Humans are damaged beings.
Damaged by themselves and the restrictions that a modern existence has forced to have all that we know and named and identified so we can put it in boxes, it has been how we are able to move forward.
Humans need to make sense of their world, we invented religions when we realised that stuff just didnt happen, that there had to be a 'God' that created molten lava in anger, until we understood the tectonic plates where moving around very slowly and every now and again releasing molten rock from fissures below the hard surface plates that make up the outer shell of our planet. We needed a 'God' of abundance to explain why we had good or bad results from the cropping season.
Later we created a single God that rules all and when he was unhappy with humans, that was the reason disease plagued the population, it worked well as a religion which coupled well with the peace that came with empire, as the new God was more about love and individuality. The only problem with this has been for humans who name natural events as acts of God, then can not explain why good people are harmed by them, or when two armies claim the same God is on their side and yet all that occurs is mass slaughter of their greatest heroes.
Then along came the agricultural revolution and Darwinism, which further allowed humans to box everything around them into species and sub species, however despite our ability to map the cosmos, comprehend the world of insects and bacteria there are some things we fail to understand.
There are somethings that when boxed make us humans feel very uncomfortable.
Sexual behaviour in our species is one of those parts of the universe that we just don't want to understand and box.
Unfortunately sexuality in humans was labeled in western culture as behaviour that leads to procreation, and behaviour that dosent. The former being good and the latter being evil and wrong.
Yesterday Jason Akermanis an AFL footballer with the Western Bull Dogs in Melbourne wrote in his Herald Sun Column that he believed footballers who identified as gay should not come out publicly to their team mates or to the media.
Due to our western culture boxing sexual behaviour into good and evil, it does make partaking in the evil very difficult for people, leading to self loathing and other illnesses such as depression.
Thankfully as always, we humans are moving forward and realising not all things can be boxed, that some species defy the rule book that whilst we comprehend all around us it is time to comprehend what is within us.
It has been a great tragedy that we have been forced to box sexuality and name some activity as good and bad. Of course as we experience life for ourselves we have realised that what we were told is untrue.
Human sexuality is very fluid.
In the world of football, physical contact is at its height. Its rough its full on and its whats the game is all about. Before and after the game nudity is the norm. The male bonding continues well after the game and into sexual behaviour.
It is no secret that many footballers partake in group sex with each other as well as others.
The problem for Jason Akermanis is that even though the boundary of good sex has moved to include a lot more than just sex that leads to procreation, sex which involves exclusively males is still seen as bad when it is boxed as 'Gay Sex'. Many footballers have a fluid sex life, with males and females involved, in fact there would be a minority of footballers who have not partaken in sex which has involved other males.
It continues to baffle me why men who prefer to be boxed as 'Straight' continue to loath the thought of the 'Gay' box and yet continue to partake in same sex behaviour and remain very verbal in the damnation of 'Gays' to define who they are.
Akermanis has raised an issue that does need to be put to the fore, that is that humans need to stop looking at same-sex behaviour as bad and realise that our sexuality is fluid.
It would be an incredible leap forward for us to realise that even though we love 'boxing' all that is around us, we don't need to box our natural sexual behaviours as good and bad.
In the mean time I do hope that footballers do come out of the lockers, and tell 'box focussed bigots' like Akermanis that rather than partake in the fluid sexual behaviour of their team mates, are secure men who have strong monogomaos relationships with other men....and therefore throwing Akermanis' boxes out the window.
I am of the belief that humans are free to do as they please on the provision no one gets hurt or abused and they are of a maturity to make the decision that will not lead to hurt later on, personally, monogamy is for me as I am a man in need of security, but I am not everybody, we are all different.
So the question then would be; what is Good or Bad, a man in a strong loving monogamous relationship with his husband or the fluid adulterous bed hopping group sex behaviour of many players.