Mr. West's Severe Isolation
By: Gary Hollander - Posted on: 5/15/2005

James E. West, the Republican mayor of Spokane, Washington, has been denounced recently for his duplicitous political career: working to limit the human rights of lesbian and gay people in that city while he himself sought to lure young men into sex with favors and gifts. He has admitted that he has had “relations with adult men” but does not “characterize” himself as gay. He has also complained that the local paper, the Spokesman-Review, has participated in a “brutal ‘outing’” of him and his personal life.

Many will understandably want to focus at this time about the current and historic fertile hotbed of man sex in the conservative Republican stronghold. Others, too, will want to address the self-loathing that appears to serve as undercurrent to similar situations in New Jersey, New Orleans, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, and elsewhere when anti-gay, anti-AIDS prevention, anti-marriage, and anti-women policies spew from male leaders whose own sexual activities would recommend a different political position. These will be important considerations to make; I look forward to the commentary.

But instead, I want to mention an often overlooked issue: what it means to be socially and humanly and tragically isolated as a leader.

Mr. West has had the clarity of mind to point out that he does not consider himself gay. Rather he has sex with men. In this he points out that he seems to have compartmentalized his life more or less successfully with sex in one silo, politics in another. When in similar situations other public figures have stated that they are “Gay Americans.”

I shudder at both of these statements. And, I must admit, I’d like to have a vote on who gets to claim my identity group as their own – though I know that I can’t and I shouldn’t.

Lesbian and gay people (I am consciously aware of not including my beloved bisexual and transgender comrades in this – they have done brilliant and wonderful things all their own) have been at the forefront in the social movement where people organize their lives and world view in part on the basis of the direction of their erotic attachments. As weird or funky as that might seem, it is actually not either. We have created wonderful and brilliant community, fostered human rights, and pulled a chunk of the world into a place where we can all reconsider what we had known to be “true” about human sexuality in all its forms. I can go on for ages about all the things that lesbian and gay people have contributed to the fabric of society.

So I feel a bit protective about others claiming these identity labels when my sisters, brothers, and I have worked so hard on so many fronts for so long.

Mr. West probably isn’t gay. He really does just have sex with men. Some of the men he has sex with may be gay. Others may not. (Those who are gay and have had sex with Mr. West might want to rethink their decisions in sex partners.) Many men, and perhaps fewer women, seem to be able to compartmentalize their lives sufficiently to segregate their sexual actions from their sexual identities. This rigid socio-sexual compartmentalization may or may not be the case if we had a world without homophobia. But also in a world without homophobia, we might not have a gay identity because there would be no need for it.

Of greater concern for me in these so-called conservative men-who-have-sex-with-men situations is the incredible isolation tanks in which these leaders operate. These guys – and they all do appear to be guys – live in an altered state of consciousness, having sexual “relations” with men instead of having sexual “relationships” with men. I am sure that there will be many in their families who will argue that these are solid citizens, committed to public service, good sons, good husbands, good brothers.

But I would argue that putting these defenses aside, these folks are wooden figures who long ago were forces to give up closeness for success, power, survival, acceptance, or love.

Looking at it this way, I suppose I shouldn’t want to cast my vote against accepting them into the gay fold. I didn’t hear anyone asking for Bill Clinton to turn in his straight card after Monica. But I would like Mr. Dolan, Mr. Finkelstein and other conservative politicians who claim gay identity to address honestly what Mr. West has done – are they members of this identity group, with the social and interpersonal relationships to prove it? Or, are they just isolated men having sex with other isolated men?

If it is the latter, I don’t want them representing me in political office – they are not connected enough to the human condition to know what they are doing. What they may consider is dispassionate reality is in fact inhumanity.