Asexuals United! -- Give Me a Break!

or NO SEX PLEASE -- WE'RE GLBTA!

You may or may not have noticed how some GLBT bloggers are adding "asexuals" to the list of oppressed minorities (Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender). If you have any sense at all, you're probably going "what the fuck?" [Or perhaps "what the no-fuck" might be more appropriate.] Salon and The New York Times both did articles on the (small) number of people who are identifying as asexual and who claim that, like gay or straight, it is an orientation.

No, I'm not making this up!

It's almost becoming -- hell it has become--comical the way that groups are stealing the language of gay liberation -- "asexual and proud" like hell! -- and appropriating it for their own pathetic purposes. Of course, some dim bulbs in the GLBT movement are perfectly happy to let them do it. As I've said before, some well-meaning but intellectually challenged individuals are loathe to discriminate against anyone who might be "oppressed," so they''ll add just about any group imaginable to GLBT (thank goodness that does not extend to pedophiles or bestialists, but in the future, who knows?)

Asexuality has different meanings but for our purposes it refers to people who have no sexual attraction for anyone, male or female. Naturally they have no sex lives, or if they do, don't get any pleasure out of them. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't an orientation -- it's a disability and it does no one -- least of all the asexuals who are missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures -- any good to pretend otherwise.

Frankly, as a gay man I find it deeply offensive to have these "asexuals" comparing themselves to gay people. Sex is the big bugaboo in our society, not a lack of it. I don't know of anyone being beaten to death because they were asexual, or being fired from their job because of it, or any really negative societal response except maybe laughter, pity, or disbelief. The fact that homosexuality was once seen as a mental or medical disorder doesn't change my mind one bit. Homosexuality is not a disability; asexuality is.

David Jay (pictured) founded a group for asexuals called Aven when he was all of 19. Many people don't know if they're gay, straight, bi or what-have-you at 19, but Jay has identified as an asexual for the past four years. Even people at 23 or (much) older often haven't determined exactly where they are on the sexual scale, so it seems a mite premature of Jay to classify himself as anything. But the asexual movement -- pause for a big guffaw right here -- is just the kind of stupid thing that an immature mind would conceive of and post on the Internet.

There are different reports as to the number of members in AVEN, everything from 100 (which seems reasonable) to 4000 (which is pathetic). I've no doubt that a lot of sad, sexless people who for one (bad) reason or another have zero sex drive have happily signed up with the group to validate their dysfunctional lives. Some of them may be people who couldn't get laid if they showed up in hooker heaven with a pile of thousand dollar bills in their fists. Many therapists [unless they're politically over-correct assholes] agree that these are people who need therapy and counseling, not to be told that their asexuality is just another "orientation."

Comments that Jay makes to reporters make it clear that he has a very negative attitude toward sex, which is either the cause or result of his "asexuality." He literally doesn't seem to understand what it is that he's missing.

It's appalling that some GLBT people would take the asexual movement seriously. Again, I can only assume its very young or at least very immature people who have no real sense of the long-time gay movement, the struggles before and after Stonewall (and still on-going) and really don't understand why comparing asexuals to homosexuals is blatantly ludicrous, inaccurate, and even, as I said, offensive.

And there's something else that's troubling about this. In a New York Times piece written by Mary Duenwald, she writes about a 32-year-old man who got married hoping that it would "fix" his asexuality. Unfortunately, it only resulted in divorce. Duenwald then writes: "now he is living with a younger man in a relationship that he described as loving and romantic but free of sex."

Frankly, this guy sounds more like someone who's gay and in denial, someone who desires men sexually but is too hung up for whatever reason to act upon it, then a genuine (if there is such a thing) "asexual." [Asexual may merely be the opposite of bisexual and just as trendy, if not yet as political.]

And how many more of the men and women attracted to AVEN are in this category, how many more will fall victim to Jay's childishness and irresponsibility. Even if one believes that some people are "oriented" to be asexual (that's like not liking food, as one therapist puts it), it doesn't mean that many people who classify themselves as such don't need counseling and sex therapy and help of some kind to discover why there is this abnormal gap in their psycho-sexual make up. GLBT activists should not and hopefully most will not enable these people in their delusion.

Sure, there may be people who are not sexually active and may be happy in spite of it. You can be deaf and blind and still be happy -- but you're still disabled. Just like deaf people who refuse to get cochlear impants, "asexuals" have the right to refuse treatment or advice. But they are not an oppressed minority group, and I believe -- despite all the pc fools out there -- if they continue to insist that they are it will only backfire on them.

Now I'm going to have some safe sex. The rest of you -- jerk off!

Some People Just Don't Get It

Boston Legal craps out.

On tonight's episode of Boston Legal -- the series finale, and not a moment too soon -- two heterosexual male characters, Denny (William Shatner) and Alan (James Spada) get married.

Anybody really feel like watching this storyline considering what happened with Proposition 8 and so on?

Boston Legal has had a few pro-gay episodes in the past, but this one -- written by the producer David E. Kelley (pictured) comes off as something cobbled together by a liberal -- who like many liberals -- just doesn't get it when it comes to gays.

Frankly I'm sick of shows and movies that try to equate the platonic love between two heterosexual men with the romantic love between two gay men. [And yes, I do understand that Kelley was in part underlining the irony that the most significant relationship these two skirt-chasing heteros had was actually with each other.] I have lots of friends -- gay and straight, male and female, but for now let's stick with gay men -- whom I love and care about very much, but I would never consider marrying them. I have experienced romantic love and passion and know that it is very different from the love of platonic friendship. Non-romantic love, especially between a parent and child, can certainly run very deep, but it is a different experience altogether from romantic passion.

On the show Alan argues before a judge and snippily debates a gay activist who, rightly, finds the idea of these two straight guys getting married to be offensive, making a complete mockery of what marriage equality -- emphasis on equality -- is all about. Alan insists that having sex is not always a deciding factor in marriage, and that many people marry individuals that they do not love in the romantic sense. The judge adds that homosexuals often marry heterosexuals in passionless relationships, and sometimes gay men marry lesbians. "You wouldn't want the government telling them they couldn't do that, would you?' she asks the activist.

Of course this sentiment completely misses the point that the whole emphasis of gay liberation (including marriage equality) is to remove the stigma and shame that is still attached to being gay for those very people who wind up in those sham "mixed" marriages. Besides, even in cases such as those -- as well as cases where one person marries another for, say, financial gain -- at least one party has some romantic feelings for the other (for instance the straight wife of a husband whom she doesn't realize is secretly homosexual). In the case of Denny and Alan, neither party feels any romantic attachment to the other. But hey, they love each other, Kelley seems to say, so they're just a gay couple without the sex.

Wrong.

To be fair, Boston Legal is all about being irreverent, and the show has been playing up the brotherly love between the two men for quite some time now. They have had sexless sleepovers, for instance. Perhaps we're supposed to see these fellows as being so cool and secure that they can get married and have no problem with it, but it's hard to forget that Denny is a Republican who in one episode referred to a character as a "faggot, a total faggot." As is often the case with Boston Legal, the whole situation is completely contrived anyway. Denny wants the younger Alan to get his money, and could simply leave it to him in a will, but even the judge observes that a marriage will give them certain tax benefits. Chuck and Larry anyone?

So this is a mockery and nothing more. Even the supposedly more liberal Alan doesn't seem to understand what he's doing wrong. The gay activist says -- and the judge agrees (although she allows the marriage to take place) -- that this will only open the door to the kinds of excesses and stupidities predicted by the religious right. [Let me make it clear that gay marriage opponents argue that if gays can get married simply because they love each other, then why can't, say, a sister and brother, or mother and son, get married as well because, after all, they love each other too. Yes, they are that stupid.]

Gay marriage equality is being compared to the fight against interracial marriage years ago. One can't imagine Alan -- or David E. Kelley -- arguing during that period that if a white and black person could marry one another then two white male friends should be able to get married, too, because, well, love is love.

Yes, some people don't marry for love. And yes, there are sexless marriages. But I can bet that the vast majority of gay couples who line up in Massachusetts and hoped to line up in California to get married did feel romantic passion for each other and that most of them had a fulfilling sex life as well.

To say that the "love" between these two silly guys Alan and Denny (they chase after women so relentlessly and indeed pathetically at times that they come off like Don Juan homosexuals, but Kelley never had the guts to go into that) is similar to the romantic love between two gay men, two lesbians, or indeed a straight man and woman, is ludicrous. Besides, after what happened in California and elsewhere, who the hell wants to see a show where two straight guys get married when millions of gay people who truly love each other can't?

When it comes to gays, some people just don't get it and probably never will.

How sad that this sometimes applies to the purportedly gay-friendly as well as to the bigots.