Author and gay activist Wayne Besen, to Express Gay News, Oct. 6:
Besen concedes that the gay community is partly to blame for the ex-gay phenomenon. “Gays could be more supportive of their own,” Besen said. “Gay bars can be cruel places. They go to the gay bar one night and are treated terribly, and then they go to the ex-gay ministry and are hugged and treated well. The ex-gay people tell the person, ‘You don’t have to go to this smoky, dark place and be treated like shit anymore. In larger communities, people don’t have to go to the bars; in smaller communities, the bars are often the only places to meet other gay people. Many gays also don’t get support from their families.”
Besen said the programs dangle lofty possibilities in the faces of those who will stick it out and stay straight. “They tell you how happy you’re going to be, how you can be married, how your life will change.” Besen said.
Besen is correct to point out that gay bars can be terrible places.
I have not read his work so I wonder if he recognizes that in many cities (even medium sized ones) other types of gay orgnizations exist.
Gay Community Centers offer all sorts of support, organizations, places to meet, etc. for gays.
Gay sports groups, religious groups, discussion groups, etc. have come into being since Stonewall.
If gays and lesbians want positive and supportive places to go, they can find such groups in most (admitedly not all) locales.
Actually, these groups are accesible in rural areas also. There are national organizations through which rural gays can have a social life.
My observation from my years in the rural south is that gays from a conservative christian background tend to be socially inept. Rather than run on about the deficits of gay bars, it might make more sense to educate those who are not with it about proper behavior.
I have read Wayne’s book, and believe what he is saying is that people who are raised in the very strict world of evangelical/fundamentalist churches find the “everything goes” attitude of the typical urban gay community unsettling, and often they have had no previous exposure to gay people, and see the bars as the only alternative. Then they get to the bars and find people who are superficial, etc. I don’t think Besen believes all gay people are superficial, but that it can appear that way to certain people when they first come out.
At usa_queers yahoo group, Rusty has pointed out several times that those drawn to exgay groups tend to be noticably more effeminate than gays in general. In reading exgay testimony, I notice the same litany: bad at sports, other guys made fun of me, prefered dolls, etc. In other words, classical sissy boy stuff. This may account for the problems in gay bars refered to.
I think we are kinda over generalizing. I have been in all sorts of gay bars and there are many types of gay bars. I have been in some where effeminate behavior would not be welcome and I have been in others that could care less. I have been in some that were just over sexualized (i.e. pick up bars, strip bars, leather bars, ect.), and I have been in others that were just a nice place to chat meet friends sort of a gay cheers. I agree that they can be terrible places at times. I mean the smoke, crowds and loud music can certainly drive one nuts and I don’t think anyone who is conservative about their sexuality would care for the overt sexual atmosphere present in some of them. However they are not the only places where you can meet other gays and lesbians and many people esp. people who are not part of the community, don’t know that.
Gay, straight, ex-gay, ex-straight, ex-ex-ex-whatever…
Whatever your sexual orientation is, the fact remains that dating is emotionally daunting to all of us. Well, except for you good looking type-A’s…
And small towns suck — for dating and pretty much everything else. Whether or not you are a sissy-boy (some of us grew out of it), we all wish our familys had been a little more supportive of the choices we made.
I dont see an ex-gay or ex-straight angle either way. Courtship is a pain in the ass these days… too much pressure from all sides!
We need emoticons here. Why anyone would egard leather bars as sexualized is beyond me. I have always found the cheers type atmosphere easy to come by. There is usually a meat rack moment here and there, beyond which bars can be quite chummy places. Have met many worthwhile guys in bars.
Instead, I think the problem is with the evangelical conservative church. Which seems to exist in a time warp of sorts. The gay fundy going to a bar is jsut another instance of the fundamentalist encountering moderenity issue. Karen Armstrong’s ‘The Battle for God’ details this struggle.
Is anyone here familiar with H L Mencken? About 80 years ago he wrote an essay called ‘The Hills of Zion’ dealing with the topic at hand. Only in his experience, the e/fC fled from the lasciviousness of the ice cream parlor. So, I feel, no matter how you slice it, and no matter what is available, people from these sorts of backgrounds are going to be uncomfortable.
And do not see this as a failing of the gay world as much as a personal limitation that those from conservative christian backgrounds impose on themselves. In other words, get with the program.
From Mencken’s ‘Hills of Zion’ with a hope of the url working and relevent quotes. Written in 1925 it could just as well describe the exgays we are talking about here.
https://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Mencken/the-hills-of-zion/
‘A country girl from some remote valley of the county, coming into town for her semi-annual bottle of Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, shivered on approaching Robinson’s drug-store quite as a country girl from up-State New York might shiver on approaching the Metropolitan Opera House. In every village lout she saw a potential white-slaver. The hard sidewalks hurt her feet. Temptations of the flesh bristled to all sides of her, luring her to Hell. The newspaper woman told me of a session with just such a visiter, holden a few days before. The latter waited outside one of the town hot-dog and Coca-Cola shops while her husband negotiated with a hardware merchant across the street. The newspaper woman, idling along and observing that the stranger was badly used by the heat, invited her to step into the shop for a glass of Coca-Cola. The invitation brought forth only a gurgle of terror. Coca-Cola, it quickly appeared, was prohibited by the country lady’s pastor, as a levantine and Hell-sent narcotic. He also prohibited coffee and tea — and pies! He had his doubts about white bread and boughten meat. The newspaper woman, interested, inquired about ice-cream. It was, she found, not specifically prohibited, but going into a Coca-Cola shop to get it would be clearly sinful. So she offered to get a saucer of it, and bring it out to the sidewalk. The visitor vacillated — and came near to being lost. But God saved her in the nick of time. When the newspaper woman emerged from the place she was in full flight up the street. Later on her husband, mounted on a mule, overtook her four miles out the mountain pike.’
‘ The preacher stopped at least, and there arose out the darkness a woman with her hair pulled back into a little tight knot. She began so quickly we couldn’t hear what she said, but soon her voice rose resonantly and we could follow her. She was denouncing the reading of books. Some wandering book agent, it appeared, had come to her cabin and tried to sell her a specimen of his wares. She refused to touch it. Why, indeed, read a book? If what was in it was true, then everything in it was already in the Bible. If it was false, then reading it would imperil the soul.’
I guess the leather bars in your area are different. The ones in my area are pretty wild in terms of the amount of nudity and sex that go on in the back rooms. However they are rather well advertised, so I don’t see anyone walking into one of them not knowing what to expect, perhaps shocked at the sex in the back room, but at least not shocked at the guys wearing almost nothing and the gay porn showing on the television.
I am not sure that this is an issue of fundamentalism vs. modernity. Not all Christians that have issues with homosexuality are fundamentalist. I don’t like certain aspects of fundamentalist beliefs. My experience of them is that many find themselves “back sliding” into sin. Some of them seem to lack the “I will do this much and no more” aspect of morality. They don’t seem to do things in moderation and they expect too many miracles from God.
I think this has more to do with conservative Christianity in general vs. modernity. I often get stuck going to a church that preaches sex outside of marriage is wrong. What I find funny is they hardly seem to go on as to why. I love scripture and no where in the bible does it say that both men and women should save themselves for marriage. About the only thing it does say is that you may divorce your wife for not being a virgin and you may execute women for not being virgins even in cases of rape. No where does it give women the same option. It seems that they have not took time to understand why the virtue of saving your self for marriage was created and if that virtue still makes sense in the modern world and the reason why most people are not living up to that virtue. The more liberal branches of Christianity seem much more engaged in the world. Much more aware of the real issues that people are dealing with and much more willing to create new virtues and disregard old ones when they don’t make sense any more.
Homosexual acts were once regarded as simply bad behavior that anyone might do and was subject to fines imprisonment and perhaps the death sentence. It was sort of like adultery or stealing. We don’t expect that a husband not fined other women attractive, but we do expect that he not commit adultery.
The rest of the world changed and now understands the concept of orientation which means a some people might normally be sexually attracted to members of their own gender but not all people. They also understand that getting rid of the attraction is not an easy option and that people who are attracted to members of their own gender might not be attracted to members of the opposite gender. Those concepts change the moral calculus and I think conservative Christianity hasn’t had time to digest them yet. I suspect that in fifty years they will be preaching on trying to return to some norm of today.