, weighs in at
8.1 megapixels, and cost me just under two hundred bucks, a bargain when you consider that I never leave home without it, and always come back with at least 150 photos from the day's adventure. The L
series is even easier on the pocketbook. You can find L14s with 7.1 MP for around a hundred bucks. No one will mistake you for Ansel Adams, but you can have a lot of fun with it.
Because They Can
Marriage: where hetero camp meets gay cliché!
There's been a lot of talk lately in my comments about "heteronormative" standards in gay dating. So I thought some of you might be interested in Boston's own Benoit Denizet-Lewis's recent piece in the Times Sunday Magazine about gay marriage, and why twenty-something gays in Massachusetts are "rushing to the altar," as he breathlessly puts it.
Many assumed along with Barney Frank, I think, that gay marriage was actually more for middle-aged lesbians than for club kids and go-go bois. This may have to do with the fact that the most salient and ultimately persuasive arguments for gay marriage were the most prosaic and at the same time the most poignant ones — hospital visitation in the case of illness and full inheritance rights in the case of a spouse's death. Isn't it romantic?
But it turns out twenty-somethings are doing it, too. Personally, I don't think it's really all that surprising that some kids are taking advantage of the right to wed. Any excuse to party. Nor is it surprising that trendy trend-spotter Denizet-Lewis spotted a trend here. That's what trend-spotters do, after all.
Well, first they feign surprise. He says he didn't know what to make of the fact that more than 700 gay men 29 or younger had married in Massachusetts over the course of nearly four years. There is a question whether +/-200 marriages a year constitutes a twenty-something stampede to the altar. That aside, the truth is, as big a deal as gay marriage is, marriage itself is not really that big a deal in a culture where divorce is always an easy out. Or it might be more accurate to say that these days you are free to take marriage as seriously as you choose, and that freedom now extends to gays in Massachusetts. Yay!
But Denizet-Lewis has a magazine feature to write, and focusing on how access to marriage has changed the practical aspects of some gay partnerships isn't very sexy. So he tries to spice it up a bit by suggesting that up until gay marriage the very idea of "gay men in a happy long-term relationship was an oxymoron," an astonishing claim by someone who has spent his life mostly in San Francisco and Boston.
I guess you have to chalk it up to PR. Denizet-Lewis's brand of social commentary on gay life is obviously meant to put things in perspective for straight people. Here's how he summarizes the heteroproofed version of gay culture for Times readers:
I entered high school in 1989, before gay teenagers started taking their boyfriends to the prom. If I was lucky enough to find love, I thought, I’d better hold onto it. And part of me tried, but a bigger part of me wanted to pitch a tent in my favorite gay bar. I wasn’t alone. Everywhere I looked, gay men in their 20s — or, if they hadn’t come out until later, their 30s, 40s and 50s — seemed to be eschewing commitment in favor of the excitement promised by unabashedly sexualized urban gay communities.First of all, if you hang out in gay bars you mostly see other people who hang out in gay bars — surprise! But I can assure you there are a lot of gays who don't. They're all in the Fens. Secondly, it seems presumptuous to make a sweeping claim about generations of gays "eschewing commitment" in favor of sex. Is that what all those old barflies were doing? Or were they simply combining these things in unconventional (if unimaginative) ways that polite society might not approve of (whether or not they were engaging in them, too, on the sly)?
Denizet-Lewis may have some unresolved issues he's bringing to the table here. He explains away gay sexuality and the sexual exuberance that characterizes youth itself as something akin to PTSD.
There was a reason, of course, why so
many gay men my age and older seemed intent on living a protracted
adolescence: We had been cheated of our actual adolescence. While most
of our heterosexual peers had experienced, in their teens,
socialization around courtship, dating and sexuality, many of us had
grown up closeted and fearful, “our most precious and tender feelings
rarely validated or reflected back to us by our families and
communities,” as Alan Downs, the author of “The Velvet Rage: Overcoming
the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World,” puts it. When we
managed to express our sexuality, the experience often came
booby-trapped with secrecy, manipulation or debilitating shame.
No wonder, then, that in our 20s so many of us moved to big-city gay neighborhoods and aggressively went about trying to make up for lost time. And no wonder that some of us — myself included — occasionally went overboard.
So, what is Denizet-Lewis's answer to the "secrecy, manipulation or debilitating shame" of a gay adolescence? It is to excuse his typical twenty-something sexuality as a reaction to social injustice, and, of course, to apologize for "occasionally" going "overboard" because of it. I don't know exactly who he's trying to ingratiate himself to in this piece. But if he thinks that straight twenty-somethings aren't being just as naughty and nasty as you please, he's living in a Victorian fairyland.What constitutes going overboard, anyway? He doesn't say, but it seems fairly obvious that what he is apologizing for is not his youthful sexual excess (which he doesn't seem to realize is universal to youth, not just gay youth). No, what he's apologizing for is old-school, pre-marriage equality gay culture, the gay culture that, he is slyly assuring straight readers, the institution of gay marriage, if his survey of the next gay generation is any indication, is nicely superseding.
He seems to want to argue that not only did previous generations of gay men never experience "happy long-term relationships," because society didn't sanction them, but that before gay marriage two men embarking on an intimate relationship never seriously considered questions of emotional commitment and sexual fidelity. He quotes an expert: "older gay men... often make a distinction between emotional fidelity and sexual fidelity. There’s an emerging rhetoric around monogamy among young gay couples. In that way, they’re a lot more like married heterosexual couples than they are like older gay couples.” Rhetoric is the operative word here.
But even so, I'm afraid the monogamy discussion predates marriage equality by a few millennia. Every man wants absolute fidelity from his partners and absolute freedom for himself. That's how it has always been, and marriage equality, as grand as it is, won't change it. What the rhetoric of monogamy indicates is not so much a generational shift as simple lack of life experience on the part of Generation Next.
But one thing gay marriage has definitely changed: it's provided plenty of work for a new class of "experts" on it. Some old experts are chiming in, too. Dan Savage kvetches:
Once, our relationships were only respected if we had remained together for a long, long time. Only longevity earned us some modicum of respect. Straight couples could always rush that validity by getting married. Now I just worry that some gay kids, desperate to have their gay love taken seriously, will wield their new marriage licenses and say: ‘See how real our love is? We’ve only been together five months, but we’re already married. You better respect us now!’But so what if they do? I mean, really, so what?
That's basically what I took away from this article. In the end, like the whole marriage debate itself, it turns out to be much ado about nothing. Don't get me wrong, once it's on the table, there's no convincing reason to deny a marriage license to a same-sex couple. It's a big deal. But it's a big deal because it shouldn't be. The fact remains: marriage equality is one thing. Marriage itself quite another.
In struggling to make his point that gay married people are much like straight married people it's unfortunate Denizet-Lewis feels it necessary to apologize for gay sexuality. He apparently feels that in order to advance The Agenda, marriage must be seen as a cure for rampant promiscuity in the "gay community". It alone has the power to make us all grow up and become responsible monogamists.
But before judging him too harshly, remember: his naive view of marriage and neutered version of gay life have an immediate context: the battle for marriage equality in New York State.
One argument that some gay advocates of marriage equality seem to think appeals to their straight allies is that the availability of marriage will change the more unsavory sexual behaviors of gays. Opening up marriage to them will "tame" their wilder urges, the argument goes. That's why Denizet-Lewis's starts out with an apology for his own wretched excess: I'm sorry I went a little overboard in my twenties, but society oppressed me as an adolescent and left me with no other options but promiscuity in my adulthood!
But the truth is, as married people know, marriage is not a panacea. Even straight marriage is not a surefire cure for sex. Different people are attracted to marriage for different reasons. It works for some, not so much for others. Denizet-Lewis ends up discovering that gay people do have a lot in common with straight people, which is the point he's trying to make. But by focusing on the "rhetoric of monogamy" and suggesting that marriage will cure the gay lifestyle, which he characterizes as a form of wholesale "acting out" against oppression, he's romanticizing the institution itself while advancing the notion of Victorian hypocrisy that used to undergird it.
The most compelling argument for gay marriage has nothing to do with the sexual ethics of married people, gay or straight. It has to do with 1,138 federal laws "in which marital status is a factor." It has to do with equality under the law.
Why are some young gay people marrying in Massachusetts? Simple: because they can. Which is a good enough reason for me.
I think it's great that we gays now have the same legal rights in Massachusetts that straights have always had. I never would have imagined I'd have seen this in my lifetime.
But for all those who think that somehow this, or other legal or even cultural acceptance will lead to a state of gays and straights being "equal" in the greater sense or, God forbid, "the same", is nonsense. We are not the same. We will never be truly equal because we are a permanent, biological, minority and we always will be that. Used to be, we figured out ways to make that work for us - by using our status and world-view as outsiders to create art, have fun and enjoy each other (when I first came out I felt that the best thing about being gay was the music - now the straights even have access to that), and forming the kind of relationships in our small, different group that aren't available to people participating exclusively in the dominant culture.
Gay people, because of their minority status and, let's face it, the discrimination and repression we still face, in order to succeed and even simply survive have to be more self-aware and more aware of the world around us. It's not easy being separate, but it does have it's advantages. These kids trying to recreate their parents marriages with the one little difference (or not so little - both partners have penises and straight people are repulsed by the thought of you having sex!) that they are gay are fooling themselves, and missing out on experiencing life as what they really are - gay. I have a great partner of two years, we will probably get married eventually, and I am happy as can be to be with him. But I would never, ever, wish away the fun times at gay bars, the dancing, the road trips with gay friends, the summers in Provincetown, the feeling of being in on something special, cool, and different, and all the rest of it. I view my straight friends as the one's who have been deprived, and it makes me sad to see these kids furiously trying to deprive themselves of what being gay can offer in order to pursue an unattainable goal of sameness.
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Hmm...my clunky word-choice returns to haunt me. You point out, quite correctly, that what I was in a high snark about (as were others) was a particularly unfortunate intersection of naivete and hypocrisy, particularly in certain virtual flesh-auctions (though it could be anywhere and is nothing new), typically the ones shared with the heterosexual world and geared most to that majority market and the prevailing societal mores. This should come as no surprise: societies don't function without a goodly dose of institutionalized hypocrisy; it just gets tragically annoying when some humorless naif takes it to heart, then tries to cram the whole world into that box...again, nothing new, as any woman who has ever run afoul of the madonna/whore complex knows.
Wasn't part of the point of 'Gay Liberation' that we were also supposed to corrupt...ahem...liberate the straights?!
The best and/or brightest of these 20-something newlyweds will work it all out over time, just as their parents did (or didn't), and that's grand. You and I both know (cf: your V-Day post) a sterling example of a mature, inspiring marriage, forged well before any government deigned to recognize it. Thoughtful folk will work things out for themselves with or without the sanctions of the state, much as fools will be fools with or without its intervention.
I suppose the NYT magazine piece is one more incremental sign that gay IS going mainstream and we're being absorbed by the mass culture (resistance is futile)...right up there with such other signs of the End Times as now having our own crap softcore porn on cable ("Dante's Cove")...
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"...a culture where divorce is always an easy out..."
Seriously? I wouldn't call it "easy" but I guess it's comforting knowing it's available just in case.
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Divorce may be emotionally painful, inconvenient, and costly, but there's no significant social stigma attached to it, and since the advent of no-fault legislation in the seventies and eighties, it is much easier to obtain than it once was. So, yes, I'm serious.
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Marriage is a basic civil right that should be attainable by all Americans if they choose. For the truth about gay marriage check out our trailer. Produced to educate & defuse the controversy it has a way of opening closed minds & provides some sanity on the issue: www.OUTTAKEonline.com
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"Marriage is a basic civil right that should be attainable by all Americans if they choose." I wholeheartedly agree.
Thanks for the link, Charlotte. Enjoyed the trailer!
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I had read that article and I have to say that I have little patience with the idea of hetronormative. As an old friend of mine once said, "I didn't go through all the trouble of coming out of the closet, just so I could pretend I'm normal."
That said, I do understand the need an desire on the part of some people for marriage. We all deserve equal protection under the law.
I am inclined to say, marriage is not for me, though I am also old enough to know better than to say never. I can say, for me marriage is unlikely. But if somehow I found myself in a position where it was an option, I would like to be able to exercise that option.
One of the real issues here is that while marriage is recognized here in the Commonwealth, the marriage license isn't worth the paper it's printed on in the other 49 states. The notion that this is an issue that has to be decided on state by state and is a states rights issue, it complete and utter nonsense.
Hetrosexual couples do not have to remarry every time they move across state borders. We do not require a passport to go from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. If you are allowed to drive in California with a Delaware drivers license, shouldn't a Massachusetts marriage license be recognized legally in all 50 states?
The answer is of course that Washington has to grow a set, strike down these stupid "protection of marriage" laws and do their real job, which is to protect all citizens. I never thought I would live to see the day that same sex partnerships would receive legal recognition and then they were in Vermont, with it's civil union legislation. That Massachusetts legalized same sex marriage came as an even bigger surprise!
I am not sure if I will live to see same sex marriage institutionalized on a national level, but once again, never say never.
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Heteronormative? Please.
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Hey - I noted it was a crap construction - best/shortest I could think of in a pinch - "dominant heterosexual paradigm" seeming even worse, and "the Tao of the Straights" also unwieldy... Lotsa bright wordsmiths comment here: someone must have a pithier term to encapsulate the notion...thoughts? Oh, and Toby: right on!
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Personally, I like the word "heteronormative." I think it has a nice ring to it. Someone should write a song. "The Heteronormative Song." We could use slant rhymes in the chorus, of course...
Heteronormative
You're oh so informative
Heteronormative
Beer bongs and borscht again
Heteronormative
Heteronormative
Heteronormative
Uh uh uh!
I give and I give
But you're just like a sieve
You're so heteronormative
You're just like a purgative
Oh, God, I'm bored again!
Heteronormative
Heteronormative
Heteronormative
Uh uh uh!
(theremin solo)
Heteronormative
Heteronormative
Heteronormative
Uh uh uh!
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The latest by the Pet Shop Boys, of course...
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"700 gay men 29 or younger "
That actually is a tiny percentage of gay men in that age group in Massachusetts. The big story is how few young gay men are getting married in Massachusetts.
While relationships certainly are relevant to most gay men, marriage really isn't.
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I thought the Times was just trying to reassure middle-aged straight moms of boys (like me, or maybe Denizet-Lewis's mom)--no need to worry if little Johnny is gay, because he just might bring home a cute, clever boy who decorates well and even lets you plan the wedding! Maybe it's not a trend, but how would we know? All our gay friends are middle-aged like us (and mostly lesbian moms).
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God knows I'm all for bringing cute boys home, weddings, and home decor (though not always in that order). I just don't think apologizing for youthful exuberance and human sexuality and implying that marriage will cure them is a strategy for pushing marriage equality. The issue here is not social engineering, as Denizet-Lewis implies. Marriage equality, as the name suggests, is about equal protection.
It's clear from Denizet-Lewis's own narrative that he wants to convince readers that the reason for promiscuity in the gay community of which he is a part is the lack of equal status for gay relationships. He strongly implies that with marriage equality comes less of what he characterizes as "acting out" on the part of gays. In doing so he comes close to arguing that marriage can cure what he seems to think is chiefly "wrong" with gays: their (in his view) inability to form "happy long-term relationships" without the state's sanctions.
Not only is that not the issue, it's also not a very convincing argument. However oxymoronic happy long-term relationships among gays may have been among the barflies Denizet-Lewis hung out with in his roaring twenties, they have existed, in great number, for as long as there have been gays. Confusing monogamy and marriage only serves to muddy the waters.
If he’s trying to convince readers with a casual acquaintance with the cause of the benefits of gay marriage, chastity is probably not the place to start. He’s naive to think that other people are as naive as he is about the multifarious realities of actual marriages.
If Denizet-Lewis had just shown these kids doing their thing instead of getting philosophical about it I think it would have been a more persuasive piece. I don't think gay marriage, by necessity, has to incorporate Victorian sexual hypocrisy. It’s not about gays finally being able to “do the right thing.” It’s about the government finally doing the right thing by gays.
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I know this article and the discussion here ended a few weeks ago, I am compelled to comment.
While I am not a close friend of the guys in the article, I know four of the guys ( I won't mention names) and I will tell you this:
One married young couple is in an open relationship, widely known to their friends in the "gay village." One recently finished a stint in rehab on the west coast, one was recently heard using the "n" word to call an African American person in a bar....Another couple in the article recently had a fight where blood and cops were involved...
and there is more... but seriously, Benoit must be delusional to write this piece and featuring the wanna-be-Leave-it-to-Beaver or Brady Bunch-esque young gays that don't have their shits together except their parents money, then it's just a sad thing to see how non-gays might see young gays in Boston in this manner... what a fucking joke, seriously... don't believe anything in this article!
GRRR.... I will stop the dirty details here...
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