Expectations of Privacy

I know a guy who ended up in couple’s therapy because he wouldn’t kiss his wife in public. I got in trouble for taking his side. I didn’t even do that. I said, “He doesn’t kiss me either,” and ended up in trouble.

Couple’s therapy is a pretty great racket. You pay a hundred and fifty bucks to hear how the husband was wrong for an hour. I’m not even complaining. Historically speaking, men are usually in the wrong. I always wanted to give it a try myself. “Historically speaking, men tend to be insensitive and overly aggressive.” And then get their credit card details.

That he loved his wife was never in question. They had three beautiful kids who looked just like him. They shared tons of activities as a couple and as a family. He just wasn’t comfortable with public displays of affection, which I thought he had a right to, but I honestly should not have given my opinion.

It seems that the issue was one of expectation and conformity. The other wives were being kissed, and they had started to notice that my friend’s wife was not. My friend was not behaving as expected, and as a result, his wife was not conforming. He was doomed from the start.

Of the forty-seven women who have been in and out of my life, forty-six will tell you that I’m pretty good at the hand-holding, eye-gazing, and letter-writing parts of building a relationship, but everything beyond that is beyond me, including anything that happens when we’re alone in the dark. One woman told me that I made her weep for the children we never had—and then I made her remember why.

We generally don’t see what happens with couples when they’re alone, but we have expectations of it. The public parts of a relationship are pretty tame. You hold hands, you share food, you kiss on the cheek when she comes back from the bathroom. These things are expected.

People assume they know what you’re going to do when you’re alone, but should Bill ever find out that when Frank and Sandy are alone, Frank dresses like Delores and Sandy was William all along, then Bill is going to be very upset. He most likely will end the relationship and begin whispering about Frank and Sandy to the rest of the world, even though he himself never saw them do these things, they were not conforming to the expected behavior, and so they must be punished.

When several congregations wanted to leave the United Methodist Church, I began watching YouTube videos about what people were going through. It’s part of my YouTube algorithm now, and they recommend all these videos on the subject.

You’d be surprised how many people on YouTube who aren’t Methodist have found it necessary to make videos condemning the United Methodist Church for how they handled this. Their position is that the bible makes an argument against homosexuality. This is true. The Bible also makes an argument against eating pork or shellfish. Disobedient children must be stoned. All debts must be forgiven. It’s a sin to charge interest, and adulterers must be stoned. Somebody tell that to the president-elect.

The United Methodist Church decided that they couldn’t justify turning people away from the doors, and they couldn’t refuse people who wanted to live in service of the Lord based on their sexuality. From what I read of Jesus, that’s a philosophy very congruent with how he lived. More than that, people who aren’t Methodists shouldn’t really feel entitled to tell Methodists how to run their churches. That sort of intervention is why the people who wrote our constitution insisted on building a wall between the state and the church. Can you imagine if these people who want to condemn the United Methodist Church had the power of law behind them?

Despite differences in how they dress and sometimes how they speak, homosexual and transgender people lead public lives virtually identical to everyone else, but that doesn’t seem to be adequate. For some people, how they conduct themselves when they’re alone and in private spaces should conform to their expectations or suffer harsh criticism and increasingly legal scrutiny.

I know people who have been part of gay marriages for twenty years longer than they’ve been legal. They simply decided not to wait for the rest of us. I applaud their decision. Some of them are very active members of the United Methodist Church, aren’t you shocked?

I know enough about evolution and anthropology to understand why we isolate and eliminate people who are different. I also know we evolved beyond that thousands of years ago, and people cling to it because we still have a little bit of brain chemistry where it feels good to judge and expel the different.

I watch people at CPAC and Trump Rallies talk about their plans for LGBTQ issues, and you can’t tell me they don’t get pleasure from judging. I watched Kid Rock use a high-power rifle to shoot Bud Light cans because Bud Light printed up a couple of cases of beer with a Transgender streamer’s face on them. Kid Rock is a pretty strange guy, but I’m telling you, the look on his face shooting those Transgender cans of beer was not only pleasurable, it was sexual. I’m immensely satisfied that he was wearing a MAGA hat while he did it, forever fixing this moment in time with the phenomenon of how Donald Trump made Americans feel comfortable with irrational hate again.

I choose not to hate people based on what they do in private. I pretty much don’t care. I don’t even care if they hate in private. Most people do. It’s really hard not to feel hate, but it’s very easy to keep it squashed down and contained as it should be.

The truth is, not one of us meets the demands of conformity and expectation. We try to because nobody likes feeling judged, but none of us succeed.

I do believe these days of irrational hate will pass, even though they will claim victims. I’m gonna do my best to prevent that, but I know in advance I’m gonna fail. There’s only so much me saying “but, I love you” will help people when they feel eighty percent of the Republican Party wishing them dead. Make no mistake. Some will end up dead. Some will end up dead by their own hand, and some will end up dead by the hand of others. That’s the logical consequence of hate. I hope you feel proud of yourself when that happens.

In the meantime, there’s a sign that says, “Long-haired freaky people need not apply.“ We’ll have to endure this. That’s all you can do. You can’t beat hate. You can’t out-love hate. All you can do is hold on and wait. You’re stronger than you know.