In Defense of Beg Borg and Gay | Time

Contents:

• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
• IN DEFENSE OF BEG BORG AND GAY
• WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MYSELF AFTER YEARS OF FALLG FOR GAY MEN
• AM I GAY?
• I’M SOOO BORED OF BEG GAY
• AM I GAY? QUIZ – 100% RELIABLE TT

HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY

Part of realizg you're gay, or bi, or trans, or non-bary, or anythg other than cisgenr and heterosexual is acceptg you’re different—and somewhat separated—om the majory. Here he shar his journey to overe the sense of isolatn he felt growg up gay a small U. At the time, there were no real gay role mols except for Graham Norton and Jack om Dawson's Creek—and I certaly didn't intify wh him bee I wasn't a football player.

IN DEFENSE OF BEG BORG AND GAY

I felt like I was pletely on my rried on until I was 16, when I started gog out to gay bars my hometown.

I ma one gay iend, who I'm actually close to now.

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MYSELF AFTER YEARS OF FALLG FOR GAY MEN

For the first time I've been able to form a good group of gay iends and create my own support work. I'd go on gay chatrooms but that was jt a facels nversatn wh someone who uld have been anyone. I thk if I'd had iends who were gay when I was growg up, my life would have been so different.

I now know there were other kids at my school who were gay, but they didn't e out till much later. About 10 years ago I saw John Waters give a lecture, and he said (and I’m paraphrasg here, bee was a long time ago), “Back when I was young the bt thg about beg gay was that you didn’t have to get married, have kids, or serve the ary. Much has changed 10 years, and gay Amerins have won rights many stat (but not all, so don’t get placent).

Now the fight is about somethg different: It’s a fight between lettg beg gay fe a person or be jt one more fact about them. Noted gay artist David Hockney recently told the Guardian that too many gay men now are “borg” bee they want to live “nservative” liv. But most of what Hockney is sayg has to do wh the worry that the gay inty is slippg away.

AM I GAY?

“We live the era domated by a born-this-way, ‘’s-a-small-part-of-me’ ethos that mimiz gay difference to sexual attractn, ” he wr. “The current dogma among mastream LGBTQ advocy anizatns and the majory of gay wrers and public figur se gayns as ltle more than a hazy accint of blogy that shouldn’t be legally or socially disadvantagg.

I’M SOOO BORED OF BEG GAY

” Lowr is ncerned, as is Hockney, that gays are beg borg and losg that sense of shared touchston and flamboyant difference that once set them apart om the culture at large and ma them here as somethg that was like an ethnicy.

Gay was as much a culture as was a sexual orientatn. Gay kids many parts of the untry are much more accepted as they e out by iends, straight and gay, and don’t need to seek refuge wh their own kd. Frank Kameny, one of the founrs of the gay civil rights movement, told the first gay-rights prottors at the Whe Hoe that they should all wear sus or drs so that those power uld see that there was no difference between the picketers and everyday people.

It’s a strategy that has worked wonrs for acceptance, makg gay people blend , and showg that there is ltle difference. Now that the gay muny is startg to ga the equaly that has been fightg for, the nsequence is that they are jt as borg as everyone else. Jt like femism the ‘70s wasn’t about forcg women out of the hoe and to the workforce, was about givg them the choice to live any kd of life they wanted, the gay civil rights movement was about lettg gays have the social and legal protectn to live any kd of life they want as well.

AM I GAY? QUIZ – 100% RELIABLE TT

Gay men n’t be Quent Crisp, and they all shouldn’t be, eher. Like Lowr and Hockney, I much prefer an excg gay. My persistence fallg love wh gay I don’t mean havg a csh on Neil Patrick Harris or dreamg about removg Anrson Cooper’s black-amed glass to share a th-lipped kiss.

" Luckily, I never learned to drive, as Matt’s current profile pic on Facebook featur him wrapped a rabow, my early 20s, I uldn’t rist the plump lips and bedroom ey of my Greek gay btie, Peter. I knew he was gay, but so was I, and I liked him, so I gus the whole gay thg was pretty flexible, right? “He’s gay, ” they’d say a you-know-that-right?