Legacy

I have always been mystified by the fantasy of heterosexuals that having children somehow insures their immortality. Do we see the pigs we raise for pork as immortal because they have litters? Is a snake immortal because it lays hundreds of eggs which eventually become genetic descendants? No. The immortality myth attached to human reproduction is just another example of fear of death and the denial that we are simply mammals within a necessary and vast ecology of life.

 

Part of my consternation about all this obsession with legacy comes from my innate homosexual nature, far removed from any impulses to reproduce a mini-me. The maintenance of household pets as objects of anthropomorphizing parenting is also something that has little appeal to me. I strongly believe this is a genetic program within my hormonal and cerebral systems, bolstered by my developmental environment.

 

I do not expect that reproducing heterosexuals have any easy control over their parenting drives. As a gay man, who sexuality is not reproductive, I figure having the urge to reproduce attached to a person's sex drive is a very strong life motivator, unless the person takes intentional and difficult steps to resist this genetic and environmental programming. Social pressures from others with similar sexual programming must complicate and intensify this life state. I have compassion for those who struggle with these issues.

 

Last evening, I attended the book debut of Chris Stedman's Fatheist at Harvard University. Chris read from his memoir for us. It occurred to me during his reading that I was experiencing the pull of wanting my legacy as a gay man of the Gay Liberation era to go on in this fine young man. His work and general personhood represent a wonderful example of what I consider humanist practice in action.

 

There is so much more to Chris than carrying on a legacy of liberating the LGBT community from homophobic self-oppression. He is his own truthful person. I hope he will go on to create new ideas for the progression of humanist values in society. Those ideas, while built on his knowledge of a history which I lived, will be his own. Valuing those, whether or not I agree with them, is part of valuing Chris as a unique human being, not a faithful reproduction of me or anyone else. Legacy is less important than the creativity of the individual with what he/she learns from history.