Keeping the closet door locked .

[woodlawn]

>You've made it clear that you think that gay people need to

>fit in and not rock the boat and not throw stuff into the

>faces of people who you see as being disgusted by us. By

>inference, you seem to believe that we're best off when we

>look and act just like straight people in all places except

>perhaps in the bedroom.

 

 

You may have gotten that impression from one paragraph of one of my posts. You obviously ignored the many other paragraphs in the rest of my posts in this thread. In other posts I (and several others) have said that many of us "look and act just like straight people in all places except the bedroom" because that's who we really are. We don't march through the streets in tank tops and hot pants not because we're afraid to but because we don't want to: that is not who we are, and we don't want to suffer your version of the "acting white" accusation on that account. What part of that do you not understand?

 

>If someone was beating you up, would you stand up and fight?

 

Given the way I reacted to the namecalling in your first post in this thread, the answer should be obvious to you.

 

>Or would you cower and let them keep hitting you? It's the

>same thing with rights; the only way for us to get and keep

>our civil rights is to stand up openly and demand them.

 

Yeah? So why has that strategy proved to be such a failure? One of the people on your side of the argument in this thread tells us that he's giving up his job and his home to move to another community that is more "gay friendly." Is segregation your answer to this problem? To me that seems just as self-defeating as marching.

 

>And as we come out and our friends and family see us as gay

>people, they will realize that, in many important ways, we are

>just like them. Not because we're hiding or pretending to be

>something we're not or hiding our affection for each other

>from them. But because we really are just like them in most

>parts of our lives.

 

Well, are we or aren't we? On the one hand you say it's wrong to be critical of gays who give the impression that being gay means one is different in many more ways than just in the bedroom. On the other hand you say that our goal is to make straights realize how similar we are to them. Both of those things can't be true. Which is it?

[BigD]

>The only thing that makes me sad about this entire discussion

>is that so many people see nothing beyond their myopic worlds.

> It's like, they owe nothing to anyone. It's hedonism at its

>ugliest. It's not how I want to spend my life.

 

Glad you have made this decision. It will enable you to celebrate

life more fully. Embracing your sexuality is a sure sign you love

yourself and frees you to love others. Further, it will encourage

others to come out and live life honestly.

I told my family about thirty years ago. Initially, there were

problems, but over the years their attitudes have evolved, at first

tolerating, then accepting, now taking pride in my being open about

who I am. I have had simular experiences with friends, as well as

with those with whom I have worked. There have been exceptions,

but their approval is not worth my having to live in shame.

Peace.

[+ Lucky]

The Supreme COurt ruled today that a black death row convict was unfairly denied his right to challenge bias in his jury selection. The only dissenter was of course Clarence Thomas.

I wonder what postion Clarence would have on the issues in this thread. Or is woodlawn already stating them?

[woodlawn]

>The Supreme COurt ruled today that a black death row convict

>was unfairly denied his right to challenge bias in his jury

>selection. The only dissenter was of course Clarence Thomas.

>I wonder what postion Clarence would have on the issues in

>this thread. Or is woodlawn already stating them?

 

I realize you're not very bright, but you usually avoid showing it by limiting your posts to issues like how much you dislike other posters and how much you miss seeing boys in hot pants on Santa Monica Boulevard. That is much the best strategy for you and you should keep to it.

 

I doubt that Thomas has spent five minutes in his entire life thinking about whether gay men should or should not come out. Given his own history, however, I doubt he has much sympathy for the argument that blacks who try to adapt to achieve success in a white-ruled society are "acting white."

[+ Lucky]

>I realize you're not very bright

 

Damn, I've been outed!

[Spida]

Okay first off is everyone on this site a lawyer?

 

First off Everett I wish you the best both you and Flower. However, one thing you got wrong was when you said I don't want to build a life for myself. I do very much want to build a life for myself, where that might be is a different story. I am in the computer field and have a very good job and good opportunities where I am. I would not have those opportunities if I moved. However, I have thought about that many times!

 

I really do appreciate all the input on this site and this thread. It has made me think yet again if this is the life I want to build for myself. I do not have any gay friends so it isn't like I could turn to them. I have no idea how to start over again.. Or I may just be chicken and I am making excuses to myself. I have another question though I am going to start another thread.. What are the "Gay Friendly" Cities out there, of course San Fran, West Hollywood but where else could someone be out without a problem.. (of course this is probably a diversion from my thinking of this problem)...

[Flower]

>Okay first off is everyone on this site a lawyer?

 

 

:) :) :) :)

 

*****

>I am in the computer field and have a very good job and good

>opportunities where I am. I would not have those

>opportunities if I moved. However, I have thought about that

>many times!

 

I saw your other thread, and I responded -- San Diego, California. It is also developing quite a computer related job industry and very gay friendly and has a couple of Universities close by.

 

Starting over is hard to do (um, so the song goes but so was being in the closet where I was last year this time -- I've been fortunate in being introduced to several gay friends by the two escorts I've mentioned before in my posts and being included in their group of very nice friends and just having gay friends has made all the difference. But going to a few gay clubs is easy and a way to start meeting some nice people on a casual basis.

[Boston Guy]

>>And as we come out and our friends and family see us as gay

>>people, they will realize that, in many important ways, we

>are just like them. Not because we're hiding or pretending to

>be something we're not or hiding our affection for each other

>>from them. But because we really are just like them in most

>>parts of our lives.

>

>Well, are we or aren't we? On the one hand you say it's wrong

>to be critical of gays who give the impression that being gay

>means one is different in many more ways than just in the

>bedroom. On the other hand you say that our goal is to make

>straights realize how similar we are to them. Both of those

>things can't be true. Which is it?

>

 

You know, we've had any number of dialogs here over the last few years. We see the world differently and often disagree on issues and problems and solutions. You tend to be conservative and I tend not to be, although there have been times when it seemed we did agree.

 

You criticise others easily and hastily and fall prey to some of the very things you criticise others here for, including the lecturing that you -- perhaps rightly -- accuse me of. I think there are at least some here who think you are not a nice person.

 

I don't include myself in that group. I don't think of you in terms of nice or not nice. Instead, I think you are a very intelligent man who knows what he believes and who is consistent in his world view. I usually don't agree with you but I respect that your opinions are founded on thought and not emotion. It's one of the reasons why I take the time to engage in these discussions now and then.

 

So it's surprising to me as I think this issue through you don't "get it" -- viewed from my point of view. You are smart and I've said that any number of times before. But I think you're missing something really fundamental here. (I find myself having used the word "fundamental" a number of times in this thread but it seems like some of the issues we're discussing are about fundamental rights.)

 

This is not really about what I want or how I want to live my life and isn't about what you want either or anyone else here. Instead, it's about freedom and rights. I guess questions of civil rights pretty much always are about "big" things.

 

I see this whole discussion boiling down to freedom: freedom to live our lives as we want to, however we want to. If the drag queens want to ride on floats and dress up on the weekend and walk down the street, more power to them. If the guy in the suburbs wants to live in a white house with a picket fence and wash his car on Saturday morning, more power to him, too. We should all be able to make the choices we want without worrying that someone who doesn't like us (or is disgusted by us) will come along and take away our civil rights. And most certainly we shouldn't have to pretend to be other than who we are just so our neighbors will like us and not beat us up or fire us from our job or kick us out of the neighborhood. There are fundamental rights that should attach to being an American (or, really, a citizen of any country) and the right to live one's life in peace should be one of those things.

 

You suggest that the best way to do that is to not shove gay things into the faces of the people who are disgusted by us. Well that implies permission, that we need their permission in order to live our lives happily and peacefully and successfully. Seen from that point of view, the drag queens on the float and the boys grinding away for the television cameras do us a great disservice.

 

But I don't see it that way. The rights of gay men and women don't stop at suburbia and the picket fence. Civil rights protect the minority precisely from the tyranny of the majority and that's why they're so damned important. Political whims come and go and crowds can be whipped up into frenzies of emotions. Civil rights are the barriers that keep our society stable and strong.

 

I don't think you disagree with much of that, if any. But I see your prescription for living a gay life -- or perhaps, living a life by man who happens to be gay -- to be acquiescence to the idea that straights are superior or morally better or that straight sex is good and gay sex is disgusting or any of those ideas. Sort of "they're better than us so if we play quietly, maybe they'll be nice to us."

 

Well, the history of civil rights in America has always been that advances in rights occur when people demand their rights, not when they sit quietly back and let the majority rule as they wish.

 

It's ironic that I'm writing this because I'm one of those guys who you'd probably describe as living a "straight" life. Much of my life is not very different at all from that of my straight friends or family. But I live this life because I choose to, not because I feel I have to.

 

On a slightly different point, you have expressed that you think that gay rights have only seen "marginal" improvement in the last 35 years. I think we've come a long way, even though I think there's a long way to go. I'm curious what others think and I'm going to start a new thread to ask that question. I'm hoping we'll get responses from people who are old and young and who are coming to this question from lots of different backgrounds. There's no real right or wrong answer but your belief that we haven't come very far has made stop and think about some things I haven't thought about in a while.

 

BG

[Flower]

>Yeah? So why has that strategy proved to be such a failure?

>One of the people on your side of the argument in this thread

>tells us that he's giving up his job and his home to move to

>another community that is more "gay friendly." Is segregation

>your answer to this problem? To me that seems just as

>self-defeating as marching.

 

Um, who could you be referring to?

 

I have chosen to move to a metropolitan area of 1.3 million people rather than the very much smaller area I live with very few gays and no gay clubs, gay heatlh services, gay entertainment, and on and on.

 

I have found, after spending a lot of time with gay friends, that for the first time in my life, I feel like I fit in. We can comment on some cute boi, talk about a gay movie, talk about BF problems, about gay related issues on the political front, and be serious or superficial as the mood strikes. We can discuss gay sexual matters and most important, we seem to understand each other and I feel accepted.

 

I no longer enjoy many of my str8 friends--sorry but true. Maybe I'll feel that way about my gay friends after a while, but I doubt it. When I go to visit my gay friends, I feel like I've come home, for the FIRST time ever.

 

I used to have several horses, but one by one they were sold or died off 'cept my long time favorite and personal horse which I've had for over 20 years. I decided to give him to the girl down the road who had horses and was totally absorbed with them. I hated to see him go, but he was lonely in my pasture without another horse. The dog, the cat and the goats didn't do it for him, and he was obviously depressed and bored. He's now with his own kind--I see him as I drive by to and from the city I work in--sometimes stop and feed him carrots--but he now acts alive and even YOUNG again -- even as old as he is--is no longer depressed--he runs and plays horse games and snorts and holds his head tall and his tail up as only an Arabian can.

 

Maybe moving to a "gay friendly" area is a cop-out and I should "stay and fight" and maybe I'm taking the easy way out, but I don't find it easy. I know there has to be a lot of gay people where I live, and a few of them are out--but not many. Right now I'm not about changing the world, but about finding happiness in who I am.

 

Like my horse, I too want to be with my own kind.

[VaHawk]

BRAVO!!!! BRAVO!!!! BRAVO!!!! So very intelligently and well stated! Gays have to keep demanding their rights to ensure those rights already gained are not reneged and to ensure that full, unmitigated, unquestioned rights ensue in the future. I agree, that gays have made tremendous strides in all areas in the last 30+ years, but can not rest on the so called laurels and have to constantly fight for full and equal rights!!!

 

One needs to look no further than current gay rights, domestic partnership benefits, etc. legislation to back up this point. Compare this to as short a time ago as 25 years, when Anita Bryant led a successful campaign in Dade County Florida to overturn a gay rights amendment. Or on a non-political basis, how many non-stereotyped gay portryals did one see in the movies, much less on mainstream tv?

 

But, just like the civil rights movement, there are still many long hours and days, weeks, months and years of effort needed! IMO, until the day comes when every gay is free to express affection in public, gay life is portrayed accurately in all it's diversity in the arts and media, national legislation is in effect to guarantee the basic Constitutional rights of gay citizens, and gays are an accepted, uncommented upon part of the national persona, that the battle will need to continue. If it takes "flamboyant drag queens" and/or "leather clad, sex-simulating guys/dykes on bikes" in gay parades to keep those goals in the media spotlight, then let's embrace that, as we do them, as a means to achieve the full, unmitigated, unquestionable existence that all gays deserve!!!!!!!!!!

[Flower]

>and gays are an accepted, uncommented upon part of

>the national persona, that the battle will need to continue.

 

Very good point. We will have arrived NOT when we are protected by legislation, but when we need NO LEGISLATION to protect us!

[woodlawn]

>You criticise others easily and hastily and fall prey to some

>of the very things you criticise others here for, including

>the lecturing that you -- perhaps rightly -- accuse me of. I

>think there are at least some here who think you are not a

>nice person.

 

 

I really don't give a shit about their opinion of me or about yours. Unlike you and several others, I don't come here to talk about myself. So none of you knows anything about me except for my opinions on a very short list of issues that keep getting discussed here over and over and over. That isn't much of a basis for making a judgment of someone's character, but of course that doesn't stop you and others from doing so, even though you are the very same people who constantly criticize me and others for being "judgmental."

 

 

>I usually don't agree with you

>but I respect that your opinions are founded on thought and

>not emotion. It's one of the reasons why I take the time to

>engage in these discussions now and then.

 

Suit yourself. I didn't ask you to get involved in this thread. You are doing so because you want to and for no other reason. As for your statements about "respect," it would be easier to believe them if you hadn't started your posts in this thread by making negative personal remarks about all of the people who happen to disagree with you on this issue. But that is exactly what you did, remember? I remember.

 

 

>I see this whole discussion boiling down to freedom: freedom

>to live our lives as we want to, however we want to.

 

No, that is not what this whole discussion is about. No one questions that people have the freedom to come out or to do so in an extremely flamboyant manner if they wish.

 

This whole discussion is about two things. One is why people choose NOT to come out -- you did read the thread title, didn't you?

 

You made it quite clear in your first post that you think there is something wrong with people who make that choice. You seemed to want to back away from those statements in your subsequent posts, but I'm not going to let you pretend you never said those things.

 

The other subject of this discussion is not freedom but strategy. The gay community has certain goals that can be achieved only through political means. We can have all the "commitment ceremonies" we want, for example, but the only way we can get the rest of the community to treat us as married people is by persuading them to agree that we deserve the right to marry. The question is how to persuade them. Is the best way to do that by having parades with large numbers of gay men exposing their bodies and doing other things our fellow citizens, the people we are trying to persuade, find disgusting and perverted? I think not. To me, the point is a very simple one: showing and telling people you are very different from them undermines your argument that you should not be treated differently from them.

 

>I don't think you disagree with much of that, if any. But I

>see your prescription for living a gay life -- or perhaps,

>living a life by man who happens to be gay -- to be

>acquiescence to the idea that straights are superior or

>morally better or that straight sex is good and gay sex is

>disgusting or any of those ideas. Sort of "they're better

>than us so if we play quietly, maybe they'll be nice to us."

 

The truth is I have never said any such thing. You are just making that up because it's a lot harder for you to challenge the things I actually did say, which are shown above.

[btmstudnyc]

Knock first...then OPEN

 

I've lived both in and out of the closet...and I guess my rule this day and age is...

 

If you want to KNOW what's in the closet. ASK.

 

If you want to SEE what's in the closet...either open the door and be surprised, scarred, mamed, enlightened or happy....OR, KNOCK FIRST and wait for an invitation to CUM IN.

 

Just please consider one thing....

 

What would you do...if you were in the closet...and you were outed...Or yanked out? Truly answer that question....and it will reveal a lot about yourself..

 

Would you lie and deny it?....even though there are pictures and witnesses and a paper trail...or I guess rubber trail in this case.

 

NO ONE EVER SAID LIFE WOULD BE FAIR.

 

I Go to the parades...ALL of them...Diversity is something I like to celebrate...I don't want everyone to be like me. (please...no comments from the peanut gallery)

 

But...in the end...(yes mine) It kinda comes down to that old game kids play....you know...where they HOLLER..COME OUT! COME OUT! WHEREVER YOU ARE. You can Hide...or you can be found out and run around, or you can just jump out and run for HOME.

 

Each way can be fun....HOW DO YOU LIKE TO PLAY?

 

Sometimes you have choices...sometimes you don't...other times..you have to create them. I'm for allowing it all. LIFE will always be interesting that way. DON'T JUDGE...Unless you want STONES thrown at you too.

 

I LOVE THIS BOARD...ALL OF YOU. THANKS

 

JIM

 

If it dont fit, force it

[email protected]