Nobody Really Likes Straight Men, Except For Some Misguided Gay Guys

In the new issue of Out, Mark Simpson covers a new book by David Halperin, How To Be Gay, and he covers it by interviewing Halperin. By all means read the whole amusing interview at the link above. But a few questions and responses got me to thinking about how the gay movement or "lgbt community" has changed so drastically since I started pondering why there were so many gay people in the 1970s punk rock revolution and how that had made me wonder if there had been an over-representation of gays in the French Revolution and Russian Revolution as well.

A cherished line of mine in your book is ‘Sometimes I think homosexuality is wasted on gay people.’ Why are gays these days so keen to out-bore the straights?

They’ve been bought off with promises of normality, and their social worlds have been destroyed, so they lack the context and the courage to claim their cultural heritage, to the genius of being queer. They still produce cultural breakthroughs of brilliance, but they aren’t comfortable taking credit for them.

Is it a paradox that the resurgence of biological explanations of homosexuality has coincided with the dominance of the line “gays are just like everyone else,” except even more boring?

It’s kind of weird that so much of the gay movement embraces that bogus gay science, because that’s the one area in which claims of gay difference are triumphing in a kind of return to Victorian notions about congenital abnormality. You would think gay people would prefer to think of themselves as culturally different rather than biologically different. But here you can measure the effect in the United States of religiously inspired homophobia: In order to dodge the implication that homosexuality is a sinful choice, gay people are willing to accept biological determinism.

Believing that you only suck cock because God made you do it is kinda kinky, though. Are you a bit of a gay chauvinist. Do you believe that being gay is better than being straight?

Yes, I am and I do. At least, I can’t imagine living any other way, or wanting to. I certainly think being gay is better than being a straight man. But then nobody really likes straight men, except for some misguided gay guys.

Friday night Ken penned a post about how the Assad regime in Syria has adopted a strategy of total war to stave off its collapse and is well worth reading-- The horror in Syria reminds us of the way the lust for power brings out the worst in humankind. "It reminds me," wrote Ken, "of the horror I feel when I read or hear, notably in the ongoing battle for the country's largest city, Aleppo, about aerial bombardments unleashed by the Assad regime on its own cities. It's not even necessarily the most destructive or destabilizing form of war the regime is waging as it presses its death struggle to hold on to power, but still, there's something about a government bombing its own people." Saturday morning I woke up and there was a note from DWT friend and international journalist Reese Erlich suggesting I read a post he had just written, Gays of Syria, Unite!

Homosexuality is in itself a criminal offense in Syria, though, like in all Arab countries, finding a gay sex partner is a lot easier than finding a gay bar. Among the millions of Syrians who have risen up against the Assad regime are plenty of gays and lesbians and, Reese assures us, "dozens of gay men and lesbians have been killed during the uprising, but most Syrians are unaware of their sexual orientation." But not all gays are joining the revolution against Assad-- and for good reason.

Miral Bioredda, a secular leader of the Local Coordinating Committees in Hassakah, a central Syrian city, says he personally views homosexuality as a private matter, “but Syrian society would say ‘no way’ if gays rose to claim their rights. Developing a civil society will take time.”

Others are less tolerant. Interviewed in Turkey, Nasradeen Ahme, a member of the Free Syrian Army, who also considers himself part of the secular opposition, says: “If I was in charge, I would enforce tougher laws against homosexuals. If someone said homosexuals should be stoned to death as in Iran and Saudi Arabia, I would not object.”

Hassino [a gay man who joined the revolution] acknowledges that such conservative views mean homosexuals face challenges whoever wins Syria's civil war. “This is a bigger problem than the law now,” he says. “Social traditions are influenced by the religious traditions. Most people reject homosexuality.”

Hassino argues that the right to organize and speak freely will benefit all Syrians, and eventually help gays as well.

“The intelligence services arrest people if they're discussing any kind of social or political change,” he says. Without freedom of speech, we can't address these issues.”