Sort of political Monday
We have signs designating a "gay village" in Ottawa. We have these signs at the behest of a city councilor who pushed to have the signs even though the most of the residents and businesses of the place now designated the gay village didn't want them.
I might further add that while there are a two gay sex shops and one gay book store in the area that it is not, in fact, a gay village. There are three massage parlours, four or five sex shops and who knows what else serving heterosexuals in the area along with what is probably the highest concentration of drug dealers in the city of Ottawa in the area.
There used to be a gay village in Ottawa back in the 1970s. It was a few blocks east of the location presently designated. It disappeared because most gay men have moved upscale and are no longer much interested in risking their lives running around dark and dangerous streets looking for a temporary partner now that they live in nice houses in nice neighbourhoods with a more permanent partner.
But we're told it's important to make the statement.
The most prominent of the two gay sex shops embodies this perfectly. It has window displays designed to rub the fact of gay sexuality in your face but the owners have covered up the windows so that their customers can have privacy. Oddly enough, one of the reasons for this privacy is that many of its customers are now heterosexual as it can no longer get by selling only to gay men.
But we're told it's important to make the statement.
That's the liberal side of the private/public divide. You can also see it in my neighbourhood which is very liberal. Canada's Conservative Party runs candidates here but only for the sake of appearance. The candidates typically skip any candidates meetings as not worth their time because they are only going to be mocked and attacked if they show up. Anyway, the residents here also feel it is very important to make the public statement. They will all support the councilor who insisted (who is forcing) the residents of the non-gay village to accept designation as such.
But the private lives of liberals are socially conservative and often painfully so. They all get married and stay married while talking about the decline of marriage. They all teach their children to behave in socially conservative ways. They, as lots of others have noted before me, know perfectly well that social conservatism is the key to personal happiness. This is not news—generations upon generations have of the wise known this and called the attitude "prudence".
But there is a flip side to this as well. Conservatives I know practice a public rectitude but privately let their hair down. It's not that their social conservatism is a sham but rather that they understand it as an outward behaviour. My conservative friends typically have private lives that are more exciting than those of my liberal friends.
And this is also not news. But it is a more recent idea. The ancients did not see this private excess as a virtue and neither do most modern liberals. But it is very much a part of our modern life. It is a bourgeois value.
We have signs designating a "gay village" in Ottawa. We have these signs at the behest of a city councilor who pushed to have the signs even though the most of the residents and businesses of the place now designated the gay village didn't want them.
I might further add that while there are a two gay sex shops and one gay book store in the area that it is not, in fact, a gay village. There are three massage parlours, four or five sex shops and who knows what else serving heterosexuals in the area along with what is probably the highest concentration of drug dealers in the city of Ottawa in the area.
There used to be a gay village in Ottawa back in the 1970s. It was a few blocks east of the location presently designated. It disappeared because most gay men have moved upscale and are no longer much interested in risking their lives running around dark and dangerous streets looking for a temporary partner now that they live in nice houses in nice neighbourhoods with a more permanent partner.
But we're told it's important to make the statement.
The most prominent of the two gay sex shops embodies this perfectly. It has window displays designed to rub the fact of gay sexuality in your face but the owners have covered up the windows so that their customers can have privacy. Oddly enough, one of the reasons for this privacy is that many of its customers are now heterosexual as it can no longer get by selling only to gay men.
But we're told it's important to make the statement.
That's the liberal side of the private/public divide. You can also see it in my neighbourhood which is very liberal. Canada's Conservative Party runs candidates here but only for the sake of appearance. The candidates typically skip any candidates meetings as not worth their time because they are only going to be mocked and attacked if they show up. Anyway, the residents here also feel it is very important to make the public statement. They will all support the councilor who insisted (who is forcing) the residents of the non-gay village to accept designation as such.
But the private lives of liberals are socially conservative and often painfully so. They all get married and stay married while talking about the decline of marriage. They all teach their children to behave in socially conservative ways. They, as lots of others have noted before me, know perfectly well that social conservatism is the key to personal happiness. This is not news—generations upon generations have of the wise known this and called the attitude "prudence".
But there is a flip side to this as well. Conservatives I know practice a public rectitude but privately let their hair down. It's not that their social conservatism is a sham but rather that they understand it as an outward behaviour. My conservative friends typically have private lives that are more exciting than those of my liberal friends.
And this is also not news. But it is a more recent idea. The ancients did not see this private excess as a virtue and neither do most modern liberals. But it is very much a part of our modern life. It is a bourgeois value.
No comments:
Post a Comment