The Other Side of Normal: A New Paradigm for Gay Love

This work is an outgrowth of two profound life experiences. One took place in graduate school, preparing for a career as a clinical psychologist. One professor, well into middle age, began pontificating on homosexuality. Without hesitation he made a pronouncement which was delivered as the final immutable truth on the subject: Men do NOT love one another. It was delivered with a finality of conviction, of ultimate judgment. I wondered how he knew; how he could be so sure; what had given him the right to speak so authoritatively on a matter he in all likelihood had never experienced nor ever would. It struck me as the ultimate arrogance. That was 1980. The second experience was the ever popular enquiry: What do homosexuals do with each other? This question is rarely one of innocent curiosity but rather one of disbelief, incredulity, distaste, disgust, even thinly disguised contempt. Both these early experiences impressed me as a powerful negation of our core essence as gay men in the world. It seemed incredible that who we are should be dismissed with a wave of the hand, as if the gay experience is of no consequence whatsoever, a mere pock mark on otherwise unblemished skin. Even nineteenth century Victorians were never so cavalier about [hetero] sexuality. Few, if any of us, growing up in heterosexual society, avoid the experience of being wholly dismissed in this way, as if our very existence is irrelevant, perhaps should never have been. This is profoundly corrosive of our core sense of human integrity. An ineradicable message is implanted: that of deviate, defective, unworthy, condemned. This unavoidably etches a deep experience of shame within us all. Over the years, with maturity, we slowly come to terms with who we are, always at a price.

What do homosexuals do with each other? The fulcrum of the question is on the do-ing. It completely ignores the be-ing; what does a gay man feel about men? How are such feelings distinct from those felt by heterosexual men for other men? The feelings we hold for one another are rarely of concern to the hetero. It just doesn't get asked. Curiosity stops here. It seems a discussion that prefers to be shunned. Bringing it up evokes fear and discomfort and embarrasment, even shame. We are cued into silence. It is a silence which intrudes into our shared moments of intimacy with other men. Unaware of our shame, we prefer instead to utter the body language of sex, giving voice to the feeling within, through the do-ing. Sex often serves an unwitting purpose of helping us avoid our feelings. What we take to bed with us is the commonplace heterosexual male model of using sex to spare us the whole range in feelings which naturally arise with intimacy between human beings. In their case, however, the female presence helps balance out this inclination. Healthy women are active seekers of intimacy and feeling expression. As gay men we are required to find this balance within ourselves.

It wasn't so very long ago that, not only did we not have the right to have sex with one another; we didn't even have the right to be in one another's company. Meeting one another socially, in public places or private gathering was fraught with risk. In almost any gay bar or restuarant, entrapment by the vice squad was a very real threat. The accusation was tantamount to the conviction, particularly as to employers, authority figures, parents, family, community. This was a de-facto suspension of civil rights: freedom of assembly; freedom of association; freedom from harassment; threat, coercion, intimidation, habeas corpus, rights to privacy, and so on. Our lives were dismissed out of hand. Like the Jews in 1940's Europe, our very existence was taken from us. Like theirs, our very livelihood was at stake. We were relegated to the fringes of society, forced to live in shame and in secrecy. Certainly this did not provide a conducive atmosphere for