The responsibilities that come with a Gay sex life are exactly the same as the responsibilities that come with a straight sex life, or a bisexual one.

There will always be people who don't take those responsibilities seriously.

I know someone very well who is a professor and has studied extensively in the area of human sexuality. In his work, he learned that it's not uncommon for some men to identify as heterosexual and yet, at times, have sex with men. I don't find this terribly surprising, nor something to condemn. If their primary identity is as heterosexual iin a world that seems to demand that we are either one thing or another, it would seem to me that our lack of acceptance of the range of human sexuality is the problem.

Deception often results in the face of condemnation. There is too much at stake for your friend to identify as gay when a large part of his identity either isn't fully there or he hasn't processed it far enough to incorporate it into his sense of who he is. No doubt, he will figure it out in his own time.

My first thought was that being a human being has responsibilities attached to it and that would certainly include gay people. The second thing that I thought of is that people in minority groups are sort of ambassadors to everybody else, whether they want to be or not. As you go through life you may encounter someone who (as far as he or she knows) doesn't know any gay people. If you act badly you'll create or reinforce any negative ideas they have towards all gay people. If you make a good impression you'll help dispell any negative ideas and maybe help establish positive ones in it's place. Again, that's not fair to put that on you and others but that's how it is.

Hi |Witch,

Amen.

Grace and peace to you.

John

What Witch said

Ditto

Every person has the responsibility over their own lives. Anything else is not freedom.  We are each charged with considering the risks and advantages of various options and then choosing well.

Indeed.

I concur with witch, it is the same with anything.

People stereotype, that will never change, so anyone who acts in a negative way portays that as the image in x or y person's mind as what all: Muslims, christians, homosexuals, tall people, smart people, atheists, et cetera... act like.

As-salaamu alaikum

-Omni

lol, witch, you're just like, the mossiah or somethin. Keep preachin' the good truth!

.

Hey -- I liked your answer DG.  I'll have to think about it some more , but it sounds very reasoned  sane.

(ducks and runs)

.

You touched on a very pertinent subject, FG.  Gay is a fairly arbitrary identity; after all, something as fluid as sexual practice isn't an automatic rallying point.  The reason we have gay is political: people who don't fit the heterosexual norm need to identify themselves and secure a future where they can enjoy the same rights as everyone else.  The issue is recognizing that gay is a conditional identity: in the world we're working towards, it wont matter wont matter which gender the pangs of love draw a person towards.  Being gay will be as irrelevant as being straight. 

The problem with that end goal is the sacrifices that countless people have had to make just to be gay.  They've identified as gay and been punished for it; that identity is a central part of who they are.  I can understand why among previous generations, there's a great deal of anger towards people from our generation who are eager to become post-gay when being simply gay took an incredible amount of courage, and now that's somethign we feel we can move beyond. 

When confronted with that, I always try to remind myself that these divisions are the consequence of second-class citizenship; it's not uncommon for victims to actually embrace the identities their victimizers have given them as one last marker of personhood.  Jews who survived the concentration camps became more pronounced in their Judaism; members of the French Legion became even more loyal patriots; those who were identified as Communists became loyal Communists.  Similarly, disparate ethnic tribes across Africa were willing to embrace just being black or African in the face of colonialism's monolothic view of them.  It's something to hold onto, even though in aftermath of colonialism, pan-Africanism didn't prove to be that powerful a uniting force.  Similarly, as gays begin to gain greater acceptance, the solidarity of being gay will give way to the ordinary divisions of public life.  Victimization can create solidarity, but we shouldnt' feel nostalgic for that solidarity when we consider the conditions that made it possible.  

That's not to say that solidarity still isn't necessary; there is a great amount of work to be done, and LGBT remains a rallying cry for dispossed sexual minorities the world over.  Not until the last teen in the far corners of the world feels comfortable with who they are, our work isn't done.  But as we begin to get closer to the finish line, at least in Canada, the common experience of gay life - a shared defiance against victimization - will dissipate, and there'll be a range of identities that we have to make room for.  Attempts to unite all of them under the banner of Queer and use that to mobilize around a common agenda of anti-capitalism is highly disingenuous.  On this issue, like others, there'll be a whole range of viewpoints and that's something to welcome. 

The lack of a common goal other than a commitment to securing legal rights means that gay should no longer remain the central tenet of a person's identity.  That's a scary prospect for whom it was, usually through the victimization forced on them by others, but it's something we're going to have to come to terms with.  Otherwise, we risk descending into the listlessness and anonymity that are an ever-present temptation in modern urban society.  This is an issue not just with being gay; boundaries around nation, race and culture are becoming much more fluid, and we can't underestimate the fear of people for whom those markers created a sense of security.  It's an issue we're dealing with civilizationally. 

.

The guy's a wunderkind

Whenever he posts, I don't feel I have to.  I'm always edified by what he has to say, but I'm still trying to figure out how a person can be that perceptive and so young at the same time.

.

The term gay came out of the early seventies and was a term used to discribe being a revolutionary. Not just a sexual being.

The Gay Liberation Manifesto of 1972 says

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/glf-london.html

The way forward

FREE OUR H EADS

The starting point of our liberation must be to rid ourselves of the oppression which lies in the head of every one of us. This means freeing our heads from self oppression and male chauvinism, and no longer organising our lives according to the patterns with which we are indoctrinated by straight society. It means that we must root out the idea that homosexuality is bad, sick or immoral, and develop a gay pride. In order to survive, most of us have either knuckled under to pretended that no oppression exists, and the result of this has been further to distort our heads. Within gay liberation, a number of consciousness-raising groups have already developed, in which we try to understand our oppression and learn new ways of thinking and behaving. The aim is to step outside the experience permitted by straight society, and to learn to love and trust one another. This is the precondition for acting and struggling together.

By freeing our heads we get the confidence to come out publicly and proudly as gay people, and to win over our gay brothers and sisters to the ideas of gay liberation.

CAMPAIGN Before we can create the new society of the future, we have to defend our interests as gay people here and now against all forms of oppression and victimisation. We have therefore drawn up the following list of immediate demands.

• that all discrimination against gay people, male and female, by the law, by employers, and by society at large, should end.
• that all people who feel attracted to a member of their own sex be taught that such feeling are perfectly valid.
• that sex education in schools stop being exclusively heterosexual.
• that psychiatrists stop treating homosexuality as though it were a sickness, thereby giving gay people senseless guilt complexes.
• that gay people be as legally free to contact other gay people, though newspaper ads, on the streets and by any other means they may want as are heterosexuals, and that police harassment should cease right now.
• that employers should no longer be allowed to discrim inate against anyone on accou nt of their sexual preferences.
• that the age of consent for gay males be reduced to the same as for straight.
• that gay people be free to hold hands and kiss in public, as are heterosexuals.

Those who believe in gay liberation need to support actively their local gay group. With the rapid spread of the ideas of gay liberation, it is inevitable that many members of such groups have only partially come to terms with their homosexuality. The degree of self-oppression is often such that it is difficult to respect individuals in the group, and activists frequently feel tempted to despair. But if we are to succeed in transforming our society we must persuade others of the merits of our ideas, and there is no way we can achieve this if we cannot even persuade those most affected by our oppression to join us in fighting for justice.

We do not intend to ask for anything.

We intend to stand firm and assert our basic rights.

If this involves violence, it will not be we who initiate this, but those who attempt to stand in our way to freedom.

The long-term goal of Gay Liberation, which inevitably brings us into conflict with the institutionalised sexism of this society, is to rid society of the gender-role system which is at the root of our oppression. This can only be achieved by eliminating the social pressures on men and women to conform to narrowly defined gender roles. It is particularly important that children and young people be encouraged to develop their own talents and interests and to express their own individuality rather than act out stereotyped parts alien to their nature.

As we cannot carry out this revolutionary change alone, and as the abolition of gender rotes is also a necessary condition of women's liberation, we will work to form a strategic alliance with the women's liberation movement, aiming to develop our ideas and our practice in close inter-relation. In order to build this alliance, the brothers in gay liberation will have to be prepared to sacrifice that degree of male chauvinism and male privilege that they still all possess.

To achieve our long term goal will take many years, perhaps decades. But attitudes to the appropriate place of men and women in our society are changing rapidly, particularly the belief in the subordinate place for women. Modern conditions are placing increasing strain on the small nuclear family containing one adult male and one adult female with narrowly defined roles and bound together for life.

I'm studying up on Indentity Politics.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/

ninja, I think that one of the things that undermined the Left in Canada and the US was identity politics.  Although part of the original intention was to socially locate those who spoke, i.e., qualify what was said based on the identity of the speaker, it very quickly became a way of marginalizing people.

*raises a candle for Free_Thinker*

Thank you for being here.

To the day when we all can be free to be our polymorphous perverse selves. No fear, just excitement in being human.

Just a Self-writing poem,

Inannawhimsey

That and gophers.

ROFLMAO

All this praise, it's too much - I can't accept it.  Thank you. 

"Does there come a responsability in a gay life?"

Hmm....I think there is as much responsibility in a gay life as there is in any life you choose.  One just happens to be gay as a footnote and will deal with things that realte to that in any form as they live their life. 

So.... no... no real responibility.  Just be yourself.

There is a point of view that there is gay or straight and that's it.  Anything else is denial, or giving in to patriarchal oppression.  I hadn't heard this in decades, until about a year ago from an older guy who just moved to Vancouver from the Chicago gay community.

Whether it's being on the "down low" because you don't want one side of your life to meet the other, or your love life is wonderfully unpredictable, I agree with Shallis--it's just part of your life that you deal with much as you deal with the other parts of your life. How you live the rest of your life is as up to you as to anyone. 

I just wanted to point out, though, that whoever you have sex with, you can't know who they have been doing what with. Sex education in the US is pretty skimpy, and their rate of HIV and other STD's are growing in minority communities.  You are responsible for your own behaviour. Make sure that you know how to enjoy yourself safely. 

I still refer to jovial behaviour as gay,   but then again me and my friends have always been a little queer ;)

As-salaamu alaikum

-Omni