Editor's Note: Don't know why, but, here of late, the MadeByMark mailbag is piling up with questions about The Gays. I can't speak for other gay people. I am, however, always willing to share my story -- and, perhaps, from that, you can draw some useful conclusions about the experiences of gay people in general.
Or not. Just keep in mind: everyone is different. While I'm willing to be very honest and very patient, I can only speak from my own perspective and can only share my own Truth.
Q: Why are you gay? What made you gay?
A: I honestly don't know.
But, like a lot of questions I receive, the folly of this one becomes immediately apparent when you turn it around: why are you straight? For that matter, why is anyone ... anything?
At some point in their lives, straight people realize they are attracted to members of the opposite sex. My experience was no different, except that, when the time came, I realized I was attracted to other guys.
Q: When did you know?
A: When I was about nine years old.
No trauma triggered this realization. No abuse prompted it. No exposure to pornography was involved, and no recruitment program was necessary.
I grew up in a sheltered home with heterosexual parents. All my life, our culture bombarded me -- almost exclusively -- with heterosexual images. Every role model, every hero, every movie or television romance, every film I ever saw -- all steeped in pure, unadulterated heterosexuality.
And yet: from a very early age, I knew I was wired differently. Even before I had an understanding of sexuality, I knew I felt differently about Ricky (you know, the older, red-headed, athletic guy in class) than I did any of my other classmates. I knew that photos of shirtless men in shaving cream ads captured my attention in ways that Sears Catalog photos of women in their underwear did not.
At first, I thought I was the only guy in the whole world who was hardwired to be attracted to other guys. But when I was eleven, while reading a copy of the Reader's Digest, I came across the word homosexual for the very first time. I didn't know it, so I looked it up.
When I saw the definition, I was flooded with relief. If there was a word for what I was ... that meant there were others.
I wasn't alone.
You can't imagine what hope that gave an eleven year-old kid who, until that moment, believed he was the only gay person on the planet.
Q: You do know, don't you, that, because God couldn't have made you homosexual, you had to, at some point, make a choice to be?
A: Of all the old wives' tales about homosexuality, this one exasperates me the most, because, in addition to contradicting my own personal experience, it contradicts yours!
When you realized that you were a sexual being ... was choice involved? Did you have to ask yourself, "Hmmm ... am I going to like big, burly men ... or soft, curvaceous women?" Was there ever a debate? Did you sleep with an equal number of men and women, compare the results, and then, fully informed by experimental data, announce your choice to the world?
No. No. No.
You didn't have to choose. You simply were who you were, and you felt drawn to the people you were drawn to.
Why, then, would you ever believe that my experience was any different from your own?
I didn't start out preferring women, only to switch later on. I didn't have to engage in an internal debate, weighing the pros and cons, asking "To be ... or not to be?" I didn't have an experience that confused or reprogrammed me.
From the start, from my earliest memory, from the first time I was aware that I was someone interested in partnership, companionship, romance, and completion ... I knew with every fiber of my being that my partner, companion, romantic interest, and completer would someday be another man.
For those who continue to insist that homosexuality is a choice: I'm sorry that my experience conflicts with your beliefs. At some point, though, it may be useful to distinguish between your beliefs about how things work ... and the reality of how things work.
I never made a choice to be gay. I simply was.
That said: while being gay was not a choice, being honest about being gay is most definitely a choice that every gay person must, eventually, make.
But that's a conversation for another day.
To sum up, while I can't speak for everyone, my Truth is this:
- I'm gay.
- For as long as I've been aware of myself as a person with a desire to relate romantically and sexually to others, I've been absolutely certain I was gay.
- My status as a gay person was not the result of trauma, abuse, exposure to gay people, or personal choice. My sexuality feels as much a part of me as yours does to you. It's as hard-wired as being right-handed, and as natural and unremarkable as being blue-eyed.
To be continued ...
