. . . living, in short, at least to a great extent, in an affectionate and perilous intimacy with the men of the other race, provoking them, playing with them by speaking of its vice as of something alien to it - a game that is rendered easy by the blindness or duplicity of the others, a game that may be kept up for years until the day of the scandal when these lion-tamers are devoured; obliged until then to make a secret of their lives, to avert their eyes from the direction in which they would naturally turn away from, to change the gender of many of their adjectives in their vocabulary, a social constraint that is slight in comparison with the inward constraint imposed upon them by their vice, or what is improperly so called, not so much in relation to others as to themselves, and in such a way that to themselves it does not appear a vice.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 640
And we revisit this long section once more. Actually, Proust continues his exegesis on homosexuality and society's response to it for a while longer, but he finally decided to end the sentence, and even the paragraph. One of the things about the recent election which is so disconcerting is the continued advance of the radical wing of the GOP, and the hope we be that they're not going to roll back so much of the progress that has been made on social issues. In my heart of hearts I just don't think that they will. As I'm wont to point out, my students are simply much more open-minded on so many issues than even a few years ago, and I go out of my way to praise them for that. In some ways this, at least in my opinion - which I'm sure is tainted by my own very liberal beliefs - that this is the last rage of the angry white man. Trump's victory isn't going to alter the browning of the country, or the fact that a younger generation just more tolerant on so many social issues than even the previous generation. Once only has to look at the numbers on the acceptance on gay marriage, and how dramatically it's changed in the last decade to see that. Of course, I could truly be delusional since Ohio is trying to pass through a law to outlaw abortion, without even concessions related to rape or incest, after six weeks, which is, of course, before many women even realize that they're pregnant. It would be so criminal to go back to an age like the one that Proust describes. What must it be like to a painful charade, "a game that may be kept up for years until the day of the scandal when these lion-tamers are devoured; obliged until then to make a secret of their lives . . ."? In Islam, a religion, sadly, with enough intolerance to go around, but still, we are reminded that our job is merely to remind others, and that in the end Allah will see to these things. Personally, I don't think Allah gives a tinker's damn about these things, and as long as you're a good person everything else will take care of itself. That said, the point is that it's not your job, or within your skill set, to judge others. Seriously, how arrogant are you to believe that you are constructed in such a way that you can judge other people? It's especially galling for me when it is Christians who are doing the judging. Of all the important religious leaders in history was there ever one who stressed not being judgment more than Jesus? Granted, almost every one of them stressed that concept as well, but did anyone ever do it is beautifully as it is rendered in the Sermon on the Mount? Apparently they don't read that in Sunday school anymore.
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