I thk I might be gay or bi or trans or queer. What do I do? – Queer Grace

Contents:

• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
• AM I GAY?
• COMG OUT GAY STEP-BY-STEP
• I THK I MIGHT BE GAY OR BI OR TRANS OR QUEER. WHAT DO I DO?
• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOUR SPOE COM OUT AS GAY
• GAY AND CAN'T FD A PARTNER?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• I LIKE GUYS BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE GAY. HOW DO I STOP BEG GAY?
• QT MARSHALL SAYS HE PCHED ANTHONY BOWENS’ ‘I’M GAY’ SEGMENT
• THE SOLUTN TO "GAY" INSULTS: FREEDOM OF SPEECH
• LETTERS TO THE EDOR: I’M GAY AND DON’T WANT TO PATRONIZE BIGOTS. THANKS, SUPREME COURT
• JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS ASSISTANT KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH MAJOR U.S. PRO LEAGUE TO E OUT AS GAY

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. 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.

AM I 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. For the first time I've been able to form a good group of gay iends and create my own support work. I now know there were other kids at my school who were gay, but they didn't e out till much later.

Gay - While this adjective has historilly scribed men who are attracted to other men, the term now is ed to refer to anyone who experienc romantic, emotnal, or physil attractn to people of the same genr. Sce genr inty and sexual orientatn are separate, transgenr people n intify as straight, gay, lbian, bisexual, etc.

There are many gay men who say "I'm not part of the scene" -- men who hate gay bars and, prumably, crowds of queer people general. Internalized homophobia -- self-shamg, self-hatred -- leads many gay men, and many queer people general, to recreate their closets long after they're "out" by shunng others, particularly those they nsir "flamboyant. But you mt spend time wh others, whether that means havg a group of gay movie iends or queer gamers or playg on a gay sports team.

COMG OUT GAY STEP-BY-STEP

This parable piece by lbian wrer Sarah Prager go through the lp of great gays who changed the world -- om ventor Alan Turg to Tchaikovsky, the poser, to the Renaissance pater and ventor Leonardo da Vci.

I THK I MIGHT BE GAY OR BI OR TRANS OR QUEER. WHAT DO I DO?

Read the numbers: In four years, more than 5, 596 people the Uned Stat had died of AIDS, many of them gay men and transgenr women.

Fd a gay elr who's been where you are and r for your well-beg, someone who unrstands you and never pass judgment, someone who lets you make the mistak you need to make. Tmp has repeatedly attacked transgenr servicemembers, and gay men are still beg hunted and murred Chechnya. There would be no ternalized self-hatred if no one had ever told you that beg gay is wrong, or that gay sex is disgtg, or that gay men n't feel real love, or that beg transgenr is fake, or that beg nonbary is a mental illns or a ll for attentn.

If you thk a word like "gay" or "queer" works for you right now (aga, don't have to work for you forever -- labels do not e wh lifetime ntracts) and you're not ready to tell everyone, simply say out loud to yourself. Comg out gay refers to the procs of acceptg one's own sexualy and embracg , followed by disclosg to fay, iends and -workers. Due to different amounts of social and fay prsur that surround each dividual, g out gay is different each stance.

HOW TO COPE WHEN YOUR SPOE COM OUT AS GAY

The dividual do not have to pletely alter their personaly, they are still who they are, but when you e out gay, do provi an opportuny to:. Oftentim when a person out gay, they feel isolated and different regardls of where they live and who they surround themselv wh. The clu gay muny centers and gay onle muni, where one n fd others alg wh siar issu who n offer some support.

Any person who has e out gay has alt wh a certa amount of strs alg wh the reactn of his or her loved on. If a person's fay do not take kdly to the news, they should try to te their fay regardg their liftyle and maybe seek out a support program at a lol gay muny center.

GAY AND CAN'T FD A PARTNER?

The one mon theme that seems to be prent amongst all dividuals who e out gay is the liberatn of no longer havg to lie or hi the tth.

A gay person is someone who is attracted to people of their same genr, and the term is often ed to scribe men who are attracted to other men. Choose a iend or fay member you know you n tst, who don't have any homophobic tennci and will have your bt tert md. ” Believe Out Loud has a great map for fdg a church near you, and Gay Church also has a search functn.

Unls your spoe shar their sexual orientatn wh you, there is no way to know for sure if they are gay. Among the upl, when the gay, lbian, or bisexual partner out, a third of the upl break up immediately; another third stay together for one to two years and then spl; the remag third try to make their marriag work. There's no qutn that learng your partner is gay when you believed them to be straight n be extremely difficult.

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

People do not choose who they are attracted to, so make sure to not direct homophobic backlash towards your partner.

I LIKE GUYS BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE GAY. HOW DO I STOP BEG GAY?

OK, so, you’re gay, and you want to fd a partner and eventually a hband; someone wh whom to share your life. As an openly gay man wh over 30 years of experience as a therapist, I have seen sr of sgle gay men sabotage their efforts to fd a partner, placg obstacl their own path—whout havg the slightt ia as to what they are dog and why. Fortunately, I have also learned how to intify and name the self-featg and often hidn hurdl—and have disvered that they are beliefs that too many gay men repeat to themselv, often whout even knowg .

In my experience, this ternalized belief is the poison that prevents some gay men om buildg a healthy relatnship, and also why many ms up the on they already have. Some of have been bullied as children; physilly, verbally, and emotnally abed at tenr ag by our peers and fay members for beg gay before we even regnized and unrstood our same-sex attractns.

Sadly, the wounds are difficult to heal, and as a rult, n leave gay men wh the sense that we are unlovable and th unworthy of love, affectn, and happs. For sure, so much of the gay male world is way too foced on looks, youth, the gym, partyg, and fast hookups; so searchg for Mr. Nonmonogamy was a polil statement, and gay rights advot saw marriage as nstrictive, patriarchal, heterocentric, flawed (perhaps due to the 50% failure rate) and therefore not worthy of pursu, pecially light of how gay men of the era were still gettg ejected om their jobs, hom, fai and blackmailed and arrted for who they were.

QT MARSHALL SAYS HE PCHED ANTHONY BOWENS’ ‘I’M GAY’ SEGMENT

Contrary to heterosexual fears, legal gay marriage has given the stutn an enormo boost importance.

Where ’s legal, same-sex upl are gettg married drov, and some gay weddgs are so theatril and over the top that they n actually be timidatg. Many sgle gay men are happy, valug their tonomy and personal eedom (like the mcled bad boy scribed above).

I have worked wh many gay widowers—guys wh good relatnship track rerds, who are anxly seekg a new mate, but are sabotagg themselv the ways scribed above.

THE SOLUTN TO "GAY" INSULTS: FREEDOM OF SPEECH

I have had several grievg gay men tell me: “If I move on, will be like I am fettg him, ” which is jt not te.

Remember, as a gay man, you have survived lots of direct and direct msag that there was somethg wrong wh you, which has left srs. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.

LETTERS TO THE EDOR: I’M GAY AND DON’T WANT TO PATRONIZE BIGOTS. THANKS, SUPREME COURT

I me out at a nservative Christian llege the US and was a gay relatnship for around two years wh a basketball player who end up marryg a woman. Well, you mt have been gay the whole time, some might thk, and bee of some relig shame, you cid to lie to yourself and experiment wh a girl. But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup.

Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. ” Vios started circulatg on the ter featurg gay people askg straight people “when they chose to be straight. ” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy.

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS ASSISTANT KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH MAJOR U.S. PRO LEAGUE TO E OUT AS GAY

”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns. “Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy.

” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame. In a 2012 terview wh New York Tim Magaze, the actrs sually mentned that homosexualy was, for her, a choice.

“I unrstand that for many people ’s not, but for me ’s a choice, and you don’t get to fe my gayns for me. Callg me “idtic” and “patently absurd”, Aravosis wrote, “The gay haters at the relig right uldn’t have wrten any better.