I found an article today that really hit home. It is a direct response to the desire, mentioned elsewhere here at EC to have queer culture disappear in the interest of "normalizing" LGBT relationships. The title is "California Love Story" by Alexander Borinsky: http://nplusonemag.com/california-love-story It's about how California's Prop 8 was overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District Court of California (gay marriage is, however, still in legal limbo pending the Supreme Court decision) by the argument that gay couples were "normal" folk who aspired to nothing more than the right to marry as straight couples do. But what was fascinating about this article is Borinsky's argument that much of gay culture, a culture without the kind of institutional memory that straight culture takes for granted, was set aside to win that argument. One of the more fascinating points he made was that he felt the need to affirm that being gay is, actually, "a lifestyle choice"...here's how he put it: "The urge [after a difficult breakup] to prove that I could stand on my own two manly legs came, in part, from the language of helplessness that pervades most messages of gay acceptance: “It’s okay that you’re gay, because you were just born that way. It’s no one’s fault.” Binging and fucking made my gayness into, yes, a “lifestyle” choice—not just a hormonal tic I couldn’t help. I was a person making choices, not a sexuality unfolding itself." Borinsky argues for the retention of that missing memory and goes on to describe a necessary richness and diversity of gay culture: "The fact is that gays haven’t always paired off into happy couples. There have long been places where it was messier than that. Even in the 1980s—an era of homosexual mortality that gay-marriage supporters pay homage to but don’t want to talk about—a surprisingly interconnected group of men were fucking and falling in love and arguing and sleeping in each others’ arms and making art and going to work in suits and cooking meals together and reading Proust, or Baldwin, and doing drugs and going to church and dying. They improvised a network of connections erotic, emotional, familial, or what have you. A web of friends, old friends, once-friends, mentors, surrogates, lovers, almost lovers, ex-lovers, lost souls, loose cannons, patrons, pickups, dropouts, healers, strippers, gods; all contributing to a social fabric—call it tulle, or cashmere—in which a clear distinction between love and friendship, eroticism and warmth, loving and fucking, couldn’t quite exist. Versions of that fabric existed long before AIDS, before Stonewall, and versions exist today." One last quote that, to my mind strikes me as important, arguing for the need to understand gay culture as distinct from the straight norms that are aspired to: "In Perry, the plaintiffs argued that gayness is a biological kink that simply substitutes one gender for another within an otherwise universal mechanism of desire. The lawyers insisted with dogged humorlessness that it is possible to separate the homosexual dancer from what has been—if only historically, as Peplau maintained—the homosexual dance. Fine. But the resulting portrait, so stripped, is not a particularly useful one. Take away everything that’s not foretold in my genes and you’ll find me a meager specimen—all hunger, sleep, and hormone. Our histories, our habits, and our choices are as “fundamental,” as “relevant to the ability to form successful marital unions,” as anything else about us. I’m made by that late night on the deserted streets of South London, and I’m made by promises exchanged with people I’ve loved. It’s no less true to say that gay individuals and communities are made by decades spent negotiating nonstandard models of love and family. In his ruling, Walker may be talking about legal status, but he’s also trying to talk about history, and about love." Turns out Judge Vaughn Walker is gay and has lived in a same-sex partnership for a decade. Opponents argued that he was not an unbiased judge in this case, but that argument was struck down by Judge James Ware; judge Walker's replacement after he retired. It's Borinsky's argument that "gay individuals and communities are made by decades spent negotiating nonstandard models of love and family" that is striking to me. Whereas before I would have drifted to the idea that gay relationships should be "normal", and to a certain extent that is a good thing, he argues that there is a necessity to understand how these "non-standard models of love and family" also deserve to be taken seriously. I welcome your comments, but please read the article first, it is very much worth understanding...
Hmm. I think I see the point about potentially shooting ourselves in the foot in the service of being recognized by the larger culture. The biggest challenge I see is that 'gay culture' has only been around a short time vs the 'straight culture' that has been around a very long time indeed. That said, even straight culture moves all over the place over time. I suspect gay culture will as well. The pendulum swing that is pushing for 'queer culture to go away so we can 'normalize' may hold sway for a time. But then it's likely to create a backlash. Whether the people on EC will be part of that backlash or push against it, i don't know. It should also be remembered that the population of EC is a subset of the total gay 'community' (such as it is given we are talking about millions of people all over the planet, each living in a larger culture) and doesn't represent the entire LGBT population. So lots of different trends and takes on things and all happening within the context of the larger culture. Which is itself changing all the time. What will ultimately come from that, I'm not really sure. Todd
I see your point Todd; thoughtful as usual! It seems to me that gay culture has always been the vanguard for those "nonstandard models of love and family", but yeah, the whole culture is a shifting mess as well, and hard to pin down. The article I refer to expressed what I still feel would be a side effect of "normalization" i.e. the loss of this wonderful diversity of ways to love and interact. Nevertheless, I still believe normalization is, on the whole, a good thing. This evening, I listened on NPR radio (from Vermont where same-sex marriage is legal, we get the signal here in Montreal) to a woman talking about her wife and what it's like in the day-to-day raising of children. It was heartwarming to hear, and I felt such a strong connection to her. Perhaps this is also part of the transition to normalcy, although it is still altogether not normal, she wasn't on the radio for a poetry recital...
He makes some interesting points. Reading this article, I was reminded of the tendency for cisgender, non-monogamous, gay men to be set up as the "true queers", as if the rest of us are not being true to our roots or are buying into an negative, assimilationist, straight ideal by wanting to get married, have kids or pets, etc. I don't think that there is a right or a wrong way to be LGBTQ. Everyone has a right to do what makes them happy. If it is LGBTQ people who want to get married, I think that's great. However, I do agree and relate to the author's frustration with straight people who get involved with the same-sex marriage cause solely because it makes them feel more comfortable to know that we are "just like them". As if us being humans wasn't enough. Unfortunately, I got quite turned off by the author after his casual use of the "t" word.
One thing that sometimes seems to get forgotten in a lot of the talk of 'normalization' is that it needn't just mean that all the gay people start acting in a way that the straights consider 'normal'. It can also mean that gay people and gay culture come to be considered 'normal' regardless of what they may consist of. Another thing that doesn't get mentioned much (and I think it should) is that 'straight culture' isn't exactly an model of puritanical chastity. Rather it is an engulfing sea of sex and sexual innuendo that is either accepted as so normal as to go largely unnoticed or semi-ignored in a titanic exercise of mass hypocrisy. Straights do pretty much everything we do, but it either is accepted, gets a pass, or is just 'wink wink, nudge nudged' out of existence. Meh. Todd
Well-written article indeed! though I don't really agree with it either. Because: sure, in the prop8 lawsuit, there was a big emphasis on gay people who lived a life that you could only describe as "standard marriage", even if the State didn't recognise it as such. But... what kind of stories do you expect in a lawsuit centered on the right to marry? If the question is "how does gay people marrying affect society?", then it's not really going to help anyone by testifying on the rich and multilayered tapestry that is the gay culture. It would be the same as my brother wondering whether he should go on holiday to Italy or to France, and me replying by a grand speech on the virtues of backpacking through the Andes. The gay marriage advocates had to choose their weapons, and they picked the ones most likely to win them the case. It's hard to fault them for focusing on that, instead of providing the definitive overview of GLBT life in the last 50 or so years. Also... I do think that nothing is being "set aside" here. In the end, these proceedings might prove to be a key document. nothing, however, stops people from creating other documents to make an "institutional culture". If other voices are needed, let them write, speak, live lives to be remembered. Gay marriage won't stop people from living in gay communes, or experiment with other forms of living together! Yeah, it might seem like that at first. Some will leave their "other modes of living" once marriage is an option. But I'm not sure if that's because of societal pressure, or because that's what they really did always wanted, but couldn't. Actually, the story of societal pressure gets bandied about by both sides. If you hear the side of the marriage advocates, straight society is trying to push gay people out of relationships, and force them to live in alternative relationships. If you hear people on the other side, you'd imagine that straight people are forcing marriage on us! So... I'm more a fan of leaving all options open (allow marriage, don't criminalise anything else), and let the people themselves sort it out! Not sure if the above is entirely coherent. Just a few things that played through my mind after reading it. Thanks for the read, in any case!
