How 'bout we just hit the toilets straight off?

It will take a very long time to figure out what homosexuality really is.

Remember that 50 years ago, Gays were as reviled as pedaphiles are now and most people were convinced that they deserved to be.

Right now, because of political correctness, people pretend that homosexuals are just like straights, but they are not. How many straight couples want to have sex in public restrooms?

I think a lot of straight guys wouldn't mind. I could certainly see scenarios where some gentle persuasion from the right woman would not make me completely averse to such a proposition.

Well that's one, and you can count me and UG out.... 2-1 against is the score so far.

Yeah, I've had my hand held in the past, completely innocently, by both gay and straight men (the straight in my wannabe hippy days) but I'm too full of middle class repressions and hang ups to tolerate it for long.

Would you hold hands with a women who you did not like in a romantic way or were not attracted to? That would bother me almost as much as holding hands with a man. I'm not sure that it's all about middle class repressions and hang ups.

Then sorry to bother you UG but I have a number of female friends and members of my family with whom I have walked holding their hand and not felt any sexual attraction. Some have been elderly and some young and some the same age group as me but they have all simply been friends.

Some of us are able to separate friendship fom sexual desire.

I have said this before but in my experience we hate in others what we fear in ourself.

CB

I'm not sure what your story has to do with what I said, but I don't think it anything to do with me or my post.

I was pointing out that not wanting to hold hands with other men is not necessarily a sign of homophobia.

I don't enjoy holding most peoples hands and it doesn't matter if they are men or women and it doesn't have anything to do with “middle class repressions or hang ups” or even sexual desire.

I usually don't like holding hands with someone that I am not extremely intimate with or want to be. That does not mean that I can not do it to comfort someone else. It means that I don’t particularly get anything out of it emotionally myself.

Some of us are able to separate friendship fom sexual desire.

I have said this before but in my experience we hate in others what we fear in ourself.

That is nice, but, I think that most of us are easily able to separate friendship fom sexual desire. I know that it is not any problem for me.

If you are implying that I hate gay people or am afraid of being gay, you are completely off the mark and I don't really need to defend myself. However, these are the kinds of politically correct platitudes that are always used to keep people from discussing homosexuality realistically - If you don't paint us as saints, then you hate us and probably are in the closet as well.

Gay people are not saints. They are just regular people with somewhat abnormal sexual needs.

There is nothing wrong with homosexuality, but it is different from heterosexuality and lots of people want to know why. If you are so confident that being gay is OK, what are you folks so afraid of?

Queen Gertrude:

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,

If once I be a widow, ever I be a wife!

King:

'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here a while,

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

Queen:

Sleep rock thy brain,

And never come mischance between us twain!

Hamlet:

Madam, how like you this play?

Queen:

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Good Luck

Moss

If you are implying that I hate gay people or am afraid of being gay, you are completely off the mark and I don't really need to defend myself. However, these are the kinds of politically correct platitudes that are always used to keep people from discussing homosexuality realistically - If you don't paint us as saints, then you hate us and probably are in the closet as well.

See what I mean.

Gay people are not saints. They are just regular people with somewhat abnormal sexual needs.

Again, I would like to break into the debate here and point out that by most measures- if you take a survey of surveys- the 'self-identified' gay/lesbian/bi types form about 10% of most populations where any data is available, and the numbers of persons who may have had significant experience but do not self-identify as 'gay' probably stretch the percentages even further. Considering that we have always been around in any recorded historical human civilisation and are present in every human society today- with a prevalence that approaches the same as that of 'left-handed' persons- then I submit that if 'left-handed' persons are not 'abnormal', then neither are the persons or sexual practices of gay persons. Perhaps you meant to say 'minority?' Surely in a rational discussion it is not being 'politically correct' to avoid words with perjorative connotations when they are not warranted.

I would also say that while it is *probably* true that homosexuals have more bathroom sex than heterosexuals, it is most likely heavily tied up in:

a. Greater opportunity (it tends to attract police attention when men enter the women's bathrooms)

b. Lesser opportunity (in many places it is still unsafe to seek same-sex contacts through more conventional processes)

c. Habit (it used to be very, very unsafe to seek same-sex contacts in any way at all- you can't blame an oppressed minority for choosing to operate underground, and many of the older hands may never feel safe).

"S"

Some of us are able to separate friendship fom sexual desire.

I have said this before but in my experience we hate in others what we fear in ourself.

That is nice, but, I think that most of us are easily able to separate friendship fom sexual desire. I know that it is not any problem for me.

If you are implying that I hate gay people or am afraid of being gay, you are completely off the mark and I don't really need to defend myself. However, these are the kinds of politically correct platitudes that are always used to keep people from discussing homosexuality realistically - If you don't paint us as saints, then you hate us and probably are in the closet as well.

Gay people are not saints. They are just regular people with somewhat abnormal sexual needs.

There is nothing wrong with homosexuality, but it is different from heterosexuality and lots of people want to know why. If you are so confident that being gay is OK, what are you folks so afraid of?

What we're afraid of is you taking 20 years experience of living in an atypical hot-house gay environment whose equal simply doesn't exist anywhere else and making assumptions about the rest of us based on that experience. If you live in a whorehouse all you see is whores.

So why are so many gays still afraid?

I realise that there are a number of places that they would be ill advised to go, but there are places that I don't go either because I am afraid of physical assault for racial reasons, or even because people of my own race don't like outsiders.

My former home city which could be described as "white, conservative" if type cast, (it's even called the City of Churches) still has a number of thriving gay bars.... but also has a number of "haunts" where gays are in far more danger of being attacked by young thugs looking for easy victims who won't make a police report. So why go there?

I'll tell you why, most go there because they are sneaking around on another partner, sometimes same sex, usually not. When they have a problem they cry "gay discrimination" but it's not, it's just a bit of unfaithfulness or adultery that they are afraid of being caught out in, not being "outed".

Like being black, or brown, what ever... you are never going to make everybody accept you. Sexual difference frightens many people more than skin color and right wing politicians and religious lunatics play on this.

One of the strange things about politics is that you can get by if you're openly gay, for example the enormously popular (or enormously hated) Senator Bob Brown in Australia, but God help you if you get caught out having a little homosexual hanky panky and people thought you were "straight".

Gay people are not saints. They are just regular people with somewhat abnormal sexual needs.

Again, I would like to break into the debate here and point out that by most measures- if you take a survey of surveys- the 'self-identified' gay/lesbian/bi types form about 10% of most populations where any data is available, and the numbers of persons who may have had significant experience but do not self-identify as 'gay' probably stretch the percentages even further. Considering that we have always been around in any recorded historical human civilisation and are present in every human society today- with a prevalence that approaches the same as that of 'left-handed' persons- then I submit that if 'left-handed' persons are not 'abnormal', then neither are the persons or sexual practices of gay persons. Perhaps you meant to say 'minority?' Surely in a rational discussion it is not being 'politically correct' to avoid words with perjorative connotations when they are not warranted.

I would also say that while it is *probably* true that homosexuals have more bathroom sex than heterosexuals, it is most likely heavily tied up in:

a. Greater opportunity (it tends to attract police attention when men enter the women's bathrooms)

b. Lesser opportunity (in many places it is still unsafe to seek same-sex contacts through more conventional processes)

c. Habit (it used to be very, very unsafe to seek same-sex contacts in any way at all- you can't blame an oppressed minority for choosing to operate underground, and many of the older hands may never feel safe).

"S"

I chose the word abnormal with great care, but I have to admit that - to me - it is not a word with a perjorative connotation. In fact it can be used in a way to suggest superiority. I was using this definition: Adj. 1. abnormal - not normal; not typical or usual or regular or conforming to a norm;

I feel that if homosexuals only make up 10% of the population, the definition fits, but if they only make up 3% of the population, it is even more accurate.

As far as homosexuals making up 10% of the population, there is a lot of controversy about that, Some experts suggest that it may be as low as 1%. I found an interesting article on this subject:

THE NUMBERS GAME: WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATION IS GAY?

Dr. Kirk Cameron, Statistical Scientist

Family Research Institute

Talk presented at seminar sponsored by Accuracy in Media entitled, "The Gay Nineties"

Crystal City, Virginia

May, 1993

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I. Mythic Status of the 10% Figure

A. Until very recently, 10% figure has been accepted lore within media and academic circles

1. Newsweek, 2/15/93, p. 46: "For years, the gay-rights movement has sought safety in numbers. Its leaders have long claimed that homosexuals constitute 10 percent of the American population. They cited Alfred Kinsey, who interviewed thousands of men and women for landmark studies on human sexuality in the 1940s and 1950s. Activists seized on the double digits to strengthen their political message–that millions of citizens are excluded from the mainstream by anti-gay discrimination. Policymakers and the press (including NEWSWEEK) adopted the estimate–despite protests from skeptical conservatives–citing it time and again.

2. Fortune, 1991, p. 42: "Kinsey’s classic 1948 studies suggest that about 10% of American adults are homosexual, a figure that more recent surveys support."

3. Washington Times, 11/19/91, p. A3: "10 percent of American men are homosexual and 5 percent of women are lesbian."

4. Professional journals like the Family Therapy Networker, 1991: "from Kinsey’s historic study in the 1940s to the present, surveys consistently show that 10 percent of the population is either gay or lesbian–that’s 25 million people."

5. Even the head of the American Psychological Association, Bryant Welch, testified on 2/6/89 that the APA had found "in fact all the research supported the conclusion that homosexuality... is a sexual orientation found consistently in about ten percent of the male population and approximately 5 percent of the female population.... research showed that across different historical eras and in totally different cultures the incidence of homosexuality remained the same irrespective of public attitudes and prohibitions."

B. Figure is embodied in names of homosexual groups such as "1 in 10" and the adolescent support project for homosexual adolescents called "Project 10," which started in the L.A. public school system but has now spread to San Francisco and Minnesota also.

C. Proof of the pudding: so many "shocked" by much lower recent numbers reported in Alan Guttmacher-sponsored study of men aged 20-39, which estimated that only 1.1% of men had had only male homosexual partners within the last 10 years.

1. Washington Times, 4/16: "‘If everyone examines their own conscience, they know that more than one in 100 people is gay.... Common sense tells you this survey is nonsense,’ said Gregory King, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation’s largest homosexual rights group. ‘I feel the 10 percent figure is probably about right’ because many homosexuals fear to admit their sexual orientation, said Cathy Renna, co-chairwoman of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Againse Defamation."

NY Times, 4/16: "Yesterday, gay groups scoffed at the 1 percent figure, saying that even though the researchers promised respondents anonymity, many homosexuals were afraid to disclose their sexual orientation."

2. NY Times editorial from 4/17 called the new survey results a "surprise"

3. Letter to the Washington Blade entitled "Out in America": "Up until now, we have always based our estimates of the size of our community on the Kinsey studies of the late 1940s. Researchers revisiting the question in the 1970s reaffirmed that ‘one in ten’ view. Until now. A sociological study published by the progressive Alan Guttmacher Institute, that interviewed over 3,300 men throughout the country in 1991, found that only 2.3 percent of those interviewed admit to a same sex experience in the last ten years; only 1.1 percent say they have been exclusively Gay. Although most of believe in our heart of hearts that these are gross underestimates, the controversy will continue to be fueled by experts and homophobes from everywhere."

4. NY Times election poll buried: A journalism seminar reviewing 1992 nominated the NY Times for one of the most significant "buried" stories of the year. The Times own presidential election exit polls asked about voters’ sexual orientation and found less than 3% claimed to be gay. Times staffers couldn’t believe the results, being so much lower than the standard 10%, and so they did not report the story.

D. More revealing: gay leaders now admit to abusing the 10% figure for their own gain

1. NY Times 4/16: "Gay leaders have contended that the number of gay and lesbian Americans was around 10 percent, a figure that many of them suspected to be inflated. But they repeated the number often, they said, as a way of encouraging the nation’s large population of closeted homosexuals to be open about their sexual identity."

Newsweek, 2/15: "Some gay activists now concede that they exploited the Kinsey estimate for its tactical value, not its accuracy. ‘We used that figure when most gay people were entirely hidden to try to create an impression of our numerousness,’ says Tom Stoddard, former head of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund."

Entire article:

http://www.familyresearchinst.org/FRI_AIM_Talk.html

Some of us are able to separate friendship fom sexual desire.

I have said this before but in my experience we hate in others what we fear in ourself.

That is nice, but, I think that most of us are easily able to separate friendship fom sexual desire. I know that it is not any problem for me.

If you are implying that I hate gay people or am afraid of being gay, you are completely off the mark and I don't really need to defend myself. However, these are the kinds of politically correct platitudes that are always used to keep people from discussing homosexuality realistically - If you don't paint us as saints, then you hate us and probably are in the closet as well.

Gay people are not saints. They are just regular people with somewhat abnormal sexual needs.

There is nothing wrong with homosexuality, but it is different from heterosexuality and lots of people want to know why. If you are so confident that being gay is OK, what are you folks so afraid of?

What we're afraid of is you taking 20 years experience of living in an atypical hot-house gay environment whose equal simply doesn't exist anywhere else and making assumptions about the rest of us based on that experience. If you live in a whorehouse all you see is whores.

If San Francisco is a "whorehouse", it is only a gay whorehouse. Straights live like pretty much anywhere else.

Gays probably have more political power in San Francisco, than anywhere else in the world. They can be themselves without having to hide anything and they can turn the place into whatever they want.

Maybe it is a big gay whorehouse for a reason?

UG, let's take a look at what your source says about itself:

Link To CryptoFascists Here

"Family Research Institute is a non-profit scientific and educational corporation that believes the strength of our society depends on preserving America's historic moral framework and the traditional family. FRI is working to produce sound, scientific data on pressing social issues — especially homosexuality — in an effort to promote traditional policies. We welcome all who would join in the fight to restore a world where marriage is upheld and honored, where children are nurtured and protected, and where homosexuality is not taught and accepted, but instead is discouraged and rejected at every level."

I had no idea you would regard such a compromised 'source' as having any credibility, and have lost a lot of respect for you in posting this as 'evidence.' Obviously, I have no interest in continuing this discussion with you.

"S"

I had no idea you would regard such a compromised 'source' as having any credibility, and have lost a lot of respect for you in posting this as 'evidence.' Obviously, I have no interest in continuing this discussion with you.

"S"

That is too bad, but it sounds to me like you just want to avoid any opinions about this subject that conflict with yours.

I chose that source simply because it was the first listing, easily understandable and so many other's statistics afterwards seemed to match theirs. Gay friendly, or not, that doesn't change the fact that they seem to be accurate. Most experts, seem to agree that 10% is a very inflated number.

This is from Yahoo answers, but there are many simular answers all over the net and they actually added a percentage - in case of "under-reporting" - to their actual findings, so they seem objective enough:

What's the average percentage of gay people?

Are there any serious statistical/sociological studies on this?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

The best current estimates seem to be roughly 3-4% of males over 18 in the US are gay or bisexual, and 1.5-2% of women.

This is based on The Social Organization of Sex: Sexual Practices in the United States, which reports that 2.8% of males and 1.4% of females identify as homosexual/bisexual, with .9% of females identifying as exclusively lesbian and about 2% of males identifying as exclusively gay.

This gives us a base from which to work. We can safely assume that these numbers are underreported, as there is some reason in some areas of the country for GLBT to stay in the closet. The question is how much is this underreported? If we go with a nice, conservative 1/3, this gives us a range of 1.5-2% of women and 3-4% of men who are GLB.

UG, let's take a look at what your source says about itself:

Link To CryptoFascists Here

"Family Research Institute is a non-profit scientific and educational corporation that believes the strength of our society depends on preserving America's historic moral framework and the traditional family. FRI is working to produce sound, scientific data on pressing social issues — especially homosexuality — in an effort to promote traditional policies. We welcome all who would join in the fight to restore a world where marriage is upheld and honored, where children are nurtured and protected, and where homosexuality is not taught and accepted, but instead is discouraged and rejected at every level."

I had no idea you would regard such a compromised 'source' as having any credibility, and have lost a lot of respect for you in posting this as 'evidence.' Obviously, I have no interest in continuing this discussion with you.

"S"

And why not ?

I play in a Lawn Bowls team ( sadly years of silly sports have led to such ) where the Captain, " Big Ian " lives very happily with another player " Little Ian ". The team is full of gnarly old ex-cops and the like, who have all been won over by the " Ian's " openness, sincerity and sheer spirit of fun.

If they were members, thay would not pull out of a debate on the grounds that someone might disagree with them.

Sorry to disappoint, but I don't try to put cryptofascism on the same plane as scientific research or rational theorizing in discussions- might as well try engage rationally with the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazi Party as the group he's citing. Clearly, UG is not able to justify his views with legitimately academic research- which is up to him, but no need to waste my time.

The last UK census had questions about same-sex relationships. Using the statistics gathered a government department (either the Department of Work and Pensions or the Office of National Statistics - can't remember which) estimated that the percentage of homosexuals in the UK population is about 6%. Having said that I don't see that it matters what percentage of the population we are.

One of the strange things about politics is that you can get by if you're openly gay, for example the enormously popular (or enormously hated) Senator Bob Brown in Australia, but God help you if you get caught out having a little homosexual hanky panky and people thought you were "straight".

I don't think that's strange at all. It's got nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with hypocrisy which most people dislike in politicians.

So why are so many gays still afraid?

I realise that there are a number of places that they would be ill advised to go, but there are places that I don't go either because I am afraid of physical assault for racial reasons, or even because people of my own race don't like outsiders.

Ask Matthew Shepard, Jody Dobrowski or the drinkers in the Admiral Duncan. Those are three that spring to mind immediately.

Some of us are able to separate friendship fom sexual desire.

I have said this before but in my experience we hate in others what we fear in ourself.

That is nice, but, I think that most of us are easily able to separate friendship fom sexual desire. I know that it is not any problem for me.

If you are implying that I hate gay people or am afraid of being gay, you are completely off the mark and I don't really need to defend myself. However, these are the kinds of politically correct platitudes that are always used to keep people from discussing homosexuality realistically - If you don't paint us as saints, then you hate us and probably are in the closet as well.

Gay people are not saints. They are just regular people with somewhat abnormal sexual needs.

There is nothing wrong with homosexuality, but it is different from heterosexuality and lots of people want to know why. If you are so confident that being gay is OK, what are you folks so afraid of?

What we're afraid of is you taking 20 years experience of living in an atypical hot-house gay environment whose equal simply doesn't exist anywhere else and making assumptions about the rest of us based on that experience. If you live in a whorehouse all you see is whores.

If San Francisco is a "whorehouse", it is only a gay whorehouse. Straights live like pretty much anywhere else.

Gays probably have more political power in San Francisco, than anywhere else in the world. They can be themselves without having to hide anything and they can turn the place into whatever they want.

Maybe it is a big gay whorehouse for a reason?

I don't think we have anything further to say to each other. You seem determined to denigrate the whole world of homosexuals based on your experience of living in an atypical city. I'll leave you to your 'expertise' and allow others who read this thread to make their own judgement.

Unfortunately this thread is disintegrating fast. But then that shouldn't be surprising because the original premise of the opening thread was quite denegrating. Most gays I know don't cruise restrooms or the parks. But the question posed by the OP was "If they have achieved gay rights, why all the secrecy?" The implication is that gays are twisted perverts. So I would suggest that the thread be closed before further hard feelings develop. By the way, the percentage of men who have sex with other men is tremendously underreported because most studies don't take into account the sexual libido of men who will gladly accept a blowjob from any willing partner after the bars close at 2:00 a.m.

They are fortunate indeed if they are capable of any sexual activity after being in a bar until 2am.

These days I can rarely combine drinking and bonking, it's one or the other.

I don't think we have anything further to say to each other. You seem determined to denigrate the whole world of homosexuals based on your experience of living in an atypical city. I'll leave you to your 'expertise' and allow others who read this thread to make their own judgement.

All I am trying to do is be honest about something that I know a lot about from living in San Francisco and other cities with a large number of gays. I do have a number of honest gay friends, who not only agree with me, but have given me most of my ideas about homosexuality.

Men in general are obsessed with sex and with no women in the picture to soften us and change our focus with their femininity, things tend to get pretty sleazy. That doesn't mean every relationship, but it means a lot of them. If there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, we need to accept it for what it is and not pretend that it is otherwise. How can you "denigrate" a lifestyle by telling the truth about it?

I find it interesting that so many intelligent gay folks on here are not willing to admit that there is any truth at all to what I am saying; they just stick to the party line. However, as another poster said earlier, being gay is no big secret any more and I think that much of what I'm talking about is pretty common knowledge - like the fact that gay groups have been exaggerating the 10% of the population figure for many years.

I'm not trying to start any fights. I'm just telling the truth as I know it.

I don't think we have anything further to say to each other. You seem determined to denigrate the whole world of homosexuals based on your experience of living in an atypical city. I'll leave you to your 'expertise' and allow others who read this thread to make their own judgement.

All I am trying to do is be honest about something that I know a lot about from living in San Francisco and other cities with a large number of gays. I do have a number of honest gay friends, who not only agree with me, but have given me most of my ideas about homosexuality.

Men in general are obsessed with sex and with no women in the picture to soften us and change our focus with their femininity, things tend to get pretty sleazy. That doesn't mean every relationship, but it means a lot of them. If there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, we need to accept it for what it is and not pretend that it is otherwise. How can you "denigrate" a lifestyle by telling the truth about it?

I find it interesting that so many intelligent gay folks on here are not willing to admit that there is any truth at all to what I am saying; they just stick to the party line. However, as another poster said earlier, being gay is no big secret any more and I think that much of what I'm talking about is pretty common knowledge - like the fact that gay groups have been exaggerating the 10% of the population figure for many years.

I'm not trying to start any fights. I'm just telling the truth as I know it.

UG, I am trying to be patient with you. But when you say that "men in general are obsessed with sex, and with no women in the picture to soften us and change our focus with their femininity, things tend to get pretty sleazy." What the fuc_k are you talking about? That is about the most assinine statement I have read on TV in a long time. If you are not trying to start any fights, then you are doing a damned good job pissing people off...including me. Get your head out of your ass.

Are you claiming that most men are not obsessed with sex? If so, you are doing a pretty good job of pointing out just how dishonest you folks are being here.

Sounds to me like you've had an especially extreme set of gay friends, UG!!! I'll go ahead and say this: most of my gay friends and acquaintances use the bathroom for the same reasons as everyone else, and most of them are completely 'vanilla' re. sex and have no interest in S&M or kinky stuff- and I hope you're not about to say that you have a broader international gay acquaintance than I do. Perhaps, considering that 3 very different gay men (and a couple of straight men, too) are saying that you don't know what you're talking about, your opinion may actually not reflect the mainstream?

Re. the actual thread topic and 'secrecy,' which we should probably get back to: there's still a lot of prejudice and a lot of a lot of hate out there. I'm not in the closet but I'm careful because it makes sense: in many parts of the world, 'he was flaunting it' or 'he was coming on to me' are still almost socially acceptable excuses for violent crimes against men (or women) perceived as gay. Some older men who grew up in certain nations where their behaviour was previously illegal lived in real fear of being hounded from town to town and 'outed,' even in the newspapers, to keep them from getting work (I know at least one ex-army fellow who was booted from the army 50 years ago or so and then discredited in multiple cities when he tried to find work- finally he found a niche as a hairdresser- and I know another very old fellow (near 90) who still looks both ways in public when he shows his friends the academic gay research that he reads).

"S"

P.S. FP, I agree that we should watch this topic carefully. If we see more words like 'abnormal' (or worse) or more neofascist website links, it will certainly be closed. I'd like to remind participants of one of the rules of this subsubforum:

[From prohibited content list]:

* Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization

Are you claiming that most men are not obsessed with sex? If so, you are doing a pretty good job of pointing out just how dishonest you folks are being here.

I have issues with just about your entire post UG...but I think you are trying to provoke this type of reaction and you have succeeded. I know that you aren't this dumb, even if you were a Marine.

I am at a loss to understand the reason behind such subterfuge.

Lets be honest, You people have no interest in having an honest debate about this. You want to spread P.C. propoganda and if I argue with you I will most likely be banned no matter how polite and truthful I am, so why bother?

The funny thing is that I have nothing against gay people, but I'm not going to pretend that they are other than they are.

By the way, the "subterfuge" in the OPs original article has nothing on you people. You should give Fahrenheit 451 a read sometime.