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Whitop
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Toe is in the water |
Location: USA
Registered: June 2005
Messages: 73
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I recently read a very interesting cover article from TIME Magazine of last October (’05) which I found encouraging for the gay and wondering teens coming along. I checked with Timmy to see if it had already appeared here & he suggesting I post it. The complete article is at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1112856-12,00.html
The following summary was posted at gayteens.org.
Quote
Kids are disclosing their homosexuality with unprecedented regularity--and they are doing so much younger. The average gay person now comes out just before or after graduating high school, according to The New Gay Teenager, a book Harvard University Press published this summer. The book quotes a Penn State study of 350 young people from 59 gay groups that found that the mean age at which lesbians first have sexual contact with other girls is 16; it's just 14 for gay boys.
The article covers the high rate of growth among Gay/Straight Alliances in American schools:
In 1997 there were approximately 100 gay-straight alliances (GSAs)--clubs for gay and gay-friendly kids--on U.S. high school campuses. Today there are at least 3,000 GSAs--nearly 1 in 10 high schools has one--according to the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN, say "glisten"), which registers and advises GSAs. In the 2004-05 academic year, GSAs were established at U.S. schools at the rate of three per day.
Leaders of gay organizations are quoted in the article. Kevin Jennings, head of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) explains,
"We're gonna win," says Jennings, speaking expansively of the gay movement, "because of what's happening in high schools right now ... This is the generation that gets it."
In a telling paragraph the story covers young Exodus Christians:
For their part, several of the young Exodus Christians seemed more stereotypically gay--"I love that Prada bag!" a 16-year-old boy at the Youth Day squealed several times--than some of the Point scholars who had been out for years. Others had gone to Exodus with no intention of going straight. Corey Clark, 18, belongs to his GSA at Governor Mifflin Senior High in Shillington, Pa., and says he sees nothing wrong with being gay. He attended Youth Day because he wanted to better understand his evangelical church and friends who say gays should change. "Actually," he says, "I've heard so many good things about gay pride"--in the media and at school--"but I hadn't heard directly about the downside." (Emphasis added.)
The article goes in depth about the so-called "ex-gay" movement, including the divisions faced within the evangelical movements over the treatment of gays.
"Few young gays actually want to change: six surveys in The New Gay Teenager found that an average of just 13% of young people with same-sex attractions would prefer to be straight.
On the success of conferences created to help gay teens "convert" out of homosexuality, the article has this interesting item:
Carrasco says Exodus has helped him develop some heterosexual attractions, but I met very few at the conference who claimed to be completely straight. (At least two of the young men--one 21, the other 18--hooked up that week and still keep in touch.) (Emphasis added)
End quote
I found the entire article well worth reading, and in preparing this post found (there) the link to ‘Reader Responses’ and the author’s replies which I haven’t read yet. Sounds like progress.
Mac
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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It does seem to be getting easier, but by no means everywhere.
Ex gay movements are "ok" if people feel they themselves need help in realising that a relationship does not have to be same gender. A gay man or woman is capable of forming a loving relationship, even a sexual relationship with the opposite gender. Buyt we all know that instinctively.
We know the str8 boys who explore each other in every possible way (well I wish I had known a couple!) before going on to form happy heterosexual partnerships later. We know gay men who marry, raise kids and who love their wives. I have a lesbian cousin-in-law who left her husband and is now in a happy gay relatonshp. But she loved her husband, too.
Equally we know men who love other men but who are wholly heterosexual - the love is emotional and wthout sexual component. And we know gay men who love women that way. All combinations are possible under the leading "love". It is sex that gets in the way, kind of.
But with sex, certainly in a man, the healthy penis is designed to respond to physical stimuli. It will become erect and function whoever plays with it (0.9 probability for each encounter). When erect it is insertable into any relevant orifice, and that orifice will tend to induce orgasm if used correctly.
So ex gay movements can argue that "training" the brain to accept this allows people to be "cured" of being homosexual.
I have loved the same woman for almost 28 years. We arentl alwasy friends, but we love each other. I have a son, and we hav a "standard married sex life". I am able to function. But that does not mean I am not gay.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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.... I think our objective should be integration with the community. I don't like the idea of politicising experiences. Gays are NOT something different from the rest of society - they are an integral part of it.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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But society views it differently. I have a cousin, bless him,wno manages to get homophobic remarks into pretty much any conversation gratuitously. Now I know it is because he is afraid in case he is gay. But he does not know this.
While it is not "manly" to be gay, and while the non gay folks have no understanding (and how would they) of what drives a gay person, and the whole concept of anal sex between two guysis seen as objectionable, but as fun between a man and a woman is seen as great fun (go figure!), then integration will only ever be on the surface.
[Updated on: Tue, 03 October 2006 06:21]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy wrote:
I have a cousin, bless him,wno manages to get homophobic remarks into pretty much any conversation gratuitously. Now I know it is because he is afraid in case he is gay. But he does not know this.
How can someone be afraid in case he is gay without knowing it? What does he not know? - whether or not he has homoerotic feelings? That he is afraid?
(I hope this is not hijacking a thread.)
JFR
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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He is wholly camp, and, as a kid, was definitely "into boy/boy gamnes". He married very late indeed to a very maternal mature girl. His body language exudes the need for male comanionship, and he manages to introduce gay people into every conversation within 10 minutes of starting it.
He is "not gay". I know this because he says so very often indeed. He is constantly mentioning anal play (being averse to the idea that he introduced into the conversation), and simply is not in a position to admit to himself who he is.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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These are the people who refuse to believe they are gay. They are the ones who are the dangerous ones. If you were to tell him he is gay he would probobly become very annimated and maybe even violent. They cant accept the idea that they are not "normal".
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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How very strange. Why does he have so many hang-ups over homosexuality? Is he significantly older?
Do you think the same thing has ever occurred to him about you? (I don't mean you're camp or dangerously closeted, but you are married and live a straight lifestyle.)
David
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Oh, and has anyone pointed it out to him? Quizzed him over it?
I assume it is fairly obvious that he has this preoccupation even to non-gay people?
David
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In the UK, at least, I think these people are dying out. It would be difficult for a young person to become completely closeted and homophobic as it is difficult to be exposed to extensive homophobia outside the home, because of political correctness. (GOOD political correctness -- it does exist, Nigel et al...)
In the home -- well, there is still the potential for damage there, but the parents of today grew up in the sixties and seventies and are less likely to be as rigid as their own parents. And their friends are likely to be less homophobic, so once young people start to make up their own minds they are likely to pay attention to them more than their own parents.
I suspect that this type of person is rather more common in the US, presumably for religious reasons.
David
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timmy wrote:
He is a couple of years older than me.
Oh, he's ancient then. [Ducks smartly to avoid flying missiles.]
;-D
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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A veritable antique 
[Updated on: Tue, 03 October 2006 19:02]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Whitop
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Toe is in the water |
Location: USA
Registered: June 2005
Messages: 73
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Cossie,
I don't see what the "this" that you're "not really happy about" is. I think the article shows high school kids straight and gay getting together to form GSAs -- that promnotes integration. I don't know what "the idea of politicising experiences" is, and I agree with your third statement - so why not be happier?. We have an elderly male couple of long standing as a completely welcome member of our suburban apartment complex social groups. Our small resort community up-state has a younger such couple recently moved in that has become a welcome addition. And I just saw the following quote from this week's New Yorker Magazine which seems to point toward more integration as well.
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK - BOYS' NIGHT OUT
Before the nineteen-eighties, male-male partnering was a rare sight on the dance stage. With gay rights, we started getting more male duets, but they tended to be narrow in feeling. Some were agressive (gay men are real men); some were lachrymose (gay men are dying of AIDS). Few were anything else. With time, however, the male duet has grown larger, subtler. This weekend, as part of City Center's "Fall for Dance" series, Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, the founding directors of George Piper Dances, will reprise Russell Maliphant's "Torsion," from 2002. Here nobody beats anybody up or makes us cry. The two men seem to be dancing about their friendship. But forget that, even. What a joy it is just to see two men dance together, with all that male bodies can deliver (weight, shoulders). How big those guys look when they're lifted into the air! Interestingly, Nunn and Trevitt seem to be straightr; the advance articles make a point of telling us that each has a wife. So, just as with hip-hop, the minority story is being picked up by the mainstream -- a sure sigh that it's arrived. -- Joan Acocella
All best, Mac
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