also notice
that the porn section is where all the customers are. And they will
feel sort of silly standing alone among the books. Eventually, they
will find their way back to the porn, with the rest of the customers.
And like them, they will start rooting through the videos. And, gentle
reader, that is where most of them will spend the rest of their lives,
until God or AIDS, drugs or alcohol, suicide or a lonely old age,
intervenes.
Ralph McInerny once offered a brilliant definition of the gay rights
movement: self-deception as a group effort. Nevertheless, deception of
the general public is also vital to the success of the cause. And
nowhere are the forms of deception more egregious, or more startlingly
successful, than in the campaign to persuade Christians that, to
paraphrase the title of a recent book, Jesus Was Queer, and churches
should open their doors to same-sex lovers. The gay Christian movement
relies on a stratagem that is as daring as it is dishonest. I know,
because I was taken in by it for a long time. Like the owners of
Lobo's, success depends on camouflaging the truth, which is hidden in
plain view the whole time. It is no wonder The Wizard of Oz is so
resonant among homosexuals. "Pay no attention to that man behind the
curtain" could be the motto and the mantra of the whole movement.
No single book was as influential in my own coming out as the now
ex-Father John McNeill's 1976 "classic" The Church and the Homosexual.
That book is to Dignity what "The Communist Manifesto" was to Soviet
Russia. Most of the book is devoted to offering alternative
interpretations of the biblical passages condemning homosexuality, and
to putting the anti-homosexual writings of the Church Fathers and
scholastics into historical context in a way that renders them
irrelevant and even offensive to modern readers. The first impression
of a naïve and sexually conflicted young reader such as myself was that
McNeill had offered a plausible alternative to traditional teaching. It
made me feel justified in deciding to come out of the closet. Were his
arguments persuasive? Frankly, I didn't care, and I don't believe most
of McNeill's readers do either. They were couched in the language of
scholarship, and they sounded plausible. That was all that mattered.
McNeill, like most of the members of his camp, treated the debate over
homosexuality as first and foremost a debate about the proper
interpretation of texts, texts such as the Sodom story in the Bible and
the relevant articles of the Summa. The implication was that once those
were reinterpreted, or rendered irrelevant, the gay rights apologists
had prevailed, and the door was open for practicing homosexuals to hold
their heads up high in church. And there is a certain sense in which
that has proved to be true. To the extent that the debate has focused
on interpreting texts, the gay apologists have won for themselves a
remarkable degree of legitimacy. But that is because, as anyone
familiar with the history of Protestantism should be aware, the
interpretation of texts is an interminable process. The efforts of
people such as McNeill don't need to be persuasive. They only need to
be useful.
This is how it works. McNeill reinterprets the story of Sodom, claiming
that it does not condemn homosexuality, but gang rape. Orthodox
theologians respond, in a commendable but naïve attempt to rebut him,
naïve because these theologians presume that McNeill believes his own
arguments, and is writing as a scholar, not as a propagandist. McNeill
ignores the arguments of his critics, dismissing their objections as
based on homophobia, and repeats his original position. The orthodox
respond again as if they were really dealing with a theologian. And
back and forth for a few more rounds. Until finally McNeill or someone
like him stands up and announces, "You know, this is getting us
nowhere. We have our exegesis and our theology. You have yours. Why
can't we just agree to disagree?" That sounds so reasonable, so
ecumenical. And if the orthodox buy into it, they have lost, because
the gay rights apologists have earned a place at the table from which
they will never be dislodged. Getting at the truth about Sodom and
Gomorrah, or correctly parsing the sexual ethics of St. Thomas, was
never really the issue. Winning admittance to Holy Communion was the
issue.
Even as a naïve young man, one aspect of The Church and the Homosexual
struck me as odd. Given that McNeill was suggesting a radical revision
of the traditional Catholic sexual ethic, there was almost nothing in
it about sexual ethics. The Catholic sexual ethic is quite specific
about the ends of human sexuality, and about the forms of behavior that
are consistent with those ends. McNeill's criticism of the traditional
ethic occupied most of his book, but he left the reader with only the
vaguest idea about what he proposed to put in its place. For that
matter, there was almost nothing in it about the real lives of real
homosexuals. Homosexuality was treated throughout the book as a kind of
intellectual abstraction. But I was desperate to get some idea of what
was waiting for me on the other side of the closet door. And with no
one but Fr. McNeill for a guide, I was reduced to reading between the
lines. There was a single passage that I interpreted as a clue. It was
almost an aside, really. At one point, he commented that monogamous
same-sex unions were consistent with the Church's teaching, or at least
consistent with the spirit of the renewed and renovated post-Vatican II
Church. With nothing else to go on, I interpreted this in a
prescriptive sense. I interpreted McNeill to be arguing that
homogenital acts were only moral when performed in the context of a
monogamous relationship. And furthermore, I leapt to what seemed like
the reasonable conclusion that the author was aware of such
relationships, and that I had a reasonable expectation of finding such
a relationship myself. Otherwise, for whose benefit was he writing? I
was not so naïve (although I was pretty naïve) as not to be aware of
the existence of promiscuous homosexual men. But McNeill's aside,
which, I repeat, contained virtually his only stab at offering a gay
sexual ethic, led me to believe that in addition to the promiscuous,
there existed a contingent of gay men who were committed to living in
monogamy. Otherwise, Fr. McNeill was implicitly defending promiscuity.
And the very idea of a priest defending promiscuity was inconceivable
to me. (Yes, that naïve.)
Several years ago, McNeill published an autobiography. In it, he makes
no bones about his experiences as a sexually active Catholic priest --
a promiscuous, sexually active, homosexual Catholic priest. He writes
in an almost nostalgic fashion about his time spent hunting for sex in
bars. Although he eventually did find a stable partner (while he was
still a priest), he never apologizes for his years of promiscuity, or
even so much as alludes to the disparity between his own life and the
passage in The Church and the Homosexual that meant so much to me. It
is possible that he doesn't even remember suggesting that homosexuals
were supposed to remain celibate until finding monogamous
relationships. It is obvious that he never meant that passage to be
taken seriously, except by those who would never do more than look in
the window -- in others words, gullible, well-meaning, non-homosexual
Catholics, preferably those in positions of authority. Or, equally
naïve and gullible young men such as me who were looking for a reason
to act on their sexual desires, preferably one that did not do too much
violence to their consciences, at least not at first. The latter, the
writer presumed, would eventually find their way back to the porn
section, where their complicity in the scam would render them
indistinguishable from the rest of the regular customers. Clearly,
there was a reason that in the earlier book he wrote so little about
the real lives of real homosexuals, such as himself.
I don't see how the contradiction between The Church and the Homosexual
and the autobiography could be accidental. Why would McNeill pretend to
believe that homosexuals should restrict themselves to sex within the
context of monogamous relationships when his life demonstrates that he
did not? I can think of only one reason. Because he knew that if he
told the truth, his cause would be dead in the water. Although to this
day McNeill, like all gay Christian propagandists, avoids the subject
of sexual ethics as if it were some sort of plague, his life makes his
real beliefs clear. He believes in unrestricted sexual freedom. He
believes that men and women should have the right to couple, with
whomever they want, whenever they want, however they want, and as often
as they want. He would probably add some sort of meaningless bromide
about no one getting hurt and both parties being treated with respect,
but anyone familiar with the snake pit of modern sexual culture (both
heterosexual and homosexual) will know how seriously to take that. And
he knew perfectly well that if he were honest about his real aims,
there would be no Dignity, there would be no gay Christian movement, at
least not one with a snowball's chance in Hell of succeeding. That
would be like getting rid of the books and letting the casual
window-shoppers see the porn. And we can't have that now, can we? In
other words, the ex-Fr. McNeill is a bad priest and a con man. And
given the often lethal consequences of engaging in homosexual sex, a
con man with blood on his hands.
Let me be clear. I believe that McNeill's real beliefs, as deduced from
his actual behavior, and distinguished from the arguments he puts
forward for the benefit of the naïve and gullible, represent the real
aims and objectives of the homosexual rights movement. They are the
porn that the books are meant to conceal. In other words, if you
support what is now described in euphemistic terms as "the blessing of
same-sex unions," in practice you are supporting the abolition of the
entire Christian sexual ethic, and its substitution with an
unrestricted, laissez faire, free sexual market. The reason that the
homosexual rights movement has managed to pick up such a large
contingent of heterosexual fellow-travelers is simple: Because once
that taboo is abrogated, no taboos are left. I once heard a
heterosexual Episcopalian put it this way: If I don't want the church
poking its nose into my bedroom, how can I condone it when it limits
the sexual freedom of homosexuals? That might sound outrageous, but if
you still believe that the debate is over the religious status of
monogamous same-sex relationships, please be prepared to point out one
church somewhere in the U.S. that has opened its doors to active
homosexuals without also opening them to every other form of sexual
coupling imaginable. I am too old to be taken in by "Father" McNeill
and his abstractions anymore. Show me.
A few years ago, I subscribed to the Dignity Yahoo group on the
Internet. There were at that time several hundred subscribers. At one
point, a confused and troubled young man posted a question to the
group: Did any of the subscribers attach any value to monogamy? I
immediately wrote back that I did. A couple of days later the young man
wrote back to me. He had received dozens of responses, some of them
quite hostile and demeaning, and all but one -- mine -- telling him to
go out and get laid because that was what being gay was all about.
(This was a gay "Catholic" group.) He did not know what to make of it
because none of the propaganda to which he was exposed before coming
out prepared him for what was really on the other side of the closet
door. I had no idea what to tell him, because at the time I was still
caught up in the lie myself. Now, the solution seems obvious. What I
should have written back to him was, "You have been lied to. Ask God
for forgiveness and get back to Kansas as fast as you can. Auntie Em is
waiting."
In light of all the legitimate concern about Internet pornography, it
might seem ironic to assert that the Internet helped rescue me from
homosexuality. For twenty years, I thought there was something wrong
with me. Dozens of well-meaning people assured me that there was a
whole, different world of homosexual men out there, a world that for
some reason I could never find, a world of God-fearing,
straight-acting, monogamy-believing, and fidelity-practicing
homosexuals. They assured me that they themselves knew personally (for
a fact and for real) that such men existed. They themselves knew such
men (or at least had heard tell of them from those who did). And I
believed it, although as the years passed it got harder and harder.
Then I got a personal computer and a subscription to AOL. "O.K.," I
reasoned, "morally conservative homosexuals are obviously shy and
skittish and fearful of sudden movements. They don't like bars and
bathhouses. Neither do I. They don't attend Dignity meetings or
Metropolitan Community Church services because the gay 'churches' are
really bathhouses masquerading as houses of worship. But there is no
reason a morally conservative homosexual cannot subscribe to AOL and
submit a profile. If I can do it, anyone can do it." So I did it. I
wrote a profile describing myself as a conservative Catholic (comme ci,
comme ça) who loved classical music and theater and good books and
scintillating conversation about all of the above. I said I wanted very
much to meet other like-minded homosexuals for the purposes of
friendship and romance. I tried to be as clear as I knew how. I was not
interested in one night stands. And within minutes of placing the
profile, I got my first response. It consisted of three words: "How
many inches?" My experience of looking for love on AOL went downhill
rapidly from there.
When I first came out in the 1980s, it was common for gay rights
apologists to blame the promiscuity among gay men on "internalized
homophobia." Gay men, like African Americans, internalized and acted
out the lies about themselves learned from mainstream American culture.
Furthermore, homosexuals were forced to look for love in dimly lit
bars, bathhouses, and public parks for fear of harassment at the hands
of a homophobic mainstream. The solution to this problem, we were told,
was permitting homosexuals to come out into the open, without fear of
retribution. A variant of this argument is still put forward by
activists such as Andrew Sullivan, in order to legitimate same-sex
marriage. And it seemed reasonable enough twenty years ago. But
thirty-five years have passed since the infamous Stonewall riots of
1969 in New York, the Lexington and Concord of the gay liberation
movement. During that time, homosexuals have carved out for themselves
public spaces in every major American city, and many of the minor ones
as well. They have had the chance to create whatever they wanted in
those spaces, and what have they created? New spaces for locating
sexual partners.
There is another reason, apart from the propaganda value, that
bookstores like Lobo's peddle porn as well as poetry. Because without
the porn, they would soon go out of business. And, in fact, most gay
bookstores have gone out of business, despite the porn. Following an
initial burst of enthusiasm in the 1970s and 80s, gay publishing went
into steep decline, and shows no signs of coming out of it. Once the
novelty wore off, gay men soon bored of reading about men having sex
with one another, preferring to devote their time and disposable income
to pursuing the real thing. Gay and lesbian community centers struggle
to keep their doors open. Gay churches survive as places where
worshippers can go to sleep it off and cleanse their soiled consciences
after a Saturday night spent cruising for sex at the bars. And there is
no danger of ever hearing a word from the pulpit suggesting that
bar-hopping is inconsistent with believing in the Bible. When I lived
in the United Kingdom, I was struck by the extent to which gay culture
in London replicated gay culture in the U.S. The same was true in
Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Homosexuality is one of America's most
successful cultural exports. And the focus on gay social spaces in
Europe is identical to their focus in America: sex. Cyberspace is now
the latest conquest of that amazing modern Magellan: the male
homosexual in pursuit of new sexual conquests.
But at this point, how is it possible to blame the promiscuity among
homosexual men on homophobia, internalized or otherwise? On the basis
of evidence no stronger than wishful thinking, Andrew Sullivan wants us
to believe that legalizing same-sex "marriage" will domesticate gay
men, that all that energy now devoted to building bars and bathhouses
will be dedicated to erecting picket fences and two-car garages. What
Sullivan refuses to face is that male homosexuals are not promiscuous
because of "internalized homophobia," or laws banning same-sex
"marriage." Homosexuals are promiscuous because when given the choice,
homosexuals overwhelmingly choose to be promiscuous. And wrecking the
fundamental social building block of our civilization, the family, is
not going to change that.
I once read a disarmingly honest essay in which Sullivan as much as
admitted his real reason for promoting the cause of same-sex
"marriage." He faced up to the sometimes sordid nature of his sexual
life, which is more than most gay activists are prepared to do, and he
regretted it. He wished he had led a different sort of life, and he
apparently believes that if marriage were a legal option, he might have
been able to do so. I have a lot more respect for Andrew Sullivan than
I do for most gay activists. I believe that he would seriously like to
reconcile his sexual desires with the demands of his conscience. But
with all due respect, are the rest of us prepared to sacrifice the
institution of the family in the unsubstantiated hope that doing so
will make it easier for Sullivan to keep his trousers zipped?
But isn't it theoretically possible that homosexuals could restrict
themselves to something resembling the traditional Catholic sexual
ethic, except for the part about procreation -- in other words,
monogamous lifelong relationships? Of course it is theoretically
possible. It was also theoretically possible in 1968 that the use of
contraceptives could be restricted to married couples, that the
revolting downward slide into moral anarchy we have lived through could
have been avoided. It is theoretically possible, but it is practically
impossible. It is impossible because the whole notion of stable sexual
orientation on which the gay rights movement is founded has no basis in
fact.
René Girard, the French literary critic and sociologist of religion,
argues that all human civilization is founded on desire. All
civilizations have surrounded the objects of desire (including sexual
desire) with an elaborate and unbreachable wall of taboos and
restrictions. Until now. What we are seeing in the modern West is not
the long overdue legitimization of hitherto despised but honorable
forms of human love. What we are witnessing is the reduction of
civilization to its lowest common denominator: unbridled and
unrestricted desire. To assert that we have opened a Pandora's Box
would be a stunning understatement. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and
gentlemen, it looks to be a bumpy millennium.
When I was growing up, we were all presumed to be heterosexual. Then
homosexuality was introduced as an alternative. That did not at first
seem like a major revision because, apart from procreation,
homosexuality, at least in theory, left the rest of the traditional
sexual ethic in tact. Two people of the same gender could (in theory)
fall in love and live a life of monogamous commitment. Then bisexuality
was introduced, and the real implications of the sexual revolution
became clear. Monogamy was out the window. Moral norms were out the
window. Do-it-yourself sexuality became the norm. Anyone who wants to
know what that looks like can do no better than go online. The Internet
offers front row seats to the circus of a disintegrating civilization.
Take Yahoo, for example. Yahoo makes it possible for people sharing a
common interest to create groups for the purpose of making contacts and
sharing information. If that conjures up images of genealogists and
stamp collectors, think again. There are now thousands of Yahoo groups
catering to every kind of sexual perversion imaginable. Many of them
would defy the imagination of the Marquis de Sade himself. People who
until a few years ago could do nothing but fantasize now entertain
serious hopes of acting out their fantasies. I met a man online whose
fondest wish was to be spanked with a leather wallet. It had to be
leather. And it had to be a wallet. And he needed to be spanked with
it. Old-fashioned genital friction was optional. This man wanted a
Gucci label tattooed across his backside. He could imagine no loftier
pinnacle of passion. And he insisted that this desire was as
fundamental to his sexual nature as the desire to go to bed with a man
was for me. Furthermore, he had formed a Yahoo group that had more than
three hundred members, all of whom shared the same passion. There is no
object in the universe, no human or animal body part, that cannot be
eroticized. So, is the desire to be spanked with a leather wallet a
"sexual orientation"? If not, how is it different?
There was a time when I would have snorted, "Of course it is different.
You can't share a life with a leather wallet. You can't love a leather
wallet. What you are talking about is a fetish, not a sexual
orientation. The two are completely different." But the truth is that
all the gay men I encountered had a fetish for naked male skin, with
all the objectification and depersonalization that implies, that I now
consider the distinction sophistical. Leather is skin too, after all.
The only real difference between the fellow on the Internet and the
average gay man is that he preferred his skin Italian, bovine, and
tanned.
Over the years, I have attended various gay and gay-friendly church
services. All of them shared one characteristic in common: a tacit
agreement never to say a word from the pulpit -- or from any other
location for that matter -- suggesting that there ought to be any
restrictions on human sexual behavior. If anyone reading this is
familiar with Dignity or Integrity or the Metropolitan Community
churches or, for that matter, mainline Protestantism and most of
post-Vatican II Catholicism, let me ask you one question: When was the
last time you heard a sermon on sexual ethics? Have you ever heard a
sermon on sexual ethics? I take it for granted that the answer is
negative. Do our priests and pastors honestly believe that Christians
in America are not in need of sermons on sexual ethics?
Here is the terrifying fact: If we as a nation and as a Church allow
ourselves to be taken in by the scam of monogamous same-sex couples, we
will be welcoming to our Communion rails (presuming that we still have
Communion rails) not just the statistically insignificant number of
same-sex couples who have lived together for more than a few years
(most of whom purchased stability by jettisoning monogamy); we will
also be legitimizing every kind of sexual taste, from old-fashioned
masturbation and adultery to the most outlandish forms of sexual
fetishism. We will, in other words, be giving our blessing to the
suicide of Western civilization.
But what about all those images of loving same-sex couples dying to get
hitched with which the media are awash these days? That used to confuse
me too. It seems that The New York Times has no trouble finding
successful same-sex partners to photograph and interview. But despite
my best efforts, I was never able to meet the sorts of couples who show
up regularly on Oprah. The media are biased and have no interest in
telling the truth about homosexuality.
I met Wyatt (not his real name) online. For five years he was in a
disastrous same-sex relationship. His partner was unfaithful, and an
alcoholic with drug problems. The relationship was something that would
give Strindberg nightmares. When Vermont legalized same-sex "marriage,"
Wyatt saw it as one last chance to make their relationship work. He and
his partner would fly to Vermont to get "married." This came to the
attention of the local newspaper in his area, which did a story with
photos of the wedding reception. In it, Wyatt and his partner were
depicted as a loving couple who finally had a chance to celebrate their
commitment publicly. Nothing was said about the drugs or the alcoholism
or the infidelity. But the marriage was a failure and ended in flames a
few months later. And the newspaper did not do a follow-up. In other
words, the leading daily of one of America's largest cities printed a
misleading story about a bad relationship, a story that probably
persuaded more than one young man that someday he could be just as
happy as Wyatt and his "partner." And that is the sad part.
But one very seldom reads about people like my friend Harry. Harry (not
his real name) was a balding, middle-aged man with a potbelly. He was
married, and had a couple of grown daughters. And he was unhappy. Harry
persuaded himself that he was unhappy because he was gay. He divorced
his wife, who is now married to someone else, his daughters are not
speaking to him, and he is discovering that pudgy, bald, middle-aged
men are not all that popular in gay bars. Somehow, Oprah forgot to
mention that. Now Harry is taking anti-depressants in order to keep
from killing himself.
Then there was another acquaintance, who also happened to have the same
name as the previous guy. Harry (not his real name) was about 30 (but
could easily pass for 20), and from a Mormon background, with all the
naïveté that suggests. Unlike the first Harry, he had no difficulty
getting dates. Or relationships for that matter. The problem was that
the relationships never lasted more than a couple of weeks. Harry was
also rapidly developing a serious drinking problem. (So much for the
Mormon words of wisdom.) If you happened to be at the bar around two in
the morning, you could probably have Harry for the night if you were
interested. He was so drunk he wouldn't remember you the next day, and
all he really wanted at that point was for someone to hold him.
Gay culture is a paradox. Most homosexuals tend to be liberal
Democrats, or in the U.K., supporters of the Labour Party. They
gravitate toward those Parties on the grounds that their policies are
more compassionate and sensitive to the needs of the downtrodden and
oppressed. But there is nothing compassionate about a gay bar. It
represents a laissez faire free sexual market of the most Darwinian
sort. There is no place in it for those who are not prepared to
compete, and the rules of the game are ruthless and unforgiving. I
remember once being in a gay pub in central London. Most of the men
there were buff and toned and in their 20s or early 30s. An older
gentleman walked in, who looked to be in his 70s. It was as if the
Angel of Death himself had made an entrance. In that crowded bar, a
space opened up around him that no one wanted to enter. His shadow
transmitted contagion. It was obvious that his presence made the other
customers nervous. He stood quietly at the bar and ordered a drink. He
spoke to no one and no one spoke to him. When he eventually finished
his drink and left, the sigh of relief from all those buff, toned pub
crawlers was almost audible. Now all of them could go back to
pretending that gay men were all young and beautiful forever. Gentle
reader, do you know what a "bug chaser" is? A bug chaser is a young gay
man who wants to contract HIV so that he will never grow old. And that
is the world that Harry left his wife, and the other Harry his Church,
to find happiness in.
I have known a lot of people like the two Harrys. But I have met
precious few who bore more than a superficial resemblance to the
idealized images we see in Oscar-winning movies such as Philadelphia,
or in the magazine section of The New York Times. What I find
suspicious is that the media ignore the existence of people like the
two Harrys. The unhappiness so common among homosexuals is swept under
the carpet, while fanciful and unrealistic "role models" are offered up
for public consumption. There is at the very least grounds for a
serious debate about the proposition that "gay is good," but no such
debate is taking place, because most of the mainstream media have
already made up their (and our) minds.
But it is hard to hide the porn forever. When I was living in London, I
had a wonderful friend named Maggie. Maggie (not her real name) was a
liberal. Her big heart bled for the oppressed. Like most liberals, she
was proud of her open-mindedness and wore it like a badge of honor.
Maggie lived in a house as big as her heart and all of her children
were grown up and had moved out. She had a couple of rooms to rent. It
just so happened that both the young men who became her tenants were
gay. Maggie's first reaction was enthusiastic. She had never known many
gay people, and thought the experience of renting to two homosexuals
would confirm her in her open-mindedness. She believed it would be a
learning experience. It was, but not the sort she had in mind. One day
Maggie told me her troubles and confessed her doubts. She talked about
what it was like to stumble each morning down to the breakfast table,
finding two strangers seated there, the two strangers her tenants
brought home the night before. It was seldom the same two strangers two
mornings running. One of her tenants was in a long-distance
relationship but, in the absence of his partner, felt at liberty to
seek consolation elsewhere. She talked about what it was like to have
to deal on a daily basis with the emotional turmoil of her tenants'
tumultuous lives. She told me what it was like to open the door one
afternoon and find a policeman standing there, a policeman who was
looking for one of her tenants, who was accused of trying to sell drugs
to school children. That same tenant was also involved in prostitution.
Maggie didn't know what to make of it all. She desperately wanted to
remain open-minded, to keep believing that gay men were no worse than
anyone else, just different. But she couldn't reconcile her experience
with that "tolerant" assumption. The truth was that when the two
finally moved out, an event to which she was looking forward with some
enthusiasm, and it was time to place a new ad for rooms to let, she
wanted to include the following proviso: Fags need not apply. I didn't
know what to tell Maggie because I was just as confused as she was. I
wanted to hold on to my illusions too, in spite of all the evidence.
I am convinced that many, if not most, people who are familiar with the
lives of homosexuals know the truth, but refuse to face it. My best
friend got involved in the gay rights movement as a graduate student.
He and a lesbian colleague sometimes counseled young men who were
struggling with their sexuality. Once, the two of them met a young man
who was seriously overweight and suffered from terrible acne. The young
man waxed eloquent about the happiness he expected to find when he came
out of the closet. He was going to find a partner, and the two of them
would live happily ever after. The whole time my friend was thinking
that if someone looking like this fat, pustulent young man ever walked
into a bar, he would be folded, spindled, and mutilated before even
taking a seat. Afterwards, the lesbian turned to him and said, "You
know, sometimes it is better to stay in the closet." My friend told me
that for him this represented a decisive moment. This lesbian claimed
to love and admire gay men. She never stopped praising their kindness
and compassion and creativity. But with that one comment she in effect
told my friend that she really knew what gay life was all about. It was
about meat, and unless you were a good cut, don't bother coming to the
supermarket.
On another occasion, I was complaining to a lesbian about my
disillusionment. She made a remarkable admission to me. She had a
teenage son, who so far had not displayed signs of sexual interest in
either gender. She knew as a lesbian she should not care which road he
took. But she confessed to me that she did care. Based on the lives of
the gay men she knew, she found herself secretly praying that her son
would turn out to be straight. As a mother, she did not want to see her
son living that life.
A popular definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, while
expecting a different result. That was me, the whole time I was
laboring to become a happy homosexual. I was a lunatic. Several times I
turned for advice to gay men who seemed better adjusted to their lot in
life than I was. First, I wanted confirmation that my perceptions were
accurate, that life as a male homosexual really was as awful as it
seemed to be. And then I wanted to know what I was supposed to do about
it. When was it going to get better? What could I do to make it better?
I got two sorts of reactions to these questions, both of which left me
feeling hurt and confused. The first sort of reaction was denial, often
bitter denial, of what I was suggesting. I was told that there was
something wrong with me, that most gay men were having a wonderful
time, that I was generalizing on the basis of my own experience (whose
experience was I supposed to generalize from?), and that I should shut
up and stop bothering others with my "internalized homophobia."
I began seeing a counselor when I was a graduate student. Matt (not his
real name) was a happily married man with college-age children. All he
knew about homosexuality he learned from the other members of his
profession, who assured him that homosexuality was not a mental illness
and that there were no good reasons that homosexuals could not lead
happy, productive lives. When I first unloaded my tale of woe, Matt
told me I had never really come out of the closet. (I still have no
idea what he meant, but suspect it is like the "once saved, always
saved" Baptist who responds to the lapsed by telling him that he was
never really saved in the first place.) I needed to go back, he told
me, try again, and continue to look for the positive experiences he was
sure were available for me, on the basis of no other evidence than the
rulings of the American Psychiatric Association. He had almost no
personal experience of homosexuals, but his peers assured him that the
book section at Lobo's offered a true picture of homosexual life. I
knew Matt was clueless, but I still wanted to believe he was right.
Matt and I developed a therapeutic relationship. During the year we
spent together, he learned far more from me than I did from him. I
tried to take his advice. I was sharing a house that year with another
grad student who was in the process of coming out and experiencing his
own disillusionment. Because I had been his only gay friend, and had
encouraged him to come out, his bitterness came to be directed at me,
and our relationship suffered for it. Meanwhile, I developed a close
friendship with a member of the faculty who was openly gay. When I
first informed Matt, he was ecstatic. He thought I was finally come out
properly. The faculty member was just the sort of friend I needed. But
the faculty member, as it turned out, despite his immaculate
professional facade, was a deeply disturbed man who put all of his
friends through emotional hell, which I of course shared with a shocked
and silenced Matt. (I tried to date but, as usual, experienced the same
pattern that characterized all my homosexual relationships. The
friendship lasted as long as the sexual heat. Once that cooled, my
partner's interest in me as a person dissipated with it.) It was not a
good year. At the end of it, I remember Matt staring at me, with glazed
eyes and a shell-shocked look on his face, and admitting, "You know,
being gay is a lot harder than I realized."
Not everyone I spoke to over the years rejected what I had to say out
of hand. I once corresponded with an English ex-Dominican. I was
ecstatic to learn that he was gay, and was eventually kicked out of his
order for refusing to remain in the closet. He included an e-mail
address in one of his books, and I wrote him, wanting to know if his
experience of life as a homosexual was significantly different from
mine. I presumed it must be, since he had written a couple of books,
passionately defending the right of homosexuals to a place in the
Church. His response to me was one of the last nails in the coffin of
my life as a gay man. To my astonishment, he admitted that his
experiences were not unlike mine. All he could suggest was that I keep
trying, and eventually everything would work out. In other words, this
brilliant man, whose books had meant so much to me, had nothing to
suggest except that I keep doing the same thing, while expecting a
different result. There was only one reasonable conclusion. I would be
nuts if I took his advice. It took me twenty years, but I finally
reached the conclusion that I did not want to be insane.
So where am I now? I am attending a militantly orthodox parish in
Houston that is one of God's most spectacular gifts to me. My best
friend Mark (not his real name) is, like me, a refugee from the
homosexual insane asylum. He is also a devout believer, though a
Presbyterian (no one is perfect). From Mark I have learned that two men
can love each other profoundly while remaining clothed the entire time.
We are told that the Church opposes same-sex love. Not true. The Church
opposes homogenital sex, which in my experience is not about love, but
about obsession, addiction, and compensation for a compromised
masculinity.
I am not proud of the life I have lived. In fact, I am profoundly
ashamed of it. But if reading this prevents one naïve, gullible man
from making the same mistakes, then perhaps with the assistance of Our
Lady of Guadalupe; of St. Joseph, her chaste spouse; of my patron
saint, Edmund Campion; of St. Josemaría Escrivá; of the blessed
Carmelite martyrs of Compiégne; and, last but not least, of my special
supernatural guide and mentor, the Venerable John Henry Newman, I can
at least hope for a reprieve from some of the many centuries in
Purgatory I have coming to me.
So, what do we as a Church and a culture need to do? Tear down the
respectable façade and expose the pornography beneath. Start pressuring
homosexuals to tell the truth about their lives. Stop debating the
correct interpretation of Genesis 19. Leave the men of Sodom and
Gomorrah buried in the brimstone where they belong. Sodom is hidden in
plain view from us, here and now, today. Once, when preparing a lecture
on Cardinal Newman, I summarized his classic Essay on the Development
of Christian Doctrine in this fashion: Truth ripens, error rots. The
homosexual rights movement is rotten to the core. It has no future.
There is no life in it. Sooner or later, those who are caught up in it
are going to wake up from the dream of unbridled desire or else die. It
is just a matter of time. The question is: how long? How many children
are going to be sacrificed to this Moloch?
Until several months ago, there was a Lobo's in Houston too. Not
accidentally, I'm sure, its layout was identical to the one in Austin.
It was just a few blocks from the gas station where I take my car for
service. Recently, I was taking a walk through the neighborhood while
my tires were being rotated. And I noticed something. There was a
padlock on the door at Lobo's. A sign on the door read, "The previous
tenant was evicted for nonpayment of rent." The books and the porn, the
façade and what it conceals, are gone now. Praise God.
Ronald G. Lee
is a librarian in Houston, Texas.
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