Tipdin

The term fag hag is deplorable - I hate it. Although, I seem to get along better with straight women than with anyone else. I'm not very typical no matter which category I'm trying to squeeze into. For many years, my closest friend was a straight women with two children. I was raising my six nieces and nephews at the time, while spending a great deal of time with my friend. In public, everyone thought we were married with eight children. Most of my life, my best pal has been a female. Most straight men are far to insecure to have gay male friends. Straight women don't have to wonder about the motives of gay men, and in fact may have a lot in common with them. It seems almost predictable that many straight women and gay men would get along together.

"Wow, that's great! You did that?" My dad used to think he was funny when he told me I did something well - for a southpaw...

YOU SAID IT BOTHER! Marriage is actually a formal legal term. A contract between two people. Wedding is actually a religious term. A ceremony joining a man and a women as one within their religion.

Keep the friendship - and keep it only as a friendship. You're too young to get caught into someone else's neuroses.

There are many instances of homosexual activity in the animal kingdom. It is not all that uncommon. And it is not simply about sex, it is often a display of submission and dominance - well, I guess that could still be construed to be about sex, couldn't it...? We humans also confuse affection with sexual identity. Many types of animals often show affection to their own sex and it has nothing to do with sexual acts or sexual orientation. Men, especially here in the US, are forbidden to show other men affection for some reason. Other countries are not nearly as weird about it, but we seem to be a prudish lot.

Every place is different when it comes to how people will react. I was lucky, Minnesota is quite accepting of gay people and my family was super-supportive. But I know nothing about Wales. What is the attitude among citizens? Usually, even in very restrictive areas there is a spot of two where it is safe or where you can relax a bit. (Unless you're in Mississippi or Alabama - those states are simply not from this planet....)

There are actually more advantages. Right of survivorship for example. If my partner dies, I would not automatically get his half of everything. We had to spend a good deal of money for an attorney to make sure our paperwork ensured our rights as much as possible so that we COULD enjoy what straight married couples get automatically. Recently, I had surgery and my partner was not automatically allowed in to see me, not automatically consulted by the doctors. I had to sign special papers that gave people permission to tell my spouse of 25 years, if I was alive or dead.... There is a great deal of inequality yet for gay people. I don't give a hoot about the religious aspect of weddings, but I am very clear in my belief that gay people deserve the same right to a legal union that straight people have.

Yes, I am very much out of the closet. I owned a business that catered to other gay business owners. I was quite public about myself, my business, and the public support that my company offered to gay people. I have always been fairly public with my gay activism. Everyone knows that I'm gay. Locally, my partner is a rather well known person as well. He brought PFLAG to Minnesota and for many years owned a therapy clinic that took over many of the services of a gay community services organization that went out of business. We were sort of the gay power couple in the community for a while so everyone knew about us. My partner has no family, but my family is humongous and has always been extremely supportive. Many of them worked for me, helping other gay business owners.

Skyline, you've made many interesting comments. I agree with most of what you said, but I would like to emphasize that people in general, are such social creatures that our behavior is often determined by our circumstances and those people that may be nearby. I think that fact is extremely telling. How we react is dependent upon who may see us. That alone tells us a great deal. Figuring out WHY has been a life-long study for me. I come from a different planet, evidently. My upbringing was very different than my peers as well as from the generations after my own. From the beginning of my schooling, at age five, I was in an experimental school program. It was based on the Utopian Society theory. That is, my happiness is indistinguishable from the happiness and well-being of those around me. That any and ALL forms of competition were inherently bad and must be eliminated. Aside from setting me up for a lifetime of failure, anger, and frustration, I do not react or behave in ways that are deemed 'normal.' For example, when I was a kid, I was waiting for a bus in downtown Minneapolis and there was a man who started arguing with another man just a few feet from where I was sitting. One man stabbed the other man several times. While the other people at the bus stop ignored what was happening, I was like the alarm going off. As the stabber began to leave, I followed him, screaming to everyone that he had just stabbed someone. I followed him into a bar, (even though I was nowhere near the age to enter) and I was screaming constantly that he had just stabbed someone. The man tried chasing me but I was a quick little shit. He also threatened me and eventually threw his bloody knife at me, but I followed him for blocks screaming the entire time. The police finally came to get ME! Someone had called about a kid disturbing the peace! But I pointed out the stabber and he was taken into custody. Sadly, the man who was stabbed, died. But I just could not ignore what happened. Because of my upbringing, there was no way in hell that my values and beliefs would allow me to NOT do something about what I saw. Since then, I have seen other incidents and while battling for gay rights over the past 35+ years, I have been caught and beaten on several occasions. I now carry a cell phone and will call 911 at the drop of a hat rather than intervene myself. But I still cannot ignore a situation. This whole thread makes me wonder what are we really teaching our children and are we prioritizing correctly? In this experiment that you showed us, it's fairly safe to assume that most everyone has a cell phone today, yet nobody even went so far as to reached for it while passing someone who was clearly in distress. Fascinating.

Amazing, isn't it? Very interesting. There are so many rules/regulations/thoughts/fears coming into lay that it's no wonder that so few people take note. In today's world, it could even be a set-up for a mugging. A well dressed alcoholic that fell off their wagon. Someone infected with an illness that could pass to us. I grew up in a city and I have passed by many bodies on the street. Although, on several occasions, I have called 911 regarding someone that I belied to be in true distress, but I did not approach them. I thought it better to leave the helping to those in the profession...

The question is, how do I feel about marriage. Did you really mean, what do I think? I wish Americans were more clear on this whole subject of marriage and weddings and rights. First: marriage is a legal term. A contract between two people. Second: wedding is a religious term. A ceremony joining a man and a women as one within their religion. I think the two aught to be separate. I like the idea of separation between church and state. If two people want legal rights afforded by a legal marriage, then two men, two women, or a man and a women should be able to enter into that contract. Just like buying a car or a piece of land - it's a matter of paperwork. I think if two people want to have a religious ceremony to symbolically mark their union, then they should be free to do so anywhere that is willing to allow them to do so. If this or that church won't do it, you don't even need a church for a religious ceremony, you just need the people!

I assume it's difficult for them to be so conflicted. Although, it's nice that coming out is far easier today than it used to be.

It's cool that so many of you said PRACTICE! I really, REALLY like that idea. WOOHOO! Make him beg and then make him glad!

There was never a time that I did NOT know that I was different - in many ways. Before I had the correct vocabulary, I knew that I preferred the company of boys. By the time I was finishing elementary school, I knew what the word homosexual meant. And in those days, it meant something VASTLY different, (read worse) than what it means today. Before I was ten, I knew that 'playing doctor' with my best friend was my favorite 'game.' The first time I had to take a shower after gym class, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a locker room attendant! Everything about the male body obsessed me. I couldn't see enough of them. Forty plus years later, that obsession is just as strong, if not more so. The knowledge regarding what being gay meant came before puberty. My first 'real' sexual encounter happened when I was almost eighteen. Now, well into my fifties, not a single day passes where I don't see at least half a dozen men that I would like to drag back to my cave.

I have always thought that being bisexual was the most advantageous way to go about it. It's just that very, VERY few people are willing or able to explore "the other" side of their sexuality. I think that there are lots and lots of people that are actually more bisexual than what they will admit. I used to manage a heath club and a big part of what I had to do was break up the sexual situations in the men's locker rooms. Then I would see those same men leave the club with their wives and kids...

We all react to hurt in our own way. However, if your friend is behaving so out-of-character with wild mood swings, that could actually be symptomatic of something more. Early adulthood is when many psychological manifestations come to the surface, often triggered by something like this event. Depression and wild mood swings are classic symptoms of treatable problems. A psychiatrist, not psychologist should really be the one to whom she should look for help. (Psychiatrists have a medical background that psychologists normally do not, and thus are better able to diagnose when something is biologically-based, not just a stress reaction.)

Oh gosh, yes. Karaoke, and live. I have a theater background and I used to sing at a gay piano bar. I was one of the "belters" that loved the big songs with the big loud finishes. Of course, lots of show tunes. But love songs as well. In 40 years of singing for the stage and audience, I have never once, EVER sung a true country song, like as in bluegrass. That kind of music is just fingernails down the blackboard to me. when that kind of music starts, I turn into a screaming queen, running for safety.

I'm confused about how to answer your question. First of all, I very rarely read sci-fi, it just doesn't interest me, however, your synopsis caught me and I thought it would make a nice read. OK, thinking out loud, on the fly: However, again, I would have said the best way to make a gay character gay without making him stand out like a lighted bulb in a dark room, is to simply not make love or love interests a focus of a story. And then I read that your story is focused on the idea of a character who came from a str8-only planet who falls for a gay character. It's hard not to bring attention to the very subject that your discussing. With that said, as I've gotten older, I think I have seen a distinction in the gay world that even among gays, is not often discussed. That is, the difference between someone who is gay and someone who has a homosexual orientation. Usually, we make no distinction between the two, but I think there might be. Some men have a homosexual orientation. That's all. They just happen to be attracted to men. And then other men are not simply homosexual, they are GAY. Not the screaming queens, but the in-between group. That group of men that is attracted to men and who are more socially or publicly OUT. It's hard to describe. I think of myself as having a homosexual orientation, but I don't like drag, I don't like being around screaming queens, I almost never go to gay bars, I don't have naked posters and paintings on my walls, I don't own a boa or a pair of leather chaps. I'm indistinguishable from the guy nextdoor for the most part. It's subtle, but there is something that I'm not able to explain very well. I don't stand out in a crowd. I don't have orgy weekends or popper-induced sexual vacations. I live my life pretty much the way my father lived his life and my brother lives his. My cousins are all straight and my house looks like theirs', (well, perhaps it is a BIT nicer...) I go the the movies, I cut the grass, and change the oil just like any other guy. It's a kind of existence that is unremarkable. A sameness that many of my gay friends use as explanation for why I'm not REALLY a gay man. I hate Judy Garland songs. There's no f-ing way I'd could live with a partner who was a leather queen or a screaming queen. I'm just not that different from the average straight man who has a wife and kids. Hell, I even had the kids! I raised my nieces and nephews. To make a gay character NOT stand out, I think the best way to do that is simply not make him different. His orientation is not a focus or an issue. He's just Joe Average with a husband rather than a wife. I have not expressed myself well here, but this was thinking on the fly. There is some THING that separates some gay men from others that I can't put my finger on. Perhaps it would be worthy of its own thread. But there you have it, a long convoluted answer to your question.

Many people see sexual orientation as a "this-or-that" issue. In reality it's not so simplistic. Sexual orientation is on a sliding scale and can often change to some to degree. It follows then that many people will have attractions one way or the other and back again in varying degrees of intensity. There don't seem to be too many people like me, that have NEVER for a split second wondered about their sexuality and NEVER had any change at all in where they are on that sliding scale. (That would be slammed up against the peg and wrapped around it at the gay end...)

Yes, it is possible. My partner and I are 20 years apart, (he's older) and I met him when I was 20. I'm now in my fifties...

I used to own a business that included answering suicide hotline calls. During full moon and no moon phases, our call volume always went up and the calls were more severe. We always had extra staff on duty. ...and lots of Kleenex... Our "success" rate was never as high during those times as the in between times.

Sure, I would move out of the US. In fact, I have plans to move to Scotland when I retire. And my partner's family is from Italy, but he lived in Mexico City while going to college. He is not convinced that the US is so much better than anyplace else. We wants the eastern coast of Italy, but I have more family in Scotland than he has in Italy, so I decided, I win...

Who are you to say it is universally hated? Even if that were true, which it is not, does that give you license to be so obnoxious and condescending? And it's not just you, although you have demonstrated that you have a hair-trigger on many occasions. Many of the respondants here have made some really callous remarks. Reading various threads on this website is quite a study in psychology. Most of us here have voluntarily taken on the label of "unusual" in some way; gay, bi, trans, figuring it out, whatever, so we ourselves do not fit the norm. Many of us have survived countless nasty verbal attacks and some of us, even physical beatings. Has that made you people hard and cold? Is it that pent-up anger that makes you so quick to be rude and nasty? Surviving painful situations can also have an opposite effect, you understand how painful verbal attacks can be so you can avoid spreading or adding to the hurt. If we published reviews of writings here the way many of you have responded to this music video, I'd bet there'd be a lot of anger and hurt. Why are you people so extremely acerbic? If you don't like the video, ok, no problem; but you're so intensely negative and unkind. I'm reminded of the movies I've seen about snotty girls having a bitch-fest to verbally murder someone they don't like. A very sad commentary on the participants.

Wow. You people can really be cruel.

Not. Prefer manly men. Emphasis on men, ...not boys.