Revenge. Forgiveness. Us.

Behold the power of resentment…

AOG, Madrid

A couple of days ago I met up with a couple of friends. New friends. People I had just met but which seemed to have struck an equal chord with me.

So there we were, at Café Figueroa, Madrid’s first openly gay coffee shop, establised as it was in 1981, talking about things.

We spoke about the current economic crisis, Spanish politics, the influence of Germany on Europe’s economy, the phantom (or prospect) of Catalonia’s and Scotland’s independence, and after all this, we began to talk about childhood. About our experience of life as gay children.

Our stories, although they were lived out in different cultures, different places and countries, were still extremely similar because of the homophobic element of our peers.

Turns out, (surprise!) that children are little homophobic monsters, just like their parents.

All children? No. Not all children.

Part of our conversation versed on the fact that a small group of bullies had decided that we were gay and had, somehow, a God-given (or Santan-given) right to make our lives hell, but, also, not all children. 

 Not all of our classmates. Only some.

“The usual ones”, said one of my new friends.

He then went on to talk about how it wasn’t just children. He told me a horrible tale about his youth in a small town in rural Spain, about 15 years ago.

Image taken at the ARCO Art Fair in Madrid, 2006.

Turns out that around the age of 18, he told his friends that he was gay.

“They all ran away from me on the spot. I don’t mean that they stopped talking to me, which came the next day and continues to this day. I mean that as soon as they heard the words they took off. They ran away!”

He then told me that he did the same, trying to get to his house before the gossip came in through the airways and his parents found out about it from other people.

He didn’t tell me about what his parents told him at the time. He just went on.

“What amazes me most is the fact that they could not wait to tell every one in town about it. Including my boss. They all got into a car and drove all the way to the bar where I worked, which was in another town. They went and told my boss I was gay. And when I got to work, I was told I no longer worked there.”

I was aghast.

Of course, he left town soon after.

Why?

Well, the locals would do that thing which tends to happen in small towns. Not so much make his life hell, but just talk about him whenever he walked past. Criticise him in front of his parents and family. And their friends.

And he moved on.

 

So I asked, ‘did you ever talk to them again?’

He said yes, one of them. A couple of years ago one of his friends walked up to him when he was visiting his parents, and started talking to him. He was getting married and invited him to the wedding.

‘Did he apologize?’, I asked.

“He did, but I didn’t accept his apology. I don’t need it.”

And at that point we started a different conversation.

On the one corner, one of them arguing on behalf of his partner, and on the other me, arguing for forgiveness.

“They don’t need to be forgiven. Shouldn’t be. They were cowards.”

“But don’t you think that it takes a lot of courage to say you are sorry?”

“Maybe so, but what about what we go through? They should have known better.”

“But think about the time you were 18, or 8, aren’t you sorry about some of the things you did?”

“Yes I am, but less so about those I did when I was 18.”

“But 18 is still pretty much a kid.”

“I don’t agree. They should have known better.”

“But they only reflect what society does with us.”

“Exactly. So now we do it.”

“But if someone is asking for forgiveness… they are suddenly giving you all the power. Suddenly you have the upper hand. If you don’t forgive them, then you are exacting revenge.”

“Then that is what I’m doing, but that is not what I’m doing really. I am just not forgiving something which should not have ocurred but did.”

“But then you are just resentful, that can’t be healthy.”

“I disagree. We are talking about something I don’t need. I don’t need their apology. I have, we have, lived without it for a long time, so that now, if they offer it, it is just without meaning.”

“But it does have meaning. Especially to them.”

“Doesn’t matter. Not to me. Do you need to hear the apologies of those who made your childhood hell?”

“Well, I’ve never been in that position, but I would love for it to happen. Not because I want to forgive anyone in particular, but because it would signal to me that they achieved a certain level of maturity, and that they realized they did something which was very wrong. I think I would forgive them right away, like I think I do when somebody says they are sorry.”

The conversation afterwards pretty much remained along those lines, and then he, my new friend, began to tell me his reasoning behind the ‘apology’.

“He has children now. Two boys. Maybe now he is thinking that one of them could be gay. That it could happen to him. And that is why he apologised, not because he felt bad about what he did, but because he is probably afraid that it might happen to his own children.”

www.fotothing.com/polo

And then, he also told me –and here human nature did amaze me a bit– that he had had an opportunity to “wreck” one of his ex-friend’s life, but didn’t. And wouldn’t.

“One of them asked me once not to say anything about what I had seen. And I didn’t. But I wasn’t planning on doing so anyway. It is none of my business, and it’s his life anyway.”

“What was it that you’d seen?”

“I’d seen him at a gay bar in another town, canoodling with another man.”

“And…”

“And he still lives in our town, and is married and has children. And every time I go there he goes out of his way to avoid me, and looks shit scared to see me.”

Our conversation ended about 30 minutes after all of this went on.

We were trying to be nice with each other since we’d just met, and clicked, but here was this different approach to this situation.

We just accepted that each of us had a different way of looking at things, and moved on.

We didn’t fall out but there was a different perspective which was at odds with the perspective opposite. I could tell there was a lot of resentment in what one of them had told me, and his partner had merely defended his partner’s point of view, although hinting here and there that he too had a similar tale to tell. 

As do most gay men and women today.

I write this not to judge them in any way, since we all have to walk our own path.

I write this because I liked the fact that, in spite of it all, we all try to be good people, except we all define ‘good’ in a different way. I would not ever say that these guys were anything but good, in as much as I can tell about somebody I’ve had coffee and a conversation with over the space of a couple of hours.

We all try to do the right thing, however we define what that is, and in spite of so many things.

And although I might be very adept at accepting apologies, I wonder about what I would have done if ‘incriminating’ information about one of my childhood torturers had come into my hands.

Would I be so benign?

 

America's gay problem

 AOG, Madrid

A few days ago, US President, Barack Obama, said that he had changed his mind about gay marriage. He said that he "supported" it. 

"At a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married", he said in an interview on television.

At present, it is difficult to know what this conclusion actually means for gay couples wishing to marry. Will he support it enough that he will legalize it at a federal level, equating it to marriage between heterosexual couples? 

Will we have to wait until his next Administration for this to happen? Of course, it bears thinking that if he were to loose the election (unlikely but not impossible), his good wishes will remain just that: good wishes. Nothing more.

It is very interesting to note that this new civil rights movement, the movement for equality under the law for gay couples, is called anything but that. 

That it is attracting the same sort of hate from religious groups that black people had to face during the civil rights movement in the 60s (and before). 

That whereas it might be hard to identify the death of a black youth who committed suicide because he or she was black (though not impossible), we are increasingly seeing in the media how some young gay people are doing just that, because the society they live in does not give them the right to live in peace. 

Because everywhere they look, all they see is hate, insults, abuse. And still in the US we don't classify hate crimes as hate crimes when directed against gay people. Freedom of speech, many say. 

Because we see people who look far removed from sanity picketing the funerals of soldiers, claiming that "God hates fags".

Because a woman in Nebraska  stood up to publicly declare her graphic homophobic views during Lincoln's Anti-Discrimination Law hearings, saying things like "a huge percent of gay men in school grounds molest boys, partly because they don't have AIDS yet" and "Jesus was kissed by Judas, a homo, who tried to sabotage Jesus' kind ideas. Do you choose Jesus, a celibate, or Judas, a homo? You have to choose!".

I would not say that she has the freedom of speech to proclaim such hateful statements.

And I feel very unprotected by American law when people like her are allowed to spew forth such hate and ignorance. 

Of course, when I listened to what she was saying, I immediately realized that this lady was either, a) extremely ignorant and uneducated, or b) suffering from some sort of mental illness, which, in spite of everything, makes me feel sorry for her. 

However, I know too well that she is not alone. I know that many people in America feel like they can justify their blood-curling hatred of gay people because, according to them, it says so in their Bible. 

Just like their Bible was used as justification for discrimination of black people not too long ago. 

Ironically, all of these "studious" religious leaders, who say things like marriage is a sacrament, and that God dislikes homosexuals, seem to ignore the history of their own faith. 

A history that would tell them that the Christian church, among other things, didn't really have an official marriage rite until about the XI century, and that, believe it or not, did marry people of the same sex.

And it did so for a very long time. And married a lot of people. It was not a one-off. It was not a weird thing, or an abomination. 

It just was. 

So of course, when they say things like that,  you can't help but think, 'how dare you?'. 

How dare you ignore your own history and pretend that what I'm asking for is something your faith has always deplored, when it clearly is not the case?

How dare you invoke a text written by a primitive people with very little relevance in the XXI century to justify your hate?

How dare you speak of love for everyone, unless they are gay? 

Does this make sense to you? 

It doesn't make sense to me.

America has a problem with gay people, yes. But it also has a problem with hate. And a problem with religion. 

And the America we think (or like to think) the world admires, is just fiction and has been for a long time now. 

Why do I say this? I have a friend who is from Africa. He came to Spain a couple of years ago. 

He speaks English, some Spanish, and his native Bantu language. 

He is not gay and can read and write a little. And he is fascinated by the US and has been since he was a child he told me when we first met.

I spoke with him last night when I came across him on the street at 2AM. He makes a living by working for a Chinese mafia which runs a pirate CD & DVD operation. 

He was amazed by Obama's words and asked me to explain what exactly he meant.

"It means that he favors gay people getting married".

"What do you mean favors? Was the law going to be changed?"

At this point I had not realized yet what he was asking.

"No, the law is not going to change yet. We may have to wait until his second Administration for that to happen".

"But, he is going to change the law? Why? If he favors it, why is he going to forbid it?"

And then I realized that my friend's view of America belonged to another era.

I explained to him that gay marriage in America was illegal. To say he was surprised would be an understatement. 

"So Spain has more advanced laws than America?"

"Some laws, yes".

"So how can America be the most advanced country in the world if it forbids that?"

And I didn't know what to say.

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