They Impress Me Again

I've always been somewhat protective and careful of my sexuality when around one of my main group of friends. Tim and Mike are two members of this greater group of people. It's a way of acting that I've always had around the group, even though they know I'm gay. It's nothing in the realm of me pretending I'm straight - no, nothing like the old me. I don't know why I'm like this with them in particular; it probably has a lot to do with me knowing the core of the group since highschool. I've briefly written about these people in one of the first WindsThatYouRise blog posts, here.

Around them, I kind of just let my sexuality take a backseat. I don't really bring it up, but if they ask me something specific, I won't hesitate to talk about it. Mike and Tim are exceptions to this, since we're real close (today, I freely tell them anything about some guy I like or my personal issues regarding sexuality). Anyway, when the group all starts talking about something related to gay people or homosexuality, I typically just listen in to what they have to say. I find it pretty interesting to see what they think, since I don't usually jump in to impose my view (which personally usually I think is right). This way I also feel like I'm learning what they really think about gay-related things and people.

From what I've heard from them recently, my feelings are a little mixed, but in general I'm really happy with them.

For a long time, I've wondered if this group of friends is accepting of gay people in general or if their acceptance of homosexuality only extends to me as an exception. It's kind of like saying I like Obama, but I hate black people. I know that none of them really talk about other gay people they know, assuming they know any. I also know that although I'm not some super, macho guy, I'm not really representative of the gay stereotype either. Because of that, the group might not even think of me as "truly gay", but instead an exception, like with the Obama example.

Although I haven't heard it recently, a few of them used to like to say "well that's gay!" when talking about something stupid (I would murder the kid who first thought of that expression, if I could). Tim even used to say that, although recently he once said it, and I just looked right at him and stared him in the eyes. He then looked really nervous and said You know I don't mean it as an insult to gay people, but just to mean something stupid, right? I just kept starring at him. He has never said it since.

This group of friends had dinner at a restaurant last week. During the dinner, the topic of gay marriage, the US-ban on gay marriage, coming-out, and the origin of homosexuality came up. I swear, I had no hand in introducing these topics. Like usual, I kind of listened in and let them state their own opinions and differences, although they would all eventually look at me waiting for some sort of comment "from the expert", since clearly if I'm gay I know everything *I roll my eyes*. Their general consensus was that they all thought:

• it was pretty pathetic to ban gay marriage, since it was ruining two peoples' chance to be happy.

This view isn't too odd, since we're all a young generation of people and Quebecois notoriously tend to live together as couples, have kids and never bother to get married, since there's a general dislike for organized religion, in particular Evangelicals and the Catholic Church.

• being gay is purely genetic.

Being a biology major, I'm actually against this view. I think it's a combination of environment and genes working together. After all, if one identical twin is gay, the other only has a ~50% likelihood of also being gay (there are problems with the study, but anyway...) Of course, by environment I mean it's something that happened in the mother's womb or before the age of conscious thought in the baby. The idea that they all believed being gay was purely genetic is probably a weight on the their opinions for these other topics.

• it's sad that there are some adults (they focuses particularly on men in their examples) who lie to themselves and their families all their lives, to eventually come-out at the age of 40 or above.

This really interested me, because they kind of ignored the alternate viewpoint of the other spouse. When I think of this type of situation, I feel sad for both the gay person and for the wife/husband who genuinely did love their spouse, only to discover he/she is gay. A little part of me is even mad at the closeted person, because they've made someone else's life a lie. I would expect straight people to empathize more with the straight spouse, "who was lied to", than the gay person. In the conversation though, my friends only really thought of the person coming-out at a later age, and how terrible it must be to have been dishonest to themselves for so long. They kind of saw it as a life with wasted potential, since he/she spent so much time hiding and running from what he/she wanted.

It seemed that my guys friends were much more into the conversation than my lady friends. I found that the women were much more quiet, but that's also because their attention was focused on my friend's really cute 10 month old baby, who was trying to grab a knife and stick it in his mouth. He's a good kid - I hope he makes it to the age of 2.

Maybe it's the laziness in me, but I like that I don't need to be a preacher with this group of friends, or any of my friends in particular. Obviously, they say some off-comments sometimes or opinions that come straight from idiocy, but I look at them and usually tell them how I actually think it is. Maybe my presence as a gay person has changed their opinions or maybe they've always thought like this (pfffft, ya right...) or maybe they've matured with age. Either way, I'm pretty lucky.