Playing Chicken

 I was recently asked in an interview my feelings about living in a so-called post-gay world, and my answer was clear:  I’m not at all interested in living in a post-gay world.  What I want is to live in a post-homophobic world.

From recent events, I would say there’s both good and bad news on that score.  Clearly, the fact that the president of a popular company feels comfortable spreading his hateful rhetoric and donating money to suppress my civil rights suggests that this is still a homophobic world.  However, the degree to which his behavior has been denounced—not only by gay people but by a large swath of the larger community—says something very profound about hopes for the ultimate demise of homophobia.

The times, as Dylan said, they are a-changin’.  While the gay marriage at the center of The Heart’s History becomes a lightning rod for disagreement among the older characters (some of whom see it as progress, while others believe it only ties an otherwise progressive movement to an outdated institution), the younger ones don’t bat an eyelash.  To them, same-sex marriage is an inevitability, a fact of life.  They are living in a post-homophobic world—or will be when their generation is at the seat of power.

We live in a country where freedom of religion has been perverted into license to discriminate, oppress, and hate.  Bigots like Dan Cathy of Chick-fil-A (its own name a perversion of the word filet, which I suppose was too “un-American”—or at least too hard to spell) hide behind their religion or, more precisely, those aspects of their religion that they choose to follow.  The same Bible they cite to excuse their homophobia also forbids the eating of pork products, but they still put bacon in their chicken club.

Despite the bacon, though, this place is all about chicken.  It’s about being so chicken that someone else’s happiness threatens your own.  It’s about being so chicken that you can’t face life without the fantasy of Pearly Gates at the end of it.  It’s about being too chicken to come up with your own morality, instead relying on a book written thousands of years ago but never updating it to account for tiny little things like science and the Enlightenment.

The homophobes continue to justify their views by calling sexual orientation a choice.  But it’s not.  Religion is a choice.  One chooses to believe in God.  One chooses to follow the instructions in an ancient book.  One chooses to discriminate and spew hatred.

And the rest of us choose to boycott the people who do.

Publishers Weekly Review

The Heart’s History was recently reviewed in Publishers Weekly—a first for me!  PW is a major resource for bookstores in selecting the books to put on their shelves.  (I’m sure that would mean more if half the bookstores in the world hadn’t vanished in recent years!)  It must mean something, because my publisher is reissuing the book to include the review on the cover.  Here’s a sneak peek for you:

DeSimone's second novel (after Chemistry) is a thoughtful and engaging examination of contemporary gay life and love. When Edward, a 35-year-old Boston architect, introduces his new boyfriend, Robert, to his tight-knit circle of longtime friends, none of Edward's cohort expects the relationship to last--Edward has an abysmal romantic track record, and the generational differences between the two (Robert is 10 years Edward's junior) manifest in the ways each man navigates their relationship; Edward remembers "the romance of secrecy" when homosexuality was still a taboo, whereas Robert and his generation "openly proclaimed their right[s]." Soon, Edward tests positive for AIDS, and his body fails to respond to treatment. Set against the backdrop of Edward's illness, the next four years sees various friends and former lovers embrace their individual connections to Edward while discussing the opportunities and challenges of monogamy, polyandry, safe sex, gay/straight relationships, and sexual politics. DeSimone's facility with the minutiae of everyday life and the rhythms of friendship brings depth to this timely story of ordinary individuals struggling to bulwark their ideas of love against shifting personal and cultural tides.

BTYBNBKKDTBP

Tone Deaf

Let the record show that I gave up on American Idol weeks ago.  Unlike last season, when there was some real competition, this time around I lost interest when the final 12 emerged and turned out to be a single great talent surrounded by 11 mediocre wannabes.  I didn’t tune in again until the two-part season finale, when I saw Adam Lambert predictably leave Kris Allen in the musical dust on Tuesday night.  Of course, when the dust settled the next evening, it was—appallingly—Kris who was left standing.

I want to believe this absurd decision is simply another example of bad taste in a country where Lindsay Lohan is a big star and nobody’s ever heard of Patricia Clarkson, where Dan Brown’s pablum sells millions of copies while Philip Roth languishes on the top shelf.  But this time I think there may be more going on.

Much has been made of Adam Lambert’s ambiguous sexuality—the eyeliner, the flamboyant costumes that make him part Gene Simmons, part Elton John, and a whole lot of Freddie Mercury.  So I suppose, in this age of Carrie Prejeans whose fake breasts are bigger than their brains, we should consider it a breakthrough that someone so probably gay made it even this far on today’s ultimate homage to conformist Americana.

But in the end, America in its infinite wisdom decided it was willing to go only so far in its political correctness, and musical taste once again lost out to intransigent homophobia.  And so Adam Lambert becomes the bridesmaid instead of the bride—and in a state where the likes of Miss Prejean have decreed that he shall never marry at all.  Runner-up status is, one could argue, the reality-show equivalent of domestic partnership:  Adam is equal, but separate.

Or perhaps it’s a lot simpler than that.  Perhaps the tween girls who make up the supposed majority of American Idol voters just wanted to vote for someone they could imagine kissing who might actually kiss them back.  One hearkens back to the 2000 election, when many people preferred to vote for the guy they’d want to have a beer with (even though he was a recovered alcoholic) rather then the one who might actually do something.

I have nothing against Kris Allen per se.  He’s certainly talented, easy on the ears and the eyes.  But the gap between his talent and Adam’s is huge.  Picture Halle Berry competing in the Miss America pageant against Janeane Garofalo—pretty, but hardly a beauty queen:  who would you vote for?

Will Young, the very first winner of Britain’s Pop Idol, all the way back in 2002, was gay.  Now, seven years later, America still can’t catch up—even when the truth is glaringly obvious.