It's Time for You to Lose Your Excitement

This Larry Craig folderol has me asking the question: Are straight people ever going to get their shit together when it comes to sex? I''m being serious here. Straights may be the dominant culture, but it's obvious that--when it comes to the Big Nasty--they are as clueless as children.

It was nothing short of embarrassing watching the smirking, giggling newsreaders on cable try to get their arms around the reality that a man could marry a woman and still have sex with men. I mean, they seriously didn't know this happened? Has happened for all of history? Is happening? Sheesh.

I've personally known many married men who also fuck around with guys, and each of their situations was different. Some were cheating from deep inside the closet. Some claimed to be straight. Some were gay, but married because they wanted a "normal" public life. Some had arrangements with their wives. And while I certainly have opinions about their choices, I never made fun of them or even judge them harshly. Why? Because their lives, like my own, were messy and real.

And how about the serious--or at least professed--puzzlement about a fetishes such as anonymous sex or tearoom trade? I find it hard to believe that people in show buisness are more square and more naive than I. Seriously, the only thing that outpaced the ignorance was the squeamishness.

Embarrassing. Unbelievable.

To be clear, I have nothing but disdain for Larry Craig the politician and the immoral, hateful, and unrealistic policies that he and his party supports. But Larry Craig the man gets my sympathy. The snickering jackdaws that have made his life a living hell over the last few weeks have done nothing to illuminate the situation.

And no one has asked the most obvious question: Why are we behaving like immature assholes? Answer that, and you may know why a 60-somethinig Midwestern politician had to go into a men's room to get a blow job.

All my life, people have asked me if I'd ever wanted to be straight. My answer has always and emphatically been "no." There are many reasons. The last two weeks has highlighted one: Gay men understand sex. We know how it fits into life. We get that it's simultaneously important and frivolous. We embrace--however reluctantly--its messiness, its complications, its contradictions.

We are adults about it.

Finally, before you call me a bigot, I realize I'm making some generalizations. I mean, some of my best friends are straight.