The topics of "normal" and “queer” vs. “gay” resurface, not just here, but also implicitly in the many questions asked whether Senator Craig is gay (or to a lesser extent around Governor Spitzer's resignation). It has led me to ponder our current political state versus similar historic eras and wonder ...
Can it be said we have entered a period of Enlightenment and much of the bitter politics and exposure of moralists (like Senator Craig) as hypocrites is simply part of the natural progression from old to new traditions? Words like “gay” and “queer” may simply be terms of a cultural revolution, a part of the Enlightenment.
- “Homosexual.” A clinical term and nothing more. It defines sexual attraction and nothing else. “Homo” for same”; “sexual” for “sex.” We are all homo and heterosexual to one degree or another because we all find attractiveness to some extent in people of the same and opposite sex.
- “Gay.” A man in acknowledgement of that small facet of his greater essence which involves homosexual attraction. Generally unashamed of the facet as well, the gay man is one who has rejected and become liberated from the confines of institutional and societal norms which dictate that to be “normal” (i.e., “blessed”) one is naturally, and must remain exclusively, heterosexual.
- “Queer.” The benefit that a life lived outside of societal norms bestows. To be queer is to appreciate a greater sentience, to be enlightened, able to appreciate the beautiful and ugly that make up the simple and complex nature of life, more capable of embracing the divine gifts of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and senses yet imagined.
- “Fag”/“Faggot.” The pejorative. An aural weapon, like “witch,” used by those in power to instill institutional fear in others in order to hold what’s left of a weakening position in face of an enlightened society. (A “faggot” being the pyre used to burn heretics and witches during prior Enlightenments, its root is found in ironic violence.)
The distinction between “gay” and “queer” is subtle and probably best-grasped by young people to whom concepts like “labels” to define sexuality and “the closet” are quaint traditions (like flat worlds and witch hunts and blood letting). It’s why “GLBT” groups more and more become “GLBTQ.” It’s why college students and 20-somethings are quick to embrace “Queer.” Born and raised in the early understanding of this Enlightenment, they know their sexuality, your sexuality, my sexuality, those “G,” “L,” “B,” “T” labels, matter little and hardly threaten whether they or I or others are blessed in the greater realm of existence. Attraction-be-damned, if joy and camaraderie is found in the style and lights and music and dance involving men or women or both in a “straight” or “gay” bar, so be it. Sexuality like art and music and all things sensual, Enlightenment reveals, is naturally fluid.
Larry Craig isn’t “gay.” He, and his ilk, are victimizers, predators. They are the Puritan fathers clinging to old notions, leading Salem to witch hunts, shackled by ruefulness, ensconced in reactionary fear of that which is different. Like hypocritical Puritan ancestors, in seeing Enlightenment's possibility, they force themselves to be blind, become both enthralled by and terrified of the possibility that Enlightenment is real and the human soul can run deeper than imagined. Unable to conceive “blessed” as anything but what they have always understood, yet captivated, they are driven to unsatisfying and furtive pleasures seeped in denial. Their lives become hypocritical, dark, self-loathing existences, the antithesis of Enlightened “Queer,” into which they can only try to keep others in order to maintain the illusion of that which had been “normal” and not be left behind.
“Burn the witch” 300 years ago had less to do with witchcraft than it did with the fear of a new consciousness that geographic independence the New World an ocean away from Old World traditions revealed. “Hate the sin, not the sinner” has less to do today with sex than it does with the realities brought to light in the Enlightenment of the Q Revolution.
Can it be said we have entered a period of Enlightenment and much of the bitter politics and exposure of moralists (like Senator Craig) as hypocrites is simply part of the natural progression from old to new traditions? Words like “gay” and “queer” may simply be terms of a cultural revolution, a part of the Enlightenment.
- “Homosexual.” A clinical term and nothing more. It defines sexual attraction and nothing else. “Homo” for same”; “sexual” for “sex.” We are all homo and heterosexual to one degree or another because we all find attractiveness to some extent in people of the same and opposite sex.
- “Gay.” A man in acknowledgement of that small facet of his greater essence which involves homosexual attraction. Generally unashamed of the facet as well, the gay man is one who has rejected and become liberated from the confines of institutional and societal norms which dictate that to be “normal” (i.e., “blessed”) one is naturally, and must remain exclusively, heterosexual.
- “Queer.” The benefit that a life lived outside of societal norms bestows. To be queer is to appreciate a greater sentience, to be enlightened, able to appreciate the beautiful and ugly that make up the simple and complex nature of life, more capable of embracing the divine gifts of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and senses yet imagined.
- “Fag”/“Faggot.” The pejorative. An aural weapon, like “witch,” used by those in power to instill institutional fear in others in order to hold what’s left of a weakening position in face of an enlightened society. (A “faggot” being the pyre used to burn heretics and witches during prior Enlightenments, its root is found in ironic violence.)
The distinction between “gay” and “queer” is subtle and probably best-grasped by young people to whom concepts like “labels” to define sexuality and “the closet” are quaint traditions (like flat worlds and witch hunts and blood letting). It’s why “GLBT” groups more and more become “GLBTQ.” It’s why college students and 20-somethings are quick to embrace “Queer.” Born and raised in the early understanding of this Enlightenment, they know their sexuality, your sexuality, my sexuality, those “G,” “L,” “B,” “T” labels, matter little and hardly threaten whether they or I or others are blessed in the greater realm of existence. Attraction-be-damned, if joy and camaraderie is found in the style and lights and music and dance involving men or women or both in a “straight” or “gay” bar, so be it. Sexuality like art and music and all things sensual, Enlightenment reveals, is naturally fluid.
Larry Craig isn’t “gay.” He, and his ilk, are victimizers, predators. They are the Puritan fathers clinging to old notions, leading Salem to witch hunts, shackled by ruefulness, ensconced in reactionary fear of that which is different. Like hypocritical Puritan ancestors, in seeing Enlightenment's possibility, they force themselves to be blind, become both enthralled by and terrified of the possibility that Enlightenment is real and the human soul can run deeper than imagined. Unable to conceive “blessed” as anything but what they have always understood, yet captivated, they are driven to unsatisfying and furtive pleasures seeped in denial. Their lives become hypocritical, dark, self-loathing existences, the antithesis of Enlightened “Queer,” into which they can only try to keep others in order to maintain the illusion of that which had been “normal” and not be left behind.
“Burn the witch” 300 years ago had less to do with witchcraft than it did with the fear of a new consciousness that geographic independence the New World an ocean away from Old World traditions revealed. “Hate the sin, not the sinner” has less to do today with sex than it does with the realities brought to light in the Enlightenment of the Q Revolution.
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Florida
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Re: "Queer" : A New Enlightenment ...?
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 5:19 PMThis is fantastic Marko! May I reference it for Queer Spirituality workshops that I do?
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Re: "Queer" : A New Enlightenment ...?
Wed, April 9, 2008 - 4:47 PMan aside. The puritans weren't as anti-sex as we often imagine. A lot of the sexual hypocrisy comes from the Victorian Period when no-one was doing it yet syphilis was rampant. It is not entirely surprising to me though, the puritans were trying to form a more just society, while Victorian society saw social inequality as biological destiny...
