These Gay Men Are Partners, Not Predator and Victim

Twitter flips out over MP’s younger boyfriend

Sometimes same-sex relationships have age gaps, just like straight relationships. It’s not the norm, but it happens. Often when older gay men have younger partners, people flip out in outrageously homophobic ways. Maybe they don’t realize how prejudiced their reactions are, but the disparities are striking and toxic.

Over the weekend, Twitter flipped out over a photo UK Labour MP Luke Pollard posted of himself and his younger partner. While many people offered congratulations, hundreds of Twitter users reacted with what I can only describe as nauseating levels of homophobia.

Homophobic reactions to gay partners with age gaps are ordinary

Here is a sample of some of the reactions on Twitter to the above photo. Please don’t think these comments are outliers. If you go to the thread, you’ll find hundreds more just like them. In a moment, I’ll tell you about other cases just like this one and about my own life dealing with with homophobia because of my own older partner.

But first, check this out —

• This Lehman Brothers VP calls Pollard a pedophile.
• This eloquent commentator responds to the photo with nausea emojis.
• This one calls Pollard a nonce, which for American readers lands somewhere between sissy and fag for emotional impact.
• “I know Trump, Boris & Macron all married to people a lot younger than them, but I did not know yesterday was take your son to work day,” snarks another user, apparently nonplussed about his hypocrisy.
• This user takes the cake, asking which partner “takes it up the rectum,” guessing the younger one does. (Note: it’s uncouth to speculate about intimate sexual practices, and even if you think you know how gay men have sex, data show you are likely mistaken.)
• Continuing on the gay-men-as-pedos theme, this user notes that “Grooming gangs are real.”
• Another user pulls fewer punches with, “this is SICK! pederast scum!”

Let’s clear up the age gap

First, as the queer press have noted, Pollard’s partner appears to be in his mid to late 20s. Pollard is 41. It took me about 30 minutes to verify a few details, and I didn’t use any special software. I easily learned Pollard’s partner’s full name and professional accomplishments. Pollard has never posted them publicly, so I won’t either, but here’s a sketch.

The two live together and have been a couple since at least 2017. The younger partner has a distinguished career in an elite field and, going by his education and qualifications, is probably about 26 years old. He may be a little younger or older than that.

In fact, the age gap between the two is very close to the age gap between American President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden, and far smaller than the gap between UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his female partner — a gap nobody seems to find remarkable.

Let’s clear up the troll gap

The queer press has taken to calling Pollard’s homophobic commenters “trolls,” implying they are Conservative Party operatives. But I’ve combed through hundreds of negative comments and can only find five or six that come from obvious troll accounts. Most of the rest are from people who seem to be ordinary Twitter users. While most appear to lean conservative, plenty of people with more left-ish leanings participated in the virtual gay bashing.

Age-gap gay bashing is common

I’ve written previously about a group of campus Democrats who tried to pull a political hit job on 31-year-old gay congressional candidate Alex Morse. They tried to harness outrage over his sexual relationships with men in their early and mid twenties.

They smeared him, saying he’d abused his college guest-lecturer position, and it turns out they did it deliberately and without evidence, fishing for vulnerable “victims” who would help elect the candidate they preferred. Only there weren’t any victims. Morse, who had led substantially in the polls, lost even though the dirty tricks were exposed shortly before the election.

Too many people found his sexual relationships too distasteful — distilled, high-proof homophobia at its worst.

Then there’s controversial journalist Glenn Greenwald and his younger husband David Miranda. Despite the couple having been married for 16 years and raising two children together, moralists on the left fiercely criticize Greenwald for power imbalance and “grooming.”

Greenwald is seldom mentioned on Twitter without commenters raising the homophobic allegation that he is a “pedophile” because of his marriage to Miranda. People even (Seriously!) cite his sensitivity to being called a pedophile as evidence that he must be a pedophile. You can’t get more homophobic than that.

As James Greig noted in The Guardian regarding gay men and age gaps, “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.”

I know from personal experience how true Grieg’s words are.

My older lover and partner

I was in my late 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, and that was just one of many things I adored about him.

The age gap between Lenny and me was roughly the same (possibly a little wider) than the one between Pollard and his partner.

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 spacious 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 plainly 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. That’s it, that’s all. But for the decade we were together before Lenny passed away, we had to deal with judgmental homophobia all the time.

Sometimes gay men fall in love outside expectations

I shouldn’t have to say that; it’s too ordinary and obvious. As a rule, gay people fall in love with people close to their own age, just like straight people do.

But there are plenty of exceptions.

I was one such exception, and so is Luke Pollard today. And you know what? If you feel like condemning gay couples because of age gaps, you are spreading a common, toxic, homophobic trope. You need to check yourself.

Boris Johnson is not a pedophile, Alex Morse is not a pedophile, Glen Greenwald is not a pedophile, and my partner Lenny was not a pedophile. Neither is David Pollard. Can we all just grow up a little?

James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, 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].