Gay Sex
It is 2016, and for the first time, I’ve just watched Ellen Degeneres coming out to Oprah (if you’ve not seen it, click here for part one, and you know how to work YouTube for the rest).
Watching the interview, from the late ’90s, it struck me how some views were completely at odds with mine. So far, so ‘yeah, and?’ A lot of the vocal critics said the same things over and over. They talked about lifestyle choices and sex being pushed on kids who might be influenced in some way (like a kid will decide to fancy someone they don’t because someone from a sitcom came out, and indeed, like anyone would make the ‘choice’ of being slagged off for who they’re in a relationship with).
The ’90s were pretty backwards when I think back to them, and I remember the dumb shit I used to say, even as someone with LGBT friends and family. It’s pretty toe-curling, but that’s not what got me thinking. What did get my brain ticking over (as slowly as ever), was the fact that in 2016, the same conversations from anti-gay people are happening.
A stranger on Twitter, came at me with some drive-by words. I can’t remember what brought them to me, but I remember them saying that children shouldn’t have to know about gay relationships, because it is a bit pervy. Pervy? I argued that no child is taught explicitly about shagging, but they should be taught about relationships. You get books where it talks about mummy and daddy, and likewise, kids should know that some people have daddy and daddy, or mummy and mummy, in the same way.
Again, this man said he thought that I was perverted for wanting to teach children about sex. Again, I pointed about that a) He was sailing dangerously to being a dick and/or troll, and b) I wasn’t talking about sex, just relationships. Telling a kid that his uncle might have a boyfriend, wasn’t the same as telling a child that his uncle liked giving blow-jobs to men, and then going into graphic detail about what a blow-job entails, and where their uncle might prefer to have their partner ejaculate on them. I was talking about holding hands, not boners.
We circled around, and every single time, this man kept bringing it back to sex. ‘Leave children be! They don’t need to know about sex!’ he’d say. Every time, I kept saying that sex doesn’t enter the conversation when you’re talking about straight relationships to children, like it shouldn’t when you’re talking about any relationship to a child (until you have that conversation). His response, every time: “I think it is a bit pervy that you want to talk to children about sex.”
I couldn’t tell if I was being trolled, or dealing with someone who is an idiot who wouldn’t listen to what I was saying (sounds like a textbook, perfect troll move in fairness, and I took the bait), but it was still indicative of conversations I’ve had, debates I’ve seen with people who are anti-gay — and that is their complete inability to stop thinking about shagging.
When Stephen Fry travelled to Africa for a show, he met with a vehemently anti-gay man, who was obsessed with ‘sodomy’. Fry pointed out that there’s gay men who don’t shag. Again, the anti-gay man came back to penises in bumholes. He couldn’t stop talking about it. It made me puerile and think “Oh, hurry up and get fucked by some bloke, and just get it over and done with!”
It won’t be news to anyone, and I’m just unloading really, but it really astounds me that, after this conversation has been going on for such a long time, there’s a certain brand of straight person who can’t fathom that gay people have relationships. Ordinary, boring, getting a loan out for a car and struggling to work out what to have for tea tonight, forgotten to buy toilet roll, relationships. You can be celibate and gay, just like people who are born straight and celibate.
Then, you get the religious people saying, “well, I’m afraid you’re going to hell.” In the case of Christians, they’ll say “it says in the Bible…”, never for a second weighing up whether or not the person they’re talking to (and the people that can hear them as bystanders) is a religious person themselves. In my godless case, I don’t mind someone telling me that I’m going to hell, because I don’t believe in hell. I’m not going to turn into a Dawkins Devotee bore, don’t worry.
There’s still people who think it is a lifestyle choice. There’s Manny Pacquiao, who says “you don’t see gay animals do you?”, when the answer is ‘Yes, you do. There’s loads of them.’ For the record, owls are sometimes gay, and if that doesn’t complete someone’s hipster bingo, I don’t know what will.
Anyway, I guess this is a pointless whine about how, every time get gooey, and coo at how far we’ve come maaaaaan, there’s something that snaps me out of it. There’s always some toe-head who starts obsessing about gay people having sex, instead of catching on to the idea that some of us are talking about relationships. Plain ol’ relationships, regardless of who you’re taking on a romantic meal for two.
Watching the Ellen video just reminded me that there’s still a lot of people who think in exactly the same way certain types of people did 20 years ago. That’s two whole decades, and I’m annoyed that some haven’t grown in that time, or at least got new arguments to bring to the table. If you’re going to be a dick about something, at least up your game and give everyone some new questions to answer.
Maybe, if we’re in trolling mode, every time some anti-LGBT person talks about their relationship, we should start saying “Oh, URGH! Will you stop talking about you jizzing all over the place FOR A SECOND you dirty, dirty fucker! Honestly, you’re obsessed! I don’t want to know where you’re cumming every night, IT IS VILE!”
They’re the ones who bring everyone else’s relationships down to base level, right?
