Is our pursuit of the perfect family making us ill?

I started writing this in response to two articles on 'SoSo Gay' ... the first was, 'What is the Church So Afraid Of?', the second 'Why are HIV Diagnoses on the Rise?'. *

The answer to both questions seemed to be connected as soon as I read them.  Both relate to how we inter-relate, not only within the gay community but with everyone else.  

The people most of us know best are partners and lovers, next to them its our families, even if we don't always get along...no family I have ever known always does. Yet it is the issue of 'family' that I think ties these questions together, at least in part. What is family though anyway? Its a tough question these days, with gays adopting or asking female friends to surrogate, lesbians asking gays - and anti gay campaigners as it turns out - to crack one out for the turkey baster, stars seemingly adopting children by the tribe...the list of possible family structures seems limitless.   Yet despite such structures we were all 'conceived' in the same way; genetic materials met.  This is the ultimate creative act and the basis of 'Western' family.  Our love though - how we inter-relate- can't do it, nada, nothing, diddly squat - no immaculate conceptions here. 'Gabies' as a direct result of genetic exchange and behavioral reproductive actions are a myth. Or a fairytale, because its what we dream; to create something immortal of ourselves.  Now the LGBTQ community is traditionally creative, (if the stereotypes are to be believed) so we must on some level be deeply pissed about this.  I don't want kids but I saw an ex girlfriend's gorgeous baby today and he totally outshone anything I feel I have created. The point is we are at some level conscious of the fact that no matter how truly we love someone we cannot (currently) have 'our' children with them. Our creativity is different and our sense of mortality with it; part of our connection with this world cannot exist beyond us and we are sad for it. This would be depressing enough without the rest of society flaunting reproduction in our faces, but they do it all the time. Even at Gay Pride a friend of mine, a Doctor as it happens, was asked by a health promoter what he thought about gay contraception, his exasperated response was '....there is no conception to 'contra'!' I think he was wrong, there is, and I'll come back to this point. 

When LGBTQ people have children most of them are going to have to reach out beyond whatever their immediate family is for help to have children. This goes against heterosexual norms and changes the nature of 'family' as a unit. Yet this is not confined to clinical help, this could be friends willing to give time, energy, DNA and love to someone who is not part of their traditional 'family'. This is all subverts society, especially the Church. Its been conducting rites of passage based on one man and one woman making children for two thousand years.  That is the reason they dominate any discourse on the matter of reproduction. The system is built into how we live and die from baptisms to social security to inheritance tax.  Simon Johnson in his article 'What is the Church so afraid of?' says 'I consider myself to be a Christian.' Yet he confesses he does not believe in the central tenants of Christianity. He believes that this is a 'Christian society', so what he is really saying is he wants to belong to 'society.' Problem is, that society clings to the 'Christian 'family' as its core unit on so many levels that changing it threatens not merely the Church but social institutions at large.  This is why 'family' rites of passage are the current apex of the gay movement, they are a sign of inclusivity (not least from God). This reflects that like Simon, we don't often feel we are part of society, be it Christian or secular. This creates in us a deep sense of injustice but also a deep longing for our own 'families'. The question then is not all about the fear of the Church, but the projection onto the Church of our own fears - the overriding one here being isolation.

Societal 'family' comes from sex, if you want to be Christian about it, 'Marriage' has been held to be for this purpose alone. We can't have this at the moment, we are denied the possibility of our camp charade because we have to wank into a cup or have a Doctor place a zygote on the uterine wall - everything about our families is choreographed. So is it any wonder that what is the most natural urge (for us) in the world is something people keep doing? I'm talking about unsafe sex of course, to carry someone else's DNA in us -icky.  HIV/AIDS is in this sense the cruelest, most contemptuous shit ever. Period. It is torture.  I AM NOT advocating unsafe sex. I am saying we are denied what should be second nature - if we hold to our claim that homosexuality is 'natural'. A partner in that orgasmic moment represents what has been always denied us; the possibility of spontaneous 'natural' family that we in part originate. 

Another of my friends mentioned to me a while ago that an acquaintance of his was shocked he himself didn't have HIV. This person had decided since most of his friends had it, he may as well get it too, then they could all have sex and not worry. He was re-conceived as a member of their sexual family though his new status - sex was a constant reiteration of their communal bond. We both agreed this was more than a little fucked up but the party in question's 'family' ties were strained by his negative status. Waxing lyrical about it wasn't going to enable empathy, imagining a deep seated isolation from friends was the only thing that could do that - something I was not about to simulate. Its a rare thing for people to seek infection or give it, at least that's what we tell ourselves, but maybe 'breeding' does create a communal identity; new conceptions of people that most try very hard to 'contra'.  There is always something about a sense of belonging in these cases and we need to think  about what 'family' means to us because we are all on this scale of needing to belong. Our scene can be pretty one dimensional, leading to alienation, depression and desperation for both HIV positive and negative people. Do not forget that for many we are ourselves still seen as 'ill' simply because of our orientation. Couple that with large quantities of alcohol and drugs and you have a problem.  

This last point is best summed up by Albert Camus in his novel 'The Plague'. A town is cut off from the outside world as disease rips through the population.  The author notes that perhaps the most depressing thing about isolation is not physical suffering itself, but separation from loved ones as the quarantine is put into place.  The response of the towns people changes over time from violent panic to religious fervor to resignation, 'At the beginning, when they thought it was a sickness like any other, religion had its place. But when they saw that it was serious, they remembered pleasure.' (2001:93).  Camus is talking here about a '...sickness like any other...' as one that passes, but the people increasingly see no end to the situation. Faced with this prospect they take every pleasure they can, even if it means crowds in cafes and bars - the perfect transmission medium for the plague. Translating this to our situation, the Church is the societal barometer on gay marriage, its continued refusal to recognise anything other than heteronormativity is creating a quarantine; from legitimation of ourselves in each other and with wider society. Couple it with a sub culture struggling with and as disease and do not be surprised when people find solace in pleasure, in all its forms. 

Reading this back you might think I'm blaming HIV/AIDS rates on the Church, wider society, even biology for not accepting us. Perhaps I am in part, but there is plenty of room to blame ourselves and we need to take a long look in the mirror. HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns and marriage equality campaigns are all well and good but they are campaigns not social relations. Gaining equal marriage laws will not change the biology of our sex, our 'family' will always be different. We need to think bigger about this 'family' and we already have some headway in this direction but we are in danger of becoming complacent. Dare I say we could take a page out of the Church's book? They may hold the monopoly on 'traditional' family recognition, but they also teach community through their congregations. This to me is where 'family' lies for us, not in aping the nuclear family, but in generating behavioral communal 'family' through active communal choice. This is harder to maintain and as we doggedly pursue heteronormativity, something we can never have, we constantly remind ourselves of our permanent difference and give in to pleasure for its own sake.   How many times a week do you meet with friends to do something other than get wasted? If its a small number, start a coffee morning, a book club, football club, make dinner (without a bottle of wine...each...), organise a charitable a jumble sale..... 

I winced as I typed this, its twee and I like getting wasted but maybe it needs to take a back seat to building our communities from time to time. 

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* Both articles are available via: [ http://sosogay.org/2011/opinion-what-is-the-church-so-afraid-of/] & [http://sosogay.org/2011/opinion-why-are-hiv-diagnoses-on-the-rise/]

Camus. A. 2001 (1947). The Plague. (Buss. R. (Trans)). London. Allen Lane. (Penguin).

Is there a common resentment of young and old?

I've just watched the Archbishop of Canterbury's New Year's message and something struck me that has struck me over and again this past few months....and no it wasn't a desire for atheism.

Dr Williams' example of good young people were those working for the benefit of others – without wages, all very noble, though not universally practical. The point was, they were working for others. Then I started to think about the recent reports of spiralling care for the elderly. The Human Rights Commission and the Care Quality Commission have recently and correctly given damning reports on the state of social care. Last week a collaborative letter headed by Age UK has been written to MPs asking them to save the care sector. Words in the letter include, 'lonely, isolated, at risk, neglected' – that list could go on. The thing is, so many of these words were used by Dr Williams referring to young people. It begs the question, what underlying attribute do both the elderly and so many of these young people have in common? What is making this an issue right now? The answer, I believe is all about (un)employment and contribution. I have worked in the social care industry and I have worked for social security. One of the phrases for your tax or social security is 'contribution' ('Stamp' went out some time ago). The epistemology of the word is telling, you are paying towards society so it can help those who cannot feed or care for themselves (usually both) and society contributes back to them. This is done in the hope that when the time comes, society will protect you in turn. Its a wonderful system – in theory. The dark side to this is it propagates the emotional response that those who are not currently contributing never will or perhaps never have. They are lazy, louts, scroungers...or students. They spend their money on booze and drugs and have children to get a council flat...to take more. The problem is this flawed reasoning is bleeding over to include all the unemployed, all the elderly, all young people and this has huge ramifications. The sleaziest result perhaps, perpetuation of a belief that the more money you earn, the better you are and if you are out of that fiscal race you are nothing but a burden.

People often create difference by forming boundaries between 'us' and 'them' the most obvious difference is signs of affluence. These are usually material goods and the argument goes that the more people spend on them, the more employment is created and thus it is morally acceptable. Do the labourers making luxury goods get paid enough to pay for their own long term health care? Often not. Do their employers invest enough for their staff's long term needs? Often not. The problem is there are people out there helping the affluent (including the employers of said labourers) avoid paying their fair 'contribution' so that they might purchase more signs of affluence instead. Cheating the tax system is another industry, and it skews the contribution system against the poor. This means cheating the elderly, the unemployed, the young and the sick is also, by association, an industry because it drains the capital pool shared by everyone for the sake of consumption and production.

Now I have to talk about Adam Smith and I'm sorry about that because he's boring and something of a product of his age. In fact if he were alive now I think most people would think of him as a bit of a twat. He compares the work of labourers to the work of slaves...in terms of potential productivity...he does the same for children and by proxy, women. This he does in a cold economic way. To be fair to Adam Smith, he was writing in another age and sometimes we do have to get down to cold hard economics. The problem with this though is that we are currently enjoying the fruits of his thinking. He is a darling of right wing economics who espoused the idea of continual growth, without it being at the expense of anybody.....(did someone mention slaves earlier...?). This is the dream of the 'Free Market', but it only works if you are manning your market stall at all times and always buying to sell on. We have gotten to the point where constant wealth creation (and tax evasion) are ideals to be emulated. The moment you leave your stall, for what ever reason, your products, your past contributions or future return mean nothing. (The welfare state was supposed to plug this gap). The capitalist idea of drip down wealth consistently fails to reach the poorest and most vulnerable because the wealthy strip savings possibilities from the poor and seek to pay less and less to social assistance, even turning charity into industry. Well, the market is far from 'free', it does negatively impact those who begin their lives at a disadvantage and it seems its very ethos poisons attitudes to those out of the rat race.

Well Adam, fellow rich bastards, I've lost confidence. The cold hard economic facts are that perpetual profit is not possible for individuals. We live in a finite world and are finite beings. In order to ensure people get some semblance of decency when they are out of the market you need capital to circulate in a way that includes those no longer directly contributing through employment. I may sound like I'm teaching your grandmother to suck eggs here, but bear with me. Stock held indefinitely as bonds and shares is not 'stock' at all, like all commodities it should have a use by date. What would happen if all stock held unmoved, un-traded, not used as insurance (for over a certain period of time) was reinvested in the elderly, young people, education, health? How much money is out there simply for the sake of pixels on a computer screen and ink on a page? Stock is an investment, the hope of future consumption and the future ability to 'contribute'. The opportunity to grow old with dignity or believe in yourself enough to get a job, to have health insurance, to have an education.... This stock, these commodities, they take time to mature and we get them back in money eventually, in love and gratitude more immediately. Apparently these commodities aren't worth paying for though.

This is the attitude we are facing when we look at the state of marginalised young people and older people. They have been ripped from the circulation of capital as a mechanism for social gain because it has been replaced by an ideology of capital as individual gain – all too often those who are working are not working for the benefit of others. The fact that the government wants to privatise education and the health service reflects this selfish ideal. Add to that the wages given to those who do actually help others – carers, social workers, youth workers, who receive barely minimum wage. These examples and ideals will lead only to greater numbers of disenfranchised young people as they learn not kindness but structural brutality...and they will take it out on their parents and grandparents in turn.

Rather than displaying the virtues of some young people caring for others Dr Williams should have forced bankers into doing some charity work for a day, 'contributing' back and filmed them. Such 'Big Society' gestures need to include active economic support and pretending otherwise is a gross distortion of the connectedness of social relations. The economy itself is a social relation and it needs to be given back to society not ripped away piece by piece. Has it failed to be noticed by economists that older people, if they had a fair return on their investments, would have more money to spend, thus driving economic forces? In cheating the tax system and contributions, business not only helps to rob the elderly of dignified retirement, but the young of the potential employment that could bring. I am making a very simplistic argument here, but the over emphasis on individual profit is perverting what economics is – a system of communal and social exchange. The sad result is the derided, 'lonely, isolated, at risk and neglected' state of any people(s) who do not or cannot freely pursue individual profit at the expense of others.