GAYER THAN A PICNIC BASKET: More responses to “Playground Twist.”

Clio writes about possible sources of the difference between societal response to homosexuality and response to other temptations. Since I was focused more on the effects of that response on people with whatever degree of same-sex attraction, I really didn’t get into any of this stuff: Neither you nor your correspondents have suggested that homosexuality is “treated differently” than other sins of the flesh by Christians for reasons that have nothing to do with religion at all, but are rooted in both biology and in the deepest aspects of sexual psychology.

I say this with some hesitation, as I know it’s the kind of thing many people find painful; others may find it too obvious. But I think it needs to be emphasized, in defense of us benighted heteros.

And let me first explain that I am not referring now to the causes of homosexuality itself, but to the origins of anti-gay prejudice.

So what are the biological and psychological aspects of anti-gay prejudice?

1. Desire for dominance: in the animal world, mounting behaviour directed by one male to another is a mark of dominance-seeking. Only the most submissive males tolerate it. Thus young men who may be at their peak sexually but who lack any other mark of dominance to secure their status will ALWAYS guard against the possibility of penetration.

2. Fear of effeminacy, part A: Men, especially young ones, again because they are insecure, feel the need to distinguish themselves from women in order to win a female mate. Thus they make a great point of being hostile to gay men, especially to effeminate gay men. This problem has grown worse as women have moved into the public sphere because there are now far fewer things that only men are allowed to do. One reason why Islam had a long tradition of de facto if not de jure toleration of male homosexuality until recently is that women had no place in the public sphere in most Islamic countries; much the same can be said of pre-industrial Europe. Anyway, one result of women’s increasing freedom is that hostility to male homosexuality increases, as sleeping with women becomes one of the few remaining marks of manhood. Another is that men’s fondness for “bimbos” grows more acute, as it becomes more difficult for them to impress liberated–and demanding–women.

3. Fear of effeminacy, part B: Gay men who adopt effeminate mannerisms (I realise they are a minority today but they do exist) are disproportionately threatening to other men because they remind them of the possibility of collapsing back into permanent childhood, mamas’ boys unable to break free of the lures of the mother-goddess who rules all our childhoods. I’ve noticed that straight men who are mamas’ boys, or even too dependent on their wives, often seek psychological freedom by pursuing as many sexual partners on the side as possible. (Think of Joey Buttafuoco…)

This isn’t a comprehensive list. All of the points apply more to gay men than lesbians, but social hostility to gay men seems to be far fiercer than to lesbians.

Incidentally, I realise you’ve alluded to much of this already, when you’ve talked about children’s need for “gender certainty” and other such matters. But I think it’s equally important to the understanding of why anti-gay prejudice is so persistent, when other forms of sexual misbehaviour get more of a free pass from religious believers.

John applies the wisdom of the Desert Fathers.

Transcendence offers a personal post about his journey to Catholicism and chastity. Powerful, well worth a read. If permalinks are bloggered, it’s the second post here.

Zorak misreads me pretty seriously; I’m not sure what I said to cause this impression, but let me see if I can clarify.

I never said anything about one person’s situation or temptations being “worse than” another, and I, too, find that kind of “who hurts more” contest really distasteful. But I don’t think homosexuality is treated like “the sin of pornography, masturbation, any other unusual sexual compulsion, self-mutilation, suicide, compulsive eating, etc, etc, etc.”

For one thing, my initial post was about the ways in which our society treats homosexuality as something you are, not something you do. Here I quoted Ron Belgau’s description of the difference between guilt and shame: “Guilt recognizes that I, God’s child, have done something inconsistent with my new Identity in Christ. It leads to repentance and a renewed commitment to live in Christ. Shame, on the other hand, ‘is the feeling that I am no good, I am worthless, and I cannot control my behavior.'” The whole “eww, that’s so gay!” mentality, the constant attempts to prove that you’re not gay and the people you dislike or view as vulnerable are gay, all that stuff is about imposition of shame, not calling someone to account for a guilty action.

For another, some sins are supported in large swathes of our culture: pornography, say. Some are viewed as funny but basically neutral: masturbation. Some are viewed as tragic but not a basic, defining characteristic of one’s identity: self-mutilation, compulsive eating. All of these differing attitudes present different obstacles to Christian life. Heterosexual lust is often reinforced in our culture; that’s one major obstacle for people struggling with heterosexual temptations. It’s worth talking about the particular kinds of cultural barriers faced by people struggling with homosexual temptations, as well. Why wouldn’t it be? Why on earth would we expect our culture to treat all temptations the same way, presenting the same incentive structures for or against each?

None of this needs to be about who hurts more. (Which is why, you know, I didn’t compare homosexuality to anything else. I was talking about one thing, with no comparison to other things either stated or implied.) It’s about accurately analyzing cultural patterns to see the ways in which they reinforce sinful temptations and false beliefs. The mainstream of our culture treats homosexuality–when it’s affirming it and when it’s attacking it–as an unchanging and defining aspect of one’s identity. Obviously, that makes it a lot harder for people with same-sex attractions to hear the Church’s message. For me, personally, figuring out the ways in which the culture had “hardened” my identity was really important in helping me figure out how to deal with sexual temptation (to the extent that I have) and how to understand the Church’s teaching on the subject.

Here’re the key bits of the initial post. I hope it will make my take on all this stuff clearer: “I’ve been thinking about the fact that homosexual attractions are treated so differently in our culture from many other temptations to sin. This was more true in the recent past, but it’s still pretty obviously true. Kids say a pencil sharpener or a t-shirt they don’t like is ‘so gay’; they don’t say it’s ‘so gossipy’ or ‘so cruel’ or ‘so klepto.’ People who realize that they have strong homosexual desires quickly learn to feel alienated and isolated in a way that is simply not true of people who feel strong temptations to many other sins. (Even if we’re not counting the sins, like heterosexual lust, that are praised and supported in our culture.) Two things may result from this:

“1) A hardening of identity–your sense of self-as-homosexual is strongly reinforced. You start to think of yourself as deviant, and thereby strengthen the deviant aspects of your personality. Most people spend most of their lives living out a persona–a mask–and so how we view ourselves can have deeply damaging, even tragic, consequences. People whose sexualities might otherwise be more fluid end up reinforcing the homosexual self-image so intensely that the lost fluidity can’t really be recaptured (or only with great difficulty). I know this happens because I just described lots of people I know.

“2) Sort of the same thing that happens with overblown anti-drug programs in schools. Our school foisted this ridiculous stuff on us, like if you smoke one joint (or drink too much caffeine!) you’ll end up a slavering acid casualty who thinks she’s a potato. So then your friends smoke up, or you do, and you find out that it’s really not that big a deal. And the credibility of the program is just gone. Similarly, if your culture builds up this totally stupid, unrealistic depiction of homosexuality, in which, e.g., sin never accompanies love, and gay people are weird twisted alien freaks, you’re bound to meet actual humans with actual loves. And so you swing over to the other extreme, thinking that, because people in homosexual relationships are (gasp!) real people with real emotions and real commitments, there can’t possibly be anything wrong with it.

“St. Augustine was not so naive; he well understood, and emphasized, that sin can be woven into the fabric of a loving relationship (or, if you like, that loving care can be woven into the fabric of a sinful relationship). He even argued, if memory serves, that the root of all sin was misdirected virtue.”

More on this topic here and here.