I'm 43 – but I'm ma to feel like a dosr by younger gay men | Metro News

Contents:

• HOW TO LOOK GREAT AS A GAY MAN
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?
• THE GAY BOWEL SYNDROME: A MON PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUAL PATIENTS THE EMERGENCY PARTMENT
• I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN
• WHAT DO LOOK LIKE TO BE GAY – AND A PRACTICG CATHOLIC?
• WHAT DO GAY MEN WANT?
• BRAS OF GAY PEOPLE REMBLE THOSE OF STRAIGHT PEOPLE OF OPPOSE SEX
• WHY ARE SO MANY GAYS AND LBIANS ATTRACTED TO SAME-SEX PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE THE OPPOSE SEX?
• THIS IS WHAT GAY MEN AMERI REALLY LOOK LIKE
• IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?

HOW TO LOOK GREAT AS A GAY MAN

It prumably means the advertiser nsirs himself a “real” man—real, that is, acrdg to a standard of masculy he don’t attribute to other gay men. So many gay men learn we are different om other boys by havg the fact poted out and ridiculed by bulli durg our young, most imprsnable, years. As every gay man knows who has been sulted or asslted for his actual or perceived sexual orientatn, there are steep penalti for vlatg the Boy Co as there are for anyone who is “different” om the prumed (typilly whe, heterosexual, middle-class) standard.

How do a gay kid survive the trma he suffers for beg different a culture that still nmns his difference as somethg bad or “ls-than” and wants to mold him to the same shape tri to mold every boy? Robert Pollack says the most important thg a fay n do to support their gay son is to keep lovg him, “to nvey to him, as soon as he shar his feelgs, that he is still loved through and through, that his sexual orientatn will not any way dimish how much he is admired and rpected. He needs to know that ’s okay not only to be gay if that's what he is, but to be a man who choos what beg a man means for himself.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

Fortunately there is a long history of gay men who bucked the accepted fns of masculy and created liv that exprsed their unrstandg of themselv and how they choose to exprs their inty as men who don’t necsarily f tradnal molds. The late Harry Hay often lled "the father of the morn gay movement, " found the Mattache Society Los Angel the fall of 1950 for gay men to gather and ponr the qutns Hay had long been askg: Who are gay people?

Hay didn’t tend the Mattach to be a polil anizatn per se, but a group that would e together to enhance their self-unrstandg and explore the ntributns gay people had ma to the human race through the ag. In a 1987 say tled “A Separate People Whose Time Has Come, ” Hay scribed homosexuals as “spir people, ” who, throughout the ag, had served society their rol as “msengers and tercers, shamans of both genrs, prits and prits, imagemakers and prophets, mim and rhapsos, poets and playwrights, healers and nurturers, teachers and preachers, tkers and tkerers, searchers and rearchers. Hay believed that gay people had somethg special to teach nongay people about human life, and for that reason should be nurtured, rather than reviled, by society.

THE GAY BOWEL SYNDROME: A MON PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUAL PATIENTS THE EMERGENCY PARTMENT

Hay believed that gay men are different om heterosexuals and that those differenc go much eper than mere sexual attractn to other men. He said gay men look at the world differently, are uniquely nonaggrsive, nonpetive, oriented toward sharg and cled to velop what Hay lled “subject-subject” love relatnships of equals. In a 1990 terview for the Washgton Bla, Harry Hay told me our llg as gay men “is not only to accept our uniquens, but to affirm , make joyo.

Most lleg have cracked down on hazg, and while I'm sure there are plenty of aterni that still "torture" pledg wh homoerotic ruals and acts (that ironilly reaffirms their masculy, straightns, and whens), I don't thk all ats are a gay breedg ground the way they're portrayed porn.

I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN

Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a men's rtroom at the Mneapolis airport for allegedly lookg to engage gay sex wrote his June report that he "regnized a signal ed by persons wishg to engage lewd nduct. Craig told reporters today that he did nothg appropriate and said his guilty plea was a plac like men's rtrooms, airports and tra statns, tck stops, universy librari and parks, have long been plac where gay and bisexual men, particularly those the closet, ngregate orr to meet for anonymo time, people faiar wh cisg told, gay men began g a dified system of signals to dite to others that they were terted sex.

WHAT DO LOOK LIKE TO BE GAY – AND A PRACTICG CATHOLIC?

In an effort to curb lewd acts public — or as some gays argue, an effort to persecute gay men — unrver police began stg operatns plac known for sex solicg and employed the same s. Bee much of the signalg is self benign behavr, some gay rights activists and lawyers have admonished police partments for arrtg men who have done ltle more than tap their feet. If a se like this went to trial, police officers would have to produce evince to say here is how we n say wh certaty this is was really a lewd act, " he plead guilty to the charg and therefore opted agast a, Craig nied beg gay and said he ma a mistake by pleadg officers, for the most part, only vtigate an area after members of the public have plaed about beg ed for sex, said Rich Gregson, executive director of the California Peace Officers Associatn.

"Wh many other optns available for gay men to meet each other, Gershen Kfman, a profsor emer of psychology at Michigan State Universy and thor of the book "Comg Out of Shame, " said public cisg is practiced maly by eply closeted men. ) And Kate McKnon, playg a so-lled Weird Barbie who experienced an extreme haircut and makeover at the hands of an experimental child, never actually answers the qutn anybody would have upon seeg her gay-ass haircut and knowg the actor’s sexualy. Each of the enti implited the gay bowel syndrome is nsired separately and epimlogic nsiratns rponsible for the appearance of such a syndrome are examed.

Google the words "gay Catholic" and one of the top s to appear will be Prever's own blog, a blog wh the tagle: "Catholic, Gay, and Feelg Fe. The blog is about what 's like to be a gay Catholic – a gay Catholic who is of urse, celibate – and I say 'of urse' bee that seems to me like the only optn if you're gog to be both gay and Catholic. My iends and I joke that there's a gay Catholic renaissance on, or actually a gay Christian renaissance on, and we're proud to be at the foreont of – or at least we tell ourselv that we're at the foreont.

WHAT DO GAY MEN WANT?

It was hard the sense that I'd actually always said that people shouldn't be public about beg gay, bee was not anybody's bs and I felt that would lend legimacy to this ia that beg gay is a sort of a sgle way to intify yourself: I actually still sort of hold that posn – kd of. It's hard to scribe: I don't thk that beg gay is as sential of a way to intify yourself as say, beg male is, or beg Catholic, or beg human. ' I ed to joke that the only reason I ed the word 'gay' was so that I would tend to show up more on Google, which is only partially a joke, bee you know if you're gog to e the tools of technology to evangelize, then you have to be savvy about what Google is gog to fd and what isn't.

But I gus the shift maly happened as I began to approach beg more public about , bee as I beme more public I also me to ntact more openly wh people who intified as gay or who stggled wh same-sex attractn, or whatever. And fact, I rarely feel strongly about whether I should e the word gay or not, but the one time I do feel strongly about is when somebody starts upbraidg me for .

It's the sort of thg where people feel, and I thk rightly, that they have been nstraed to keep silent for most of their liv – and a lot of people have, whether 's nstraed by actual explic homophobia among the people that they love and/or are related to, or whether 's jt sort of a general culture unrstandg that you don't talk about this sort of thg. ' This is tratg and across as very patronizg bee the are people who don't have any sight to the experience of what is to be gay tellg you what is or is not ok to talk about, and what is and is not ok to ll yourself. This is reason that I haven't yet e to a solid opn on this qutn – bee the problem is that secular people and Christian people mean two different thgs by the word 'gay.

BRAS OF GAY PEOPLE REMBLE THOSE OF STRAIGHT PEOPLE OF OPPOSE SEX

Now I thk that one reason Christians tend to dislike the word 'gay' is bee if somebody says that they are gay, then they are ually implyg that is an unchangeable aspect of their personaly. I'll start first by sayg that I'm extremely grateful for the anizatn People Can Change, which is an anizatn found precisely on the ia that radil change wh rpect to homosexualy is possible.

WHY ARE SO MANY GAYS AND LBIANS ATTRACTED TO SAME-SEX PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE THE OPPOSE SEX?

I'm grateful for them not bee they 'ma me straight' or somethg, but bee they gave me a space which to work out some of my issu, many of which turned out not to be related precisely to homosexualy particular, but were jt sort of emotnal issu that need alg wh. But on the other hand, this is dangero bee you have a lot of Christian people already assumg om the get-go that if somebody is homosexual, then they mt have var and many emotnal issu that need workg on, and that's not necsarily the se.

THIS IS WHAT GAY MEN AMERI REALLY LOOK LIKE

If the unrstandg the Christian world is that homosexualy is a "disorr, " and homosexual activy is a s, then logilly would seem like as Christians, we would want to help our fellow Christians who are "dis-orred" to be "orred.

The Church has to be clear wh rpect to 'what is the nature of homosexualy self, ' but n't make a pronouncement on whether is a mental disorr, for example. Many people assume that when the Church says 'homosexualy nsists of a disorred clatn, ' they take that word 'disorr' and assume that She means 'mental disorr. I'll tell you how I see myself and what I do, which is not only wh rpect to homosexualy but wh how I try to live the Catholic fah general.

Recent efforts to analyze gay men's motiv for sexual risk-takg the ntext of the HIV/AIDS epimic have led to a revival of medil thkg about homosexualy and breathed new life to punive clichés about gay men's alleged low self-teem, lack of self-ntrol, and var psychologil "fics. Agast the sid forms of sexual disciple, Halper champns neglected tradns of queer thought, both lerary and popular, that afford fascatg possibili for addrsg the vexed qutn of what gay men want.

IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?

In a seri of provotive and often movg readgs of thors as obscure as Marcel Jouhan and as well known as Jean Ge, he shows how the long history of gay men's of "abjectn" n yield alternative, non-moralistic mols for thkg about gay male subjectivy. Anyone searchg for creative and non-judgmental ways to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS among gay men—or terted new mos of thkg about gay male subjectivy---should read this book. ScienceNot Exactly Rocket ScienceThe differenc between heterosexual and homosexual people are as much the subject of fascatg science as they are a source of social bate.