Lately I've started playing a game called Crusader Kings 2. It's an excellent game by the way that focuses on being a sort of replacement for the all-time epic game series "Civilization" but set in the Middle Ages. It's incredibly detailed with lots of computer characters and historical accounts incorporated into actual game play. This game is unique in how it's played because you don't just have one character that you play until you win or lose, instead you have your starting character that you play until he/she dies and then you continue playing as the family or kingdom's heir (you do get married and have children in this game) and so on. You lose when you have no heir to replace you when you die, which means the game can last for centuries.
Believe it or not this game does actually relate to today's post topic.
You see at one point I was playing as the Christian Duke of Jerusalem in the middle of the Muslim Abbasid Empire and working my way to becoming my own Emperor; I married one of my daughters to the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire but then noticed that her character information showed that she was homosexual. I freaked out momentarily and went to the game's cheats to remove her homosexual trait. I didn't think about it at first until after I hit enter on the remove trait cheat, but I realized pretty quickly that I had in fact just panicked about "my own" child being gay and without thinking twice took that trait away from her, turning her straight. When I realized what I did I stopped and was just like "Why the heck did I do that? I thought I was fine with my sexuality."
Growing up I was always told that being Gay was a choice, that it's something I chose because I wanted it somehow. This experience should be another check-mark in Heaven under the Book of Life's page titled "Stupidest Human Ideas Ever" proving that no one who is Gay or Transgender or anything else actually chooses to be this way, especially after horrific experiences. I've spent the vast majority of my life fighting with myself, God, family and church over whether, how or why I was Gay and developing some semblance of self-respect. I thought I had progressed quite well and was even feeling happy to be Gay but then this happened out of no where. I was genuinely surprised that I would so blatantly (and quickly) make a move to change "my child's" sexual orientation away from homosexuality. I thought that if I was in fact comfortable or happy why would I do that without even a second of hesitation. I began to question for a moment if I was in fact as happy or settled in my reality as I had told myself.
As quickly as that situation unfolded it also ended in my mind. I quickly realized that as a parent I would not want my child to suffer emotional or any other kind of pain and being Gay (etc) is a very painful reality to experience. Out of a protective desire for my child I would want to shield them from what I could and that gaming platform definitely gave me the means to protect "my daughter" from that pain. Living in the Middle Ages (around 790 A.D.) as a devout Catholic royal would have been exceptionally dangerous for any homosexual or any other sexual/gender identity. Having the homosexual trait in the game effects your vassal's (lesser nobles who worked for you) opinions of you and could inspire riots or civil wars (depending on other factors too) against you as their leader. If there was a lover's event (which does happen in this game, that's how in depth it is... it's like the TV shows Reign or Tudors but on a computer screen) your homosexual character could get caught and punished. There are a lot of negative and even dangerous possibilities for a homosexual character in real life as well as in this game and I instinctively wanted to avoid those outcomes where I could.
Having that experience though brought a question into my mind: What is so great about Gay? Or in other words: Why would I want to be Gay? And to be honest I'm not entirely sure I have an answer to that. I've always seen such negativity in my life and the lives of others related to homosexuality that I'm not really sure what the upside is. Obviously I'm ignoring the highly biased viewpoint of how attractive guys are (in my case) and I'm also dismissing the answer of how great it feels to fall in love with someone who you are actually interested in. That last one I'm avoiding because it too is a biased answer and one that is not unique to the LGBT community, straight people need to and love falling for someone who they actually click with on emotional, physical and intellectual levels as well. I've been thinking this question over for a few days so far and still have no answers whatsoever.
So, since I'm drawing a blank I'd like to open this up for answers from anyone who's reading this. If you're Gay, what is the upside? Why is being Gay "great" for you? I don't want to see some generic answers saying "you shouldn't be anything different than what you are", we know what we are and that we need to learn to love it for our own sake's. What I don't know is what is there to love about homosexuality independently of everything else? Forgetting the traumas and the self-loathing for a moment, I want to learn what positive traits there are to homosexuality or its sibling identities: bisexuality, transgender etc.
Whenever you answer remember to always be courteous to others in your responses.
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