ALL GAYED OUT
MATT NEWBURY PONDERS WHAT THE WORLD WOULD BE LIKE IF GAY PEOPLE HAD NEVER EXISTED. RATHER BEIGE WE SUSPECT...
How dreary would the world be if gay people hadn’t existed
The controversial gay gene debate cruised back into the news earlier this year, when scientists presented further research suggesting that being gay is in your genes. The team from Chicago University analysed the DNA of more than 400 pairs of gay brothers (recruited from Gay Pride festivals over several years) and found two stretches of DNA linked to homosexuality.
While other biological factors can also come into play (the more older male siblings a man has by the same mother, the greater the chance he will be gay), the research nevertheless strengthens the argument that being gay is a matter of biology, rather than choice. And that should, in theory, silence anyone who claims that homosexuality isn’t natural.
Of course, the gay gene debate is also one of the most famous double-edged swords of modern times. Isolating a gay gene could also lead to tests being developed that could be used by pregnant mothers to decide if they want to carry a gay child. Put that power into the hands of the leaders of countries where being gay is not particularly welcomed and things might turn nasty.
Only last year the Director of Public Health in Kuwait claimed that a new test was being developed to “detect” homosexuals and stop them from entering any of the Gulf Cooperation Countries, so you might want to cross Bahrain, Kuwait, Quatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates off your holiday wish list. And those sort of attitudes aren’t only confined to Muslim countries. Back in 1993 when research into isolating the gay gene was first carried out, the Daily Mail notoriously carried the headline: ‘’Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ findings’’.
While such a test currently seems unlikely (and the amount of vodka in most of our systems should counteract any blood tests or saliva swabs...) if it were possible to determine sexuality before birth, you can be sure that there are fanatics out there who would love to wipe us off the face of the planet. Of course, the best counter argument is to ask people what the world would be like if gay people had never existed.
A lot less colourful and a lot less tuneful as well, we’d imagine.
Acerbic New York wit Fran Lebowitz wrote an incredibly honest and astute piece in the New York Times back in 1987 on “The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community” in the city: “If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture you would be pretty much left with Let’s Make a Deal.”
Move the argument forward 25 years and relocate it in the UK and you’d pretty much be left with ITV’s Take Me Out.
Try to imagine our musical heritage if gay people had never existed. While Putin would happily remove all gay people from Mother Russia, the country would certainly be a lot greyer without The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, 1812 Overture, Romeo and Juliet and the other collective works of Tchaikovsky. And when Bible Belt patriots sing America the Beautiful with their hands on their collective breasts, I wonder how many of them realise it would never have existed if not for for lesbian songwriter Katharine Lee Bates.
There would be a huge void where musical theatre stands if it wasn’t for everyone from Cole Porter to Noël Coward and Leonard Bernstein to Stephen Sondheim. And that’s not to mention where we’d be without all of the gay choreographers, designers, writers, actors, dancers, singers, costume designers and audience members.
“How uninspiring would fashion be, or haircuts, or the drinks service on transatlantic flights?”
Of course the devastation would be even far more reaching. There would be no drag, no dance, no disco, no Disney and no divas, while you might as well write off most pop music from the 80s.
Visual arts would be a far duller place without the likes of David Hockney, Keith Haring, Gilbert and George, Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, not to mention the artist behind the most famous painting in the world, Leonardo da Vinci. And what would those famously tolerant Catholics think if the roof of the Sistine Chapel was just painted a rather bland shade of beige because Michelangelo had never dipped his brush into a rainbow palette. Mind you, Catholicism might not exist without the words of St Paul the Apostle (widely believed to have been gay) or the scholastic skills of Desiderius Erasmus who created the New Testament from ancient scrolls.
The knock on effect could be endless. How uninspiring would fashion be, or haircuts, or the drinks service on transatlantic flights? What would literature be like without the words of W.H. Auden, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman or Armistead Maupin? And films and theatre would have been less rich and vibrant without the talents of Marlene Dietrich, Rock Hudson, Lawrence Olivier, James Dean, Montgomery Clift and Ian McKellen.
Take a journey through history and the world would be a very different place without the philosophy of Socrates, the military victories of Alexander the Great, the architectural inspirations of Emperor Hadrian, the plays of William Shakespeare, the pioneering nursing reforms of Florence Nightingale, the political overhauls of Abraham Lincoln, the human rights achievements of Eleanor Roosevelt... the list goes on.
Of course, we could all be speaking German now in a country that was as intolerant as Uganda or Russia or Kuwait if it wasn’t for Alan Turing and his code-breaking skills. Not only is he credited with helping us win the Second World War, he also pretty much invented the computer, one of the most important creations of the last century. If that doesn’t make you feel like an underachiever, nothing will.
This very westerncentric list only scratches the surface of what has been achieved by gay people throughout history, not to mention those invisible pioneers who by a quirk of fate were born into one of the 70 countries (out of the 195 countries in the world) where being gay is still illegal. Who knows how different the world could be if they were just allowed to be themselves and flourish?
One thing is for sure, however conservative your beliefs are about the percentage of the world’s population who are gay, we certainly punch beyond our weight when it comes to overachieving and have rightfully earned our place in history.
Fortunately, the latest findings make it unlikely that there will ever be a gay test of any kind. That said, if anyone does ever manage to isolate the gay gene, while simultaneously inventing time travel, there are a few not so nice suspected gays they might want to take out from Machiavelli to Nixon via Hitler, with an uncomfortable number of serial killers along the way.
Oh, and if you can do anything to stop Steps ever reforming while you are at it...