A recent poll on a gay dating site has produced some surprising results. Asked whether they would willingly take a pill or drug, should one be developed, to turn them straight, roughly 77% of members said no, with the ones most likely to say yes in the remaining 23% coming from those aged 18 to 24 years. How can younger gay men be so downcast after an unprecedented period of advances in gay rights and the social acceptance of LGBT people?
A few respondents were uncomfortable with the very idea of a straight pill, with its underlying implication that being gay is a disease in need of a cure, a point of view with has been rightly consigned to the cobwebbed halls of Victorian psychiatry. As a kind of science fiction possibility as desirable to most of us as a one-way trip to a Swiss flat run by Dignitas, however, the idea has a certain vintage. I remarked long ago on the Mothership Gay Forums how comedian Frankie Howerd, belonging to a less fortunate generation before gay sexual liberation, might well have taken a drug that would have made him heterosexual, if only for the reason given by some ‘yes’ respondents in this poll, that it would make their lives a lot easier.
The current poll showed that the tendency to say ‘yes’ by the under 24s dropped by a few percentage points as the age scale was climbed. One youth said he would find it far easier to find a girlfriend than a suitable boyfriend, while others wished to escape the horror of telling their family and friends. The mature members who had run the gauntlet of gay history were the most adamant in their refusal to be anything less than out, proud and completely themselves.
One such polled recalled early 1970s Gay Liberation marches (the fledgling equivalent of today’s Pride events), when you could see the beginning and the end of the parade as one marched, when holding hands feeling the hostility was an act of defiance. Living with his boyfriend in their first flat, he remembered the windows being broken, getting hate mail, and faeces being smeared on the door. “It wasn’t nice but it toughened us up I guess, ” he comments. “It’s only a perception that being straight is easier. Life is what you make it.”
Personal experience over time gives a more balanced, considered view, and lack of a historical perspective is a disadvantage, when considering whether gay life is a great gift and privilege to be embraced wholeheartedly. This is why I felt uneasy watching the latest gay storyline in tv soap Emmerdale, in which young lad Aaron Livesy (played by Danny Miller) realising his true nature hovers outside a gay bar afraid to enter, then goes and beats up the gentle, encouraging Paddy because he cannot face reality. Surely, I thought, this is not a realistic portrayal in the 21st century when we have come so far, and yet the straight pill poll perhaps shows it is a true reflection for guys under 24, especially those living away from the great urban centres.
Some wanted to pose the reverse question: would straight men take a pill to make them gay? I’d be most interested to see the results of that enquiry. For myself I feel so glad life has dealt me the cards it has. Being gay has opened up a world free of the constraints of the householder life ( married with 2.3 children and the rest), a life of real freedom and new possibilities, of wonderful loving friends and a costant buzz that I wake up with every morning and thank God for every night. Hang on in there my younger, struggling brothers, and look forward to getting older and wiser. Know that the beautiful rainbow’s inside you. As Armistead Maupin once wrote in US gay newspaper, the Advocate (1985) as his ‘Design for Living’, ” Your job is to accept yourself - joyfully and with no apologies - and get on with the adventure of your life…..Stop feeling sorry for yourself and start hoisting your sales. You haven’t a moment to lose.”
By John Hartley
(c) Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.
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