Rambly blog post takes its cue from misguided article

I read this article by David Shariatmadari about Stonewall's 'Some people are gay. Get over it!' adverts and it raised a few good points, although I didn't arrive to the same conclusion as him. He wondered:

Who was it aimed at, I wondered? Was it a) homophobic people? Well, I'd be surprised if anyone actually believes it has the power to inspire Damascene conversions among the prejudiced. So that leaves b) gay people, who I'm confident don't need much convincing that they – we – exist and c) sympathetic straight people, who equally don't need to be persuaded. 

Well, is it as simple as dividing straight people into homophobes and sympathisers? Despite the fact that us gays like to imagine we are the centre of attention the whole time, there are lots of people who perhaps don't have any gay friends or acquaintances and haven't given a huge amount of thought to it either way. People like my grandparents who, upon hearing "Tom's news" have never had a bad word to say about it. One congratulated me on the fact that even though I was gay, at least I wasn't "like that Chinese chap". Their assertion that being gay wasn't a problem as long as I was slightly less camp than Gok Wan  was obviously meant with love, and despite the anti-Gok Wan overtones I'm sure if I was as camp as Gok Wan they'd have thought of something else supportive to say.

I nearly wrote: "He thought that the whole point of  campaign was about equal marriage rights (it isn't)". I'm wrong about this - the campaign is now all about marriage apparently. Or sort of. They've had the exact same campaign for a few years now, although currently on bus adverts instead of directing people to stonewall.org.uk, it has the web address stonewall.org.uk/marriage. Great. A campaign about fighting equality and discrimination is now all about getting married. Even though we already have civil partnerships.

'Get over it!' could be viewed as kinda confrontational, although it makes a pretty good point. Some people are gay. So? It doesn't even really mean you have to like gay people, or condone the horrifying sex acts we get up to. It just asks you to leave us alone. Which is why I'm surprised they've bastardised this old campaign into being about marriage, when the slogan doesn't really fit. 'Some people are gay. Therefore we should change the law to allow same-sex marriages!' - would be more appropriate. 'Get over it!' vaguely implies that the only thing that needs to change is your attitude, and not a centuries-old law.

Saying that - I don't really approve of Stonewall banging on about marriage so I should be grateful that they've changed tack in a really half-arsed way. The campaign keeps its its original message intact, despite the url change.

Back to the 'who was it aimed at?' point. Well, not just people's grandparents. Basically, people are more impressionable than we think. Especially young people. As Judge Judy once said to a 16-year old girl who'd crashed her friend's car, "When you're 16, you're not fully cooked". Stonewall does a lot of important work fighting homophobia in schools, and seeing these ads all over buses probably hammers the point home a bit.

I take issue with this paragraph:

Being gay is still seen as fine in some contexts, but not all. It's acceptable in your proverbial Islington dining room (though perhaps not in the Islington registry office), fine according to the statute book, but not if you try kissing your same-sex partner in public. Or sit next to them on the bus. Or hold hands in the street.

You sure about that David? Not to say I've never had any problems with random members of the public, but is it sensible to let a few hate crimes intimidate us? Don't let the terrorists win. Letting random attacks deter us from holding hands in public seems a pretty defeatist attitude.

But when I saw the advert it occurred to me that it, and that supercilious exclamation mark in particular, could in fact give people an excuse to express their homophobia. Stonewall's good intentions might simply end up making gay people's lives more difficult.

And so it came to pass. The Core Issues Trust ("God's heart in sexual and relational brokenness") and Anglican Mainstream, a group of hyper-conservatives within a generally quite gay-friendly church, took the bait. They booked space on buses to display a different tagline: "Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!" Slightly baffling, but definitely homophobic, and obviously intended as a riposte to Stonewall.

OH MY GOD.

Remember on that show Dead Ringers, how Jan Ravens took the piss out of Kirsty Wark, and deadpanned the lyrics to rubbish pop songs "don't be shy, touch my bum this is life"? Maybe just me then. These crazy gay-curing people already existed. The fact they somewhat unhilariously satirised a gay-rights campaign is not really going to make our lives any harder. And pointing out they copied Stonewall so it's Stonewall's fault this story even happened is a bit like saying If Kirsty Wark didn't present Newsnight that the first minute of Dead Ringers would have been that old BBC test card of the girl with the creepy clown.

Gay people have been pointlessly reminded, not that homophobia is unacceptable, but that there exist organised groups that detest them.

Thanks David. Yeah, gay people are that forgetful. We had no idea that there were some Christian groups who are jealous of our fabulousness until I heard about yesterday. I was so wrapped up in making myself margaritas and browsing the Ikea catalogue that I just forgot some people reckon they can cure me of my inherent deviance by electrocuting me whilst showing me slide after slide of gay pornography.

What he's trying to say is that we can blame homophobia on gay people. As long as we play nice and don't make too much noise, the homophobes will leave us alone. Basically, we should hide.

He makes one very good point though:

If that weren't enough it's now impinged on the mayoral race as a dream pseudo-controversy for Boris, an opportunity to flaunt his inclusivity and his modernising credentials just before polling day.

We really need to think what Ken would have done here, and it would have been the exact same. Ken Livingstone has an amazing record of fighting for gay rights and let's not let Boris use this as point-scoring to win the gay vote. (Btw: I have a few issues with Ken, but he's a better mayoral candidate than Boris).

Oh and because I'm feeling generous, let's pick one more issue with the article.

Stonewall could learn a thing or two about campaigning, and changing attitudes, from Dan Savage

Well no, Dan Savage isn't as great as you think. He thought of those 'It Gets Better' videos, good on him, but read this article where he comes across as a complete dick.

The tranny activists are going to jump down my throat for this, but it seems to me that your ex could’ve put off the sex change until after his son was out of high school. One of the things parents are supposed to do is make sacrifices, big and small, for the sake of their children. And while I think people have a right to do pretty much as they please (and parents are people), I also believe that children have a right to some stability and constancy from the adults in their lives. Perhaps I’m a transphobic bigot, but I honestly think waiting a measly 36 months to cut your dick is a sacrifice any father should be willing to make for his 15-year-old son. Call me old-fashioned.

Unfortunately, your ex wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice (selfish tranny!) or it never occurred to him to make that sacrifice (stupid tranny!). So what do you tell your son? Tell him his father can do what he likes—suck dick, flaunt it; get his dick cut off, flaunt that. If dear ol’ dad chooses to live as a woman, well, there’s not a lot you or your son can do. But guess what? Your son is old enough to do what he likes and if he chooses to live without seeing or speaking to his father, well, there’s not a whole lot his father can do. If your son can’t deal with having his dad/mom/whatever around right now, support your son and tell his dad/mom/whatever to leave the two of you alone for the time being.

Now I am sometimes tactless. But this? You've gotta admit this isn't nice. It's more of this 'I'm gay but discreet' bullshit.

People shouldn't be afraid to challenge homophobia. It's all about context I know (if a drunk stranger shouts something at me then I'll run away if it looks like there's the slightest chance they're good at punching) and it's not like the situation is all that terrible in this country when we compare it to other parts of the world - but this doesn't mean we should chastise people for trying to make a difference.

We don't hear about racism and say it's because there's too much anti-racism campaigning going on, or that the anti-racism campaigning is too aggressive. We shouldn't do the same for homophobia.

Time to Boycott Starbucks

Got my cynicism hat on. Starbucks gives money to gay marriage cause. Anti-gay marriage group calls for a boycott. Cue ridiculous online petition to say 'thank you' to Starbucks. It does lead me on to the question: how stupid does Starbucks think we are? Anyone should be able to see that Starbucks knew they'd stir up controversy among the religious insane by doing this, and the backlash to this could only be good PR.

Obviously generating good PR has got to be the primary motivation behind all corporate charity donations, but this one smacks of focus-groups and self-appointed social media gurus and brainstorm sessions and decaf soy lattes. What I mean is: let's not seriously allow our opinion to be swayed in favour of Starbucks because of an obvious marketing gimmick.

In the meantime I will be continuing my own personal boycott of Starbucks. But this is because I refuse to spend more than I would on the ingredients for an evening meal every time I want a caffeine hit. And for the record this isn't me endorsing some other cafe, I drink coffee that I make myself alone in my room. Coffee isn't a party drug.

Back to gay marriage, I've been reading some interesting stuff written by gays who are against gay marriage. I nearly wrote 'from an LGBT perspective', but most of what I've been reading has largely been written by and about gay men, without much of a nod to B, L, or T. But hey, we got left out the sandwich. (This is not a joke I thought of myself, but I love it and had to retell it.) I think there's a bit of an issue with how in the media the issue of 'gay rights' is often played out as if it only affects gay men, with other sexualities and gender identities being largely ignored. I'm about to do just that, but it's only because I'm trying to draw on my own thoughts and experiences. I'm aware this isn't the full picture.

This article makes the point that 'traditional marriage' as we understand it is a recent invention, and that part of the magic of being one of them gayers is being all nonconformist and challenging tradition.

Certainly, there were always members of the gay community who would rather not have borne the burden of existential difference, who would rather have stayed who they were while seeing society change in such a way that who they are might be allowed to count as normal. The domestication of same-sex desire is surely a good thing for these people. But their individual advantage does not mean that the world as a whole is not losing something, and it has been one of the great fallacies of the liberal defenders of gay marriage to assume that what is good for any given individual is for that very reason good for society. The loss we have in fact suffered is one akin to the loss of some mighty species of wild boar as it is bred downward into a fat, ugly, lazy, edible pig; or to the move of indigenous Amazonians from the rainforest into squalid urban slums. In each case, one may insist that the absorption of these once-free beings into the dominant world order is a bit of progress for them: the pigs will now be well fed (until they are slaughtered), and the proletarianized Indians will eventually benefit from some small dose of welfare-state largesse. But in each case there is something the world is losing. 

I don't know how much of this I can agree with, but the author is definitely on to something. As western culture has come to terms with the fact that we're not mentally ill and we're not deviants, the tendency has been to try to get us to act like straight people. Instead of being discriminated against, we are being told to assimilate. As far as marriage rights are concerned, I'm siding with the well-meaning straight people who think we should have the right to tie the knot. In this country we already have equal marriage laws in everything but name, and I don't see how the government's plans to make same-sex marriage the real deal is actually going to change much. Except annoy some fundamentalist Christians. This is obviously a bigger issue in the US because they don't have an equivalent in every state, and there's a lot more fundamentalist Christians out there. We should let the pig breed downwards, because some of the pigs really want to breed.

But I will side with the author of the above passage, in that I don't think all we should all shut up and get married. Here's a wild boar who intends to stay wild.

In 1991, the year I was born, the word 'heteronormativity' was coined. I bloody love this word. I suppose it's one of these annoying trump cards that I can invoke whenever, like an equivalent of 'white privilege'. Straight people, even with the best of wills, cannot escape their heteronormative viewpoint and will never understand what it's really like to be gay. We're different. And while we should be grateful for the increasingly tolerant world in which we find ourselves, we shouldn't be afraid to retain a distinct identity. We don't have to embrace outdated institutions in order to prove ourselves, and we don't have to pretend we're just like straight people who happen to like cock.

Homosexual relationships are different to heterosexual ones.

And as for marriage? The primary reason for getting married nowadays is economic. In the event of your partner dying, you'll inherit everything, and if you're worse off financially you can get some money off your partner when you get divorced. This second point applies mostly to women who've sacrificed their careers to have children and has thus ended up earning less than their husbands. 'Traditional marriage', where you get married once and then you die, is itself dying. People are cohabiting and marrying and getting divorced and remarrying in an endless cycle of constant nuptials. You have to ask yourself why they bother.

Who says we shouldn't question the idea of marriage? Marriage, to me at least, is a relic of a paternalistic society where women are traded like cattle, passed from father to husband. It's not fit for purpose. I question the logic of 'gay marriage' when it's clear that most people, and possibly men in particular, are not exactly wired towards choosing one person to form a long-term monogamous relationship with, and sticking with that person for the rest of their life. Which is not to say it's impossible, some people end up meeting 'the one' and live happily ever after. But equally, some people stick around in unhappy relationships far longer than they should.

Promising to stick with someone until death do you part is placing a heavy burden on yourself should the relationship start to turn sour. You've made a promise not to cut your losses and run if it's not working out. No, you will stay and try to make the relationship work until either things improve or you never want to see his face again. And of course when this happens you will feel guilt, shame and regret. You can't reflect that you had a good relationship that ran its course - no, no such luxury for you. Your marriage was a failure. Is the fight to legalise gay marriage about what we really want, or is it just another notch in the civil liberties bedpost?

Bigots like the Coalition for Marriage argue that gay marriage is an attack on heterosexual marriage. If anything, it's the opposite. It will have no effect whatsoever on straight people's unions, but it's what it does to the gay way of life that's the real game changer. We used to be outlaws, now we're bickering in Ikea.

I digress. We should totally change the law to allow gay marriage for one reason and one reason alone: it will annoy the fundamentalist Christians. Enjoy your Starbucks.