This is a Warrior Culture in action.

These are strong, free, brave Men -- Men of Valour -- caring for each other and openly expressing love for each other.

"Huge, strong men walked by each other and hugged, tears streaming down their faces."

This is Warrior Culture, and this is how it's been for millenia -- since the race began.

Here's Quintus Smyrnaeus' description of the mourning for Achilles:

Then, sorrowing sorely for Achilles still,
The Danaans woke to weep. Day after day,
For many days they wept. ... As rain upon the earth,
Their tears fell around the dead man, Aeacus' son;
For out of depths of sorrow rose their moan.
And all the armour, yea, the tents, the ships,
Of that great sorrowing multitude were wet
With tears from ever-welling springs of grief.

~ Quintus Smyrnaeus, The Fall of Troy, Bk III

Warriors watch out for each other, protect each other, are at each other's backs, feel intense love for each other, and grieve for each other.

"Huge, strong men walked by each other and hugged, tears streaming down their faces."

"I love you," he said. "I can say I love you if I want to."

The fact that these men are "strong" -- made strong by the fight -- is what enables them to express their love for each other.

A love which is absolutely authentic and true.

... over [Achilles'] dead face, [Athena] drew
A stern frown, even as when he lay, with wrath
Darkening his grim face, clasping his slain friend
Patroclus; and she made his frame more massive,
Like a war-god to behold.

~ Quintus Smyrnaeus, The Fall of Troy, Bk III

That's Warrior Culture.

A culture of strong men who love and protect each other.

Do Warriors who are part of the same Warrior band ever kill each other?

Very rarely.

If we look at Iraq, for example, there are of course instances of death by "friendly fire," but those deaths are accidental.

Murder is extremely rare.

Now: what about gay-identified men, most of whom are not in a war zone, but are living in the peaceful confines of the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand?

Right now there's a push in the American congress to extend hate crimes legislation to lesbians and gay men.

The goal of course is to reduce violence against gay people.

Something I'm all in favor of.

Indeed, as I've noted before, anti-gay violence is something which I, unlike 99.99% of those who profess abhorrence towards such acts, have actually done something about.

Including serving as a founding board member of the NYC Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project.

As a consequence of that work, one of the things which was clear to me when AIDS appeared was that the disease was a form of anti-gay violence.

That may not be apparent to everyone.

But anyone who's seen the victim of a gay-bashing, and has also seen what full-blown AIDS does to the human body, can appreciate that the differences are not great.

AIDS is a form of violence.

And it's a form of violence which gay-identified men have inflicted on each other.

I'm not alone in this opinion.

Larry Kramer has described the behavior of gay men vis-a-vis HIV / AIDS as murderous:

Does it occur to you that we brought this plague of aids upon ourselves? I know I am getting into dangerous waters here but it is time. With the cabal breathing even more murderously down our backs it is time. And you are still doing it. You are still murdering each other. Please stop with all the generalizations and avoidance excuses gays have used since the beginning to ditch this responsibility for this fact. From the very first moment we were told in 1981 that the suspected cause was a virus, gay men have refused to accept our responsibility for choosing not to listen, and, starting in 1984, when we were told it definitely was a virus, this behavior turned murderous. Make whatever excuses you can to carry on living in your state of denial but this is the fact of the matter. I wish we could understand and take some responsibility for the fact that for some 30 years we have been murdering each other with great facility and that down deep inside of us, we knew what we were doing. Don't tell me you have never had sex without thinking down deep that there was more involved in what you were doing than just maintaining a hard-on.

I have recently gone through my diaries of the worst of the plague years. I saw day after day a notation of another friend's death. I listed all the ones I'd slept with. There were a couple hundred. Was it my sperm that killed them, that did the trick? It is no longer possible for me to avoid this question of myself. Have you ever wondered how many men you killed? I know I murdered some of them. I just know. You know how you sometimes know things? I know. Several hundred over a bunch of years, I have to have murdered some of them, planting in him the original seed. I have put this to several doctors. Mostly they refuse to discuss it, even if they are gay. Most doctors do not like to discuss sex or what we do or did. (I still have not heard a consensus on the true dangers of oral sex, for instance.) They play blind. God knows what they must be thinking when they examine us. Particularly if they aren't gay. One doctor answered me, it takes two to tango so you cannot take the responsibility alone. But in some cases it isn't so easy to answer so flippantly. The sweet young boy who didn't know anything and was in awe of me. I was the first man who ****ed him. I think I murdered him. The old boyfriend who did not want to go to bed with me and I made him. The man I let **** me because I was trying to make my then boyfriend, now lover, jealous. I know, by the way, that that other one is the one who infected me. You know how you sometime know things? I know he infected me. I tried to murder myself on that one.

So:

The gay male community, which bills itself as a community of "gentle people," is actually a community which allows mass murder to be visited upon its members.

By its members.

That's what goes on.

And that behavior is open, and in many quarters, celebrated.

These pictures I've been posting

are not hard to find.

They're all over the internet, including those gay hook-up sites which profess a concern about health, but which allow their users to post profiles with names like "bareback25" and "bareking."

They also post pictures like these:

These are images of humiliation and rape.

And the "sex" depicted is not safe.

HIV can be and is transmitted orally.

As are all the more common STD.

So: the question has to be asked:

Which culture does a better job of taking care of its members?

Warrior Culture?

or Gay Male Culture?

The guys in the Warrior Culture so ably depicted in the IHT / NY Times piece go to great lengths to insure that neither they as individuals nor any of their platoon mates will be killed or wounded.

Their effort is to stay alive.

And, as was reported, despite being in an incredibly dangerous environment, they've been by and large successful:

The group had been fighting together for 10 months. Covering central Mahmudiya and parts of the surrounding area, they had been attacked by rockets, gunfire, mortars, grenades and roadside bombs. They had always survived. Ski was their first killed in action.

Which is why we can legitimately speak of them as heroes.

Because they've tried so very hard to protect the lives of their buddies.

Can the same be said of the gay males -- the barebackers, the bugchasers, the giftgivers -- who are infecting each other?

No.

I'm well aware that there have been attempts -- and more than a few -- to present gay males who bareback and bug-chase as being in some way heroic.

But they are not.

Their behavior is at once self-loathing, predatory, and suicidal.

In point of fact, their behavior is homophobic.

It's a form of anti-gay violence.

Yes, it's perpetrated by gay males upon each other.

But it's still violence and it's still anti-gay.

And the level of this violence far outstrips the level of violence which those advocating changes to hate crime legislation wish to address.

Once again, they're right to wish to address that violence.

But it doesn't make much sense, in my view, to address the lesser source of violence and ignore the greater source.

Yet that's what the Congress is doing.

It's going after "hate crimes" perpetrated against gay people presumably by nongay people;

while ignoring the hate crimes perpetrated by gay males against gay males.

365Gay:

According to the FBI, about 14 percent of the 7,163 hate crimes reported in 2005 targeted gays or lesbians - a slightly lower percentage than the two prior years.

Fourteen percent of 7,163 is about 1,000.

That's about three people per day.

And let me make crystal clear that that's three people too many.

We should have NO tolerance for those crimes.

Because violence is the first tool of the oppressor.

But we should also have no tolerance for the continuing gay on gay violence which transmits HIV.

About 60 people per day are victims of that violence.

That's 20 times as many.

Now:

The source of the gay on gay violence is a culture which we call analism.

And which has as its components three elements: anal penetration, promiscuity, and effeminacy.

Each of which feeds on and feeds into the next:

What we put forward as the alternative is Warrior Culture.

That culture, in its sexual aspect, is Phallic:

the sexual expression of the culture is Phallus on Phallus -- an act which we call Frot.

And which we regard as sacred.

The other two elements of the culture are Masculinity and Fidelity.

And they too feed on each other and reinforce each other:

There are two other feedback loops which we must consider and understand.

The first is the essential feedback loop which joins analism and HIV:

This is the essential truth of the epidemic and of the gay on gay violence which perpetuates the epidemic and about which the analists are in denial.

They fail to see -- or simply refuse to acknowledge -- that anal itself is implacably violent, and leads inevitably to the sort of devaluation of life which has resulted in the AIDS epidemic among gay men.

So there are two elements.

One is anal penetration itself.

The other is the refusal to stop doing anal even though:

Which has been demonstrated over and over and over again.

What about in Warrior Culture?

Clearly, if anal = death; then Frot = Life.

And we have a graphic which says so:

But there's another element of Warrior Culture which we must understand.

The cohesion of the Warrior band is made possible by the bonds between and among the Warriors.

In the IHT article, those bonds are elucidated through the phrase "huge, strong men walked by each other and hugged" -- and by the statements of love which the men made to each other.

The Warrior Bond in turn is made possible by a necessary and essential interplay between aggression and attraction.

Aggression and Attraction are the two poles of the male-male experience.

Aggression and Attraction are the two *essential* poles of the male-male experience.

Analism denigrates and denies aggression, distrusts masculinity, disdains fidelity.

And in so doing creates violence.

The furtive and secret violence of anal penetration.

Warrior Culture honors and embraces aggression, exalts masculinity, and cherishes fidelity.

And in so doing creates love.

The honest and open love of the Warrior band.

Here's more from the article:

"I'm worried about my guy out front, Sergeant Wisniewski," he said. His Ohio accent was thick enough to sound almost southern. Blood had splattered his face, which was bruised but intact.

"I have a question," he said to this reporter, pointing to the left side of his head. "Is my ear still there?"

Insurgents adjust to changes

The army has a creed - no soldier left behind - that has held the organization together in times of trouble. The soldiers of 2nd Platoon, Alpha Battery, Task Force 2-15, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division lost one of their own on Saturday in an effort to follow that creed. Wisniewski died at the start of a 16-kilometer, or 10-mile, trek through farms and over canals with the goal of finding three missing American soldiers abducted during an ambush on May 12.

...

Remembering Ski

Ski, as he was known, was a sarcastic joker. A native of Standish, Michigan, he was tall, blonde and decisive. He was young for a platoon sergeant. His commanders promoted him because he had the ability to inspire. And to goad.

At one point, his friends said, he made his soldiers wear their helmets and goggles on base - where no one else does - so that they would remember to keep them on at all times while on patrol.

In return, on his 22nd birthday, his friends gave him a gift they thought he would appreciate; they threw him in a Dumpster.

Losing Ski and seeing three other friends wounded brought out a mix of uncharacteristic honesty and anger in the platoon. Immediately after the explosion, the soldiers swore, and kicked whatever they could find. One said he wanted vengeance.

But "I love you, man" was far more common. Huge, strong men walked by each other and hugged, tears streaming down their faces. When it was not clear whether the seriously wounded soldier on the ground would make it, "I love you" came out repeatedly, blurted as if it was something they wished they had told Wisniewski, something they wanted all their buddies to know.

When one of the wounded soldiers said to stop, insisting that the mushy stuff had gone too far, there was friendly resistance. "What, I can't love someone now?" a soldier said.

"I love you," he said. "I can say I love you if I want to."

The group had been fighting together for 10 months. Covering central Mahmudiya and parts of the surrounding area, they had been attacked by rockets, gunfire, mortars, grenades and roadside bombs. They had always survived. Ski was their first killed in action.

"I haven't really accepted it," said Simonovich a day later, after returning to his unit with minor shrapnel wounds in his face and a burst eardrum. "I haven't accepted it." His eyes were open and intact. He had been wearing his goggles when the bomb exploded.

Four hours into Saturday's search, the soldiers received more news they did not want to accept: A sniper shot hit another member of Alpha Battery in the head. He had been on the roof of a house that was being searched, oblivious to the threat.

Captain Aaron Bright's unit, a platoon of Bravo Battery, received the news too. They were a few hundred yards north of Captain Abercrombie's group when the call came in. The men were disappointed, angry, frustrated.

...

A clear and noble goal

The search operation continued on Saturday in the midday heat. Abercrombie's unit walked through farms, searched houses, struggled through a wide swath of mud that nearly claimed a few pairs of boots.

In a house near where helicopters would later deliver bottles of water in black body bags, they rested once again. Sergeant Stephen Byers, 31, of Detroit, said that Friday night was the first time he had a chance to call his wife and two kids since the search started.

He said he was too tired to say much, but that his wife was clearly worried. He had begun to wonder himself if the search was not becoming more dangerous. "The more we chase them around," he said, "the more they know where we're at." But, he said, in a war without front lines and goals that are difficult to achieve, the search offered the comfort of certainty, of a clear and noble goal.

"If we find them, we accomplish something specific," Byers said, his legs stretched out, his head leaned against a wall. "It's not like trying to bring peace to the area then finding out later that you didn't."

The searching Saturday turned up nothing significant. The three soldiers - Private First Class Joseph Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, California; Specialist Alex Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts; and Private Byron Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Michigan - were not found.

On Sunday, the group welcomed the return of two of their wounded soldiers - Simonovich and Private First Class Nicholas Barker, who had slight shrapnel wounds to the face. American soldiers are not allowed to drink alcohol here so they had a barbecue. They celebrated. They talked.

And on Monday, it was back to work. The men of 2nd platoon prepared their Humvees for another day of walking, another day of searching. They placed bags of ice in coolers. They prepared ammunition. They reviewed the route for what would be a 11-kilometer march that they hoped to do in three hours.

Wearing dark glasses, his uniform bloodstained from two days earlier, Delgado was a picture of calm. "We had our time to grieve, but after that you have to detach from your emotions and drive on," he said. "We're going to be here for another six months."

Those brave soldiers will be in Iraq for another six months.

Some of you are going to be on this planet for another sixty years.

How do you want to spend your time?

Where?

And with whom?

In the analist hell?

Or among Warriors?

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2007 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.