The big deal with Larry Craig (R., ID)

The story is all over the place.  The jokes are already beginning – I can hear them now.  I saw the police report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  All of this, “I’m not gay; I never have been gay” bullshit is becoming so predictable that I would bet money that every single one of these anti-gay crusaders, politicians and their friends are really a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Every single one.   We’ve had 38 years of post-Stonewall activism.  What’s gone wrong?  While everyone on gay.com is making catty jokes (also predictable) about Craig and other closet cases, I am left wondering – what is it about the gay male community that continues to make us the most hated group of people in America?  Not only are we hated by anti-gay forces, we are hated by each other – the way we lie to one another.  The way we knowingly spread HIV to other gay men whose names we don’t even know, and don’t care to know.  The way we’ve been able to turn our craft for deception before coming out (for survival) into manipulation in our gay relationships after coming out.  It’s pathological.  We have done absolutely nothing but lie, steal and rip off other gay people over the last four decades.  We’ve been horrible role models to other gay men who are thinking about coming out.  My guess is that many of these married men actually did think about coming out, but in contemplation – they looked at what they would be coming out to and quietly declined.  The rejection and hostility that was in their lives already was not going to change after coming out – gay men are terribly brutal when it comes to those two things.  If you do not fit the image that gay men are sold on (a straight 20-year-old rugby player), you’ll have eyes looking towards you, but more along the lines of looking over your shoulder for that 20-year-old rugby player who isn’t gay.  Some community we have!  And that is my main point.  We care only when it caters to our desires.  We don’t care when it involves real suffering among men whose lives are in terrible distress, and need help from someone who knows exactly what they are going through.  I haven’t done a very good job in that respect.  I know.  There have been many closeted gay guys who I just didn’t want to deal with.  I came out at 15.  I had a very easy time with the actual coming out process.  No judgement, no family mess, nothing.  I am the ONLY person I know who has had this kind of luck.  Many guys I’ve talked to are considered dead by their parents.  So why on earth do these same men go out of their way to reject those facing a similar fate now?  I’m puzzled.The only excuse I can think of is trauma.  It’s a very traumatic, humiliating process to come out in the beginning.  It means letting go of everything that had been expected of you as a boy – and the grief that your parents will have as you develop into a man who (most likely) will never get married, will never be a dad, and will have a very difficult time finding and keeping a relationship that will span a long period of time.  No parent wants that for his or her child.  Most of us who have gone through this are hesitant to revisit those memories again, and dealing with someone who is going through that reopens those moments.  But if we are to create a gay community that is not so riddled with addictions, suicide, depression, and a relationship failure rate of over 90%, we HAVE to change the way we treat other gay men.  It won’t change itself.