Gay Porn Unwittingly Reveals the Cause of Homosexuality

In gay pornography, one of the oldest tableaus is the father/son or daddy scene: this usually consists of an older man seducing the younger. Sometimes, there are mock references to an incestuous relationship either between a father and his son, uncle and his nephew, or brother and his younger sibling. In pop-culture, the truism goes all the way back to the initial gay pulp novels of the 1950s and 60s; they were the first manifestations of commercially produced modern gay porn. One of the earliest gay porn films that I ever saw was the 1980s video “Chip off the Old Block” which detailed a deviant camping trip taken by a group of dad’s and their sons. During the weekend, they all partake in various sexual relations. With the explosion of porn in the 90s and 00s, the larger pool of men, including those over 50 and even 60-years of age, willing to take part in pornography made the incestuous subtext expand; correspondingly, there was also an onrush of very young guys, many only 18, also going into the sex industry. Sadly, the older octogenarians and teenage newbies are often paired-up. And just as straight porn cheapens and twists the conjugal act between man and woman, gay porn corrupts the heavenly ordained bond of father and son.

What does this entire obsession with intergenerational sex have to do with the origins of homosexuality? As I wrote in my book, many, if not the vast majority, of the gay men that I knew were often haunted by missing or unfulfilled relationships with their fathers. This set-up a subconscious longing for masculine love and acceptance. That very real woundedness is subsequently misread, or ruled by others, as homosexuality. Afterward, the search begins: for the ultimate lover who will magically take all the pain away. Tragically, it never happens. Then one lover follows another; until there are too many to count. Gay porn feeds this distress for the father-figure by constantly spewing out an endless supply of sexual daydreams that falsely depict the deformed couplings of protective and affectionate dad’s with their needy and alienated gay sons. It’s a cycle that also plays-out in the gay “real-world.” As I soon discovered, when entering the gay lifestyle, as a stupid 19-year old, the first thing I encountered in the Castro was an immense wall of slobbering older homosexual men whom everyone had to pass through in order to be accepted in the male-only universe of gay sex. Ultimately, one walks away not feeling loved or healed, but used.

The greatest truth to come out of the gay cultural milieu for the past decades is probably Elton John’s “The Last Song” (1992) about a young gay man dying of AIDS, who can finally pass on in peace after a visit from his estranged father. Inevitably, it’s all just sad. The predominate image: the father lifting his son high in the air by artist Keith Haring (who died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 31.) It’s the definitive cry of the 20^thcentury: the boy’s need for his father to hold him above the evil of the world and to protect him from all harm.