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Philadelphia and Me

A couple of nights ago I caught most of Philadelphia, from the point where Andrew excuses himself to go vomit in the bathroom and ends up in the hospital to the freeze frame of the home video from his childhood.

I was very moved. I cried. Not great sobbing gouts of tears or anything, just a quiet happy-sad little trickle from both eyes and a short little catch in the throat.

The value of a film like Philadelphia, a toned-down mainstream look at an alternative lifestyle, is that it forces us to see the adherents of that lifestyle as people like us. They have hearts that can be wounded and broken. They have families that love them and whom they love. They have friends they care about and who care about them. They have their loyalties and disloyalties, their heroisms and betrayals. From a distance, in the words of the song, they are pretty much like everybody else. They just dress differently, eat different food, have sex with a different gender.

That's one side of a very valuable coin.

The film makes a point, through the person of Andrew's lawyer, Joe, of bringing up mainstream objections to homosexuality and neatly disposing of them. Joe, like the mainstream viewer, comes to see homosexuals as people, not problems, people with hopes, dreams and needs, people with lives they deserve and have the right to keep, people with secrets they have the right to keep. We rejoice with Andrew in his victorious bid against callous, abusive prejudice. We grieve with Andrew over the loss of his life, both physical and social. We laugh and cry with his family over the antics of a curly-haired little angel as he plays on the beach with his siblings and drags a heavy picnic basket to the porch steps. The film draws out our sympathies–and rightly so.

The film also makes a point of showing us a member of a recently abused and maligned minority in a position of unchallenged power and authority. The message here is that the still feared and suppressed sexual minority deserves the same acceptance and assimilation as the mainstream now cherishes for the once despised and oppressed racial minority.

The film likewise draws a distinction between moral and legal attitudes toward homosexuals. Joe's opening address to the jury asks them, and through them the mainstream viewer, to remember that what matters in the courtroom is not morality, but law. It is a question of the legal, not moral, code whether Andrew Beckett was wrongully dismissed. It is a question of the legal, not moral, code whether homosexuals may occupy positions of influence in our communities, from the highest offices of government to the lowest offices of education.

That's where it gets tricky. It's easy for me to accept that some people desire or need to be actively homosexual. But I get uneasy when personal active homosexuality breaks down the bedroom door from the inside and becomes public homosexual activism. This is the point that Joe attempts to make when propositioned in the drugstore. It's one thing to be yourself. It's another to shove your individualism in other people's faces. Put another way, it's one thing to come out of your closet and quite another to walk into mine. Or my children's.

People like me are in something of a bind. We are educated intellectuals (that is not redundant), liberal in outlook, conservative in lifestyle, morally religious, professionally secular. We see homosexuality as a sin, not a crime; as not a crime, and yet a sin. We believe, as Joe declares, that all men (read humans) are created (or evolved) equal, whatever their sexual orientation, and that most things in life have nothing to do with sexual orientation. We wish to see everybody free, happy and fulfilled. We try to be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves". But being wise as serpents, we know that people affect each other, even without trying, and that not all effects are good (read desirable, positive, expedient).

The law reflects our tolerances, not our morals. That is, it directly reflects our tolerances and only indirectly reflects our morals. We are generally happy to tolerate diversity "out there", but we are occasionally loathe to admit it "in here"–and rightly so.

You may read the word rightly in two ways: right as in correct and right as in having a prerogative. If I do not wish to raise my children with the notion that homosexuality is a viable option, equal in physiological naturalness and social value to heterosexuality, is that not my right as a father? What I would do if one of my children chose to experiment with homosexuality or pursue a homosexual lifestyle is another matter and a very complex one that I'll address below. For the moment, I am concerned with my "natural" and "socially sanctioned" responsibility to nurture and socialize minors. If I am to socialize them, I must teach them values. What values shall I teach them and what weight shall I give to those values? How far shall I go to reinforce, or even enforce, those values?

To be continued

For discussion of a related issue, see A Clairvoyant Selfportrait of the Artist as a Published Author. See also the story A Dream of Fortune/The Fate of Meteors.