The critically acclaimed Hollywood film, “Brokeback Mountain” chronicled a moving love story between two gay men. It left people experiencing a whole gamut of emotions – of wonder, sympathy, helplessness, pity, some form of sadness, of reminders, and some of opposed emotions such as disgust, fury, judgment and self-righteous indignation. It was a time when gay men were literally lynched to death by men who considered gay-hood as a sick social aberration, indeed a curse deserving death penalty.
Perhaps these “straight” men considered the men who were attracted to other man as an insult, or even a threat to their own manhood and manliness. Or perhaps, by aping the ancient Old Testament law of stoning defaulters to death, the “straight” men thought they were justified in uprooting the sinner from their midst! Hence they vengefully took the law into their own hands by bludgeoning homosexual men.
At that time when the Civil Rights Movement was still struggling to gain momentum, gay men were afraid to come out of their closets. They married women as socially expected; had children and suffered silent guilt and private unrest, yet playing the role of father and husband in the family. “Brokeback Mountain” explored this predicament with absolute sensitivity.
The other film is “Milk” – an iconic biographical film of Harvey Milk, the celebrated gay activist turned politician with a successful but short-lived career. The epic role of Harvey Milk is portrayed by Sean Penn. Milk was murdered, not because he was openly gay, but because he was the arch rival of another powerful politician. The angst in gay men came out clearly in the role of Milk’s lover who later committed suicide out of despair. In the backdrop of this film, suicide was depicted as a route of escape from pain, disillusionment and rejection of gay men who struggled to “fit in” with mainstream society of heterosexual men and women.
The third film on the sensitive theme of homosexuality is “Doubt.” In an all-White dominated school, a black boy idolizes a White Catholic Priest. The boy’s father beats up the boy because of his condition, suggesting innate homosexual tendency. The mother is confronted by the Headmistress and she confesses that her son is “born” that way. In other words, she suggests that it’s not his fault, he did not choose to be a homosexual; it was a natural thing for him to be so.
All the above issues have the potential to raise conflicting questions and heated debates as to whether homosexuals are “born” (genetically predisposed and programmed by nature) or “made” (psychologically and socially conditioned) that way.
While I was still a student there were few gay men and women on campus and some of them stood out in the crowd. The tendency of the others were to stigmatize and stereotype them – gay men as being effeminate, fashion conscious and speaking with a ‘gayish twang’, and lesbians as being masculine, aggressive and short-haired. But this stereotyping was not always accurate because many of them completely flouted the assigned imaging. Very macho men turned out to be gay, and very feminine girls turned out to be lesbian; their same-sex partners assumed the opposite image. There was therefore a complex sociological and psychological structuring many of us could not relate to.
Besides the defining “act” itself, homosexual inclination per say may simply be a surface “orientation,” a germinal disposition that may not really take off or materialize. Orientation involves the visual and mental exposure to it through peer influence or mass media. Here there are attempts to explore personal sexual leanings, curiosity and experimentation with outward or superficial trappings such as cross dressing, styling and accessorizing. This is more or less like a “flirtation” with the idea, the aura and stylistic disposition associated with the often glamorized world of the effeminate man or ultra masculine woman.
The other angle in which homosexuality is met head-on is the “act” itself where the person is a practicing homosexual. S/he is grounded in thorough sexual preference of the same sex. It may so happen that a practicing homosexual may have a history of enforced initiation and eventual development in the same stream. For example: An innocent boarding school boy may have been exposed to homosexual acts by a senior or an elder, and hence grow up to be confused about his sexuality, and eventually turn into a regular homosexual himself; or perhaps into a bisexual, with attraction toward both males and females.
Coming to our context in Nagaland, for many years the concept and practice of homosexuality was hush-hush, a dark taboo. After all, the macho head hunter, the masculine and brave warrior cannot possibly be a “sissy.” He always had women admiring his valor and prowess at war; his duty was to protect the village from enemies and the honor of the womenfolk consisting of mothers, daughters and sisters.
Even today, a huge majority of Naga men are so hard line masculine that one cannot expect them to show sympathy toward movie portrayals such as “Brokeback Mountain” or “Doubt.” Yet at the corner of our macho society, one may spot effeminate men who are intimidated by “real” men, but seeking sisterly solace in women. It’s not a freak happening to see men who inwardly identify themselves with women and blush in the company of straight men! Of course, Naga society was never fond of theatrics where men habitually and unashamedly dressed as women (eg. Thailand’s lady boy types or Manipur’s Shumang Leela actors).
At the same time, if we examine our contemporary society accurately, many of our young boys are being initiated toward the effeminate in terms of dress, hairstyles, career choices and lifestyles. Some of it is harmless and quite amusingly a passing phase. It’s almost become “fashionable” to go against the establishment, either as an act of rebellion, or imitation of/experimentation with other cultures (eg. Korean screen culture). Yet we may also wonder if some of it is an emergence of true self expressions once kept closely hidden! Studies show that there is a resurgence of sexual re-orientation, where many suppressed men who prefer the same sex are now coming out of the closet and asserting themselves in orientation and practice. MSM (men having sex with men) is the buzz word for many of the NGO’s working with homosexuals in Nagaland.
For practicing Christians, the Bible is the ultimate book of ethical/moral/spiritual standards, and is the decisive “mirror” for self-examination and renewal of conduct. I first stumbled into this passage on the topic of homosexuality in the Bible from Romans 1:16 – 2:16. It says very clearly that it is one of the sins of human lawlessness where men and women give up “natural relations” and in exchange burn with lust for one another instead.
Surely it’s not worth the trouble to suffer silent personal guilt due to misconduct. Whether one is “born” or “made” a homosexual or a bisexual is not the core issue here. There is such a thing as personal choice even in the face of inherited or induced transgression. What’s more, one can never escape the “consequences” of personal choice, whether good or bad, and that’s a prospect we cannot ever take lightly if we have any good sense in us.
Written By: Susan Waten, HAWA, Dimapur.
(susanwaten@gmail.com)
