The Gay Lifestyle. Are You Missing Out?
Dave Muskera, M.A.
January 24, 2008
Intro note: I'm reposting this article from November 20th. It was accidentally deleted. It has been one of my more popular and reposted articles - so if you missed it the first time, here it is again. Hope you enjoy.
If I read or hear the words "the gay lifestyle" one more time, I´m going to chew nails, or yell like a summa wrestler whose butt has been kicked. I´m fed up with this phrase and the people who use it. They pretend it has some real, substantial meaning. It doesn´t! Let´s get this straight (and no comments from anyone abut the use of that word) - it´s usually not a phrase used by gay folks to describe how they live or who they are. Just as straight people never refer to themselves as living the "straight lifestyle", most gay people I know or have read about don´t see themselves as leading any particular lifestyle based on who they love or sleep with. It´s really a meaningless, or worse yet, a misleading term. But somehow, the fundamentalist far-right religious camp has managed for years to successfully use this phrase in very negative ways mostly to bash homosexuals.
So, what does the "gay lifestyle" really refer to and why do anti-gay groups insist on itīs continuing use?
Let me suggest some possible explanations. Many words (no matter in what language) have meanings that associate easily with mental pictures. If I ask you to think about pink elephants or frizzy brown hair, chances are a visual image will cross your thoughts - at least briefly. Some words are more visual than others. Christmas has more visual images associated with it than does the word economics. Now consider the term "gay lifestyle". What image comes to mind (if any)? Well, that of course is going to depend on who you are and what experience you have or don´t have with gays.
If all you´ve seen or heard about gays is from the religious right or those with similar agendas, you might mostly recall that depraved video your church showed of how gays marched near naked, or worse, in a San Francisco parade. You might remember images of wild parties, men lurking around school yard fences or some other such negative things. Heck, you might even have seen this kind of stuff on TV, say FOX NEWS for example. I´m told they like that kind of thing. It sells. It entertains. In any event, you are "seeing" just what you are supposed to see in your minds eye. It´s been deliberately planted and frequently reinforced by the anti-gay propaganda machine. Propaganda has been well known for decades, perhaps thousands of years. Something like it was at work during the time Jesus was hounded and persecuted by his own people. Repressive regimes often become masters of this kind of visual propaganda. For example, by the time Hitler came to full power, most Germans literally saw Jews as dirty, lazy and deceitful people. Nazi propaganda pounded those images over and over till the populace believed them. African Americans suffered similar negative visual image pictures in the minds of whites for years. In some quarters, they still do.
So by using the term gay lifestyle, which has constantly been negatively spun, the hope of the propaganda machine is that there will be a non-thinking automatic negative emotional response in the minds and hearts of most people. Well, I fear it has worked with a distressingly large number of otherwise good and gentle folks. These same people never consider what kind of kinky heterosexual sex films could be made at a New Orleans Mardi Gras or the annual Carnival Festival in Brazil. In both events, open sexual intercourse in the streets is not all that unusual. But these nice folks donīt think about these things or even the thousands of images that could be pulled from heterosexual porn. And even if all this were paraded in front of them, it would never be used to condemn all heterosexuals for sinful misbehavior. Yet, somehow, the silly immature shenanigans of a relatively few gay people are always offered-up and usually accepted as evidence that all gays are somehow evil, sick and depraved.
If you´re still with me, I have one other point. Sort of the flip side of why using the term gay lifestyle is so important to the far right. It´s a little more subtle. Focus on the word "lifestyle". Everything that word means as found in a dictionary or conjures in your mind points to "lifestyle" as something, or some set of somethings, that people do because they choose to do so. It is massively important to the religious far right to made sure everyone buys into the idea that gay people chose their sexual orientation. They chose, in other words, to sin. And therefore, they can choose to become ex-gay. So choice is the big unspoken reason underlying the use of the lifestyle term. I´m not going to expound in this article about the choice issue. Suffice to say, sexual orientation is not chosen consciously and every major reputable scientific group agrees on that. But by paring the two words, gay and lifestyle over and over, the right has been successful at keeping sexual orientation from being considered as just a variation along the line of sexual attraction.
Let me tell you what I think is a "lifestyle." A friend of mind centers his life on football. His home is full of football memorabilia, he watches as many games in season as he can and it´s just about all he can talk about. He could surly be said to be leading a "football lifestyle". Consider the lifestyles of the "rich and famous." This conjures up all the things these people might chose to do with their money and fame. Everywhere from having fifteen expensive sports cars to vacationing at private luxury resorts is my bet. In years past, I have also counseled my share of golf widows. Women (and sometimes men) married to a spouse whose entire social life centered on playing golf. Is this a "golfing lifestyle?" Well, I think it just might qualify. How about you?
Let me close this by describing to you this gay man´s lifestyle (me and my partner that is). Are you ready for this?
I don´t think we´re unique. I know too many others like me (us) for that to be the case. We have a house, three bedrooms and two baths, two dogs and one cat. Occasionally we run the vac and dust a few of the things cluttering up the place. We cook meals, shop for groceries, pay bills, visit with neighbors and family, buy a new car occasionally, go to movies, rent DVDs, attend concerts, take vacations and shorter trips and rake leaves in the fall. In December we put up a tree and decorations. We make love or have sex depending on the amount of energy left over after a week or so of work. We talk on the phone, use the computer and the Internet, go shopping, write long winded articles for the American Chronicle and sleep as needed or when we can. Is this the gay lifestyle? Well, for us, it is. Not exciting, but fulfilling. And probably a boring and unbelievable letdown to those gay-sex obsessed fundamentalists who prefer the naughtiness of their vaguely decadent thoughts each time they roll the term "gay lifestyle" over in their minds.
Sometimes, when I see videos of the supposed gay lifestyle like those distributed by organizations such as Focus on the Family, I wonder if hey, maybe we are missing out on something. But then I also worry that sometime soon, the doorbell will ring and I will open it to see two men in black (buttless chaps of course) - sent by the local gay agenda committee to yank our gay male credentials because we missed the last Circuit Party and just generally haven´t been depraved enough.
If I read or hear the words "the gay lifestyle" one more time, I´m going to chew nails, or yell like a summa wrestler whose butt has been kicked. I´m fed up with this phrase and the people who use it. They pretend it has some real, substantial meaning. It doesn´t! Let´s get this straight (and no comments from anyone abut the use of that word) - it´s usually not a phrase used by gay folks to describe how they live or who they are. Just as straight people never refer to themselves as living the "straight lifestyle", most gay people I know or have read about don´t see themselves as leading any particular lifestyle based on who they love or sleep with. It´s really a meaningless, or worse yet, a misleading term. But somehow, the fundamentalist far-right religious camp has managed for years to successfully use this phrase in very negative ways mostly to bash homosexuals.
So, what does the "gay lifestyle" really refer to and why do anti-gay groups insist on itīs continuing use?
Let me suggest some possible explanations. Many words (no matter in what language) have meanings that associate easily with mental pictures. If I ask you to think about pink elephants or frizzy brown hair, chances are a visual image will cross your thoughts - at least briefly. Some words are more visual than others. Christmas has more visual images associated with it than does the word economics. Now consider the term "gay lifestyle". What image comes to mind (if any)? Well, that of course is going to depend on who you are and what experience you have or don´t have with gays.
If all you´ve seen or heard about gays is from the religious right or those with similar agendas, you might mostly recall that depraved video your church showed of how gays marched near naked, or worse, in a San Francisco parade. You might remember images of wild parties, men lurking around school yard fences or some other such negative things. Heck, you might even have seen this kind of stuff on TV, say FOX NEWS for example. I´m told they like that kind of thing. It sells. It entertains. In any event, you are "seeing" just what you are supposed to see in your minds eye. It´s been deliberately planted and frequently reinforced by the anti-gay propaganda machine. Propaganda has been well known for decades, perhaps thousands of years. Something like it was at work during the time Jesus was hounded and persecuted by his own people. Repressive regimes often become masters of this kind of visual propaganda. For example, by the time Hitler came to full power, most Germans literally saw Jews as dirty, lazy and deceitful people. Nazi propaganda pounded those images over and over till the populace believed them. African Americans suffered similar negative visual image pictures in the minds of whites for years. In some quarters, they still do.
So by using the term gay lifestyle, which has constantly been negatively spun, the hope of the propaganda machine is that there will be a non-thinking automatic negative emotional response in the minds and hearts of most people. Well, I fear it has worked with a distressingly large number of otherwise good and gentle folks. These same people never consider what kind of kinky heterosexual sex films could be made at a New Orleans Mardi Gras or the annual Carnival Festival in Brazil. In both events, open sexual intercourse in the streets is not all that unusual. But these nice folks donīt think about these things or even the thousands of images that could be pulled from heterosexual porn. And even if all this were paraded in front of them, it would never be used to condemn all heterosexuals for sinful misbehavior. Yet, somehow, the silly immature shenanigans of a relatively few gay people are always offered-up and usually accepted as evidence that all gays are somehow evil, sick and depraved.
If you´re still with me, I have one other point. Sort of the flip side of why using the term gay lifestyle is so important to the far right. It´s a little more subtle. Focus on the word "lifestyle". Everything that word means as found in a dictionary or conjures in your mind points to "lifestyle" as something, or some set of somethings, that people do because they choose to do so. It is massively important to the religious far right to made sure everyone buys into the idea that gay people chose their sexual orientation. They chose, in other words, to sin. And therefore, they can choose to become ex-gay. So choice is the big unspoken reason underlying the use of the lifestyle term. I´m not going to expound in this article about the choice issue. Suffice to say, sexual orientation is not chosen consciously and every major reputable scientific group agrees on that. But by paring the two words, gay and lifestyle over and over, the right has been successful at keeping sexual orientation from being considered as just a variation along the line of sexual attraction.
Let me tell you what I think is a "lifestyle." A friend of mind centers his life on football. His home is full of football memorabilia, he watches as many games in season as he can and it´s just about all he can talk about. He could surly be said to be leading a "football lifestyle". Consider the lifestyles of the "rich and famous." This conjures up all the things these people might chose to do with their money and fame. Everywhere from having fifteen expensive sports cars to vacationing at private luxury resorts is my bet. In years past, I have also counseled my share of golf widows. Women (and sometimes men) married to a spouse whose entire social life centered on playing golf. Is this a "golfing lifestyle?" Well, I think it just might qualify. How about you?
Let me close this by describing to you this gay man´s lifestyle (me and my partner that is). Are you ready for this?
I don´t think we´re unique. I know too many others like me (us) for that to be the case. We have a house, three bedrooms and two baths, two dogs and one cat. Occasionally we run the vac and dust a few of the things cluttering up the place. We cook meals, shop for groceries, pay bills, visit with neighbors and family, buy a new car occasionally, go to movies, rent DVDs, attend concerts, take vacations and shorter trips and rake leaves in the fall. In December we put up a tree and decorations. We make love or have sex depending on the amount of energy left over after a week or so of work. We talk on the phone, use the computer and the Internet, go shopping, write long winded articles for the American Chronicle and sleep as needed or when we can. Is this the gay lifestyle? Well, for us, it is. Not exciting, but fulfilling. And probably a boring and unbelievable letdown to those gay-sex obsessed fundamentalists who prefer the naughtiness of their vaguely decadent thoughts each time they roll the term "gay lifestyle" over in their minds.
Sometimes, when I see videos of the supposed gay lifestyle like those distributed by organizations such as Focus on the Family, I wonder if hey, maybe we are missing out on something. But then I also worry that sometime soon, the doorbell will ring and I will open it to see two men in black (buttless chaps of course) - sent by the local gay agenda committee to yank our gay male credentials because we missed the last Circuit Party and just generally haven´t been depraved enough.