WHERE THE DYNAMIC LIES:

Britain's gay (con)sensus (Jennie Bristow, February 6, 2004, Spiked)

It's official: hardly anybody in Britain is a homosexual. Government figures released on 3 February, based on the 2001 Census, showed that only 78,522 individuals identified themselves as living in a gay or lesbian relationship.

Many have pointed out that this is markedly lower than British policy-makers' unofficial assumption that 'six percent are gay', let alone the one-in-10 statistic that was once claimed, based on the now-discredited 1948 Kinsey Report on sexual behaviour in the USA (1). Indeed: to accept these figures would mean that gay couples made up about 0.3 percent of all married or cohabiting couples. It's enough to make you wonder where they find all those TV presenters. [...]

In a feature article titled 'Where have all the gays gone?', several contributors to The Times (London) attempt to explain gays' aversion to revealing their sexuality to the Census. 'As far I am concerned sexuality exists as a kind of continuous line which runs from 100 percent heterosexual to 100 percent gay, and many people choose to spend different periods of their lives in a relationship which can occur at any point along that line', muses Jill Waters.

Robbie Millen puts it more bluntly. 'A lot of gays have the morals of tomcats', he says. The '"gay lifestyle" doesn't exactly conspire to lash couples together'. He continues: 'Some would rather be married to promiscuity than have a loving, faithful relationship.' And what is new, or wrong with that? If a minority in society choose to opt out of the 'normal' moral framework, by having a good time and refusing to procreate, it's hardly going to bring everything crashing down. For decades, gays have suffered from official interference into their relationships and demands to conform to the social and sexual norm. That society should now let them have the morals of tomcats if that's what they want should be a step forward, of sorts.

Except that's not where the dynamic lies today. As gay becomes the new straight, with young heterosexuals eschewing monogamy and domesticity for singledom and nights on the town, desperate officials find themselves looking elsewhere for some kind of model of the functional family. Having expended countless calories portraying the normal family - Mum, Dad, marriage, kids - as a site of domestic abuse, poor parenting and relationship breakdown, the authorities have something of a struggle in trying to paint an ideal adult relationship, when this seems to clash so badly with the presumed reality of heterosexual monogamy. So they make something else up, instead.

Whether it is the government's Women and Equality Unit putting the case for gay marriage, or the chair of the IVF regulatory body singing the praises of gay parents, or the census trying so very hard to recognise gay couples as a legitimate household unit, today's officials seem to find it much easier to present a positive picture of long-term monogamous gay relationships than straight ones. It's not surprising really - given that nobody knows anything about gay households, gay marrieds or gay parents, they can be imbued with all kinds of friendly, affectionate, non-threatening qualities, without anybody offering an alternative reality.

How much of your society are you willing to damage to benefit so few, so divergent from your culture?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 7, 2004 6:10 AM