I don’t personally know anyone who engages in coprophagia, golden showers, sexual torture, or nightly orgies. And I’ve never heard of anyone who insisted that others “celebrate” these things. To say that the “gay community” insists that you celebrate this stuff suggests that you are not being intellectually honest.

I have dared to contest that hyper-sexuality is harmful to gay people and that I resent it representing me as a “gay man”. In response, I have been called “Stepford”, “conservative”, and a “control freak”. So for you to insist that the “gay community” does NOT insist that I accept (or even celebrate) all forms of human sexuality suggest that you are living in denial. Have you ever heard the phrases “sex negative” or “afraid of sex”? Those were slurs that were flung against Bruce Bawer’s book _A Place at the Table_ for his suggestion that gay men integrate into straight society.

It seems that you define “gay culture” to be those things which you find unpleasant.

Wrong. I define “gay culture” as I see it and it is a topic open for discussion. I only object to those things that I dislike. I particularly dislike the fact that the “gay pride” parade claims to speak for ALL gay people and portrays ALL gay people as being accepting (or even celebrating) of cross-dressers, leather freaks, and hyper-sexual gym bunnies. The other, more normal, gay people who march in the “gay pride” parade don’t offend me at all, but I don’t understand why they choose to march with the cross-dressers, leather freaks, and hyper-sexual gym bunnies.

Self-perception theory proposes that during attitude formation, labels and the social context may indeed shape the thing itself.

Although I do believe some things are objectively good and true, for the most part about many issues, I think this stance seems right.

American culture is NOT analogous to “gay culture”, which seeks to prescribe a set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices among those who are part of it.

Only in your mind, my friend.

I don’t personally know anyone who engages in coprophagia, golden showers, sexual torture, or nightly orgies. And I’ve never heard of anyone who insisted that others “celebrate” these things. To say that the “gay community” insists that you celebrate this stuff suggests that you are not being intellectually honest.

It seems that you define “gay culture” to be those things which you find unpleasant. Then you define “the gay community” to be those who do such things.

Yet your argument ignores the fact that the overwhelming vast thundering majority of people who identify as gay have never at any time engaged in those acts nor do they approve of them.

I agree with Jimmy Gatt and Peter when they say, “‘gay’ comes from culture, not from biology or even behavior.” I guess in my mind, I have two different words that I use.

When I speak of culture, I use the word “gay”. When I sepak of attractions to the same sex, I am more likely to describe them as homosexual attractions — using homosexual in its more literal and clinical sense. But as clinical labels are inadequate for describing the whole person or the culture in which he/she lives, I don’t use the term “homosexual” in place of a pronoun.

I also agree with Michael. I think Tatachell takes his constructionist ideas to a rather illogical conclusion. True, maybe someday nobody will care who I love, but I most surely will be just as discerning as I am now. I don’t see that changing. Let’s just say that when it comes to attractions, I don’t even think twice. And that was true even before I was willing to acknowledge it to anyone else — even when I lived in a “lifestyle” that actively encouraged that I see things differently. That’s where I think Tatchell’s conclusions fall apart, in my experience anyway.

I think it is true that too many people cling to their own labels too tightly — part of Tatchell’s thesis. Whether it is a narrowly defined idea of what “gay culture” is or a broader one, or whether it is a narrowly defined idea of what it means to be gay, or homosexual. All too often, labels drive who we are and what we think, but that is true only if we let them.

I’m not a zen practitioner by any means, but I gotta tell you, I learned more about the limits of thought and labels from reading Suzuki than anywhere else. And this has led me to be suspicious of anyone who holds too tightly to a theory, or a viewpoint, or a definition. It keeps you from seeing the much larger picture, one that cannot be contained by theories, viewpoints, or labels.

It seems that some people are not attracted sexually to members of the opposite sex — but ARE attracted to the same sex. That basic biological drive or instinct is found in all cultures and even among other species.

I don’t agree with Tatchell’s implication that we are all essentially polymorphous perverse and would all be bisexual if labels, contructs and judgements became ancient history. Not me, Mr. Tatchell. I am homosexual through and through.

During feudal Japan, Samurai, merchants, farmers, and untouchables all inhabited separate and rigid social classes. Samurai followed bushido, the moral code of the warrior, and were considered to be above all of the other classes. Samurai had wives who were also samurai (a fact usually unknown to many westerners). Samurai also considered male-male love to be superior, “more pure”, than male-female love (a fact usually unknown to many westerners). The notion of a “gay man” was completely alien, as just such a notion is entirely rooted in modern Western culture.

In other words, “gay” comes from culture, not from biology or even behavior.