Americans have become significantly less accepting of homosexuality since a Supreme Court decision that was hailed as clearing the way for new gay civil rights, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll has found.
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This alleged swing of opinion reminds me of a bit of personal history.
Over a decade ago, a woman I’d known for many years, and desired for a time with unwise intensity, came out to me as a lesbian.
This was good for many reasons; for example, I no longer had to listen to her hilariously dodgy explanations as she tried to hide her ‘other life’ and our friendship blossomed into something quite sweet. Mostly though, I appreciated her honesty because it gave me an opportunity to spend a lot of time with her circle of friends.
A little while after she came out we became housemates. And so, before I knew it and via one of those mysterious social processes only EU researchers seem to study, I became deeply involved in her social life – the lone straight guy at a number of (mostly lesbian) parties. Intriguingly, this provided me with an opportunity to listen to and participate in a wide range of discussions on issues of sexual politics from the perspective of these women. A priceless education really and a lifelong inoculation against stereotyping – negative and positive.
The friendship circle was a diverse group: there were the closeted bi-sexual women (very touchy issue), the ‘let’s move to a commune in Oregon’ faction, yuppie couples merely looking forward to a more tolerant America where they could be themselves and be ignored, the sexual scientists who used their bodies as a test site for exploring the limits of sensation and just plain folks with no discernable agendas.
Of course, after a little while, the ideological tensions broke the group up into balkanized same-concept blocs. But for a little while, it was a fascinating mix.
It so happened that one year, for whatever reason, the idea of ‘lesbian chic’ assumed a place on the national scene. Newsweek ran one of those issue-length theme stories on lesbians (which, to the editors, seemed to mean only cute, 34 or younger White women) and advertised this with a photo of two cute, 20-something White women embracing on the cover.
KD Lang and Melissa Etheridge were openly Gay and selling CDs, straight club girls were making out for fun and to titillate their boyfriends - yes, it seemed to the hopeful and the naïve that a new era had arrived.
At one of those parties in which I was the only guy, this became, unsurprisingly, a topic of heated debate.
Had a corner been turned? Was America really becoming more accepting? Or was this, as one of the Marxist-feminists insisted, simply capital cynically using the community to acquire profit?
I turned to my friend (who, by the way, was cute enough to have graced that Newsweek cover) and asked for her thoughts.
Her response (which I’m paraphrasing of course) has always stayed with and disturbed me:
“Some people play around, girls especially, and have a porno-like girl on girl moment but the fact is that the really Gay part of the population is a minority and always will be. When you’re a minority, good things can happen and bad things can happen but it’s always at the discretion of the majority. We should fight for fair treatment but we’ve got to remember that that’s just the way it is.”
To be honest, I’ve never known quite how to take this.
Of course, by stating this point of view she got herself into a lot of hot water that night.
DRM
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