When Gay Lifestyles were Considered Superior

Down the years, some writers and thinkers have suggested that far from homosexuality being equal to heterosexuality, a gay lifestyle is actually superior to a straight one. This was an influential theory advanced by the noted literary critic and essayist Cyril Connolly who thought that it was a distinct advantage to any artist to be homosexual in orientation.

Firstly, Connolly believed that being a heterosexual tended to make people more conformist and more liable to be influenced by deadening “bourgeois” influences. Heterosexuals got caught up in the tangle of family life – that “dear octopus” which imposed obligations, inhibited freedom of expression and extended its tentacles to enforce respectability. He even suggested – this was in his classic text Enemies of Promise  - that a writer who is also married is only “half a writer”, because a spouse necessarily imposes the demands of domesticity.

By contrast, homosexuals – they didn’t use the term “gay” in mid-20th century – had the liberty to reject all that. They could live outside of the limiting restrictions of domestic responsibility: they could refresh their imaginations with travel, friendships, and were free to make more money without the encumbrances of family life.

Connolly envied homosexual writers their freedom from such appalling encroachments as in-laws: and even more, the risk and inconvenience of begetting children. He used a now  celebrated phrase about how progeny dampen the inspiration of the artist: “the pram in the hall”.  The pram in the hall, indicating the presence of an infant, was the “enemy of promise”, proclaiming the call of responsibility, not the inspiration of the muse.

Oh, wrote this master litterateur , lucky are the artistic homosexuals who were outside of these restraints.  And the rich  contribution of genius to history provides Connolly with some evidence: from Socrates to Michaelangelo (and probably Leonardo da Vinci), from Baudelaire and Rimbaud to Oscar Wilde and Lytton Strachey and possibly including Shakespeare and Cardinal Newman, the disproportionate level of talent displayed by gays throughout history is stunning.

But today, Connolly would find it strange that campaigners for gay rights have as their most ardent demand that they should be “equal” to heterosexuals: that gay marriage should claim the same entitlements as heterosexual marriage, and that the lack of such “equality” is regarded as exclusion from “a fundamental civil right”.

He would be amazed by the claim made by Irish gay rights campaigners that the Civil Partnership Bill of 2009 “legalises discrimination” against gay couples because it does not provide exactly the same conditions as heterosexual marriage. He would ask, in astonishment  – why would gay couples want to be equal, or the same, as heterosexual married couples with their petty preoccupations with the price of nappies, the arrangements for child-care and the cost of education?

And why would homosexuals, with their long and glorious history of representing the enriching difference to humanity, the colourful (watch any Gay Pride march and behold the colour), the non-conformist, the free spirit of artistry and the affirmation of exuberance – want to join the ranks of the legally wedlocked? It would certainly be a puzzle to past writers and thinkers who ventured into this territory: especially to those of Cyril Connolly’s ilk, whose lives were often dedicated either to avoiding marriage, or to leaving a stream of discarded wives, cast-off mistresses and abandoned children as a consequence of their own reckless heterosexual forays.

Perhaps the answer lies in V.S. Pritchett’s reflection, that “sooner or later, everyone wants to be respectable”. Or perhaps the reason for this demand for equality is that we now live in an age where the Holy Grail is “choice”, and everyone must have their choices, even in defiance of biological fact,  whether it be motherhood at 65, or choosing to change sex by surgical means in middle age.

The most ironic comment on gay marriage came from a libertarian Texan Republican who quipped: “Sure I’m in favour of gay marriage -  why shouldn’t gays have the right to be as miserable as the rest of us?” And some gays may eventually arrive at  the same acid conclusions as the heterosexual divorcee P.J. O’Rourke: “Next time I consider getting married, I’ll cut out the middle man and just give a house to someone I hate.”