The issue of gay “marriage”—so perpetually in the news these days—in itself little concerns me. I find the very notion grotesquely absurd, but then it’s really no skin off my reactionary Catholic nose if men want to live with other men or women with other women in arrangements that they consider to be, in some warped way, “matrimonial.”
I am, of course, troubled by certain patently totalitarian aspects of the homo matrimonio crusade, which I have already discussed at length, but I’ve really got no serious beef with gays who seek only to “live and let live,” and don’t intend to harass the rest of the world into acceptance or approval of their behavior. I’m far too much of a solitary-dwelling, crusty-crabbed curmudgeon to get the least bit exercised over what other people are doing with their genitalia. I don’t really want to know—I won’t ask, so please don’t tell. But in the privacy of your homes, or bathhouses…whatever, man. Just keep it far away from me.
There is, however, something in the agitation for the normalization of homosexuality that is deeply galling to my sensibilities, even without considering the patently totalitarian “We will bury you”-style legal threats raining down on dating services, bed and breakfasts, and religious denominations who decline to cater to the demands of the queer lobby. Something in all of the sound and fury reminds me of why I broke with liberalism in the first place, and why I remain an angry ex-liberal to his day.
Put simply, the gay marriage-movement is symptomatic of a general tendency within the modern Left that I have long despised; the manufacture of the “marriage equality” controversy in itself demonstrates the essential spiritual emptiness of liberalism, as well as the flighty, facile, abjectly conformist nature of most liberals.
Liberalism, as currently constituted, is essentially little more than a social clique. One adopts a liberal mindset in order to prove himself worthy, so all of the “cool” people will like him, invite him to their parties, and thus improve his overall social standing. Put that way, liberalism is just so damn high school-esque it’s plainly pathetic.
But if liberalism is overly concerned with status, it is also militantly and determinedly sycophantic in orientation. Being liberal, far more often than not these days, is all about proving oneself fashionable; like a nervous pledge to a storied fraternity of exquisite allure, the liberal tends to be obsessed with fitting in, and eager to say the right things to the right people. If he sufficiently impresses the “in” crowd and in shows himself to be a reliable follower of the party line, he won’t ever have to suffer the mortifying shame of getting shunned.
Since the pomo liberal has dispensed with God and any sort of transcendental law, his human drive toward reverence of the sacred has been misplaced; being predisposed towards the hive mind of his clique, he worships whatever is trendy. Usually, the trendy thing is The Other: minorities, immigrants, supposed historical victims of the Big Bad White West. I recall, back in the ‘90s, when feminism seemed to be the ruling ideology of the cultural Left; back then, it seemed everyone was listening to Sarah McLachlin and Natalie Merchant and talking angrily about rape, sexual harassment, misogyny, and the multifarious depredations of the perfidious “patriarchy.” If you called a woman a “girl” back then…well, Goddess help you! Your fate would likely be worse than Nicolas Cage’s was at the end of The Wicker Man.
Today, though feminism hasn’t disappeared, people seem more mellow and copacetic on these matters (in America, anyway—Sweden, appears to be a different issue entirely). A man can probably get away with calling a woman a “girl” in 2011 without having some broad-shouldered, crew-cut harridan smack him in the groin with her man-purse; he’s smiled on, rather than being glowered at, when he holds a door open for a lady; what’s more, jocular observations about gender differences are considered entirely kosher fodder for late-night comedians and sociologists alike.
Priorities have shifted: today, instead of being all about the gals, it’s all about the gays.
Twenty years ago, no one, not even the most strident of gay activists, was demanding gay “marriage.” In fact, back then, the trend among liberals back then was still to see the entire institution of marriage as unimportant, a mere “piece of paper” from a bureaucrat, which signified nothing. Gays didn’t need marriage back then in order to feel “affirmed”; they merely had “longtime companions,” and that was enough.
But at some point, for some reason, someone high up in the liberal clique decided that the time had come to extend marriage benefits to pomo homos. They determined that it was, yes, “discriminatory,” to tell a man he couldn’t get a piece of paper from the county courthouse to show that he was committed to his “longtime companion.”
Once this new party-line was decided upon, all of the rank and file of the clique—those jostling for social position, ever desirous of proving their ideological bone fides—fell into line like meek little sheep. I remember watching some episode of a talk show a few years ago, wherein aging sexpot Jacqueline Bisset was asked what she thought about the notion of gay marriage. She pouted her luscious lips for a quick moment, then shrugged and said, “Well, why not?”
Why not, indeed? If it’s what the cool, hip, glamorous people like Jon Stewart, Brad Pitt, and Lady Gaga want, then you’d be a fool to oppose it. Why court the disdain of the high-born and well-placed? If all the sexy cheerleaders and the cute preppy guys who rule the high school of liberalism are in favor of gay marriage, what in the world do you have to gain by speaking out against it, you pimply-faced dork? You’d better toe the party line, if you don’t want to become persona non-grata…
My own reasons for opposing gay marriage aren’t superficial or rooted in unthinking bigotry towards the differently-sexed. And they aren’t in any way related to “homophobia,” whatever the hell that exceedingly tired word was ever supposed to mean… But even if I didn’t have moral qualms about suddenly redefining a thousands-year old institution out of deference to a capricious Zeitgeist, I suspect I’d feel the same compulsion to jeer and flout at the acolytes at the altar of this latest Big Important Cause, just because the degree of such creepily craven adherence to trends just screams out to be mercilessly mocked.
I am, of course, troubled by certain patently totalitarian aspects of the homo matrimonio crusade, which I have already discussed at length, but I’ve really got no serious beef with gays who seek only to “live and let live,” and don’t intend to harass the rest of the world into acceptance or approval of their behavior. I’m far too much of a solitary-dwelling, crusty-crabbed curmudgeon to get the least bit exercised over what other people are doing with their genitalia. I don’t really want to know—I won’t ask, so please don’t tell. But in the privacy of your homes, or bathhouses…whatever, man. Just keep it far away from me.
There is, however, something in the agitation for the normalization of homosexuality that is deeply galling to my sensibilities, even without considering the patently totalitarian “We will bury you”-style legal threats raining down on dating services, bed and breakfasts, and religious denominations who decline to cater to the demands of the queer lobby. Something in all of the sound and fury reminds me of why I broke with liberalism in the first place, and why I remain an angry ex-liberal to his day.
Put simply, the gay marriage-movement is symptomatic of a general tendency within the modern Left that I have long despised; the manufacture of the “marriage equality” controversy in itself demonstrates the essential spiritual emptiness of liberalism, as well as the flighty, facile, abjectly conformist nature of most liberals.
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***
*
Liberalism, as currently constituted, is essentially little more than a social clique. One adopts a liberal mindset in order to prove himself worthy, so all of the “cool” people will like him, invite him to their parties, and thus improve his overall social standing. Put that way, liberalism is just so damn high school-esque it’s plainly pathetic.
But if liberalism is overly concerned with status, it is also militantly and determinedly sycophantic in orientation. Being liberal, far more often than not these days, is all about proving oneself fashionable; like a nervous pledge to a storied fraternity of exquisite allure, the liberal tends to be obsessed with fitting in, and eager to say the right things to the right people. If he sufficiently impresses the “in” crowd and in shows himself to be a reliable follower of the party line, he won’t ever have to suffer the mortifying shame of getting shunned.
Since the pomo liberal has dispensed with God and any sort of transcendental law, his human drive toward reverence of the sacred has been misplaced; being predisposed towards the hive mind of his clique, he worships whatever is trendy. Usually, the trendy thing is The Other: minorities, immigrants, supposed historical victims of the Big Bad White West. I recall, back in the ‘90s, when feminism seemed to be the ruling ideology of the cultural Left; back then, it seemed everyone was listening to Sarah McLachlin and Natalie Merchant and talking angrily about rape, sexual harassment, misogyny, and the multifarious depredations of the perfidious “patriarchy.” If you called a woman a “girl” back then…well, Goddess help you! Your fate would likely be worse than Nicolas Cage’s was at the end of The Wicker Man.
Today, though feminism hasn’t disappeared, people seem more mellow and copacetic on these matters (in America, anyway—Sweden, appears to be a different issue entirely). A man can probably get away with calling a woman a “girl” in 2011 without having some broad-shouldered, crew-cut harridan smack him in the groin with her man-purse; he’s smiled on, rather than being glowered at, when he holds a door open for a lady; what’s more, jocular observations about gender differences are considered entirely kosher fodder for late-night comedians and sociologists alike.
Priorities have shifted: today, instead of being all about the gals, it’s all about the gays.
Twenty years ago, no one, not even the most strident of gay activists, was demanding gay “marriage.” In fact, back then, the trend among liberals back then was still to see the entire institution of marriage as unimportant, a mere “piece of paper” from a bureaucrat, which signified nothing. Gays didn’t need marriage back then in order to feel “affirmed”; they merely had “longtime companions,” and that was enough.
But at some point, for some reason, someone high up in the liberal clique decided that the time had come to extend marriage benefits to pomo homos. They determined that it was, yes, “discriminatory,” to tell a man he couldn’t get a piece of paper from the county courthouse to show that he was committed to his “longtime companion.”
Once this new party-line was decided upon, all of the rank and file of the clique—those jostling for social position, ever desirous of proving their ideological bone fides—fell into line like meek little sheep. I remember watching some episode of a talk show a few years ago, wherein aging sexpot Jacqueline Bisset was asked what she thought about the notion of gay marriage. She pouted her luscious lips for a quick moment, then shrugged and said, “Well, why not?”
Why not, indeed? If it’s what the cool, hip, glamorous people like Jon Stewart, Brad Pitt, and Lady Gaga want, then you’d be a fool to oppose it. Why court the disdain of the high-born and well-placed? If all the sexy cheerleaders and the cute preppy guys who rule the high school of liberalism are in favor of gay marriage, what in the world do you have to gain by speaking out against it, you pimply-faced dork? You’d better toe the party line, if you don’t want to become persona non-grata…
*
***
*
My own reasons for opposing gay marriage aren’t superficial or rooted in unthinking bigotry towards the differently-sexed. And they aren’t in any way related to “homophobia,” whatever the hell that exceedingly tired word was ever supposed to mean… But even if I didn’t have moral qualms about suddenly redefining a thousands-year old institution out of deference to a capricious Zeitgeist, I suspect I’d feel the same compulsion to jeer and flout at the acolytes at the altar of this latest Big Important Cause, just because the degree of such creepily craven adherence to trends just screams out to be mercilessly mocked.
