I attended a gay boxing club in London once and it was
great, right up my street. I enthused about it to a heterosexual colleague and
he asked me, quite genuinely and interestedly, what the point of a gay boxing
club was. He pointed out that there are boxing clubs, just go to one of them.
You don’t get straight boxing clubs, why do you need a gay one? I pointed out
that you do get straight boxing clubs, they’re called boxing clubs.
His incomprehension was frustrating but understandable. He’s
grown up in a society that has validated his sexual orientation from before he
even knew he had one. From that first pre-teen birthday party, to the first
school disco, to hanging out underage in the local pub, to university balls,
festivals and clubs, to work Christmas dos: at all of these he has been able to
express his sexual preferences clearly and with only the fear of rejection to
hold him back.
I and the millions of other Western gay people of my
generation have only received validation of our own inherent orientations incrementally, reluctantly and so recently that often it has come
far too late to ease or prevent long-standing and deep-seated mental health issues, or worse, suicide. While my colleague was holding hands with a girl at that
pre-teen birthday party, I was repressing the urge to do the same with a boy I
liked. While he was snogging a girl at the school disco, reluctantly so was I,
because homosexual behaviour was wordlessly but quite clearly forbidden. While
he was flirting with young women at college, I had to spend time gauging a
situation with gentle questions, dropping miniscule hints, all with the fear
of, not only rejection, but retribution and potential violence.
The importance of gay spaces, even in these seemingly
enlightened times, cannot be understated. To be able to strike up a
conversation with an attractive human being, to be able to hold your partner’s
hand, to sit and talk freely about your life and desires without judgement, to
behave naturally in public without fear of repression and disgust is something
straight people take for granted. As they should. As we all should. But gay
people can’t do these things unthinkingly. When gay people do these things they
are political acts. Consequences have to be considered. Pros and cons weighed
up. And often a repressive and unhappy decision made.
Until same sex couples and homosexuality are acknowledged
with as little thought as heterosexuality, gay spaces allow us the freedoms
straight people aren’t even aware they have. I was taken to my first gay pub at
the age of 16, and I was overwhelmed, not only because I was a closeted
16-year-old, but also because I had to entirely rethink what a pub could be.
The idea that a social venue or event could be somewhere I met a lad in the way
that my heterosexual peers met girls, or even just made like-minded friends I
could talk about boys with, was a revelation to me. While straight people are
exploring their burgeoning sexuality, we are repressing ours. And the results
are disastrous.
It seems unlikely that Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was the
puppet of ISIS he claimed to be. If he was driven by their orders, they show
remarkable insight into the things I’ve been talking about above, by striking
at the heart of what gay people rely on the most – a safe gay space to be
themselves.
More likely it seems that Mateen was driven by demons many of
his victims would have been familiar with, as he struggled to come to terms
with his own homosexual desires. He was a regular at Pulse nightclub, he used gay dating apps, and he did that classic thing we all did as gay
people growing up: deflect suspicion in friends and family members about our
own same-sex attraction by showing disgust of it in others. All gay people
experience some level of internalised homophobia, it’s an inevitable symptom of
being brought up in a homophobic society. But Mateen’s upbringing via a
religion that is at least dismissive of homosexuality, at worst murderous, and
then confused by the reluctant validation of it he found in modern American
society, sent him on a path most of us can’t comprehend, turning him against the very people who could have helped him.
It used to be that you might be scared of being seen going
into a gay venue, but you were safe once you were in there. Now it feels like
you’re safer outside. At least you can just fucking run. The Orlando shooting
is an unwelcome reminder of the 1999 bombing of the Admiral Duncan, which made
me step onto Old Compton Street with trepidation when I moved to London, rather
than the joy and enthusiasm I should have experienced. But now as I did then, I
will carry that anxiety right up to the bar of any gay venue I go to and buy it
a (few) drink(s). I can’t stop going to gay venues, none of us can. We need
them.
