British actor Stephen Fry married his partner Elliot Spencer - and quite a few people are criticising their age difference. Why - not least because, according to a study, the age difference is greater in same-sex partnerships than in mixed-sex ones.
Stephen Fry is married. In mid-January, the actor and author announced his marriage via Twitter: "Elliot G. Spencer and I walk into a room as two people, sign a book and come out as one. Unbelievable."
The ceremony was no longer a real surprise. The Brit had already announced the event a few days ago. It was predictable that this would not only be newsworthy in the UK, but also on pretty much every gossip site between New York, Sydney and Wanne-Eickel. After all, Fry is a gifted, successful and famous all-round talent. And it's not every day that a gay celebrity announces his intention to get married.
But HOW the press reported the news was surprising. There was hardly a newspaper or online portal that didn't emphasise the age difference between Fry (57) and his fiancé, 27-year-old comedian Elliot Spencer. British newspapers in particular seemed compelled to make bad jokes. Their readers then lowered the bar even further in the online comments and clearly expressed their disgust. Stephen Fry, it was said again and again, was a "greasy old bag", a "pervert", a "paedo". And Elliot G. Spencer was nothing more than his "toy boy", possibly an unfortunate gay man with a father complex. The hashtag "Stephen Fry disgusting" briefly ranked among the top posts on Twitter.
None of these spiteful commentators seem to have realised that the two might have simply found each other and fallen in love without first calculating the threshold for a just morally acceptable age difference.
But there was also blasphemy in German-language social media, and Fry is by no means the first and only victim. When former Hamburg mayor Ole von Beust's relationship with his 36 younger partners became public, similarly tactless and discriminatory comments were heard and read. Some people apparently cannot imagine that a younger person could enter into a partnership with an older person voluntarily and without any ulterior motives.
It's just strange that such constellations don't evoke a sniff or similarly malicious comments from heterosexuals: Or has Clint Eastwood ever been vilified as a paedo because his wife is 35 years younger? Do people find it strange that Catherine Zeta-Jones married Michael Douglas, 25 years her senior, or that Harrison Ford married Calista Flockhart, 22 years his junior? Or that there is a 26-year difference between Celine Dion and her husband René Angélil? Love knows no boundaries, as the saying goes in such cases, and age limits are included in this expression.
The fact that straight people (and equally many gay people) mock the age difference between gay couples alone can therefore only be explained by defamatory reservations that suddenly break out again here and by a deeply rooted - and internalised - homophobia: the image of a nasty old gay man looking for a defenceless boy to play disgusting games seems to have taken root in someone's mind. The fact that Elliot Spencer is a fairly grown-up man of 27 who is in the middle of his life seems to have somehow escaped the attention of those with evil tongues. Perhaps the couple have special challenges to overcome due to their age difference - but isn't that ultimately true of every relationship? And even if it is: Isn't that their own private matter?
And anyone who believes that such partnerships are doomed to failure from the outset need only be reminded of two famous gay couples. The British-American writer Christoper Isherwood (the author of the musical "Cabaret" and Tom Ford's film "A Single Man") was in a relationship with the painter Don Bachardy, 30 years his junior, from 1953 until his death in 1986. And Armistead Maupin ("Stories from San Francisco") has been married to Christopher Turner, 27, since 2007.
The fact that gay people are also outraged by Stephen Fry (or Ole von Beust, as the case may be) is also surprising because the age difference is greater in same-sex partnerships than in mixed-sex ones. At least that was the result of a study by Facebook Data Science, which analysed data from US users. Although the scientific validity of the data may be questioned, it does provide a certain indication: while the average age difference for heterosexual couples is relatively even across all age groups at 2 to 5 years, for gay couples it increases with age to an average of up to 10 years. Hollywood star Matt Bomer (36) and his partner Simon Hall (49) are only just above this average. But regardless of whether they are two or twenty years apart, there is no reason to be indignant. Because every love deserves respect.
Link to the Facebook study: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-age-of-love/10152058525083859
Link to Stephen Fry's Twitter post (with photo!): https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/556496533848596480
