Homosexuality in truth and fiction
I am old enough to remember some of the early debates about including individuals with various homosexual tendencies and actions in fiction. Specifcally I remember that from the beginning those justifying it argued that fiction was meant to reflect reality, not an idealized goal.
I have also been around long enough to realize that by and large this is a lie. The key reason I can say this is because the "fiction is meant to reflect reailty" group very heavily corresponds with those who used boycott and other anti-literary freedom means to stop DC from publishing Superman works written by Orson Scott Card.
Why did they object to Card as a writter? A little because Card had been bold enough to support Proposition 8, and they objected to anyone who disagrreed with them having a say about public policy. However it was mainly because Orson Scott Card told the unvarnished truth about the lived experiences of interactions that infleunced many to have homosexual tendencies. However actually Card avoided the truth fully, because many with homosexual tendencies and inclinations were sexually abused by someone of the same sex when they were under 12. Note conditional phrasing, not absolute statements.
Card showed the equally problematic and quite widespread state of teenagers being sexually exploited and manipulated in toxic relationships with much older adults of the same sex. Considering that is what brought down Detroit's first openly homosexual city council member, and considering that is what brought down Theodore McCarrick, although most of his victims were adults who he had power over which he misused, and considering the actual stats, one would think people would welcome discussions of this, especially if the goal of portraying Homosexual individuals and relationships was to present the truth.
However as anyone who has any even limited contact with modern TV knows, portraying the truth is not the goal in presenting homosexual relationships. If it were we would have a very different picture presented. Let me explain.
While the exact prevalance of homosexual relationships is not 100% clear, the best studies suggest that historically those who atleast fit the mold presented in almost all TV portrayals of gravitating fully or almost exclusively to homosexual relations and not feeling any attraction to the same sex is at about 5% or less of the population. Probably historcally less but with the rhetoric spewing from entertainment media especially TV these days, it may be a bit closer to 5% now.
However people who derive truth from television tend to estimate it more around 20% to 25%. A case in point in my experience on this front is Switched at Birth. Of the characters portrayed it was probably at least 20% who were homosexual.
The prevalance is actually probably the least problematic issue in portrayals. Secondly it is the general portrayal of them as having the goal to get married and establish committed, stable relationships. In the case of males engaged in homosexual relationships this is virtually always a lie in television. There exist almost no homosexual males who are in committed exclusive sexual relationships. Most who outwardly would tell others this is what they are doing are in fact in a relationship in which they openly accept the other individual will engage in sex outside the relationship.
Stats show that homoseuxals are much less faithful in a monogomistic sexual way than those who primarily engage in heterosexual activities. Yet film and TV only very very rarely portray homosexuals as anything other than fully faithful. This is a clear indication that TV producers are engaged in creating a false reality, not trying to capture what is really going on. It also indicates that it is not just an issue of not wanting to deal with sexual unfaithfulness because shows that will portray married couples as being sexually unfaithful to each other, often never protray those engaged in homosexual activity in this light.
An even bigger problem with how homosexuality is protrayed in film and TV, but mainly in TV, is that it is almost always portrayed as the default atraction state of those who have any level of such attraction. Homosexuals dating people of the opposite sex are always protrayed as closeted deniers. This elides the huge number of people who are to some extent on the bisexual spectrum. At least for females this group outnumbers those who are clearly only homosexuals, and for males bisexual erasure is also skewing our understanding.
Due to positions of attack against anyone who publicly presents themselves as someone with any level of homosexual attraction who has married someone of the opposite sex, and due to media glee if any such individual gets divorced, ignoring the very real stats of people who have in the past had some level or other of homosexual attraction being happily and stabily married to those of the opposite sex, I understand why those so married often are hesitant to publicizetheir existence.
Few people want their marriage held up for ridicule and attack especially with the modern emergence on the internet of very toxic behaviors. Oddly enough the people most willing to publicize thier situation in this regard are not often the best to be held up as examples of it.
The Deseret News about a two years ago ran an article with several quotes from and descriptions of people who had dealt with same gender attraction who were married to a person of the opposite sex in a very happy marriage.
I also understand why from a psychological perspective there is hesitancy to bring this up too much. As President Hinckley stated on more than one occasion getting married is not a reasonable or adequate cure for same-gender attraction. No one in LDS Family Services, or actually anywhere else outside of liberal fantasies, talks of "pray the gay away".
This is the third toxicity of media portrayals with regard to homosexuality. When they present conservative religious reactions they are almost always negative and built on false understandings of how conservative religious people react to such situations, reinforced by the fact that the very narrative about the spectrum of sexual attraction plus the general narrative about human sexuality is false.
The biggest problem of most TV protrayals of sexuality is not the over portrayal of homsexual prevalence. It is the portrayal of two unworkable sexual relationship situations. One is the new pattern of sex in hiding, move in together, and then marry. The way this is protrayed in "family-friendly" TV is the most unfamily friendly and toxic way to portray it. Basically it is a set of narratives that lead us to think that this process will lead to stable families. Those who have lived anything approaching it in reality know that casual sex leads to much more heart ache than family friendly shows ever protray, and in fact than any TV shows protray, but I will get to that problem further down. Cohabitation almost always breaks up long before marriage, in part because the men often view it as a short term relationship while the women often think the man is their fiancee. I saw this disconnect first hand from talking to couples in such relationships on my mission. Social function statictics also bare out that children raised by cohabitating couples have the general negative social indicators we see with single parent households much more than the more positive general indicators we see with intact two-biological parent married couples.
The most toxic message protrayed by TV and other media however is the notion that one can engage in the hook up, quick sex, one night stand culture and not be emotionally burned. What a realistic analysis of some of the least meritious attacks in the #Metoo movement and of a large percnetage of claims about sexual violence on college campuses tells us is that we are in many cases not dealing with crimes. True, the actions of Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nassar, and of some college sutdents clearly are criminal. Nassar probably does not belong in this consideration at all, since his actions were a form of abuse from power.
However there are some accusations that basicly boil down to women being unhappy because they are left emotionally empty by meaningless sex. What we have to realize is that the use of persuasion for sex is not criminal, but we also have to teach the truth that random quick sexual encounters will leave people especially women feeling emotionally empty. The fact that you feel emotionally empty does not mean you have been criminally violated. We need to teach this truth more clearly.
I have also been around long enough to realize that by and large this is a lie. The key reason I can say this is because the "fiction is meant to reflect reailty" group very heavily corresponds with those who used boycott and other anti-literary freedom means to stop DC from publishing Superman works written by Orson Scott Card.
Why did they object to Card as a writter? A little because Card had been bold enough to support Proposition 8, and they objected to anyone who disagrreed with them having a say about public policy. However it was mainly because Orson Scott Card told the unvarnished truth about the lived experiences of interactions that infleunced many to have homosexual tendencies. However actually Card avoided the truth fully, because many with homosexual tendencies and inclinations were sexually abused by someone of the same sex when they were under 12. Note conditional phrasing, not absolute statements.
Card showed the equally problematic and quite widespread state of teenagers being sexually exploited and manipulated in toxic relationships with much older adults of the same sex. Considering that is what brought down Detroit's first openly homosexual city council member, and considering that is what brought down Theodore McCarrick, although most of his victims were adults who he had power over which he misused, and considering the actual stats, one would think people would welcome discussions of this, especially if the goal of portraying Homosexual individuals and relationships was to present the truth.
However as anyone who has any even limited contact with modern TV knows, portraying the truth is not the goal in presenting homosexual relationships. If it were we would have a very different picture presented. Let me explain.
While the exact prevalance of homosexual relationships is not 100% clear, the best studies suggest that historically those who atleast fit the mold presented in almost all TV portrayals of gravitating fully or almost exclusively to homosexual relations and not feeling any attraction to the same sex is at about 5% or less of the population. Probably historcally less but with the rhetoric spewing from entertainment media especially TV these days, it may be a bit closer to 5% now.
However people who derive truth from television tend to estimate it more around 20% to 25%. A case in point in my experience on this front is Switched at Birth. Of the characters portrayed it was probably at least 20% who were homosexual.
The prevalance is actually probably the least problematic issue in portrayals. Secondly it is the general portrayal of them as having the goal to get married and establish committed, stable relationships. In the case of males engaged in homosexual relationships this is virtually always a lie in television. There exist almost no homosexual males who are in committed exclusive sexual relationships. Most who outwardly would tell others this is what they are doing are in fact in a relationship in which they openly accept the other individual will engage in sex outside the relationship.
Stats show that homoseuxals are much less faithful in a monogomistic sexual way than those who primarily engage in heterosexual activities. Yet film and TV only very very rarely portray homosexuals as anything other than fully faithful. This is a clear indication that TV producers are engaged in creating a false reality, not trying to capture what is really going on. It also indicates that it is not just an issue of not wanting to deal with sexual unfaithfulness because shows that will portray married couples as being sexually unfaithful to each other, often never protray those engaged in homosexual activity in this light.
An even bigger problem with how homosexuality is protrayed in film and TV, but mainly in TV, is that it is almost always portrayed as the default atraction state of those who have any level of such attraction. Homosexuals dating people of the opposite sex are always protrayed as closeted deniers. This elides the huge number of people who are to some extent on the bisexual spectrum. At least for females this group outnumbers those who are clearly only homosexuals, and for males bisexual erasure is also skewing our understanding.
Due to positions of attack against anyone who publicly presents themselves as someone with any level of homosexual attraction who has married someone of the opposite sex, and due to media glee if any such individual gets divorced, ignoring the very real stats of people who have in the past had some level or other of homosexual attraction being happily and stabily married to those of the opposite sex, I understand why those so married often are hesitant to publicizetheir existence.
Few people want their marriage held up for ridicule and attack especially with the modern emergence on the internet of very toxic behaviors. Oddly enough the people most willing to publicize thier situation in this regard are not often the best to be held up as examples of it.
The Deseret News about a two years ago ran an article with several quotes from and descriptions of people who had dealt with same gender attraction who were married to a person of the opposite sex in a very happy marriage.
I also understand why from a psychological perspective there is hesitancy to bring this up too much. As President Hinckley stated on more than one occasion getting married is not a reasonable or adequate cure for same-gender attraction. No one in LDS Family Services, or actually anywhere else outside of liberal fantasies, talks of "pray the gay away".
This is the third toxicity of media portrayals with regard to homosexuality. When they present conservative religious reactions they are almost always negative and built on false understandings of how conservative religious people react to such situations, reinforced by the fact that the very narrative about the spectrum of sexual attraction plus the general narrative about human sexuality is false.
The biggest problem of most TV protrayals of sexuality is not the over portrayal of homsexual prevalence. It is the portrayal of two unworkable sexual relationship situations. One is the new pattern of sex in hiding, move in together, and then marry. The way this is protrayed in "family-friendly" TV is the most unfamily friendly and toxic way to portray it. Basically it is a set of narratives that lead us to think that this process will lead to stable families. Those who have lived anything approaching it in reality know that casual sex leads to much more heart ache than family friendly shows ever protray, and in fact than any TV shows protray, but I will get to that problem further down. Cohabitation almost always breaks up long before marriage, in part because the men often view it as a short term relationship while the women often think the man is their fiancee. I saw this disconnect first hand from talking to couples in such relationships on my mission. Social function statictics also bare out that children raised by cohabitating couples have the general negative social indicators we see with single parent households much more than the more positive general indicators we see with intact two-biological parent married couples.
The most toxic message protrayed by TV and other media however is the notion that one can engage in the hook up, quick sex, one night stand culture and not be emotionally burned. What a realistic analysis of some of the least meritious attacks in the #Metoo movement and of a large percnetage of claims about sexual violence on college campuses tells us is that we are in many cases not dealing with crimes. True, the actions of Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nassar, and of some college sutdents clearly are criminal. Nassar probably does not belong in this consideration at all, since his actions were a form of abuse from power.
However there are some accusations that basicly boil down to women being unhappy because they are left emotionally empty by meaningless sex. What we have to realize is that the use of persuasion for sex is not criminal, but we also have to teach the truth that random quick sexual encounters will leave people especially women feeling emotionally empty. The fact that you feel emotionally empty does not mean you have been criminally violated. We need to teach this truth more clearly.
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