Newspaper Page Text
THE NEWS June 20,1985 Page 5
H • E * A • L • T • H
Pride and Prejudice
i.
Pride and prejudice are opposites that attract. Gay pride attracts more than a little at
tention from right wing moralists and those groups have certainly attracted the atten
tion of the gay community. Sad but true, Anita Bryant and Jerry Fallwell are still better
known among gays than anyone in gay leadership.
Pride and prejudice, like other polarities, create an uncomfortable magnetism, a ten
sion felt in both directions. In both directions there is also a strong need to reduce that
tension and the general prescription has often had a moral tone, “If only the other side
had a conscience...” What may be more at issue than morality is morale. As
social/sexual institutions homosexuality and heterosexuality are only a hundred years
old. This arbitrary division of human sexuality is still an historical novelty and pro
bably won’t last another hundred years simply because human beings don’t work that
way. Consequently there is a need for cheerleaders and morale boosters,
“pro-family” types and “liberationists”, who will bolster the notion that among
human beings there are opposing sexualities (breeders and perverts) and antagnostic
ways of loving.
It is probably-true too that love, sexual love in all its variation, will survive any
reformation of lifestyle or social groupings. In China and the Soviet Union-where
homosexuality officially does not exist-same sexed lovers continue to find each other.
In gay meccas such as San Francisco and Amsterdam, babies are still being born. Love
is more passionate than the ideology or lifestyle and what we can hope for and work
toward is a world in which love, every kind of love, is honored. That, however, is not
the world in which we live and we have no world but this one to begin change from.
n.
Hatred is a palable emotion. We can feel a person’s hatred as sure as we can feel
their loving. For lesbians and gay men the experience of others’ hatred of us can be
and often is a daily reality, putting aside demagogues and queer-bashers, intolerant
relatives and condescending acquantances, we feel others’ hatred of us as heads are
turned...or turned away (I once saw a father shield his son’s vison of two men walking
hand in hand), we feel others’ hatred of us in the often shared perception that all the
“normal” world is straight. And then there are the queer jokes and'the not so subtle
put downs of “masculine” women and “feminine” men. Even where there is no overt
violence or outright rejection we can still feel others’ hatred of us in their refusal to see
us, in their derision, in their presumption that anyone who doesn’t act like a queer isn’t
one.
How do we handle that much hatred? when I worked with poor blacks in rural south
Georgia racism was so' heavy that most of these people were immobilized by the
weight of their neighbors’ hatred of their color. It is true of any oppressed group (true
of lesbians and gay men, even those who can pass for straight, even those with
economic advantages) that they carry their neighbors’ hjatred of their difference as an
immobilizing force in both their personal and social struggles for happiness and liber
ty. Erving Goffman who pioneered in the study of social stigma (negatively valued
variance from the norm via racial, religious or sexual preference) observed that it is
the tendancy of the stigmatized to succumb to shame. Because of others’ hatred of us
and the burden it creates in our daily lives it is hard not to carry that burden as shame.
We often feel we must hide our loving,’cover up our feelings^ stiffle our outrage and
dilute our passion. It is no secret that this kind of stress effects individuals as dis-ease,
relationships as dis-integration and bleeds off any energy that might be left over for a
moment that challenges the conditions in collective consciousness that perpetuate the
hatred that causes the stress. This can amount to a death sentence (shame pushing
toward its ultimate punishment) if we as gay men and lesbians fail to recognize,
strengthen, and celebrate the joys of our living and loving together.
There is another side to homosexuality. There is gay shame, lots of it, sad and ob
vious too is gay pride. Being a tradition that has passed through many times of secrdcy
it is difficult to find a source to celebrate and yet we can sometimes find in a kiss or an
embrace an echo that takes a women back to Sappho, that returns a man to Ganymede?
Ill,
As lesbians and gay men we practice mysteries as old as humanity and as deep as the
sources of our consciousness. Over millenia, rarely in public but always somewhere,
we have continued to initiate each other into the passions that flow between two of the
same kind. We have celebrated a love that has no object but itself and we have
demonstrated that men can be lovers of each other not just warriors at each others'
throats and that women can join in love that does not make them mothers. As men who
do not battle and women who bear no children we have offered the human race another
option. That we can make love without fear of reproduction in a terribly overcrowded,
warring world is no small contribution.
(Frank Abbott, is a psycho
therapist in private practice
in Little Five Points.)
To The Memory Of
CHUCK CASSIS
“Good Bye Friend... ’
49 SIXTH STREET / A TLANTA / (404) H92-H9HA
★ Gay Men's Support Group ★
Open to men who want to explore attitude values behavior goals
and self esteem issues in a positive, caring group experience.
DANIEL TRUSSELL
Facilitator
★ Lesbian Support Group ★
Women new in town, those in relationship transition, married
women questioning their sexuality, will find this a valuable
resource. Monday evening, 7:30 p.m.
PAM MARTIN
Facilitator
t Community Counseling Center • 634-9440 ★
"Gentle Dentistry”
Pharr Road