How Raspily Can You Say, "Gaaaaaay!"

I don't really consider this space as one to evidence my opinions, per se. I'll let my biographers handle the question of where it all went wrong. Today, though, I'm going to discuss an opinion that is used to argue against everything from gay marriage to drinking milk: how "natural" something is.

I've been using my facebook status to throw up ideas, leaving little nuggets of politically-charged opinion here and there to the delight of my friends and relatives. I've poked fun at free market capitalism by using "Wal-Mart" as a verb, questioning the wisdom of using chemical weapons manufacturers' artificial sweeteners and letting the world know about Arrested Development Monopoly, all greeted with joy.

The time I quoted Marianne Williamson's "Out Greatest Fear" led to my mother asking what a glory hole is, but you can't win them all.

My current status is off the chain. "If your argument against gay marriage is that 'it isn't natural,' then you shouldn't use Splenda." 14 likes, 6 comments.

If you're reading this you're almost certainly my facebook friend so take a second, check it out and come on back. Done? Good.

Now you may have noticed that it's not a terrific argument, but I'm merely engaging the "not natural" idea on its own terms. And "natural" is a stupid argument for anything.

I've been told time and time again that Socialism can't work because it's "against human nature." I've been told this by Christians, and I finally retorted with, "isn't human nature sinful?"

Some people point out that humans are the only mammals who drink milk past infancy as a shorthand to offering any scientifically-reasoned argument, instead offering a fallacy a step below "correlation=causation." Specifically, they just say "causation" and leave it at that.

How about this: humans are also the only mammals to put themselves on the moon, have a codified system against rape, write books and invented the Beatles. We can drink milk if we want.

Now back to the gay thing. Check the fb discourse if you want, there are some interesting ideas floating on the thread. But let me question what the "natural" argument gets to, which asserts that God did not design humans for same-sex relationships. If we excuse the questionable translations of Greek into English, the fact that Paul even says he offers his own commentary and the fact that a reasoning brain says that God has bigger concerns than two people doin' it when there are child soldiers, we are left with the inescapable conclusion that it just doesn't make sense to keep people from getting married.

I'll tell you what's "natural." It's natural to be a small, spiteful, selfish little monster who cares only about itself. Get over what the world has to say and make your own evidence.

Manly Men!

Newsweek recently featured an article on masculinity and how it hurts men by forcing them to think it's imperative they work in the auto industry when the jobs are in nursing. This, along with paternity leave, would redefine masculinity. Cool. Whatever.
Now for my rebuttal: fuck "masculine," "feminine" and any other moniker you want to hang on people. Wanna know why? Here's why. Let's set up a few facts.

1. Fact: No one is pleased with how things are. You know, in general.
2. Fact: If you think the way you've always thought, you'll do the things you've always done and you'll get what you've always gotten.
3. Fact: The world has always used labels to confine the human being.
4. And we're fluid.

Einstein said insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I think Bob Dylan said my #2 up there, more or less. Jesus compared this to putting new wine in old wineskins, and in His metaphor, the wineskins broke; the problem gets worse.
I was reading Y: The Last Man recently (and if you aren't/haven't FOR SHAME). In it, there's a scene in which Yorick (our hero) is having a water gun fight with his girlfriend Beth. In this scene, while Beth is using a run-of-the-mill multicolored toy, Yorick's pistols looks like a freakin' pistol. Yorick says some bravado garbage and Beth calls him: his gun's empty. He claims he's refilled it with his piss.

I thought long and hard about this. Masculinity, as I understand society to understand it, demands anyone with a penis (that's me) act as though we have the capacity for deadly violence. It calls for bravado and the infantile. Just think about the last comedy you saw. Chances are it was about a grown man acting like a child and a woman teaching him to act his fucking age already. The reward is often true love--or at least empty sex, which, as far as empty experiences go, is one of the best.

This sort of thinking has really screwed men. Last night, Allie and I were biking and, long and short of it, a guy in a taxi called me a faggot and told me to suck his cock. He also spat at me. I told him to fuck off (of which I'm not proud).

Looking back on it, I realized how hard it must be for that bro. Brah? Whatever. Dude felt the need to show off in front of his buddies by hurting someone else, to assert a masculinity in which he had no confidence. This masculinity plants the seed of "do, not be," which is to say one must do something to be a man, not that you can just be a man. This manliness is the peg on which so many hang their self-worth. How terrible.

How difficult it must be to affront someone's sexuality to glorify your own, to demand a homosexual act while calling someone a faggot. I say it's difficult in the sense of how scared a person is from masculinity's compulsion. Really, it's the easy way.

The hard way is to be happy with the masculinity you create for yourself (you women, too! Everyone's welcome!). I cook and clean. I lift weights. I play violent video games. I enjoy Audrey Hepburn movies. I make movies. I write poetry. Comic books. Dungeons and Dragons. Have a wife, but try to think of her as "spouse." None of these things are inherently masculine or feminine. To contextualize, there are gay men in the military killing people. There are gay men singing showtunes. There are straight men baking pastries, building a house with their own hands. That's the masculinity we need: not a paradigm, but a personality. We don't need to "do" to be valid, and "being" does not validate either. Rather, everyone needs to find the place between the two where self-love and love for others is best realized. One can only occur with the other, you know.

So I encourage all of you to consider how you view yourselves and others, because it's not just the examined life worth living, but the properly examined life. Help me to do the same.

And you know what else? That guy wasn't even my type. I wonder if I'm his?