Noah Michelson, the editor of the Huffington Post’s “Gay Voices” website, thinks the gays are a special crowd in their enthusiasm for sexual activity: “Oh the hours -- the afternoons! The days! The weekends! -- I have spent looking for and having sex. And oh the incomparable joy it's brought me!... After all, gay men have always had a bit of a reputation when it comes to sex. And why not? Unbridled by the restraints of 'traditional' relationships and (until very recently) solely straight institutions like marriage and the nuclear family,we've long enjoyed the pursuit of sexual relations whenever, wherever, however and with whomever we could get our sweaty gay mitts on.”
He added “As much as I want straights to join us in ushering in a brave new age of sexual liberation, I understand that change takes time and that thanks to a whole bunch of heady terms (think: religion, sexism, patriarchy) it's not as easy for them to partake in sex the way that gay men historically have.”
So Michelson doesn’t like prudes, especially in the gay commmunity: “But you know what I can't understand, and furthermore, won't stand for? Other gays playing sex police -- and it's starting to happen more and more.”
There was a New York Times article with “a number of gay parents living in what is perhaps one of the most famously gay neighborhoods in the world and who are now lamenting the fact that their children have to grow up just feet away from sex shops.” There was an op-ed for Elite Daily where “Thomas Caramanno felt compelled to rail against ‘certain gay men who objectify other men and change sex partners as frequently as their 2(x)ist underwear’.”
That kind of complaint is “just plain gross,” says Michelson:
I can't count the number of times that I've heard other queers saying things like "isn't it time we grow up and stop wearing jock straps on Pride floats?" or "how are we supposed to demand equal rights if we can't stop being so promiscuous?" And all of that kind of thinking is... well... aside from reeking of sexphobia and internalized homophobia... just plain gross. [Ellipses in the original.]
I believe sex is a gift that allows us to connect with others (and ourselves) for a night, for a lifetime or just for 25 minutes during our lunch break. I believe sex and pleasure are nothing short of magical and transformative. I believe queer people have been appointed by some higher power to help change the way that our society thinks about sex. And I refuse to believe that just because queer people are increasingly being folded into the mainstream, we should give up fighting for all of the things we've been fighting for all these years. [Emphasis in the original.]
The goal has never been to get the same rights as non-queer people so we could be just like non-queer people, even though some, like Caramanno, might argue otherwise. We're supposed to be leading by example and showing that sex is not scary, sex is not dirty, sex doesn't need to be with just one partner and in a healthy, happy society, sex should be an important and inspiring way of connecting with one another. If I had it my way we'd have sex shops in every neighborhood right next to the local McDonald's and we'd talk about sex in every school and we wouldn't give films with sexual content NC-17 ratings while slapping PG-13 ratings on mindnumbingly violent films.
That passage is a beaut. Sex shops in every neighborhood! Talk about sex in every school, no matter what grade! Sex replaces religion as a place where people find a transformative experience. Michelson is an evangelist for the glories of casual, emotionally detached sex.
Michelson concluded that “you have to stop telling me and everyone else that it's unsavory to want sex simply for sex's sake or how it is or isn't OK to find it or how often it's OK to want it and with whom and where. When you do that, you're buying into the same broken nightmare we've been fighting against for years. Instead, let's welcome the stunning progress that we've recently made with open arms and unzipped pants.”
