John Shore: I Don't Want to Be Straight

We humans are driven by the imperative to procreate. As spiritual, philosophical, intellectual, and creative as we are, in the end we must, and will, have sex. In the end. See?! Right there! It's like it's all we can think about. Stupid pulsating gonads. Anyway, eight seconds spent people watching at any mall (or airport, or county fair, or concert, or through your blinds at your neighbors, you perv) makes extremely obvious what any dog knows: it's all about the big You-Know-What (the sex... I mean it's about sex). So why, for basic human needs and desires, does the urge to merge actually and totally compete with, say, food?

Well, for one, sex is how we make people. We are a species, after all. And that means we are necessarily compelled to not just compete in but flat-out win Ye Olde Survival Race. And nothing says "not only am I here, but some version of me always will be" like rockin' out to the horizontal rumba. So primordially vital is our need to mate and raise to maturity our young that our entire society is and always has been defined by that very singular need. Assuring our survival meant securing for ourselves a steady food supply, shelter, cooperative neighbors, a safe environment, and economic security. Next thing you know, though, it's 100,000 years later (give or take 100 centuries), and voil?! We've done it! By far and away, we are now the dominant species. We win! Woo-hoo! We're number one! Evolution, divine creation, awesome luck, assistance from Martians... whatever its cause and/or purpose, we humans have now officially won the drive to survive.

So, about that fact and gay people.

Gay people don't play any obviously huge role in pumping out and raising youngins. So historically, it's been easy enough to justify maligning, ignoring, or even denying their existence, which, again, to be fair, is understandable: our race is resourceful and tough, yes, but not necessarily bright, or even what you'd want to call overwhelmingly compassionate, which, again, makes sense: when you're busy trying to be Alpha Survivors, you're sometimes not all that worried about protecting everyone's feelings. You're just trying to eat.

Well, we here in America (to suddenly go all colloquial about it, but we are one of the guiding lights of the world, so, you know) have certainly had enough to eat now. We've got plenty of everything we need to survive -- and then, of course, a great deal. We're fine. We're OK. We've unquestionably made it. We can relax. And that means that for the first time in human history, it's extremely safe for us to allow into our hearts and minds the truth of just how much we need gay people. And not because by nature they don't produce children; the proper function of gay people in society is hardly as agents of population control. Rather, we need people who are gay, bi, transgender, and every permutation thereof, because (amongst a whole bunch of other awesome things) such folks offer us straighties a way to finally expand our conception and understanding of what it really means to be human. We've been animals. We been all about survival. It's time, finally, for us to move out of strictly survival mode and into something a good deal more interesting -- and infinitely more fun. The dinner plates are gone. It's time for dessert.

It's so freakin' boring to have who we are and/or who we can be forever and unquestionably reduced to Dad, Mom, Sis, and Brother Billy. It's good to have Dad, Mom, Sis, and Brother Billy who likes to wear Sis' clothes and play with her dolls. It's time to finally just let Billy be the Billie she was born to be.

I'm a straight guy. I also love art, theater, music, and language. While talking, I tend to flap my hands around like they're on fire. When barely more than a boy, I was pushed out of my family's home. Because I was then an actor, it was largely gay people who rescued me; who took me in, fed me, supported me; who showed me how to rent an apartment, get a job, fix a car. I didn't know my friends were gay. I didn't even have a concept of what that meant. And none of them ever, even slightly, hit on me. All I knew was that they, too, loved art, theater, music, and language. When excited, they, too, moved their hands around so much that you could get brained if you didn't stay alert. They were artists. And they weren't shy about letting me know that they thought I was a great artist. By so generously loving me, and so bravely being themselves, they showed me that I, too, didn't have to be afraid to just freakin' be the person whom God made me to be.

Designations like "gay" and "straight" are so useless. They're so toxic. They do nothing but harm. They limit people in crucial, terrible ways that cut to the very heart of the best of who all of us are, or could be.

The number-one argument against gay marriage is that society's interests lie in protecting the reproductive family unit. Today, that's like arguing that horses should be outlawed so that they don't interfere with automobiles becoming the dominant form of transportation. It just doesn't make any sense. The reproductive family unit is thoroughly, 100-percent safe. There are now more than enough straight people in the world. Happily coupled breeders are definitely here to stay, forever. Our race is safe. We are now free, and now obliged, and should be now honored, to start making it extremely safe for every person to be whomever and however God so wondrously designed them to be.

I don't want to be straight. I don't want to be gay. I don't want to be bi. I don't want to be anything but the most fully realized me I can be. Same as anyone. Same as everyone.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shore/i-dont-want-to-be-straight_b_1322011.html

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