On Writing About Others

Dear Editors,

Let me begin by saying that I’m an openly non-straight guy (in a long-term relationship of 10+ years) who is very much in favor of gay-marriage rights, not because I have ever favored the institution of marriage as a bourgeois construct to limit sexual freedom or otherwise constrain people from being happy, but because I think that any two people (regardless of sexual orientation) should be able to avail themselves of the same rights as any other two people; this is a fundamental inequality that frankly harms gays as much as straights.

Unfortunately, in the piece in question, the author seemed to make no effort to hold the mirror up to himself, and say, "As a straight man, what have I done to rectify this situation?" Rather, given the tone of it, he seemed to ask: "Why do you gays want marriage? Don’t you understand that it’s really taking a step backward to want this horrible thing?" It would be like a white person who grew up in the suburbs with every financial advantage going into the inner city and saying, "Why do you minorities want material things? Don’t you understand that it will erode your soul?" Which is not to say that the white person is necessarily wrong, but he/she has to proceed with extreme sensitivity, and ideally LIVE in the inner city—i.e., to turn his back on the very thing that he wants to destroy—before he can make the case with any kind of credibility. This is why I found the tone of the article to be somewhat offensive—not wrong, necessarily—but rather insensitive to what it really means to be gay in our society at this juncture. (And trust me, it’s not a pretty picture, as anyone who has spent more than a few hours in any junior high—or in an average YouTube comment section—can attest; the level of fear/hatred is staggering, and possibly unprecedented—at least in terms of gays—for reasons relating to increased exposure in the media, right-wing political tactics, misogyny, stereotyping in mainstream movies and advertising, and other factors that are beyond the scope of this letter.)

All of this perhaps begs the question of how the author could have made the same point with more sensitivity, and the answer is certainly not to say that he (or other straight people) needs to experience gay sex or "gay life" but rather it does require a sense of empathy and identification, i.e., had the author said "We should ALL be fighting against marriage — I know that I have done so (and here’s how/why)!" there would have been no backlash, at least from me. Maybe this was implicit in his argument, but he could have helped himself a lot by making it explicit (and not "demanding" something from gays, as Keith Gessen put it on his Tumblr). On a related note, I would point out that AIDS cannot be summed up in a sentence or two in which the author describes it in terms of a philosophical emancipation without sounding incredibly (and to me, naively and offensively) detached from what was for all intents and purposes a holocaust that wiped out an entire generation—many of them younger than you or I—less than twenty years ago; again, I’m not saying that the author was necessarily WRONG in his analysis, it’s just that his tone seemed lack tact and empathy, and thus seemed almost glib, at least to someone like me who will never stop grieving over a tragedy that is/was incomprehensible on some emotional level (and one that has STILL not really been acknowledged as such, at least in the U.S.); it would be like going up to someone a week after his entire family was killed and saying, ‘well, at least they died nobly, and you know what? you could really learn a thing or two from them.’

Obviously we—as in those of a "liberal" or "left-wing" persuasion—all have a lot to learn from each other—and if nothing else, the author should be commended for at least broaching the subject of gay rights, which however misguided in his execution requires a certain courage that is obviously lacking in too many others—and I hope that we will continue to learn going forward.

Sincerely,