Recently (08/24/2007) I read an article on this site, titled “What makes a family?”, by Jerome Whitehead.

The author describes the comfort and solidarity he felt, when he and his partner took part at an Easter dinner together with other gay (and straight) couples, and he put it in contrast with dinners he attended with his original family. I can see his point, but what made me set pen to paper (metaphorically) is this: J. Whitehead in his exposé doesn’t even touch the question of time as one major factor that determines solidarity and thus security any family is supposed to give: How many gay couples do you know who are together more than five years? Or ten?

True, nowadays straight couples get divorced more easily, too, and there is no point in staying together, when you don’t have anything in common, but I would say gay couples have the tendency of giving up more easily. Thus: The same man with whom you might be at such a party today might dump you tomorrow for someone better. I guess we all experienced things like that before. When we are young, we think we got all the choice, we always think this guy is nice, but maybe round the corner is someone more attractive, more witty or whatever. The older we get, the more likely it might be us who find ourselves dumped, for someone younger perhaps.

Why else is it that gays in their old age often are so lonely?

Maybe I am too pessimistic, and of course it does happen that you might meet someone with whom you a) stay together for the rest of your life or b) develop a friendship that remains stable even if you and him might break up and find new partners – as if you were brothers or something like that.

I am not going to say that the traditional family is better per se, and there are many examples of completely dysfunctional families, but ideally a brother or a sister is someone you can call in the middle of the night when you are feeling lonely. Try that with your yesterday´s lover!

Gays need to work harder for their social network than heterosexuals, imbedded in their traditional family system, and there never is a total security. Friendships can always break away, it doesn’t even have to be a new man; sometimes even a wrong word does it.

J. Whitehead speaks of love – maybe that would be solution. But it would need to be love in the truest sense of it – seeing the other one as a living person with a soul, a heart that feels and will hurt when it gets broken. But if you can dump the person you claimed to love yesterday – how true can your love have been?

And he wisely speaks of us being created as God´s image – again I would say this should be a guideline in our general behaviour – if we truly recognized that doesn’t just mean ourselves, but also people we are dealing with.

I might add that Jesus says: “What you are doing to any man, you are doing to me!”

Thus, Christian values truly understood provide us with guidelines that can make life much more human.

When we want solidarity, first thing is we have to offer solidarity – and don´t dump a living person like an empty bottle.

To return to the question raised by J. Whitehead: “What makes a family”, I would say, it is not only nice dinners, nice conversations – it is “In good times as in bad times”! And this is where we gays need to overcome our deficiencies.