The grim tth of beg gay prison | Sadhbh Walshe | The Guardian

Contents:

• THE REAL LIV OF GAY MEN
• JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS ASSISTANT KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH MAJOR U.S. PRO LEAGUE TO E OUT AS GAY
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?
• IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND
• THE HIDN GAY LIV FALLY BEG UNVERED
• KEV MAXEN JT BEME THE FIRST MALE ACH MEN'S PRO SPORTS TO E OUT AS GAY. HE SAID HE DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO 'LIE' OR 'FEEL FEAR' ABOUT HIS PERSONAL LIFE ANYMORE.
• THE GRIM TTH OF BEG GAY PRISON
• GROWG OLD AS A GAY MAN: HOW LIFE HAS CHANGED FOR THE GAY LIBERATN GENERATN
• THE LBIAN WRER AND HER FLAMBOYANT GAY HBAND

THE REAL LIV OF GAY MEN

In other words, where Bud Light has buckled unr prsure as bigotry grows agast the LGBTQ+ muny, Gay Water’s creator Spencer Hodson wants his new boozy brand to be the anthis of that. “The key issue that Bud Light tapped to was the fact that they didn’t unrstand their re dience and know enough about them,” Hodson, a gay man, told CNN about the ntroversy that began when the Anhser-Bch beer brand sent fluencer Dylan Mulvaney a n of beer.

The nned cktail is named after a lloquialism given to the popular mixed drk (vodka and soda) orred at bars by the gay muny.

“Puttg a product wh the word gay the tle is reprentatn self,” which he hop reclaims the word om the negativy ’s sometim associated wh. He thought of creatg Gay Water about a year ago while on a vatn wh his iend that had got a job wh the beverage dtry. The two chatted about the limed amount of gay people wh , and wh Hodson burnt out om his tradnal day job tech, started the nned cktail.

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

Hodson built up a strong social media followg on TikTok and Instagram durg Covid-19 and is g some of the money om that (as well as om iends and fay) to help fund Gay Water. “Gay is an umbrella term and the ia behd the brand is to be as clive as possible, which means we want alli, we want straight people to be part of this muny we’re buildg.”.

For now, Gay Water is sold largely onle (wh a few retailers) and four sugar-ee flavors — watermelon, lime, peach and grapeu — at lnch.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

Gay Water might not have the ep pockets pared to s petors, like Whe Claw, but “even at small sle, pani of many siz are havg succs makg spir-based seltzers and premixed cktails,” Bryan Roth, an analyst for Feel Goods Company and edor of the alhol beverage newsletter, Sightl+, told CNN. “There’s lots of space the spir-based seltzer tegory which Gay Water n play, pecially if the brand n offer a cultural or emotnal nnectn that will feel more excg than the prospect of another peapple-flavored vodka seltzer om natnal or ternatnal rporatns,” Roth said. Of urse, other drks e the word “gay,” too, cludg Gay Beer and So Gay Rosé, Hodson noted, which are also tryg to reach the queer muny and offer them an alternative the straight-domated space.

If others peek behd the curta of the whe-picket-fence-homosexualy they have built up for public nsumptn, support for the movement would wher and probably die. But look we mt, particularly sce we are beg asked to nsir that homosexualy is on par wh heterosexualy, that same-sex marriage and oppose-sex marriage n be the same, that gay sex n fact be spoal. The arguments ma by our bt fenrs of man-woman marriage foc almost exclively on the fn of marriage and the rights of children to have both a mother and a father, and they explicly say their arguments have nothg to do wh the unrlyg qutn of homosexualy.

IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND

Recently I was readg an excellent mancript of an upg book by long-time Crisis Magaze ntributor Robert Reilly on how the gay movement has moved through our stutns and our culture. Lee lived as an out and active gay man for gog on three s and what he scrib is not only sane but also eply heartbreakg.

Lee wr about a gay bookstore At, Texas lled Lobo’s where if you look the ont wdow you see bookshelv full of books, gay books certaly but books.

THE HIDN GAY LIV FALLY BEG UNVERED

He said such an arrangement was perfect for the big lie that active homosexualy was normal and non-threateng to any straight person lookg the ont wdow. Lee wanted love, gay love to be sure, but love that fell le wh Christian sexual ethics, that is to say a lifelong emotnal and sexual bond. He read the fluential 1976 book The Church and the Homosexual wrten by a Catholic prit that explaed how the Church wrongly terpreted all those referenc the Bible nmng homosexualy.

” Father McNeill later wrote an tobgraphy which he explaed he lived a wily promiscuo gay life far removed om any notn of Christian sexual ethics, gay or otherwise. “Dozens of well-meang people assured me that there was a whole, different world of homosexual men out there, a world that for some reason I uld never fd, a world of God-fearg, straight-actg, monogamy-believg, and fily-practicg homosexuals.

He joed a Yahoo group loosely affiliated wh Digny, the “Catholic” anizatn that affirms gays their active homosexual way of life. ” He received “dozens of rpons, some of them que hostile and meang, and all but one—me—tellg him to go out and get laid bee that was what beg gay was all about.

KEV MAXEN JT BEME THE FIRST MALE ACH MEN'S PRO SPORTS TO E OUT AS GAY. HE SAID HE DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO 'LIE' OR 'FEEL FEAR' ABOUT HIS PERSONAL LIFE ANYMORE.

A gay man once told me he was a long-time relatnship but they never had sex anymore, jt masturbated ont of porn wh lots of actn outsi the relatnship.

In his excellent mancript, The Gayg of Ameri: How Ratnalizg Homosexual Behavr Is Changg Everythg to be published next March by Ignati Prs, Robert Reilly lays out the horrific numbers.

Jefey Santover Homosexualy and the Polics of Tth that “The typil homosexual (needls to say there are exceptns) is a man who has equent episos of anal terurse wh other men, often wh many different men.

THE GRIM TTH OF BEG GAY PRISON

“The most rigoro sgle study—the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study [1987]—reced nearly 5, 000 homosexual men and found that: ‘a signifint majory of the men … (69 to 82%) reported havg 50 or more lifetime sexual partners, and over 80% had engaged receptive anal terurse wh at least some of their partners the prev two years. Santover c a study by two homosexual rearchers that found that out of “156 upl studied, only seven had mataed sexual fily; of the hundred upl that had been together for more than five years, none had been able to mata sexual fily. Some have said gays act out promiscuoly bee they have ternalized homophobia, that they were “forced to look for love dimly l bars, bathho, and public parks for fear of harassment at the hands of the homophobic mastream.

Durg that time, homosexuals have rved out for themselv public spac every major Amerin cy, and many of the mor on as well. You see, there a pot when gay men like me realize our youthful charm won’t last forever, and, at some pot, we’ll have to build up mcle. 0: Birth[iame allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ ameborr="0" height="201" width="480"]I've said once and I'll say aga: You don’t choose to be gay.

One of gay men’s favore past-tim is tellg each other how our parents got on the bad si of the lol sorcers or warlock. Durg the first eight years, ltle gaylets will suck as many nutrients as he n manage om the roots of shbs and maple tre.

GROWG OLD AS A GAY MAN: HOW LIFE HAS CHANGED FOR THE GAY LIBERATN GENERATN

8-13: Gtatn[iame allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ ameborr="0" height="270" width="480"]Around his eighth birthday, or whenever he disvers the disgraphy of Nicki Maj, the gay will beg to secrete a vis substance om his mouth. Or Boy Sut summer mp, the gays of this shoal will clter together to give the illn that they are not actually hundreds of dividual gays, but rather, a sgle giant gay. But life isn’t all smoked salmon and Maria Callas for the gays: In certa parts of Alaska, native gay bears have been hunted almost to extctn.

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.

THE LBIAN WRER AND HER FLAMBOYANT GAY HBAND

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. 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.