Power Plays

He spoke of anger and isolation.

He thought perhaps his friends were right--that he blew things out of proportion, that he and not oppression was the problem.

"If you can take a dick, you can take a joke," --Anonymous Straight Man

He confessed finding no haven among gay friends who, largely, echoed the same clarion call of straight jokesters and jeerers to 'ligthen up.'

And perhaps he could lighten up, if he was not so confident that if he did, he would be destroyed. But he is smarter than that. He knows that his every breath and step and word is an act of defiance and challenge. His existence, his body is a realm of constantly contested space. These contests are (in no particular order):

• over whether he was born as he is or recruited;
• whether he deserves equal protection under the laws of his nation;
• whether he ought to enjoy the same liberties to the same extent as his straight fellows;
• whether he is a threat to our most cherished (?) social and cultural institutions;
• whether he should exist or been seen or heard at all....

But he is smarter than that. For he knows if he left the question of his personhood and individual liberty to straight people he would surely die. He would suffer cultural erasure, his name and body stricken from the course of history. Or perhaps he would simply be murdered.

So the only choice is to endure: to be as relentless as violence, relentless as fear, relentless as bigotry for they do not sleep. This is why he looks so tired.

But to be a tireless counter to violence and oppression is to be gnat swooping at the forehead of Goliath. It is to be a buzzkill. Because to be a tireless counter to violence and oppression is to never let us forget that there is always a choice to consent or to protest that same violence and oppression. Moreover, it is to remind us that we are all marked by our modes of seeing, being and knowing and there is no meridian separating ourselves from our culture.

There are no good people and there are no bad people. There are only those who participate. Sitting on the sidelines does not make us any less part of the game; abstinence offers us no spiritual absolution from the sins of our day.

'They need a course in gay politics,' he moaned. 'All they want is to be straight....'

Perhaps it was true that his less enlightened gay brethren, in the end, merely wanted to be straight. But first shouldn't we ask: if you are a gay person anywhere on the face of the planet, is wanting to be straight such a terrible thing?

There are a million things wrong with this proposition of course. A gay man 'wanting to be straight' has many meanings. However, this statement illustrates the way status is conflated with behavior in our society. Heterosexuality, and inversely homosexuality, describes behavior but both are perceived as status.

If to be straight is to not have to think about it, then a gay person 'wanting to be straight' at the most basic level means wanting that fearlessness, that unchallenged and assumed right to exist that gay people experience as straightness.

Indeed gay people everywhere might 'need' a course in politics but what balm could mere politics be to our individual and collective scars?

"...For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places]." --Ephesians 6:12

Ido not believe the answer to our problems, these are the problems of the day not just the gay ones, is in any sense political. Material changes in our society: in institutions, legal systems and norms reflect the desire to remove the visible barriers to a freer, more open, loving and equitable society. Recall: we do not wrestle with flesh and blood but with principalities, with the realm of the immaterial. It's easy to integrate your lunch counter, less so to integrate your mind.

The legal landscape alters according to who is in what office or who sits on the bench. The history of law, indeed of humankind, is as much progress as retrogression. Legal solutions are necessary but, by themselves, insufficient to change our world on the elemental level at which it needs changing.

Whether two gay men want to live in the suburbs, have a two car garage, a dishwasher and 2.5 children and live largely apolitical lives, is neither my business nor my concern.

Everyone deserves the lives they want. What is worrisome for me is that everyone, whether privileged or oppressed, is conditioned to respect the prevailing vector of power. What is worrisome for me is that I can be told by straight men and gay men to bend over for homophobia.

I am reminded of a story I heard from a straight friend whose brother who is gay.

Steve was hanging out with his fiancee's father in NYC. The father, from small town Kentucky, thought it cute to walk the streets of Chelsea and point out all the 'fags' to my friend. (As if it would be that difficult in any case.)

Now my friend, a straight man, nice guy, and with a gay brother, was offended but his future father-in-law persisted in his afternoon 'fag-spotting.'

'And what did you do?' I asked.

'I didn't do anything,' he said. 'I probably should have said something, right?'

If there is, as I am often told, some great arc of oppression with the multiply subordinated (the gay, the black, the female,) at some point on the extremities, then Steve, whether he wishes to be or not, is situated at its center.

Here is a white straight man,incensed by this narrative of abuse toward all gay people and his brother specifically, still paralyzed by a need to respect homophobia as 'culture' writ large.

If indeed Steve is at the center of the arc, what was he so afraid of?

The vague answer is: a confrontation. Like most civil people we are taught not to rock the boat. We are taught to respect culture, if that culture is violent, intolerant or greedy it is irrelevant.And no matter what face on the spinning coin of oppression we occupy (privilege or oppression), no matter what our intentions or our politics, we are taught to respect the prevailing vector of power.

We have all been very good students.

We're taught to respect big over small

male over female

rich over poor

white over black

straight over gay

bigotry over sensitivity, compassion, love and brotherhood.

In this opportunity for resistance, how could Steve, as a good student of culture, see love as a legitimate challenge to homophobia? How could any of us?

"...we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language...while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us." --Audre Lorde

It begins and ends with a choice of what to respect: love or fear, which is the opposite of love.

It was a hot day in June and I had taken him to the Long Island City waterfront. We looked across the East River as Manhattan glittered in the afternoon heat. I wanted to kiss him but there was a slightly overweight woman eating her lunch some fifty yards away who watched us very closely. And there were two construction workers about thirty yards away from us down the pier. And a woman pushing a stroller. And a group of co-workers chatting idly on the way back to the office. And a group of tourists taking pictures against the Manhattan skyline. And there were no shadows, no trees or shade to abscond to. Just the blue sky. And the bright sun.

And the woman eating lunch who watched us very closely. In that moment I too was paralyzed by my desire to show this man affection and my fear of what would happen if I did. Would the construction workers sneer, jeer? Would the lady confront us? Would all or any of them? Who else might see and be repulsed? Have their day ruined by two fags kissing on the waterfront in broad daylight? Who might perform their civic duty to police us? And would I be able to resist?

In the end I chose to respect love more than fear and kissed him. And that moment was heady and electric with danger, as most genuine moments of resistance, as many instances of gay life. To be gay is to live on the edge of so many knife-points, yet somehow have life retain its goodness.

In the end this is the only choice for all of us: that of love over fear. Many will laugh. This is because they have been good students, because they have learned that love is an inadequate challenge to nearly everything. And to the extent that they continue to teach these lessons to themselves and others, they will continue to be hemmed in by fear; there will be a bogeyman behind every door and there will be no escape.