If you’re a hater, you can characterize gayness as you will: sodomy, pederasty, the admonitions of Leviticus, the love that dare not speak its name, the Greek vice, bestiality, “vile affections” (St. Paul), unnatural pleasures, an abomination, “homosexuality is sin” (Jerry Falwell), “God hates fags” (Westboro Baptist Church), “sick unfortunates” (Ronald Reagan). Homosexuality has always been the most reviled of human behaviors. We know this from every civilization which has left records of itself, from the ancient Jews (of course), Japanese and Hindus through the Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and the Dark and Middle Ages, to our own era. Those men and women practicing same-sex love were shunned, exiled, excommunicated, or subject to severe, violent physical punishment, including castration and death. (Yes, it’s true the American Indians had their berdache, but they were usually ostracized.)
Throughout history, though, there has been one exception to this abysmal record: the upper classes of most cultures. If they did not actively practice homosexuality themselves, they accommodated themselves to it, and were comfortable in the company of “the third sex.” It was always the broad lower classes who hated and persecuted homosexuals.
Why? Because the wealthy were better educated. Because they were more cosmopolitan in terms of their travels, acquaintances, and reading. Because, when it came to religion, they were more agnostic and rational. Perhaps they were simply more intelligent. As a result, they were more “liberal.” We see this today when we consider the cultural tolerance of big U.S. cities—San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, Portland—and contrast it with the narrow-minded bigotry of red states, especially the rural counties that comprise Trump’s MAGA base. The Christians in those ultra-conservative areas are the worst-educated, most bellicose, most likely to get their information from the Bible, and most alarmingly vulnerable to rightwing harangues from the likes of Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, Franklin Graham and Tucker Carlson. This is why Hillary Clinton accurately called them “a basket of deplorables.”
One has to wonder why the right is so preoccupied with sex. My own opinion is that they have a genital fixation that makes them think with their reproductive organs rather than with their cerebral cortex, much less with their hearts. (The irony is that so many “Christians” are utterly lacking in Christian values.) This obsession with sex becomes especially heinous when the so-called moral leaders of the Christian right, who usually are male ministers, are caught publicly in flagrante delicto having sex with female prostitutes and/or with other men. You’d think that, after all the Christian sex scandals of the last forty years, the American people would laugh these clowns off the stage when they spew their hatred.
For all my criticism of progressives and wokeism, I thank them for being the only major political group in America that has consistently stood up in support of the LGBTQ community. For this reason, I cannot universally hate on wokeism, the way MAGA and their leader, Trump, do. When Trump does it, it’s an obscene bend-of-the-knee to the Christian nationalist right. We should send Trump those “Newsom kneepads” the Governor is sardonically offering the public.
When the President of the United States openly supports the anti-gay violence of Kirk, Archbishop Cordileone, Glenn Youngkin, Ralph Reed, Lindsay Graham (talk about irony), Ron Johnson and religious maniacs like James Dobson (“Focus on the Family”), responsible, moral American political leaders must stand up and offer resistance, regardless of the fallout that may ensue.
When you think about it, the widespread condemnation of homosexuality throughout human history is proof of its enduring ubiquity. Homosexuality is endemic to the human race. Men and women like doing it. One of these days, we may admit the real reason for homophobia; organized radical religion, as exemplified by Orthodox Jews, extremist Muslims, and, especially in this country, maniacal rightwing Christians, whom you’ll find under the rock of this hatred. We ought to resist these freaks with everything we’ve got. If you’re inclined in the MAGA direction, you should be fighting this homophobic tendency in your own party.
One last thing: Someone referred to homosexuality as “the love that won’t shut up,” a twist on Lord Alfred Douglas’s 1892 aphorism, “The love that dare not speak its name.” I have always been reticent, in my public writing, to overdwell on gayness. It annoys me that Black people fetishize on being Black; their activists see everything through the distorting lens of their skin color when the world is so much larger and more interesting than one mere biological feature. But every so often, I feel compelled to opine on gayness, especially since homophobia has now “come out of the closet,” so to speak, following Trump’s liberation of all types of bias. Remember Pastor Niemoller.
Steve Heimoff