Starless and Kettle Black

They say the more things change, the more they stay the same.  I think that's nonsense.  There is always a progression.  Sometimes the progression is slow, and sometimes it gets distracted, sidetracked along the way, or even lapsing into old habits before straightening out and resuming its procession of progression.  We can’t unlearn what we’ve learned.  History is an endless quest.  Once you reach the next level, you don’t retry the earlier ones, but move on to the next, prepared to stumble through the next set of challenges until you’ve mastered it, and so on.

The problem, from which the old cliché is derived I suspect, is that sometimes crises resemble past levels, and suddenly you feel like you’ve just wandered in the woods in a circle, only to recognize that same tree you swore you saw half an hour or half a century ago.  For example, the struggle for women’s rights in the early twentieth century closely resembled the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  Now, generations on, it is unthinkable that someone was once discriminated against based on gender or skin colour.  Unthinkable except for a small minority of people who still stubbornly cling to outdated social dogma, people I like to refer to as ‘uneducated’, to put it politely.

The latest crisis to hit a fevered pitch in virtually every aspect of life these days is homosexuality.  It has to be a crisis.  Everyone is talking about it, and everyone has either a solution to it or a critique of the whole thing.  They likely aren’t sure what  the whole thing really is.  Homosexuality is really a generic term with very broad definitions, implications, and perceptions, from those who are, aren’t, or are somewhere in the middle of what it means to be ‘gay’.

There are no aspects of our culture free from the long shadow of sexual ambiguity.  I can’t get through a line at a grocery store without seeing plastered all over tabloids which celebrities are or aren’t gay.  Or, more often than not, a blurred teaser photo inviting me to check page 34 to see which shocking celebrity has just been unceremoniously ‘outed’.  Sadly, I’m sometimes surprised to see the names mentioned, before it occurs to me I have no idea why I would assume one way or another, or whether or not it’s even my business to wonder at all.  Whether or not Lindsey Lohan likes women is as irrelevant to me as whether or not she has a drug problem. 

Even the domain of professional sports isn’t immune to the tongue wagging.  I remember people being shocked when Martina Navratilova came out in the 1980s, when I was still a teenager.  It seemed that people were more interested in her sexuality than her unparalleled accomplishments on the tennis court. 

With the shocking death of the famous actor Rock Hudson from the newly discovered AIDS virus, a wave of fear for the homsexuals lurking in the shadows, locker rooms, public bathrooms, and local supermarkets had everyone afraid that someone of the same sex was eying you lasciviously, waiting for you to be alone before they pounced on you and ravaged you in unimaginable ways.  That irrational fear gave cause for most of the homophobia that flourished in those years, back when being gay meant to be unmanly or unwomanly, or that you were certain to carry plagues that would surely be the end of civilization.  And just like racism, homophobia has a long memory.  It doesn’t just go away; in fact, it still permeates society, just more cleverly veiled.  The team locker room was one of the last bastions of accepted or encouraged homophobia.  But that is changing.

TSN hockey analyst and former player Aaron Ward has produced a series entitled ‘ReOrientation’, in which he investigates the changing climate in dressing rooms of professional sports.  The reality is, there have always been and always will be gay athletes, but few have ever felt comfortable enough to identify themselves publicly for fear of reprisal from their team mates.  Only in recent years have athletes begun to reveal their homosexuality while still playing, and some sports have yet to reveal their respective pioneer in sexual acceptance.  I recently overheard some middle-school boys, athletes themselves, likely already anointed in the locker room culture, speaking to each other enthusiastically about Aaron Ward's article, and it made me smile.  The memory is long, but like anything else, it can eventually fade away.  When (not if) a future team mate comes out, they will have the moral fiber to accept them for who they are.  That is the real spirit of team anyway.

Homophobic normalcy was once part of my character.  Like most everyone around me, I also felt that homosexuality was less a trait or attribute, but a political opinion.  For example, I was vocally opposed to gay pride parades, less for the advocacy of acceptance, and more for the image I thought was being portrayed, that of a more perverse or deviant social behavior.  I never truly knew any gay people, though.  Actually, I probably did, but they weren’t ready to reveal that, and since I was no more understanding than the next guy or girl, why would they ever feel comfortable telling me?  I still feel ashamed when I think about it like that.

One day, a friend in my circle came out.  I had never seen it coming.  He was a popular, fit, friendly person who dated really attractive girls frequently.  How could he be gay?  And how could he suddenly seemingly decide that these beautiful women were no longer sexually attractive?  It just didn’t make sense.  I’ve come to realize that in that regard, to me it will never truly make sense. 

Most of our group of friends accepted him for who he was, and I remember feeling for the first time that everything I thought I knew about what it meant to be gay was wrong.  Less wrong, and more misinformed, I suppose.  One afternoon after exams, we were all sitting around on a patio, having a few drinks, and he decided he would field our questions.  It wasn’t locker room talk anymore, but a legitimate Q&A session.  He very bravely and graciously shared his perspective, and we learned quickly that the friend we had in him before had not changed, and in fact was always that way, just concealed behind a veil of fear.  His fear was justified.  Team mates on his rugby team were less forgiving, and some refused to change in the locker room when he was present.  To imagine that he was ogling them in the showers all that time!

As he became closer friends with other students in the gay community, I was introduced to more and more gay and lesbian folks, all of whom seemed friendly enough to me.  At the end of the day, isn’t that all that matters?  If people are respectful to me, I see no reason to treat them otherwise.  He introduced me to another fellow who it became apparent quickly found me to be attractive.  Uh-oh, here come the sneaky homosexuals from earlier in this essay, and this one had me in his sights.  Around campus, he seductively cooed my name when he said hello, and to my chagrin in front of lots of attractive women.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was still friendly to him, but I clearly wasn’t interested in dinner and a movie.  Even if he was paying.

My friend  told him a few days later that I was straight.  He seemed a bit disappointed, but not too much.  I guess that for gay people, there are plenty of fish in the sea too.  I hope he found someone who treats him well.  He seemed like a decent guy.  And whether or not he’d noticed me in the grocery line reading tabloids or saw me scrubbing my back in the locker room shower, he didn’t seize upon that opportunity to attack.  It occurred to me that there were no more likely skulking gays than communists.  The more things change, I suppose.

Still, I accept that people will have their own views.  You can hide behind the discomfort that comes with a lack of understanding of homosexuality if you like.  You can make jokes with your friends privately for a few quick laughs, like lots of people do.  You can even try to convince me that scientifically homosexuality is not natural, and that if we were supposed to be attracted to the same sex, our species would have died out long ago.  You won’t likely succeed, but you can try.  You can’t convince me that homosexuality is wrong if your only defense is that you read it in the Bible.

The latest and most furious kindling in the firestorm of controversy surrounding homosexuality came about when one of the stars of the popular TV show Duck Dynasty revealed in an interview that his religious adherence is the reason he feels gay people are sinners, akin to those who commit bestiality, among other claims.  He says that his strong ‘family values’ are a result of his faith, and so his views on homosexuality, which are shared by millions, should be accepted as such.  Religious freedom is also something we value today which was less tolerated in the past.  If we have to accept Muslims, those swarthy Middle-Easterners with such strange customs who attacked the Twin Towers, then surely to our God, good old-fashioned Christianity has to be protected, here in a country founded on those same Christian values that believes in freedom and tolerance for all, doesn’t it?

I really don’t like his TV show.  I watched a few episodes, and failed to see the charm.  Still, I’ll grant the Robertson family a few of their more endearing qualities.  They eat supper together, worship together as they see fit, help each other in both work and play, and seem to get on just fine.  I’ve also met plenty of gay people who live the same way.  Some of them even like hunting.

Historically, public opinion about issues like this tend to heighten along with social upheaval or uncertainty.  When Germany was economically in the toilet after WWI, the Jews seemed like logical scapegoats, and we all know how that turned out.  With so much economic instability in North America, particularly in the southern states, it isn’t surprising that people yearn for a simpler time, when men were men, and women were, well, women I guess.  When you went to church, ate dinner together at 5pm, asked a girl to the prom, and went muddin' on the four-wheeler, when you could actually afford to buy gas for it.  The Duck Dynasty men remind us of those times.  Phil Robertson briefly also reminded us of all the fear gay people had during those same times.  For them, it is not a time of fond remembrance.

Defenders of the Robertson family claim that they are suffering an attack on a legitimate point of view.  They believe that their faith affirms this, and that they are free to believe it so long as they are propped up by their scriptures.  They feel that a traditional way of life is under seige from those perverts waiting in the bushes to rush out and push their gay agenda on us.  Some even feel that their traditional man/woman marriages are in peril on account of male/male or female/female marriages being permitted, and even defended under law.  How anyone could claim the Robertsons are any less than saintly is inconceivable to them.  They pray.  They must be good people.

The fact is, you can still be like that younger me well past middle age.  You can hold on to that view that something you don’t understand is a threat to you before you take the time to try to learn about it.  I believe that A&E, the company that distributes Duck Dynasty, was well within its rights to dismiss an employee that portrayed a point of view that is no longer socially acceptable.  Those who had found their champion of homophobia were suddenly without their star power.  After a huge public outcry, they weren’t starless for long.  For them, it was not an indictment of their religiously-backed views of homosexuality, but an indictment of a simpler way of life.  I feel that the sacking, however temporary, of Phil Robertson was actually an indictment against enabled and tolerated mediocrity, of cyclical uneducation, and of intolerance.  And for that, I applaud them, because cultural ignorance is not something worthy of defense. 

If you think that life was better when Bo and Luke were driving the General Lee with its confederate flag emblazoned on the doors they were too lazy to open, you’re painting the kettle black when it comes to the millions who lived those days afraid to be themselves.  The maniacs ready to pounce on them at any moment were not hiding.  Even the German SS troops sat down to eat with their families once in a while.