The Closing of the Closet

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States was a tight one: 5-4 in favor. As several commentators have pointed out, the male magistrates voted 2-4 against, while the female magistrates voted 3-0 in favor. Apparently, fanaticism takes root more strongly among men.

The law, as usual, is the last to know, and maybe that is how it should be. Those of us who are old enough — I began to see the world with a certain freedom at the start of the 1970s — remember the time when being gay was forbidden. There were no gays, only fags or queers, among the many derogatory names, and coming out of the closet was something for the brave. For those coming out, they did so with great fanfare: They went to promiscuous bars, they tried to recruit followers, and they lived their lives to the fullest, as if there was no tomorrow. One day, it all almost came to a complete stop when in the second half of the ’80s, the AIDS epidemic broke out. God, according to some believers, and to the fearful caught in the vortex, wanted to get his revenge on gay men, unleashing among them a biblical plague. The death toll was brutal.

Then came new drugs, which allowed the disease to be controlled, and there was also a minor change in habits. The hunting for couples, in which no one took any prisoners, was dissipating, and many back rooms closed. Promiscuity was, thus, more a symptom of the times than an intrinsic characteristic of male homosexuality, as was once thought. Furthermore, gradually, although irrepressibly, people’s sexual preferences started to matter less.

With such acceptance, the drama is also starting to disappear. Gays will surely lose their romantic aura and will become increasingly common in families and the social clubs. Today, they are our ordinary everyday neighbors. They consist of believers, religious people, at whose heart is a growing conservative trend. Will the legalization of gay marriage reinforce this trend? It is not impossible. Amy Davidson points out in The New Yorker that the fault can be seen as the key to conservatism because gays want to marry, in contrast to many heterosexuals who have started to live together, nothing more than that, under the protection the law. In short, homosexuals run the risk of becoming commonplace, just as heterosexuals have been for millennia, without exception. Not everyone is cut out to be a hero.

The joy felt toward federal legalization of gay marriage in the United States was not uniform, of course. The decision was resented, most notably by the more conservative groups, whose members overwhelmingly belong to the Republican Party. What some have called “the triumph of love” has also been a thorn in the side of the party heading for the presidency, a thorn added to others recently, such as the constitutionality of key provisions of “Obamacare” and the normalization of relations with Cuba.

Nothing is decided, of course. However, for those of us who do not want a Bush to return to the White House, we feel a great chill.