Middle school is hard. Children leave the structure and relative safety of elementary school, and armed with a brand new set of hormones and "feelings,"get thrust into a school where the hall talk has moved from Pokémon to bra sizes and sex. Yes, sex. I get that. I thought I was prepared for it.

Then the middle school took my daughter and threw her in a world of sadness and despair, and I had to act fast. ...

On the first day of school, my daughter went willingly, happy for a new environment and I held my breath. I did not have to hold it for long. I got a call within an hour telling me that the principal wanted to talk to me. Here it comes, I thought. I was right; Cheyenne had made sure to tell everyone she was pagan and gay. And then something remarkable happened. They supported me and Cheyenne. Yes, they asked that she not announce to everyone (literally, because she does that) but they were not going to kick her out and would do everything to protect her from other students. The principal and teachers have become her greatest source of strength and inspiration.

It has not all been smooth sailing. She is once again on the outside of the class, since most of the children come from conservative backgrounds. Other girls will even tell her it is wrong to be gay. I do not know for sure, but I suspect the principal must have gotten one or two phone calls from other parents insisting that they expel my child. After all, many of them send their kids to Catholic school to get them away from the very influences espoused in my daughter. She is still a mediocre student, and is a constant thorn in her religious teacher’s side as she challenges every tenant of faith.

But Cheyenne has persevered and thrived.

Labels: adolescence, Catholic Church, culture, homosexuality, schools

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Many religious and social conservatives believe that homosexuality is a mental illness caused exclusively by psychological or spiritual factors and that all homosexual persons could change their orientation if they simply tried hard enough. This view is widely pilloried (and rightly so) as both wrong on the facts and harmful in effect. But few who attack it are willing to acknowledge that today a wholly different, far more influential, and no less harmful set of falsehoods—each attributed to the findings of “science”—dominates the research literature and political discourse.

We are told that homosexual persons are just as psychologically healthy as heterosexuals, that sexual orientation is biologically determined at birth, that sexual orientation cannot be changed and that the attempt to change it is necessarily harmful, that homosexual relationships are equivalent to heterosexual ones in all important characteristics, and that personal identity is properly and legitimately constituted around sexual orientation. These claims are as misguided as the ridiculed beliefs of some social conservatives, as they spring from distorted or incomplete representations of the best findings from the science of same-sex attraction.

Labels: culture, gay/straight differences, homosexuality, mental health, monogamy, professional associations, religion

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We believe in sexual freedom. We take it for granted that consenting men and women have the right to do what they like with their bodies. Sex is everywhere in our culture. We love to think and talk about it; we devour news about celebrities' affairs; we produce and consume pornography on an unprecedented scale. We think it wrong that in other cultures its discussion is censured, people suffer for their sexual orientation, women are treated as second-class citizens, or adulterers are put to death.

Yet a few centuries ago, our own society was like this too. In the 1600s people were still being executed for adultery in England, Scotland and north America, and across Europe. Everywhere in the west, sex outside marriage was illegal, and the church, the state and ordinary people devoted huge efforts to hunting it down and punishing it. This was a central feature of Christian society, one that had grown steadily in importance since late antiquity. So how and when did our culture change so strikingly? Where does our current outlook come from? The answers lie in one of the great untold stories about the creation of our modern condition. ...

Indeed, the first sexual revolution was characterised by an extraordinary reversal in assumptions about female sexuality. Ever since the dawn of western civilisation it had been presumed that women were the more lustful sex. As they were mentally, morally and physically weaker than males, it followed that they were less able to control their passions and thus (like Eve) more likely to tempt others into sin. Yet, by 1800, exactly the opposite idea had become entrenched. Now it was believed that men were much more naturally libidinous and liable to seduce women. Women had come to be seen as comparatively delicate and sexually defensive, needing to be constantly on their guard against male rapacity. The notion of women's relative sexual passivity became fundamental to sexual dynamics across the western world. Its effects were ubiquitous – they still are.

A crucial reason was the rise of women as public writers, which introduced into the cultural mainstream powerful new female perspectives on courtship and lust.

Labels: adultery, class, culture, Europe, gender, homosexuality, men, premarital sex, race, religion, sex, women

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If you met Hanne Blank and her partner on the street, you might have a lot of trouble classifying them. While Blank looks like a feminine woman, her partner is extremely androgynous, with little to no facial hair and a fine smooth complexion. Hanne’s partner is neither fully male, nor fully female; he was born with an unconventional set of chromosomes, XXY, that provide him with both male genitalia and feminine characteristics. As a result, Blank’s partner has been mistaken for a gay woman, a straight man, a transman — and their relationship has been classified as gay, straight and everything in between.

Blank mentions her personal story at the beginning of her provocative new history of heterosexuality, “Straight,” as a way of illustrating just how artificial our notions of “straightness” really are. In her book, Blank, a writer and historian who has written extensively about sexuality and culture, looks at the ways in which social trends and the rise of psychiatry conspired to create this new category in the late 19th and early 20th century. Along the way, she examines the changing definition of marriage, which evolved from a businesslike agreement into a romantic union centered around love, and how social Darwinist ideas shaped the divisions between gay and straight. With her eye-opening book, Blank tactfully deconstructs a facet of modern sexuality that most of us take for granted.

Salon spoke to Blank over the phone about the origins of heterosexuality, the evolution of marriage and why the rise of the “bromance” is a very good thing.

Men and woman have been having sex for as long as there have been humans. So how can we talk about there being a “history” of heterosexuality?

We can talk about there being a history of heterosexuality in the same way that we can talk about there being a history of religions. People have been praying to God for a really long time too, and yet the ways people relate to the divine have specific histories. They come from particular places, they take particular trajectories, there are particular texts, and individuals that are important in them. There are events, names, places, dates. It’s really very similar.

So where does the term “heterosexual” come from?

“Heterosexual” was actually coined in a letter at the same time as the word “homosexual,” [in the mid-19thcentury], by an Austro-Hungarian journalist named Károly Mária Kertbeny. He created these words as part of his response to a piece of Prussian legislation that made same-sex erotic behavior illegal, even in cases where the identical act performed by a man and a woman would be considered legal. And he was one of a couple of people who did a lot of writing and campaigning and pamphleteering to try to change legal opinion on that matter. He coined the words “heterosexual” and “homosexual” in a really very clever bid to try to equalize same-sex and different-sex. His intent was to suggest that there are these two categories in which human beings could be sexual, that they were not part of a hierarchy, that they were just two different flavors of the same thing. ...

In his book “Gay New York,” George Chauncey writes about the flip side of this, how previous to the invention of “homosexuality,” men’s sexualities were much more fluid. Do you think that’s the case?

Oh, absolutely. When you start operating on the principle that you indeed can divide people into sheep and goats, then there’s also the idea that you must divide people into sheep and goats and there are certain boundaries that cannot be crossed without reclassifying.

Labels: culture, gay/straight differences, heteronormativity, homosexuality, Marriage, men, sex, transgender issues

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Australia's greatest women's tennis player Margaret Court says she will not be deterred by gay activists planning to target the Australian Open over her views on homosexuality.

Court, who is now a pastor at a church in Perth, is staunchly opposed to gay marriage and a peaceful protest is planned at the first Grand Slam of the season next week at Melbourne Park, where a court is named after her.

The Facebook group, Rainbow Flags Over Margaret Court Arena, began in response to Court's anti-gay marriage stance and they are urging people to display gay pride colours at the tournament.

Court vowed the protest would not stop her from attending.

"Are they not wanting me to come to the Australian Open? Is that what they are trying to do? I don't run from anything," Court, who won all four Grand Slams in the same year in 1970, told The Australian newspaper Thursday. ...

Tennis Australia said it did not share Court's views.

Labels: Australia, gay marriage, homosexuality, professional associations, religion

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THIS summer, soon after gay marriage became legal in New York, my sons held a wedding for my former husband and his partner of over 30 years. The grandchildren were flower girl and ring bearers. The wedding thrust me back to the time when we faced a terrible choice and decided to stay married for the children. That’s what motivated my then husband and me to carry on our incomplete marriage for its last nine years, and that’s how we explained our actions after the divorce. It was a convenient truth, and also a self-serving one. ...

Of course we both wanted to protect our sons, who were 10 and 14. Divorce was not uncommon then, but the circumstances surrounding our relationship were controversial and would have created a scandal in our small university town, so staying married for the children helped us both feel better about ourselves and our lies. We thought they didn’t notice any change, and we were mistaken. Secrets have a way of seeping into the atmosphere. Kids are natural observers. They watch parents like hawks, and they know when something is wrong, even if they don’t know what. I desperately wanted the charade to work at home — we were doing this for the children. So covering for my husband on his two nights a week out, and his two vacations a year became second nature — he was a busy man with many meetings.

I paid a price for my silence with my closest friends, because a secret of this magnitude builds barriers. I just couldn’t bear to show them the spot I was in. And I was leery of advice. When I felt so alone, I could always remind myself what a good person I was being, sacrificing for the children. ...

If I had faced the other reasons to stay in the marriage, the burden of our lies would probably have been harder to bear. But the burden on our sons might also have been lightened. It’s not so great for kids to be told they are the cause of their parents’ behavior, especially when that’s only part of the story.

Labels: children, culture, divorce, gay marriage, homosexuality, Marriage, parenting

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Ours is an unusual friendship. One of us is a gay man who has written a book in favor of gay marriage. The other is a straight man who has written a book opposing gay marriage.

One of us argues that the advent of gay marriage could help to strengthen marriage as a social institution. The other warns that accepting gay marriage is likely to weaken the institution for everyone. Not much to agree about.

But here’s an interesting thing: Both of us are married, and both of us live or work in political jurisdictions -- New York state and Washington, D.C. -- that define marriage as the union of two persons. So we recently asked ourselves a question: What does it mean for us to disagree about gay marriage, now that gay marriage is the law where we make our homes and pursue our livelihoods?

For David, the opponent of gay marriage, what seems most important as the shouting stops is conciliation. His side must confront and reject anti-gay bigotry. Is opposition to gay marriage by itself proof of bigotry? No. But is far too much of the opposition largely fueled by prejudice? Yes. Looking to the future, is it important for all of us to understand and affirm the equal dignity of homosexual people and of homosexual love? Yes.

For Jonathan, the proponent of gay marriage, what seems most important as the shouting stops is getting marriage right, for all people. Winning the legal right is important for same- sex couples, but it’s hardly the end. Over the long run, will same-sex marriage shore up marriage’s privileged social status, or diminish it? Gay Americans and their communities all have an interest in establishing that their right to marry can support and perhaps even strengthen American commitment to the institution that is now open to them.

Supporting the Gift

What has always mattered most, to David, regarding marriage law is what he calls the gift: the possibility that a child will be raised in love by both biological parents -- the two people, the man and the woman, whose sexual union brought the child into the world. In states where gay marriage is the law, can he continue to advocate and work for that gift? Might Jonathan support him? The answer to both questions is yes.

Labels: adoption, culture, David Blankenhorn, domestic partnership, donor conception, gay marriage, homosexuality, Jonathan Rauch, Marriage, religious liberty, single parenting, unmarried parents

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American Catholics have by and large remained loyal to the core teachings and sacraments of their faith, but increasingly tune out the hierarchy on issues of sexual morality, according to a new study released Monday (Oct. 24)

The sweeping survey shows that over the last quarter-century, U.S. Catholics have become increasingly likely to say that individuals, not church leaders, have the final say on abortion, homosexuality, and divorce and remarriage.

That trend holds true across generational and ideological divides, and even applies to weekly Mass attenders, according to the survey, which has been conducted every six years since 1987. ...

The report identified two-thirds of U.S. Catholics as “moderately committed,” a group that inched up in size as the share of “highly committed” has shrunk from 27 percent in 1987 to 19 percent this year. ...

The issue of homosexuality showed one of the largest gaps between the pulpit and the pews. The portion of Catholics who say church leaders have “the final say” on homosexuality has plunged by half, from 32 percent to 16 percent, over the past 25 years, while those who say individuals make the final call has shot up from 39 percent to 57 percent.

Dillon noted that other issues have remained relatively stable, which leads her to conclude that Catholics are taking their cues from the larger culture, much like they did on birth control. ...

The loosening ties to the authority of the hierarchy may also parallel a diminishing commitment to the poor and to parish life.

In the 2011 survey, 60 percent of Catholics said you could be a good Catholic without donating time or money to help the poor, up from 44 percent in 2005. Similarly, three-quarters (74 percent) said you could be a good Catholic without donating time or money to a parish, up from 58 percent six years earlier. ...

The online survey of 1,400 adult Catholics (with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points) was conducted by D’Antonio, Gautier and Dillon in cooperation with the National Catholic Reporter, an independent newsweekly.

Labels: Catholic Church, contraception, culture, economics, homosexuality, religion

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...Jenell Paris, a cultural anthropologist teaching at Messiah College, has posed these questions and provided her own answer in her recent book, The End of Sexual Identity. Her book makes the historical argument that the very concept of a homosexual versus heterosexual identity is a relatively modern invention. ...


Was it also the 19th century when these labels gained currency in the broader culture?

Those didn't really influence the general public until the 1930s, when those words became a more common part of American discourse. So in thinking about even my own family, just to take an example, we could say that my grandfather who came of age in the 1910s probably didn't have a sexual identity. He was a fundamentalist minister, but he was a man, he was a Christian, and his sexuality got wrapped around those concepts, not his identity understood in terms of his sexuality.

My parents remember getting a sexual identity in the 1960s. So these ideas came a little late for them but they both can talk about realizing, "Oh, I am heterosexual; there is such a thing and I am going to claim one of those labels for myself." I, growing up in the ‘80s, always had a sexual identity. So we can see across the 20th century there has been a deeper and deeper entrenchment of that concept in American self-understandings.

And these changes correspond to how different generations have understood the role and meaning of sex in human life?

Right. If anything, sex was considered a more communal element of life. It had to do with reproduction, with family, with extended family, and with church and community. Sexual identity categories radically individualized the meaning of sex in the human experience. So the meaning of sex is now located primarily within the individual and her private, innermost feelings.

As an anthropologist, why do you think these changes occurred?

I think there are many different social factors around increasing individualism, even urbanization and other factors that don't seem directly related to sex. Urbanization made it possible for people to move far away from their families and have relationships or sexual experiences that their kin would never even know about. So people were gaining more freedom to cultivate sexual experiences that were more individualized, and I think this influenced the scientific community to categorize sexuality in ways that were more individual and less religious and less communal.

Labels: Christianity, culture, gay/straight differences, heterosexual couples, homosexuality, religion, sex

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The culture war over gay rights has entered the impersonal world of e-commerce.

A handful of advocates, armed with nothing more than their keyboards, have put many of the country’s largest retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and Wal-Mart, on the spot over their indirect and, until recently, unnoticed roles in funneling money to Christian groups that are vocal in opposing homosexuality.

The advocates are demanding that the retailers end their association with an Internet marketer that gets a commission from the retailers for each online customer it gives them. It is a routine arrangement on hundreds of e-commerce sites, but with a twist here: a share of the commission that retailers pay is donated to a Christian charity of the buyer’s choice, from a list that includes prominent conservative evangelical groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.

The marketer and the Christian groups are fighting back, saying that the hundred or so companies that have dropped the marketer were misled and that the charities are being slandered for their religious beliefs.

The national battle was ignited in July by Stuart Wilber, a 73-year-old gay man in Seattle. He was astonished, he said, when he learned that people who bought Microsoft products through a Christian-oriented Internet marketer known as Charity Giveback Group, or CGBG, could channel a donation to evangelical organizations that call homosexual behavior a threat to the moral and social fabric.

Labels: Christianity, culture, homosexuality, religion

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FOR a few years now, I have watched the Emmy Awards with a mixture of amazement and envy. Did that actor really kiss the guy next to him when his name was announced? Did that composer really say I love you to his male partner in his acceptance speech? Looking forward to tonight’s Primetime Emmy awards, hosted by the openly gay actress Jane Lynch, I can’t help but think how far we’ve come since my own encounter with the awards show in 1976.

I was painting in my studio in downtown Los Angeles when the phone rang. Not surprisingly, it was my “friend” Alan Shayne (we used the word friend in those days, even though we had lived together for 18 years). He sounded terribly excited. At that time, Alan was the president of television at Warner Brothers. Before becoming president, he had persuaded me to create collages for four holiday specials he had produced for CBS. Now he told me that he had secretly put up my name for an Emmy in graphics for the 1976 Valentine special “Addie and the King of Hearts,” and I had been nominated. I couldn’t believe it.

That night we talked about the show and the two tickets I would receive. We had been told of Warner Brothers’ hesitation in making Alan president because of our relationship, and had been advised by helpful friends not to rub it in people’s faces. So Alan always attended business parties with women, never with me. But this was the Emmys, and I was nominated for Alan’s show. Shouldn’t we be together?

We went back and forth but finally decided it would be better if I went with a woman, and that was the end of it. In any case, I didn’t think Alan would miss much.

Labels: culture, homosexuality

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...And blogger Alyssa Rosenberg summed up the biggest objection. “I think it’s actively unhelpful,” she wrote, “to gay and straight men alike to perpetuate the idea that all same-sex roommates, be they puppet or human, must necessarily be a gay couple . . . Such assumptions narrow the aperture of what we understand as heterosexual masculinity in a really strange way.”

Strange indeed. It teaches the ridiculous and deeply destructive idea that same-sex friendships are necessarily sexual. And that’s the last thing we want to teach our children, because it will spell the end of friendship, particularly friendships between young men.

Yet that is precisely the message that’s communicated over and over. It’s the reason gay apologists want to eroticize Bert and Ernie, David and Jonathan, Jesus and the apostle John, and Achilles and Patroclus from Homer’s Iliad.

Some in our culture are apparently incapable of understanding close friendship without sex. And that flies right in the face of a Christian understanding of friendship.

Labels: culture, friendship, gender, homosexuality, men, sex

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A private college outside of Chicago has begun asking potential students about their sexual orientation in a move the school says is aimed at increasing campus diversity.

Here’s the question on the application for those students hoping to attend Elmhurst College in the fall of 2012: “Would you consider yourself to be a member of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community?” The three multiple-choice answers: “Yes,” “No” and “Prefer Not to Answer.”

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the addition of the question to the school's application makes the college the first in the U.S. to ask potential students directly about their sexual orientation or gender identity.

School officials say that, like questions about race or religion, the question is completely optional and will have no impact on an applicants' chances of admission. Still, those who answer “yes” may be eligible for a scholarship worth up to one-third of the cost of tuition, according to the paper.

Labels: culture, homosexuality, universities

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Michele Bachmann followed up on her Iowa straw poll victory with two Sunday interviews, in both of which she was given ridiculous questions about homosexuality. The gay card seems to be the feint of choice for Democrats and their proxies.

On Meet the Press, David Gregory played back audio from an education conference held about seven years ago, in which Bachmann referred to the gay lifestyle as "personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement." He then asked Michele Bachmann if she could clarify. She answered, "I'm running for the presidency of the United States; I am not running to be anyone's judge."

Gregory asked her if she would ever appoint a gay or lesbian subordinate. Michele Bachmann answered that she would simply hire whoever was qualified. (The same answer she gave earlier about hiring atheists.)

Then Gregory asked her, "Can a gay couple who adopt children in your mind be considered a family?" At last Bachmann put the brakes on Gregory: "You know, all these questions aren't about what people are really concerned about right now."

Though less obnoxious, a similar series of questions surfaced in Bachmann's interview with Jake Tapper. Her answers in both interviews were succinct and professional. CNN's Anderson Cooper led a program examining her views on homosexuality.

Michele Bachmann's statements are perfectly defensible. You have to have a great deal of inside information about the gay and lesbian community to read what she has said correctly. I'll do my best to offer an alternative reading.

Labels: adoption, bisexuality, culture, homosexuality

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...Now, I don’t know a lot of “best friends” who share bedrooms in an apartment that size, but fine, let’s roll with that part. What I want to note is that the (presumably somewhat tongue-in-cheek) observation that puppets “do not have a sexual orientation” is just manifestly false. Lots of the puppets on Sesame Street are portrayed as having a “sexual orientation,” insofar as they’re shown in romantic couples.

Oscar has his girlfriend Grundgetta. The Count has been involved with a series of different Countesses. The Twiddlebugs are your standard nuclear family. And of course, there are no shortage of one-off songs and sketches centered on families or unmarried couples. Muppet squirrel girl groups sing about their boyfriends. The human characters Gordon and Susan were married from the outset (and later adopted a child), while Maria and Luis famously got married on the show.

What all of these have in common is that they’re heterosexual couples. Because it’s regarded as the default, that “sexual orientation” is invisible. But, of course, it’s still there—and nobody imagines that simply depicting all these straight couples and families somehow counts as injecting inappropriate “adult” or sexualized material into a children’s show. ...

That omission is not neutral. The refusal to acknowledge the existence of same-sex relationships on a show that otherwise routinely celebrates family is, in itself, a message and a value judgment. ...

Update: Doug Mataconis articulates what I think is the natural reaction to this kind of argument, which is that “the mission of Sesame Street doesn’t really have much to do teaching children about sexuality at any level.” Whether it’s the “mission” or not, however, that’s what it does. It’s just that when it teaches us about heterosexuality, the teaching is invisible.

Labels: children, culture, gay marriage, heteronormativity, homosexuality

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The makers of Sesame Street say characters Bert and Ernie will not marry in a same-sex ceremony despite an online petition calling for the union.

Campaigners say the best friends should marry as a way to encourage tolerance of gay people.

Nearly 7,000 have signed the petition, with more than 3,000 joining a Bert and Ernie Get Married Facebook page.

A statement from the show's makers said: "They remain puppets and do not have a sexual orientation."

But they conceded that the pair are "male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics".

The confirmed bachelors have lived together for 40 years and sleep in the same bedroom, albeit in single beds.

"Bert and Ernie are best friends," the statement from Sesame Workshop added. "They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves.

Labels: children, culture, friendship, gay marriage, homosexuality

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The ongoing controversy at St. Cecilia’s Church in Boston over the scheduling, postponing and re-theming of a Mass originally planned to celebrate Boston’s gay “pride month” has brought to the surface issues that extend far beyond the boundaries of one parish or archdiocese. The controversy touches not only on the subject of the pastoral care of the Church toward those with same-sex attractions, but on the much larger matter of the purpose of the Church’s pastoral care to anyone and everyone: Whether the Church, her priests and parishes will faithfully, lovingly and courageously care for people with the fullness of the Gospel; or whether her ministers and ministries — perhaps out of too much fear to give offense, a lack of faith in the teachings of the Church, or a faint-hearted notion of what true love demands — will dilute the Gospel of its saving power by stripping it of the uncomfortable and countercultural teachings that some listeners most need.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, homosexuality, religion

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...As a gay man, I have lived in a world created, propelled and dominated by testosterone. I have loved it, been entranced by it, obsessed by it, crushed by it, exposed by it, humiliated by it and also exhausted by it. The gay male world is in some respects women's revenge on men - because everything women deal with on the testosterone front is doubled and then inflicted on other men.

In the long run, it makes sense to settle down and see this raging, deranging horniness/temper decline in one's life, whether you're gay or straight. Marriage has had this effect on me in ways I never fully expected. Yes, men can domesticate men, even if not as effectively as women can. ...

But back to the gay angle. Because there is so much more physical and psychological equality in a male-only sexual culture, the traps and tragedies of straight men's testosteroned lives in interaction with calmer, saner women, may not be so common. Yes, hearts are broken, diseases caught (by far the biggest drawback), cruelties unleashed. But there is also more civility than you might expect. Very few fights break out in gay bars over emotional rivalries. Aggressive, unwanted pursuits of beloveds are less likely, because guys can tell guys to fuck off and mean it much more successfully than less physically imposing and more decorous women. When you're rejected, you are more likely, as a man, to know it's only superficial, because you too are superficial, and perhaps recover more quickly from the blow to the ego.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, gender, gender differences, heterosexual couples, homosexuality, men, sex

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New York gay about town and Barneys creative director Simon Doonan just sold a manuscript for a diet book called Gay Men Don't Get Fat. While this is true, the real reason why gay men don't get fat might not be the most marketable message. ...

Gay men, unlike their straight counterparts, don't have the luxury to stay in "fighting shape" just long enough to find a partner before letting their bodies fall to [junk] afterwords. No, gay men have to get buff, get married, and stay buff. Why? Because of three-ways, obviously. I'm going to let you in on a little secret: There are countless committed gay couples out there who like to either play on the side or invite guest stars into their beds. And you're not going to get any A-list guest stars if you're giving D-list torso with a four-star gut. Yes, gay men go to the gym to stay competitive, but since the man-eating marathon doesn't end after marriage, they just keep on competing and competing until death do they part.

The funny thing about the gay competition is that, because men (especially of the gay variety) are so visually stimulated, the only piece on the chess board that matters is having that traditional lean body. If straight men are lacking in some area, they usually make up for it by becoming rich or powerful, things that some women (see: Real Housewives of Orange County) find just as attractive as a washboard stomach dusted with natural body hair. But for gay men, only body will do.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, homosexuality, men, open relationships

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A 3 ½-year-old named Harry was playing at home in Los Angeles recently when his father walked in with a Target shopping bag. Inside was a special gift for the little boy: a sparkly princess Barbie doll.

“You could hear the gasp of excitement,” recounted Harry’s mother, Lee. “It just made his whole world.” ...

In general, researchers say, the behavior of very young children may not be a strong predictor of their adult sexual orientation. “Even when the child has extremely gender variant behavior at 4, it doesn’t necessarily mean the child will be gender variant at 10 or 15,” said Dr. Edgardo J. Menvielle, who directs the Gender and Sexuality Psychosocial Programs at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “It’s possible they will remain who they are and they may also change in a variety of ways.”

In other words, parents have to wait, a limbo that many find unbearable. Some rush to aggressive advocacy. Diane Ehrensaft, a therapist in Oakland, Calif., said that a parent might say to her, “ ‘I know my child is transgender and I’m ready to go with hormone blockers.’ ”

Her response? “Whoa, not so fast.”

Labels: boys, children, culture, gender, girls, homosexuality, parenting, schools, transgender issues

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