“One on One” by Dan Woog, “Bedtime Story” by Anne Stockwell, “Meditations on Monogamy” (an interview with Deepak Chopra) by Judy Wieder, “High Fidelity” (an excerpt from a book by Eric Marcus), “Hip to be Square” by David Heitz, “The Other M Word” by John Gallagher, “What Century is this Anyway?” by Edmund White, The Advocate, June 23, 1998.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Monogamy is the theme of this set of cover articles in the country’s major gay and lesbian newsmagazine. Since, as Woog says, monogamy is “one of the hottest debates in today’s gay world,” it’s surprising that it fares as well as it does in many of these pages. Observing that monogamy seems to be more prevalent among women than among men, regardless of sexual orientation, Woog quotes a psychotherapist’s assessment that “lots of gay men can’t dig deep inside to reach the emotional foundation needed to achieve sexual intimacy.” He cites another therapist who faults the internalized pessimism about gay relationship that’s held within the wider society, suggesting that this is why gay relationships don’t do better. One of the therapists claims that so-called threesomes “can be shared experiences,” failing to see that the novelty sought in the outsider will reinforce the perception of the couple’s “old hat” sex — the very impetus for the threesome — and that usually, one rather than both partners will get more attention from that third party, resulting in feelings of anxiety, hurt and resentment. How does this help? These therapists do recognize, however, that “open” relationships “are not shared experiences.” One of them grants that “going from partner to partner can get old hat too.” Aware that nonmonogamy is fraught with problems, another therapist urges that “open” couples observe certain rules: “Always let each other know what’s going on [Yeah right!] … if the other person has a partner, always obtain her permission [Sure! No problem!]; be there for your partner … .” Hello? “Most people,” Woog reports, “draw the line at cheating — that is, having outside relationships without the knowledge or consent of one’s partner.” But isn’t it just such duplicity — the opposite of intimacy — that necessarily characterizes most nonmonogamy? In contrast to the therapists’ notions, the quoted gay and lesbian couples themselves are committed to monogamy. Says one woman: “We’re like an old pair of slippers, kind of worn-down and ragged. There are certainly better-looking shoes out there, but none quite so comfortable.”
New Age guru Chopra “believe[s] that human beings are not monogamous biologically,” but he says that “monogamy is more expedient [because] we are social creatures.” He, too, understands betrayal and much nonmonogamy as evidence of immaturity.
Stockwell gives an update on a committed male couple in Dallas, profiled in Life magazine in 1996. One of the pair says: “It would be an incredible step if everyone who was in a solid relationship shared that with their neighbors and just let them see.” Both couples from the Marcus book, Together Forever, have struggled toward the monogamy they now maintain. Heitz reports on Arrow, a young gay couple’s new pro-monogamy magazine and website for gay men (www.arrowmag.com). It’s had more than 15,000 hits in its second month, mainly from younger gay men. Writes Heitz: “In Arrow there’s no need to debate sexual freedom, the merits of gay marriage, or the best way to cruise the showers at the gym. That would be like Car & Driver having a section on people who have taken to pedal power.” The article by Gallagher is an update on same-sex marriage legislation. Among “Resources for couples” listed in a sidebar is Catherine M. Wallace’s For Fidelity, a book from a Christian viewpoint which Christianity Today also recommends — though with objection to Wallace’s support of same-sex couples.
The “Commentary” is by popular gay author Edmund White, now a writing teacher at Princeton. He thinks that by now we should all be beyond “bourgeois companionate marriage.” He claims that in the 1970s “no gay man would ever have imagined [we’d now be having] a serious discussion of monogamy, of all loopy things.” But whether in print, couples conferences, counseling or in conversations, confrontations and confessions in private, there was plenty of serious discussion of monogamy in those days. White values “cheerful sexual freedom” and “delirious, riotous promiscuity.” He asserts: “Real love is built on feelings, not Old Testament guidelines,” thereby sadly exposing his misunderstanding of real love, feelings and the Old Testament. He pretends that “gay cohesiveness was built precisely on a rejection of religion,” but the typical meeting place for the early gay movement was a church building, the major heterosexual allies were clergy, and the largest gay/lesbian organization was a religious one, as it still is.
White is bitterly antimonogamous. Castigating “our graying leaders,” he preaches that “monogamy is part of a pleasure-hating package being sold by aging gay leaders, now in their 50s and 60s, people who through some ghastly process of natural selection managed to survive the plague precisely because they were so dysfunctional that they never could get laid. [White is HIV positive.] Whereas normal red-blooded gays in the late ’70s were breaking down roles and indulging themselves, these tight-asses were too unredeemably macho to experiment or too drunk to stay awake for the coupling or too homely or self-loathing to attract partners.”
From his co-authored Joy of Gay Sex in the pre-AIDS era to his full-blown AIDS era’s Farewell Symphony, White’s viewpoint has never matured. In a Village Voice review of White’s latest book, young gay novelist Dale Peck writes: “there are only two emotions on these pages, the ecstasy of a 15-year orgy and the grief of the 15-year dying spree that has followed it. … Sex scenes are depicted with the obsession with which they were carried out: the death scenes are avoided with almost the same mania.”
In wisely valuing committed relationship, the younger generation portrayed in this issue of The Advocate may well achieve something more meaningful than what too many in White’s generation fell for.