Public Displays of Gay Affection

Eww! (S)

According to many studies, the vast majority of homophobic hate crimes are attacks on gay men.

It's not uncommon to hear of gay couples being beaten up in the street, even in some parts of the Western world, and also not uncommon to hear of a gay man being followed and then attacked when he's alone.

No matter where you live, these stories exist.

But should we, as gay men, refrain from expressing our love for our partner in public? Or should we express it as we wish?

Personally, I believe that we should express our love for our partner as much as we want. Don't get me wrong, you have to make sure you're going to be safe. There are certain places where you shouldn't kiss, and others where you shouldn't even hold hands, purely to just be sensible and stay safe.

Before we embark on this post, perhaps it's worth me stating I've been told PDAs are generally more common here in Europe than in North America by my American and Canadian friends. So why do I think gay couples should express their love for each other just as much - if not more often - than straight couples? It comes down to a few factors.

First of all, I'll take you back to over a year and a half ago to when I was coming to terms with my being gay. I grew up in the countryside all my life. I felt alone when I realized I was gay, and so it took me six years to stop telling myself I'd magically turn straight one day and that my feelings for other boys would go away. I gave myself a choice between a heterosexual life or suicide, and luckily I opted for the first one. It wasn't really until I moved to a big city to go to university that I started to see more gay couples around, and as someone who was, at that point, coming to terms with their sexual preferences for other men, it was reassuring to see that there was hope.

"Hope". It kind of leads me perfectly on to my second reason. "You've gotta give them hope". Does that quote ring a bell? Harvey Milk should be an inspiration for every gay person. Everyone should at least watch the film with Sean Penn, or the documentary about his life. In the 1970s, Milk claimed that if gay people came out of their closets, then there was a better chance of change happening in the State of California, and eventually across the US. He was right. If the gays of the time didn't have Harvey Milk to say that to them, who knows where we would be right now? We'd probably be a few years behind on our current progress because for a movement to exist, it requires people and there's even greater strength in numbers when it comes to spreading a message. We still need to spread the message that "we are here, in your hamlets, your villages, your towns, your cities, your universities - we exist". If anything, we should PDA more often than breeders! There are less of us, so we should do it more often, in different places, to make up for the 95% we can't cover. Yes, we need to do it 19 times more often than heteros to be just as visible! Ok, so I'm kidding a little bit, but you get my point. With marriage equality bills popping up for review all around the place, there's no time that's more important than now to get out there and hold your partner's hand in the street. Show them and the people around you that you love them.

And so there's the third point I want to make. Why should a passing stranger's feelings have any influence on whether or not you express your love for your partner? Do heterosexuals think that? No. If we want a world where we can hold their hand or kiss them without getting stared at, or where we can walk down the street without being subjected to other people's derogatory mutterings (or worse) then we need to start building it. It's an exercise I find incredibly interesting. Reactions of passing strangers to me holding my boyfriend's hand have been very mixed, very common, and sometimes I've found them kind of amusing. We've had parents avert their children's eyes at the "shocking" sight of us holding hands, we've had the usual disgusted looks on very many occasions, we've heard people mutter to themselves but purposefully within earshot, the list goes on. However, nothing bad has happened yet and none of the above have affected either of us. On the other hand, it's really evaluating to see some other people's faces light up. They're a lot less common, but they do exist. The feeling you might have made someone's hour, day, or week, just that little bit brighter and restored a little of their faith in humanity, is reciprocal; both you and the stranger feel happier.

The only kind of hurtful experience we've had was when a bunch of middle-schoolers were standing behind us on the tram hurling insults. We just carried on in our conversation, but it was hard to block them out. When I had a look around at the other people in the tram, quite a few were now looking and staring, some shocked by what they were witnessing, others not all that bothered and just interested to see what was going on. Others ignored the situation entirely. It kind of amused me to think that perhaps being homophobically insulted confirms you're in a relationship, sort of like the equivalent of "knowing you're getting popular on the internet when you get your first troll" (not that homophobia is funny - well, not always).

When it comes to more intimate public displays of affection than holding hands, we have been known to kiss in the middle of the street with a Nazi bookstore on one side and an extremist church on the other while waiting for a friend to turn up. Are you shouting "be careful" at your screen? Because a woman walked past looking worried and muttered "be careful" to us. We were. They were both closed, we were well aware of what they both sold, it was a Sunday, and there was no-one in or around the two buildings. However, had they have been open, we wouldn't have dared.

There's a big difference between being confident, and being stupid. It's fine to show your love for your partner in public, as long as you know you're being sensible, and safe. It's not worth going to hospital because of someone else's hate. There's no point in trying to change those people's minds. By kissing in front of a Nazi bookstore when it's open, you stand a better chance of being beaten to death with a hardback copy of Mein Kampf than changing the owner's opinions. But when it comes to those who are passively homophobic like my Dad - who called gay marriage just "stupid" -, holding hands and showing you're genuinely happy with your partner could just be enough for them to tilt their scale of prejudice in our favour, and appreciate the beauty of the universality of love.