Dr. Joseph Kenan M.D., the former President of The American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, has been exposed in a new documentary as a homosexual bondage and bareback sex devotee. Entitled “Divorce Corp,” the film delves into Kenan’s public life as a Beverly Hills psychiatrist and child custody evaluator, who has been called on to testify in court during hundreds of custody battles. But, Kenan also lived a none-too-private life as a gay male who frequently documented his various dalliances and sexual adventures on a personal Facebook page; this included anonymous bareback anal sex, sadomasochism, and recreational drug use. What I find most interesting about this case is not the privileged peccadilloes of Dr. Kenan, but the reaction from others when they found out exactly what gay men are doing. Because Kenan is certainly not a pervert or freak in terms of what is common in the gay community; in fact, he is rather boringly typical. For example, according to the CDC: in 2011, 57% of gay men who reported to a study admitted to having unprotected anal sex in the past 12 months - see: http://www.josephsciambra.com/2013/11/gay-men-continue-to-engage-in-deadly.html; also, according to the Center for American Progress, up to 30% of gay and transgendered people abuse drugs, compared to about 9% of straight people - see: http://www.josephsciambra.com/2013/05/the-drug-abuse-epidemic-among-gays-why.html; as for bondage fetishism, it’s a mainstay in both main-stream gay culture and in homosexual pornography.
The sort of dumbfounded shock that many people, namely heterosexuals, have expressed after seeing the documentary featuring Dr. Kenan is understandable considering the current social context. For, we live in a strange era during which the gay lobby, and their advocates in politics and the media, have been very successful at redefining the collective unconscious of a nation regarding the public-persona of the gay male. The leather biker from The Village People has been replaced by the successful businessman, the entertainer, and the athlete. While it is true that in our more tolerant times, many gay men have challenged the stereotypical image of your everyday homosexual as either a testosterone fueled egotist from Tom of Finland or a drag-queen from “Victor/Victoria,” still, the reality of what constitutes gay sex has remained wholly unchanged; it has merely been pushed off to the side. In the drive for middle-American acceptance of same-sex marriage, the dirty reality of how gay men act out their sexuality has become rather inconvenient. The truth only occasionally returns to public consciousness, though hidden and limited, with such stories as this hapless psychiatrist or buried within CDC reports. For those, like myself, who lived through it, we will continually thank God they we survived.