The Disease of the Left

In today's post, I am going to criticize some ideas associated with the political Left in the US and around the world. I need to say right of the bat that I consider myself a Left winger. I support a Universal Basic Income, equal rights for all and, if I was American, I would vote for Bernie Sanders. But the Left is not perfect: there are problems with its world view that require discussing and addressing, and this is what I want to do in this post. The Left is not perfect. It just happens that the Right is far worse.

The issue I want to discuss is sexual politics. Leftists support Gay rights and fight to stop people discriminating on the grounds of sexual orientation; the Right, particularly the religious Right (although not so much the Libertarian Right) tends to despise and fear homosexuals. The Right's position is based on hatred and bigotry and the position of the Left is more concerned with love and compassion. In a way, ironically when you consider that most liberals are atheists, you could argue that the Left has adopted the more Christian standpoint.

But there is a problem with the liberal world-view, something I would like to describe as the disease of the Left. The Right hates all homosexuals equally; the Left draws a distinction between openly Gay people and closet homosexuals, supporting the former and censuring and ridiculing the latter. You can see this dynamic at work in episodes of Glee and The Big Bang Theory. Many liberals believe that all Gay people should come out, that homosexuals have a moral duty to come out. Recently, for instance, Matt Damon engendered a storm of outrage among Left-leaning commentators for suggesting that Gay Hollywood actors shouldn't have to come out if they don''t want to, that a person might not want to be defined by his or her sexuality. His comment met with immense opprobrium. Damon was called ignorant and homophobic - a charge which seems absurd considering he played Liberace''s lover in a film about the Gay composer. Yet Damon had failed the purity test. He had refused to subscribe to the idea that Gay people are always happier after they have come out.

The disease of the Left is the belief that the world is full of closet homosexuals. Sometimes this world-view can tip right over into paranoid schizophrenia. In fact, I believe this delusion (we could describe it this way) is often another kind of homophobia, a homophobia masquerading as progressiveness. One sign of it is that, if a person believes he lives in a world full of closet homosexuals, he is likely to worry that others might think he is one himself. Recently I saw Bill Maher interviewed by Stephen Colbert and you could sense, watching, that Maher has a touch of this paranoia. Maher's approach, his way of saying that he is straight, is to support Gay rights. This strategy is commonly adopted by heterosexual left-leaners. Conversely, liberals frequently view homophobia (incredibly when you think about it) as a indication of repressed homosexuality, as a a sign that the homophobe is in denial. For example, in a recent episode of Full Frontal, Samantha Bee suggested that a homophobic Fundamentalist pastor probably secretly jerked off to Gay porn in the middle of the night. The Left's way of attacking the Right on this issue is to say that homophobes are precisely the thing they so vehemently oppose. You are, they say, what you hate. This is of course ridiculous. It is like saying that racist rednecks hate African Americans because they are secretly black.

I remember an episode of The Daily Show in which Jon Stewart discussed Russia's abysmal record on Gay rights with a guest. The guest, who had written a book on the subject, asserted the extraordinary claim that "99% of Russian homosexuals are in the closet". Consider, my reader, the risibility of this statement. How could someone possibly know this? Did he get this statistic from a survey among Russians that asked them "Do you consider yourself a closet homosexual?" Surely the definition of a closet homosexual is that he or she never tells anyone – so the statistic the guest cited could only have been made up, simply plucked out of the air. There is, logically, no way to know how many closet homosexuals there are in any country. It is indicative, though, that Jon Stewart simply accepted his guest's statement on face value. His way of summing up the situation is incredibly eloquent.  "The best disinfectant is sunlight". This is virtually poetry. It encapsulates up all the hypocrisy of the Left.

As readers of my blog will know, I like Jon Stewart very much but, on this issue, I believe he was totally wrongheaded.

The problem with the Left's position is one of language and ideology. According to most on the Left, people are born one way or the other – a position, incidentally, that is Jon Stewarts avowed position although I am unsure if this is what he really believes. Homosexuals start off "in the closet" and then, at some time or another, "come out". Some never "come out" at all. If a homosexual doesn't want to "come out", it must be because he or she is afraid of prejudice and stigma. Consequently (according to this ideology), it is the job of the Left to make society more tolerant, so that Gay people can feel comfortable "being true to themselves". Personally, I don't believe that people have authentic selves, and so I believe the whole issue has been misframed.

The whole notion of "coming out", when scrutinized, is more complicated than is realized. The liberal paradigm fails to encompass its complexity. For one thing, a person does not "come out" all in one go but gradually, in installments. It is rare for a Gay person to issue a press release that tells the whole world all at once. A Gay person comes out first to his or her lovers (of course), then to his or her friends, and then to his or her family. He or she might never tell some people at all, like his or her employers. Sometimes, as happened with the Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, a Gay person can "come out" having never had any homosexual experiences whatsoever and after years of repeated denials. The process of "coming out" is incremental, rather than a single, world-changing event - arguably Gay people have to come out repeatedly all their lives, every time they meet someone new. A second problem with the notion of "coming out" is that often, when someone "comes out", he or she does it indirectly rather than explicitly. I have often been in situations  where I have thought a person might have come out as Gay to me but not quite been sure. These problems arise from the facts that the world is an incredibly messy place and that the ideology surrounding sexuality is, at best, an oversimplification and, at worst, a falsification. For one thing, these issues with the notion of "coming out" undermine the whole premise that there is a clear distinction between openly gay people and closet ones.

It would be helpful to have have clarity on what it means to "come out". A good definition is attributable to Barack Obama.  In his last State of the Union address, in his one glancing reference to sexual politics, he effectively defined "coming out" as the moment a Gay man tells his father. Generally, I admire Obama greatly, consider him an extremely intelligent man, and I think this might be the best possible answer.

The whole issue is hideously difficult. One problem is that the definition of homosexuality is uncertain - the Left, as represented, for instance, by someone like John Oliver, defines sexuality in terms of love. I think this definition to be bullshit but that it may be the preferable definition on pragmatic grounds. Furthermore, I don't think people are born one way or the other (although I used to think this). I think that, for some reason or reasons, people turn gay. And I think that, at least in the world we live in now, when someone turns gay, they don't come back.

I don't know how to cure what I have termed the disease of the Left, this notion that the world is full of closet homosexuals who should all come out. I think though that I agree with Mat Damon. A person shouldn't have to come out if they don't want to. Perhaps someone is simply thought to be gay but isn't (consider the example of Tom Cruise). Liberals should argue in favor of freedom whenever that freedom does not harm others - and people should be free to decide if they want to come out or not.

[NOTE: I found this post extremely difficult to write. In fact, I suffered a nose-bleed immediately afterwards. If you want some more insight into my views on this issue, I recommend the post "Concerning Kafka and Wilde". It is probably my favorite post.]