I started the campaign to rename the park after Oscar Wilde,  (which has thousands of members now) and it’s received a fair bit of media attention. The idea was not mine, it’s been suggested before, by Rory O’Neill and others, but Ryan’s fall from grace gives Dubliners a window of opportunity for it to happen. But the idea has met with fierce opposition from some Catholic quarters.

Colum Kenny wrote in the Sunday Independent about the proposal: “(it) seems strange… calling it after someone who frequented London rent boys and secured youngsters for sex in North Africa (whatever Wilde’s undoubted literary merits) is not the best option.”

“We can’t name city park after Wilde who ‘hunted young boys’ for sex” screamed the headline in the Evening Herald: “Writer’s activities no different to church abuse says professor”. The professor in question, Joseph S. O’Leary, a Maynooth graduate who now writes and blogs on literature and theology, and teaches in a university in Tokyo, was reportedly “amazed” at the suggestion to name the park after the writer. “Ryan is accused of lacking vigilance in preventing the very behaviour that Wilde and Gide indulged in without scruple”, he said. “How does this make Ryan a villain and Wilde a hero?”

I suggested online that, at the heart of the objections to honouring Wilde, there seems to be a reluctance to observe the crucial distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex, and that, however much sex one has, it does not make one an abuser. In response, O’Leary wrote to me saying that, according to my logic, my disapproval of Archbishop Ryan should lead to the removal of Wilde’s statue from the park as well. “In both cases the good that the men did is overshadowed by the evil of which they are accused.” After indicating to him that I would rather not engage in private discussions on the matter, that I’d favour open debate, he then sent me the most astonishing message:

“Busy archbishops may have trouble keeping track of deviants in their clergy and handling complaints from people like Andrew Madden (whose statements in the Irish Times today suggest that he must have been very difficult to satisfy) but dizzy queens obsessed with and addicted to the most louche and lawless forms of sexual behaviour (thinking that they were liberators in advance of their time) are sure to find themselves in a far deeper quagmire than any archbishop.” He also noted that Wilde and Bosie were never prepared to “justify” that phase of their existence, so “they cannot be held up as NAMBLA-style martyrs of free love either”. He ended his message with an entreaty to “take warning from the from the experience of the Dublin clergy; any appearance of collusion with “paedophile” offenses is now exposed to grimmest media and police scrutiny!”

The value judgments in this correspondence from Professor O’Leary need to be deconstructed and understood. Not because I’d lose sleep if the park was eventually named after someone else, but because these attitudes are still widely prevalent in Irish society and are judgmental and destructive. I’ll deal with each one in reverse order:

His final warning to me is redundant. I have already paid the price for an “appearance of collusion with ‘paedophile’ offenses’” when I heavily criticized the film “Fairytale of Kathmandu” and the way it portrayed Cathal Ó Searcaigh as a child abuser. The vitriol aimed at me personally was quite disturbing, so I cannot imagine what he has had to endure. I know the nature of the attacks, and I know also that they are misguided.

There is no necessity to put “paedophile” in quotation marks. Generally, paedophilia is understood to refer to sexual attraction to prepubescent children, and there are no quotation marks necessary to apply that label to the priests who abused the children in their care. It is a crime and should remain so; indeed I believe that a convicted paedophile who has received treatment in prison, and then goes on to re-offend on his release, should be permanently deprived of his freedom. It is that bad a crime. The damage done can be devastating and long-lasting. At the root of the trauma of child sex abuse is a deep sense of loss of trust and safety in the world, and a lingering sense of impotence, the result of someone in authority having taken advantage of them. There are also the complex and often nightmarish effects of early sexualization on an adult survivor. But a particularly odious element to clerical abuse is the way in which the child is pickled in a toxic shame, because of the way Judeo-Christian religion works using internalized guilt as a method of mind-control. It can take a long time for a survivor of child sex abuse to shake off the belief that they are wicked to the core. When a child’s faith in goodness and god is destroyed, and when the institutions and society that allowed this psychological and spiritual carnage to take place turn a blind eye, it is quite remarkable how some survivors grow up to be such wonderful rounded people. And quite understandable if they find themselves full of rage and continue to suffer for their whole lives.

Wilde was not a paedophile. As to the ages of the young men he had sex with, it seems that most would have been over our current age of consent, while some were younger, and at least a few were fourteen. In a recent UK poll, nearly a quarter of all fourteen-year-olds have had a sexual experience, and one in three fifteen-year-olds is sexually active. I cannot imagine that it was any different in Victorian times, especially considering that the lads that Wilde found attractive tended to be working class, and independent, either holding down a job or in search of one. Wilde flattered, cajoled, persuaded, dazzled, bribed and paid his many young “panthers” for sex. But he did this in an era when all same-sex activity was condemned and criminal, and the notion of there being an age of consent for it was nonsensical. The power Wilde exercised was financial, social, sexual and charismatic. He held no other power over them; he was not charged with their care or pretending to be something he was not. However, as he found out to his cost, the young men he had sex with could turn the tables and blackmail him, and exploit the power they had over him.

Modern laws relating to the age of sexual majority are designed, naturally and sensibly enough, to protect children. I have written in this column, three years ago now, how, when an Irish 14-year-old went looking for sex on gaydar in 2006, I was disgusted with the older men who agreed to have sex with him, and praised the men who turned up to meet him and then sent him packing, when they could see for themselves how young he was. Despite media coverage at the time, there was no paedophile ring, because there is a big difference between men who seek pleasure in the company of sexually active young men, and those who seek to despoil bodies and souls that are not ready for such an experience. It is a fine line, I know, because each person matures at a different age. But here’s a question: should a quarter of all fourteen year olds face a criminal conviction, because they have had sex?

I would be very interested to know how the young Irishman in the gaydar scandal, now aged 18, is faring, and what he makes of his experiences. Around the time of the scandal, a number of young men told me of their own sexual experiences when they were younger. Some were delighted with the sex they had when fourteen or fifteen; some were sad that it had happened so young. Most were philosophical. But not one of them ever expressed anything remotely like the suffering that has now become all-too-familiar of those who were abused by paedophiles. It’s a very different phenomenon.

If Wilde and Bosie were alive today, they would, perhaps, be civil partners. They loved each other that much. But they would also be cruising together and having lots of sex, together or separately, with lots of men. They would, no doubt, attract the same tabloid attention that George Michael and his lover do. I imagine that two crucial things would be different, however, between the Victorian era and ours. (Homo)sexuality has changed so much in just a century. They probably wouldn’t have to pay their lovers, and they would probably stick to the law, because they wouldn’t need to break it.

If a modern Wilde had sex with a fourteen-year-old now, I’d be disgusted, because we now have the rights that he never had, to live a life without shame or self-hatred or the threat of the ruination that, sadly, he had to endure over a hundred years ago.

We have no way of truly knowing how Wilde treated his lovers in intimate circumstances, but rather than make them feel cheap or dirty, he seems to have put them on pedestals, and showered them with gifts. There is no evidence that Wilde ever brutalised any of his lovers, or went against their will, or shamed them, or abused their trust. We can never truly know whether the motivation for youths blackmailing him came from their hurt feelings, or if it was an inevitable result of Wilde being rich and having sex with people who needed to survive and pay the rent. But Wilde worshipped them – or, to be perhaps more accurately, Wilde worshipped cock. Bosie was a rakish “top” whose hunt for passive youths certainly led him to test the ethical boundaries of any caring human being. I suspect I’d have disliked him intensely. But Wilde was sexually versatile (in modern terms, we take that to read: “bottom”) and therefore his sexual pleasure derived not from subjugation or possession of a youth’s body, but of inviting young, virile and testosterone-charged men to subjugate or possess him.

The emotional repercussions of a promiscuous lifestyle are still as complex as they were then, but at least now it is out of the reach of a cruel and unjust law.

Mentioning NAMBLA in any discussion about Wilde muddies the waters disgracefully. The North American Man/Boy Love Association is a society that props up the wicked delusion held by recidivist paedophiles that children, when they seek affection from an adult, are “asking for it”. In my eyes, these views are on a par with those expressed in the pro-anorexia websites, where young anorexics are told how to get as thin as possible. Disinformation rules, horrifying destruction is revered or, at best, ignored, with a malevolent self-serving sophistry that is sick and disturbing.

The comment about Andrew Madden reveals O’Leary’s true colours. Only an apologist for the Church would say that. But, happily, a Church is only as powerful as the numbers of people who belong to it. And such remarks have no power over someone who has left it, in a secular society. The (Roman) Emperor has no clothes. The old and clever shame-inducing mechanisms do not work any more. The Church can never satisfy Madden, not because of any flaw of his, as O’Leary tries to impute, but because the Church has lost all credibility with rational people.

As for “dizzy queens” having lots of “louche sex” – it amazes me why people froth at the mouth at this phenomenon. Is it envy? Sex is simply mutual pleasure. Why it is demonized as evil is simply beyond me.  It may be lots of other things – distracting, crazy-making, risky, chaotic, anarchic, but shared physical pleasure between two people who freely engage in it is a beautiful thing.

It is the following particular statement by O’Leary that astounded me the most, however. “In both cases (Ryan and Wilde) the good that the men did is overshadowed by the evil of which they are accused.”

Ryan’s job was pastoral. It was to care for his flock. His responsibility was, indeed, first and foremost, not to be “too busy” to take the trouble to “keep track of deviants in his clergy and handling complaints from people like Andrew Madden”. The fact that he didn’t see how protecting children is the most important responsibility he had, is a disgrace. I don’t believe in the concept of evil but I hate hypocrisy, and I detest the mindset that prioritizes the  reputation and authority of an institution over the lives of suffering children. What could be more villainous?

Wilde was an artist. A magnificent artist. He was true to himself and to his values and his passions. He devoted himself to beauty, and he paid the price for it, a thousand times more cruel than any bishop or archbishop or Pope will ever have to endure. And yet, their crimes are far greater. Could you imagine Wilde, after a passionate and mutually enjoyable tryst with a young buck, ever committing the obscenity of making his lover say the rosary in penance? Leave that to the master mindfuckers, the priests.

It is the heightened sensibility and sensitivity that the fallen Wilde displayed in his last masterpiece, De Profundis, that reveals his breathtaking humanity. It is his tragic flaw that makes him, in my understanding of the word, heroic.

If we, as Irish people, allow his all-too-human flaws to overshadow his unparalleled gift to the world, his art, because we still can’t get over our hangups about sex, then we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Further reading: The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna

Lynch’s piece pulls no punches. “Gay love,” one of his interviewees discovered, “was all about internet sex encounters, leather and studs” and “… gay men go from innocence to debauchery without ever knowing romance.” “We measure relationships in minutes. Anything over a week and your friends start cracking jokes about buying a hat for the wedding.” He correctly, in my opinion, traces one of the origins of this phenomenon to the particular experience of many gay men in adolescence – the secrecy, the lack of socialization regarding sexual adventures, the lack of emotional literacy between men. If, as a gay teenager, none of your friends knows about what you get up to, then there is no possibility of discussion, comparison, consideration about sex and/or relationships, and integrating them into one’s life. Such an atmosphere encourages what for many men is a natural tendency, to split sex from emotions, and once learned it’s not easy to unlearn. “The instinct of any man, gay or straight, is to sow his wild oats as often as humanly possible,” says Lynch, and although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that is true for all men, I would say that for most men the temptation is there, no matter what situation they are in. For many men it is a struggle, to a degree that most women, in my experience, do not really understand. Or, if they do, their instinctive hostility towards that drive, being as it is anarchic and disrespectful towards home and hearth and family, ensures that they rarely want to discuss it, or know more about it. For men (of all orientations), easy access to sex (that the internet in particular offers) creates a familiarity with the Dionysian, the carnal, the ecstatic, that few ordinary relationships can compare to. If we are let loose in an exotic sweetshop with endless tastes and varieties, it’s not easy to be persuaded to leave, to find contentment in the ordinary, the daily meat and two veg.

There is a natural caution about letting the side down when talking about this aspect to gay life. Gay men have long had to contend with the stereotype of being sex-obsessed and promiscuous, and those who have an investment in furthering gay rights and equality are wary of publicity that talks about this side of queer sexuality. Those who are lucky enough to be in a loving relationship are offended that they are being tarred by the promiscuous brush, and they quite rightly protest when comments are made that seem to imply that we’re all at it like rabbits. Brian Finnegan, in his passionate attack, dubs Lynch’s article as “propaganda” and “feeding into a myth”, and criticizes him for using his position (as a gay journalist writing in a newspaper read by middle Ireland) to perpetuate a “lie” that “disenfranchises” gay men, “by dubbing us all as sexually and emotionally sub-human”. He thinks that Lynch is “bolstering the myth that gay people are not as valuable as straight people.” He believes that such an article feeds “bigotry and misconception” and that is damaging, to us all.

The truth may be uncomfortable. It may be strategically unhelpful in a political campaign. It may indeed be used by bigots as a stick to beat us with. But I am passionate about the truth, especially when it comes to human nature, and most especially when it comes to understanding men and our sexuality. Truth cannot be damaging. We can only learn from it.

Sexual people are not sub-human. Single people are not sub-human. Single gay men are not less valuable than those in relationship. I may wish not to be single sometimes but I won’t stand for my life, and the lives of many men I know, being judged in such harsh terms. Lynch hits the nail on the head more than a few times. I reject Finnegan’s pathologization of our lives, and although I am glad to read in his editorial that he has a loving relationship with a man, whom he would love to marry, acknowledging that other gay men have lives that are different to his, and who have different stories to tell, is, surely, not a threat to him or to the argument for gay marriage.

Sex has always been related to money, to value, in some cultures more so than others, literally and symbolically. Let’s start with the gold standard, the symbolic unit of highest value, that has been revered for millennia: the Virgin. A woman who has sex, in many parts of the world, becomes worthless, damaged goods, if she has it with a man who is not her husband. Such is the power of the symbolism of the act, it matters little whether it was something she chose to do or if she was raped. Woman is property, sold from family to family in wedlock, and one premature penetrative act of sex causes instant devaluation and can have disastrous effects on a village community, with the stock of one or more families crashing to bankruptcy. It can be as ruinous to those affected as a failed company on the New York Stock Exchange can have on the global economy. Viewed from this extreme angle, it makes economic sense to keep women shrouded behind sexless veils, concealing as much flesh as possible, for a lot more is riding on her than her own sexual morality. She has to be kept intact, wrapped, whole, unopened, unknown, unseen, (and preferably uneducated and unknowing) for her value to be preserved. But, lest we project all this nonsense onto dusty Indian villages and think we’re above all that primitivism, we only have to gaze at the entrails of the sad life of Diana, Princess of Wales, to see the human cost that is paid when, by accident of birth and timing, a shy young woman finds herself embodying the archetype of virgin. For England’s future king, nothing less would do.

In Marian cultures such as ours, of course, even post-Catholic as we may now be, the Virgin still holds sway in the consciousness of many women, and the concept of a sexual person being a devalued person holds strong. (Although buried in the archaeology of our unconscious, and in the storerooms of our museums, Sheela-na-gigs remind us of another, pagan, more celebratory perspective on female sexuality.) A woman is “cheap” if she doesn’t “save” herself for a husband. Young Irish women these days may be far more sexually liberated than previous generations, but most women I have talked to are fairly consistent on one thing – if she has sex on the first date with a man, it’s not likely the relationship will last; if it’s going to be a serious relationship, “holding out” is important in terms of maintaining self-respect, (not to mention control) and gaining the respect of the man she’s dating. Of course women these days are happy enough to have one night stands, in the same spirit as men, but the women I know do it with their eyes open and have no illusions or expectations about what might follow from them.

The heterosexual courtship ritual is a time-honoured waiting game for the man, with sex as a reward for patience, kindness and good intentions, and when the time is right (although rarely these days on one’s wedding day, and as this century advances it seems the waiting period is getting shorter and shorter) enough trust has been established to enable something special to happen. Women, in general, work hard to avoid feeling like an object in sex, a disposable thing for man’s pleasure, and use time and exclusivity as a filtering mechanism to ensure that those who stay around long enough in courtship are likely to treat them more like a subject, a person; a man who can make love and connect emotionally, not just fuck. Heterosexual men, in general, at least those who seek relationship, are willing to forego the pleasure of the instant objectifying fuck (which is the masturbatory fantasy of most men, I would suggest) in order to build up a stronger, more intimate connection that lasts, that is more emotionally supportive and satisfying for both. In terms of supply and demand, if women in a society collectively adhere to these principles, and prostitution is prohibited and dangerous, then heterosexual men have less choice in the matter – if they want sex, it has to be on women’s terms. Intimacy, however, is not pleasure per se. There can be pleasure in intimacy, but there is also, for many men, conflict and fear and loss of independence, something which many women seem unaware of. For those many men who are pleasure seekers, first and foremost, (and there are many), intimacy does not provide enough pleasure for it to be worth pursuing, and is often something to be avoided at all costs.

One of the important factors that persuades a heterosexual man to enter into relationship with a woman is the belief that she is worth it; unconsciously, as long as she is saving herself sexually for him, and him alone, there is a certain proprietorial dynamic at work, almost a territorial claim – he has worked hard to be allowed into her bed, invested a lot of time and energy and risked being emotionally open and vulnerable to get there, and although in the modern era he may well know she’s not a virgin, the dynamics are very similar in terms of his sense of knowing he’s had a good return on his investment. A woman sets her own value, and the higher she sets it, the more satisfaction a man can have in pursuing and eventually possessing it, sharing it with her. However, sadly, her own self-evaluation is not enough to guarantee suitors (if only it were) – all sorts of other factors come into play, to do with body image, fashion, ideals of beauty and sexiness.

As women have long complained, there is a double standard at play, for men tend to increase their worth, their social standing – at least amongst their male peer groups – if they score with a woman, because men together spend a lot of time savouring and comparing their pleasurable experiences, especially their sexual ones. (As opposed to women together, who will spend their time discussing their feelings). Men egg each other on to pursue pleasure, and men will do lots of often risky things to pursue it. Many heterosexual men will enjoy no strings sex on a one night stand if they can get away with it, saying all sorts of plausible things before breakfast to get it, that they may even believe at the time. But, if they can’t manage it, they will often pay for sex, so insistent is the lunacy of desire. Working girls know just how badly men seek pleasure, and although few women manage to survive prostitution without damaging emotional and psychological problems, it is a paradox that, in our society, those who set a price for sex are often those who have little or no sense of self-worth. The Madonna/Whore polarity is a psychological reality.

Men rarely share their vulnerabilities and pain in conversation with each other – it is seen as weakness – so a man with lots of male friends will find it hard to separate from the pack and enter into the scary business of forming a serious relationship with a woman, because the challenges of relating do not tend to fit into male discourse. A man has to really fall in love with a woman to be motivated enough to change his ways, and even then may find he can only open up to her, not anyone else.

In deconstructing heterosexuality like this, I realise I’m using broad brush strokes and stereotypes that many people may think ridiculous and antiquated. But heterosexuality works, as a relational model, despite its many flaws, to foster relationship, largely due to the demands and standards of women, and, incidentally, largely to the benefit of men in terms of emotional well-being. For the same reasons, lesbianism “works”. But with the majority of gay men living single lives, and (I believe) not satisfying or emotionally fulfilling lives, it’s essential that we address the reasons why. And this may also cast some light on the difficulty that many single women I know have in forming relationships with men – and it’s not for the want of trying, it’s for the lack of relationship-orientated men. To understand something about men and our values, an examination of how men treat each other when they have sex with each other is highly relevant.

In the chaotic free-for-all that is online cruising, the pursuit of pleasure is paramount, and with so many men engaging in it, it cannot but have a corrosive effect on the body politic of gay men, how we form relationships, what we expect from them. And, increasingly, more and more bisexual men are joining in, which must, in time, have a powerful affect on the wider society. The infinite choice available to us on cruising sites like gaydar, imagined or real, creates an enormous expectation that our sexual desires will be gratified. And the fact that they often are magnifies this expectation to a mind-boggling and ultimately unsustainable degree. With no one holding out on sex, prioritising the slow but necessary process of trust-building and the awkward-but-essential nurturing of intimacy and relationship, everyone is judged solely on their capacity to offer pleasure, and in the dizzying escalation that ensues, with men falling over each other in the rush to gratify each other, nothing really satisfies. Sex is not a reward or a precious commodity or a symbol of trust or love; our bodies are not precious or valuable symbols of anything, but merely heightened erogenous zones, simulations of pornographic images and experiences, the pleasure principle run riot. The gold standard of sexual modesty and virtue, the principle of exclusivity and specialness, the connection between emotions, intimacy, fidelity and sex, has long gone, replaced by a manic, anarchic hyperinflation. And with that comes an extreme emotional and spiritual poverty.

Another Saturday night in a gay bar. Even the guest MC for the night, Heklina, the burly high-gloss starlet of Filthy Gorgeous, a film about San Francisco’s legendary drag bar Trannyshack, commented on the oddity of showing a documentary in a night club, albeit one like The George in a city like Dublin, where the drag subculture is so sophisticated. Truth be told, it emptied the place, when the bravura opening sequence wasn’t followed through in the rest of the film with equally offensive/amusing MTV-style vignettes. It became more of a gentle enquiry into the thoughtful, handsome, and sometimes troubled men who make irreverence a performance art form, and, as such, I enjoyed it, but at 90 minutes it was far too long for the venue and the night. Heklina’s brassiness was about as in-your-face as you could imagine, with repeated appeals to the audience that, if there was anyone who got off on being rimmed by a gorgeous tranny, would they make themselves known after the show?

The oddness of the evening was compounded by the fact that it was a charity event, the money raised at the door going to support the High Court challenge to allow same-sex couples to marry. One cannot imagine two more contrasting icons: Heklina, the epitome of transgressive queer anarchic hedonism, and Ann Louise Gilligan and Katherine Zappone, the dyadic symbol of decades-long fidelity and commitment. They represent, in a sense, an extreme polarity of masculinity and femininity: the rapacious single priapic male, the fool, the jester, intent on disrupting the social order and offending as many as possible, and the domestic unruffled contentment of the lesbian couple. Of course, not having met any of these three, I can’t comment on the sort of people they are, but I think it’s safe to hazard a guess that neither of the good doctors have ever pulled a flag from their nether regions in public or advertised their desire to lick a stranger’s ass, nor has Heklina, or any of the other trannies featured on the documentary, had a monogamous relationship of any equivalent quality or duration to that which was placed in evidence at the High Court by Gilligan and Zappone.

I’ve been interested for a long time in exploring the shadow, the unconscious, of any given culture, person or belief system. To this end, my sexual explorations and adventures in London were part of this voyage of discovery; no stone was left unturned as I found different ways of rooting around in the barrel-bottom of my psyche, and those of other men. And I know I’m not alone in this journey, it’s something that many gay men do, going to a big world city and reinventing ourselves, using anonymity to explore the many facets of desire. For me, it was definitely connected to an inner struggle to overturn bourgeois notions of conformity, Catholic notions of shame, and to allow myself to enjoy being sexual for its own sake. I succeeded in this – but, paradoxically, I believe I am coming full circle. Coming back to Ireland, I find that a sexually confident and playful younger generation is highlighting how much of what I was struggling with is history now. It’s old baggage, and it’s time to dump it.

Notions of modesty and chastity and sexual continence and fidelity used to be enormously distorted in Ireland, because they were all associated with one extraordinarily dominant archetype, the Virgin Mary, to the exclusion of all else. Her impossible example was used by the Catholic church in Ireland to batter the sexuality out of many generations of women and men, and that affected all areas of Irish life. In a similar way, notions of modesty are also dominant in Islam, and, as in Catholic Ireland, it is women that are bearing the brunt of the distortion. Recently, a Muslim cleric has suggested that an uncovered, unveiled woman is as responsible for the advances she gets from men as a piece of uncovered meat on the street is, when cats come and eat it. It’s the Madonna/whore polarity all over again, rigid and uncompromising, with no middle ground. Whenever that sort of cultural imperative is in force, balance and wholeness is extremely difficult to achieve on a personal level.

I’m beginning to see that, of course, the values of the Catholic Madonna or the archetypal modest Muslim woman are not inherently bad and oppressive, they are important qualities in themselves. It is only in a truly post-Catholic or secular society that one can begin seriously to reclaim them, not from a sense of sin or bourgeois conformity or social pressure, but because they are of worth in themselves. The tranny tart offering to lick the arse of any man who wants it has, somewhere inside him, as a counterpoint, a part that would value contentment and security in a stable relationship, to enjoy sex not only as an act of pleasure, but as an expression of love. The lifelong committed female couple must, if only at seven-year-itch intervals, seek some liberation from the safe and the known, and risk something vital in pursuit of pleasure.

We are all creatures of duality, we all contain our opposites within.

“…we have to grow out of our teenage years of sex and drugs and mocking the old, and embrace a future of fidelity and responsibility.”

I am not convinced that the fact that some men have lots of sex, whenever and wherever they can find it, has anything to do with sexual orientation or modern notions of sexual identity or equality. I am also not convinced that the only route to emotional and psychological maturity is via “fidelity” – ie monogamous relationship. The road of excess can indeed lead to the palace of wisdom.

As Billy Crystal jokes, when women have sex, they need a reason, when men have sex, we just need a place. What Simon is writing about is the tragedy/comedy of being male, of being human with lots of testosterone, plenty of spare cash, and no children to be responsible for.

In every “ex-gay” thread I’ve read to date the men who become “ex-gays” first live lives of utterly extreme sexual addiction; not to say drug addled erotomania; until eventually they repent of their spectacularly dysfunctional ways and embrace Christ.

Well, if those are your two choices, no wonder, really.

But even then their gay orientation doesn’t appear to change, just their sexual addiction; so they’re not actually “ex-gays” at all, since it would be far more accurate to call them ex-drug and ex-sex addicts.

Why do we never hear of a well adjusted, monogamous gay man in the tenth year of his blissful homosexual partnership becoming an “ex-gay?” Can you guess? (Possibly because the dissolution rate for gay civil unions in Vermont is currently hovering at a mere 1%).

Back in April, I co-facilitated a workshop in London on this notion of sex “addiction” in gay men. (I’ll be doing another one in June.) If anyone is talking about erotomania or sex addiction, I always wonder if there’s erotophobia around. (Oh dear god, so many phobias. So little time.)