An interesting, and a highly provocing article to me as a gay nationalist as well. :b I will try to express some of my thoughts which appeared while reading this marvellous peace of civil war literature.
RAPHAEL: What is gay and lesbian fundamentalism?
WALCOTT: It’s a hell-bent desire on heterosexual respectability. What it means is that there are members of “the gay and lesbian community” that become unacceptable. It has a foundation – not unlike many other religious fundamentalisms – that is deeply moral. I don’t want to pick on the [gay] rights people, but definitely the overwhelming kind of argument for rights has produced this gay moralistic fundamentalism which puts down people who question boundaries, who raise difficult questions, who behave in a way that might trouble some of us. I am afraid, Mr Walcott mistakenly uses the term “gay and lesbian fundamentalism“ for what should be better described as “religious fundamentalism among gays and lesbians”. Indeed, the word fundamentalism is constantly used to describe an extreme devotion to the particular ideology to which it is attached. Therefore, “gay and lesbian fundamentalism“ should be correctly used in connection with individuals strongly devoted to “gayness and lesbianism” – you will easily identify some in this forum. :b
Beyound this minor confusion, I completely agree with him that while the gay rights movement was fighting the battles for legal and moral recognition by the mainstream society, the lines of division were re-drawn. As a consequence, certain parts of the LGBT-community were excluded from the new circle of “respectable society” – boy lovers are one example. Now, we must not confuse
all ethical objections with that hypocritical moralism we encounter in the gay community again. The “religious fundamentalism among gays and lesbians” is indeed a sign of gaining respectability on the costs of other, vulnerable members of the society; ethical judgment is a sign of mature and responsibility. While morals are condemning the individuals, ethics are condemning the behaviour while harmful or self-destructive. One can certainly
not be forced to agree that sex with immature boys is doing them any good, but one should be open-minded enough to consider the fact that legal age of consent often does not correspond with the actual (biological) age of sexual maturity. Social exclusion of cross-generation couples, drag queens and other “freaks” shall be recognized as what it is: self-righteousness in its purest form. To the same self-righteousness we shall count also the incredible arrogance of
some gay parents who regard themselves of more value than other, “infertile” gays, and assume the worst attitudes we have ever encountered among straights.
WALCOTT: And part of what has happened in the moment of achieving rights is that “proper lesbian and gay history” is undergoing a radical rewriting. And part of that rewriting is that all the marginal, outlaw figures of Jews, blacks, Latinos and drag queens have been written out of history. [..] But we also need to know the names of the drag queens at Stonewall who said, “No more of this shit.” For the past 6 monthes, I follow the discussions in the russian forums about the pro’s and contra’s of a gay parade in Moscow, planned by Mr Nikolay Alexeev. Interestingly, many of the “gay activists” and busines people are strongly opposed to the notion of a gay parade – out of a fear that someone “might be injured”. Certainly those are justified qualms, but at the end it will be again the “outcasts” who will make the history – betrayed by the middle-class gay establishment, anyway enjoining a relative safety.
CHOY: I think that instead of calling it queer culture, it should be called sexual culture. [..] We have to ask the question: what makes us human? And I think that one of the answers is that being human is to be fluid, and to acknowledge that fluidity and people’s flow at different ages, different places.Dear me, when does this propaganda of “flexible” sexuality stop? There are bisexuals as there are gays and straights – why mingle them all into same pot? If a bisexual who previously was with a boy comes along with a girl nowadays, he isn’t a gay with “changed orientation”, he is still a bisexual as he was before. You guys better spare me from this “flexible” and “metrosexual” agitation – I prefer to stay a “rigid” gay, a faggot, a “Schwuchtel”, if I may. In my entire life, I have met lots of men who admitted their homosexuality after years of struggle with themselves, but I have
never met a homosexual who finally has discovered his heterosexuality. If such a thing exists, this can’t possibly happen that often – that’s all about the “dark secret wrapped in mystery”. What scientific findings lead the disputants to these particular conclusions? I shall eat my shoe if they have some statistics or ecperimental proves for their highly speculative claims.
RAPHAEL: But sometimes you sit back and you feel guilty when you challenge something like, say, gay marriage. [..]No one shall restrict his mind from considering alternative social institutions, like, let’s say a clan system or free love or poligamy or whatever other system one shall invent. But attacking gays who feel most comfortable in a monogamous same-sex marriage is a token of ideologic blindness: as long as the institution of marriage exists and many gays are happy to become married, they shall have the right to do so. Discussions about the sense of marriage should not end up in derision of married couples, as it by times happens here and there.
What happens between gays is a matter only for a gay normative system and government.That normative system and government could or could not,depending upon the circumstances and for reasons of public order,import some variant of the institution of marriage among the citizens of a gay country. [..] a gay State might have to encourage its citizens to register those preferencial relations,for example in the form of monogamous or polygamous cliques,clans or tribes.
We must accept that there is nothing like one “gay lifestyle”, but indeed a plentitude of “gay lifestyles”, which in their diversity form our culture. Both, in Diaspora and in the future State, gays shall adopt practical models of relationships. Socio-economic and sexual communities have not necessarily to be the same thing – one can easily imagine clans as a suitable social units, while romantic affiliation with an individual could be freed from any economic component.
CHOY: We’re not talking to each other. How will you create a space where we will talk to each other?Certainly, experiencing different people
occasionally is a good idea, even if just for broadening one’s horizon. It’s true, from time to time we must meet people with different experiences - for me, those people can
all be gays, and a few gay-friendly straights.
The lack of public space for encountering other gays and lesbians is indeed a problem: in the most cases, we simply do not have the possibility to meet our people and have a conversation beyound the small-talk in the bar. Our own communal cultural centres certainly would contribute much to trans-gender and trans-generation communications. But we certainly will not achieve any progresses on that way if we accept, as the disputants suggest, that our sexual identity is “fluid” and we indeed do not exist up to this logic.
I would add that the state of gay culture seems to be in the hands of a few literati who are basically sucking at the teat of academia. Here too it seems that the academics' only contact with the gay world is a handful of privileged university students and a comfortable life near to one of the largest gay ghettos on the planet.
Indeed – some of the academics are adherent to the ridiculous idea, that homosexuality and homosexuals were “invented” in the middle of 19th century and, alike, fall prey to the idea that they can re-determine sexual nature of a man by simply introducing new labels. Rictor Norton has deconstructed this foolish notion in his
“Critique of Social Constructionism and Postmodern Queer Theory”.
Some people aren't gay. Is it exclusionary to say that some people are, quite simply, not gay? Perhaps, if it is exclusionary to say that a mountain is not a prairie. Shall a rose bush be offended that it may not be classed among the trees?
That “fluid” theory of sexuality is strongly connected to the ridicolous strive of most people to find simple, but universal explanations for every question. To that logic, a man of wits and honor must think day and night about the global problems of the mankind and search for a solution which would provide happiness to each and everyone on the planet. It is beyound my understanding, why some individuals can’t accept the simple truth that gays are as different from straights as seldom an ethnic group is different from the other – we are therefore in need of our own partial solutions. Why artificially mingle oil with water? They will separate anyway.
The very idea that the gay people will be liberating heterosexuals from anything is really quite absurd. If we have learned anything, it is that liberating ourselves is more than battle enough. If the hets are to be liberated, they shall have to accomplish this feat on their own.
We shall acknowledge that a free and unprejudiced conversation with straight men often has extremely positive “collateral” effects both on their acceptance of homosexuals and on their self-perception as sexual beings. But you have right: it is neither our “moral duty”, nor a “social role” to liberate heterosexuals from their sexual troubles – we simply can’t take that burden on our shoulders.
I see three possible paths for the gay people: Assimilationism, Integrationism, and Separatism. Clearly, as a gay nationalist, I favor the last option. The gay people ought to be free to live their lives and build their culture along what ever lines they wish, and they should do so because they wish it.
As the disputants have noticed, it is not the “Us against Them” issue – how right they are! I only would add that this is an “Us without Them” issue. Not in the sense that straights are evil, or tiresome or whatever – no, they can be charming creatures and indeed I am very fond of pretty a bunch of them. Nevertheless, gay topics are an issue for gays, and we are well-adwised to undertake efforts to nurture our own developement and create our cultural and political institutions. Gay nationalism is not that much about segregation from “them”, it’s about unification of “us”. Logically, this consolidation of “us” as a people requires a predecessing
mental separation from the straight society. Nationalism is by times wrongly perceived as a destructive and hateful ideology intended to withhold individuals and nations from fruitful cooperation and cultural exchange – how unjust is this misconception! Modern, positive nationalism is simply a means to give a framework for best possible developement of
different cultures on the basis of mutual respect, while of course recognizing that we are all humans sharing the same planet.
Are these participants Canadians who happen to be gay, or Gays who happen to live in Canada?
You bring it to the point, Ron.