Family

About two years ago, I wrote:

Yes, there is a sense of identification when I read E.M. Forster or listen to Elton John, but there’s always this nagging feeling that they wouldn’t really consider me one of them. I don’t think I’d fit in at a Village People concert any more than I do in elders quorum or on a basketball court. The fact of the matter is that I’m as distanced from gay men as I am from straight men.

I've mentioned here before that I no longer feel so distanced from straight men, and I'm happy to report now that lately I'm not feeling so distanced from gay men either. See, a couple years ago I didn't really know any gay people except for the few I'd met in group therapy sessions and Evergreen conferences, and (a) I'd never identified with any of them because we had nothing in common except attraction to men; (b) those had been brief acquaintances in artificial circumstances; and (c) the people who run those groups had discouraged us from getting to know one another outside the group setting because inevitably if gay men hang out together they're going to have sex. You know, because we're all just uncontrollable hormone dogs.

In the last year or so, however, I've gotten to know (to varying degrees) several gay men--some online and some in real life. Two of the real life gay friends I've made are a couple who live in Salt Lake, who shall henceforth be known as Harty and the Decorator*. Harty loves to read, which is sort of a pre-requisite to be my friend, and Dec has a dry wit that equally qualifies him. What I'm trying to say is that we have more in common than just being gay. Besides being pleasant people, Harty and Dec are more or less in the same stage of life as Foxy and I--they're a few years older than us and Dec has kids a few years older than S-Boogie, but the two of them have been together for a little over a year now, which puts them in the "young couple" stage of life. At any rate, Foxy and I have enjoyed hanging out with them several times over the last couple of months.

Harty invited me not too long ago to join FHEfamily, which is a group of people who meet every other week at the University of Utah to discuss issues related to gay Mormondom. The group is unique, I think, in that it comprises a wide spectrum of gay Mormons--there are a few on the Evergreen side of things who intend to either live a life of celibacy or marry heterosexually, there are some on the Affirmation side who maintain faith in the Mormon church while embracing their gay identity, there are others who have completely abandoned Mormon beliefs and consider themselves Mormon only culturally, and there are all sorts of others who don't fit into any of those categories. I enjoy FHE because it gives me a chance to exercise the political activist in me and educate myself more about things like Senator Buttars' anti-GSA bill so that I actually know what I'm talking about when I get on my gay political soapbox.

Last night after FHE I went to IHOP with Harty, Dec, and a bunch of other people from the group. I'd like to say that I felt completely at home and comfortable, but the truth is that I rarely if ever feel completely at home and comfortable in groups of more than three people who are not Fob. Or even in groups of fewer than three people who are not Fob. I'm just not a socially adept sort of fellow. So last night I was thrilled to hang out with Harty and Dec and the other guy I already knew, and I also enjoyed getting to know a couple of the others, but there were also guys in the group who I would probably never hang out with otherwise because we have nothing in common. I also felt a little bit like a closet heterosexual because I didn't introduce myself as "Hi, I'm Master Fob and I'm married to a woman" and I'm sure everyone assumed I was either single or with the guy I was sitting next to and it was just one of those things that didn't matter enough to make an announcement but at the same time I felt secretly different from everyone else because of it. I'm not making sense here.

The point is (you'll notice I often feel the need to explicitly state my point), just like straight men, gay men are people. People are people. I get along with some more than others. I feel accepted by some more than others. It is silly to spend my life making assumptions about what people think of me because of their gender or sexual orientation or life choices or whatever.

One of the things I've learned from my new gay friends is the term Family. The reason the group is called FHEfamily is because Family is gay code for "gay." Maybe you already knew this, because apparently it's common knowledge, but I'm still learning my queer lingo. One gay friend of mine recently remarked to another that he doesn't like the term Family because he doesn't feel any familial connection to gay people. I, personally, prefer another friend's definition of family: "Family is who you love." By that definition, some of my family is gay, some are straight, some are bi, some are guys, some are gyns, some are old, some are young, yadda yadda yadda. This conclusion seems rather trite and obvious now that I say it, but the reason I say it is because, even though I probably could have said it a couple years ago, I'm only now beginning to learn it. Forgive me for being a slow learner.

*Apologies to Harty and Dec for the horrible blogonyms. I tried.