26 Apr 2010
Brenda Power, The Vatican and Growing Up Gay
Watching the first part of Growing Up Gay last week, the documentary on RTÉ following the fortunes of several gay teenagers as they negotiate life out of the closet, I was struck not only by the strength of the kids' convictions, but the strength of character displayed by their parents. While the gay teens who took part are role models for young, isolated gay people across the country, their parents are role models for a different sector of society, the middle ground where prejudices about homosexuality are hidden and rarely discussed.
As I explained to Brenda Power when interviewing her for this issue, homophobia isn't simply about hating gay people, or saying hateful things about them. Because there is a long history of oppression and repression of lesbians and gay people, of stereotyping, prejudice and myth-making, negative feelings about homosexuality are deep-seated and they leak out in all sorts of ways, often without the offending person knowing what they are doing. On the surface they think they are okay with gay and they subscribe to the political correctness that has built up around sexual orientation, but beneath, an often unconscious residue of negative education remains.
The wonderful thing about Growing Up Gay is that it showed straight people confronting their own prejudices, thrown face-to-face with those feelings on discovering that a person they love above everyone else in their lives - their child - is gay.
I asked Brenda Power what she would say if her own child came out as gay and she said that she would be fine with it, that she would only want her child's happiness. She's telling the truth, but it's a hypothetical situation. If Power's child came out to her as gay, she could be forced, in the way the brave parents who agreed to be filmed for Growing Up Gay were, to deal with how underlying anti-gay feelings affect the happiness of gay people as they grow up, and how it often creates an internalised homophobia that stymies individual gay and lesbian lives.
When I was first asked to interview Power to publicise her new book, I was reluctant; I didn't want GCN to provide even more space for someone who has expressed what I regard as opinions that are rooted in underlying societal homophobia. But as time went on, I felt it was an opportunity to ask her if she could see that the sentiments expressed in her anti-gay marriage column validated a deep-seated antipathy towards people who were born homosexual rather than heterosexual. I wanted to hold up a mirror and show her exactly what homophobia is, and why gay people need to celebrate themselves at Pride to counteract a sickness in society that judges them inferior and distasteful.
What I discovered is that it is very difficult to change hearts and minds. Power is entrenched in the idea that Gay Pride, as it is represented in the mainstream media with images of drag queens and men in leather chaps, is the wrong way to go about changing hearts and minds; that in seeking equality we are shooting ourselves in the foot at the same time. It is an argument I have heard before, but I believe it is wrong. What gay people are fighting for is the right to be fully, truly, openly ourselves, as we were born to be, and to be treated as equal members of society.
If certain parts of our community moderated their dress and behaviour to help achieve the goal of equality, would they be ditching precisely the thing everyone, not only just LGBT people, needs to celebrate - the fact that the world is rich with diversity, of which we are just a small, energetic part?
The day after I met Power, in an effort to shift the blame for clerical child abuse and its cover up by the Catholic Church, the Pope's right-hand man, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone shamefully repeated one of the most hateful myths perpetrated about gay people; the idea that we are sexual predators who rape and molest children. There was widespread condemnation of his comments, but be certain: the Cardinal's insidious linking of homosexuality with paedophilia feeds that little beast in many people's minds that distrusts and distorts gay people. He knew what he was doing, because he knows that beast still exists.
The parents who appeared on Growing Up Gay confronted that space within themselves. By doing so in the public eye, they created another space where those who read Brenda Power's anti-gay marriage columns and agreed with her, or have secretly nodded approval of the Church's latest distraction, might see the truth of our humanity, as evidenced through the love of the people around us. They might have come nearer the full understanding that we have a human right to equality with everyone else, while being different at the same time.