Closer than you think

The recent blog-debate about homosexuality in Ethiopia was interesting and frightening in that it revealed the blinkered bias and prejudice about homosexuality like it's some deviation and disease. Today I found that it has been much closer to home than I realised when chatting to a cousin:

My uncle was not very popular in my world for various reasons, one being that he'd loose all male and adult aloofnes when it came to unruly kids, stooping to harmless pranks and trying to give tit for tat.

What was strange to us was that he used to spend so much time on his grooming, dyeieng his hair and fluffing it up for hours outside infront of a mirror. He used to have a minceing limpwristed walk that was impossible to keep up with in its leg-numbing slowness. He used to hand-make very realistic cloth dolls for my mother. He was married but after his misfit of a son was born they separated (nothing special for sure, but the wedding pictures show a cornered man). He used to bring over male friends, who would share his bed in a "brotherly" fashion. He wore a tiny braided ponytail that he'd stuff down his shirt collar when at home. He'd spend a lot of my mum's money. He drank a lot. He was nasty.

The nastiness, drinking and bitchiness to children (especially his nieces) are not steroetypical traits of gay men, but I reckon they are the result of the oppression and prejudice that cause the frustrations to come out in a nasty way. So not just for the sake of humanity and a more tolerant society should homosexuality be accepted as something that is part of human nature. Let's accept it for the sake of healthier families and happier men, for those thwarted and oppressed inevitably find someone else to torment, in most cases children. To those who say it's against God's will and design, if anything exists in the world it is by his design.

Thing is I just guessed only a few years ago that he might have been gay. I never had confirmation, the whole family was blind to it -despite the extended grooming etc (though stereotypes mean little on their own) and I didn't run it past my mother as she would have had a fit- after all he made dolls with his hands to keep her entertained.

Tonight my cousin and I almost simultaneously said "Did you know he was gay...?" Only to stop and gawk at each other, as no-one had ever mentioned it. And it will stay like that since it will not be seen as something that he just was among other things, like he was light-skinned or liked to wear a "shirrit", it would look like I was acting out a final piece of revenge against an uncle who bullied me by "tarnishing" his name with homosexuality. I think if I said he was a child molester, rapist or red-terror torturer people would accept it more since those are more "manly and heterosexual" things to do, but loving other men? Never.