When Gay Meant Happy

Back in Jane Austen's time people used to laugh, and sing happy songs like ‘now we don our gay apparel.’ But now gay means getting murdered in rural Wyoming like Matthew Shepard, or flogged in Teheran, or at best having to be secretive, or at least pretty brave, if you choose to come out anywhere outside of, say, the West Village or West Hollywood. But to me, I keep wondering just what all the fuss is all about. It’s like the old saying, ‘some of my best friends are Jews.’ Or in this case, ‘gays.’ Relatives too. Even favorite ones. Having worked in the arts, music, Hollywood and literary worlds my whole life, I was bound to meet one or two of them. And it’s hard to understand why all this anathema from the rest of us. Most of the gays I’ve met are very nice, well educated, well dressed, polite people who wash their hands, and have excellent taste in most matters. Every town or city I’ve ever lived in was improved once gays moved in: art galleries were opened, good restaurants, theater groups, musical venues, museums, and attractive neighborhoods all seem to be preferred a lot more by gays than, say, those who live in double-wides but attend church every Sunday before going out to blow away Bambi’s mother.

In much of the world, even more than in Wyoming or our Christian-feigning West, people are so afraid of gays they routinely beat or kill them on sight (even more so in Islamic and African cultures). And no issue involving gays seems to inflame all these righteous religionists quite so much as marriage. In fact, none of the gay people I know personally are actually in any huge rush to get married at all. Truth is, gay people are about equal to straight people when it comes to marriage. Some want it, others don’t. Some would rather ‘cohabit.’ Or, as the Religious Right would have us believe, ‘live in sin.’ Of course, if you’re Christian, all sex is sin, even though you’re under some kind of moral obligation to get married, go forth, and multiply (thus our seriously overcrowded, over-polluted world). I suppose on the other hand, so long as you’re straight, it’s perfectly fine to live in sin, too, so long as you pay the piper. Or at least your congress person and clergyman. If you’re gay, you’re not allowed to do either one.

I think this whole coming out getting married thing is going a bit overboard though, really, because I think the people who are going to really make out the most in the long run, apart from the Cadillac-driving Jesus preachers, are lawyers. (BTW, was Jesus straight? I can’t get a ‘straight’ answer on this one. Only Mary M. knows for sure, I guess. But if he was so straight, how come he never got married and procreated like God said?) Anyway, getting back to the gay thing, it’s divorce lawyers who are going to make out like bandits, from all this gay marriage. The more states allow gay marriages the better, for them. Because gay people are no more devoted to long term relationships than, say, Hollywood actors, or Republican preachers. Which also goes for long-term marriage.

But here’s where I fall down laughing, while others are busy shouting. If you are to believe the Religious Right, the reason they are all so outraged about gays being allowed to marry is that, in their words, it is a threat to the institution of marriage. Why, exactly, is that? Are they terrified that all their sweet young straight things, all so good and Christian-like, (those who aren’t pregnant from pre-marital unprotected sex, at least) all those hockey star manly guys and Texas halfbacks are going to be unable to resist the huge attraction, should gay marriage be allowed, to abandon their hetero sweetheart fiancés and dash off to marry the nearest gay person instead? Thus, there is a belief, among Christian types, that there is a conspiracy behind all this gay marriage. It’s to make us all gay. Or at least, to make your kids gay. Because after all, given the chance, at least according to these ‘Christians,’ gay must be the preferred alternative, unless we beat it out of you.

So the anti-gay crowd is determined, at all cost, to make certain that their upstanding straight high school age children be taught abstinence, and biblical studies, and hockey, and rid the world of gays so they can all remain straight gun-loving Christians (or for that matter, Muslims). But what’s so hilarious about that notion, is the idea that adults in pulpits or Governor’s offices can make any red-blooded teenager or post-adolescent, for that matter, do anything. Let alone practice abstinence while deprived of even the knowledge of alternatives, let alone change their sexual preferences for reasons yet to be disclosed (other than behind the doors of some Baptist ministry in East Texas or Grisham country, I suppose).

Let’s get something straight (pun intended): you can’t make people be something they aren’t. Try as you might. If God intended gays to be so straight, he’da made them that way. Y’know? No doubt so they could run for governor of Alaska. Or for congress in Raleigh. Or maybe for the next Presidency of Iran, the current leaders of which insist there are “no gays in Iran.” Or at least none that haven’t been whipped, beaten, murdered, or driven into exile. Like those in Wyoming.