Eric

Pride. Not.

6-28-2006

You know, I just happened to come across the Man2Man Alliance website about three weeks ago. Ever since then I have been spending a great deal of time reading it, and I haven't been able to think about a whole lot else since then. The message is powerful. It has really shaken me to my core. I really tried to find a flaw in Bill's heroic homosex arguments. At first glance, his agenda appears to be intolerant and discriminatory against men who (seemingly) of their own free will choose anal sex as part of their private sex lives; and men who choose to express themselves in an effeminate manner. Who can rightfully say that they are harming others by these behaviors? How can I as a proponent of individual rights criticize what other people do in privacy?

I've also been reading the criticisms of his arguments.

But I have not myself been able to find any flaws in his logic -- and his critics are, to me, unconvincing. I have become convinced that what these men are doing in private *are* harming others by propagating the tyranny of an anal sex culture. These people are doing more damage to humanity than the fanatical neoconservative nutjobs that wage immoral wars. The death toll is higher. Where is the individual right to choose when one is subjected to intense pressure to conform to the analist's agenda, something I have personally frequently experienced? How can the impressionable youth find alternative role models when the analist's agenda is flaunted in their face by a pervasive culture that portrays itself to represent all men who have sex with men?

I went to the annual Pride parade today in Dublin, but it could have been in any city, really. It was a small parade, but the themes were clear. Half or more of the participants in the parade were men dressed as women. The AIDS prevention workers were passing out free condoms to make sure we used them every time we had anal sex.

The parade participants were using whistles as noisemakers. What an awful idea!

The shrillness of the whistles was hurting my ears ... the sight of all the drag queens... the tyranny of it all ... something in my mind just snapped.

I saw the connections as clear as day. Bill and all the men who have written in support of the Alliance are right.

Effeminacy <-> anal sex ---> Death.

It sounds terrible. It's a message I and no one else wants to hear, let alone own up to. I so do not *want* it to be true. But the truth of it is inescapable.

Now don't get me wrong. If the effeminacy and anal sex culture were to be a fringe fetish behavior and kept behind closed doors I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it. It wouldn't harm other people. But to flaunt it like this and present it as a *mainstream* culture that supposedly represents all homosexuals is just wrong. It is putting out the wrong message, a message that kills.

A wise person once said that we can never stop teaching: everything we say and do, teaches. Instead of asking ourselves what we want to do today, we might as well ask what we want to teach today.

I was not feeling Proud. I left my friends and the parade at that point; I felt like I had to be alone...
to grieve the dead.