Coming Full Circle, A Tribute to Marc

As many of you know by now, Marc, the Gay Dude, died this past Sunday afternoon.

I am still saddened by his death. He was a wonderful gay man who took time to write and post to so many of our blogs. His insight was remarkable, for such a young guy.

This past week, I finally finished reading "Full Circle" by Michael Thomas Ford. I don't know if Marc had read the novel, but in some ways, certain passages of the book were written with Marc in mind.

The main character, Ned, goes through his first 56 years of life, 1950-2006, trying to be just an average guy, but who wants to make a difference, and he does. He's no saint, this guy gets fucked bareback to become pos he feels shitty about himself. Luckily for him, he doesn't get his wish.

Ned has two friends, Andy and Jack. Andy plays an important part in Ned's adult life, meeting up with him at Penn State and they enlist in the Army together, in late 1969 to fight in Vietnam. Jack is Andy's next door neighbor from childhood, the lucky Jack who uses Ned as a comfortable pillow through childhood up to Penn State, where fearing he would flunk out of school and get drafted, enrolls in seminary school until he gets fucked by his professor and is forced to quit.

What comes to mind reading this is gay men are human, perhaps more human than the general population. We may be drama queens at times, but life sometimes just doesn't give us a fair break. Marc suffered from ailments that should not have happened to such a young guy, and unfortunately, he was very unlucky in the health department. He was dealt a bad hand, health wise, and for a long time, made the most of it, and even seemed to lick it.

He gave us hints about his state of health, but for the most part, he never wanted pity or wanted to burden us. He gave and shared, both from his mind and from his heart, everytime he communicated with us through blogging.

Quoting from the book, the passages dealing with love and understanding. " There will always be friendship and love, and between the two of them, there are mysteries to last a life time." We go on trying to figuring them out, but only get a tiny bit closer to the discovery. Something like Pluto, until some body of scientists proclaims that we aren't what we thought we were.

The ending passage of "Full Circle" continues, "Like God and death, the question of what drives the heart may be one we never fully understand.. . "And although some will doubtless be disappointed when no clear answer arises to give them comfort, those who look carefully will find that in the search, in the questioning and wondering and raging, there is beauty beyond reckoning."

I feel that our love and rememberance of Mar is something beautiful. He brightened our minds and our souls. He is still with us, beaming his charm and knowledge in that eternal cyberspace. We love you, Marc. We'll meet again and embrace in big warm hairy muscle hugs of celebration and joy. Until then, your spirit lives on in our blogs.

Oddities in the NewsThis Week, with a gay slant

Here's one from New Zealand. Might this be a trend?

Aucklands iconic K Road gay club, G.A.Y. is old hat and will be re-branded as Supermarket, says Miss Ribena, entertainment coordinator for the adjacent Family Bar.

In part, the change is to distinguish the club from Family Bar upstairs, which is hands in the air camp, loud, cheesy, with drag shows and karaoke, says Ribena, and partly to ditch the old hat stereotypical G.A.Y. logo, which has been a gay club in London for, like 100 years.

Some people refuse to go to G.A.Y. because of its name, says Ribena, and the music is often the same downstairs as it is upstairs [in Family].

Supermarket will attract the shirts-off Les Mills muscle boy set, wholike to look at themselves in the mirror, she adds.

The change will come into effect this coming Saturday.

© 2006 Copyright GayNZ.com
I guess all muscle boys, the world over, love to look at themselves. Such is gay life.

Now for me, enjoying life is getting my mouth to savor the juices of a firm, ripe, tomato.

I Beg to Disagree

The following are excerpts from an article found in this weeks Washington Blade.

Joe Kort is a gay social worker and therapist who wrote “Ten Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Find Real Love.” Michael Alvear, writes the gay male sex advice column “Need Wood? I have on occasion, not agreed with our "Woody" concerning some of his views.

“After five years together, most gay couples have open relationships,” Kort says. “I think it serves two functions. Number one, it helps gay men find partners. It’s how they look for partners and I also think it keeps relationships together so that these gay male couples who are non-monogamous and cruise, they have emotional fidelity, but they have sexual openness.

“The other reason that it works is that every couple has a sexual desire discrepancy. In gay couples, the one that wants it more can go get it. It relieves the pressure in their relationship in that area. It’s the truth and I can’t hide from it. But I do believe this — you open your relationship up for more problems when you’re not monogamous.”

Michael Alvear, however, says that his observations have led him to conclude that younger gay men are pursuing monogamous relationships.

“I can almost tell you with 90 percent accuracy that whenever I get a letter from somebody who is longing for monogamy or is upset at seeing couples who have open relationships, it’s inevitably somebody younger, someone in their 20s,” Alvear says. “It’s a sort of retro gay, a turn to traditional values and relationships in guys in their 20s.”

Joe Kort says that sex in public can be problematic.

“It’s rude because you’re using a public space for something it wasn’t designed for,” Michael Alvear says. “How would George Michael like it if people starting having sex in the middle of one of his concerts and started driving away people who came in for what that stage was designed for, a concert? How would people at the baths feel if IBM conducted a business meeting in the middle of the place? There’s a time and place for everything.”

Other expert on the subject, Rob Weiss declines to give his opinion on public sex, but points out that its illegality means participants must accept personal responsibility if they are caught.

Rob Weiss, a gay social worker and therapist, says he considers anonymous sex to be more an issue of gender than sexual orientation.

“Certainly, cruising and anonymous sex is endemic to gay culture,” Weiss says. “There’s no question about that, but I don’t think gay men’s pursuit of sex is any different from straight men’s pursuit of sex.”

“It’s not up to me whether to say the laws are right or wrong, but they are,” Weiss says. “So to put yourself in the situation of getting arrested and then turn around and say ‘I’m harassed,’ I have trouble with that.”

Weiss, who wrote “Cruise Control: Understanding Gay Men and Sex Addiction,” says cruising turns problematic when it becomes compulsive.

“When recreational behavior can be identified as an addiction is when it’s having serious consequences to the life of the person that’s doing it,” Weiss says.

The consequences can include betrayal of a relationship, loss of career or job, acquisition of disease, violation of personal belief or value or some form of public humiliation, such as an arrest.

“The people I see in my experience are people who have consequences because of their behavior and can’t seem to stop,” says Weiss, who has been treating people with sex addictions for 12 years. “These guys are acting out sexually … because of the arousal that goes on. Not genital arousal, but the endorphins, out of the chase, the possibilities. It’s not so much about the sex or the orgasm.”

Weiss and Kort say they lack statistics on the matter, but suspect that a majority of gay men have experienced sexual addiction. Weiss says that his treatment clinic, the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, sees about an average of 150 men a week.

First of all, I am really glad to read that younger gay men are seeking monogamous gay relationships at least, initially.

What I find hard to believe that there exists this vast sea of gay couples constantly screwing around outside their relationships. How emotionally draining can this be? What about faithfulness and love, both sexually and emotional? You can't always have your cake and eat it too without being a really fat pig. And on top of all of this, we want to be able to marry so we can emulate unfaithful straight couples. If this is the widespread opinion of the gay male community, then maybe gay marriage isn't worth the struggle.

On a lighter note, the photo spread above is a belated celebration of National Underwear Day. How I'd like to pat each and every one of your cute butts in celebration. Enjoy.

Under Sweltering Temperatures, Our Resident Gay Pundit (In His Dreams), Andrew Sullivan, Cracks.

Old Andy this past week, just can't seem to get his rocks off enough. He has entered a very lively debate raging on over cable and blog world about gay male promiscuity. He contends that gay men are inherently more promiscuous than straight people.

He basis his theory on the fact they, like Bill Clinton (oh, it always has to be political with our buddy, Andy) gay men are full of testosterone, and, like Bill Clinton, they can get sex when they want it. Sounds like we can just turn on the charm and the spigot, and instantly, we are romping with any guy we want. I wish.

Andy goes on to dig his hole deeper, or should I say, plow his fellow gay men's hole deeper, by suggesting that "gay men get it [sex] because their emotional and sexual universe is all-male and so twice as testosterone-laden as the straight male sexual universe.

Because we have bathhouses, public sex, backrooms and such, we have the resources to get laid 24/7. I guess the piers of New York are teaming this weekend with guys fucking each others brains out. Just because Andy Sullivan says so.

So are we all as promiscous as Andy tends to believe we are? Love to have you guys post your comments. I'm going to now take a very cold shower. Anyone want to join me? Big hairy muscle hugs.

What a Week It Has Been.

First this from over the pond:


Michael: 'I'm Not Afraid Of Gay Cruising'(Soundbuzz, Thursday July 27, 12:00 PM)
George Michael is not ashamed of being spotted prowling a notorious homosexual pick-up spot in London last week, insisting he's still a role model for young gays.

The singer was exposed by a British newspaper last Sunday cavorting in the shadows on Hampstead Heath with 58-year-old Norman Kirtland, before he fled from reporters and photographers. But the former Wham! heart-throb refuses to apologise for his actions, stressing he's done nothing wrong by cruising. He says, "I should be able to be what I am to young gay people - which is a man who has managed to succeed in the industry for 25 years. Sorry if people don't like the fact I cruise on Hampstead Heath but the police absolutely accept that it goes on at night. It's the only place in London where that is the case so it's generally a safe place." (wenn)

What shocks me about this is that George prefers older guys, supposedly. I took him for a twink admirer.

Then there was the Lance Bass admission that "surprise", he's gay.

The last time I saw Lance was on Game Show Marathon, and even for Lance, he was acting strange, showing his homeboy contingent of guys with "College" tshirts in his rooting section.

Anyway, if this was some kind of symbolism, then Lance was taking protracted steps in the process. I just wish he would have kissed Reichen after one of his wins, and that would have settled that.

I didn't notice Reichen there, but with his shirt on, he blends in with the crowd.

Anyway, I, for one, am giving the happy couple big hairy muscle hugs of congratulations. Hoping they stay together. Remember this isn't the first relationship/marriage for Reichen. He was "married" to Chip, his partner on Amazing Race, but dumped him shortly after they won and splitted the $1 million prize money.

I hope you guys are finding ways to cool off. I am still chilling with my favorite sno-cone flavor.
There is just something about blue raspberry ice as it dribbles down a furry guys chest. WOOF.

A Tongue,Some shaved ice and Plenty of Blue Raspberry Syrup makes for some Good Old Fashioned Summertime Fun

It is hot, sweaty, and sticky out there. But I have a recipe for cooling down and having some fun, all at the same time.

Get yourself a manual ice crusher/sno-cone maker at Kmart or Target. Stock the freezer with plenty of ice. Also stock up on your favorite sno-cone syrups.

I enjoy cranking and hearing the ice crackle and grind as I crush it. It's fun when some pieces of ice somehow escape from the container as I am turning the crank.

Have some guys over for this. Have them strip down to their jocks and gather them around the kitchen table or island. Thats when the fun begins.

Have enough paper cones for everyone. Extra cones can make great cock top caps.

Then accidently as you are making one of the cones, let some shaved chips spill onto one of the guys chests. That's when the tongue plays an important part of the process.

While the other guys get what's going on, have bottles of the syrup readily available for splashing over the individual cups filled with shaved ice. Before you know it, everyone is exploring their tongues on the mounds of shaved ice somehow finding its way on the fuzzy chests and pecs of your guests. Whatever happens next, please don't hold me responsible for. But whatever happens, you've been forewarned.

If any of you have any other fun ideas for keeping cool, please share. In the meantime, big hot hairy muscle hugs to each and every one of you. I enjoy sharing my passions and kinks with you. You being there means a whole lot to me.

P.S. The patio tomato plants that I grew from seeds are producing a lot of tomatoes now. They haven't ripened yet, but with these sunny, hot days, that won't take long. Soon they will be ripe for having some fun with.

I'm still here, guys

Sorry to not have posted for a while. Just been busy at my Mom's as well as getting sweaty on a backyard project. Also order John Weir's new book and about finished reading Andrew Holleran's book, Grief. Will write about them in the near future. Big hairy muscle hugs, guys. I miss you a lot.
Hope these guys got noticed. WOOF

Summertime Book Picks. Great Fiction for Gay Men Written by Gay Men

The New Gay FictionAfter years of neglect from the mainstream, queer lit undergoes a renaissance
by Edmund WhiteJune 20th, 2006 12:06 PM


At the beginning of the 20th century Rodin said that Americans had just lived through a renaissance and no one in America knew it (he was referring to the advent of painters such as Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Sargent). Something similar could be said about gay fiction right now, which is totally neglected and almost never reviewed by the mainstream press but which has never been more vital. In fact it could be said that gay novels and short stories are among the best being written anywhere now.
Of course there are a few exceptions to the general blackout—the worldwide success of Michael Cunningham's The Hours and the Booker prize–winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty. The action of both of these books, to be sure, takes place outside the gay ghetto and includes many important straight characters; both books belong to what is called "post-gay fiction," a subgenre that David Leavitt may have invented in his first collection of stories, Family Dancing.
The vogue for gay fiction has long since passed after a brief flurry of visibility and celebrity in the late 1970s and early '80s. The market did not respond. Whereas the literature of other minorities (Asian American, African American, Latin American) presents the straight reader with interesting variations on his or her own life by taking up the themes of parenthood, marriage, divorce, adultery, and the intergenerational conflict, the literature of the gay ghetto seems at times utterly alien.
With the collapse of the gay market—and the closing down of gay literary magazines such as Christopher Street and nearly a hundred gay-themed bookstores across the country—gay fiction became invisible, often to the gay community itself. Gay studies as a subject was drying up in the universities (not that gay scholars had ever devoted much energy to contemporary gay creativity). Even the way gay novels are shelved at a bookstore, in a quarantined section labeled "Gay and Lesbian," places a wall around these books that few straight women readers—much less straight men—would have the guts to breach.
Case closed. Except for the inconvenient fact that in the last five or six years gay writers have been turning out some of the most exciting fiction being written today, though it is sold in the small numbers more typical of poetry collections. This spring has seen the publication of an extraordinary novel, John Weir's What I Did Wrong. Weir has written only one other book, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, which was highly acclaimed in 1989 as a stellar first novel. His new book tells the story of Tom, a middle-aged teacher at a university in Queens, who has lost his lover—a foul-mouthed, impossible, endearing novelist—to AIDS. Tom feeds all his need for love into his charged relationships with his best friend from high school, a drifting straight guy, and with one of his students, an oppressed, apologetic, disenfranchised kid who plays in a rock band and worships Sharon Olds's poetry. This is among other things one of the best books about how ordinary folks live in New York now. His students work at restaurant jobs in Manhasset and blow their salaries at a casino in A.C. They're almost all heterosexuals and Tom studies them as if they were members of another species. "They're outsiders, not pariahs. Their irony is different from mine. The defining crisis for them is their disbelief in other people, while mine is disbelief in myself. Straight guys are conspiracy theorists, wrecked by the knowledge that they can't control the world. Yet I learned early on that I can't control, well, me. I yearn for guys. I am what I want. Straight people aren't asked to justify their yearning. They don't have to boil themselves down to an impulse or an act. Unlike me, they think, 'I am because I want.' "


There are also several recent novels and collections of short stories by younger men that prove the efforts of gay writers to reach out to the world at large. Patrick Ryan's Send Me is about a modest family in the 1970s living near Cape Canaveral in Florida; two of the sons are gay, the older one closeted and the younger one weirdly free of the constraints of the period. This book is full of careful social observation in the manner of Cheever; one of Ryan's stories has been selected for The Best Short Stories of 2005. Actually it's a bit unfair to label it a gay book since so many of the stories are about eccentric if thoroughly heterosexual characters. The first and last chapters in his book, however, are devoted to the younger brother's struggle with AIDS, a theme that lends great depth to a tale of quirky family life. In much of good gay fiction today AIDS plays a role. In Keith McDermott's first novel, Acqua Calda, an older actor with AIDS ventures to Sicily, where he is to participate in an avant-garde theatrical event. During his sojourn he becomes extremely ill but the show must go on and his decision to play his role despite backstage envy and condescension lend him a quiet heroism.
Vestal McIntyre's stories in You Are Not the One are edgy urban tales about young gay men interacting with their straight colleagues at the office or with friends. In one story a young woman decides she needs a gay man in her life (a Will to her Grace, perhaps), but she chooses one who is slippery and ultimately not too friendly. Mack Friedman's Setting the Lawn on Fire is again linked stories that take a young man through a horny, repressed boyhood, up to a summer of canning fish in Alaska and onto a seriocomic career as a hustler. Such a summary does no justice to the elegance and originality of the writing.
Barry McCrea, a young Irish-born Yale professor, has written a rapturous ode to Dublin in his first novel, The First Verse. A gay student at Trinity is manipulated by a strange cult of heterosexuals who use their erotic power over him to induct him into rites and practices of a satanic intensity. More traditional pleasure is provided by Robert J. Hughes's closely woven first novel, Late and Soon, about the art auction business in New York today. It is told from the point of view of a woman whose husband has left her for another man. Now, years later, she becomes friendly with her erstwhile rival, who has in turn been abandoned for a hotter, younger fireman. There are Jamesian delights in the beautiful language and ironies and nuanced psychological observations that Hughes has devised.
I think there is a real phenomenon here, the arrival of a whole new generation of gay writers who've come along to fill the shoes of their predecessors who died too young in the 1980s and '90s. These newcomers are unknown even to most gay men, who are too busy going to the gym and cruising on the Net to read. Whereas being cultured was once the entrance fee for being gay, now the gay community has dumbed down like the rest of the population. But just as the underappreciated American poetry scene is the most vigorous in the world and includes a dozen major figures, everyone from C.K. Williams to John Ashbery, from Louise Glück to Yusef Komunyakaa, in the same way the current gay literary moment is quietly, almost invisibly adding brilliant new names to a canon that is unknown except to the happy few.
Edmund White teaches writing at Princeton and is the author of nearly 20 books, including the recent autobiography My Lives.

Maybe Edmund White is correct in saying that the gay male reader has been dummied down, just like the rest of the reading public to accept fluff. I hope that isn't the case.

I just purchased two gay books that I am beginning to read, The Good Neighbor by Jay Quinn
and Grief by Andrew Holleran. Will let you know my thoughts as I plow through these books.

Happy Shirtless Summer

If you haven't seen it, check out Kelly's blog post challenge and what the Rainbow Flag means.

This post will remain at the top of the page until the end of the month.
Most recent posts will fall right after this one.In honor of Pride Month I made the follow challenge on May 31st.Here is my exact post from that day.
So, I have had a great response to this idea, and I want people to be recognized for taking the challenge. So I am listing all the blogs and sites that I know have posted the above picture. If you see it somewhere not on this list, email me or drop a comment in any of the posts on this blog. I never imagined it would get the response that is has from both gay and straight bloggers, and now I want more. Pride Month is almost half over, and I would like to round out the month with many, many more posts and comments. So I am reissuing the challenge...again pass it along to fellow bloggers, web hosts, online magazines, television stations, etc...get it out there, lets show the world, we are proud of who we are, where we have been and where we are going...Those who have accepted the challenge:1. Southern Expressions, 2. A Spiders Web inThorton Park,3. Strange Shades of Grey, 4.joeydestino, 5. YNAGER'65, 6. The Way I See It..., 7. A Life in the Day, 8. Raging Rainbows, 9. Dewey's Dartboard, 10. Chai and Sympathy, 11. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Gun, 12. The Krebs Cycle, 13. Utter Bibble, 14. Life's Colorful Brushstrokes, 15. Hello Waffles, 16. Hypoxic, 17. A Guy's Moleskine Notebook, 18. Orange Maze, 19. It's a Mommeee's Life, 20. JustinFeed, 21. Defining David, 22. The Lewis Show, 23. Rob's Stuff, 24. Dan Turning Forty, 25. Kevin's Space, 26. Gregor's Journal, 27. It's about what we say, 28. the AirFrames Aerodrom, 29. Sherpa of the Banality, 30. My Secretive Life, 31. Voyeur Nation, 32. You Can't Handle The Truthiness, 33. Gay Men Rule, 34. Robert Prather's blog, 35. Into the frey, 36. I'm the Gingerbread Man, 37. Tiger Wasteland, 38. Iotique Jaz, 39. Noted in an Instant, 40. Anakis Oogoo, 41. VJnet, 42. VJ Flickr Photos, 43. Sorted Lives, 44. The Life of Rian, 45. Quantum Entaglements, 46. Who Threw That Ham at Me?, 47. On a Tangent, 48. Memoirs of a Gay Chia, 49. big red dave, 50. Boys Are Ugly But So Cute, 51. The Untraveled Travel Guy, 52. The Short Bus, 53. My New Life, 54. Who Threw That Ham at Me, 55. It's Raining Men, 56. lemon parade, 57. Joel Stuart Living, 58. Weighing In, Without The Cookies, 59. Closetcase.co.uk, 60. effevescentlife, 61. All hail suburbia!, 62. Not Tell A Lie, 63. The Jimmie Chronicles, 64. Let's say you're right..., 65. A Little Happiness Sent to You, 66. There goes my pen, 67. I Keep Smiling, 68. Davids Blog, 69. These Are Me Thinks, 70. Brettcajun

TV's Interpertation of Gay Life has brought the images of Gay Men and Lesbians into the homes of Mr. and Mrs. America

See if you agree with the following article:

Gay themes brought debate to TV
By Rob Thomas
Visibly taken aback by the election results of the night before, Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" was struggling on Nov. 3, 2004, to figure out the key reason that President Bush won re-election. The reason he came up with was not tax cuts or abortion rights, or even national security.
He came up with "Will & Grace."
Stewart was using the popular and groundbreaking NBC comedy, which just ended its Emmy-winning run last month, as shorthand for gay rights issues. After all, in the 2004 election, 11 states had amendments opposing same-sex marriage on the ballot, including the deciding state of Ohio, and many observers felt these amendments brought cultural conservatives to the polls and tipped the scales in Bush's favor.
When Ron Becker, assistant professor of communications at Miami University of Ohio, saw Stewart mention "Will & Grace," he saw he had been given the opening quotation for his new book "Gay TV and Straight America." A single half-hour TV show summed up the key cultural issue that a presidential election had turned on.

UW alumnus Ron Becker will speak at Borders West on Thursday at 7 p.m.
Becker's book, published in February by Rutgers University Press, looks back on how the television landscape changed in the 1990s to become friendlier to both gay characters and gay issues. He'll read from and talk about the book at 7 p.m. Thursday at Borders West, 3750 University Ave.
The book, based on the dissertation Becker wrote while as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, surveys gay themes on a broad range of shows, everything from the expected programs like "Will & Grace" and "Ellen" to "The Commish" and "Seinfeld."
Becker says his goal was not to document the prevalence of gay characters, but to chronicle gay themes on shows even when there were no gay characters present, and to show how they reflected what was happening in both gay and straight America.
"It's about sexual identity even if there are no gay or lesbian characters," Becker says. "The classic example is the 'Seinfeld' episode where Jerry and George are mistaken for being gay. All through the episode, they're saying 'We're not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that.' The whole episode is about the politics of sexual identity."
The "Seinfeld" episode illustrates a recurring theme of straight people having to address their own sexual identity as being separate from that of gay people. It's something that characters on television didn't have to deal with before the 1990s (because there were hardly any gay people on television) but became fodder for both drama and comedy during the decade.
Becker deems these themes "straight panic," and what was happening on television mirrored what straight America was dealing with in the 1990s as gays entered the mainstream.
"One of the ways that heterosexuality and homosexuality are related is that heterosexuality, as 'normal,' is defined and established by its 'abnormal' other," Becker says. "So what happens when gays demand to be normal?"
If it seems as if comedies tended to address gay themes more than dramas in the 1990s, Becker says that the anxiety brought on by "straight panic" and other aspects of sexual politics did make good fodder for comedy writers. But he also notes that situation comedies were just much more prevalent than dramas in the 1990s, and in fact both genres addressed gay themes at similar rates.
"Gay TV" looks at several common ways straight TV characters became involved with gay themes, from the "helpful heterosexual" who might use their position to help a gay friend, to the "homosexual heterosexual" who gets mistaken by others for gay.
Becker points to an episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street" as a clever twist on this theme, where the detectives investigate the murder of a man outside a gay bar, an apparent hate crime. In fact, even though the man was murdered because the killer thought he was gay, he was straight.
N ot surprisingly, the networks didn't throw open the doors and allow gay characters and themes onto television motivated primarily by altruistic or socially progressive reasons, Becker says.
The reason was simple: money.
In the 1990s, television networks chased relentlessly after a coveted young, big-city demographic with shows like "Friends" and "NYPD Blue." The thinking was that these viewers would be lucrative for potential advertisers, and would be attracted to shows that reflected their hip and tolerant worldview. In fact, in putting gay characters on their shows, the networks were more interested in attracting tolerant straight viewers than gay viewers themselves.
"I argue in the book that the networks became obsessed with 18- to 49-year-olds, and 18- to 34-year-olds especially," Becker says. "They perceived those people as being urban and hip and edgy, and that's why you saw a whole bunch of programs like 'NYPD Blue' pushing boundaries."
In that climate, viewers who might object to seeing such shows on television were largely ignored by the networks, Becker says. That changed in this decade; cultural conservatives got much more organized, and incidents like the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show controversy drew attention to the notion of "decent" vs. "indecent" television.
Today, Becker sees more shows with gay themes that seem to be aimed at gay viewers in a way that they weren't a decade ago.
"'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' was clearly made for an 18-to-49-year-old female audience in mind," Becker says. "But they also made it with a gay audience in mind. Whereas with 'Will & Grace,' they said maybe some gay people will watch. But it was made with that young, urban audience in mind."
Becker says it's always tricky to try to draw connections between what people watch on television and what they think in their daily lives. But, as someone who remembers growing up in the 1980s and seeing hardly any gay characters like himself on television, he thinks the emergence of those characters in the 1990s was a positive force, fostering tolerance and acceptance of gays in the straight community.
"Their more open and accepting attitudes did make it more palatable," he says. "It had, I would argue, a normalizing effect."
E-mail: rthomas@madison.com
Published: June 14, 2006

Big Daddy Day Hugs to all my Blog Buds.

Getting More Than You Bargained For

Here is an article from the Washington Blade about guys meeting guys over the internet using hookup sites such as Manhunt.net, Bear411.com and others, and the unexpected results from such encounters.

Online hookup sites see thefts, assaultsCrimes linked to internet sex on the rise, officials sayBy PHIL LaPADULA June 8, 2:49 PM
The smiling young man in the muscle shirt looked like a good catch.


Ray Wenzel, 35, was arrested April 21 in Philadelphia, accused of robbing gay men whom he met on internet dating sites. According to police, at least 15 to 20 gay men fell victim to Wenzel's scheme.
After corresponding for about six hours on Manhunt.net, Joshua Sacks decided to invite the handsome stranger to his home in Washington, D.C., for some fun on the evening of April 12.
But looks, and internet profiles, can be deceiving. Sacks' dream date turned out to be a nightmare.
"Either he drugged me or I passed out," Sacks said. "I think he may have given me GHB."
When he awoke, Sacks discovered that the stranger, who would later be identified as Ray Wenzel, had left after allegedly stealing his Audi convertible, his passport, credit cards and checks. Later that day, Wenzel allegedly used Sacks' passport to cash a check.
On April 21, Philadelphia police arrested Wenzel, 35, after an alleged crime spree that spanned at least two states and Washington, D.C., in which numerous gay men seeking sexual encounters or dates via the internet were apparently victimized.
Wenzel faces charges of theft, possession of narcotics and stealing a car, according to Beth Skala, public information officer for the Philadelphia Police Department. At the time of his arrest, he was also wanted on several other charges, including identity theft and credit card fraud, in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, Skala said.
Most victims cruising sex sites
Wenzel is one of several suspected cyberspace predators prowling internet dating sites for potential victims. In fact, law enforcement officials say internet rip-off schemes related to sex and romance sites are among the fastest growing segments of the overall online crime problem.
"We've definitely seen an increase in online dating crimes in the past five years," said Sgt. Brett Parson, commander of D.C. Police Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit, who was involved in investigating the Wenzel case.
Parson said gay victims of internet dating crimes are "overwhelmingly men cruising for sex" on sites like Manhunt, as opposed to the more relationship-oriented dating sites.
According to Parson, Wenzel is suspected of victimizing at least 15 to 20 gay men. When Wenzel was arrested, police found driver's licenses and other identification belonging to alleged victims in Florida, Parson said. But it could not be confirmed through Florida authorities that Wenzel was wanted for any crimes in the state at the time of his arrest.
In a November 2005 case, police arrested Brett Chasen Wolfe in the lobby of an apartment building in Washington, D.C. Wolfe is also accused of stealing credit cards from gay men he met on the Manhunt dating site.
The D.C. Police's Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit nabbed Wolfe following a sting operation after an undercover agent contacted him on Manhunt and arranged a meeting.
The alleged 'bear' robber
In August 2005, the Broward County Sheriff's Department in Florida arrested Gregg A. Sullivan after he allegedly robbed a man he met in an online dating site for gay men who identify as "bears" called Bear411.com.
Sullivan is accused of stealing Ken Nyquist's wallet and personal items, including his grandmother's 1905 championship swimming medal, and using his credit card to purchase $112 worth of items at a grocery store.
In the Sullivan case, the computer the suspect used to facilitate his alleged crime also created an electronic trail back to him. After the alleged robbery, Nyquist went back online and contacted other customers of Bear411.com. One of them provided authorities with Sullivan's full name and address.
Sullivan was nabbed after he allegedly pawned Nyquist's belongings, including the 1905 swimming medal. He was originally charged with grand theft and dealing in stolen property. The grand theft charge has been dropped and Sullivan is still awaiting trial on a charge of dealing in stolen property, according to the Broward County State Attorney's Office. He was released from jail after posting bond.
Parson said D.C. police have not detected any coordinated effort or ring of criminals targeting gay men via internet dating sites.
"The cases we have seen have been individuals acting on their own," he said.
Besides the robberies, people have been "raped and rendered unconscious by drugs" after meeting people in online dating sites, Parson said.
Anonymity attracts criminals
Parson said the anonymity of the internet is attractive to both customers and criminals. He said many of those who use online dating and hookup sites may be closeted gay men and may be reluctant to contact police when they fall victim to crime.
"Someone who goes to a gay bar to meet people has some level of comfort with their sexual orientation," Parson said. "There is more chance that they will call the police."
Parson said the criminals are often technologically savvy. They create profiles using fake information and other people's photos from cyber cafes or public libraries, making them difficult to trace.
Stephan Adelson, a spokesperson for Manhunt.net, said the company is limited in how it can respond to incidents because of liability and privacy issues.
"We get phone calls from all types of people making all kinds of claims," Adelson said. "We could be put in a liable position if someone's accusations are not substantiated."
Manhunt, however, does delete the profile of a suspected criminal once the company receives a subpoena from the police, Adelson said.
But deleting a suspect's profile doesn't prevent an alleged perpetrator from creating a new one. In Wenzel's case, for example, his account with the screen name "OnTopofYoutoNite" was deleted March 30, 12 days before he allegedly robbed Sacks. Adelson said the words "known criminal" were noted in Wenzel's file.
But Wenzel created a new profile with the screen name "DCupforFun." That profile was deleted April 15 after Manhunt received information that Wenzel allegedly used someone else's credit card to create the account, Adelson said.
Safe cruising tips
Adelson said Manhunt posts safe cruising tips on its website, including leaving a trail behind if you decide to meet someone. Write down the person's phone number, screen name and where and when you plan to meet the individual, he suggested. Leave that information in a conspicuous place in your home.
Ask for more than one picture of your prospective date, Adelson said. Meet the person in a public place and have a friend know where you're going. It's also a good idea to have a friend call you during the date.
Paul Bressen, spokesperson for the FBI Public Affairs Office, said the agency has seen an "across-the-board increase" in crimes targeting people who visit romance websites or personal ad sites based on reports to the Internet Complaint Center (www.IC3.gov), a joint project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.
In addition to the hookup robberies, a rapidly growing scheme involves a perpetrator gaining the confidence of someone through a romance website and persuading him or her to ship stolen merchandise or cash bogus checks.
Jon van Halsing, co-author of "Cyber Love's Illusions," a book about internet romance scams, said many perpetrators never even meet their victims. They often create phony profiles using photos taken from modeling sites. The scammer, who usually resides in Nigeria or Eastern Europe, persuades the victim to receive and ship stolen merchandise or cash phony money orders.
"They'll target gay, straight or anything in between," Halsing said. "Within a week, they'll be in love and they'll say they want to come over and spend their lives with you."
'Prince Charming'
Once they gain the victim's confidence, they'll ask their target to cash a phony money order or to receive and ship what, unbeknownst to the victim, is stolen merchandise.
"They claim they can't cash an American money order in Nigeria," Halsing said.
The money order is usually not discovered to be a fake until weeks later.
"Cyber Love's Illusions" includes detailed psychological profiles of potential victims of internet romance crimes. Halsing said some victims are actually hard-working, successful people who nevertheless find themselves alone and missing something in their lives despite their business accomplishments.
"We call that the 'Captain America complex,'" Halsing said.
But perhaps the most vulnerable are people who have just been through a breakup or other traumatic event.
"The next thing you know, here comes Prince Charming over the internet," Halsing said.
E-Mail this article

So trust your instincts instead of your cock. The net is a great place to meet guys. So many of you I call my friends and enjoy your comments you post here. Without the net, I would have never gotten to know a great bunch of guys. We all have to be cautious whenever net friendship turns to a face to face meeting. But in this small world we call the internet, we can indeed build on such friendships, over the course of time. And big hairy muscle hugs do feel better in person.

A Very Sad State of Affairs: Bareback Video Rentals and Sales Skyrocket

Before I get on my soapbox, here's the article describing the surging demand by gay men for bareback porn flicks.

Bareback sales booming (Gay)Some video stores, porn producers ignore pleas of AIDS activists
By LOU CHIBBARO JR. Friday, June 02, 2006
Despite strong objections from AIDS activists, the production and sale of adult videos for gay men in which the actors don’t use condoms is expanding at a rapid pace, with more studios and retail distributors jumping on the “bareback” bandwagon.
Some AIDS activists, who expressed concern three years ago when gay bareback videos first reappeared on the scene, say they are even more alarmed over the recent trend by porn studios in using younger models, age 18 to 21, in bareback films.
“The message in that kind of imagery and entertainment should be to reinforce safer sex, and that includes using condoms during sexual activity,” said Ronald Johnson, an official with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, one of the nation’s oldest AIDS advocacy groups based in New York City.
“The imagery is a very powerful one,” Johnson said. “I think this industry needs to recognize the power of that imagery and the responsibility they have.”
Representatives of gay adult film studios and retail distributors, including the increasingly popular online sales outlets for gay adult videos, express mixed views over the bareback phenomenon.
Some refuse to produce or sell bareback videos, saying the industry should hold to the practice it established in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when condoms were required for all depictions of anal intercourse.
Others say that, as businesses, they find it difficult to buck a market demand for bareback videos at a time of great competition in the adult gay entertainment industry. They also say businesses that serve gay people, an historically persecuted group, should not be engaging in a form of censorship by denying customers the right to choose the form of entertainment they like.
“Barebacking has become an issue of, if you can’t fight it, join it,” said Todd Brown, a buyer for Blue Ribbon Entertainment, Inc., which owns the online businesses GayVideoStore.com and BarebackVideoStore.net.
Brown said his company places disclaimers in the descriptions of all bareback videos that warn buyers that the practice of barebacking can lead to HIV transmission.
Industry observers say the creation of online distributors specializing in bareback videos, and the recent formation by studios of divisions specializing in producing bareback films, show growing demand for bareback products.
Doug Lawrence, editor of Gay Video News, a subsidiary of the trade publication Adult Video News, estimates between 10 to 15 percent of the gay adult films being produced are bareback movies.
“All the major companies are safe-sex, condom companies,” he said in describing the larger studios like Titan, Raging Stallion, Falcon, Cult, Hot House and All World.
Brown, the buyer for BarebackVideoStore.net, said the larger gay adult studios, while professing opposition to bareback films, have been capitalizing on the bareback demand by re-releasing their pre-AIDS gay porn flicks, where condoms were never used. The videos are then marketing as “pre-condom” films.
“They are making a big push to re-release their old titles without condoms,” Brown said. “They want to get a piece of this money coming from barebacking.”
A spot survey of gay adult video stores in several major cities shows that nearly all are selling bareback videos.
Capitol Video, which operates three video stores in D.C. that sell both adult and general entertainment videos, includes some bareback titles, according to manager Tim Snyder.
Stores selling adult gay videos in New York, Fort Lauderdale, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston have each reported selling bareback videos during the past few years.

This all means that guys want to have unprotected sex at whatever cost. They live for the moment, whatever the consequences of their actions, they don't want to take any responsibility. Such self hatred. And all this for not wanting to take 15 fuckin seconds to put on a condom.

And it also proves that gay porn has failed to provide steamy hot safer sex. The blame goes all around. The producers and directors don't have their heart or cocks into it. The actors are so noninvolved and stoned out of their minds that they don't force the issue, instead they perform like zombies. No wonder the pre-condom sales are rising. Those guys while dead now for the most part, really knew how to have hot sizzling sex with each other.

It seems as if hot foreplay, hairy muscle sex and sizzling nipple play just doesn't do it for these guys. A very sad commentary.

Gay Pride 2006

Heads up. Here's a partial, incomplete list of scheduled Gay Pride events for 2006:

So what have been your most memoriable gay pride celebrations over the years.

For me THE 25th Anniversary of Stonewall, back in 1994, had to be for me, the most moving experience. Marching in the Parade and seeing the hundreds of thousands of gay men and women lining the parade route, and all the hot men at the various parties, WOOF

Upcoming Events
Location
Date
Columbia, SC
5/13/2006
Santa Barbara, CA
5/13/2006
Las Vegas, NV
5/13/2006
Clarksville, TN
5/18/2006
New Hope, PA
5/18/2006
Clarksville, TN
5/19/2006
Clarksville, TN
5/20/2006
Long Beach, CA
5/20/2006
Omaha, NE
5/26/2006
Salt Lake City, UT
6/1/2006
Curitiba, Parana
6/1/2006
QUEZON CITY,
6/1/2006
Birmingham, AL
6/1/2006
Winnipeg, MB
Boston , MA
6/2/2006
Charleston, WV
6/2/2006
Boston , MA
6/2/2006
Charleston, WV
6/2/2006
Lincoln, NE
6/3/2006
Cedar Rapids, IA
6/3/2006
Charleston, WV
6/3/2006
Fresno, CA
6/3/2006
Staten Island, New York
6/3/2006
Staten Island, New York
6/3/2006
Austin, TX
6/3/2006
Austin, TX
6/4/2006
Charleston, WV
6/4/2006
Jackson Heights (Queens), New York
6/4/2006
Brooklyn, New York
6/5/2006
Charleston, WV
6/9/2006
Los Angeles, CA
6/9/2006
Milwaukee, WI
6/9/2006
Omaha, NE
6/9/2006
Zurich,
6/9/2006
Omaha, NE
6/9/2006
Boston , MA
6/10/2006
Boston , MA
6/10/2006
Dublin, Leinster
6/10/2006
Columbia, MO
6/10/2006
Erie, PA
6/10/2006
Des Moines, Iowa
6/10/2006
Indianapolis, IN
6/10/2006
Memphis, TN
6/11/2006
Charleston, WV
6/11/2006
Wantagh, NY
6/11/2006
Huntington Village, Long Island, NY
6/11/2006
Philadelphia, PA
6/11/2006
Omaha, NE
6/11/2006
Tampa, Florida
6/15/2006
Halifax, Nova Scotia
6/16/2006
Louisville, KY
6/16/2006
Louisville, KY
6/16/2006
Louisville, KY
6/16/2006
Modesto, CA
6/16/2006
Moncton, New Brunswick
6/16/2006
Austin, TX
6/17/2006
San Antonio, TX
6/17/2006
Wantagh, NY
6/17/2006
Brisbane, Queensland
6/17/2006
Portland, OR
6/17/2006
Wichita, KS
6/17/2006
Allentown, PA
6/17/2006
Providence, RI
6/17/2006
Pittsburgh, PA
6/17/2006
Amarillo, TX
6/17/2006
New York, New York
6/18/2006
Oakland Park, FL
6/18/2006
Iqaluit, Nunavut
6/18/2006
Toronto, Ontario
6/19/2006
Atlanta, GA
6/23/2006
Seattle, WA
6/24/2006
San Francisco, California
6/24/2006
Guadalajara, Jalisco
6/24/2006
St. Petersburg, FL
6/24/2006
Seattle, WA
6/25/2006
Chicago, IL
6/25/2006
Prince George, BC
7/1/2006
Porto, -
7/8/2006
Burlington, Vermont
7/8/2006
Cologne,
7/14/2006
Berlin,
7/15/2006
Miama Beach, FL
7/20/2006
Bismarck, North Dakota
7/21/2006
Berlin,
7/22/2006
San Diego, CA
7/28/2006
Fort Wayne, IN
7/28/2006
Vancouver, British Columbia
7/29/2006
Montreal, Quebec
7/30/2006
Cornwall, Ontario
8/2/2006
Jerusalem,
8/6/2006
Reykjavik,
8/10/2006
Eugene, OR
8/12/2006
Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais
8/15/2006

The Science of Sexual Orientation: Are We Predetermined to be Gay?

I have visited this topic on several occasions. Below is a report from a recent CBS edition of "60 Minutes" conducted by correspondent Lesley Stall:

Psychologists used to believe homosexuality was caused by nurture — namely overbearing mothers and distant fathers — but that theory has been disproved. Today, scientists are looking at genes, environment, brain structure and hormones. There is one area of consensus: that homosexuality involves more than just sexual behavior; it's physiological.

Dr. Bailey , a noted sex researcher, and his colleagues set up a series of experiments in his lab at Northwestern University. In one study, researcher Gerulf Rieger videotaped gay and straight people sitting in a chair, talking. He then reduced them visually to silent black and white outlined figures and asked volunteers to see if they could tell gay from straight. The idea was to find out if certain stereotypes were real and observable. Based on physical movement and gestures of the figures, more often than not, the volunteers in the study could tell a difference. "So, is the conclusion that gay people do in fact move differently?" Stahl asked Rieger. "Yeah, absolutely," he replied. It's not true 100 percent of the time; it is true on average. The researchers also studied the way gay and straight people talk, and they found differences on average there too. This research is controversial. Some say it is reinforcing stereotypes. But to Bailey, the stereotypes suggest there's a feminizing of the brain in gay men, and masculinizing in lesbians. Ironically though, when it comes to their sex lives, he says gay and straight men actually have a lot in common. "Straight men tend to be shallow in terms of focusing on looks. Gay men are shallow, too. Straight men are more interested than straight women in having casual, uncommitted sex. Gay men are like that, too," says Bailey.

"One has the impression that gay men are much more inclined toward casual sex than straight men," Stahl said. "They're just more successful at it, because the people they're trying to have sex with are also interested in it," Bailey explained. "But don't you find this interesting that the one big area where gay men are more like straight men is in sex? I mean, that is…both amusing and odd," Stahl said. "It suggests that whatever causes a man to be gay doesn't make him feminine in every respect. There must be different parts of the brain that can be feminized independently from each other," Bailey replied.

But how and when does this feminizing occur? If the differences were already apparent in childhood, that would point to an early, perhaps even genetic origin — and that's what Bailey and Rieger are testing in a new study using childhood home movies. In the study, volunteers were asked to rate each child's femininity or masculinity. Stahl took the test and rated two girls highly feminine. When shown video of a toddler girl running a truck off of a table, Stahl observed, "She's really not girly. Isn't that interesting? She's not girly." She also observed differences in two boys, one of whom would grow up to be straight, while the other is now gay. If you can spot a child's future sexual orientation before the child even knows he or she has one, doesn't that prove it's genetic? Studies have shown that homosexuality runs in families. So genes must be the answer. But then the researchers tell you identical twins can have different sexual orientations.

60 Minutes found identical twins Steve and Greg Lofts in New York. They had the same upbringing, have the same DNA — and yet Greg is gay and Steve is straight. When people meet the twins and find out one of them is gay, Greg says people have asked if he's sure, and how it can be. "Everyone is curious about that," he says. There were signs, even when they were little kids. Their mother told Stahl that Steve loved sports and the outdoors while Greg liked helping out in the kitchen. But it wasn't until high school that Steve became convinced Greg was gay. Asked if he said anything to his brother, Steve says, "I did actually. And I think the way I worded it was something like, 'You know, Greg, if you're gay, it's OK with me. And I'll still love you the same.' And he gave a very philosophical answer. He said something like, 'Well, I love the soul of a person and not the physical being.' And in my mind, I was like, 'Yep, he's gay.'" "I wasn't ready just yet," Greg added. ",

Does this prove that it's not genetic? "What it proves is it's not completely genetic. They have the same genes," says Bailey. Asked if that brings us back to the mother and the father, Bailey says no. "But that's environment," Stahl said. "That's environment. But that's not the only environment. There's also the environment that happens to us while we're in the womb. And scientists are realizing that environment is much more important than we ever thought it was," Bailey explained.

A newborn rat pup in the lab of Dr. Marc Breedlove at Michigan State University, may, oddly enough, hold important clues to what happens in the womb. Dr. Breedlove says he can take a male rat and make it behave like a female for the rest of its life, and vice versa for a female, just by altering the hormones it's exposed to at birth. Because rats are born underdeveloped, that's roughly the same as altering a third-trimester human fetus in the womb. But first, he said, Stahl would need a crash course in rat sex. Dr. Breedlove explained that male rats, including one he showed Stahl called "Romeo," will mount any rat that comes their way. In the mating process, the female performs something called lordosis, where she lifts her head and rump. If Romeo goes after a male, Dr. Breedlove says the male will seem profoundly indifferent. But Breedlove says he can change all that. He gave a female rat a single shot of the male sex hormone testosterone at birth. Now grown up, she will never perform lordosis. But a male rat did. He was castrated at birth, depriving him of testosterone. "So you created a gay rat?" Stahl asked. "I wouldn't say that these are gay rats. But I will say that these are genetic male rats who are showing much more feminine behavior," he explained. So the answer may be that it's not genes but hormones. "That's exactly the question that we're all wondering. This business of testosterone having such a profound influence. Does that have some relevance to humans?" Breedlove said.

While biologists look at hormones for answers about human sexuality, other scientists are looking for patterns in statistics. And hard as this is to believe, they have found something they call "the older brother effect." "The more older brothers a man has, the greater that man's chance of being gay," says Bailey. Asked if that's true, Bailey says, "That is absolutely true." If this comes as a shock to you, you're not alone. But it turns out, it's one of the most solid findings in this field, demonstrated in study after study. And the numbers are significant: for every older brother a man has, his chances of being gay increase by one third. Older sisters make no difference, and there's no corresponding effect for lesbians. A first-born son has about a 2 percent chance of being gay, and the numbers rise from there. The theory is it happens in the womb. "Somehow, the mother's body is remembering how many boys she's carried before," says Breedlove. "The favorite hypothesis is that the mother may be making antibodies when she sees a boy the first time, and then affect subsequent boys when she carries them in utero." "You mean, like she's carrying a foreign substance?" Stahl asked. "And if you think about it, a woman who's carrying a son for the first time, she is carrying a foreign substance," Breedlove replied. "There are some proteins encoded on his Y chromosome that her body has never seen before and that her immune system would be expected to regard as 'invaders,'" he added. It's still not a proven theory and it gets even stranger. "One of the things we've only found out lately is that older brothers affect a boy only if the boy is right-handed," Breedlove said. "If the boy is left-handed, if his brain is organized in a left-handed fashion, it doesn\t matter how many older brothers he has, his probability of being gay is just like the rest of the population." I'm right handed and first born, with no other brothers.

You can give yourself a headache trying to apply all the theories to real people. Greg and Steve Lofts both are right-handed, and they do have an older brother, so maybe that's why Greg is gay. But they also have several gay relatives, which suggests it could be in the genes, except where does that leave Steve? Adam and Jared, fraternal twins, have older brothers, but they're ambidextrous. Then there's the question of how something in the womb could affect one twin but not the other. There are many more questions at this point than answers, but the scientists
60 Minutes spoke to are increasingly convinced that genes, hormones, or both — that something is happening to determine sexual orientation before birth. Adam has come up with his own theory. "I was supposed to be a girl in my mom's stomach. But my mom wished for all boys. So, I turned into a boy," Adam explained. Asked if he wished he was a girl, Adam nodded. "Do you think there was anything that you could have done that would have changed Adam?" Stahl asked Adam and Jared's mom Danielle. "I could have changed Adam on the outside to where he would have showed me the macho boy that I would want as a boy. But that would not change who he is inside. And I think that would have damaged him a lot more," she said. Stahl asked both boys if they are proud of the way they are, and both boys gave her big nods. "Yup," Adam replied. More at: http://www.cbs.com

Yep, I agree with Adam. And I know each and everyone of you are proud to be gay men and never regretted it for a day. Big hairy muscle hugs. You guys are the best.

Do You Mind Being Asked If You Are Gay?

Found myself reading yet another short but thought provoking article in the recent Details magazine and thought I'd share it.

Using our gaydar, we can almost always pick out a brother in the crowd. But is it okay when a straight person askes us about our sexual orientation? It really doesn't bother me when a women asks. I just tell her. But when a guy asks, I have to think twice.

I do so cautiously because this guy may be just inquisitive about gay life (I can handle that), or is really testing me and can have that "fag bashing" thought deep inside his brain. So it can be a coin toss where I am evasive or open in answering the question.

A funny suggestion quoted in the article by David Hauslaib, publisher of queerty.com, is "If you happen to be in a state with more than three square edges, (think Utah), then aod the subject entirely." So I guess it is up to the individual and the situation. Some of us live in places where we could face awful consequences if we reveal our sexual orientation.

It shouldn't be anybodys business. Sometimes I do think actions speak louder than words. But again size up the situation. Don't be tempted in public to slap a guy on the butt or plant a big wet kiss on his lips, or hug his pecs if you really aren't sure he's gay. Maybe the best advice may be to not ask or answer the question in casual conversation.

Dink Flamingo thinks that "straight" men perform better sex with other men than gay men do when having consensual sex

Dink Flamingo operates the gay porn site, http://www.activeduty.com

It was reported in the current issue of Details that Dink, a gay man, has been luring these guys with money to perform man sex in front of his cameras. Dink has been doing this for several years and until recently, was doing so very profitably, and under the radar of the U.S. Army.

Dink has a thing for "straight" soldiers which he freely admits to in the Details article. He goes further to say that these guys perform better sex with each other than gay men do together.
He says that these guys don't have role hangups. Either these guys aren't really "straight" or he has them high on some drug.

He tends to pick guys who desparately need the money. He pumps them up with words they like to hear. After all, these guys like to please, and obeying orders is something they do very well. So maybe Dink could be considered the best director ever or a really good con man.

But Dink is facing a temporary setback. Seven of his "actors" were identified by the Army as appearing on Dink's site. The latest news concerning one of them appears below:

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) -- An Army paratrooper pleaded guilty Thursday to engaging in sex acts on a military-themed gay pornographic Web site after a judge denied a request to dismiss the case.Pfc. Richard T. Ashley, one of seven members of the 82nd Airborne Division charged with appearing on the site, faces up to a year in prison, forfeiture of two-thirds pay for one year, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.Ashley appeared calm in court Thursday, appearing with a military lawyer and a civilian lawyer. His family sat behind him in the courtroom as the judge questioned him about his plea.Ashley, Pfc. Wesley K. Mitten and Pvt. Kagen B. Mullen were charged with pandering, sodomy and wrongfully engaging in sexual acts over the Internet for money. Mitten and Mullen, who also faces adultery charges, have pleaded not guilty.

I for one would argue with Dink's observation. Gay men know what other men want and enjoy. Plain and simple. Those of us who truly love foreplay can make it as hot or hotter as any of these guys can. After all, they are role playing, whether Dink thinks so or not. They are being manipulated into having on camera sex. While it may be for some guys, great entertainment and fulfilling a fantasy, it's nothing like the real thing.

Have We as Gay Men Matured Enough to be Taken Seriously?

Why does it seem that a lot of gay men never really grow up? Some food for thought expressed in the following article from a British newspaper web site:

Society now accepts gay men as equals. So why on earth do so many continue to behave like teenagers? When a friend heard that I had just made a documentary called The Trouble With Gay Men, his only response was: "What, just one hour?" His cynicism may well be justified. Simon FanshaweFriday April 21, 2006The Guardian
In just one hour I get to burn every bridge in the gay world I've got. I'll become the whipping boy of the more extreme political factions of the gay world, and also of the hedonists who drink and drug and whore their way up the gay pleasure food chain in search of the ultimate high. Because both groups still think it is enough to be gay in order to be good. I no longer do. And in this program I set out to expose the fact that we gay men are living the lives of teenagers, still obsessed with sex, bodies, drugs, youth, and being "gay".
I deliberately say "we" and "I" throughout: talking about cruising, saunas, too much time spent on the web on gaydar - I own up to the lot, just like my gay friends do. This is not some sanctimonious moraliser looking into the goldfish bowl; it's a gay man in his 40s looking at the big open world and wondering when we are going to grab the chance to be grown-up in a society that now regards us, legislatively at least, as equals. We have demanded a place at the table, to use Bill Clinton's phrase, but now that it is laid, some of us insist on still behaving with the silly rebelliousness of extended adolescence.
When I was a student in the 1970s, what we were fighting for was visibility. That was what we needed first, just to be seen. The difference between being black and being gay has always been that if you're black you don't have to tell your mother. But the fight just to be seen and heard ended up with us defending all of our behaviour. Because the lid had been on the pressure cooker for so long, and we were defined by sex, then in order to be truly, madly, deeply gay, we had to celebrate everything homosexual. We made no judgments about our behaviour, our morality or the morals of the culture in which we swam and into which we introduced successive generations of gay men.
Some, for instance, claimed the "right" to cruise for sex. How ridiculous. We may well enjoy it, but it's not a right. The rights and wrongs are about not being arrested for it, not being killed for it. But in public spaces the issue is not whether it's gay or straight cruising, it's about whether you offend other people. Anyone, hetero or homo, runs the risk of upsetting others if they shag in public. Now we're grown-ups we have a responsibility to make those kind of judgments. But we don't. It's still almost impossible, for instance, to wonder out loud whether it really is acceptable to walk down the main street of Brighton dressed only in a thong, just because it's gay "pride". It's fun, it's a lark, but is it antisocial? Well, we still don't stop to ask. Just shut up! It's gay, honey.
We've all spent so long being told we're bent and queer and immoral and, most recently by Iqbal Sacranie, that we are "not acceptable" and "spread disease", that we have ended up making an equivalence of every kind of sexual activity, just because it's gay. So in gay magazines, while the front section is full of holiday features and interviews with gay celebrities or cute-boy eye candy off the telly, the back is full of rent-boy ads: one I read today contains no less than seven pages of them. Very pretty some of them are too. But we've normalised prostitution. It's practically an acceptable career path for any guy with a 29-inch waist and no visible acne.
And when it comes to sex, whether it's paying for it, or being beaten, or weed on, or doing it in groups, or doing it in saunas, we make no judgments about the effects on our health, emotional or mental, or the effects on our ability to make moral judgments in the world. If you question the depths and extremes of some kinds of sexual behaviour, you run the risk of being told, as I was by the owner of the sauna I interviewed in the programme, that you're not really gay: "a straight man in a gay man's body", were his exact words.
Judgments are made in the gay man's world, of course. But they are almost entirely based on looks. Gay men primp and preen, moisturise and exfoliate. Our bathrooms look as if someone has dropped a bomb in a sample shop. Some of us have six packs implanted into our stomachs, and the meat rack hangs us out to dry if we don't have perfect bodies in a clubbing world. We still even have beauty contests. And if we had the gay lawyer of the year contest you can bet it would have a swimwear section. Briefs, I guess you'd call it.
The world has changed for gay men. I have to add the ritual disclaimer that of course there's still homophobia, but the fact is that in law we have all-but total equality. Yet we continue to behave as if we are a disconnected minority, shut out from the world of responsibility. Gay men have a lot of catching up to do. Hooked on drugs and sex and looks, we call it gay culture. The figures are staggering: 20% of gay men in London use the incredibly damaging crystal meth. Studies show that men who do are twice as likely to become HIV positive. Since 1999, the figures for HIV infections have continued to rise in the UK. Syphilis infection rates among gay men have increased by 616% in the past five years.
There will be those of you reading this whose embarrassment at me washing our dirty linen in public will be rising fast. What will Sir Iqbal and the other homophobes do with these confessions? Well, he can go right back into the shameful dungeon of discrimination from whence he came. Because gay men have fought for equality and now we have a new world at our fingertips. Some of us are ready to embrace it: civil partnerships, our ability to adopt children, our real visibility in our own communities where we contribute in so many ways, from leading the fight against Aids, to campaigns that improve public safety for everyone - this is how we now live as citizens. But to embrace it we have to grow out of our teenage years of sex and drugs and mocking the old, and embrace a future of fidelity and responsibility. We're not just following the yellow brick road any longer. We're in the real world now.

The Trouble With Gay Men will be shown on Monday at 9pm on BBC3.

I hope this documentary makes it over the pond on BBC America.

P.S. Sorry for the gap in posting. I visited my Mom for a week during Easter and that kept me busy. Hoping the Easter Bunny left each and every one of my studbuds a basket full of creamy and gooey treats. WOOF.

On this Rainy Friday, Hoping This Food for Thought and Eyecandy Brings You Enjoyment and Fullfillment

I normally don't quote Andrew Sullivan, but he must have been lucid enough to write something that I can agree with.
What say you?
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
The Next Gay Generation
04 Apr 2006 05:10 pm
Some of them are angry at my perceived nostalgia:
"As a 21 year old, Ivy-educated gay man, I find it interesting, albeit predictable, that older gay men are lamenting the death of gay culture. Frankly, I'll be much happier once drag shows and camp goes out the window. Unfortunately, I feel sincerely that the prevalence of sex shops and theaters, the celebration of farcical dress, and the obsession older gays have with a separate minority identity have done little outside give fodder to the religious right and keep us out of the mainstream. In fact, I feel that the older generation has done a great disservice by not giving us real role models and, instead, taking joy in anonymous sex in darkened theaters, dissolution of the family model, and wallowing in outrageousness. All of these things have contributed to a gay culture wherein I, as a politically active, liberal, professional, educated, monogamous, partnered, JCrew/LL Bean wearing, HIV Negative man am an unfortunate minority.
How am I supposed to support gay leadership when they seemingly endorse a culture of death (excessive partying, no interest in children, HIV, anonymous sex, etc.) and lament whenever another pit of self disrespect (i.e. sex shops/theaters, drag theaters) is closed? I truly love you and your words, Andrew, but enough is enough. Let us move on together and create a real culture with a real future and abandon the culture of separatist victimization we were forced into years ago by a repressive society."
I understand where this guy is coming from. But I don't think my essay suggests we should cling to the past. On the contrary. I wrote "Virtually Normal" for a reason and helped pioneer the idea of marriage for gay couples almost two decades ago precisely to chart such a gay future. But human beings are fallible and flawed and, well, human. While we can and should strive to move on, we need not be excessively judgmental about those in the past or present whose pace of adjustment is not so swift. I have never been an angel myself, and have often failed to live up to ideals I hold. But life is a flawed journey; and the point, at least in my Catholic soul, is the struggle and forgiveness in that struggle. I've learned that lesson the hard way. I hope my 21 year-old reader does better in his own future. He'll start from a base my own generation had no inkling of.
I might add that there's nothing to my mind in any way wrong with drag, cross-dressing or other gender-bending activities. They do not define gay life, or many gay men; but they are surely one part of gay culture and are genuine expressions of some gay men's identity. In the past, drag queens helped forge the small space in which today's 21-year-old Ivy Leaguers can now breathe. The lesson to me is that gay men should do less judging of one another. We should rather try and become the future we want to forge. And let our example, however imperfect, lead others.

WHO IS This Guy???

Big Hairy Muscle Hugs to the first guy identifying him.
Well, that was quick. No sooner than I posted this, the correct reader identified this guy.

Yes, I think he's now in the witness protection program. What a disfigured image this is. A plastic surgeon gone wild.

The answer is Kenny Rogers, and I still can't believe it. So big hairy muscle hugs goes out to Annoymous.

Fuck, What We Do In the Privacy of Our Own Bedrooms Can't Be Illegial, Can It?

Some interesting food for thought on this first day of Daylight Savings Time.

Sodomy: What Is It?
Sodomy is most commonly legally defined as any contact between the genitals of one person, and the mouth or anus of another. The word has its origins in Christianity. It is sometimes used to mean sexual deviation, though in legal contexts it is defined as above. Throughout history, "sodomites," mostly male homosexuals and bestialists, have been punished by a largely theocratically controlled government, in hopes of stamping out "ungodly practices" that might bring divine retribution against Christian society. In medieval Europe, intercourse between a male field worker and a noble woman was legally considered "sodomy," as it was thought to cause a poor harvest. The history of the concept of sodomy is tied to the Church in most every case.
Currently, there is no federal sodomy law, though some federal land falls under maritime jurisdiction, which may have sanctions in some cases. 25 states do not have sodomy laws. 5 states have laws pertaining to homosexual sodomy only, and the remaining 20 states, plus the District of Columbia, have laws covering all sodomy, even between heterosexuals.
How some states have titled their sodomy statues
Alabama: "Sexual Misconduct"
District of Columbia: "Sexual Psychopaths"
Florida: "Unnatural & Lascivious Act"
Massachusetts: "Sodomy & Buggery" but it is legal for same sexes to marry. What do they do in bed???
Maryland: "Unnatural or Perverted Sexual Practices"
Mississippi: "Unnatural Intercourse"
Montana: "Deviate Sexual Conduct"
Texas: "Homosexual Conduct" Well, that's no surprise.
Wisconsin: "Sexual Perversion"

Only For Homosexual Conduct
The five states with sodomy laws pertaining to homosexual conduct only.... Arkansas,Kansas,Montana,Nevada,Texas

The Dirty Dozen
The twelve states with the toughest maximum penalties are...
Michigan LIFE in prison for repeat offenders, 15 otherwise
Georgia 20 years
Rhode Island 20 years
Tennessee 15 years
Maryland 10 years
Mississippi 10 years
Montana 10 years, homosexual offenders only
North Carolina 10 years
Oklahoma 10 years
Washington, DC 10 years
Nevada 6 years, homosexual only
Idaho 5 years MINIMUM penalty

Other States With Sodomy Laws
Alabama
Louisiana
Kentucky
Minnesota
Missouri
South Carolina
Virginia
Utah