I’ve never liked using the word ‘queer’ and I was surprised as anyone when I found myself binge watching Queer Eye on Saturday night. In case you don’t know or have forgotten about this Reality TV franchise it’s now in its seventh season and it features some gay guys who call themselves the Fab Five. In each show they give lifestyle and fashion makeovers to a guest. It could be a makeover for straight guys, straight women or gay guys coming out. I've seen a sampling of all of these.
I actually started watching it not so much as a choice but because I couldn’t find my remote that got lost in my bedding. I’d just finished watching the end of Next in Fashion and because the main fashion designer in that show, Tan, is also in Queer Eye Netflix's took me into an episode of Queer Eye and by the time I located the remote I was curious enough to keep watching. I already knew Tan as a sweet guy who is emphatic with the contestants on Next in Fashion. But what really hooked me to keep watching QE was a co-host named Karamo who seemed to be be able to give good, solid lifestyle advice to the guests. After a quick Google search I learned he was a licensed social worker and psychotherapist for ten years before going into the media work. Rounding out the Fab Five is a hairstylist named Jonathan, a food and wine expert, and an interior designer who does home makeovers while the rest of the guys work on the guest.
Jonathan is my least favorite personality on the show and he's also the most flamboyant who loves being the center of attention. He's an over-the-top type who often wears dresses and ‘swishes it up’ for the camera. But we do occasionally see glimpses of depth in his personally when he’s one-on-one with the guests. However, I can't get used to seeing a beard and dress on the same person. I’ve known quite a few gay guys in my lifetime (between the floral industry and art classes) and only one them was what I'd call gay-dramatic like Jonathan.
In the Continuum Care Complex where I live there are at four gay women (two couples) and I heard a rumor there are a couple of guys but if I've met them they are too deep in the closet for me to have guessed. The women neither flaunt it nor hide it and are generally treated well by everyone except one of the guys recently called one of the couples “butch ladies” to their faces. They laughed it off but I was shocked and blurted out, “That was mean-spirited!”
I guess what I'm walking around the barn to say is it just never occurred to me to be prejudice against this entire segment of society. People who want to shove gays back in the closet because---I'm guessing---the flamboyant ones make them too uncomfortable and they don’t seem to acknowledge or care that gays are nothing new. Indigenous people around the world all have centuries old language for gender variations in their communities. Two-Spirits in North American Tribes have never been considered to be male or female.
I know from the talk around here that the United Methodist Church is splitting up over the issue of acceptance or non-acceptance of LGBTQ community. According to a recent article in Christianity Today 1,800 churches in the U.S. have taken advantage of the exit plan the church came up with a few years ago to split. Closer to home one of my fellow residents is involved in writing a handbook for his church on the subject. I wanted to ask him why he cares so much and how does the Church square its position with the biological reasons why we have gay people born? Does it ignore the fact that homosexuality appears in the animal kingdom? Though I don’t really need to ask to guess the push-back comes from the passages and parables in his Bible, a Bible that have been edited, added to and subtracted from by various mortal men over many centuries. To me it makes more sense to believe that if God made a certain percentage of all humans and animals on earth gay then He meant for them to be here and for that reason alone we shouldn’t turn our backs on them.
And if He didn’t mean for them to be here and it’s proven in the future that gayness is without a doubt a kind of birth defect caused by a hormonal differentiation between the organs and the brain that could be treated and corrected in utero how will the Church feel about its history of shunning people who were born gay before this science is available? Will the Church be among the first to try to push for laws to punish parents who might choose, for whatever reason, not to treat their babies in utero? Would they say if a fetus is too far along for the treatment that that is an acceptable reason to have an abortion? An understanding of gender selection in the brain that differs from a babies' sex organs will be commonly accepting in scientific and medical communities in the not too distance future, but it will bring with it a whole new set of moral choices to the gay debate.
We live in a country with Great Divides with neither side listening to the other. We have some states making "don't say gay" laws and a few parents wanting to keep their babies 'gender fluid' until they are old enough to pick. While waiting for the science to become widely accepted, wouldn't it be nice if we could find a way to rein in the extremes to find a common ground in the middle. Compromise and tolerance needs to come back in vogue. If only there was a makeover show to make that happen. ©
