Getting the Better of Bad Attitude

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

A neighbour once spotted my poetry readings on You Tube and  told me I should be ashamed of myself for comments along the lines that homosexuality is not a matter of choice but the sexuality with which we are born and should not be considered unnatural. He takes the view that homosexuality is 'as unnatural as it gets.' Oh, well, it's true what they say. You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time. [Do I care?]

Until 1967, gay relationships were illegal here in the UK. We should not forget that in some parts of the world they still are, even here in the so-called ‘liberal’ West. Gay people whose family origins are rooted in a culture intrinsically hostile to same sex relationships have as tough a time now as many of us did years ago. It all depends whether or not we are growing up in a gay-friendly environment. Those of us who are comfortable with being openly gay should not rush to judge those who feel obliged – for whatever reason – to stay in the damn closet.

Someone contacted me after reading this poem in my collection borrowed from a public library to ask, ‘How can being gay possibly have anything to do with our spiritual identity and well-being as God intended?’ Well, if he (or she) reads either of my poetry blogs or any of my other collection it should be clear that we don’t share the same concept of God. I take a sense of spirituality from nature, not religion. Why? Well, as regular know only too well, it is because nature doesn’t discriminate between this sense of identity or that. The reader only gave a screen name, and my email bounced back when I tried to reply. (Could I have touched a nerve, I ask myself?)

True, sexual identity is only a part of a whole, but it is integral to who we are and how we live our lives; if we need a strategy for identity at all, it is (surely?) taking pride in that and finding the self-confidence to carry on regardless.

Being gay is no crime; what is criminal and inexcusable is using hate as a weapon to justify violence against others; it has to be among the very worst of human failings, invariably a cowardly expression of frustrations and shortcomings that do not bear close self-scrutiny by the perpetrators for fear of their being made to confront them. 

Gay bashing is not the only form of hate crime, of course, and no civilized society- or community - should tolerate it in any shape or form.

GETTING THE BETTER OF BAD ATTITUDE

Once, being gay was a crime,

g-a-y not invented for sexual identity,

dictionary meaning 'strikingly pretty’

while ‘homosexual’ the more polite term

in village, town, and city

Invariably, we would hear

queer, pouf, homo, fag or even shirt-lifter

hurled as a term of (everyday) abuse

at anyone even suspected of harbouring

intimate thoughts and desires

towards a same sex lover (real or fantasy)

daring (heaven forbid) to light fires

in the hearts of those others

who, too, longed to dive under covers

and be true (if well out of sight)

to a secret self dying to tell all and burst

into orgasm, forced instead to follow

convention, be seen to live 

a ‘normal’ life (whatever that might be) 

according to criteria laid down 

by a society verging on hysteria for its inability 

to see woods for trees 

or its so-called betters for their hypocrisies 

but, rather, preferring to take 

the moral high, cite this or that religion-speak,

cross the street rather than chance 

looking a suspect homosexual in the eye, 

acknowledge his or her right 

to draw breath in a world forever

heard protesting that a common humanity 

actually exists

Alas, bigotry persists, old prejudices

as likely to win the day as new laws meant

to embrace, reaffirm, and reinforce

a basic Human Right to live and let live,

gay or straight

Time passes, and bad attitudes (hopefully);

no room (ever) for complacency

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2016

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised (2013) and the title revised (2016) from an earlier version as it appears as 'A Strategy for Identity' in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010.]