While I was in India, one of the first people I met was a big, gay Kiwi named John. John was born and raised Catholic, and was actually on his way to becoming a priest before he became fed up with the Catholic Church and quit. His reasons were that he disliked the preaching of poverty and charity, while the Church wallowed in obscene amounts of wealth. Him being gay didn’t even enter into it, which struck me as surprising.
So we talked a whole bunch about religion and what it means to us, and our sexuality and what it means to us. I asked him about how he maintained his faith in God, considering he was gay and disillusioned with religion. He answered my question with a question of his own. How would I feel if he railed me in the bum right now? I told him that I probably wouldn’t appreciate it. He asked me if I would still be straight after the amazingly homoerotic time that he would surely show me, and I said yes, I was confident that I would still be straight, if a little shaken up. He said to me, same thing with faith. Anything can happen to you, but your faith never leaves you. It is simply a part of you.
This struck me as a very interesting idea despite its… unorthodox delivery, and I thought about it over the rest of the day, long after John and I had parted ways. I decided I didn’t actually agree with him. You can lose faith, and you can also gain it. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, but it does happen every now and then (Saul becoming Paul, for one biblical example). However, your sexuality never changes. No matter how many times big, gay John might swab the inside of my rectum, I would always remain straight. This led me to conclude that our sexuality is a stronger part of our identity than our spirituality.
This seemed significant to me, and I thought about it some more and realized something else. Despite the magnitude of importance that your sexuality represents towards your identity, you can repress it. You can fake not being the one, impermeable thing about yourself. Gay people will hide who they are, even marry heterosexually, out of fear of exposure. You can’t do that with faith. Faith needs to be expressed. If you think that maybe this has something to do with the lingering stigma that remains with homosexuality compared to the acceptance of most religions (the extent of that stigma being dependent on your location, obviously), think of the Jews who continued to practice even when facing the horrors of the concentration camps.
This might have something to do with individual versus communal identity; for example, your sexuality is yours and yours alone, whereas your faith is typically part of a larger group. Under duress, groups tend to bond together to face the storm under a unified front. One person alone standing against an oncoming tide is much more likely to find some way to avoid it.
Would a stronger LGBT community help? It’s hard to say. Sexuality isn’t really as communally bonding as faith. If a group got together every week to celebrate their sexuality, there’s really only one genuine way to do that. As an alternative, they might discuss worldly affairs or how to solve the crises that affect them, but that’s closer to activism than it is to community. Another reason I don’t believe that sexuality is as communal as spirituality is because the ultimate goal of the LGBT movement isn’t a gay community, it’s normalcy. Heterosexuals don’t have a community, we just are. Maybe I’m wrong since I am not privy to the meetings, but that is the goal of the LGBT rights movement, not forming a group.
Even if I am wrong, in its current state, the LGBT community does not extend to schools, sports teams, churches, etc. where it would need to in order for those suffering to feel as though they are part of a group, rather than desperately facing off against the world, alone.
Post-script: Obviously in a world where there is no oppression of sexuality or religion, then there would be no need to repress either one. My observation is that in a world where oppression of both exists, it is easier to repress sexuality than it is to repress religion.
Blog for Chumps 
“that’s closer to activism than it is to community.”
Activism is a way of forming community, is it not?
It is, that’s why I have no qualms with referring to the LGBT community as a community, but it’s still not the goal of activism. I’m not saying that sexuality cannot be used as a means of community building, it just isn’t as strong as spirituality.
People move to a new neighbourhood, and go to the local church to meet their new neighbours, or at least the like-minded ones. Going to a rally, you’re going because you believe in the cause, not to meet and greet with your like-minded neighbours, even if that’s what might end up happening anyway. Some people might, sure, I’m making generalizations here, but I am willing to bet more people go to churches to meet their neighbours than to protests.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
Eh, not sure about that, man. To make that claim, you’d have to figure out a way of evaluating “strength” of communal bonds, and there might not be any credible way to do that on such a large conceptual scale.
Similar orientations are also a kind of like-mindedness of their own. Speak for yourself, but I’d love to be able to attend a meetup for people of the same sexuality as me, specifically for the purpose of hanging out and maybe making friends. Not every gsrm gathering has to be about protests or pride parades. Sometimes it’s just nice to be around people who understand.
Well I’m measuring quantity over quality here. Places where you’re just more likely to be fostering community, not necessarily creating a stronger one. I mean you can meet your neighbours or friends sitting on a park bench, just randomly out of the blue.
To be honest, I don’t know enough about GSRM gatherings to be able to say how many are dedicated to activism and how many are just for hanging out. You’re right that it’s nice being around like-minded people with similar lifestyles, hence why a church is a great place to meet people for those that have that inclination.
The internet is another place to create community, which I didn’t get into because that wasn’t the theme of my blog post, but if those types of community-building hang-outs are hard to come by in the non-digital world, I would imagine there’s something to be found online.
Yeah, you sound like you don’t. Since you were motivated enough to write a blogpost that touched on the subject, I’d think you’d be motivated enough to do some research on the parts you don’t have personal experience with, right? We generally think of religion developing more ideology than sexuality does, and that makes sense to some degree, but within the queer community and the asexual community, you can actually find some really thoughtful, insightful reflections on culture, norms, and ethics — relating specifically to sexuality — if you know where to look.
You don’t have to be condescending.
And I think you’re proving my point, here. You’re saying that you can find sexuality-based communities “if you know where to look”, which means it takes effort to find. Whereas I pass by three faith-based buildings just on my 10 minute commute to work.
That’s right, no one has to be condescending.
Well, if your only point is about numbers, then, yeah. Of course.
This leads me back to activism versus community.
Because at first I was like, “well GSRM has minorities literally in the acronym, so obviously the numbers would be less.” But then I remembered that heterosexuality counts as a sexuality too, and if everyone has a sexuality, then the numbers of the community building of sexuality versus spirituality would be similar.
This brought me back to the point I made in my blog which was that the goal of the LGBT movement (though I will likely start using GRSM, thanks) was normalcy. Heterosexuality isn’t very strong in community building (people typically don’t go to strip clubs to make friends), and it is considered the norm, and I think the two are linked.
The minority sexualities might lose some of their communal bonding once they become more normalized and socially acceptable. Like I mentioned in my blog, a lot of community comes from bonding together while under oppression, and I think that’s where the GRSM community might be coming from.
You said yourself that it’s sometimes just nice to be around people who understand. In a fantasy world where everyone understands the nuances of the wide variety of sexualities, and accepts them as they are, then wouldn’t that GSRM community not be as needed? Obviously that world is a long way off, if it’s even humanly possible, but maybe it’s not so much the sexuality that’s communally bonding, but being part of an oppressed group.
If you’re cisgender and heterosexual, then you shouldn’t be speaking on what the goal of the LGBT community is. My bisexual friend (and others, I’m sure) would definitely disagree that their goal is “normalcy”.
But I’m glad you’ll be using gsrm more. It’s more inclusive all around.
Actually, no, I have to disagree there. Community happens — and is needed — even without oppression to force it. For example, I am a horse person. Anti-equestrian oppression does not exist. Nonetheless, since not everyone is a horse person, sometimes I enjoy being around other horse people just because we have that in common and can talk about horse stuff together. Even if we’re not the target of oppression, there’s still that shared similarity that not everybody relates to.
I’m not trying to dictate what the goal is, that’s just my observation. It seems like the end game is acceptance, equality, and no discrimination. To be considered a part of society, instead of an aberration from it. Maybe “normal” was a poor choice of words, since I understand it has certain connotations, but what could the end game possibly be unless it’s everyone getting along, with sunshine and rainbows and smiles on the faces of children?
Horses are a hobby; sexuality is a lifestyle. I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison, unless you’re super duper into equestrianism. Hobbies can, of course, unite people together. Shared interests always will.
However, I don’t know if I’d call sexuality an “interest”. Activism is, and sex is, for sure, but sexuality?
For something like sexuality, if you want to find examples of where non-oppression and community building are co-existing, you’d have to look at heterosexuality, where examples are hard to come by.
I really don’t consider my orientation a lifestyle. It impacts my life, sure, but only as much as anything else. Being a horse person has affected me at least as much as my sexuality. But I don’t know if I can really explain that.
Heterosexuality isn’t the only one. Among a lot of us, it’s generally agreed that asexuality is not oppressed, and there’s a community there.
Well asexuality raises an interesting point, because you’re right about the community as well as the lack of oppression, but that still doesn’t explain why there isn’t community building in heterosexuality.
Maybe it’s the Otherness that is linked to asexuality (since it is defined as a lack), and the need to be able to relate to someone who is experiencing that same otherness. You’re going to hate this analogy and I apologize in advance, but it’s like someone with a disease who seeks out others with that same disease, so that they are surrounded by people experiencing the alienation that diseased people suffer from. They feel alone, not because they are oppressed or being purposely alienated by their friends and family, but because they are going through something so different and powerful that very few people experience, and therefore very few people are able to relate, save those going through something similar.
I don’t mean to imply that asexuality is a disease, but it’s the best example for Otherness I could come up with off the top of my head.
I don’t see why you’d go ahead and use an analogy that you already recognize the problems of before you said it. And if you think there aren’t people with illnesses who are oppressed (specifically because of those illnesses), then it sounds like there might be some other stuff on that subject you’re unaware of. But anyway, I think it’s pretty obvious why there isn’t a community built around heterosexuality.
If you’re trying to label me as not recognizing my able-body privilege or something, or referring to AIDS, or alcoholism and all the other diseases where there is a stigma, then you’re just being purposefully difficult. There are also plenty of diseases where there is no oppression, like breast cancer or lupus. Of which I’m sure you’re aware.
It was an example, which I stipulated with an apology because I knew it could potentially cause offense, and I wanted you to know that that was not the intent, and to try to just look at it just as an example of an Other seeking community, and why they might do that.
Another example might be a visitor in a foreign country, who finds camaraderie in a fellow traveler because he feels alone in a culture that is not his own, and looks for community in someone with a common background. The point still remains.
And perhaps you’d care to enlighten me as to the “obvious” reasons as to why there is no heterosexual community building, (which can’t be because sexuality on its own isn’t very communally bonding) instead of just mysteriously alluding to them.
I don’t care about your intent. And you don’t need to keep giving examples; I get that part.
Well, I just thought it kind of speaks for itself…? I mean, you’re probably better off looking for someone else’s explanation; I’m not even that well-versed in these things, but part of it’s how heteronormativity is already threaded into the fabric of our culture anyway, and how heterosexuality is something mostly assumed of everyone, and so on. You can’t form a community over something assumed to be as prevalent as having noses. And gender works in there as a part of it too, in that expressing heterosexuality can be a means of group bonding in a gathering of people of the same gender, and when that happens it’s generally regarded as an expression of gender (masculinity/femininity) rather than as an expression of heterosexual community. But then again, I’m not a part of that culture and can’t speak much to it.
That’s a difference between culture and community, though. And it lends credence to my theory that if other sexualities were to become part of the cultural norm, then they wouldn’t have the community building aspects either.
Gender is something else entirely, because there are guys nights out, and girls nights out, and then the community of gender minorities, and bonding in those groups. But I don’t believe that gender is intrinsically linked to sexuality.
You might cruise for chicks with your bros, or go to a strip club, which are examples of heterosexuality, but that’s a community that already exists in your friendship, and even then it’s bonding more over sex rather than sexuality. You’re not going to go out to meet new friends and neighbours based solely on your heterosexuality.
As to prevalence, you can form community with majorities just fine. Like with spirituality, even if you’re in a Christian-dominated area, you’re still going to go to church to meet your neighbours, rather than not bothering to foster community because everyone is Christian anyway.