Homosexuality and me

OK first things first: I am as straight as an arrow. I'm just writing this because I feel that maybe some people out there won't understand.

I had commented before that I was a little surprised at how many of my colleagues at work, including people I like, are completely uncomfortable with gay people. I'll just put in some snippets of gay ppl I've encountered, or ppl who have talked to me about gayness.

Now my mother used to be very concerned about my mind being corrupt and I suppose, filial child that I am, never ever set her mind at ease. My mind is too open. You can't put a barrier and say, don't cross this line because it will eventually end up on the wrong side. But it won't stay there, because my mind is wandering all the time. I do not have an unhealthy fixation on sex, no matter what my friends think. I swear like a longshoreman. (Maybe I am one in real life.) It's partially her fault because she used to swear "bloody shit, male driver" whenever she drove us out in the car.

From other people's accounts, I have heard that my paternal grandfather has a very uncouth way with the language as well.

I consider myself a fairly open minded person who accepts ideas readily, until I have turned them over and found them to be illogical and unworthy. I have so far been unable to convince myself that being gay is wrong.

When I was a kid, I went to Thailand, and I saw a show by transsexuals. Later on my mother told me that those people lead pretty miserable lives. I asked why, she said, you know, they're not normal and they'll regret it. I thought, well they look nicer than they would have if they were men. As usual, I was smart enough to glimpse part of the truth. As it turns out, we wasted money going to Thailand when 10 years later you can go to Orchard Towers and see free shows every day.

I have always thought that homosexual people were good to make fun of. Good harmless fun, like people with a big nose, or somebody who's too tall or too short. Yes, these people are not normal but who the hell is normal anyway? We are all strange in a specific way. When Cantonese people greet each other, they say "lei ho mo?" I always end up sniggering.

The older generation is not very friendly towards gays, or at least they think of them as a disadvantaged minority. There was one time I picked up my grandmother at the hairdresser's. She said that the hairdresser's brother (a hairdresser himself) was a nice guy, a few years older than me, trained in the UK, and for some strange reason not married. I looked at him and my gaydar said : 8.5. I explained to her later that he's probably gay, and she said, "how can you talk that way about innocent people like him?"

I had a form teacher in Sec 1. Some people made fun of him behind his back for being fat and gay. We started a funny story that he lusted after his students. I suppose back then we didn't understand that he was a big shot in the Singapore drama scene.

I must have told you before the story where during Drama Feste, a house put up a production that dealt with homosexuality, and the judges symbolically judged it the winner. It was a shit play, and I should know because I was one of the extras. But I suppose that left a deep imprint on my mind. It's OK to poke fun (no pun intended) at gay people, make jokes about them fucking each other in the ass. But at the end of the day, you shouldn't discriminate against them. In a way, yes, the worst fears of some parents are true. If you teach in school that gay sex is normal, people will think that it is normal.

But the lesson we learnt was also a little more nuanced than that. We also learnt that gay people suffer more than normal people.

My best friend in sec 3/4 is gay. I didn't always know that. People picked on him because he was very weird and flamboyant. I didn't pick up his gay vibe, we always suspected him and we weren't sure. I sometimes felt a little strange around him but I always assumed that number 1 he's weird (which is true) and number 2 it's also weird that I have such a close friend of the same sex (which is true). After all he was so good with women. One of the lessons I learnt is: if a guy is very good with women, you have to suspect that he's gay.

I hung around him because he was very smart and always had very original opinions about everything, even though he had a very big chip on the shoulder and I felt that he was wasting his talent away. He went to another JC from us (another one of this chip on the shoulder antics) and got "engaged" to a JC classmate. It was probably a sham to mask the fact that he's gay. Nowadays when I bumped into him, he's always dressed outrageously, and he's always with his boyfriend.

He did tell me a few things about gay sex, like how to go about finding your G spot when you're a guy. (I didn't want to know). And how, when a guy fucks another guy in the ass, the guy who gets assfucked also enjoys it to some extent. (I also didn't want to know.) Unfortunately I have such a lust for knowledge that I was grateful that he told me. He also told me that Perrier bottles are a hidden code for identifying gay people. So years later, when a colleague had a Perrier bottle on his desk with the expiry date the same as when his bond ended, I had to laugh.

I credit him with giving me a lot of interesting ideas and I learnt a lot from him but we drifted apart because we're so different. I was not happy, not because I had feelings for him, but because it's not good to lose a friend when you didn't have that many to begin with in the first place.

I'm also a weird person but I like to keep my weirdness well hidden because it's always more outrageous when a seemingly normal person says something shocking. Why spoil the element of surprise by giving things away?

Another one of my gay friends, I knew him since pri 2, and he had such a blase attitude towards everything, his parents were so permissive. I remember the Chinese teacher throwing his file across the classroom and the pages flying everywhere. Not surprisingly he sucked at Chinese. I'm not close to him, and I was startled when he came out.

Another gay ex-classmate of mine was one of the most detested people in my cohort. He was unhygienic, dug his nose in public, always felt that people were out to get him. I think he had this attitude that everybody was out to get him because he had some special qualities that other people simply "get". By a twist of fate we were in BMT together. Unsurprisingly he couldn't complete the course.

There was another guy, the most brilliant mathematician in my cohort. He represented Singapore in the Maths Olympiad and got a silver medal, which is like having your test paper graded B. That is good because no Singaporean before him ever got a gold medal. He's completed his PhD now and he's lecturing around.

So I know 4 gay people fairly well, looked at them while growing up. It's difficult to see what they have in common. Smart ones, dumb ones, motivated ones, slack ones. Yes, maybe their being in a more permissive environment enabled them to get away with being gay. I think that with the exception of my BMT mate the rest of them are fairly well adjusted people. According to gossip reports, though, none of them make good soldiers. Maybe they are not the hyper masculine gay types.

There were a few classmates of mine who were uncomfortable with the fact that there are gay people in their midst. But those few know that they're in an environment that doesn't let them express their homophobia. They know if they open their mouths they will be criticised.

People I know from SAP schools are less westernised and I think they are less tolerant of gay people. Someone I knew didn't think that anybody in his school was gay. I asked him whether it was possible, the gay ones simply learnt to keep their mouths shut. He said it was possible.

I hardly knew any Americans who were gay in the US. During one of my years in the States, a gay person called Matthew Shepard was murdered for being gay, and there was widespread outrage on his behalf. My university is like most universities in the US, one of the most gay friendly places around. But there was once when I pointed out a gay parade to my first year roommate, a black guy. He's a very friendly and polite person, but he screwed up his face and said, "who gives a damn about them fags?" I suppose generally black people aren't very friendly towards gays.

One of the most paradoxical attitudes towards homosexuality comes from my sister. She's often very amused by male gays. She used to laugh when her classmates quoted Oscar Wilde, when EM Forster wrote about "Maurice", and when Lt Gruber from "'Allo 'Allo" always hit on Rene. But when I asked her about lesbians, her mood changed. "They're gross. Yuck." I asked her why is it so strange? She said, "lesbians can hit on me, and male gays can't. They're completely harmless to me."

So what do I think about homosexuals?

On a gut level, I am to some extent uncomfortable. I don't think I would welcome guys hitting on me. I have, with one or two exceptions, never had any homosexual behaviour. And those exceptions involved me trying to gross out somebody so that doesn't count as being sexual.

But I will tolerate them, that's not going to stop me being friends with them. I know many talented people, especially musicians, who are gay. I don't think that you should discriminate against them, and if you do, think about all the wasted talent.

I believe in being lax with them because I have heard about stories where people tried to convert them towards being heterosexual, they failed miserably and the gay people started getting miserable. I have been in love before and I know that people are miserable when they can't be with the people they love. I suppose it's the same with them. This is the primary reason why I am so lax with them - because they get a lot of shit (no pun intended) and they don't need any more from me (no pun intended either.)

There is no evidence that it is inherited, or natural, or simply learnt. Scientists can't make up their minds. But I believe that once a person is gay, it's extremely hard to convert them.

I'm a little uncomfortable with some liberal attitudes. There's a little smugness in the attitude, "I can tolerate gayness better than you can. I'm more enlightened than you are." That's also obnoxious.

Because of my liberal attitudes towards gays, I get to learn that certain people are gay, much earlier than others do. And, big mouth that I am, when I casually let this slip, there are noticeable gasps, and then people suddenly feel they have to act nonchalent, well, what to do. There's a bit of "are you sure?" And a lot of the time I'm never 100% sure but a lot of evidence is there.

What do I think about how my kids are taught? I want to impart my values to them, of course. My attitudes towards these things are not that simple and I have thought long and hard about them. It won't be as easy to teach them if they're not going to think as hard as I am. It's simple: gays are your friends, they are your brothers and sisters. Just don't ever be one of them.

You can be neutral towards gays. I think it's great that they are all fighting hard for their rights, it is heroic and it makes for great drama. But can I be neutral towards them to the point where I say "being gay is as good as being heterosexual?" Of course not. I believe that if you had to choose, you have to choose being heterosexual. Unless you're just being gay in order to rebel against society. That's a different matter, I have a soft spot for rebels.

Do I think that it's OK if people experimented with gay sex? I didn't want to try. (But then again, I didn't want to experiment with girls either. I guess I'm just cold and frigid.) What if you liked it? What if people became gay simply because they experimented and they grew to like it? I'm not going to be gay! I don't want to be gay. I don't want my dick touched by a guy! There was this guy who did it - he's not gay but he just wanted to piss me off. Well he pissed me off alright, I hit him back.

I believed that all human behaviour is a mix of natural and learnt. I didn't want to mess around with the learnt bit. I'm quite happy to lust after women, thank you very much.

I don't like people discriminating against gays. But sometimes they bring up the "homosexual life style" and I can understand why they're offended. It's not so much the "different ass every night" as it's the irresponsible hedonism. Playboys who are hetero are guilty of it too. You see, if homosexuality is a choice, and I'm not entirely convinced that it isn't, doesn't it mean that some people will choose homosexuality because they enjoy the carefree, hedonistic lifestyle? No kids to bring up, no permanent weddings, nothing to do but to spread funny diseases.

Lesbians? Duh. All guys love watching lesbians. Even the homophobic ones.

I think that the formula: there's nothing wrong with homosexuals, just don't be one is something that can find a lot of common ground with people. There are many people who take the view that homosexuality is a sin, but you shouldn't discriminate against them. Not surprisingly, a lot of Christians take this view. I have never understood whether Christians are judgemental or not. Some of them will say, "judge not lest ye be judged". Others will abhor the "moral relativism" of modern society and yearn for more traditional (ie judgemental) values.

There was a friend who agreed with me for this formula, and later on he added that while he felt that it was wrong to discriminate against homosexuals, he couldn't see how it was possible that homosexuality was not a sin. I put that formula not because I think there is anything wrong with homosexuality, or anything sinful. I chose not to be homosexual, if you can really choose these things. I would choose my kids to be not homosexual, not because homosexuality is wrong, but because they will be discriminated against, and they will suffer.

I read with dismay a lot of arguments advanced by Christians about why homosexuality is sinful. On one hand they say, "liberals cannot blithely say that just because they are permissive it is the morally superior position". That much I agree. But after that, they say, "There has to be values in the world. We can't just allow moral relativism to hold sway." Which implies that just because other people judged something to be completely harmless, and you judged that something to be sinful, that is the morally superior position. That's crazy.

It was never about permissiveness. It was never about saying, “we’re right because we can be so open minded”. That does not make sense. Just as there is no moral superiority to be inferred from permissiveness, there can also be no moral superiority to be inferred from the ability to make arbitrary judgements about human behaviour. You cannot condemn a form of human behaviour for nothing, and say, “see, we have higher moral standards”. Unless there are good, solid reasons.

When liberals say, “there is nothing wrong with homosexuals”, they are accused of not having values. When the same argument is reformulated to “it is wrong to discriminate against homosexuals, and it is wrong to label homosexuality as a sin”, they are accused of being judgemental and betraying a moral relativism they never had in the first place.

This is a clash of values. This is not a clash where one side has all the values and the other has nothing.

The distinction “hate the sin, not the sinner” does not make sense. We throw a thief into jail and we will love him there. That is still discrimination. If we say that homosexuality is a sin and we throw that person into jail, to me it is unjust, because homosexuality is not a sin.

Conversely, if we were to say that X is a sin, but we do not discriminate against X, that is also a travesty of justice. Would you let a murderer go scott-free? No. Once you pronounce an act a sin, you are discriminating against that act. Either it is a sin or it isn't. Love the sinner, yes. But punish him.

It is very clear. There is an incredible amount of confusion over the Christian position. They almost want their cake and to eat it to: first to follow the party line spelt out in the Bible, that homosexuality is a sin. But at the same time, lest they be accused of being hateful, they don't want to be seen as being discriminatory.

So my attitude? Yes, I'm liberal, but my liberalism is highly nuanced.