Do you have any friends or family who are gay?

Correction: 1983, which means I was 20. The guy who attacked me was probably a year or two older. Not sure how I got so far off on the ages, other than I was recounting more than one incident in my head at the time.

 

Please. I have a lot of siblings. Everybody dishes it out and nobody is uptight.

 

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. The point of my relating these experiences is NOT to inspire pity or sympathy. The thrust of all this is to illustrate that gay people do not, generally speaking, have the same experience of life in America that straight people do. Likewise, this forum and threads within it don't exist as venue for us to define ourselves to the world by how we have sex. The forum exists for discussion of the issues affecting gay people that make our experience of life different, and to illustrate the inequalities.

After all, if we don't speak up for ourselves and our rights, who's going to? Certainly not someone who thinks the only difference between us is how we have sex. Certainly not someone who finds it easy to just ignore all the context that informs our existence and discounts are experiences or outright accuses us of lying about them.

If you don't care that we're gay, great. Pat yourself on the back. But if your purpose in voicing that viewpoint is to question why we discuss the issues we do in this forum, then naturally I have to question what your agenda really is. I don't believe for a minute that there isn't an ulterior motive involved in answering every thread on gay issues with "why do you want to define yourselves by how you have sex?"

The answer is that we don't want to be defined only in terms of our sex lives. Other people are doing that to us. On the other hand, we have just as much right to the sexual portion of our identities and self-perception as anyone else.

Once you've made your position clear, there's no need to continue attacking us with it. If you're going to do that, then don't be surprised when you get a negative response, and don't try to paint yourself as the victim. That's beyond disgusting.

 

I just patted myself on the back and pulled a muscle.

 

Thanks for sharing that, you nailed it!!

And for those who don't realize how serious the hate/violence problem is, here is one of the latest stories illustrating reality (as it is for MANY gay people).

Watch.