I want to focus on "closeted bisexual." Mitchell's father was married to his mother, so how does he count as closeted if he just kept quiet about who else he's sexually attracted to? That's the general practice among married people, not to speak out about your interest in anyone other than your spouse and not to do anything about it. It might be a more poignant case if the man married a woman but only felt attracted to men, but this, we're told, was a bisexual. Presumably, he was attracted to his wife. Where's the closeting in restricting your sex relations to your spouse? It's not as if heterosexuals feel free to speak out and act out about their sexual attraction to others. No one admires these adulterers for "coming out of the closet."
Indeed, chastity in marriage is only really a virtue because you're attracted to others. Of course you are; that's out of your control due to basic biology like pheromones that affect you subconsciously. The virtue is the practice, eventually the habit and finally the character, of keeping faith with your spouse in spite of whatever temptations there are in the world.
To link the discussion with an earlier one, here the virtue is an art that aims at the recognition of and then the perfection of nature. It would be a denial of nature to claim that you simply weren't attracted to anyone else but your spouse; indeed it would be the vice of lying. We use natural reason to understand that the best sort of relationship that such feelings can produce is one of faithful loyalty and duty to one another, and then we use our arts to nurture that thing into its actuality.
Sir Thomas Malory was accused of an affair with a married woman and celebrated both Lancelot and Guinevere as well as Tristram and Isolde. Yet he understood the value of the thing even if he didn't himself always attain it. In the quest for the Grail, only three knights attain success -- and neither of those two, who were the great victors in battles and tournaments. Two of them were virgins, Galahad and Percival. The third was Sir Bors de Ganis (i.e. 'of Wales'), of whom Malory says this:
[F]or all women Sir Bors was a virgin, save for one, that was the daughter of King Brangoris, and on her he gat a child that hight ('was called') Elaine, and save for her Sir Bors was a clean maiden.
One rarely sees the term 'maiden' employed just that way, first aimed at a man, and also one who is almost but not quite a virgin.
6 comments:
It's interesting. How to take it? Does it mean he did it out of love and not sport/lust, and therefore was excusable in some way? And/Or perhaps that because it was entirely isolated, it did not change his essential character? The latter seems problematic to me in terms of men and sexuality- once active it's hard to say it hasn't changed you in some fundamental way.
“. . . therefore all ye that be lovers call unto your remembrance the month of May, like as did Queen Guenever, for whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end.”
Malory is not against lovers, to be sure. He bows to the authority of the Church, and he accepts its description of moral perfection, but he has a warm heart for true lovers.
The original point for the guy was that, as bi, his Army major general father fought for gay rights in the military. If he wasn't bi, it wouldn't be heroic or have the personal aspect. It's the ethos part of the rhetoric.
But also, some people who are bisexual think they must have both to be complete. It's an argument for polyamory. So, if that were the case, he would be seen as sacrificing part of who he was.
Still strikes me as a rhetorical ploy, though.
"Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act. Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses. If you become King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon."
-GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy III ("The Suicide of Thought")
I don't know why one would have to have the gayness to be heroic in fighting for gay rights; then it seems more self-interested than heroic. It would be heroic for me to do it, perhaps, because I stand to gain nothing from it.
But otherwise Chesterton's point seems to hold for this case as for the traditional cases.
To be clear, it's not a position I hold at all. There are a number of flaws with it, and thanks for pointing out the Chesterton quote. I'll add that to the list.
In the interest of understanding their worldview, though, it's as much an argument from telos as anything. Bisexuality is their nature and they should properly act according to their nature.
They would answer Chesterton's objection by pointing out that polyamory is possible, and that polygamy is even practiced by Jewish kings and others in the Old Testament and not explicitly condemned. So, it's not the case that choosing one means giving up the other, but rather that they believe they can choose both and stigmatizing them for doing so would be wrong.
Again, I don't share these views. They're just what I've heard expressed by bisexuals I've known.
On the hero thing, on the Left, being one of the oppressed and fighting against that oppression is a core part of their version of the hero.
I agree with you on these points, but I find it interesting to understand the other side.
It is always a good exercise to try to understand the other side. Sometimes that can produce useful compromises; and if not, Sun Tzu says to know your enemy and yourself.
Post a Comment