On Being a Gay Statistician

I just read this great article on Huffpost by Guy Branum, and it resonated strongly with my own feelings on this subject. You should definitely read the whole thing, but here is a bit of it:

I had no clue Silver was gay. He's got a nice, interchangeably Jewish name, which, in the context of politics and journalism, just seemed normal. Therefore, I assumed he was "normal" for that job in most other ways: mid-50s, white, heterosexual.

But he's not. He's 34 and gay, which is awesome. The "Out 100" has, for most of its history, been dominated by performers (most of whom came out well into their careers) and activists working to promote gay rights -- professional gays or folks in gay professons. So now, at long last, we have a dude who's doing something unrelated to homosexuality who killed it this year. Good for us, no?

Well, no, actually. "To my friends, I'm kind of sexually gay but ethnically straight," Silver says in the Out feature. He is also said to consider "gay conformity as perfidious as straight conformity."

[snip]

So why the refusal by many, gay and straight, to define gay men and women as a culture or subculture?

When I was 17, like a good, politically minded Jewish boy, I read Benjamin Netanyahu's book A Place Among the Nations. In it he explained that the Palestinians were not a people, just Jordanian tenant farmers with no distinct culture. I believed him. Then, a few years later, I was reading an article from Germany in the 19th century that explained that Yiddish wasn't a real language, just corrupted German, a jargon. I started to realize that denying the existence of a culture is a really great way of denying the needs of that culture. Yiddish isn't the language of a people, just bad German. Palestinians aren't a distinct culture, just some people who should move out of Israel. Gay bars and Grindr aren't the cultural tools of a people, just trashy behavior.

Keeping gays from identifying as a group is a great way of keeping us from supporting each other and our rights. But even the people who would deny our rights still acknowledge that we have shared culture. Any schoolyard bully or gender policing frat boy knows what a fag is. We have litanies of stereotypes for "fags" and "dykes," and they're just all kinda bad. So we want to define homosexuality as an act, define a culture associated with homosexuality, but insist upon the right of people committing homosexual acts to distance themselves from that culture.

The article may use Nate Silver as an example, but it addresses a much broader problem. I have encountered this many times. The assumption that "gay" is an identification and not identity, that it is a culture you could opt out of, instead of a minority you belong to. It is very clear to me that we are the most self-harming group of people in the history of mankind, because it is possible for us to "pass", to hide who we are, and we do it constantly because we are taught from birth that "gay" = "less than straight". The result? Teen suicides, identity issues going well into adulthood, and a slow progress of gay rights due to the fact that a good two thirds of our community are either in the closet, or ashamed of it and distancing themselves from it.

It has been our greatest weakness that we are able to escape who we are as a group. Black people can't pass, and neither can women or Hispanics. They are who they are, and because they can't be in a closet, they have had to face it, deal with it and grow strong in the process. Yet so many gays still treat homosexuality as something to be ashamed of and hide, try to escape any labeling if they can, and will be the first to denounce gay culture, as if it is a fixed thing that - once branded with it - changes everything about you. When the truth is we ARE gay culture. What we do is gay culture because we are gay. And if we want to not be defined by being gay, we should teach the world - and apparently ourselves - that gay can be anything we decide it to be.

Why You Simply Can't Vote GOP. Ever. Period.

This is a video from a while back, talking about Romney in particular, but I figure it gives a very good explanation why nobody in today's GOP should ever be voted for, no matter how "normal" they appear. Do I believe there are no decent people in that giant party? Hell no. In fact, I imagine there are still more decent people than the Horde of Crazy. But does it matter really? When the crazies are so powerful within the party structure that you simply HAVE to fall in line, or your career is dead? And the higher you go in the food chain, the more obvious this becomes. Forcing pledges on people, supporting presentation of fairy tales and facts on equal terms in schools, being anti-everyone non-white or male... This is not a party that can sustain a thinking voting pool. And if it wants the moderate, independents voter back, it needs to show him that it doesn't need the crazy religious nutjobs, that they do not define the policies the party promotes.

Because what good is a moderate Republican, if he is a tiny island of sane in a sea of crazy that his election into whatever office he occupies opened the door for?

"Every Time People Have Voted on Gay Marriage, They Have Voted Against It... Update: Never Mind!"

Nobody can deny that marriage equality won on Tuesday, or that it won in a dramatic reversal of the trend. The biggest argument hate groups have used - that it's all the workings of us evil homofascist, helped by "activist judges and politicians", and that when the people have a say, they reject it - was not just tentatively dented, it was crashed, killed and destroyed in an across the board landslide that left no room for doubt and no way to call it a fluke - in FOUR states people were asked to stand with marriage equality or against it, and in ALL FOUR they chose to stand on the side of justice and human dignity. It is a resounding defeat of bigotry that has already changed the marriage discourse forever, and will have serious implications in future fights.

Meanwhile, hate groups, GOP nut jobs and self-appointed Christian Neanderthal moralists all across America are - as Joe hilariously puts it - "having the sadz", and whining their precious hearts out. They were outspent, the poor dears, after pouring millions into pointless hatred. The Four were "deeply liberal". It was an "uphill battle". Gotta love a language change and role reversal. All in all, this is what Tony Perkins, Maggie Galaghar, Brian Brown and the ever so magically quaffed Kalley Yanta have to say about what happened on November 6:

Yes, I feel not a shred of graciousness in myself right now. Victory tastes good!

Fixing What Isn't Broken - of Ex-Gays and Phony Science

Self-loathing and shame are a sad and unavoidable fact of the transitional times we live in. While the fight for equality seems to be gaining more and more momentum, it is far from over, and many members of the community feel nothing but utmost terror at the thought of being associated with it. Though I have no official statistics, my observation is that two out of every three gay men suffer from one form of internalized homophobia or another. Even those who seemingly don't, so often can't escape the mold of heteronormative morality and dogma.

But there is one small group of homosexuals that I think has earned a special place in Hell, and it is probably the only part of the gay community that I allow myself to actively despise - the ex-gays.

First of all, let's be real here (halleloo!) - no self-respecting LGBT person of sound mind believes that being gay is a mental disorder, and one that could be treated. Nobody who has ever been out could say this feeling of utter completeness, of the world being set right, of a weight that has left your shoulders forever, could be somehow wrong. But that's the core of the problem - ex-gays have never been out. Their horror of who they are is so overwhelming that they follow the first crazy person that promises them Dr. Straightenschlong's Magical Potion of Straightness. This is not thinking. This is not looking at yourself and your own feelings. This is self-loathing on an Olympian scale. And self-loathing is exceptionally unattractive.

Second, and much more important, those desperate souls are extremely damaging to the cause of the fight for equality. Hatemongers can just point at them and say "See? There's your proof that it can be cured!" I am not even going to try and guess at the level of self-repression and aggressive denial that is required to maintain this pathetic lie, but in the end, my sympathy for the torture those people live in is really dampened by how much of it is self-inflicted and how appalling an example it sets for other equally scared people.

However, as repulsive as I find ex-gays, they are victims too. Victims of crazy aggressive psychopaths with the power and money to say "yes, what you are IS a disease, an aberration, unnatural and wrong wrong, so very wrong, BUT I HAVE A CURE!" Which leads me to NARTH - the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. An old and seriously influential organization of phony psychiatrists who have split from the American Psychiatric Association because they can't - they just CAN'T - accept that gays are not evil and won't actually destroy society. Their "work", presented as scientific research and "fact", has been laughed at and disproved on absolutely every conceivable level, but they are the only claim to "argumentation" that the crazy religious Right has, and so they are being cited again and again by huge groups like the American Family Association or the Family Research Council, while normal people try to suppress disgusted twitches and the desire to vomit.

I recently read a Report on NARTH by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is very compelling and I urge you to read it, because one simply HAS to know exactly how unbased the entire argument against homosexuality is on the scientific level. Here are some quotes from it:

Billing itself as the counterweight to the two most prominent mental health authorities — the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association — NARTH pushes the idea, with the zeal of a religious movement, that no one is born gay and that a person’s sexual orientation can be changed through what is known as “reparative” or “conversion” therapy, also commonly called “ex-gay” therapy. At the heart of this argument is the belief that homosexuality is an unnatural deviation from normal sexual development, a form of mental disorder.

With these views, NARTH has emerged as the preeminent source of what many regard as “junk science” for the religious right — psychology that underpins the anti-gay movement’s fervent opposition to equal rights and stigmatizes LGBT people as mentally sick.

[snip]

In fact, every major American medical authority has concluded that there is no scientific support for NARTH’s view, and many have expressed concern that reparative therapy can cause harm. Most strikingly, in 2006, the American Psychological Association (APA) stated: “There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.” The APA added, “Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.”

And flourish it has.

That such an organization can still exist in 2012, and be willfully ignorant of facts is scary to say the least, but as NARTH is being marginalized further and further, and "reparative" therapy is laughed at by sane people, those of us who are struggling with who they are, see a false hope, one that isn't just based on lies, but also one that they should not be looking for at all. As long as hatred like this is given a public tribune, homosexuals will not be completely free of this self-loathing that infects us so deeply. Until those who cannot stand us for the ways that we are different from them lose their voice completely, our community will not be free of its own desire to try and "repair" what should be celebrated instead.

Romance in the Closet and the Big Lie

I've wanted to post something on the subject for a long while now, and I finally found the time to do it. I understand this post is not something many closeted people will like to read, but I feel that it's something they need to. I want it to be clear that I am NOT making fun of anyone. There is nothing fun about being the guy in any of these situations, and I know how bad it feels, how horrible it is. However, there is a comical element to it, once you have gotten far enough to look back and laugh at it.

We all want someone in our lives. We are always looking for that special person who will complete us, care for us, love us and make everything better. But can you find him from the isolation of the closet? Unfortunately, I have to say the answer is no. It is my deep conviction, but also everything I've seen in my life so far supports it. Just... no. There are so many problems with this situation, but they can easily be summed up into four big categories. And sadly, all of those lead to a bad place.


"I'm in love with my straight friend"
Probably the most common topic in the "Coming Out & Relationships" section of JUB is a variation on that topic. It could be a college dorm roommate, a childhood friend or a new acquaintance, but the story is basically always the same - a closeted gay guy who is desperately crushing on a close straight friend. They get obsessed, can't eat, can't sleep, the guy is all that matters, he is everything they ever wanted, but oh, if ONLY he were able to return their feelings! A few deranged ones will even go as far as admitting their feelings to their object of desire, thus completely obliterating whatever relationship they had with him in the first place, or at best - adding a thick layer of awkwardness to it. Most however just pine, suffer dramatically, and look online for help to a problem that should not exist in the first place.

Let's get a few things straight (haw haw haw). First of all, no, you are not "in love" with him. Love is a deep emotion, and healthy. Love makes you feel safe and appreciated. And in the end, love is rarely one-sided, because it needs to be nurtured to survive. What you are, is crushing. What you are, is obsessing. But mostly, what you really are, is being dishonest. To yourself. Because, semantics aside, whatever you're feeling, you don't want him to reciprocate. Should he ever do, that would make everything real.

And that's the whole point, isn't it? There is a reason why most out gay guys don't really care about straight ones. Suffering and lusting after the unattainable, focusing on it with such fervor, that everything else ceases to exist... that is nothing but a way to keep everything real far, far away. You can never have him, so you're safe. You don't have to move away from your miserable comfort zone in the closet. You don't have to put yourself out there, make a move, take a risk, have a REAL relationship. It's all pretend, and it's all a fantasy. That is the truth of it. That is why you go for the straight guy.


"I love him, but is he gay?!"
Another wonderful tragedy in the macabre tale of closeted romance (and a regular at JUB) is the story of a closeted boy who falls for that one wonderful, funny, interesting guy, but can't quite figure out whether it's reciprocated or not. "Does he like me?" and "Is he gay?" are two questions you should not go online to ask. The answers can never come from strangers on the internet, they can only come from you. But how can you ever know, when you can't go to them and tell them who you are? When you can't show your interest in any direct way? When all you can do is circle around them, giving greater and greater significance to smaller and smaller things that he does or says, until everything he does or says screams at you that he is gay and madly in love with you, and if you could only be completely sure, so you should ask someone online...

No, I am afraid that's not how it works. You will never know, because you can't approach him. And because you can't approach him, everything that's happening is happening in your head. And because it's happening in your head, it becomes surreal, proportions get completely skewed, and you get as far away from actual reality as one could get. Also, sad to say, chances are he's not gay, not interested and probably has no idea what fantasies are happening in your mind right now. Which is why he is not running away screaming.


"I came out to this gay guy, and now I am so in love with him!"
Few people are completely in the closet. Often there will be one or two close people who know you are gay. Coming out is a continuous process, and you are "really out" not when you come out to one person, but when you don't care who knows. But let's say you are not there yet, and somehow circumstances made you come out to a gay guy. He is kind to you, wants to help you in the process of coming out, so naturally you fall madly "in love" with him. This one I can say from actual experience, as I've been that barely out guy myself. It happens to a lot of us, but the key difference - what makes it wrong instead of right - is that for a lot of guys that is, for a long time, the end stop of their coming out.

I mean, really, why should you come out more, deal with more risk of rejection, more real world, when you have already found the perfect guy. Well, here's why. He is not the perfect guy. He is just the first gay guy you have been able to be open with. It makes you feel freer than you've ever felt in your life. You finally have an open connection to someone who knows exactly how you feel. But it is a starting point, not something to obsess over. That's just closet habits kicking in. And just because he is gay, doesn't automatically mean he has any feelings for you other than wanting to be your friend and help you. Of course, he might very well be the perfect guy. But you know nothing about being out, you know nothing about what you need in a boyfriend, and you know nothing about how a healthy relationship works. So what you will end up doing is scaring the poor guy away with your intensity. The core rule every guy - gay or straight - needs to learn early on is "just because you have a d*ck, doesn't mean I want it."


"My boyfriend is in the closet..."
But you know, some times those obstacles are not the end of the world. Some times you get lucky, you meet someone, you make a connection and you got yourself a boyfriend. And you have a relationship, right? No. Wrong. What you have, is a new secret on top of the old one. And let's be honest here - you've had your old secret for faaaar longer than your new one. A relationship cannot be a secret. It is not a one thing that you can isolate from the rest of your life. It is a part of the entire social experience. You might want to think that you'll have it all now, but can you hold hands in public? Can you kiss him goodbye after a night out? Can he meet your parents? Your friends? No, the closet won't allow it.

And the closet is a very selfish place. Protecting the big lie is everything. No one can know, right? Ever. So your boyfriend becomes second to keeping the secret. Your relationship is all about you and how to defend your big lie. You demean the guy you're with by treating him like a dirty little secret. He has to go out the back door when your parents come home unexpectedly early. Pretend you're nothing but friends when you meet people you know. And really, which one will you choose if your closet gets threatened? Well, experience shows you'll most likely sacrifice your big "love" when it threatens you with exposure - real or imagined.


When all your problems should not even exist in the first place
There is rarely a good reason to stay in the closet once you reach a certain age. I have talked about that before, and I'll likely have reason to do it again. The closet is a lonely, self-abusive and ultimately egotistic place that destroys your chances of romance and turns your dreams to dust. Most out gay guys won't even consider dating someone closeted, and the other closeted guys are just as afraid as you are. You're both each other's secret and shame, a thing not to be talked about and to be hidden away. No healthy relationship survives this strain, and for good reason.

But in the end, the choice is yours. You can lust after the straight friend and destroy your friendship with him. You can circle around your crush, never quite certain what's up and if anything is up, until you drive yourself crazy and become so weird he'll just quietly back away without breaking eye contact just in case you start getting frothy in the mouth and attack him with a knife. You can mistake kindness for interest and jump on the first person you feel you have a chance with. You can look behind your shoulder nervously any time your boyfriend attempts any sort of intimacy, until you make him feel completely worthless, a point of shame. OR you can take steps to get out of the closet, meet other guys who are gay for sure, who can and will reciprocate your feelings, who you won't have to hide. I promise you, it is a great and liberating feeling.

And it's not like you have that much choice really. As someone who struggled a lot with coming out of the closet, I will commit suicide before I let myself be dragged into anybody else's.

A (Brief) Post on Gay Conservatives

I have been following the scandal with Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu (who was recently outed as homosexual and had to resign from Romney's campaign in Arizona - google it), and it raised a very interesting question for me - can homosexuals in America be Republican? Sure, you'd say, gay conservatives have long been gathering around GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans, but there is - to my mind - a bigger problem here than finding the right group of conservatives who will accept you.

Whatever the Republican party used to be, it is clear to me that in recent decades it has progressively fallen victim to a fringe group - namely, the religious fantics. The situation has gotten to a point where a raving fanatic with medieval values like Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum can be the leading candidate for a president of the country, and moderate conservatives are left with no voice in a party that is supposed to represent them (another problem of course stems from the fact that GOP was always dedicated to serving a very small ultra rich elite, but that is neither here, nor there). As a result, the Republican party's platform is openly and viciously homophobic, barely making a half-hearted attempt at masking its bigotry behind biblical law and "traditional values" and ignoring every sane argument that people bring in response.

Because it isn't about values anymore, or about views. It's about electorate. GOP can no longer afford to part with the fanatical extremist element, as that would literally split it in half. It would take years for it to restore itself to any political relevancy, and by then it won't be one of two, but probably one of THREE major parties.

So what alternative do gay conservatives have? Who should those, whose views of economics and politics differ drastically from the Liberals', vote for? Naturally, they should give their support to the party that represents those views best, yes?

No.

There is a line, and when that line is crossed, political beliefs MUST step back in favor of dignity and self-respect. When a party is trying to deny you equal rights, when its officials can openly state that you are a mental disorder, that what you are asking for is a privilege, and if it were given to you, it should be given to pedophiles and necrophiles as well, you cannot say "I support those people" and claim to have any respect for who you are.

Yes, I am aware of how for many gay people (and MOST gay conservatives, it seems) being gay is "just one more thing, it doesn't define me, I hate gay culture" and blah blah blah. But internalized homophobia aside, you ARE what you are. If you have accepted yourself as a homosexual, how can you support someone who openly despises you? Of course, you'll say, not everyone in the GOP is homophobic, many of them support gay rights to a moderate extent. But the question is are those people in a position to change things? Does their existence mean we will see LGBT equality should their party be put in a position of power? I think we all know the answer to that question.

So, to answer my own question, I think that gay conservatives in modern day America simply do NOT have a political alternative. The GOP definitely does not represent their interests. In the end, I don't expect any gay Republican to agree with me, but in my eyes a homosexual who supports the GOP because of what it stands for in political and economical terms, is almost as absurd as an animal-loving Jew in the time of the Third Reich, who supports Hitler for his views on animal rights. Make of that what you will.

A Parent or a Christian? Thoughts on Parents With Gay Kids

In a country where there is such a huge difference between levels of education, a country that covers the whole spectrum from cutting edge liberal thinking to stagnant ignorance, the topic of how to treat your child's sexual identity can't be ignored. We've all heard the horror stories - kids being disowned, kicked out of their homes, sent to Straight Camps, beaten up or simply ignored and shunned. But to be honest, this is not something I can actually imagine. It is so deeply unfathomable to me that my mind refuses to paint a believable picture of anything like that happening in a real family.

See, when I came out to my parents, they responded with awkwardness. My mom was worried about me ending up alone, my dad was deeply saddened. There is no blame on my part, it's more or less what I expected, and I have given them time and space to deal with it. But apart from the awkwardness, nothing else has changed. I am still their child, they still love and support me the same as always. Because they know something that apparently not all parents do - being gay is nobody's fault and there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it. There is nobody you can or should blame, and things just are the way they are.

I am very happy with my sexuality, but in today's society most parents are still heterosexual. And no heterosexual parent wants this for their kid. They know a different life, and that life is what's normal to them, it's that life that they want for us. There is a difference, however, between wanting something and forcing it. I was lucky to come from a country where homophobia is cultural, and more like indifference than active hatred. Children in the States have it much tougher in many cases.

But here's the big secret - your parents' opinion does not matter. Sure, they have the means to hurt you, at least for a small part of your life, but what they think is irrelevant. Because it is their duty to love and support you, and once they fail in that, they have failed you in the deepest, most personal way imaginable, and have proven unworthy of your respect. The religious homophobic cases are the most scary to me, as religious people are the ones who most aggressively defend the holiness of the institution of marriage and the ideals that supposedly stand behind it. Yet, I have to wonder, how much of a Christian is someone who is able to love Jesus more than their own flesh and blood? The truth here is much uglier, and it is steeped in hypocrisy. They don't really love anyone. They are the antithesis of what Jesus' teachings tell us, and masking their bigotry behind poorly understood words that someone else has told them.

Because in the end, parenting is about giving your child the best possible opportunity to develop as a human being. You may believe whatever you want, but in the end, you have to accept reality for what it is, and help them in overcoming the obstacles society will put in front of them, instead of being the biggest one. You can't force sexuality on anyone, and the sooner society accepts that, the sooner abominations like the cases I mentioned in the opening paragraph will stop happening. There is only one truth here: a true loving parent changes their views based on their feelings for their child, not the other way around.

The Inglorious Comfort of the Closet - Thoughts on Coming Out

It is very difficult to write on this subject without being emotional, and also difficult to say anything new, so I feel like I need to put a few disclaimers up before I actually start this post. First of all, this is just a gathering of my thoughts, and I don't intend it to contain any particular pearl of wisdom. Not discovering America, just putting things in order for my own benefit. Second, I don't want anyone to feel judged (except for those of you that I'm actively judging, but I'll make sure to let you know specifically). It is a sensitive issue for all of us, and if there is any anger on my part, it's mostly directed at myself for waiting so long to come out, and the condition of being in the closet itself. And with that said...

What is the closet?
I frequent the "Coming Out, Relationships & Bisex Talk" section of Just Us Boys. I like giving advice, it makes me feel all helpful and stuff. But after a while, I began to see patterns in the topics that people post. Certain things invariably repeat themselves, as if it's a script someone else has written, and all those members keep following. All of them - symptoms of the closet. I will never forget that one topic - from a guy whose boyfriend was completely in the closet, complaining about how it put so much strain on the relationship - and more particularly, the answer it got from a member named TX-Beau, who I have a great deal of respect for:

Alright. While we all sympathize with someone who is in the closet, NO ONE has a right to it. It's simply this unfortunate place some of us who can't get past our fear find ourselves in. If we don't out people, it's because we know how hard it is to live that horrible life, and how hard it is to find your courage - not because closeted guys have a right to demand we respect their closet. There is nothing respectable about the closet, it's the big lie.

While legitimate reasons to stay in the closet DO exist - physical and financial security for example - most of what we tell ourselves in order to stay in the closet is bullshit. It is a trap our society creates, but it's a trap that our mind springs. It is that comfort zone which we are miserable in, but which protects us from the world - we are in control of our secret, and as long as we keep it, we are safe from the world's judgment.

When the truth is, there is nothing to judge
One of my favorite things to talk about in regards to the coming out process is internalized homophobia - that horrible mixture of fear and brainwashing that our environment has beshat upon us, which whispers to us, from the back of our own brains, that it is NOT ok to be gay, that it is shameful, emasculating, pathetic, wrong. Two out of three gay guys that I have met so far exhibit one form or another of this condition, and it is a very difficult thing to overcome, at least until you recognize it and stop caring what the heteronormative stereotypes are. Advertizing that you are "straight acting" is not a virtue, it is a glaring red flag that you are not comfortable with who you are. Anyone who thinks femme guys are to be laughed at obviously hasn't had sex with one. In the end, we all like d**k, and we have a chance to give the finger to heteronormative stereotypes of what is ok for a man to act like and do, and what isn't.

The lies we tell ourselves
In the time I've spent reading and writing in gay forums, a few symptomatic cliches stuck out from the mass of closeted paranoia:

My sexuality doesn't define me...
False. Your sexuality defines you through and through. Sure, it's not the only thing that defines you, and no doubt other things define you just as much. However, I claim that very few things, if anything really, defines you more than your sexuality. In my case, I spent the first 25 years of my life in self-deluding denial. It was a secret I didn't dare admit even to myself. Could anyone with any powers of reasoning even for a second think this hasn't defined the way my personality has developed? After I came out, it took me a few months to shed the last threads of secrecy, and then I burst that closet door wide open. Who I am today is an unbelievably different person from who I was barely two years ago, and that is again a direct result from the fact that I am gay.

...And it's nobody's business, so I am not going to flaunt it
It is everybody's business. There is no right and wrong here, it's just the way it is. I will quote TX again:

OK. First a note on sexuality. People are going to inquire, wonder, ask, look for explanations. They just are, because sexuality is an extremely public thing, and sharing that part of our lives with our friends and families is not only pervasive, it's expected. Your mother wants to know when she's getting grand-kids, your friends want to know who you're banging, it's everywhere you look, up front and out loud.

And it really is. A straight guy is never uneasy with talking about his sexuality. It is everybody's business and he is confident about it. And make no mistake - he is constantly, 24 hours a day, flaunting it. A man, coming out of a car and kissing his wife goodbye as he is taking their daughter to daycare, is flaunting his sexuality right in your face. And yet you think that your kissing your boyfriend goodbye on the street is somehow different, a thing to be kept private because it is "nobody's business"? Like I said - false.

I am waiting to find a boyfriend, and then I will come out
No, you will not. First of all, even though everyone comes out in their own time, when they are ready, it is not something that becomes easier with age. Quite the opposite actually, and it takes more and more extreme circumstances to force us out of the closet as we get older. Second, it is unbelievably harder to find a boyfriend while closeted, but I plan on writing a separate post about that. But most importantly, third - coming out is ALWAYS and ONLY about yourself. Even though we see those scenes in movies where a boy comes out to his parents, holding the hand of his boyfriend, in reality coming out is a little bit like dying. You are absolutely alone, regardless of whose support you have. There is always only one real reason to come out, and that is the realization that you can not live the lie anymore. It is about you, and you alone. Believing that someone else in your life will magically make it easier or make you more ready to face the world is being dishonest to yourself.

Not death, but rebirth
A life ends, and a new one begins. I am the living proof that it gets better, and I live every day of my life rejoicing in the choice to come out. I walk taller - my smile no longer fake - with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. The biggest secret about coming out is how little most people actually care, and the biggest challenge you have to overcome are your own fears and shame. Once you are ready to truly believe that if anyone thinks less of you, that's exclusively their problem and they can go fornicate themselves, you are ready to begin your real life. And really, there is so much more room to breathe out here...

Thoughts on Protecting Marriage

In the spirit of covering the basics, I want to talk a little about one of my favorite code phrases, namely the hate groups' crusade for "protecting traditional marriage" a.k.a. "don't let the gays marry". Now, in my parallel universe the absurdity of this codification is profoundly obvious, but since most people don't live here, it is far less clear to them.

First of all, let's look at the angle of protection. Protecting something implies that said something is in danger. Marriage has been on a steady decline in the States in the last few decades, with recent polls indicating staggering numbers of divorces. Could this somehow be contributed to The Gays? Not really, as we aren't allowed to marry, remember? Not in most places, and even when we are, it's still not recognized on the federal level. So if marriage is in danger, it's in danger because of those who can perform it, namely - heterosexuals. Can we ban divorce? Not really, and even if we could, it would be a bad idea to force two people who can't stand each other to live together. So we have to find someone else to blame. How about them gays? It's THEIR fault somehow that marriage is failing. Because of... uh... because of reasons! Giving us the right to marry would create more families, not fewer. Show me a straight person who refuses to marry because homosexuals also can, and I will personally thank him for not inflicting themselves on another human being since, yunno, crazy people shouldn't really procreate.

Wait, what? Procreation? CHILDREN?! THAT'S IT! We are, uhm, protecting marriage because it is not a right, but a PRIVILEGE! Yes, right, a privilege. Not a right. Ok, yes. It is an institution meant to promote procreation, and since gays can't procreate, messed up deviants that they are, they are not entitled to this privilege. More code words, more straws to grasp at. But there is already something wrong here. Shouldn't we, yunno, have fertility tests before allowing heterosexual people to marry? I mean, if marriage is a privilege saved for promoting procreation, it should be unavailable to ANY union that can't lead to procreation.

Yes, but, but, but... but marriage between one man and one woman creates the most ideal environment for raising children! An infertile couple can adopt a child (unlike those horrible gays with their loose morals and hedonistic tendencies) and raise it in a life of familial bliss. Hmm, fair enough. What happens when the familial bliss is broken by marital problems? When one parent starts boozing up? When they lose their job? And this applies to any family, not just the ones that adopted a child. Should their marriage license be revoked due to no longer providing a perfect environment for their kids?

And of course, let's just look for a second at what "traditional marriage" actually is. Despite what NOM and other hate groups and extremist Right wing nutjobs spout on a daily basis to somehow soften the inadequacy of their bigotry, marriage as an equal union based on love and commitment is a late 19th century invention. In all of human history before that it has simply been a contract of possession in order for one man to know that his woman OR women (depending on country or time period) will not belong to anyone else. Women were objects to be bartered away, and their role in marriage was to cook and give birth to children. Is THIS the "traditional" marriage you are protecting, Ms. Gallagher? Was that what Crazy Eyes Bachman was looking for when marrying her (I say this through tears of laughter) "ex-gay" husband?


Those are stupid arguments that I am making, but they are meant not to be new and insightful, but rather to show just how absurd the counterarguments for gay marriage are. There is LITERALLY NO REASON for anyone to be opposed to marriage equality. Except for the most basic one, which no "Protection" group or devout Christian will ever admit to, and they usually hide even from themselves, masking it in all this ideological bullshit. And that's the simple "Ew, gays!" revulsion. They wouldn't do it, it's gross to them, so obviously it can't be right for anyone and has to be destroyed. I mean, people being different is simply not ok, anyone must see that, right? So why is that again? Well, uh, because, um, because... because f**k you, that's why!

And in all of this absurd war on equality that they are waging and slowly losing (and they couldn't not lose it, considering how that must be THE most indefensible bigotry of modern day America, and thus all arguments for it are just laughably easy to dismiss), what strikes me the most is this one horrifying realization - can you imagine how empty a person's life must be if they have dedicated it to ruining somebody else's?

"Choosing" to be Gay

I "chose" to be gay in 2010. It was a tough choice, really. Basically I could either be gay, or kill myself at that point, but hey, a sucky choice is still a choice, yes?

Well, no, not really. And it is strange to me how I seem to be living on a separate plane of existence from all the Christians heavenbent on saving my poor faggot soul even if it takes completely destroying everything good about my life to do so. Because - and this one is really funny - they wholeheartedly believe that homosexuality is a choice. And who knows - sexuality in general is so fluid that maybe for some 3-5% of us - those closest to the Kinsey scale middle - it really was a choice. But COME ON! Open your eyes! I know you all had your private Christian schools and go to your Christian blogs and watch your Christian channels, but are you really THAT well protected from actual facts? Do you seriously not see what is happening all around you?

And I won't even go into how none of YOU "chose" to be straight (or to live in denial, as so many of you do), as you seem to think being straight is the only normal condition. But just THINK! "So yeah, I feel like trying d**k now, cause, yunno, I am just bored and have bad role models. Does anybody wanna persecute me until I try to kill myself?" Who chooses that? Seriously, people, who chooses that ?! To be bullied daily at school, discriminated against in the workplace, risking hate crimes, and denied basic human rights (oh, I am sorry, those are heterosexual "privileges" if we don't like you) - is this a choice YOU would make if you could choose the opposite?

It isn't about values and what your religion tells you. It's about common effin sense! Nobody chooses to be hated. It is obvious, and extremely simple, and that's why your argument is invalid. Open your eyes, or tear them away from the Christian blogs for a second and look at the actual world around you. When a child is beaten at school every day for years, that is NOT the gay agenda. That is you being an idiot.

Your Values Are Killing Children

I am constantly fascinated by the blind zeal with which bigots defend their bigotry. I am sure I will sooner or later post something on the whole "choice" issue, as well as the other code words like "protecting marriage" and "religious freedom", but now I want to just go to the very core of why sexual intolerance is wrong.

I recently read Rolling Stone's article One Town's War on Gay Teens. Through tears. And I was reminded of 2010 and another wave of teen suicides. And my mind just couldn't compute what goes on in the heads of the people who led those children to that edge, where the only possible way out they could see was to jump from it. At this point, when a 13-year old girl shoots herself with a shotgun in the bathtub, when a 19-year old boy jumps off a bridge after his personal life has being broadcast online for people's entertainment, IT SIMPLY DOESN'T MATTER WHO IS RIGHT AND WHO IS WRONG!

Even if you think it's a choice, even if your morals and what passes for conscience allow for calling an innocent child "an abomination" and "Satan", do you not realize that your actions are actively killing those children? You give yourselves names like "One Million Moms", and call what you're doing "protecting" this or that, yet you pass policies that forbid discussion of homosexuality in schools (as is the case in the Anoka High School from the article) and prevent teachers from stopping physical abuse?

Any half-wit could easily see this for what it is. Those kids did not kill themselves. They were murdered.