The readers of Salon.com are very worried about my nine-year-old son. They worry that he’s been “betrayed and humiliated” and they worry that in order to please his selfish mother, the poor boy will have to be gay. The source of their collective anxiety is an essay I wrote in 2005 about gay marriage in which I recounted my son’s comment, “I think I might be gay.” Lest you dismiss the hue and cry as more homophobic redstate vitriol, let me assure you that only liberals and the odd libertarian read Salon. The only reason the state legislatures of Alabama and Mississippi don’t ban the site altogether is that, aside from one or two New York English professors forced by the sad state of Ph.D. hiring to relocate to Tuscaloosa or Jackson, no one in the land of Dixie has ever bothered to log on.
No, the worry, the rage, the horror comes from my brethren on the left.
The essay is about my young son’s (seven years old at the time) attitude toward homosexuality. I begin with a story about his best friend, a fifty-nine-year-old lesbian with whom he shares “a passion for the San Francisco Giants, dark chocolate truffles, and New York frankfurters…Other than his dad, Zeke would rather be with Laura than pretty much anybody else, including me.” Zeke has always known about Laura’s sexual orientation, and her loving relationship with her partner is one of the many reasons he was able to speak so un-self-consciously about his own sexual orientation.
In the essay, I talk about the moment when I first introduced the subject of homophobia to my kids, ironically at a moment of joy for all of us who care about the civil rights of gay people. We had always referred to Laura’s partner as her wife, because, as I wrote in the essay, “There seemed no other way to describe that relationship in terms the kids could understand, in a way that would align this romance with the other long-term commitments the children knew—our marriage, those of their grandparents—and distinguish it from more transient ones.” When the mayor of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses, we celebrated, but we also had to explain that this was the first time gay people were allowed to be legally married in the United States of America. That shocked my son. Zeke believes that you’re supposed to marry the person you love, whoever and whatever that person happens to be.
But what really freaked people out was that I wrote that not only does the prospect of my son being gay not bother me, but I actually hope he might be. The reason I give for wanting a gay son is light-hearted. “How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them?”
I was taken to task for my biases. One gay reader chided me: “Shopping? Inappropriate relationships with your mother? This is not the 1950s and this type of stereotyping is insulting and one of the reasons it’s still hard to be gay in Bush’s America.” And: “As a gay man, I found these comments to be condescending, out of touch, and quite a bit insulting. Either support gay rights or don’t; but please don’t equate them with some deep desire on the part of gays and lesbians to trash sex-role stereotypes.”
Good points, and ones with which I agree. That’s why I described my stereotypes as “shopworn and musty clichés.”
However, at the risk of incurring yet more wrath, I’m going to go ahead and dive headfirst into the roiling lava pit of bias. While I know and love a few straight men, by and large, the gay men I know are simply more fun. For every straight male friend I have, there are three or four or more gay men with whom I’d rather spend my time. My gay friends dish with more relish and verve. They have a better design sense and are far more willing to discuss the proper placement of a piece of furniture than any straight men I know. For a long time, being part of the gay community mandated a familiarity with a certain kind of culture. You listened to opera, you went to the theater, you wore something fabulous to a Madonna concert. This may be a function of my generation—do nineteen-year-old gay men even know who Barbra Streisand or Maria Callas is?—but I have never met a straight man, other than my husband, who would comb the antique shops of Venice with me, searching tirelessly for the perfect tasseled pillow. As far as my joke about close relationships with mothers, I’m terrified at the prospect of daughters-in-law. With good reason: I am one myself. I hope my sons are gay so that they will bring home lovely young men who will redecorate my kitchen (another wretched stereotype!), rather than nubile young girls who will cast a disparaging and dismissive eye on my crow’s feet and thick waist. Zeke, his lover, and I would be a giggling and gossiping threesome, shopping for Jimmy Choos and beaded Victorian lamps (and another!) before the boys head off to a circuit party. (Now that’s just real life.) In the other, more likely but far less appealing scenario, Zeke and some young woman named Hannah or Emma will screen their calls and roll their eyes as I leave increasingly frantic voice mail messages. She will perfect an impression of me, complete with nasal whine and pinched lips, and he will wince at the droll accuracy and drag her off to the bedroom while my forlorn voice begs to the empty air, “Please, darling, give your mother a call, just so that I know you’re all right.”
Enough of the stereotypes. I do know some gay men whose ears aren’t pierced and who’ve never evinced much interest in the Divine Miss M. They wear conservative suits (Brooks Brothers and J. Press rather than Paul Smith and Zegna); they are soccer dads and computer executives who take their partners to auto shows. But even these men have a little something extra, if only the sensitivity wrought by dealing with oppression and discrimination throughout their lives.
From the time I was a teenager, and probably before, I’ve been drawn to men like that. I was a geeky, unpopular girl. I lived in a wealthy town but my family didn’t have much money; still, much of my unpopularity may have had less to do with my parents’ inability to buy me rainbow-colored Izod shirts and Fair Isle sweaters and more to do with my moods. I wasn’t necessarily a happy kid; in retrospect, I probably showed some symptoms of the bipolar disorder with which I was ultimately diagnosed. Outsiders flock together, perhaps because no one else will have them, perhaps because they know each other’s pain. For whatever reason, among the few friends I had were scrawny boys I met in drama class and on the gym bleachers holding excuse notes as elaborate as mine. I always felt most comfortable in the company of these boys with uneasy smiles who spent most of their days scrambling after the books the cool boys dumped from their arms or running away from games of “smear the queer.” Not all of those boys were gay, of course. Some turned into sensitive men, like my husband. But many were.
Soon enough, I had a better reason to like those boys. Like a lot of girls who feel insecure and unattractive, I ended up with a reputation as a slut. My behavior came to justify the initially unearned slur. But with my fellow theater rats, I never had to worry. They wouldn’t flirt with me, fuck me, and then tell their friends. It went without saying that I wouldn’t end up splayed out in the backseat of a car. We could be affectionate, even physically, without the specter of sex and its humiliating ramifications.
As an adult, these relationships continue. A number of years ago, my husband and I met a gay man who had written a brilliant memoir. After a few hours of enchanting conversation over delicious food, we invited our new friend to join us on a trip to Italy. For two weeks. I cannot imagine a universe in which we’d have dinner with a straight guy and immediately invite him to share our vacation rental. Our friend was every bit the marvelous companion we knew he’d be (note prior reference to shopping for tasseled pillows).
I have a remarkably patient gay friend who once accompanied me on a research expedition to one of San Francisco’s most notorious strip clubs (for a scene in one of my novels, I swear to God). I was shy about going alone, but I was also embarrassed at the prospect of looking up some woman’s vagina in the company of a straight man—these women are so naked that if I’d had a Q-tip and a speculum I could have given a dozen Pap smears. I wanted to see what the women did to the men in these kinds of places, but I didn’t want to be distracted by my companion popping a massive boner. Unfortunately it turns out that friction knows no sexual orientation. I had to cut my friend off after three lap dances.
My affinity for gay men is probably one of the reasons I fell so hard for my husband. My husband wrote a book that can be considered a gay coming-out novel, in part inspired by experience. Though he’s straight, he, like me, loves gay men and enjoys their company, and he is a tiny bit of a sissy himself. For example, he was the one who decided to see The Devil Wears Prada, even though it was the opening weekend of Superman. He loves to shop; most of my nicest clothes and all of my jewelry were gifts from him. He appreciates music and art, more, in fact, than I do.
I want my sons to be like their father. They may be straight and unusual, like he is, but if they’re gay there’s a hell of a lot better chance they’ll turn out like their dad.
My own prejudice was on full view when I wrote in Salon about the idea of my daughters being lesbians. “Would a lesbian daughter give me grief about shaving my legs? Would her girlfriend the Gestalt therapist bring bulgur salad to family potlucks?” What that stereotype and the others are about, obviously, is prejudice and insecurity. “The stereotypical gay woman makes me insecure, conscious of my failings as a feminist. I make less money than my husband; I rely on him for simple home repairs; I care too much about what I look like; I once got a Brazilian bikini wax.”
But the critique of these admitted biases wasn’t the real issue people, even gay people, had with the essay. Underlying all this outrage, I’m convinced, is a lonely and sad self-hatred.
Those people who are aghast that I have exposed my son to ridicule believe that being gay or just musing on your sexuality will necessarily make you the butt of other children’s bullying. That is probably true in much of what someone described as “Bush Country.” But my family lives in Berkeley. There are many gay families in my children’s school. The school shows movies like Daddy and Papa and the high schools all have Gay-Straight Alliances. My children’s world, thank God, is nearly devoid of homophobia. Sounds bucolic, doesn’t it? It is, and it’s one of the main reasons we live here when we could live so much less expensively somewhere else. Bullying may have been the sad experience of many gay men, but I think things are changing for kids nowadays. At least two-thirds of high school students support gay marriage, according to the Hamilton College National Youth Opinion Poll. This generational shift in favor of gay rights has been consistent over the years, and it explains why the religious right is desperately trying to amend the Constitution: They only have so much time before our more open-minded children are old enough to vote.
The people who are horrified that I have imposed expectations on my son are guilty of hypocrisy on the grandest scale. Would you prefer that your son were straight? Do you joke about your son marrying the little daughter of your college roommate? You, too, are imposing an expectation on your child. My son’s sexual orientation will develop on its own, no matter my hopes and idle fantasies. How many studies on twins have to be done before people understand that homosexuality is innate? It has nothing to do with choice or a mother’s smothering nature. People are gay because of genetics or fetal hormonal exposure or some other random physical and chemical spin of the wheel. Bless mutation and complication and all that gives us such magnificent diversity.
When I was an undergraduate, I went to a concert given by a not particularly talented lesbian folk singer. I have a perfect recollection of her hoarse voice warbling off-key the song she wished her mother had sung to her when she first came out: Honey, I’m glad that you’re gay; darling, I like you that way.
That’s the response my sons and daughters will receive if ever they make a similar announcement. As a grizzly protects her cubs, I will do everything in my power to make sure that none of them ever wishes away their homosexuality on the letters page of an online magazine.