From childhood to around 19 years of age, when George Orwell forever ruined me, I happily attended a small, street corner church, nestled in a neighborhood slowly slipping into blight.
It was the kind of African American house of worship celebrated by everyone from 'traditional values' bellowing conservative talking heads to wind catcher sporting NPR liberals.
Like all human collectives, it was full of contradictions: simultaneously warm and open, grim and reactionary.
It was the center of my young life.
Among our beloved Reverend's many memorable sermons was a homilie delivered as my friends and I entered our teenage years - that long state of emergency and sexual panic.
The topic was male sexuality or, more precisely, men's absolute need to "jealously guard their virility."
This idea intrigued me; how could I guard my virility? Perhaps by eating more red meat and taking ever more potent vitamins?
The Reverend presented examples. Christ, a two fisted carpenter, let's not forget, was a manly man. Didn't he go into the temple and raise an action hero quality ruckus? Didn't he face his certain, horrendous death with martial courage? We were advised to not only follow Jesus' spiritual example (which included, the Reverend hastened to tell the horny throng, chastity) but also his manly example.
Next came the Romans themselves. Sure, they'd crucified our Lord but you couldn't help but admire the stern logic of Pilate, the disciplined power of Augustus, the terrible might of the legions.
I was beginning to get the picture: we were being told to carefully retain, like a rare work of art, our toughness, but, seasoned with Christian attributes.
Interestingly, and, inadvertently, the Reverend coherently presented ideas that usually float around, unexpressed. Namely, that maleness - defined by old school gender ideologues as the ability to endure pain, act decisively, defend family, friend and country, build worlds and crush your opponents with ruthless efficiency - was a cultivated state, an attainment which could be contaminated and destroyed through neglect and bad associations.
To this way of thinking, male homosexuality represents a surrender of those austere virtues to a feminine principal of sensual indulgence. How could you hope to build an empire - our Reverend might have asked - if you were luxuriating in the effeminate splendor of Gayness?
...
Or so it goes in the more learned circles of homophobia.
At the most reactionary and violent end, these ideas are more felt than thought. But, I think the worst examples of straight (or closeted) male panic about Gayness are merely frequencies found along a spectrum which includes the old Reverend's complex admonitions and the feral shouts of bashers.
It's not that different, really, from white panic about the fragile nature of whiteness as shown by 'one drop' rules of days past (carried into the present in a softer form - anyone with a recent black relative is automatically coded as black).
.d.