The thesis wasn’t particularly radical. Drawn from the pages of C.S. Lewis’ 1960 book “The Four Loves,” an exploration of the four expressions of love according to the Greek language, I began a video essay on the alleged homosexuality of “Frog and Toad” by channeling Lewis: “Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend.”
Posted in July 2025, the video titled “Friendship Is Not Gay, Actually” for the GeekyStoics YouTube channel was written in the wake of Pride Month and to respond to the children’s classic by Arnold Lobel, “Frog and Toad,” which appears on LGBTQ reading lists — cited as “queer” literature. If you grew up reading these books, you might balk at The New Yorker’s suggestion that they were always “an amphibious celebration of same-sex love,” when other words exist to describe what these characters were up to, namely: friendship.
That is not satisfactory for much of the online world still afflicted by the lingering effects of Tumblr-induced brain rot, where “shipping” subcultures require the pornification of platonic forms of love (affection, friendship, charity).
The blowback to this video was predictable. “You know Lobel was gay, right?” “Dood, Arnold Lobel was f*cking gay.” I remain puzzled by this soft form of homophobia, which suggests that a gay man is incapable of writing a story about male friendship and affection that isn’t concerned with sex stuff.
This is left-wing orthodoxy, of course. Lived experience is required for certain modes of storytelling. Aladdin’s Jasmine must be played by an Arab actress rather than by Naomi Scott, who is of British-Indian extraction. Taron Egerton can’t play Elton John because he isn’t gay. The same logic flows down the river of stupidity to suggest, without actual evidence, that Lobel couldn’t conceive of a world where a frog and a toad go fishing, cook, and read together in perfect comfort.
“Toad sat and did nothing. Frog sat with him.” Young people, particularly boys, know what this mode of friendship is like and why it’s so important. You play Halo 2 for several hours and say nothing of importance, or nothing at all — and it’s great.
It took at least six years, and possibly the reelection of President Donald Trump, for America’s elite liberal publications to slow the pace of think pieces (written almost always by women) dedicated to examining the decline in male friendships as fruit born of “toxic masculinity.” They should just cry more, gossip, and talk about their feelings while playing Call of Duty, like women might be inclined to do. Then they’d be less depressed.
The Atlantic ran a piece titled “I Love My Emotionally Stunted Friendships,” which perfectly summarizes the observable male preference for carefree shared activities rather than hangout sessions of emotional exposition. The author appears to unknowingly reference C.S. Lewis’ “Four Loves” when he alludes to the quote, “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” Written with men in mind, Lewis’ book points to how men enjoy laboring together on projects, whether that’s a literary club or sitting quietly for hours on end in a hunting stand.
Perhaps women’s book clubs do delve into the details of the book, but even the TV sitcom “Malcom in the Middle” posited in 2001 that suburban women’s “book clubs” were a likely cover for petty-drama-venting sessions fueled by white wine and personal insecurities. Sexist? Maybe. But even the casual sexism about men having nothing going on in their minds late at night, except technical nonsense and reflections on the sacrificial death of Boromir in “The Lord of the Rings,” is virally funny because it’s based on truth.
No, he is not “thinking about other women.” He’s working out how many third graders he could fight off at once before having to use weapons.
Over the course of a year, “Friendship Is Not Gay, Actually” netted a million views and countless rebuttal videos, along with spinoffs emphasizing why men are starved for connection today. Why?
I believe it’s because men and boys know that modern storytelling is obsessed with the idea of repression and hidden pain, and they’re sick of it. Only a few months after the video, the Netflix hit “Stranger Things” went all in during its final season by having Will give a painfully over-the-top coming-out speech to all his friends. The seeds were planted in prior seasons, when Will had feelings for his best friend, Mike Wheeler, and, in defense of “Stranger Things,” many guys have had a friend who turned out to be gay in adulthood.
In one sense, it’s relatable; in another, it’s not what the vast majority of audiences hunger to experience on-screen: childlike adventure, free of more mature concerns. Could “The Sandlot” or “Stand By Me” be made today without one of the boys having a somber, repressed gay backstory? Unlikely.
Men today are hungry for a quest, risk-taking, and shared struggle. Dip into #masculinity content on YouTube and Instagram, and it’s an endless stream of shorts about men longing for the rivalry between Dragon Ball Z’s Goku and Vegeta, as well as the painful hike to Mount Doom for Samwise Gamgee and Frodo Baggins.
Tolkien’s hobbits are, of course, another popular example of a friendship marred by 21st-century notions of intimacy where it’s all a cover for sexuality. Lewis addressed this tiresome trend of gay conspiracy theories by saying, “The very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden.”
“The Four Loves” is marked by a rather humorous tone of frustration with the women of Oxford University, who, it seems, might have been peddling rumors of secret gay romances between Lewis, Tolkien, and their friends in the Inklings. The simple fact that these men didn’t want women in their literary club was besmirched as, in the words of modern folk, “GAYYYY.”
It is undeniable that we live in lonely times, and it hurts for both men and women, with the pain manifesting itself in unique ways for both of the sexes. Every time GeekyStoics does a video on friendship, it outperforms everything else on the channel. Understanding why that is will continue to affect our shared culture and world politics, for good and for ill. We must work toward the good and start from the fertile ground of reality: men and women are different, male friendship is going to look different than female bonds, and friendship is still not gay.
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Stephen Kent is the founder of Geeky Stoics and co-author of the upcoming book “Great Escape: 30 Reflections on Stoicism, Faith and the Wisdom of Great Stories.” Available for pre-order now.
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