Gay Love, Straight Sense | Psychology Today

Contents:

• GAY LOVE, STRAIGHT SENSE
• STEFAN GEE'S CONCEPT OF LOVE AND THE GAY EMANCIPATN MOVEMENT
• GAY LOVE
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

GAY LOVE, STRAIGHT SENSE

The margalizatn that attend growg up homosexual saw ank exprsn Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Inty, his 2012 exploratn of how parents raise children who are markedly different om themselv any one of a number of ways. Gay men and lbian women typilly report siarly tortured experienc reckong wh their own sexualy, nstantly lculatg the sts of hidg or revealg one of the most fg arcs of beg, self-policg their behavr for mannerisms that might betray their clatns before they themselv are prepared to acknowledge them. It’s a ttament to urage that so many eventually do, spe the possibily of rejectn om those clost to them and a self-hatred ternalized om a wir culture that still often revil homosexualy.

STEFAN GEE'S CONCEPT OF LOVE AND THE GAY EMANCIPATN MOVEMENT

And some stem om doublg, the pound dose of a sgle genr, which sometim brgs out the bt partners (emotnal openns among lbians)—and sometim the worst (domance stggl between gay men, emotnal enmhment lbians). “Our sexual IQ is bigger, ” says psychologist Joe Kort, who teach at the Universy of Michigan and se both heterosexual and homosexual upl his clil practice. In long-term observatnal studi of both gay and straight relatnships, Gottman, who is a profsor emer at the Universy of Washgton and founr of Seattle’s Gottman Relatnship Instute, has found that same-sex upl beg more “softly” brgg up a topic of nflict.

As a rult, homosexuals have had to learn how to be iends wh people they are attracted to and how to live a world wh lots of threats whout beg overly nfed. It’s not that boundari never get crossed: Gay men, he reports, often hook up sexually first, then bee iends, matag the secury and emotnal mment of their primary relatnship. Sometim the loosened requirement for gays is a nsequence of cultural homophobia: Not all gays are at the same pot the g-out procs, and not all fai are fully acceptg of same-sex partnerships.

Rearch shows that 50 percent of gay male upl have open relatnships, says Kort, although the number may now be creasg as gays marry and tablish fai, actns that shift gay culture more to the mastream. Some gay male upl negotiate an open relatnship that has very strict l to , observ David Greenan, a psychologist and fay therapist New York who se gay and straight upl his clil practice.

GAY LOVE

In 2007, Andrew Solomon relquished all vtig of shame about beg gay and before 300 guts mted himself to his partner an elaborate ceremony at a stately English untry hoe.

The term gay is equently ed as a synonym for homosexual; female homosexualy is often referred to as different tim and different cultur, homosexual behavur has been varly approved of, tolerated, punished, and banned. Homosexualy was not unmon ancient Greece and Rome, and the relatnships between adult and adolcent mal particular have bee a chief foc of Wtern classicists recent years.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Others—om factns wh mastream Prottantism to anizatns of Reform rabbis—have advoted, on theologil as well as social grounds, the full acceptance of homosexuals and their relatnships.

Morn velopments Attus toward homosexualy are generally flux, partially as a rult of creased polil activism (see gay rights movement) and efforts by homosexuals to be seen not as aberrant personali but as differg om “normal” dividuals only their sexual orientatn. The nflictg views of homosexualy—as a variant but normal human sexual behavur on one hand, and as psychologilly viant behavur on the other—rema prent most societi the 21st century, but they have been largely rolved ( the profsnal sense) most veloped untri. The Amerin Psychiatric Associatn, for example, classified “ego-syntonic homosexualy” (the ndn of a person ntent wh his or her homosexualy) as a mental illns 1973.