The Grace Pages

Queer Eye, schmeer eye

Well done to the author of Proceed at Your Own Risk (he has a photograph and a biography up, but am I the only one who can't even find his actual name anywhere on the site?) for telling it like it is about the hideous Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

I've heard some folk talk about the guys on this show as if a gay man (an outrageously camp one, anyway) were some sort of neat fashion accessory -- and yet if you were to probe deeper, you'd find out they really believe all gays are on their way to an eternity in hell. PAYOR is onto something when he says that "Queer Eye reinforces the notion that we can only be accepted if we entertain and serve "the man.""

(Warning: The sidebar contains links to adult sites.)

This is not me

Really, this is not me. I was being ironic by putting it in my post last week.

British readers will have recognized the character as Dafydd, "the only gay in the village", from the BBC comedy Little Britain. It wasn't until an American friend alerted me last night to the potential for confusion that I decided I ought to clarify.

For those who are familiar with Little Britain, have a read of this excerpt from The Independent. As a one-time fan of the series, it is with regret that I have to admit that Mr Hari's full article was, in general, true.

There's a but...

So as of today, gay rights have turned a corner in the UK. The law now allows gay partners to register their "civil partnerships" and enjoy most of the same rights as married couples:

They can inherit from each other without a will, benefit from each other's national insurance contributions, are exempt from inheritance tax, are treated as married for immigration purposes, have the right to financial support from each other and can make financial claims on each other if the partnership is dissolved.

I say "most" because the one thing that is still missing -- and that will keep activists fighting for more change in the law -- is the word itself, "marriage". The new law in effect says you can have all the benefits of a marriage, except the societal recognition that it is a "marriage". I think it is disingenuous of anyone to claim that gays can now stop pressing for gay marriage, or that they now have it. Isn't that societal acceptance a core function of marriage and the wedding ceremony for many straight couples? Isn't the public declaration and affirmation of a sexual love and commitment between two people what marriage is really all about for many people?

It's been a step in the right direction, but there is more to be accomplished; onlookers should expect gays and lesbians in the UK to keep making themselves heard.

IVP moves into 'The Onion' territory

Inter-Varsity Press seems to have branched out into the satire market with A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. (What my mother would have given to have this important volume in her hands twenty-some years ago!) Here's a classic comic moment from the introduction:

I told her, "Mom, you saw me play with Barbie dolls. You allowed me to use makeup and to fix my hair in front of the mirror for hours. My brothers never did any of this. Why didn't you stop me? What were you thinking?"

Later on it gets even more devastating:

"Doctor, ... my son Stevie ... [is] a beautiful little boy, a special child. But..." She hesitated. "Stevie's fascinated with little-girl things. Even more so than my daughters. In fact, he just loves the colours pink and red. He even... well, plays with Barbie dolls and... dances around the house on tiptoes like a ballerina."

As I listened, Mrs Johnson gave me a few more specifics. Her son was five.

"I've been noticing this kind of behaviour for almost two years," she explained.

To me, that length of time was significant. It is okay if a little boy wonders what he would look like wearing long blonde curls and so he tries on a wig, simply to be silly. There is nothing particularly alarming about that. But if he keeps on doing it and has little interest in "boy" things, there likely is a problem.

I am finding it very difficult to believe such stuff can actually be written -- by doctors no less -- without tongue firmly in cheek.

Stephen Green and Christian Voice

Brett Lock of the Gay and Lesbian Humanists blog writes a fascinating profile of Stephen Green, leader of the notorious UK fundamentalist campaign group Christian Voice.

Browsing through the Christian Voice website, I couldn't help but be amused at this curious promise of action, should the Racial and Religious  Hatred Bill be passed (which it already has):

[We shall] report Islamic Bookshops for selling the Quran and Hadith, which, if they aren’t hate speech, nothing is.

Dear, dear. Go back and read your Holy Bible, Mr Green, and then tell me if you still can't see the irony.

Stephen Green will be one of the panellists tonight on BBC's Question Time. The programme will be available online free for a week afterwards, but alas, I suspect, in the UK only.

Queers, Quakers and the Queen: Peterson Toscano comes to town

Peterson Toscano will be coming to town with his one-man show, Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House. He'll be in Oxfordshire, Birmingham, Brighton and Southampton next week. Visit his website for details.

Researching ex-gay ministries in the UK

I'll be writing a feature article for a British Christian magazine about homosexual (but not pro-gay) and 'ex-gay' ministries in the UK. I'd love to talk to anyone who has had any experience of this kind of thing in the UK, whether positive or negative. I'm trying to get a broad overview of conservative ministries to gays in the UK, especially in comparison to ex-gay ministries in the US.

If you can help, or know of anyone who can help, drop a comment underneath or email me.

The Archetypal Gay

There's a certain stereotype of the gay man that is almost superfluous to describe: effeminate, outrageously camp, with a particular taste in fashion and music, and an obsession with sex; probably promiscuous, too. It is a stereotype reinforced by both gay and straight people. It is an image of the gay man representative of one particular subculture, perhaps, but a subculture that is in fact just one aspect of the gay "community".

I was amused by the irony when a straight friend the other week explained his reasons for thinking that "all" gay men were of a certain type. His first piece of evidence was that all the gay men he'd met were the same; but where had he met these men? On a night out in a gay club with his gay brother. Most gay men I know rarely do "the scene", and many are put off by it. The second piece of evidence was the image put forth by well-known gay celebrities such as Graham Norton and Julian Clary (both camp as t*ts). I pointed out that in fact there were hundreds more gay celebrities that have little in common with Norton and Clary; the irony is that they were ruled out of his equation simply because their gayness was so incidental to their public image, and manifest in such a non-stereotypical way, that they had slipped under his radar. Or should that be gaydar?

The media often does little to help the situation. Programmes like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy further entrench the stereotype. The gay media, too, at least in the UK, is dominated by a particular type of "queer". I enjoy my monthly read of Gay Times, but find it bizarre that a serious, well-written feature about politics or the arts can be followed by a full-page ad for hardcore porn videos. Reading another gay magazine, Attitude, I found no less than three articles in a row, all opening with a cliche along the lines of "We gay men love to..." followed by some fashion supposedly followed by all gay men, ranging from being "obsessive" to having a fetish for men in uniform.

I am full of praise for The Advocate, a US magazine which apparently doesn't suffer from the same blinkered view of gay life as its UK counterparts. And I have discovered pockets of people trying to do something to balance things out: The Independent Gay Forum discusses gay issues from a broadly conservative perspective; and Out Everywhere is a thriving online and offline community making a conscious attempt to challenge the ghettoization of gays into a monolithic subculture.

I hope to add my own voice soon with In Perspective, a quarterly online periodical of gay perspectives on just about anything. Look out for the launch later this year.

How to tell if your child is gender-confused

Everyone is posting this, so I won't hat-tip anyone in particular. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. This is what Focus on the Family says about how to tell if your young son is "gender-confused". The heading is "Is my child becoming homosexual?":

[He has a] tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy. 

Sad to Be Gay

On the BBC documentary Sad to Be Gay last night, David Akinsanya endured an emotional journey to try to change his sexuality. Having been gay for 20 years, David was unhappy with his "lifestyle" (his words), and visited ex-gay therapy centre  Love in Action in Memphis, Tennessee, to see if he could change.

Politics to the right of me, politics to the left of me: Both sides of gay politics have a vested interest in denying ambiguity. David concluded (I think) that his own sexuality was in part shaped by various environmental factors, including the abuse he experienced as a youngster, and rejection by his parents, but also that he needed to accept himself. He ended with some very wise words, which I paraphrase: Sexuality can and does change, but it cannot be forced to change.

I think Timothy Kincaid at Ex-Gay Watch is off-base in his harsh criticisms:

It is clear that Akinsanya bought into the LIA pseudo-psychological distant father, dominant mother argument.

It was clear in the documentary (I think Kincaid was relying on an earlier Independent article) that David held this view before he encountered Love in Action, and he said nothing to suggest he believed all homosexuality was due to these factors; just that in his case, he thought they had partly shaped his sexuality. Kincaid also writes:

But still he seems to accept celibacy, the reduced goal of LIA, without recognizing the irony that it put him in the same category as the LIA organizers:

But he says his time there wasn't wasted. "I have more control over the choices I make. I feel empowered to choose celibacy as a result of the course, at least for the time being."

He adds:

His observations of the ex-gay ministry he attends suggests that those touted as a "success" are living in a "strange no man's land" and that the best they can offer him is celibacy, and yet he hopes against hope that he can be straight and father a child.

In fact, he said at the end of the programme that he didn't think his one-time dream of having (straight) marriage and a family was possible; yet he seemed hopeful for the future, not negative. His decision to be celibate for the time being was not as a result of thinking gay sex in itself was wrong, but because he had identified that he had been using sex as a substitute for love. I didn't get the impression this was a general comment on gay sex, or that he would never again have gay sex, but that he had too easily had sexual relationships in his pursuit of genuine love. I found his response overwhelmingly healthy and positive. He said nothing to suggest (by the end of his quest) he thought gay sex was wrong or sinful, or that he glibly accepted what Love in Action had told him. Rather, he spent a few days there and managed to get something positive out of an inadequate situation.

The right has an interest in denying homosexuality could be innate, and maintaining it is always the result of a negative environment; the left has an interest in insisting it is always innate and never the result of environmental factors. Both have an interest in denying ambiguity; those for whom sexuality has been politicized will find David's experience hard to accept.