Zoë Strachan

There are things about ourselves that we’re supposed to want to change. We’re actively encouraged to take pills which make us happy, we demand pills to make us horny, and millions of us waste money on pills that promise to make us thin. But what if there was an anti-homosexual pill, one that miraculously turned gay people straight? Surely, as the Gay Liberation Front spent so long teaching us, gay is good.

Not so, says David Akinsanya, subject of a BBC documentary to be broadcast this week. If there was such a pill, he’d pop it in a nanosecond. Failing that, his obsession with how great it must be to be straight leads him to Jesus. After watching a hysterical god squad ad in which the “living proof” of Christ’s power to change homosexuals is an array of splendidly moustachioed men who look as if they’ve strutted off a Tom of Finland drawing, David signs up for a Love In Action sexual reorientation course. Although it’s difficult to believe he does so for any other reason than it looks sure to make great telly, he isn’t alone. There are 120 “ex-gay” ministries in the US, dealing with 400,000 enquiries a year from men and women who are anything but glad to be gay.

David is quick to deny he’s ashamed of his sexuality. It’s just that he’s been there, done that. “I’ve been out on the scene for twenty years,” he says, “And it’s not really done anything to enhance my life.”

I’m not surprised. If I’d spent twenty years on the gay scene I’d be more than depressed, I’d be suicidal. Gay may be good, but the gay scene isn’t, or not for me. More of my straight friends go to gay clubs these days, and if anyone has actually found the love of their life amid that heaving morass of sweaty male torsos bopping away to incessantly hideous euro-pop remixes, well good on them. The term “gay village” isn’t a misnomer. It’s invariably claustrophobic, incestuous and bitchy. Little wonder that David’s gay relationships haven’t made him feel good about himself. Even those who like that kind of thing tire of it, and twenty years sounds like a life sentence.

In fairness, David’s past is far from happy. His English mother abandoned him at birth and when he was nine his father returned to Nigeria. He grew up in care, where he was abused by older boys and then by a male social worker. This, he believes, taught him to be gay. There is no doubt it’s a tragic story. I’ve known only one gay male who was open about having been abused by a man as a child, and his coming out was a slow and tortuous process, which thankfully reached a happy conclusion in the form of a move to Brighton and a solid relationship. David, on the other hand, wants to be “normal”, to redeem his own experiences by creating a new family of his own.

“I’m tired of the lifestyle and have been single for years,” he complains. “What I want is a nuclear family. Wife, kids, the lot.”

The casual misogyny of this statement is astounding. Likewise Josh, a graduate of the Love In Action programme, feels he’s now “open to the possibility of a woman”. He hasn’t “acted out with another person for well over a year” but still “struggles with same sex attraction”. Pity the poor females who end up entangled with these guys, destined only to be lifestyle accessories and brood mares. Besides, when nuclear families reach critical mass, the emotional fallout isn’t necessarily any less damaging.

Craving heterosexuality seems a bit extreme given that the family dream is edging towards reality for gay people now. Same sex couples have full legal recognition in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and legislation is pending in Canada. Scotland is perfectly poised to move with the times, and sure enough, gay people can legally have sex at the same age as their hetero friends, potentially adopt children, and register civil partnerships. Yet last week the news broke that many registrars in Scotland are being allowed to opt out of conducting gay “marriage” ceremonies. At least two local authority areas will deny gay couples the right to anything more than the legal minimum of partnership registration – none of the registry office ceremonies that straight couples enjoy. As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t a matter of choice, it’s the law. The only decision these whinging homophobes should be able to make is whether to like it or lump it. A fortnight ago Spain, a predominately Catholic country, saw its first gay marriage between two men who’d been partners for 30 years. It was attended by Pedro Zerolo, the top government official for social issues. I won’t hold my breath for similar recognition for the first Scots whose councillors deign to favour wedding style ceremonies, though given Jack McConnell’s taste in kilts that might be no bad thing.

Not everyone wants to get married, and many gay people will welcome the move towards equality but eschew the ceremony as an essentially hetero construct. One male couple I know have no intention of tying the knot but are planning a family, whether by adoption or with the help of a lesbian couple in the same position. They both love children, are financially secure, and have supportive relatives themselves, so they feel they can create a secure environment for their kids. It’s a natural progression for them, and yes, it’s completely based on David’s ideal – minus the wife.

If anything gay people have to put much more thought into becoming parents than straight ones. There are no little accidents, no missed pills or burst condoms. Every child is planned and wanted. When gay couples become parents they must also have to confront a whole new set of issues, especially if their offspring turn out to share their sexuality. Have they taught them to be so, or passed on a gay gene? Although every gay parent must be concerned about their child being bullied at school for having two mummies or daddies, or perhaps having sufficient access to male and female role models, I can’t imagine anyone preferring that their progeny be straight.

Although my knee jerk reaction to David wasn’t favourable, as I watched the documentary, I found myself considering his position more seriously. Could it really be more than a case of the grass being not only straighter, but greener? I began to wonder if I was being prejudiced myself. After all, why shouldn’t someone reject the gay label? There’s little doubt that your best chance at an easy life comes from being born Western, male, white and straight, and if I could temporarily turn into a man to see what it’s like, I’d jump at the chance. I sought the opinion of a friend. Like David, he’s been openly gay for at least twenty years. He’s single but sexually active. If the fictitious anti-gay pill was reversible, he said he’d take it like a shot. Partly out of understandable curiosity (he’s never “acted out” as heterosexual); partly for the same reason as David, an urge to reproduce and form a family. To be hetero might offer a greater chance of happiness. “If you love your parents, there’s always a sadness there,” he said. “Even if they don’t show it, you know you’ve disappointed them by frustrating their dreams of grandchildren. By being gay.”

I consider myself lucky: liberal parents, no great traumas, no angst about my sexuality at all. It’s never nice coming out, but that’s more because it’s a public airing of private feelings. For some it’s such a daunting process that openness becomes the be all and end all. Telling friends and family, being out and proud, dancing to Madonna in some sticky floored gay bar, is seen as an end in itself when really it’s only the beginning. For me, the decision to identify as lesbian came after forming a serious relationship. It was far easier to introduce a partner, to place love where it belongs, at the centre of the issue. And it certainly made me happier than wittering on to friends about how I wasn’t “entirely straight” and bumbling about the gay scene being mistaken for a fag hag or castigated for my lipstick.

My partner and I tend to meet with very positive responses. Admittedly we work in the arts and live in the west end of Glasgow (once known as “bohemian”, now for house prices and an excess of coffee shops), and we don’t look particularly threatening, which perhaps makes us easy to dissociate from those potentially subversive butches. In fact, we’re most often expected to bask in beneficent, open-minded approval. It’s straight people who’re crying out that gay is good, which can be just a teensy bit patronising, though immeasurably better than the truly horrendous treatment meted out to gays in many other parts of the world (not that hate crime is by any means unknown here). Recent reactions have ranged from “How sweet!” to: “You two have a lovely relationship. You’re just like sisters.” Which is true, if by sisters you mean non-blood relations who like shagging each other senseless.

Sex is undoubtedly the problem, as nobody seems able to dissociate the physical act from the wider context, and lesbian sex has a very visible niche in popular culture. Glossy soap The L Word gets rave reviews in Heat magazine. Makosi’s faux-dyke fumblings keep everyone glued to Big Brother. Pornography still harbours a soft (or should that be hard?) spot for silicone-breasted Sapphists with unfeasible nail extensions. Presumably some people find lesbian sex distasteful (indeed the women that do usually end up reviewing my books), but as long as it fits straight expectations and comes with a smidgen of glamour, it’s fine. We may be here, we may be queer, but there’s a palpable sense of disappointment if we confess that sometimes we’d prefer a nice cup of tea.

The idea of gay men having it off is far more threatening. Gay vicars have grudgingly been accepted, as long as they’re celibate. Lay people can have gay partners, but according to the Anglicans clergy “cannot claim the liberty to enter into sexually active homophile relationships”. Gay men in the media can be Carrie Bradshaw’s GBF, or figures of fun like Will and Jack. They can redesign celebrity homes and revamp tired wardrobes. They can even go out with David Furnish, but not since Queer As Folk have they been portrayed as actually having sex, and even then it was somehow sanitised, because they were marketed as objects of lust for straight women and of aspiration for metrosexual males. Witness the recent comments of Andrew “prime-time dildo” Davies, who is adapting Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker-winning novel The Line of Beauty for the small screen. “The gay sex makes me queasy,” Davies told The Times, “I suspect the television audience also finds it awkward.” Instead of the loving detail he brought to Tipping the Velvet, male actors will follow the soft-focus direction: “they make love”. Davies is, he claims, “more interested in the emotions of the characters than in the sex act”. Ah yes, that really came across in his Moll Flanders. Especially the “uncut” video version. It seems there’s a subtle distinction between “prime-time dildo” and “utter tool”.

It’s disappointing, because visibility does fight prejudice. For many gay people it becomes an inescapable duty, even if you don’t especially wish your sex life to become your defining characteristic. Although I wouldn’t have chosen the same comparison, I was surprised to find myself agreeing with Love In Action’s executive director, John Smid. He argues that homosexuality doesn’t work as a label. It’s like describing someone as an alcoholic. It doesn’t say anything about who you are as a person, it just applies to the one part of your life that relates to your relationship with alcohol. I wouldn’t have chosen the same comparison given that alcoholism is generally a negative trait, and homosexuality emphatically isn’t, but I can’t help yearning for a future in which we don’t have such a propensity for categorisation. In which sexuality just isn’t an issue at all.

So does David Akinsanya manage to harness the power of Jesus and turn himself straight? Take a wild guess. If there really was an anti-gay pill, would he swallow it? I don’t think so. Either way, it’s reductive and stupid to suggest that being either gay or straight is enough to make you happy. David’s problem isn’t that he prefers men; it’s that he’s single, nearing forty, and a bit fed up. That’s something that no pill can cure.