Author Archive
Supplies, new clothes, and carpooling arrangements. It’s Fall and Back-to-School time! (Sighs of relief are ok!) All across the globe mothers and fathers are facing the new college year, its joys and challenges. And like a gay or lesbian mother or father it can be overly challenging. Each step of one's child's academic ladder: pre-school, elementary school, middle college, high school - is a "coming out" procedure for you personally as well.
So, just how "out" should you be at your kid's school?
The solution, like good study habits, starts at home. Your outness at house can greatly influence how out you choose to become at their school. Let’s repeat… how out you Choose to become at their college! It’s the same as how out you choose to be at operate and in life. It is your option and what fits for you and your loved ones. Critics be gone, it is your choice.
Although Americans have moved some distance in accepting same-sex unions, polls indicate majorities are nevertheless opposed.
Last Monday a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit announced that the California's ban on same sex marriages would remain in place at least until December. Earlier within the month Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage.
Americans have transformed their minds on many problems relating to homosexuality. They have moved some distance in terms of accepting gay marriage, but majorities in most polls still oppose it. Gallup asks its question this way: "Do you think marriages in between same-sex couples ought to or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as conventional marriages?" In May 44% (up from 27% when Gallup very first asked the query in 1996) mentioned they ought to be recognized as valid. But 53% in the new poll, (down from 68% in 1996) mentioned they ought to not be.
Being gay in Romania
Social conservatism in Eastern Europe, especially with regard to LGBT rights and marriage equality, has definitely had its hold on Romania. Romania's Penal Code of 1864 found that all homosexual acts were illegal, forcing gay people to choose between the fulfillment of their orientation and the chance that they would be caught, which would generally result in imprisonment.
The code was not revisited until the mid twentieth century, when, in 1936, it only addressed homosexuality law in its outline of rape. Finally, it was determined through Article 431 that homosexuality was legal if kept strictly private.
In the late 1960s, communism in Romania rose to power and its forerunners returned homosexuality to its former illegal status, through legal acts such as Article 200, which not only ruled that LGBT people had to keep their orientations to themselves, but made it more dangerous than ever for them not to.
Can love cure homophobia?
Why have homosexuals been persecuted and despised for centuries? On the most obvious, surface level, a major explanation is that the dominant Western religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, have condemned homosexuality and those who practice it. For centuries gay people have been persecuted and sometimes executed for practicing their love.
The Catholic Church and fundamentalist Protestant groups have been aggressive and self-righteous, and until recently no one would stand up against them on the issue of homophobia. While this is slowly changing in our society, the effect of such teaching within towns, schools, and families often remains intemperate.
More than one gay Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Mormon child has been irrevocably drummed out of his home and school because of unyielding religious beliefs. Evidently, other beliefs about love and tolerance, which make those religions otherwise attractive, are not efficacious enough to counterbalance the intolerance. It is equally evident that in parts of the world where religions hold sway that do not condemn homosexuality Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Hinduism bigotry is by no means as overwhelming or as lethal to gays, although it does still exist to some extent.
Take some precautions before coming out to your parents.
The desire to come out to our parents is a measure of the growing self-esteem of gays. This wish is not only based upon a decision to be honest but also arises out of a need to communicate the good things that are happening in our lives.
A few tips about coming out to your folks: First, practice by coming out to some of your straight friends; study their reactions and examine how you feel as an out gay man. You should definitely consult your gay friends about their own experiences coming out to their parents.
If you feel you want to come out to your parents, it’s best to choose a moment when you’re alone with them, away from brothers and sisters or other relatives, and unlikely to be interrupted. However, if you’re already out to your siblings, let them know what you’re about to do. They can be helpful afterward. Also, make sure that you choose a time when they are relaxed. During this disclosure, do not confuse the issue of homosexuality with other matters (“No wonder I’m gay, Dad, you never paid attention to me”). No blame attaches to anyone for your being gay, so you should not allow your parents to accuse themselves, each other, or you.
Gay traveling?
One of the great benefits and joys for gays traveling to other countries is that they are certain to find other gay men. For some this means making new friends, while for others, it means fresh fields in which to trick, slut around, or find a partner. American gay men enjoy unprecedented access to gay life on every continent except for Antarctica (and we’re not sure of that). With a proliferation of gay guides specifically for gay men traveling abroad, as well as several excellent gay travel bureaus, you are limited only by the amounts of free time, money, and curiosity you have.
Of course foreign travel was always part of some gay men’s lives. “Finishing” or “polishing” oneself via the European tour has been an important rite in many British and American men’s lives. For some famous gay artists, such as the novelist Henry James, the painter John Singer Sargent, the playwright/composer Noël Coward, the journalist Norman Douglas, or the writer Paul Bowles, the discovery of ultrasophisticated gay life elsewhere generally meant remaining where one landed and seldom returning home. As a result, many other gay men heard of and came to wish to visit these foreign places.
Gay people, open your eyes!
We’re told that geese and other water fowl have life long monogamous relationships. It’s good to learn that there’s at least one animal that does. We humans have a harder time being faithful to our lovers throughout life.
It’s not that long-term monogamy doesn’t exist in gay relationships. It does, but not often. Many unproven theories explain why men (gay or straight) have problems remaining with one sexual partner. Evolutionary psychologists maintain that the cause is genetic, the effects of evolution over tens of thousands of years, starting with the cavemen. Their impregnating as many women as possible in the shortest time was the most efficient way of ensuring the propagation of the species.
Most mammals seem to behave the same way. Feminists adamantly reject genetics (and biological theories about anything), suggesting instead that our cavemen behavior is the result of social learning in a patriarchal society and our inability to form intimate relationships. A few of them call us sexual pigs.
Gay couples. When it's time to let go?
In George Orwell’s novel 1984, O’Brien asks, "What is the worst thing in the world?" For most of us it is feeling unloved and abandoned. These are all the primary feelings experienced when a love relationship ends. Sometimes the lovers have been quarreling for years. For other couples, months or years of silent distance abruptly end as one partner announces, to the astonishment of the other, that their relationship is over. No matter how long the relationship has lasted, and no matter how the end comes about, termination is painful for both parties; sometimes devastating to just one; sometimes to both.
What is worse, some men can’t let go of the past. They tenaciously hold on to the conviction that he still loves me in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Invariably, the holder-on is obsessed with finding evidence that his former lover still loves him. These indications turn out to be flagrant distortions of the truth. The personality and character of the beloved are transformed into something approaching saintliness. Unkind acts are reinterpreted as benevolent; even abuse can be reinterpreted as love. This is obsessive love, and its effects are harmful all the time.
Are you afraid of being abandoned?
Jealousy is as rampant among homosexuals as among heterosexuals. Because homosexuality provides so many more opportunities for quick, concealed sexual adventures, it can be an even worse torture for the jealous gay man.
The problem, as Marcel Proust pointed out, is that:
jealousy, which wears a bandage over its eyes, is not merely powerless to discover anything in the darkness that enshrouds it, it is also one of those torments where the task must be incessantly repeated.
Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time can be said to be a three-thousand-page dissection of this most destructive of all passions. Proust suggests that not only can jealousy never discover the truth about infidelity but it can never be brought to a conclusion.
Jealousy is such an overwhelming emotion that it seems to be both natural and ineradicable. The truth is different. Jealousy is a learned emotion, often patterned after that of one’s parents, and it exists in some societies far more violently than in others. Since it is a learned response, it can also be unlearned. Jealousy is often based on the belief that sex is the sole foundation of love.
Gay types
We often forget that most people have definitely preferred physical types. The African-American guy you’re so hot for may have turned you down because you’re white; study him a few nights and you’ll probably notice he only leaves with other blacks.
The cowboy who turned you down probably did so because you’re dark and tall; observe, and you will doubtless see he’s always got a small, feylooking blond in tow. The cultivated balletomane, with whom you discussed Mark Morris and Twyla Tharp’s latest with such pleasure, more than likely didn’t go home with you because he’s only turned on by monosyllabic, Neanderthal-looking guys with twenty-four-inch necks.
Read More
