June is Pride Month. The concept has become so ingrained in our culture that it doesn’t need to be explained. It’s often preceded with Gay or LGBTQ, but I prefer Pride because it broadens the scope beyond the sexual natures of Gays, Lesbians, et alia.
For participants and supporters, Pride is a time to celebrate the dignity of LGBTQs’ personhood. For others, it can be a time of discomfort and even disgust. The two perspectives derive largely from how one considers being a sexual minority: birth (nature) or choice (moral)
One way to look at the larger culture is through a single lens that suggests we’re alike in every aspect. That’s absurd, of course. The proof surrounds us. The other is to see it is through a prism in which culture radiates in a vast array of colors. From that perspective, while still seeing people being more alike than not, one can see there are differences among them. Which means we’re a heterogenic species as well as a homogenic one. Additionally, we’re an interdependent species, dependent on others to survive and grow.
As I’ve noted previously, we’re complex or, as David Brooks put it, “messy” creatures. To operate comfortably in that complexity or messiness, we sort ourselves into subcultures.
Gayness is a subculture within the larger culture just like Black, Latino, and SWM: straight white men. And like them, it’s not a monoculture. There’s a range of diversity within it.
If one would create a PowerPoint slide of the subcultures, they’d appear as a Venn Diagram in which the mishmash of traits overlap. For example, most men and women across the subcultures, excluding the gay subculture, are hetero, but they’re distinguished from each other by their passions, proclivities, and interests like sports, intellectual pursuits, and hobbies.
However, there’s an undercurrent that has had ramifications in the evolution of the subcultures. SWM are unique: They weren’t/aren’t shamed, abused, or ridiculed simply for being who they are. They’re not stereotyped, profiled, or targeted, nor have they been enslaved, subjugated, or persecuted in modern times.
The dynamic for non-hetero subcultures is more complicated. People within them live lives fraught with peril unknown to sexually straight folks.
People in the ancient world lived precarious existences. Brutality reigned. Massacres of entire peoples weren’t uncommon, but on the plus side, ancient cultures were generally tolerant about other peoples’ religions and their cultural and social practices and norms. The Romans, for example, didn’t care how one worshiped as long as they obeyed and paid their taxes. They even allowed a temple of Isis, an Egyptian goddess, in the heart of Rome.
In fourth-century BCE Greece, the Sacred Band of Thebes, which was completely comprised of male partners, became a formidable military force. The unit’s philosophy was fighting next to a soldier’s beloved prompted higher levels of courage. It was decimated by Alexander the Great who apparently had his own male paramour, Hephaestion. That was in the tradition of Achilles, the Greek hero, and Patroclus.
That openness changed two millennia ago when monotheists began codifying behavior along moralistic lines. In Europe, same-sex prohibitions, what Pope Francis called “sins below the waist,” took on added force at the time of the Reformation. The reason “sexual sins were favorites,” David Gibson, the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, suggests was because “they were easy to judge—you either had sex or you didn’t.”
Under the last two popes, the Catholic Church, to the chagrin of staunch conservatives, has begun softening its stance on gay relationships.
When asked about that, Pope Leo XIV said, “We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue.”
Objective studies are providing evidence to the principle that being gay is not a choice but instead is the result of biology. For example, the Fraternal Birth Order Effect shows not only gay men tend to have older brothers, it also indicates the more older brothers a younger brother has, the chance he’d be gay statistically increases.
Nevertheless, the question about whether one is born gay or chooses to be continues. Where one stands on the topic is a matter of choice. I hold it’s part of the person’s DNA. Where you stand is up to you.
