Can You Be Homosexual Without Being Gay?

It's a long article so I'll have to read it tonight.

I'm glad there is a new thread for it though, the portion I read raises some interesting issues.

Thank you, Kad! You're my touchstone!

I just finished the article because damn it's long. But what a read! There's so much to unpack and I didn't know where to start until I came upon this nugget in the end...and I think it gets at exactly what is right about being 'gay' and what can be lost by assimilation (if we define assimilation as aping heterosexual norms):

After marriage equality is finally achieved, we will also need to work toward a society that can imagine family and social organization beyond the wedded couple, as we’ve known for a long time now that that model is in dire need of updating.

I'm going to relay a personal detail from my life in response to this that I think about a lot. As many here know, I lost my partner to a brain hemorrhage almost 4 1/2 years ago. It was a harrowing few days in the hospital and I was not only surrounded by my family and his, but also the family we managed to cobble together over the years. There were about 10 friends who stayed with me pretty constantly over his last few days, taking calls, disseminating information, etc. My mother later recounted to me that she and David's aunt had a long discussion over how remarkable it was that there was this core group of human beings not connected by blood or marriage acting like a deeply enmeshed family. It was mostly gay men, but a few straight friends who have lived life as 'gay' as defined by this article. My mother still brings it up and marvels at it. She's commented several times about the fact that we were all from accepting, loving families but that we somehow still found each other and formed this other group in which to find solace and support. She thought that was only for those who were abandoned and left outside. I've never had the heart to explain to her that, not matter how much they loved and supported me, I still grew up alone because there was no one in my family at the time that could impart on me what it was to grow up gay. Of course we found each other...because we needed to.

As much as I am open to the idea of having a husband in the future, I do worry that we will leaving something behind if we simply march forward to mirroring 'straight' relationships as defined in the last century in the United States. We have much to gain by being able to have access to institutions that we've been kept from. However, we also have a lot to teach about the expansion of the idea of family. It need not be just bloodline or something joined by the state and/or God. It's essential and I know for a fact that I wouldn't have made it through the last few years without the family I've created, no matter how important the family into which I was born is.

I've been thinking a lot about my age. Not in any kind of 'Oh God I'm old way,' but in a 'I really am defined by when I was born' way. I attended college from 92-96. Many of the potential gay mentors were simply not available because they were dead, sick or trying to repair their lives after so much loss. It fell to us to educate ourselves...and it's something I'm very happy to have done, or tried to do, over the years. But without that passing down of knowledge from the direct descendants, something has been, if not lost, diluted. It's why a performance artist/provocateur such as Justin Sayre is essential to the debate. Be how you wish to be. Embrace 'gay' or not. But have the respect to at least explore it a little bit before you reject it out of hand.

These kinds of articles usually make me cringe, but I've been reading J. Bryan Lowder's article for a while and he's very smart.

Be how you wish to be.

This. I've read too many articles and had too many acquaintances with the reaction that monogamy, marriage and child-rearing are not only deliberate attempts at societal norms, but an abandonment of gay culture and the LGBT community. As if the notion is a betrayal and we have a duty only to live in the style of certain individuals of a small (but notable) era in gay history (chiefly, the late 60s to the early 80s).

My sister-in-law and her wife have been together over 30 years. They raised two children together and have two grandchildren. They recently were legally wed because they were granted the option of doing so. It has never entered their minds that they have been doing this for over three decades because they are desperate to mimic societal norms or try to fit in just as they didn't feel it was their responsibility to educate anyone on gay life or the definition of family. They loved each other and wanted to be together. They wanted to love and raise children. Knowing them personally, I do believe they are shining examples of family, love and support, but neither of them had examples of LGBT couples/parents from which to draw and they don't believe they have a "responsibility" to mentor others than to simply keep doing what they are doing and be supportive to others. It's all organic and the beauty of it is, they weren't told who they should be or how to live their lives.

Perhaps it is just the people I roll with, but I have not seen the idea of "gay" (as in the culture discussed in the article) dying down.

Updated On: 5/13/15 at 03:15 PM

"(My Julia Child imitation was lost on him, as was my Katharine Hepburn and my Bette Davis.)

That's because all your imitations sound like you've just had a stroke.

I KID! I KID!

That story reminds me of the affliction Blacks Without Soul:

What are we going to do about
The Other Generation?
How will ever communicate
Without communication?

You can't account for what they'll say or do.
And what peculiar thoughts they think
They never reveal to you.

A very discouraging problem is
The Other Generation.
They want to lead a life that's all their own.
Perhaps we ought to let them,
Forsake them and forget them!
But then we'd only find ourselves alone.--With one another!--
I don't believe we'd like to be alone!

I guess it's cause we roll with similar people (given our circumstances), but yeah...I'm with you. I guess there will always be the keepers of the culture, those who rebel against it and those who don't even know or care that it's there. And that's probably as it should be.

The one thing I hope for is that self-satisfaction that wafts off of bro-mos because they're beyond the 'gay' sh*t lessens. I'll then stop clucking like a hen and clutching my pearls every time I meet someone who doesn't understand why Dorothy Loudon's giggle at the end of Fifty Percent is the greatest thing to ever happen anywhere ever.

'But I think that we should not worry ourselves silly about terminology and instead just focus on our thoughts.'

Or perhaps you can take a moment and realize how grateful we all should be that there were people before us that decided to name themselves in the face of overwhelming opposition so that we can have a relaxed conversation about how 'silly' 'terminology' can be.

I want young queer people to not feel the oppression that those who came before dealt with. But I also want them to know the how and why of the new privilege they now enjoy.

"
The only thing that made them gay was that they liked dick. And that they got a lot of it."

Well, and that they vacationed in Ptown...

"'But I think that we should not worry ourselves silly about terminology and instead just focus on our thoughts.'
Or perhaps you can take a moment and realize how grateful we all should be that there were people before us that decided to name themselves in the face of overwhelming opposition so that we can have a relaxed conversation about how 'silly' 'terminology' can be.
I want young queer people to not feel the oppression that those who came before dealt with. But I also want them to know the how and why of the new privilege they now enjoy. "

Absolutely! However, when you look at that group of people, they are not all Drag Queens forming a kick line outside of Stonewall. They encompass the whole spectrum from "We are just like you!" to "It's raining Men!".