Eric Bach is an openly gay broadster for the Frericksburg Natnals. He has major league aspiratns, but his path has been much lonelier than he would prefer.
Contents:
- WHICH GAY TRIBE DO YOU BELONG TO?
- STONEWALL, AIDS AND GAY LIBERATN: ONE HISTORIAN SHAR HOW THE CULTURAL MOMENTS SHAPED UTAH’S LGBTQ MUNY
- A HANDY GUI TO ALL GAY MEN
- KEN HAS ALWAYS BEEN BARBIE’S GAY BT FRIEND—NOT HER BOYIEND
- JAGUARS ACH KEV MAXEN RECEIV OVERWHELMG SUPPORT AFTER G OUT AS GAY
- JAGUARS’ KEV MAXEN IS FIRST MALE ACH TO E OUT AS GAY US MEN’S PRO SPORTS
- A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.
WHICH GAY TRIBE DO YOU BELONG TO?
Jan Gay was ahead of her time--an openly queer woman who spearhead some of the first studi of lbians. She's largely been fotten. Until now. * trib gay *
The fdgs of my rearch led me to nclu that llege-aged gay men, particularly those studyg at a small liberal arts llege, face a variety of challeng different om those their heterosexual unterparts face and that the men have many ways of pg wh the difficulti. Fally, thgs that are nsired to be general issu faced by all gay men are addrsed at the end of the sectn, cludg: fear of hate crim, difficulti wh people’s relig beliefs (both the beliefs of gay men and those of the people they teract wh), stereotypg, and the rise of the “GBF” (or gay bt iend), as well as self-acceptance and the popular view that homosexualy is a choice.
Though there is the mon ia that g out has to be a specific s down talk, there are many other ways gay men choose to munite their sexual orientatn, which vary greatly based upon the ntext which a person out. This rmal way of g out is credibly popular wh my rmants (and, acrdg to them, other gay men who are already out wh their fay and iends), and many new iends and acquatanc get a more sual treatment than if they had known Simon or Rorich when they were first explorg their new sexual orientatn. Simon mentned when he began the procs of his “big” g out (the first time he began publicly prentg himself as a gay man, but after he had e out to his close iends and fay) and he was meetg new people, he would drop hts about his orientatn durg a game lled “20 qutns”.
In orr to intify the range of rpons that gay men face, I had Rorich and Simon participate a ee listg exercise which they listed all the possible ways someone might react upon disverg a gay man’s sexual orientatn.
STONEWALL, AIDS AND GAY LIBERATN: ONE HISTORIAN SHAR HOW THE CULTURAL MOMENTS SHAPED UTAH’S LGBTQ MUNY
The gay world is often reprented as some sort of monolhic whole that has the same culture. That is a lie. It is actually broken down to a handful of substrata to which each gay belongs. Here they are. * trib gay *
This mak a b more difficult for him to meet other gay men if there is no personal nnectn already, which n be through a iend or acquatance or meetg them bee of an LGBTQ+ group on mp. In orr to bat the issu of the limed datg pool on a small mp (and the difficulti due to beg ls obvly gay), my rmants e onle rourc, like datg webs or apps like Tr or Grdr, to meet other gay men.
Acrdg to Simon, when you meet someone through an app like Grdr (an app for meetg other gay men, or, as Rorich puts , “…a trackg service for other gay men” that allows you to msage other ers) or an onle datg se, there is more of a sexual nnotatn. I asked him if he believed there were any posiv to beg gay, and he rpond, “Hontly, I n’t thk of any, which is why I thk people who say beg gay is a choice are fuckg morons… It is not an easy road that I’m on now.
A HANDY GUI TO ALL GAY MEN
Soldiers reprentg the lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer muny virtually celebrated Pri Month Thursday * trib gay *
Neverthels, spe of the difficulti they face, both Simon and Rorich clared they will ntue to be who they are and they will never go back to the closet and will persist their efforts to overe the obstacl associated wh beg gay. Gay saw her study as a subtler type of activism—a way to document the many shas of queer inty, but also to show the world that queer people were far more like the rt of society than they had been given cred. In honor of the 100th anniversary of her birth this year, I have renstcted parts of Gay’s life through material held at the Library of Congrs and the Johns Hopks Medil Archiv, as well as om letters sent to me om a fay member of Gay’s.
KEN HAS ALWAYS BEEN BARBIE’S GAY BT FRIEND—NOT HER BOYIEND
* trib gay *
The glimps of Gay’s legacy highlight how early queer people envisned rearch as a way to advote for their muny—and how they were nohels erased om that From Harper's BAZAARFour upl of women pose for a photo, . Gay also beme an early figure the nudism movement: She served as the director of the Out-of-Door Club, a nudist lony of 50 people Highland, New York, where she enuraged rearchers to study the psychologil differenc between nudists and people who wore cloth.
At Hirschfeld’s Instute for Sexual Science, a proment rearch clic, Gay read Hirschfeld’s “books and not and rerds ncerng homosexuals, seeg somethg of the treatment acrd them, ” she wrote later. Vermont’s Benngton College admted to Gay that had disvered “two or three” relatnships between female stunts, and a doctor at Mount Holyoke said that three girls had “brought up the qutn of homosexualy” wh saw her study as a subtler type of until that pot, the Uned Stat, rearch to queer people was highly clil, and often done through a lens of ntempt.
JAGUARS ACH KEV MAXEN RECEIV OVERWHELMG SUPPORT AFTER G OUT AS GAY
In s ial outle, the Commtee for the Study of Sex Variants noted that the subjects of s study “were to be obtaed through the servic of Miss Jan Gay, ” addg—phemistilly—that Gay had “close ntact wh this field for a number of years.
JAGUARS’ KEV MAXEN IS FIRST MALE ACH TO E OUT AS GAY US MEN’S PRO SPORTS
)Two women on bend knee and drsed as men, appear to be proposg marriage to two women unison, cir Vtage Stock//Getty ImagGay troduced each queer person to the mtee g only their first name and last ial. They paid Gay to “supplement” her rearch wh stricter medil histori of each queer person, cludg by nductg X-rays, pelvic measurements, physil examatns, and hormone iends and acquatanc of Gay sat for extend terviews wh the rearchers, they told her that the techniqu felt vasive.
In a September 1935 letter, Gay wrote to a rearcher on the mtee that three of her iends “went away om their terviews feelg that they had rather been ma fools of, ” and plaed that the rearchers’ llo approach to terviewg queer women was jeopardizg the study. Gay wrote one letter, “When one of the foremost women paters Ameri giv up an afternoon and eveng to such a study as this and the whole emphasis nversatn wh her is placed upon the pattern of her sex procre—wh not even the vagut mentn of her creative and athetic and spirual terts and velopment—somethg is, seems to me, a ltle b wrong.
A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.
In May 1939, when Gay read the mancript for the mtee’s rearch fdgs—soon to be the book Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns—“My chief reactn is one of disappotment, ” she wrote a letter to the entire mtee. At least once, after a vlent outbreak, Gay was rted off to the hospal a she died 1960, Gay received a short obuary The New York Tim that scribed her only as a “publicist and thor” whose book on nudism had “created a stir the early Neteen Thirti.
For s, queer people have been attemptg to change how they were portrayed scientific and popular lerature; if Gay’s story is any ditn, they were jt stripped of the opportuny to get regnized. Specifilly, Williams, 71, has bee the chronicler of the history of Utah’s LGBTQ+ muny — much of which he has experienced as a young Brigham Young Universy stunt who was kicked out for beg gay, and later durg the AIDS epimic of the ‘80s when he cid to e the box, he rri bs and piec of the history he’s kept. And there’s a dty block, a lifetime achievement award the Utah Pri Center gave him ’s the 2015 certifite, for outstandg ntributn, given to him by the Utah State Historil Society — which, Williams said, was the “first acknowledgment of [the existence] of a gay muny om a state agency.
“I always felt that there’s gog to be a time where Utah’s gog to rewre history and say how much they loved gay people, Black people, people of lor and everythg else, ” Williams said. “Very few ci n trace the orig of their gay muny, not only the origs, but who the people volved were, ” he of those journal entri have been chronicled Q Salt Lake Magaze and on his blog “This Day Gay Utah History. In high school, he said he remembers beg love wh a boy named John who didn’t love him heartbreak, and the general shame associated wh homosexualy at the time, ma life difficult.