COLUMN: Exploring the homosexual myth

From Malik Wilson's, "RosZ," Fall '98 From Malik Wilson's, "RosZ," Fall '98It was only my second day working at the restaurant when I saw Al. He walked loudly into the room, announcing his arrival in a half-deep, half-high voice that made me look up abruptly. He sashayed into the room with his lanky arms swinging and snapped quickly in one of the waitresses' face. She laughed. I stared. His hair was pulled back in braids, revealing two large gold earings. Placing his backpack in the cabinet, he announced to no one in particular, "I'm ready to go to work, baby!" I looked away from him with an uncomfortable mixture of amusement and disgust. I think I wanna go home, baby, I thought. Like any other young, American teenager, I stood for quintessentially American things like breasts, cars and football. These were things that were cool. Gay people were uncool. Except maybe lesbians, who were cool as long as they weren't "butches" and as long as they liked men, too. I wouldn't have been friends with a gay man because number one, that wasn't socially acceptable, and two, I would never have anything to talk to him about. This is because my friends and I spent our time borrowing each other's copies of Penthouse, trading X-rated movies and describing and exaggerating our various sexual exploits. When I was a 14-year-old over-flooded with hormones, I really did spend 85 percent of my time thinking about naked women. I couldn't understand how a man could pass up a woman for another man. To a large extent, that last statement has not changed much. But what has changed significantly is the way I view homosexuals and their attempts to live normal lives. What has changed is my attempt to answer a question so naturalized in our culture I never even thought to ask it. That is, Why do heterosexual men in America despise homosexual men? The ideal image of the American male is a man who is proudly heterosexual -- cool, tough, unemotional and sexually desirable to women. He must be able not only to make money, but to make women swoon on the street and faint in the bedroom. From an early age, we are taught this. American masculinity, i.e., the set of actions and activities through which we define ourselves as men, is inseparable from heterosexuality. Thus simply by not desiring women, homosexual men contradict with this ideal. They therefore become configured not only as peculiar aberrations, but as a group of people who challenge a set of values esteemed by the culture as a whole. We define ourselves by what we are not. It is never enough just to be something, we also have to not be something else. These binaries are essential ingredients in the formulation of our identity. Thus one must be black/not white, rich/not poor, male/not female, and heterosexual/not homosexual. Blacks feel the need to establish their own culture formulated in opposition to white culture, the rich must live a certain lifestyle in order to demonstrate that they are not poor, males participate in activities that are specifically and purposefully non-female and heterosexual men must actively demonstrate their anti-homosexuality. The continued debate over homosexuality is falsely cloaked in moral and religious objections. Whether or not the Bible explicitly forbids homosexuality has never been the central issue. The Bible forbids an array of sins and transgressions, specifically stating that every sin is equally reprehensible in the eyes of God. But no one screams "Adulter!" at men on the street or physically assaults people who work on the Sabbath day. Our national leaders may covet others and be forgiven. Uncircumcised college students are not sought out and murdered. For me, the issue is one of parity -- that, in the absence of behavior that directly harms another, what right do I have to tell another man how to act? How can we complain about our inability to effectively care for the growing numbers of people in the world while attempting to turn the 10 percent of people in every society who are gay into procreating heterosexuals. If you are a man who loves women, why should you care if other men don't love women? That only means less competition for you.