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Marry: Hugh Jackman Sleep: Orlando Bloom Throw: Prince Andrei Chris Evans Prince Harry Eric Dane

Homophobia: Harmful treatment of a homosexual that is based solely on his status or perceived status as a homosexual. Let's not forget, some awkward and/or feminine heterosexual males bear a lot of homophobic abuse. And as for jokes, jokes don't count. I completely accept myself as a gay guy and embrace it, but I enjoy a good gay joke now and then. Self parody is the path to self acceptance, you know.

This isn't really a fear... It's just something that's terrible and I can't deal with it. Raw meat in any form. I can eat it cooked, but raw is just so gross to look at, smell or even worse, touch!

Happy Birthday, Eric. I don't know you personally, but I always like to come and queue for cake! Where is it, by the way?

Essentially yes. If I am meeting someone who seems friendly enough and I realize that this might progress to a friendship, I like to sneak it in there at some point. Not in such an irritating way as, "Hi, I'm Jay, I'm gay." But within a few days of meeting someone they always know I'm gay. Because I don't want to get attached to someone who might be a raging homophobe. Common? No. Common enough to kick you in the ass a few times? Yes. As I said before, it's happened to me where I met someone I thought was nice enough and the subject never came up, and I really got burned when the subject finally did. So I like to avoid a repeat of that by establishing early on that I am gay and if they have a problem with it, we can talk it out or go our seperate ways. And yes, I recognize that straight people don't have to do this, but then again, there aren't 40% of American adults who think that being straight should be illegal so it does become an issue, and often. This is just my own personal way of getting the issue out of the way early.

When you meet someone new, and you think the potential is there for a friendship, what are your methods to communicating that you are gay to them? Some people might say this is unnecessary but I make a point of it, because I've been burned in the past by people who were quite upset that I didn't mention early on that I was gay, and they felt mislead because they made the assumption that I was straight. I don't like to make a big production out of it and take them aside to have a heart to heart, and tell them I'm gay. Because I don't feel like discussing it in depth with every single new person I meet. My personal favorites are When the conversation comes up, as it usually does, "Do you have a girlfriend" My response is "Yeah and her name is Jeff. Just kidding, I'm single." This leads them to go "OH, you're gay?" Most of the time, anyway. Another way to do it is, when taste in women comes up, and he starts discussing how hot this chick is or that chick is. I like to say, "I'd prefer Daniel Craig, honestly." (or insert celebrity male of your choice) What do you do?

It's all about Susan Boyle, it seems! She is quite good but she's not the phenomenon that she has been made out to be. If you want to see how the song she sang sounds when sung properly, go here.

Just remember guys, this IS going to happen. It has to. We have more invested in equality than they have in making sure we are denied it. It's only a matter of time till the tides change, and that's because we're not stepping into someone else's life and saying yes you can do this, no you can't do that. We fight for something that's for ourselves, that we know we deserve. And we know how unjust it is that it is being denied to us. Just remember that when things like this happen, because they will happen. But in the long run, our cause is just, and history will reflect that.

wildone - Thanks for the suggestion, bookmarked it. Benji cool, thanks. It was a great story, wasn't it? Who doesn't want their own 6'3" casino mogul

I'm light-hearted, funny, and sometimes forgetful guy with a sarcastic wit. I always cover my own innate sense of timidity with humor and false confidence. Nice to meet you.

Ooooooo I quite enjoyed the finale. The performances were great, for once. And I fully expected Adam to lose. Without a doubt, he was the better singer, but the demographics just weren't in his favor. All along Kris had the tween girl vote. (A heavy voter demographic, they don't have to pay for the time they spend dialing in their votes over and over and over.) And once Danny Gokey fell out of the competition, the christian vote went from Danny to Kris. Crappy? Sure. But that's life. They prefer Kris' small-town, aww shucks modesty to Adam's San Francisco flare. A lot of people try to make this about homophobia, and I don't buy that they were voting for Kris to spite the gay guy. Sure they prefer Kris, but lets take all speculation of sexually out of it, who do you think a small town voter would be more comfortable with, Kris or Adam? And either way, I read earlier that Queen was looking into Adam maybe becoming a part of the group. In which case he'd instantly be one rich dude. Although, I can't help but wonder if the production company that Idol stars work with would get in the way of this. If you come in the top 10 on Idol, that production company basically owns your career from then on. You have to agree to that or you can't compete. Still, that's the price of success I suppose.

I just finished Carter's Army. Great story!! It was nice laying back in front of the AC all afternoon reading it. Thanks for the suggestion Trebs It occurred to me earlier that I have read a bit of gay fiction before that my friend linked me to a few years back. I'm trying to remember the name but it's just hovering out of reach. I wonder if you guys can help me, it's about a teenager (18 or so) who gets thrown out of his home, and he goes to Las Vegas. Outside of a hotel he gets clobbered by a door that was swinging open so the hotel lets him stay a bit for free and gets a doctor to look him over. While he's there he gambles away all of his money and a guy in the bar offers him money to sleep with him, and he hesitantly agrees since he was in such dire straits. He gets caught and ends up making a deal with the owner of the hotel to pretend to be his boyfriend while the owner's mother is in town. I wont give away any more, or the ending, just in case someone hasn't read it yet.

It's quite easy to scare someone into siding with you, especially when they were predisposed to agree with you anyway and you're merely giving them something to say to support their bigotry. There has always been a very clear and very prominent part of American culture (the 'freest' country on earth) that rejects anything which doesn't subscribe to the norm. And homosexuality isn't just different, many people feel repulsion to their very core when they even think about two men having sex. Note: The preconception is that it's always about sex, sex is dirty, it's easy to treat sex with disdain, it's far more difficult to argue away love. And until homosexuality isn't viewed as outlandish and a challenge to the values which mainstream America holds dear, then there will always be people willing to stand up and proudly say that they support hatefulness and bigotry, especially when they delude themselves with things like 'it's for the children'. It's a culture war. North versus south, conservative versus liberal. It's just another thing that's been filtered into our increasingly polarized and politicized culture. Everyone loves to have an opponent, everyone loves a cause to fight for, and just like every other minority that has found a way to acceptance in American culture, we're going to have to fight like hell for it. But let me get off my soap box and discuss Prop 8. My gut tells me that they are going to uphold it. It would be a very bold step to reverse a popular (although slimly) vote when a part of the backlash to begin with was that it was viewed as undemocratic that the judiciary took it upon itself to give out the right to marry to gays. If they were to argue that the Supreme Court, in striking down Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute in 1967 found that marriage was a basic civil right and cannot be taken away, they might be able to get away with it without too much backlash (which by the way, I think should be the argument when EVERYONE brings it up). But Rush, Hannity and all the other right-wing blabbermouths will still find ways to froth about it, of course.

Thanks you guys! Wow, that's was a fast response. I'm getting started on Carter's Army right now, It's a really nice story so far. Thanks for the suggestion Trebs. DragonFire, Mark Arbour and old bob, thanks for your suggestions as well, I'm going to go through them all once I get done with Carter's Army, thanks for the help! And if any more stories occur to you, I'm always looking for more. Edit: I see I've gotten a few more since I was posting this... lol Thanks Rabble_Rouser and rec. I'll bookmark that website, Rec, looks good.

I'm sorry if this isn't the correct forum for this, but I'm gonna throw this out there anyway. I'm just getting into the gay fiction scene and I was wondering, now that I've made my way through my first few great stories, if anyone had some suggestions based on what I like. My current favorite 'cliche' genre is the jock/nerd type of story, such as in Tutoring Jerry, Educating Alex and Reclaiming Austin. The super attractive and confident guy falls for the average boy - or at least average in his own mind. I guess I enjoyed the protectiveness of Austin and Alex and Jerry with their respective beau's. If there are any good stories of this type still out there I'd really appreciate being pointed in the right direction. I've been browsing on my own but haven't found much that mirrors the relationships in those stories. Thanks.