Thanks…

I recall those feelings in myself with some of my SSA friends (gay and otherwise). my experience as a straight guy is that as I persist past it…there is a lot of friendship and kindness there…more than is there with some of my straight friends.

It can be more personal and the compassion is fairly deep and kind.

It is deeply appreciated.

I also experience SSA friends as missing much of the bravado and some of the image management.

Thanks again for commenting…

David Blakeslee…. What you are describing in straight men seems like disgust…if you want to elaborate further, I would be very interested in your point of view.

That’s about it…. a.k.a. the “ick factor.” What’s to elaborate on? It’s not my problem.

Debbie Thurman…. You already know my take on it, Lynn. The human race is fallen. “The game of sentience” makes us sound as if we are in a Star-Trek script — that we are actually perfectible or at least capable of advancing much farther than we are in our mores. The opposite is more likely to be the scenario as we move farther from the God who created us.

Yeah… such an attitudinal view is that which is inherant in my point. That point doesn’t imply at all that we are perfectible. But that there is knowledge to be found about ourselves beyond that which man has enshrined as needfully ‘gospel.’

What you are describing in straight men seems like disgust…if you want to elaborate further, I would be very interested in your point of view.

Example: I went to Riverside Pride last Saturday. The poltical-action type booths were rarely visited. People were just enjoying a nice October day in the Park, listening to the bands. I felt sad in a way. There seems to be less desire and need for “gay” identity, “gay’ activism and “gay” community.

My guess is that no one there would have known or cared who Harry Hay was. That is probably a good thing. Certainly, no one would have considered him an “icon”.

No one cares a whole lot, unless you live in Uganda.

The Middle East (or any Muslim country) and the former Soviet Union are none too pleasant, either.

I wonder how that pessimism tracks with others in the gay community.

I am more optimistic. I am convinced that we are winning what some call the “culture wars”. Even now, it is beginning to matter less and less that you are gay. No one cares a whole lot, unless you live in Uganda.

I suspect my pessimism comes with age, that lack of hope for any change which would affect my own life. However, there is also pragmatism in my view; that which realizes straights, especially straight men, will always have a disdain for gay people, especially gay men. We are not the ‘humans’ we would say we are; we are still the fearful animal only tinkering at the game of sentience.