Gay Culture Wars: Elton vs. George Michael - A Libertarian Approach

Elton's BOYcott of Dolce & Gabbana didn't last very long.

I just came across a brilliant libertarian analysis of the current gay culture wars (i.e. from about a year ago) on the Libertarian Alliance's website here:

I think it undeniable, however, that most gay men in their 40s and 50s would rather be having frequent sex with as many 18-21-year-old men (“twinks”) as possible, rather than posing as “married men” with “children” in tow. 

The Elton John style fake family seems to me to be a freak show—one that even more freakily is what the British Establishment is recommending as the ideal life for gay men. 

More recently, there have been a number of news stories showing that an older generation of gay men are “turned off” by the new politically correct developments in gay culture. The fashion designers, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, caused uproar when they criticised the attempt to create “same-sex families” along the Elton John model. The Dolce and Gabbana statements—“no chemical offsprings [sic] and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed” and “the only family is the traditional one”—illustrates perfectly the fact that there is no consensus among homosexual men on creating an artificial family-like gay life. 

The fashion designer Giorgio Armani has joined the fray, criticising effeminate or overly obviously gay dress styles, saying “a homosexual man is a man 100%. He does not need to dress homosexual” and “when homosexuality is exhibited to the extreme—to say, ‘Ah, you know I’m homosexual,’—that has nothing to do with me. A man has to be a man”. 

It seems there is a culture that is an acceptable part of the multicultural political project that is identifiably gay. A way of dressing. A hairstyle. A musical preference. A less manly mode of behaviour. This culture can be incorporated into the general attack on family values by means of gay marriage, gay adoption of children, by the mainstreaming of the gay identity. 

But most of this amounts to taking the homosexuality out of being gay. It is becoming a culture—largely a young person’s culture—and an identity. But at its most fundamental, being “gay” should be about having sex with men. It is possible to enjoy sex with men, even exclusively, and not share the cultural aspects of “gay identity”. Who cares about the hairstyles and the music? If it isn’t about sex, then this culture is a synthetic creation of the political and media class. 

Real homosexuality is incompatible with the family, because homosexuality is about sex, not love. I don’t deny that gay men do fall in love with each other—but shorter relationships are statistically more common in the absence of any real family relationship. And, yes, gay men do love attractive young men—but they love all of them, and want to have sex with all of them. Large numbers of sexual partners is what being homosexual has really always been about. A monogamous family-style gay life is really for unattractive gay men.

I think this just about covers everything, and it certainly helps to explain why in real terms George Michael is actually much less objectionable than the appalling Elton John and David Furnish.

"Being gay's about having sex with other men. What?"