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Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
I. "DOWN LOW" DISCOURSE: THE DOMINANT STORY II. BLURRING THE PERPETRATOR/VICTIM DIVIDE A. Not All Black Women Are Victims 1. Some women know; some don't care; some prefer bisexual men 2. Women can live "down low" B. Black Men Can Be Victims Too 1. Bisexuality is not an intelligible option 2. The down low harms out black men III. STRUCTURAL CONNECTIONS: WHAT BLACK WOMEN AND BLACK MSM HAVE IN COMMON A. Governmental Policies Reduce the Number of Eligible Black Male Romantic Partners B. Romantic Segregation Limits Romantic Possibilities for Black Women and Black MSM C. The Branding of HIV as a Gay White Disease Disserved Black MSM and Black Women IV. THE FAILURE OF HIV TRANSMISSION LAWS A. Positive Perpetrators and Negative Victims B. Complexity and Culpability C. A Structural Approach to HIV Risk CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
Recently, the media have brought to light examples of ordinary black men who are said to live on the "down low" (or DL) in that they have primary romantic relationships with women while engaging in secret sex with men. (1) A central theme of this media coverage, which I will call "DL discourse," is that DL men expose their unwitting female partners to HIV, which stems from their secret sex with men. (2) DL discourse warrants examination because it sits at the intersection of three important civil rights movements: (1) the gay rights movement, (2) the black anti-racist movement, and (3) AIDS activism. In this Article, I critique DL discourse in order to reveal important lessons about media framing, gender schemas, and victimization, and the relationship of all three to law. DL discourse tends to conceal several relevant and interconnected groups, including nonblack men who engage in similar practices, down low women, and women whose sexual relationships are not monogamous or "respectable." These erasures permit the media to boil the underlying issues down to a battle between two caricatures--dangerous black men and their innocent wives and girlfriends. However, a close analysis of this framing provides the opportunity to recognize complicating nuances and draw structural connections between black men who have sex with men, or "MSM," (3) and black women. I argue that both of these groups confront structural constraints that push them to the fringes of the black community and the broader society while limiting their romantic possibilities.
The media and the public have applied an insidious racialized double standard to black and white men who engage in similar conduct. The black men who are depicted as having secret sex behind their wives' backs in DL discourse horrify us, yet we see Ennis and Jack, the star-crossed lovers in the Oscar-nominated, box office hit Brokeback Mountain, as victims of the closet. (4) When Governor Jim McGreevey came out as a "gay American," the empathy that the public felt for his wife Dina did not require casting Jim as a villain. Thus, an important point of this Article is that we attend to our tendency to frame black and white men through radically disparate lenses even when they engage in the same underlying conduct. Juxtaposing what I call "white men on the down low" (5) against the stories of all-black depravity featured in DL discourse makes apparent that these media stories race the closet.
To say that the media race the closet is not to say that black and white MSM are identically situated vis-a-vis the closet. But the major differences may not be the ones suggested by the media, such as the association of DL with promiscuity. (6) First, black men face not just homophobia but also racism, and these two oppressive forces intertwine in vexing ways. For instance, black men who identify as gay may face accusations that they have let down the black community, which often views "good black men" as an endangered species. (7) Jim McGreevey can come out without anyone fretting about the white community lacking strong male leaders or linking such a problem to his sexual identity. To the extent that black men do not "come out" as frequently as white men, one explanation is that they face greater pressure to shun an additional stigmatizing identity. Importantly, this pressure arises not just from the black community and its purported greater homophobia, (8) but also from white people.
The very white gay men who bemoan the internalized homophobia of black men and suggest that coming out is a cure-all often contribute to the closet that confines black men by excluding and marginalizing black MSM in gay spaces and public representations. (9) As I describe below, (10) white gay men have dominated public images of gay men, which makes it hard for many men of color contemplating coming out to understand where they would fit in. To the extent that black men see black gay images in the media, such representations are likely to be caricatures--like the DL--that fail to reflect how black men see themselves.
Although DL discourse has convinced many readers that the DL is a real and significant phenomenon in the black community, no one has ever proved the prevalence of this practice in black communities or elsewhere. Indeed, it may be impossible to do so since the very conception of the practice entails secrecy. Asking a man whether he is down low may not produce a reliable answer since DL men, by definition, are perceived as hiding their sexual relationships with men and denying the relevance of their involvement in such sex. Many media stories on the DL fail to quote any actual men on the DL beyond J.L. King, the one man who has built a career on acting as a media spokesperson for the group. (11) Thus, the media set up the DL as a "phenomenon" whose existence can neither be proved nor refuted. In my view, the blossoming of the DL story in major media outlets, despite the lack of identifiable DL men and minimal empirical evidence, speaks to the background stereotypes about black pathology that enable the story to bypass normal expectations of verification.
Despite these verification challenges, some public health scholars who have also been intrigued by the DL story as a possible explanation for high HIV rates among black women have attempted to study DL men. I report the results of some of these studies throughout this Article. Although these studies shed some light on men who fit at least some of the characteristics of the typical media definition of down low, (12) they are subject to important limitations. First, it is possible that there is a group of DL men who would not talk to researchers, despite rigorous procedures intended to protect their identities. (13) Such men are obviously not included in the studies I describe, although we do not know how many such men exist. Second, some studies select subjects by asking men whether they identify as "down low" and thus sweep in some men who do not sleep with women and men simultaneously, but nonetheless subscribe to DL identity for reasons that may include a rejection of the whiteness of gay identity and the view that DL is a trendier term for the closet. (14) These limitations mean that the studies do not enable me to prove that the pervasive assumptions about DL men are correct or incorrect. They do, however, allow me to raise skepticism about assumptions which may amount to nothing more than stereotype. (15)
This Article begins in Part I where I describe the main themes of DL discourse, laying the foundation for Part II, which deconstructs the framing of this discourse. While the media tend to pit black MSM against black women, framing the former as perpetrators and the latter as passive victims, I reveal often ignored subgroups that destabilize the discourse's simplistic binary. I also reveal that the victimization of black men is masked by the assumption that only women can be victims. Such frames conceal the common ground of marginalization that black MSM and black women share. In Part III, I examine several mechanisms that specifically harm black women and black MSM. These governmental policies and social norms include "romantic segregation," mass incarceration, and the branding of HIV/AIDS as a disease of gay white men--not black men and their female partners. The increasingly black face of HIV today (16) is in part a byproduct of the government's initial focus on gay white men to the exclusion of others affected by the virus.
One might expect HIV-specific transmission statutes, which were partly motivated by news reports of a black man infecting numerous white women, to offer a solution to the down low because such laws punish people who know they are HIV-positive and have sex with another without disclosure. Yet many DL men currently live beyond the reach of HIV transmission statutes and under the radar of the HIV testing regime because they do not see themselves as belonging to the risk group of gay men and thus do not know their HIV status. Instead of simply trying to identify individual perpetrators, an approach that has had minimal impact, the government could protect individuals by establishing regular HIV testing as a norm for all sexually active people, not just those who fit a flawed profile of those at risk. Studies show that most people who receive an HIV-positive diagnosis alter their behavior and engage in less unprotected sex with HIV-negative partners.
Although I attack media conceptions of black men on the "down low," and their links to government policies, I do not mean to excuse or justify the behavior of a man (of any race) who lies to his wife or female partner about his sexual relationships with men and exposes her to HIV. (17) While there surely are some men who fit the DL caricature, media discourse on the DL contains little of the complexity, personal struggle, and humanity apparent in the lives of many black men who have sex with men and women and refuse to identify as gay. It also tends to distract us from the structural forces that contribute to individual decision making. DL discourse fosters a new sexualized stigma for black men while ignoring the compelling questions of intersectionality and identity politics prompted by the DL. (18)
I. "DOWN LOW" DISCOURSE: THE DOMINANT STORY
In this Part, I describe the most common media narrative concerning the down low. Then in Part II, I show how conspicuous omissions in these stories perpetuate the perception that black MSM are enemies of black women, and I attempt to blur the perpetrator/victim divide delineated by the media. In describing DL discourse, I focus on the most widely distributed examples because they have wielded the most influence on public perceptions. I consider stories in the New York Times and two of the most popular magazines directed at black audiences, Essence and Ebony. (19) In addition, I analyze an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the top-rated daytime talk show, which uniquely influences the opinions of many black and nonblack viewers. Although I focus on these sources, my review of coverage in several other media sources suggests that these sources are representative of the general discourse in mainstream white- and black-controlled media.
What is the "down low"? Whether it is used in white-dominated media, such as the New York Times, or black-controlled media, such as Essence, the term "down low" typically refers to men who are "(1) Black, (2) not identifying as gay, (3) having sex with both men and women, (4) not disclosing their sexual behavior with men to female partners, and (5) never, or inconsistently, using condoms with males and females." (20) Public health experts state that it is entirely unclear how many men satisfy this definition. (21) Nor has it been established that the DL is more common among black men than men of other races or is a primary reason why HIV rates in black women are high. (22) The term "down low" originated in the black community, but it did not initially refer to sex between men. Rather, the term emerged from R&B songs describing illicit heterosexual affairs, including those by female artists like TLC ("Creep") and Salt-n-Pepa ("Whatta Man"). (23) A hit song from 1995 by singer R. Kelly provided perhaps the most prominent usage of the term in R&B/hip-hop. In the song's chorus, Kelly instructed his partnered female lover to "keep [their affair] on the down-low. Nobody has to know." (24) By 2001, when the mainstream media noticed the term, it had become associated primarily with men who have relationships with women while secretly having sex with men. (25) More recently, it has been adopted by black men who may not have sex with women but may not be "out" in the traditional sense, and may seek to distance themselves from the term "gay," which they see as rooted in white norms. (26) The media coverage has produced public perceptions that the down low is a common practice among black men. These perceptions have taken on a life of their own and tend to conceal the scant empirical support. (27)
After briefly describing the central themes of DL discourse, I will illustrate them by analyzing some prominent examples. Media reports on this "phenomenon" are almost entirely anecdotal (28) and tend to highlight the most alarming examples. The stories consistently frame the DL as a distinctly black issue, rarely even mentioning white men or nonblack men of color. Further, they present as a paradox DL men's enjoyment of sex with men while denying that they are gay. In addition, they emphasize that the DL involves deception of women, a refusal to wear condoms, and exposure of female partners to a heightened risk of HIV. Moreover, the media tend not to acknowledge that scholars have not been able to pinpoint a single reason as the cause of HIV/AIDS among black women. Scholars have identified multiple factors that likely contribute to the high incidence of HIV/AIDS among black women, including sex between heterosexually identified men in prison who reenter the black community upon release, heterosexual black men who have multiple sex partners, sex work among impoverished black men, and IV drug use, which impacts not just users but also people who sleep with them. (29) Researchers also recently identified an apparent genetic link that may make many African Americans more vulnerable to HIV. (30) Despite these numerous factors, DL discourse tends to omit all factors other than the DL. (31)
Perhaps the most inflammatory example of this discourse is an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show from April 2004. This episode featured J.L. King, an African American man and author of On the Down Low. (32) In case King's stories of sleeping with men while being married to and raising children with a black woman were not disturbing enough, Oprah featured two men with even more salacious tales of life on the low. Oprah began the show by stating that "AIDS is on the rise again. Here's a shocker! It's one of the big reasons why so many women are getting AIDS. Their husbands and their boyfriends are having secret sex with other men." (33) Then two men whose identities were obscured provided accounts of their sex lives with women and men:
Man # 1
Having a main girl, two other girls on the side and three guys makes for a lot of sex in the course of a month. I have non-committed sex with men. In no way, shape, or form do I consider myself gay. I just don't - I refuse to accept that at all. I won't even use the term 'bi-sexual'. Being in a relationship with a woman ... there is a certain warmness; a certain comfort that you just can't get with another dude. The women I sleep with have not always known that I also sleep with men. In the past, I haven't told them because it's a lot easier to just not to [sic] tell.
Man # 2
I'm shuffling three guys right now, actually. One is married, the other two gentleman [sic], I am with basically for sex. What we do is very promiscuous ... very, very, very promiscuous. Sometimes I practice safe sex, sometimes I do not. The married guy, we use condoms all the time. He insists on it. The other two guys, we don't use condoms. Usually, if I am with a woman, we don't practice safe sex.
Man # 1
For quite a while, I had very bad behavior and had unprotected sex with men, with women. (34)
[Later in the show]
Man # 1
After I was diagnosed with HIV, my behaviors didn't change. My behaviors got worse. I hung out in bars and picked up anonymous people. I had unprotected sex with guys, with women. Unfortunately, I would say I most likely have infected other people. I didn't protect myself or anything else. (35)
Presumably, Oprah and her producers selected these men because their stories make for good television. However, they provided no reason for believing that these anecdotes are representative of DL black men in general. Nonetheless, the show perpetuated the notion that DL men are highly promiscuous with men and women and place their own sexual gratification above all else. (36) As author J.L. King said in response to repeated pressing by Oprah to admit that he is gay: "If I was a gay man, I would want to be in a relationship with another man and play house. So when you're on the D.L., all you want to do is have sex. It's about gratification, not orientation." (37) A prominent New York Times Magazine story tells a similar story: "DL culture ... place[s] a premium on pleasure. It is, DL guys insist, one big party.... DL men convey a strong sense of masculine independence and power: I do what I want when I want with whom I want." (38) According to an Ebony article, "for the most part, [DL men] think they are invincible. They don't use condoms." (39) As I explain below, these portrayals may fuel public interest in passing or maintaining laws criminalizing the exposure of sex partners to the risk of HIV, even though real life situations may be far more complex than media portrayals. (40)
An examination of an Essence story further underscores the central theme of most DL discourse--black women as unwitting victims and "low down" black men as the villains. (41) Essence titled one DL story "Deadly Deception." (42) The article begins: "There have always been men on the 'down low,' self-described straight men who have sex with other men. Problem is, the HIV threat makes the deception of these brothers disturbing, deadly--and just lowdown." (43) The DL man thus represents not just an individual enemy but a racial traitor. He is supposed to be a "brother," yet he is hurting his black "sisters," and implicitly the black community, by turning to men for sex and deceiving black women.
An important backdrop for many of these articles is the frustrated heteronormative aspirations of many single black women, who are depicted as doing everything right and yet being denied the black husbands to which they are entitled. (44) These stories either assume or demonstrate the respectability of the black women they frame as victims, which is supposed to heighten the injustice of their exposure to the DL threat. (45) For example, during the Oprah episode, Jane testified: "I was the original 1950s good girl. I was a virgin on my wedding night." (46) When her husband abandoned her after many years of marriage, Jane turned to a longtime male friend for companionship and sex. She said he infected her with HIV. (47) Ebony began one of its stories on the DL with the following:
She's never shot-up dope. She's never been what society might call promiscuous. In fact, by traditional standards, Ida Bythersmith has lived what some people consider the American Dream. She fell in love and married the man of her dreams, gave birth to a healthy child and settled in a quiet, middle. class community on Chicago s South Side. (48)
Thus, a condition of respectability appears to be middle-class status, behaving as a "good girl," and not knowing or having reason to know that her partner was involved with men. (49)
The Essence author, Taigi Smith, similarly juxtaposes respectable black women and threatening black men:
Less than a year ago, it seemed as if all I could do was stress about whether or not I would meet Mr. Right, start a family and create my own American Dream. Like so many college-educated, professional Black women, I was single, childless and totally unhappy about it. My girlfriends and I would routinely lament the fact that the brothers we knew were either noncommittal, no good, penniless, going after the White girls--or all of the above. (50)
Smith demonstrates her respectability by signaling that she is pursuing the heterosexual ideal of marriage, family, and the "American Dream." She writes that the specter of the DL man terrorizes her:
We're unsure about what to do now that we know there's a possibility that our boyfriends and husbands could be closeted homosexuals carrying HIV. I am now terrified after reading the [New York] Times article [about rising HIV rates among black women], and my fear manifests itself in curious ways. I no longer make eye contact with attractive men because I'm afraid that perhaps they're living life on the down low. I spend hours scrolling through my internal directory of past boyfriends, frantically trying to pick out closeted bisexuals. While riding the subway, I try to identify the men who might have a trace of the DL syndrome. In a word, I am obsessed. (51)
This passage might strike some readers as so overblown that it verges on the comedic, yet it was intended to convey the dangerous stakes purportedly posed by dating black men today. Midway through the article Smith says she "understand[s] the complexities of being Black and gay in America." (52) But we have to take it on faith since she devotes remarkably little space to the homophobia and racism that confine black MSM, dispatching of these topics with one short paragraph. She follows that paragraph by stating: "Still, shame and social stigma don't make it okay for men on the DL to cheat on their female partners, especially when those liaisons are infecting Black women with HIV." (53) Smith thus quickly returns to the article's overarching theme--black women being terrorized by DL men, and the black man's penis as a deadly weapon. (54) Her focus, consistent with other DL stories, is squarely on the women, as revealed by the cover headline "Do Black Men Still Want Us?" (55) The terror inspired by the DL man has spawned a cottage industry of authors and bloggers offering advice on "[h]ow to spot a DL brother." (56) Misha King, a single black woman quoted in a New York Times article, disclosed that she goes on "field trips to the gay bars" to learn how to identify DL men. (57)
Stories on the down low frequently stress how shocked women are that the men featured in these stories do not appear feminine or otherwise stereotypically gay. (58) The DL man alarms people not simply because of his behavior but because of a widespread belief that gender identity and sexual orientation correlate in men. (59) Engaging in same-sex intimacy is wrongly perceived as stripping males of their masculinity. (60) They are widely perceived as fallen and closer on the gender spectrum to women than a "real man." (61) This expectation is then used to police MSM and their gender presentation. Many people expect gay men to disclose their sexual identity through telltale signs of effeminacy, either subtle or overt. After all, is it too much to expect a limp wrist, pursed lips, a lisp, or sway in his walk? The DL man (and many out MSM) disobeys social norms by eschewing these traits and displaying a masculine gender presentation. Similarly, he does not partake in other aspects of gay culture that might make him identifiable: displaying a "gym body" (which is not necessary to attract most women), wearing trendy, formfitting clothes (which are of course designed to reveal the gym body), and using expensive grooming products. (62) Further frustrating efforts to identify him, the DL man expresses attraction toward women, thus eliding another telltale sign of a gay man--sexual disinterest in women or interest that appears feigned. Therefore, the DL man transgresses social norms in performing masculinity persuasively and failing to affiliate with gay culture. In so doing, he upsets the expectation that gay men should be identifiable, which makes it easy for society to relegate them to the margins. Moreover, in disregarding the rules of sexual identity, the DL man reminds not just women but also men that any man might enjoy sex with men if it were detached from the stigmatized social identity that normally comes with it. (63)
The primary reason for exploring the DL subculture is said to be its effect on black women and their health. Like the Oprah episode, DL stories regularly state or imply, usually at the outset, that DL men are responsible for high HIV rates among black women. (64) The purported concern for black women's health is thus used as the hook to justify exploring a topic that readers might otherwise regard as tawdry--black men secretly having sex with other men. Worse still, the stories discuss DL men with little evident interest in or concern for their humanity. Indeed, the depictions of DL men as one-dimensional sexual machines, lacking a heart and a conscience, imply that they do not suffer or struggle internally. (65) These crude depictions of black men enable their casting as villains, just as simplistic, "respectable" representations of black women and their sexual decision making assist their framing as victims. In Part IV, I show that this reductive binary maps onto the law's framing of sexual relations in the context of HIV transmission laws. In the next Part, I critique the focus on "respectable" black women, and the many black women who are obscured by such accounts.
II. BLURRING THE PERPETRATOR/VICTIM DIVIDE
A. Not All Black Women Are Victims
1. Some women know; some don't care; some prefer bisexual men
Even as DL discourse sets up a divide between black female victims and black MSM perpetrators, it grants only certain women access to the role of victim. Several categories of women are either expunged or shrouded because they would complicate the divide and present more complex and realistic images of black women. These marginalized women include those who knowingly sleep with a MSM, including bisexual women who might prefer or be comfortable with a bisexual man, and women who choose to stay with an MSM even after learning about his interest in men. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that 12% of young men who disclose their sexual orientation (i.e., out gay or bisexual men) reported having one or more female sex partners within the last six months. (66) Moreover, half of these men acknowledged having unprotected vaginal or anal sex with at least one female partner in the last six months. (67) A study by Richard Wolitski and others found that one-third of the men who self-identified as DL reported that their main partners were females who knew they had sex with male partners. (68) These findings counter several deeply entrenched assumptions in DL discourse: (1) out men do not sleep with women; (2) women would not sleep with a man if they knew he had sex with men; and (3) to the extent that a woman would sleep with such a man, she would certainly demand that he use a condom because of the risk of HIV.
A central problem with DL discourse is its tendency to assume that all or most male-female sex occurs in the context of committed relationships, which is evident from its failure to discuss other sexual arrangements. The implicit and misplaced assumption is that every black woman--or every black woman who matters--is in a relationship that she views as committed and monogamous. The Wolitski study of self-identified DL men, however, found that "few DL-identified MSM in this study currently had a female main partner--most female partners reported by these men were non-primary partners." (69) The various forms of male-female relationships that fall outside of marriage or committed partners, whether called "hooking up," "friends with benefits," or "maintenance sex," are not even mentioned in most DL discourse. The failure to acknowledge women in such situations, especially in black-controlled media, seems to arise from their failure to conform to a traditional, "respectable" image of female sexuality. (70) This is unfortunate because DL discourse could be used to make plain burdens on some black women's sexual decision making that stem from governmental policies that reduce the number of black men. As I describe more fully in Part III, the reduced availability of marriage pressures some black women who would prefer marriage to navigate the terrain of temporary sexual relationships. (71) Moreover, the framing of black women as victims in need of protection invokes the peril of the pedestal/cage. (72) The focus on black female victimhood may forestall important conversations on how society can support female agency in sexual relationships and empower women to reduce their exposure to HIV. (73)
Two related points bear mentioning. First, in some of these short-term sexual relationships, due to the lack of commitment, the male and female may be engaged in overlapping sexual relationships with others. This possibility extends to marital relationships as well. When we hear about another unfaithful husband (e.g., John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer), we are conditioned to assume that the wife standing stolidly beside him was faithful. Yet current New York Governor David Paterson's recent disclosure that he and his wife had engaged in extramarital affairs warns us that the assumption of female fidelity may be misplaced. (74) Rarely does it seem to occur to writers of DL discourse that a woman could transmit HIV to her male partner. (75) The woman is typically assumed to be monogamous and her MSM partner to be promiscuous.
Second, people sometimes have sex without asking questions about their partner's sexual history or other potential contemporaneous partners. Thus, in addition to the group of women who know about a man's involvement with men, there are others who do not know because they do not ask. (76) If they are simply hooking up for a night or two, women may choose not to ask about a man's other sexual involvements. Even if she did ask, such a woman might reason, she cannot expect full candor from someone she just met or knows only casually. Sex outside the context of a long-term relationship typically carries fewer markers of trust and reliability about the risk one takes on by becoming sexually involved. (77) The point is that women can become involved with men who behave bisexually in the absence of the male deceiving his female partner.
Another woman who receives little attention in most DL discourse is the woman who chooses to stay with her husband after she learns of his involvement with men. The New York Times revealed such women in a story that focused on white couples and did not mention the DL. (78) The article identified "Brokeback marriages," named after the acclaimed, groundbreaking movie Brokeback Mountain, which depicted two men who fell in love and maintained a clandestine sexual relationship while they were married to women. According to the founder of the International Straight Spouse Network, a group which counsels people with queer spouses, one-third of the wives who contact the network stay with their husbands. (79) And half of those marriages last for at least three years. (80) One woman in the story formally divorced her husband, yet later reconciled with him and permitted him to continue having sex with men. (81) Another decided to keep her marriage intact but began having extramarital relations like her husband. (82) In light of Senator Larry Craig's conviction for soliciting sex from a male police officer, some would put his wife in this category of women who choose to stay.
In sharp contrast to the framing of most DL stories, the Brokeback marriages article assiduously avoids placing the blame on the men in such marriages and instead revealed the complex motivations animating the decision making of the husbands and wives. Consider the following passage:
On the whole these are not marriages of convenience or cynical efforts to create cover. Gay and bisexual men continue to marry for complex reasons, many impelled not only by discrimination, but also by wishful thinking, the layered ambiguities of sexual love and authentic affection. "These men genuinely love their wives," said Joe Kort, a clinical social worker in Royal Oak, Mich., who has counseled hundreds of gay married men, including a minority who stay in their marriages. Many, he said, considered themselves heterosexual men with homosexual urges that they hoped to confine to private fantasy life. "They fall in love with their wives, they have children, they're on a chemical, romantic high, and then after about seven years, the high falls away and their gay identity starts emerging," Mr. Kort said. "They don't mean any harm." (83)
Although the conduct of the men in Brokeback marriages is indistinguishable from that of DL men, the New York Times treats white men on the DL with a compassion and generosity that I have never seen in a DL story. Kort even suggests that the women who marry gay men bear some responsibility for the marriages: "'Straight people rarely marry gay people accidentally,' he wrote in a case study of a mixed-orientation marriage published [September 2005] in Psychotherapy Networker.... Some women, Mr. Kort said, find gay men less judgmental and more flexible, while others unconsciously seek partnerships that are not sexually passionate." (84) One need not accept Kort's essentialized conceptions of gay men to find that he raises a valid question. Some women may be drawn to gay or bisexual men (consciously or unconsciously) because of their own psychological reasons. Like many parents who raise queer children, a wife might know and yet not let herself see that her mate is gay. When lawyer/TV host Star Jones announced her marriage to Al Reynolds, rumors swirled that Reynolds had a gay past. Rather than denying that he was gay, the couple released a statement that some understood to imply that, on some level, Jones knew and accepted Reynolds' past. (85) Former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey and his wife Dina are locked in a divorce battle that pivots...
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