Can We Talk About Gay Men and Age Gaps?

Discourse on the left is getting uncomfortable

Sometimes ‘me too’ gets it wrong

Did you hear about the group of campus Democrats who recently tried to pull a political hit job on 31-year-old gay congressional candidate Alex Morse? For having sex with men in their early and mid twenties? It turns out the political club manufactured moral outrage, hoping vulnerable “victims” would pop out of the closet and help the candidate they preferred.

No victim ever made an appearance.

How about celebrated journalist Glenn Greenwald and his much younger husband David Miranda? Despite that the couple have been married for 15 years and have two children together, and despite that Miranda is a courageous politician in Brazil, moralists on the left continue to criticize Greenwald for power imbalance and “grooming.”

As James Greig opined recently in The Guardian, “a sizeable segment of the liberal-left has decided that age gaps within relationships (eg a 40-year-old going out with a 23-year-old) are inherently problematic.”

He points out that such attitudes spring from concerns of post-‘MeToo’ feminism and social justice politics, which quite rightly emphasize guarding the vulnerable from predation by the powerful.

Danger lies, however (in Greig’s opinion and in mine), in concretely conflating age gaps with vulnerability and abuse. This sort of black-and-white moralizing harms many couples who genuinely love and care for one another. More disturbingly, its roots lie in homophobic tropes that have long mischaracterized older gay men as threats to young people.

I think I may have good perspective for writing about this because of my two long-term partnerships with significant age gaps. One was with a man 20 years older than me, the other with a man 10 years younger.

Greig writes from the perspective of a gay man who has always found himself attracted to older men. He points out that sometimes attraction to a more powerful person is natural and not necessarily harmful.

My own perspective is a bit different. I’ve never found myself polarized with respect to age in relationships. Age is just one factor of many that work together for me to foster attraction and determine compatibility

My much older lover and partner

I was in my twenties when I met Lenny, my New York City “Lower East Side” lothario. He spoke with such a thick Alphabet City accent he made Fran Drescher sound like a debutante fresh out of finishing school.

In many ways, I probably looked ripe for abuse. I was new to the City, alone, low on funds, and had even done a little hustling on the side.

Lenny was physically much larger and stronger than me, had a steady income, and owned (by cramped Manhattan standards) a nice Chelsea apartment. Our courtship was whirlwind, and within weeks I’d moved in with him.

Some claimed we couldn’t really love each other

People would look at us funny. Lenny was obviously a generation older than me, which could earn us either grins, leers or scowls. Many people assumed one of two things must be true: Either I was a gold digger or Lenny was using his power differential to take advantage of me.

The truth was boring and thrilling at the same time. We met and fell in love.

Lenny’s contrasts fascinated and excited me. His gruff exterior hid an encyclopedic knowledge of and passion for opera, operetta and musical theater. His various personal connections to New York art and culture kept me sitting and listening to his stories for hours.

In turn, he delighted in showing me his own special New York City, sharing the place where he’d been born and of which he seemed to know every forgotten corner and cranny. We never once, not for the ten years we spent together, got bored or ran out of things to share, experience together, or laugh and cry about.

You want to know something weird?

Lenny wasn’t attracted in general to younger men. He liked the older Marlboro Man type. His friends couldn’t believe the two of ended up together. But we did, because the heart wants what it wants, and for whatever mysterious reason, Lenny and I fell hard in love.

When he died relatively young from complications of a congenital heart defect, my own heart shattered.

My younger lover and partner

I met my younger partner in the aftermath, a man just finished with his university education. Jason was a tall and pale Australian with chestnut curls, light freckles, and piercing jade eyes

He spoke a carefully polished English that usually concealed his origins in rural Australia. He was the opposite of Lenny in so many ways. He was stylish, quietly charming, and formally educated.

People didn’t look at us as disapprovingly as they did at Lenny and me. Ten years isn’t twenty years, after all, and I still looked fairly young. But we got snide remarks sometimes anyway. It seemed like people just couldn’t stop commenting on the age gap if they knew about it.

Often, the remarks felt meant to flatter me. You, know, little elbow nudges and compliments about how how I’d landed a real catch. One friend asked me if Jason was my mid-life-crisis Corvette.

The truth was that nobody knew how powerfully Jason and I were drawn to one another, how many interests we shared, how much time we spent together at work and play, and how much of a family we were.

Our relationship was far more complicated and nuanced than what we looked like or how old we were. We even raised a foster child together. Jason originally feared he wasn’t ready for the role of parent, but he adapted magnificently.

My summer of gay flings

Not too long ago, I had a summer of romantic flings. I seriously dated two men, though not at the same time. One of them was quite a few years older, the other quite a lot younger.

Each of them was a fling, a summer dalliance, an exploration. We had a lot fun swimming, biking, dancing, and having a quite a bit of vigorous consensual sex.

I didn’t end up continuing to see either man. The details are usual and boring; we weren’t compatible. Dating was fine, but nothing more was in the cards.

I didn’t date either man because of how old he was. I didn’t decide not to pursue a serious relationship with either man because of how old he was. I wouldn’t have appreciated anyone commenting on the differences. Isn’t that how things should be? Consenting adults make up their own minds about who they date?

Power differential matters, but we must not assume abuse

In his Guardian column, Greig suggests we ought to trust people when they say their relationships are abusive. I agree with him. I equally agree with his other assertion: we should trust people when they tell us their relationships are fine.

Should we be wary of danger? Of course, but watchfulness ought not equal automatic condemnation.

Morse, who until last year lectured part-time as a university adjunct, admits he’s had sex with students, but says none of them were ever his students and that he never took advantage of his rather lowly academic position. Nobody has come forward to contradict him, so while caution may be in order, instant condemnation hardly seems appropriate.

Greenwald first met Miranda when Miranda was only 19. That’s a warning sign. But Miranda has forcibly denied ever feeling coerced or abused. Their 15-year relationship and two children, plus Miranda’s reputation as a tenacious political fighter, suggest we should believe him.

Homophobia in sheep’s clothing

Straight men who go out with young women take a lot of criticism, so I’m not suggesting that morally judging older gay men in mixed-age relationships must be homophobic.

I do observe that portraying gay men as uniquely dangerous to young men is a very old homophobic theme, and one to watch out for.

Interestingly, in French the usual pejorative for gay man is pédé, a clipping of pédéraste, referring to men who seek out sex with teenage boys. On an emotional level, pédé is about as insulting as fag, but it’s a lot more common and maybe a bit more illustrative.

Not so long ago in the US, the infamous Lavender Scare positioned gay men as unique threats to youth. For many, the link between homosexuality and abuse of the young remains an unconscious but powerful trope.

Relationships are complex and personal

Lenny didn’t abuse me, and I didn’t abuse Jason. We were simply men who loved one another and built lives together despite age differences. I’m not saying older men never abuse younger men. Every relationship is different and complicated.

Abuse happens, and watching out for it is important.

I’m saying that as a society we seem increasingly bent on declaring that same-sex relationships with age gaps must be abusive. That saddens me. I wouldn’t have missed either of my two relationships, not for any reason.

I hope nobody ever has to feel automatically judged or morally condemned because their partner is older or younger. The next time you see a mixed-age couple, could you think about that?

James Finn is a long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, an essayist occasionally published in queer news outlets, and an “agented” novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].