Dolce and Gabbana should shut the hell up
Dolce and Gabbana were asking for it. In an interview with the Italian magazine Panorama, the designer duo, who ironically are gay themselves, said some rather surprising things about gay marriage. They said that marriage ought to be between a man and a woman and that gay couples ought not to raise children. Not only that, they also think that any child born out of surrogacy or in-vitro fertilisation is “synthetic”.
The views of the custodians of arguably the world’s best known fashion brand have generated a huge backlash with celebrities such as Elton John calling for a boycott of D&G goods. John, who has two children with husband David Furnish, wrote on his Instagram profile:
“How dare you refer to my beautiful children as ‘synthetic’? And shame on you for wagging your judgmental little fingers at IVF – a miracle that has allowed legions of loving people, both straight and gay, to fulfil their dream of having children. Your archaic thinking is out of step with the times, just like your fashions. I shall never wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again. #BoycottDolceGabbana”
To be sure, what D&G have said is not new – this kind of vacuous homophobia flows all around us - but one does not expect gay fashion icons to harbour such views. Their comments are especially jarring in a climate of rising acceptance of homosexual parents. On Sunday, the Bishop of Elphin in Ireland retracted his earlier statement in which he had cast doubt on the ability of homosexuals to be good parents.
The debate over homosexuality shifts its register with every passing decade. If the period up to 1990s was about equality in the West, the period since has focused on gay marriage. It seems the next wall to burn down will be the opposition to gay parenting.
The traditional image of gay people - a bunch of hedonists puffing their lives away in sex and meth - does not help the debate. Too often the focus has been on the “gay lifestyle” to drive home the inappropriateness of gay people raising kids. At the far end of this spectrum, sickeningly, gays have even been accused of having kids to sate their pedophilic urges.
It is saddening that the debate has been allowed to reach this grim point. No one would question a straight man’s capability to be a father based on the shenanigans he got up to in his youth. But gay men, and men more than women, are not allowed to live down the burden of their youthful indiscretions. Their lives are supposed to move from one transactional search for happiness to another without a transcendent arc connecting the dots.
That is the real homophobia, this view that gay men are somehow different. That they are incapable of forming loving, long-lasting relationships. A lot of gay men, to be sure, pooh pooh straight norms, including family, during their early years because they feel utterly left out from society’s traditional structures. Their defiance is a protective film that they cover themselves in to be able to live down the hurt and shame that is heaped on them due to their sexuality.
The ordinary process of coming of age has an added edge for gay men. As they hit their 30s, they come to realise that their search for a semblance of stability is running futile because they have closed themselves so. Their anger and their politics, protective gears that they have tattooed on their skins, have also made them cautious of kindness and love. It is a most brutal realisation, more brutal than the homophobia they have faced all their lives, because it is a byproduct of the very thing that has helped them survive and fashion their unique self.
Picture this gay man. He is 30-ish, desperate to settle down, make a family, have kids his own. He must now start living anew, open himself a bit, let go of that strong, hard-willed gay youth he has been all along but whom he sees he shall now have to quietly bury. He is on the cusp of his middle age, and he wants nothing more than a family to call his own. As the pain of the past dissolves, he is looking ahead. His doubts now circle not on his own self, but on what legacy he might leave behind. What sort of parent would he become?
A deeply committed, head-over-heels-in-love parent. The only argument against gay parenting that I can think of is that gay men would arrive at the traditional family structure after such a harrowing search for happiness that they could do nothing but spoil their kids rotten. I know from experience of straight couples who suffer multiple, painful IVF cycles so that they might be blessed with a bundle of joy. Ten cycles, maybe more. They keep trying till they find success. All gay couples who have kids – every single one of them — shares in that desperation, and the kid that arrives at the end is the most precious thing in the world to them.
So, D&G, why don’t you shut the hell up?