What Makes Me Gay

Originally posted Friday, November 10, 2006, this little piece still makes me giggle at my own wit... which is pretty gay. My hope is that, if YOU are gay, you will recognize that the intent is to mock the clueless way supposedly non-gay people have stereotyped and demonized you - and, in their cluelessness, me. If you are NOT gay, the intent is to make you wonder.

Current mood:Super (thanks for asking)

I am not a homosexual, and yet people feel compelled to tell me with alarming frequency that I am Gay. What prompts this sort of thing? Well...

1) I don't like football. Nor do I care for professional wrestling, NASCAR, hunting, or even fishing. I do, however, enjoy all manner of music, and even a bit of theater. This, I am told, makes me Gay. I first learned this from a football player -- of course -- who told me that being in choir was gay, and that a real man played football. I questioned his logic, since choir brought me into close, occasionally intimate contact with a variety of lovely young women, while football offered the prospect of showering en masse with a roomful of men.

Years later there was a major scandal in our state involving "hazing" practices on many of our varsity teams. A few of the teams had forced new players to participate in highly illegal and certainly immoral acts with livestock and with each other.

Conclusion: football is "gay".

2) I love my wife. This beautiful woman, whom I often refer to as "my lovely bride", is the central focus of my existence, my business manager, my lover, and of course, my best friend. I will emphasize one of her most obvious features: she is a female. Yang to my yin, if you will. Most assuredly NOT a man.

And yet, when I mention -- or even hint -- that I feel this way about my spouse, my fellow men tell me (you may have guessed): how very Gay I am.

Pardon me for asking, but isn't being "gay" supposed to have something to do with activities between males? Or, at least, two or more persons of the SAME gender? After all, the subject usually comes up when I'm making excuses for not going out "with the fellas", drinking, watching football, or other "manly" activities. Somehow, preferring the company of my wife -- a person of the opposite gender -- to that of my male counterparts is what they are pointing out as my fatal flaw.

Conclusion: marriage, between a man and a woman, is Gay.

3) Then there is Grandpa. Grandpa would come to our house, and my parents would hover about, making sure that his Archie Bunker-esque comments were edited for our wee ears. But Grandpa felt that there were Things We Should Know about the world, so we could effectively gird ourselves with the whole armor of God. (Ephesians 6:13) So, when mom and dad were busy, Grandpa would pull us aside and "warn us" in extremely cryptic terms about the evils of the world.

"Never cross a brown horse with a white horse, son," he said once. I was confused. "Isn't that how you get an Appaloosa, Grandpa?" I asked. He made and exasperated noise, sounding rather like Foghorn Leghorn trying to talk the chicken hawk out of eating him. "No, son, you misunderstand me..."

He often suggested haircuts, though my hair was never any longer than you see it in the Superman picture to the left. And of course he cautioned against earrings of any kind. "You don't want to get too light in the loafers, son" he would say. Whatever THAT was supposed to mean. I ran to the bathroom to weigh myself, but I wasn't even sure what would count as "too light". So I changed into sneakers.

As near as I could figure, before someone actually explained what a "homosexual" was, being gay meant growing your hair out, piercing your ears, and walking around hating Jesus. So, basically, I thought it was a big word for "pirate". I did have one question about Grandpa's definition, though.

"What about Jesus, Grandpa? He had long hair. Was HE gay?"

After the choking and spluttering died down, Grandpa explained that Jesus didn't actually have long hair. All those pictures you see were just propaganda made up by Satan. (Also known in Grandpa's world as "the Catholic Church".) You see, they were all shepherds back then, and of course, they knew how to shear sheep. So, undoubtedly, he kept his hair shorn in a nice, brisk, 1950's era flat-top like any respectable Southern Baptist preacher. He appeared to be so relieved to have come up with that explanation, I didn't even ask about all of the kissing going on between men. Or why Jesus never got married.

Conclusion: Jesus was secretly Gay.

Summary: while I am not a homosexual, I am definitely going to hell. Which is fine with me, as long as they don't let in any football players!