Oh No! Gay Porn!!
Noted with irritation:
Gay author Greg Herren said he was surprised when he was asked to give a presentation to the Gay-Straight Alliance at Manchester High School in Chesterfield County, Va.
He was told that his presentation had been approved by the faculty adviser of the school’s one-year-old Gay-Straight Alliance, as well as by the principal of the school. He was even asked to donate copies of some of his books for a new gay section in the school library.
“I found myself, whenever I thought about it, kind of bemused at my own prejudices about Virginia, and red states in general,” said Herren. “Obviously, my preconceived notion that red states are hotbeds of intolerance, ignorance, and hatred masquerading as Christianity and ‘family values’ was pretty off base.”
But last Thursday — just one week before his scheduled presentation — Herren said he was contacted by a reporter from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, who wanted to interview him about the controversy surrounding his scheduled event.
That was the first he had heard about any controversy.
Herren then discovered that the Virginia Family Policy Network had initiated an e-mail campaign characterizing Herren as a “gay porn” writer and suggesting that it was not appropriate for him to be in contact with students. The e-mail urged parents to contact the school and object to Herren’s visit.
[Reported by the Washington Blade in "High school cancels appearance by gay author: School officials rescind invite after e-mail protest", by Eartha Melzer.]
Not only do I take the "gay" snub personally, I take the "gay porn" snub personally, since I, too, am an [avocational] "gay pornographer". I haven't met Greg, but we move in the same friendly and devoted circles of authors and editors — circles, mind you, that don't meet behind dumpsters in dark allies or in dimly lit, filthy basements.
No, our writing, our books, can be found on the shelves at your local mega bookstore — I still get a small kick out of having my words in 4 or 5 books on the shelves when I visit my local Barnes & Noble.
This, I think, is as it should be. I have written elsewhere (see, e.g., the link to the right or above to Jay Neal's website; Jay Neal is my nom de porn) that what started out as an exercise for me in writing fiction for an outlet that presented itself, soon became something that I practice with care and deliberation, which I think is important, and to which I feel something of a calling. In my case to do what I can to help bears (stereotypically: fat, hairy men) see themselves as positive sexual beings, and to help everyone who will read my words to get over their unhealthy squeamishness about sex.
Yes, yes, I can hear the hounds in the background yelping that such stuff is not "appropriate" for school-age children. (I am confounded by this: let them graduate from high school before they hear the word "homosexual" — to describe already familiar urges — but take the 5-year-olds to fundamentalist anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage protests to carry signs like "God Hates Fags"? Is it just me, or is there some double-standard going on with this?)
Well, get this: we gay pornographers can speak about writing without using "dirty words". Imagine that! I know that it must be quite a surprise that I've written this much without saying anything relating to the male sexual anatomy or used any of the words commonly used to describe what two men do … together.
To be honest, when I write a story the sex bits don't always come out that well, because I find them significantly less interesting than the characters and their interactions as full-blooded, social, and sexual beings. But please don't tell anyone I said so, because some people think my sex bits are hot, and I don't want to disillusion them.
But I usually don't say that, because I don't want to protest that there's not much sex in my stories anyway, because I don't think it should matter one way or another when it's adults reading them. I really don't want to facilitate (by claiming that I write artistic "erotica" rather than "pornography") those who would make the Playboy excuse that they only read the articles and never look at the pictures, because I don't think there's anything wrong with the pictures.
And that's one reason why I write stories with sex in them: I'm demonstrating in the clearest way I know that I think it's good to talk about sex.
Which, now that I'm back to the topic, has nothing to do with anything, because Mr. Herren's visit to the school would have had nothing to do with sex, or gay porn, and I guess I'm just a little outaged at all these reactionaries' thinking that it would. Do they think that a grown man doesn't know how to speak appropriately to children, young people, even young adults, just because he writes "gay porn"? I'd rather expect him, as a professional author, to have a better command of appropriate language and topics than his critics, who evidently can't help thinking about sex whenever they hear the word "gay".
Honestly, they need to grow up a little and take a lesson from happy, well-adjusted gay authors about how to integrate sex into lives so that they might hope to become fully functioning human beings.