"But WHY do you want gay marriage?": some reasons you may not have considered.

I'm against gay marriage. The reasons why are complicated, but they boil down to a belief that marriage is about a lot more than love and commitment. It's about societal leadership, a balanced structure for children, reproductive stability, nurturing environments for both men and women, and a host of other things that form the foundations of our civilisation. It's true that in recent decades the institution of marriage has become a ridiculous farce, at least in some circles. But it is only pushed further into ignominy by offering it to same sex couples, and we as a civilisation should be trying to draw it back, not push it further.

Which is not to say that I'm against gay partnerships, enjoying the same status under the law. I'm just against gay marriage.

But that's not what this post is really about. This post is a reflection on why gay marriage is so forward in the minds of modern homosexuals. After all, the whole idea of gay marriage is a very modern one, dating back a couple of decades at best. So why has it become so gosh-darned important to gay men now?

There are a number of considerations:

Gay marriage as identity

Sometimes when one is denied something one has a vague inclination toward, the desire for that thing becomes more pronounced. If the reason why one cannot have it appears arbitrary or philosophical, this can accentuate both the desire and the stubbornness of refusing to take no for an answer. In extreme cases, it can escalate into full blown hysteria, in which one can sense nothing but an attack on one's sense of self-worth.

If you tie up your sense of self worth with a cause, whether it be gay marriage, the rights of asylum seekers, or the election of Barack Obama, then anything that threatens that cause is a serious blow to your self-esteem. Many gay marriage supporters have indeed tied their sense of self worth to their cause, so a rejection, however calm and rational, is a rejection of them as individuals. They lash out in response, describing disapproval as hate, or, more likely, “H8”.

Ironically if gay marriage is enshrined in law, many supporters may experience the same deflation and sense of emptiness that Obama’s supporters felt when he was elected. When you’ve defined yourself in terms of a fight for something, who are you when the fight is won?

Gay marriage as an exercise in power

Gays love power, possibly because they’re often excluded from traditional male expressions of it. There’s an element of “I am homo, hear me roar” in the calls of gay marriage. We can do and have whatever we want. We don't particularly want marriage, but we do know that you don't want us to have it... and if we force you to, then we prove that we are superior. We'll take a foundational part of your culture from you and screw around with it, and you'll be powerless to stop us. Eat that, bitches!

Gay marriage as a sign of tribal identification

Like many small and distinctive groups, gay culture is very homogenous, and highly intolerant of contradiction to internal popular opinion. This is understandable, since gays have to band together to protect themselves from the bigotry of the outside world. However this homogeneity can lead to certain ideas or philosophies becoming a lot more potent than they should be. To be pro gay marriage is to conspicuously identify yourself as part of the tribe. It may even inure you to criticism if you do something questionable - modern tribal cultures (for example evangelical christians, anti-war activists, or green groups) accept all sorts of awful behaviour from people, providing they parrot back a few important ideologies correctly.

Gay marriage as an elitist fashion statement

You may think I'm being facetious, but hear me out. According to the latest figures, only 6% of women who possess a four year university degree have a child outside of marriage. For women who failed to finish high school, the figure is 54%. Far from being the tool of male oppression as claimed by 1970s feminists, marriage is now a fairly powerful status indicator. The poor, the ignorant and the vulgar form common-law relationships… if they’re lucky. The clever, the rich and the classy get married.

This is not lost on gays, who regard being poor, ignorant and vulgar as worse than polyester. Gays are all about the icons of status, whether it be the Ben Sherman shirts, hybrid SUVs, Danish Modern furniture or the right brand of vodka. To be married is to claim membership in middle classes and up, which is exactly where most gay men want to be.

Now you may be thinking, "Gay men want to get married for the same reasons that straight people do - it's as simple as that!" But it isn't. Men and women are very different creatures. Take the woman (or the man) out of the equation of marriage and the thing is no longer marriage. Lacking one half of the biology, it's an entirely different dynamic. Pretending otherwise just drives the paradigm of marriage further into the mud.

You may also be thinking, "Marriage can be whatever I want it to be!" If so... I'm afraid I can't meaningfully respond to dim-witted, "all truth is relative" moral equivalency like that, so the argument must end there.

The Caffeine-Free Diet Coke of Love

As I mentioned in my last post, love is in the air!

Well, not actual love. Gay love. It's not quite the same thing. I've become convinced that gay love is just a combination of lust and desperation that's close enough to regular love providing you don't look too carefully.

What brings me to such a cynical conclusion? Let us look at the current relationship statuses of some of the main characters in this blog.

KCG is in the most serious relationship he's had since he broke up with his ex early last year... but the relationship with this new man is looking shaky. The new man has displayed some odd behaviour that suggests a slightly toxic personality and/or undiagnosed bipolar disorder - he's temperamental, unreliable and unempathetic. But given that KCG hasn't had a boyfriend in over a year, and given that the new man is pretty darn hot, I cynically suspect they'll patch things up.

Meanwhile the Human Dynamo was reaching a bad place with his love interest, in which they'd both reached a point where they couldn't see a way around their mutual obstacles. But apparently he's met a thoroughly delightful new man and they've been spending every spare moment together for the past week or so. The fact that they've been on several dates and communicate electronically every day without having had sex yet is about as close to the romantic ideal as gay love ever gets.

Lastly there's the Virtuoso, with whom I had dinner on Sunday night. Unfortunately for me, I've discovered that he's taking himself off my sexual menu because he's started seeing someone. They met at the gym, after their respective versions of Grindr introduced them. This new man is a) old enough to be the Virtuoso's father, b) a millionaire and c) still letting his psycho ex live in his house. Said pyscho ex is on worker's compensation following an indeterminate injury and threatens suicide whenever it's suggested that he might like to move out. When I raised an eyebrow at this, the Virtuoso merely heaved a sigh, as if to say that beggars can't be choosers.

But what of me, you may ask? In my own burst of lust and desperation I signed up to Manhunt.com over the weekend, after KCG assured me that it wasn't any sleazier than Gaydar.net.

If you've ever been on Manhunt, you'll know that KCG is, at best, delusional.

I punched up my standard profile to make it more aggressive, to match the tone of the Manhunt profiles I'd seen. And it got me noticed! On my first night I attracted interest from a weird guy 19 years my junior, a weird guy 18 years my senior, and a weird partnered guy who's been stalking me on Gaydar.

On my second night I had a brief conversation with one unattached, age-appropriate man who wanted to know about something in the background of my profile photo. He spent most of his time boasting of the number of hot guys he'd banged, with the heavy implication that if I couldn't match him shag for shag, I wasn't worth knowing.

Time to head back to Gaydar, perhaps? Well, back on Gaydar I got a several hundred word message from a guy who thought we were compatible simply because I am younger than him, shorter than him and a non-smoker. By that logic George Clooney and I are also soulmates. Even so, I sent him a message thanking him for his kind and effusive words. It must be gay love.

In which I share my sexy powers, fool that I am.

I had some very bad insomnia on Tuesday night, leaving me still wide awake at 3am on Wednesday morning. Which was kind of handy, since it was at 2.52am that my phone decided to trill to let me know that I had received a text... one that The Virtuoso had sent me, at a more civilised hour, three days earlier.

Yes, I am changing carriers when my contract expires.

But back to the insomnia. In searching for causes, I can only come up with one.

You see, earlier this year I hosted a fancy dinner party for some of my gay, unattached friends. There was five of us in total, and it was a lovely affair.

On Tuesday evening, following a catch up with one of them, I came to the sudden realisation that, three months after the dinner party, four of the five gay, unattached men who'd attended now had boyfriends.

AND GUESS WHICH ONE OF THE FIVE IS THE ONE WHO DOESN'T HAVE A BOYFRIEND! GO ON, GUESS!

I could view this as evidence that I have mysterious gay love guru powers, somehow magically granting the gift of boyfriends to all who fall within my social influence. But I prefer to simply regard it as further, ego-crushing proof that I am a loser.

Oh well. I have a second date tonight with the guy I saw last Sunday. I'm not excited, but I suppose it beats sitting alone at home.

At least guys are still asking me out.

Within five days of returning from a fortnight's holidays abroad last week, I had two dates with different men. Hooray for me!

The first date was with a man who just barely meets the old requirement that one can only date people half their age plus seven years. Still, he is very mature, intelligent, professional, easy company and not bad looking. He is one of these spontaneous, jump-in-feet-first kind of people, which sits a little unevenly with my careful, analytical personality, but hey, it could also be good for me to be around someone who takes chances.

He comes from a very conservative and repressive ethnic background, and occasionally he appeared to be forcing himself to break through some internal barrier to share personal information. His livewire personality and buttoned-down heritage seemed to be in uneasy tension. However, as I mentioned, he was intelligent, easy to talk to and engaging, and there did seem to be a mutual frisson of potential when we hugged and chastely kissed each other goodnight.

Spontaneous, jump-in-feet-first people have a tendency to declare things in the heat of one moment that dissipate in the cool of the next. So I'm trying to take his observations that I have a "beautiful smile" and "kissable lips" with a realistic mind. Still, it's nice to be admired, even if you suspect that the admiration is shallow and transient.

The second date was more problematic. I want to see him again, not because I think there's any romantic potential in the relationship, but because I'd like to finesse my psychological profiling. He was obsessed with controlling his identity, to the point of making me promise that I wouldn't talk about him to any of my friends. Not that I have a lot to talk about - getting simple social data like his living situation or his work was like trying to uncover an Egyptian tomb during a sandstorm. Despite this, he talked incessantly, leaving me little space to do anything other than smile and nod. Amateur psychologist that I am, I'd interpret this as bluffing behaviour - filling the conversation with white noise to cover the lack of anything real being said.

He'd complain about men misinterpreting his gaydar profile, and when I explained why they would have misinterpreted it (drawing on my own experience and a university degree in semantics and language signifiers), he didn't seem able to understand that tweaking the profile would be a good thing. I'm always delighted when people offer constructive advice on how to make my profile more appealing, but he seemed to feel that it would be an admission of failure on his part, or pandering to the failings of his readers.

I also wonder if this inflexibility explains why he listed himself as a pure top despite having some fairly swishy moments: he doesn't like letting another man in, literally or metaphorically. It's not so much a desire to be dominant and in control as a deep, fervent desire not to be open or vulnerable.

Oh well. They both seem eager enough for second dates, so we'll see where this goes in both cases.

When I like you more than you like me.

More misery, I'm afraid. This time centring around my friend KCG.

You see, KCG is evolving as a person. He used to be quiet, intellectual, and hanging out with a circle of friends who were generally older, more cultivated and philsophical.

But since he's fallen in with his new friend Sexy D (so named because his name starts with D and he's sexy as hell) he seems to have realised that there will be plenty of time for the life of the mind after he's dead (ie 40). His new circle of friends is younger, shallower, more extroverted and, from all accounts, hotter.

I say "by all accounts" because I've only met Sexy D once, and I've never met his coterie. I've only heard about them.

Sexy D is a white collar worker but he has no interest in philosophy, theology, psychology or any other the other -ologies that KCG and I used to discuss. He's clearly intelligent but no intellectual. He's good with his hands, he has a great body, and he likes drinking, clubbing and fucking. His friends are, apparently, just like him, only moreso. From what I've heard, from both KCG and the Human Dynamo, they're a bunch of loud, buff, venal queens... Sexy D is the quietest and most introspective of them.

A year out from his breakup with his ex, KCG is either throwing off the last shackles of his old life and becoming the man he always should have been, or he's experimenting with a new and different persona, like a teenager who goes goth for a couple of years before settling down into polo shirts and jeans. There's hope for our relationship if it's the latter, but not if it's the former.

That's the sad thing. If he gets free of the neuroses and inner conflicts that have plagued him his whole life, KCG has the charm, the humour and the boyish good looks to be a very successful gay man. If he plays his cards right, he could have the fabulous life partner, the inner city designer terrace, the cool interior design, the luxury mid-size SUV, the chocolate labrador, the Saturday morning couple trips to the gourmet bakery for croissants... basically he could be living the cookie-cutter modern gay dream.

I could never achieve that - I'm too old, too fat, too lazy and too uncharismatic. And people who CAN manage that don't have people like me in their social circle, so I can't even expect to be invited to the occasional dinner party.

I had such high hopes for KCG. I thought that, if I played my cards right, he could be my introduction to a life that would be a dream come true. But even though I have played my cards well, it turns out he's been playing his own cards, and is moving on up to the sort of gay elite that simply isn't for the likes of me.

I miss him. Any idea of a romantic relationship between us has dissipated, but I really like having him as a friend. When I discovered BN2's cheating ways, KCG was the only person I felt I could call to talk about it. The sad truth is that he can do better than me. Our friendship is looking increasingly like a momentary aberation - a lucky confluence of spare time, need and low expectations on his part.

When high maintenance isn't worth it.

A few nights ago, when I logged onto gaydar to check my messages, I had a brief exchange with a new man. Like Tania Zaetta Man, the subject of my last post, this man's glasses were hideous, but he had a refreshing ability to joke about them, and thus didn't seem like a bad kinda guy.

It still wasn't smooth sailing. He asked to see a "full-on" picture of me, and when I replied that I'm not that sort of boy he clarified that he meant a more obvious face photo. This misunderstanding made things a little awkward, especially when he sent me a "full-on" picture of himself. When, I wonder, will gay men learn that a webcam picture of yourself staring unsmilingly at your monitor is not the most attractive look? Team that with the creepily out-of-date hairstyle (I remember wearing something similar in 1991) and the aforementioned hideous glasses, and you'll understand why I didn't hold much hope for the relationship. When I tired of browsing and exchanging messages with a couple of other people, I simply logged off and went to bed.

The next night, when I logged onto gaydar, there were SEVEN messages waiting for me from Mr Full-on. Begining with a normal statement, then a Why Haven't You Responded?, then Seriously, Why Haven't You Responded?, then Did I Say Something Wrong?, then Is There Something Wrong With Gaydar?, then FINE, BE LIKE THAT, BUT I THOUGHT WE WERE REALLY CONNECTING!, then a Let Me Know If You Change Your Mind.

Sheesh.

I did message him to say that I'd logged off the previous night (which you'd think he'd have noticed) so I didn't receive any of his messages. Then we chatted for a bit before I pointedly excused myself to go do some exercise... and I've avoided gaydar ever since.

Win versus Fail

Here's a little comparison that sums up my current dating life:

Over the weekend, KCG went out and had a beer with a man to whom he'd been talking on gaydar. Despite being from a hardscrabble industrial suburb, this man had a conversational knowledge of Jung's collective consciousness and Nietzche's will to power. He was also, apparently, even hotter in the flesh than he is in his profile pictures... which are pretty damn hot. And he's all of 23 years old.

By contrast, last night I got into my first conversation in weeks with a gaydar man. Bearing in mind that my profile mentions that I have a deep aversion to guys who wear oversized, femme sunglasses, here's a rough idea of how the conversation went:

Him: Hey, read your profile, liked it, check me out and see what you think.

Me: I don't know... the sunglasses might be a bit of an issue... (smiley icon)

Him: Er... you're joking, right? They're perfectly normal sunglasses.

He seemed to be dead serious. At this point it should be noted that in EVERY ONE of his profile pictures he's wearing huge, rimless, smoky brown sunglasses with thick gold arms, making me think that somewhere a trophy wife is searching under the seats of her Mercedes SLK200 and muttering "Where the hell did my sunglasses go?"

Me: Um... yes... just my little attempt at humour... ha ha ha...

And then I quickly logged out before I said anything even stupider.

So while KCG is flirting with a 23 year old philosopher-hunk, I'm getting interest from a 51 year old man with Tania Zaetta's sunglasses.