Group pressure

MIAMI — On the pampas, after a full day rounding up cattle, the gauchos poured themselves a strong “mate” and sat around the fire, strumming guitars and singing their woes.

The Vikings held rowdy banquets after each successful plunder.

On payday, the pubs in Liverpool filled with thirsty workers, exhausted after loading and unloading ships.

In South Florida, as we know, hard-working men have their barbecues — or “barbikiús,” as they call them.

I was at one of them, trying to mix with the locals with a chunk of meat in one hand and a beer in the other, when the lady of the house — a woman with a bountiful body and a kindly face, the living image of progress — sighed, disconsolate, in the warm shade of the porch.

“How awful! I’m telling you, this country is going from bad to worse.” That was a surprise to me, because as soon as one arrives in the United States, one has the feeling that he has fallen into a Leibnizian universe, the best of all possible worlds. So I paid attention and cupped my ear. That should be interesting.

“This time, the Democrats have gone too far,” the woman continued. “Do you know what it means to repeal a law that protected the family? Now they want to harm the family. My God, the family is the nucleus of all society.”

I leaned forward farther in my chair, very much intrigued. At a time when one hears about so many cases of child abuse, sexual violence and dysfunctional homes, you have to be very creative to contribute something novel about the subject.

“Can somebody tell me,” the woman asked, almost in tears, “how two men or two women can form a family?”

I’ve never been particularly bright, but this time it took me a while to realize that the lady’s anguish was due to the recognition by the federal government of the United States of marriage between people of the same sex.

That happened in late June 2013, when the Supreme Court repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman, exclusively, and dismissed California’s Proposition 8, which prohibited same-sex marriage. It should be mentioned that, so far, the District of Columbia and 17 states have legalized homosexual marriage; Florida is not one of them.

Once I discovered the source of the lamentations, I came up with a couple of questions, the weightiest of all being “How can a family be harmed if two people who love each other put their names on a document?” But the lady’s concern had pervaded the attendees and was on its way to being unanimous.

Besides, it is well known that when someone defends homosexuals, someone else will invariably question his manhood, so I didn’t say anything.

“Come now, tell me,” she said, resuming the charge, “where in the Bible does it say that people of the same sex may marry?” Man, that point, I think, bears no discussion. Having grown up in a country that is Catholic-Yoruba-Jewish-Buddhist-Muslim and lay, my knowledge of the Bible is not very reliable. I tend to confuse the Ten Commandments with the Four Noble Truths (1) or the Ten Sefirot (2) or the Patakíes of Ifá (3).

But the truth is that in none of the nearly 70 books in the Christian Bible there is a word or half a word — in Hebrew, Arameic or Greek — in favor of homosexual marriage. Maybe because in those days it was part of common sense and nobody felt that it was necessary to clear it up. Who knows.

“That’s the creation of communists,” said one of the guests. “Those weird fantasies occur only to the communists, who are always gumming up everything.”

Then I saw the languid specters of Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, Reynaldo Arenas. I though about the sinister solitude in the words “ostracism,” “deviation” and “parametrization.” But I didn’t say anything, lest someone questioned my manhood.

“Take my word, Obama is a communist,” said another, his mouth half-full of beer. That doesn’t need comment, I thought. “My father taught me that you shouldn’t even shake hands with those people.” (I wasn’t sure if he referred to the communists or the homosexuals.) “Moreover, when I saw one of them swishing down the street” — he was referring to homosexuals — “I crossed to the other side of the street.”

Another guest spoke up. “I remember that in Cuba, in my hometown, we boys threw stones at a faggot who dressed like a woman at Carnaval time. “Brother, I don’t know how he did it, but the truth is that you couldn’t tell just by looking.” And he patted his groin.

Everybody laughed and a shower of homo-erotic jokes fell on the man. “For sure that he fooled you, too.” “That’s why you threw stones at him; that’s how you peasants woo the girls.” “You looked forward to the Carnaval, didn’t you?” I smiled, because I knew that they were looking at me.

Caught up in the mood, another guest spoke: “When I worked at the Port, they caught the Party secretary with another guy, I’m not sure how it happened but one night they saw them, and the man was married. You know how it is, they made his life impossible. The next day began the jokes, the comments, the ribbing. The man eventually hanged himself from a beam in a warehouse.”

Silence fell, the guests turned away, uncomfortable, with faces that said “we went too far. You went too far, Pepe, too far.” Then I realized that the moment had come. If ever there was a perfect time to seize the moral authority and say what I was thinking, that was it. After such a savage story, nobody would dare to challenge me. But I didn’t say anything.

What do you expect, I was afraid. For a few minutes, I experienced the distress of a man who buries himself under a simulated marriage. Of a teenager who leaves home to escape from his father’s beatings. Of a girl who stays awake watching her roommate, looking at the lips she’ll never be able to kiss. Of the student who knows that tonight his classmates are going to beat him up. Of the spinster who was never wed because she was never strong enough to challenge the conventions and rules of a God to whom — despite her unhappiness and bitterness — she continues to pray.

So I went home and wrote this, which I know will never be sufficient, will not be enough to save me. But perhaps it will lighten the heaviness in my conscience.

*****

(1) The ideas reflected in the Four Noble Truths are part of Buddhism.

(2) According to the Kabbalah, the Sefirot (‘numberings’ in Hebrew, the plural of sefirah) are the ten emanations of God through which the world was created.

(3) In the Yoruba religion, patakí or patakís is the group of stories that form each Odun or sign of the oracle of Ifá. Generally, these signs are presented in parables. The word Ifá comes from I: action, and Fa: to attract or contain — in other words, the action of attracting or containing God’s nature. In the Yoruba language, God is known as Olodumare.