Are Gay Men More "Evolved" Than Straights When it Comes to Sex?

Anthony Wiener

There's an interesting debate raging over at DailyKos.com, a political blog, as a result of a diary entitled, A Gay Man's Perspective on Anthony Weiner.

Nutshell? Gay men tend to view sex in a much less uptight way than the heterosexual majority, at least in America. And if more people thought the way many of us do, there'd be a lot fewer problems in the world.

One of the most central, yet under-discussed, aspects of human existence is the fact that we are all sexual beings. Sex is, for most of us, something that consumes a great deal of our brain power. This is not unnatural - in fact, it is one reason why our species has flourished on this rare, blue and green speck of life floating in a distant arm of an unremarkable galaxy. Sex is why we are all here, and sex is a basic human function. When we're not actually having it, it's probably waiting in the wings to remind us that we probably should have it sometime soon.

As a gay man, I live in a community that has embraced sexuality with more maturity and groundedness than most other communities in the history of our species. So often, our civilization has evolved a series of rituals designed to pretend that sex is something separate from all those other puzzle pieces that together construct who we are in this world. Gay male society has evolved a different set of rituals - rituals that embrace sexuality as a part of the human experience, and celebrate it and take joy in all its best permutations.

That exalted - and, dare I say, quite positive - state of affairs has yet to fully prevail in the mainstream American consciousness, yet the online world has created opportunities for sex to crash through the carefully-constructed facades that define what we consider "civilized" society. For the gay male, this is not much of an issue. We were always more in touch with that primal urge, and we knew that while our penises required a certain amount of our attention, the resulting peccadilloes did not define our larger role in the world. Sex is a dance, sometimes executed with one partner for many years, and sometimes spinning from partner to partner in a beautiful series of shared joys. And sometimes, that dance stops making sense, entering a fantasy world in which we find ourselves eschewing expectations and indulging fancies that others might consider inappropriate. The online world makes such indiscretions easier to commit, and that can be both a beautiful thing and an embarrassment.

It's not a new argument: Dan Savage has been making a similar one for years about what he considers society's unhealthy attachment to an "all or nothing" concept of monogamy.

One straight man has already taken the original commenter to task, posting another diary saying, basically, it's fine if you view sex the way you do, but why all the (hypocritical) moral judgment on people who believe monogamy is a possible, and preferable, ideal for society to hold?

It's worth noting that there are also plenty of gays who've chimed in saying they disagree with the original gay poster.

And, of course, the whole debate is complicated by the fact that a group's "ideals" may not match its "reality." Do ideals matter when they're not lived up to very often? This is kind of important because it informs the whole "gay" take on sex: let's all be more realistic about how people really are, not how we'd like them to be.

My take on all this? It's always problematic to make sweeping generalizations about entire groups of people (because there are always so many exceptions on all sides). But I do think it sort of goes without saying that there are sexual trends and tendencies in the gay and bi male community that are pretty different from the heterosexual majority -- and that there's some real wisdom in some of these attitudes.

In short, I think heterosexuals really could learn a lot from us.

But are we move "evolved" on sexual matters?

I'd never say that, mostly because along with the "good" aspects of gay and bi male sexuality, there are also some very, very bad aspects: lately, for example, a willingness in some gay circles to tolerate, or even celebrate, wildly irresponsible activities like barebacking with casual or multiple partners. There's also sometimes a tendency to focus on sex to the exclusion of intimacy. And don't get me started on the ridiculous objectification of each other we sometimes do.

Indeed, I'd go further and say that while gay and bi men possess some wisdom on sexual matters, I also think there's wisdom in some of the ideals of commitment, even monogamy, in the heterosexual world, and I think as a community, we could learn something from them too.

I think this is the essence of how societies evolve: an immigrant or previously reviled group is finally welcomed into a greater society, and both sides change a little -- hopefully assimilating the best of both worlds, but sadly, sometimes taking on the worst aspects of both worlds as well. It's the very essence of change, which is why I think liberals tend to more quickly embrace "scary" new groups and conservatives tend to reject them.

But what do you think?