The BEST of Lifelube - "Whole Milk - Never Blend In" From Friday, November 14, 2008

Whole Milk - Never Blend In

Chris Bartlett reviews Milk

[opens nationwide November 26]

Read more from Chris on LifeLube here

I went to see a pre-screening of Milk, the new feature film about Harvey Milk's life, with Sean Penn in the lead role. The movie was fantastic. I was in a theater full of Philadelphian queer activists and allies who represented all generations of our movement. There was the lesbian who helped found Giovanni's Room (our still running fabulous gay bookstore), many of our key political figures, AIDS activists who have been fighting for decades, fired-up youth, people of color, transmen and transwomen. That set the perfect scene for the movie itself-- a celebration of the power of gay communities at their best.

I started crying within the first two minutes of the film. The opening scenes (I'm not giving anything away here) show 1950s era bar raids-- police pushing hapless gay men into paddy wagons; the look of fear and resignation among the gays; and a wonderful moment when one angry queen throws a drink at the camera (go Sister!). Director Gus Van Sant from the very opening paints a picture of the tremendous gains we have made in queer organizing since that time, while also ironically noting that we are fighting many of the same battles of the 1970s. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and the movie is a remarkable reminder of what has often been forgotten by our gay movement.

It seems almost odd that this film could come out at this time. The ongoing battle against Proposition 8 so mirrors one of the major dramas of the film: Milk's spearheading the efforts against the infamous Briggs Initiative (Proposition 6), which sought to ban gay teachers and their allies. Watching all of the protest, marches, and advocacy was a very spooky deja vu for me. Perhaps the most telling example of this deja vu is a marvelous moment when Supervisor Tom Ammiano, playing himself (as a teacher who confronts Briggs), shouts "you're trying to take away my job!" But it is spooky to see that Ammiano's hair is gray, and that he has not been made up to look 20something. He is the adult version of himself transported by time machine back to the Briggs Demonstration. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It's bittersweet, almost, to see that the organizing against the Briggs Initiative succeeds-- it makes a critical viewer wonder what we are doing wrong nowadays.

Delightful moments include the wonderful portrayal of Cleve Jones (of AIDS Quilt fame) by Emile Hirsch. Hirsch brings out the sweet combination of Cleve's youthful bravado, ageism, and love for elders. When Milk first attempts to get Cleve to join in the gay liberation battle, Jones calls him "Old Man" and laughs in his face. But by the end, you can see the beautiful mentorship between Milk and Jones... and you can see the ways that Milk's lessons would live on in Jones' future organizing. It's all there.

Penn as Harvey Milk is really incredible. Milk protégée Anne Kronenberg reported many a double-take during the filming-- they just look so much alike! And Penn also brings out the wonderful paradoxes in Milk's behavior-- the flirtatiousness, the naiveté, the seriousness, the genius, and the bullying. And Penn plays Milk as I always had imagined him-- a mensch on a mission. There is such a sense of self-awareness and destiny. It's also possible from viewing Penn's performance to see what it means to be a leader-- the commitment that is required, the cost to relationships and family, and the charisma and charm that is required to generate a Tribe.

And to me the main story of the movie is the power of Tribe-building. Harvey does it with genius-- including all of the folks who, until the 1970s, had largely been outside political power networks. In the film, we see Milk's deft ability to build a coalition of progressive people-- gays, people of color, elders, union rank-and-file, youth, and others. Though he was a gay leader, he was far greater than that. As he says, he is there to lead "all the people".

The portrayal of the dramatic events leading up to Milk and Moscone's assassination is compelling and direct. I had hoped for a complex portrayal of Dan White (the assassin) by Josh Brolin, and I think he did a not bad job. We get a little picture into his life: the pressures, the conservative background, the police influence. In the end, the senseless assassinations seem unavoidable.

I've seem the documentary "Times of Harvey Milk" numerous times in my life, and there were moments when I felt transported back to that telling of the story. Both films are beautiful and different-- I recommend seeing the documentary before the movie to give you some background that isn't available in the feature. Notably, Van Sant omits the part of the story that occurs after Milk's assassination-- the trial and the dramatic White Night Riot. I was glad that my friend Micah had told me this ahead of time-- so I wasn't disappointed to miss the drama of police cars burning in the night. But I think Van Sant (and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black) were smart to omit the post-Milk trial and tribulation-- because really this story is focused on Harvey-- and when he is murdered, a new story begins.

Lesbophobia in a Gay Bar: A Personal Account

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Zach Stafford

The other night I went to a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City and left feeling like a broken piece of a larger, broken gay community that doesn't seem to be whole.

As I walked into the bar, I was excited to see drag bingo being played on a moderately busy Sunday evening, and an array of different kinds of people.

This was New York to me, the New York you always hear about: fun, vibrant, diverse.

My friends decided to stand next to a group of people in front of the drag queen who was moderating bingo, and we befriended them instantly. This group, like mine, was a mixture of lesbians and gay men.

While my friends, new and old, played bingo alongside the other bar-goers, I moved to the restroom for a moment. During this break from bingo, I suddenly heard the drag queen yell over the mic, "Hey, I know you're lesbians and all, but this is a gay bar!" among a few other hateful comments.

I let that my brain absorb what had happened, and I thought, "Wait, did a man impersonating a woman just yell at women for being in a 'gay' bar?"

When I got back to my friends, I saw that the lesbians of the group were clearly pissed off and confused; one friend pulled a bartender over to ask him why they were being targeted by the drag queen's hateful remarks when they were paying customers just wanting to play bingo.

The bartender looked at us and responded, "I can't kick you all out, but I can say that you all should probably leave. You're not going to get served anymore."

This stunned all of us, and in complete anger one of my friends started yelling at the bartender that she was being denied service because she was a lesbian.

She said, "I am staying and finishing my drink. You will just have to deal with me being here, a paying customer playing bingo." The bartender shrugged the statement off, rolled his eyes, and walked behind the bar.

By this time, a gaggle of older gay men who had been watching this happen began yelling things at us: "This is a gay bar! Go home, lesbians!" "Why do you have to be here?" "Don't you people have your own bar?" I decided to talk to these men.

I approached two of them, but one looked at me and said, "You should leave here, too. You don't belong, either!" This came off as racist to me, and I responded accordingly to the older white man: "Sir, you should be careful with how you word that sentence; you're at risk of sounding racist along with already being misogynistic."

He glared at me and once more said, "Leave!" while grabbing my half-full drink, trying to pull it away from me, as the bartenders watched in apparent support of his actions. At that moment I pulled back, yelling, "Excuse you, I am not done yet, and do not touch me!"

I drank the rest of my beverage and slammed down my drink in front of them, but once again, they insisted that I leave along with my lesbian friends.

Finally, I looked at the bartender with hopes of help, but he just shook his head at me. His only response was, "Don't provoke them." With that statement I went for my coat and my friends, who had each been individually cornered by a combination of staff and the older regulars who frequented the bar. We left, defeated.

With the letters L, G, B, and T we see different identities being pushed in tandem in order to present a united front. At times this has caused controversy and turmoil within the "gay" community, but with recent advancements in legal rights, we seemed to be piecing together a more equal future and even beginning to look more whole.

But I want to point to this moment above and ask us, as a community, to look within our own group and recognize the ways in which we are fragmenting each other.

The incident that I went through is not rare, and many of my lesbian friends can point out past moments in which they were harassed for being in a gay bar.

Although I understand the importance of having certain spaces for certain groups, we should not be subjecting women within our own community to the same discrimination that we are fighting against, whether we happen to be in a gay-male bar or not.


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[VIDEO] God Loves Gays

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Jordan Bach

The anti-homosexuality bill known to many as the "Kill The Gays" bill has been put back on the table for consideration in Uganda.

The proposed legislation would deliver a life sentence in prison for any consensual gay sex act, and the death penalty for gay sex acts by a person with HIV.

Driven mostly by religious fervor, the bill is a searing reminder that, for so many human beings around the world who are born gay, life does not "get better."

Upon hearing this news, I felt an almost unbearable sadness for these oppressed men and women. In videos posted online, their deep-rooted shame is palpable, and I see myself in their faces, in their speech, and in their dreams for their lives.

I cannot separate myself from them. I know that whatever is happening to them is very much happening to me, and to every one of us.

This week, I felt a resolve to do something about it. I recorded my first YouTube video with the intention of illuminating the fact that, despite everything we've heard, God loves gay people.

Though it has never been my goal to convince non-believers, I'll point out that one needn't condemn spirituality simply because a handful of religious extremists has misinterpreted holy scripture; that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Instead, I urge gays to look inward and perceive their own very personal love -- that is God, and it will save you and, indeed, the world.

Gay Men and Women Are Not More Racist

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Laurence Watts

It was with huge dismay and much gnashing of teeth that I read Marten Weber's piece here on The Huffington Post, "Egg, Banana, and Coconut: Are Gays More Racist?" The piece does the LGBT community a great disservice.

Aside from a closing paragraph in which he concedes his assertion may be wrong (too little too late, I'm afraid), his article purports to demonstrate evidence that "the gay world is full of narrow-minded, bigoted racists." If I may, I would like to share with you my thoughts.

Mr. Weber's recurring theme for why gay men are racist is essentially that one is racist if one does not want to sleep with a man of Asian origin.

Presumably the same would be true if you have no desire to sleep with a black man. The absurdity of this statement can be summarized by pointing out that Rick Santorum is not homophobic because he doesn't want to sleep with men, but because he wants gay men and women banned from the armed forces, opposes same-sex marriage, and wants them banned from adopting children.

Just because someone isn't sexually attracted to someone of Asian origin does not mean they wouldn't want to work, live next to, or socialize with him or her, or that they believe they are somehow naturally superior to them.

Weber is confusing bluntness on "hook-up" sites with wider social judgements based on ethnicity. Racism is a strong word, and Weber does an injustice to us all by wielding it so inaccurately.

Another piece of Weber's "evidence" for racism in the gay community is the existence of separate bars for Asians and "Asian-lovers." But bars exist for every preference in the gay community, including bears, twinks, chubs, and leather-fetishists.

The specialization of such bars occurs because that is the will of their clientele and, more widely, the free market, not because of any law or statute or because any gay bar would turn away someone on the basis of their ethnic origin.

Weber seems to regard any kind of labelling as derogatory. For him terms like "rice queen" or "potato queen" have negative connotations and should not be used.

He believes that porn sites labeling certain sexual material as "interracial" show "how far away we are from an equitable, accepting society."

He is missing the point that all of this is about sex, nothing more and nothing less. Reversing his assertions, he presumably believes that the world will not be equitable until every 18-year-old gym bunny will willingly copulate with an obese octogenarian.

There are, of course, those who already happily do so, but they do so because that's what floats their boat, not because they are somehow free of the shackles of hormonally driven sexual attraction.

A possible "motive" that Weber proffers for gays being racist is that homosexual attraction may be at least partly rooted in identifying with the subject, which is to say not only do we want to shag a would-be boyfriend, but we also want to be like him.

He claims this is absent from heterosexual attraction, which would obviously explain why there are no heterosexual racists in the world. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

Weber seems oblivious to the fact that identification with the subject of one's attraction is not limited to skin colour or ethnic origin. It includes qualities such as assertiveness, intelligence, creativity, and sense of humour, to name just a few, and it is by no means unique to homosexual attraction.


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We're Not Friends, So Dont Call Me 'Girl'!

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Terrence Phearse

A random person comes up to you at an all-too-chic soirée and says "Girl, where did you get those shoes? They are fierce!"

You look over your shoulder and around the corner to make sure that you, a male, are the person being addressed. Hmm... no one is standing behind you, so you are indeed the one being addressed as "girl." But here you are tailored in menswear, with a full face of facial hair.

Obviously, this is the stranger's attempt at identifying you as a homosexual aloud.

I'm no stranger to that.

Some gays would happily respond with the tumultuous story of how those "fierce Prada shoes" were the last pair at the Barney's warehouse sale, and how the shoes were marked down to $399, and how they nearly died fighting to get them.

But words are things, and they are powerful. You have to be careful about the words you allow to be used around you, because they eventually get into you and become a part of you. Coming from a stranger, "girl" can send up a red flag as a pejorative for a gay man, so my mind quickly crafts a witty and somewhat rude response: "Oh, thank you, 'fierce' is how you pronounce my last name, and we're not friends, so don't call me 'girl.'"

The same rule applies for straight guys: "Don't 'bro' me if you don't know me!" Make sense?

"Hey, girl, hey!" "What's the tea, girl?" "Girl, hurry up and call me back!" These and similar expressions should be reserved for and used in good fun with close friends and family, as terms of endearment.

"That's a title exclusively for friends and people who randomly do you a favor," a friend exclaimed. I wholly agree with him.

Am I saying that women should not refer to their close gay friends as "girl"? No! Call your best gay friend "girl" if he is comfortable with it; you have a bond.

Just don't go blabbing out the word to everyone you see walking down 8th Avenue in Chelsea if you've had too much to drink. Capisce?


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Pieces of Meat: Do Gay Men 'Deserve' to Marry?

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Justin Huang

Last June I was sexually molested by another gay man during L.A. Pride. It's not worth getting into details, but suffice to say, this wasn't your run-of-the-mill dance-floor groping.

I was in a dark, unfamiliar room, alone, powerless, terrified. As I walked home that night, I turned to look back at West Hollywood, and I wanted to burn it to the ground.

I've been called a faggot while taking a punch, alienated by people I love, told I'm ugly and worthless, but this? This was dehumanizing.

I was a piece of meat. And it happened during a celebration of LGBTQ identity, and it was done to me by a gay man. Pride? Proud of what, exactly? The question haunted me for weeks. I couldn't sleep.

Two weeks later, the New York Senate passed the Marriage Equality Act, effectively legalizing gay marriage in one of the most populous states in America.

New York City is arguably the capital of the New World; this was quite possibly the most significant domino piece to be toppled thus far, and now with Maryland following suit, the legalization of human love is more than a pipe dream.

I was sitting at the LAX airport when I heard the news, waiting to board a flight to San Francisco. My phone buzzed, and a text popped up from a friend: "Wanna get married in NYC?"

At the time, it was bittersweet for me, personally. Later, on the plane, as I watched California sprawl beneath me, I wondered if gay men deserved to marry. Is it too late for us?

The first time I ever heard talk of gay marriage, I was probably around 10, and I was listening to my aunts and uncles spout about politics at a family reunion.

It was becoming a hot-button issue at the time, and while I still didn't quite grasp exactly what gay people were, I was one of those kids who liked to pretend that they could keep up with adult speak. "Why do gay people want to get married?" I asked my uncle.

My uncle laughed. "Crazy, isn't it? Listen, I know gay people personally. And believe me, none of them want to get married. Why would they? They just screw each other until they drop dead of AIDS." His wife shushed him and told me to go play with my cousins.

As I walked around S.F. Pride last year, this conversation popped back into my head. I watched as people held signs proclaiming "Marriage Equality" and "Love Is Equal," and I wanted to join them, but I couldn't.

I don't think people quite comprehend the profound effect it has upon a group of people when they are told that their love is not valid. My generation of gays has grown up with the notion that we aren't equal, that our feelings are weak shadows of straight love.

Is it any wonder why we have such self-destructive reputations of promiscuity, drug use, and abuse? These seem to be the main accusations that anti-gay-marriage activists dole out. What a vicious cycle. Gays can't marry because we're all sluts... and we are sluts because we can't marry.

I found a quiet place under a tree at Dolores Park, where the S.F. Pride festivities were taking place. I took in the sheer volume of the crowd, every color, age, gender, and size possible, a gathering of people who had in common the fact that they were different.

People smiled at me, and I smiled back. It was beautiful, and there was a Great Hope that permeated throughout the crowd. For the first time in a very long time, I cried. Not because of what happened, but because -- despite it -- this Great Hope overwhelmed me.

I realized then how momentous this was, how someday I'd be telling my grandkids about how I was at S.F. Pride the weekend after New York legalized gay marriage.

And it had nothing to do with how one piece of meat treated another piece of meat on a drunken night. This is a battle, one of the few in my life in which I am not just an army of one but part of a greater movement that is fighting not just for gays but for humankind.

What is marriage? It's more than a few signatures on a piece of paper, and it's more than our needing recognition. Marriage is a shining hope that we can aspire to.

It gives our love a reason and a meaning. It narrows our search to one person. It makes the idea of a soulmate seem less like a silly romantic comedy for straight people.

Sure, none of this may exist, and monogamy and marriage may just be outdated institutions. But don't we deserve the opportunity to give it a go as much as the next person?

One day, I will marry. I'll have a wedding ceremony, maybe on an idyllic beach, and I'll invite everyone I know. When it's time to cut the cake, I'll smear it on my husband's face and let him lick it off my fingers. We'll have a honeymoon, somewhere I've never been, like South America or Australia, and I'll forget to pack my cell phone.

Fast forward a few years, and I'll be sitting in the living room watching our kid play as we unwind our day. I'll be the typical Asian parent ("Educational toys only!" "No TV on weekdays!" "Finish your rice!").

But I'll also teach our kid about how lucky we are to be a family, and how my friends and I fought and yelled, side by side, obliterating these limitations on love. "People have suffered and persevered so I could have you," I'll say, "and I will never take you for granted."


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The Problem with the Gay Press

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Logan Lynn

As individuals in a marginalized group, we are often all placed together into a single pot by society. In this case, I am referring to the queer pot (but this happens around race, gender, age, religion, class -- you name it).

All of us, as members of the LGBT community, with all our differences, have this one thing in common: we are the minority.

There is something about all of us that is unlike much of the rest of the world, and much of the rest of the world's reaction to that difference can be painful, isolating, and dangerous.

Frequently, members of the greater community become fixated on our sexuality or gender expression, and they try to lump us together, assign us roles within our designated letter of the acronym, and dehumanize us in the process.

One would hope this outer pressure would be enough to bring us together as LGBT people, that we would unite and become stronger in numbers and build a community so organized and powerful that our being a minority no longer mattered.

Sadly, this has not been my experience as a man-loving man, nor in my work with gay organizations, nor as an out artist in the entertainment industry.

Being a public figure in the queer community is tough. You have to have pretty thick skin to tolerate the external homophobia that comes at you as a result of increased visibility, but I think I was raised to expect this, so it's never a big shock when it happens.

I know the world wants to see me dead on some level, or at least see me stop being such a "goddamn fag," so it doesn't surprise me when that pressure arrives.

I recognize it coming a mile away and have learned methods of processing the external hate in such a way that it no longer hurts me. I have not, however, found or been able to develop a way of moving through the crab mentality of my own community without injury.

For those of you who have not heard this saying before, "crab mentality" (also known as "crabs in the barrel," or "crabs in the bucket") refers to the metaphor of a pot of live crabs about to be killed.

Individually, the crabs could escape from the pot without any trouble, but when they are all in the pot together, they grab at each other in a pointless domination game that prevents any of them from escaping, thus ensuring their collective demise.

When related to human behavior in social movements, the term is most commonly used in association with a short-sighted, non-constructive approach instead of a unified, long-term, productive mentality. As an openly gay musician, I have experienced this problem mostly via the gay press.

Certainly, I've received my fair share of nasty emails and messages from people online and in person over the 10-plus years I've been doing this, as well, but there's a distinctive sting that comes from someone in the queer media pulling me and my people back into the pot, and I believe that action trickles down into our culture and leaks out into our community consciousness from there.


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Much More Than a TV Show

via Advocate, by op-ed contributor Michelle Kristel

"Last week, I bought the gun. Yesterday, I wrote the note. Last night, I happened to catch your show on TV and, just knowing that someday I might be able to go back into a church with my head held high, I threw the gun into the river.

My mom never has to know." So read the email that a gay Iowa teenager sent to Daniel Karslake, a producer here at In The Life Media (ITLM) in 1998.

As the executive director of ITLM — which produces the award-winning newsmagazine, IN THE LIFE — I know that media depicting LGBT people has the power to change lives. It can also, as in this case, even save them.

As ITLM celebrates its 20th anniversary, we reflect upon how far we’ve come — and how far we still have to go for LGBT people to achieve full equality.

We take pride in knowing that, through our unique programming, ITLM has become so much more than a TV show.

Twenty years ago, a group of individuals had a vision: to create a television program featuring LGBT voices and culture. In the days before Ellen or Will & Grace, let alone Glee, it was all but impossible to find respectful depictions of LGBT characters on television.

Real LGBT people were relegated to the spectacle of daytime talk shows. Many of the issues important to our community were not covered by mainstream media in any substantive manner.

Today of course, LGBT visibility in media is commonplace. While this has led to greater acceptance for our community, visibility alone does not equate to social justice.

Discrimination is still prevalent. Countless instances of antigay legislation, policies and behaviors take place throughout this country every day, often with little notice by the general populace.

However, in LGBT communities, the damage of these discriminatory actions is acutely felt.

ITLM has always recognized the imperative of truly educating the public about who we are as LGBT individuals and the very real way issues, ranging from HIV/AIDS to marriage equality to homelessness, affect our community. To us, this is crucial to securing civil rights.

Our programming consistently exposes injustice, challenges perceptions and shatters stereotypes. Here, in fact, “stereotypes crumble before your very eyes,” according to TheNew York Times.
 
For instance, our media is being shown at universities to fight homophobia on campuses around the country. Recently, our work has been used to inform Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, UNAIDS, ACLU, Anti-Defamation League, and scores of LGBT and allied groups, many of whom cannot afford to create these materials on their own.

Our programming not only has political implications, however. It also improves lives in very direct and personal ways. Case in point, we recently produced a Spanish-language Web video for our “Marriage Matters” series profiling Cristina, an American citizen, and her partner Monica, who is from Argentina.

The couple married legally in their home state but, because of the Defense of Marriage Act, Monica faced deportation, since the immigration protections provided for heterosexual couples do not apply to same-sex couples.

With the help of our video, Monica and Cristina won their legal battle and had deportation proceedings against them closed by New York’s chief immigration counsel. This is a first for same-sex married couples.

That is one example of how ITLM is moving to the forefront of video journalism. By developing model approaches to Web-based content, we are leveraging the power of online communications to propelchange for the LGBT movement.

Our provocative, short-form videos created expressly for the Web address issues still ignored by the mainstream, while utilizing the unique functionality, versatility and reach of the Internet.

Another example is “Injustice at Every Turn,” our Web-exclusive video based on a report of the same name examining discrimination against transgender people.

Our exposé gave viewers a different perspective than did most media covering the survey, and illuminated a difficult topic in ways that have a real and profound impact on our community.

I am proud to note that this video was used to inform the U.S. Department of Labor about anti-transgender discrimination in the workplace.

Similarly, one of our most recent Web-exclusives, “A Day in Our Shoes,” told the stories of LGBT homeless youth forced to sleep on the streets after having been tossed out by rejecting parents, grandparents and other family members.

The media was used as part of the Campaign for Youth Shelter, which calls on New York City and State to provide increased funding for shelter beds.

The movement has made great strides in the past decade. But the need for media that educates and informs the public about LGBT Americans is as urgent as ever.

We all know that media drives public opinion and ITLM proudly provides a counterpoint to the multi-billion dollar, antigay media machine that LGBT foes have spent decades building.


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They Called Me a Slut at 82

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by David Leddick

"The 80-year-old slut." That's what a friend calls me. "82," I say, correcting him. "82."

We have to completely rethink what age numbers stand for.

Yes, I am 82, and yes, I have a lover who is well under 30, and yes, I have an excellent sex life with him. Our relationship began when he said to me, "I usually don't like guys, but you give me a boner." For someone over 80, this is good news.

I told yet another friend, a woman, in this case, "He either really is into me or he's the best actor in the world." She said, "What's the difference?" and she's right.

As the baby boomers bulge over the 65-year mark, the time has come when what we think we will be doing in the latter part of our lives will change, must change.

If you may easily live to 95, do you really plan to sit about for 30 years, from 65 to 95? That's a third of your life.

I prefer to think that 80 to 90 is just late middle age, and we have to be ready for it. We have to run our lives and not let our lives run us. Exercise.

Control all that eating. Do all these things that we always wanted to do and have not done yet. Our lives are meant to be lived, and in that final third we can do it.

Baby boomers (and even those younger) will find themselves having a shift in their thinking as to who they are and what their potential is.

The attitude of younger people in the 21st century is bound to filter upward, and those over 65 will not be living as the previous generation did when they reached that age.


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How to Be a Better Homosexual

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Domenick Scudera

Apparently, I am not a very good homosexual.

I have had a real education this week. I started listening to Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association. He is very smart and has provided me with an eye-opening education.

He is teaching me about what it means to be gay. I have learned things I never knew before. I am not sure what his credentials are, but he talks about homosexuality quite often, so it is obvious that he is an expert.

First, he has made it clear to me that the average homosexual has hundreds of sexual partners, some as many as 500 or 1,000 in a lifetime.

I did not know this. He said that we homosexuals admit this in our own literature, but I haven't read that literature. I feel so remiss! I am way behind.

I am not getting any younger, so it seems that if I want to be at least average, then I'd better start sleeping around more. I figure if I find at least one new lover each week for the next few years, I will be getting closer to filling my quota. What have I been thinking these past 16 years, being monogamous?

Precious time has been wasted.

I also found out, thanks to Mr. Fischer, that I need to get some poppers. Using poppers is the way that gay people stay sexually stimulated for more than one sexual encounter in the same night.

I did not know this. If I want to get closer to 1,000 or at least 500 sexual partners, it is a good idea to get some poppers so that I can maintain sexual activity with more guys per evening.

And did you know that the research says that 96 percent of us who engage in homosexual behavior are using poppers? And that poppers are the main reason for the spread of AIDS? They sound so dangerous! I am so out of the gay loop that I do not know how one even goes about getting poppers.

Can you order them online? Or will I have to find a drug dealer on a street corner somewhere?

I also might need to reevaluate Nazism. I always thought that Nazis were reprehensible, but I did not know that we homosexuals are closely aligned with them. Why is it not more widely known that the Nazi party was started in a gay bar and consisted largely of homosexuals?

Thank goodness for Mr. Fischer. This fact would have gone largely unnoticed if he had not brought it to the world's attention. He also says that today's homosexuals are basically Nazis.

I want to be a good homosexual, so I better give this whole Nazi thing a second chance.

Mr. Fischer says that gay parenting is "inhumane." I do not have children, but he reminded me that if I want to be a good gay, I need to start recruiting other people's children early on.

I have not done any gay recruiting before. How embarrassing! He does not provide any information about how to recruit, but I bet it is outlined carefully in the gay literature that I have failed to keep up on.

For now, I will start hanging around schoolyards so I can build trust with some kids, and then I will slip in some gay recruitment techniques later.


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Is It a Choice to Be Gay? It Depends on the Meaning of 'It'

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Nathaniel Frank

When Cynthia Nixon, who became famous for her role on Sex and the City, recently told The New York Times that being a lesbian was, for her, "a choice," her words lit up the LGBT listservs, angering many who believe that Nixon is giving comfort to the enemy.

Those who believe sexual orientation is a choice are far more likely to oppose our equality, while folks who think we are "born that way" are more likely to support us.

If we can't help it, goes the thinking, we shouldn't be punished for it; and the corollary to that: if you can't choose to be gay, there's no need to stigmatize it as a way to discourage people from making the wrong choice.

Those angered with Nixon's comments felt they were both unhelpful and incorrect. They say that research, along with so many of our own experiences, make clear that being gay or lesbian is not a choice.

And what Nixon was really describing, although she refused to apply the term, was the fact of being bisexual, since she had previously been partnered with a man (Nixon later said, "I don't pull out the 'bisexual' word because nobody likes the bisexuals").

But many have also defended her words, particularly lesbian and bisexual women. They say she was only speaking of her own experiences and that if she feels it was a choice for her, it's not for anyone else to say otherwise.

The problem is that this is not just about what Cynthia Nixon "feels." It requires more rigorous thinking about what identity and choice really entail.

Nixon's comments further muddy a matter that sometimes seems to stem from a vast but rather simple confusion in American thinking.

To paraphrase President Clinton, the question depends on what the meaning of "it" is. When I hear "it's a choice" (or "it's not a choice"), I can only make sense of the statement if I know if we're discussing same-sex attraction or same-sex action.

I can't say it better than the blogger John Aravosis: "It's only a choice among flavors I already like." That is, I don't choose to like chocolate ice cream, but I choose whether, when, and how much to eat it.

The idea that one can choose to be attracted to one type of person over another is nonsensical, just as no one is accused of choosing to prefer chocolate over strawberry.

The question is what someone will choose to do with those feelings (eat chocolate or strawberry, partner with this person or that), and whether any particular choice is morally good, bad, or neutral.

Many in the LGBT community, as with progressives more broadly, would rather not contemplate the moral consequences of personal choice, lest we commit the same acts of judgment that have hurt so many of us in the past. Instead, they "bracket" questions of morality and opt for privacy, saying what we do in the bedroom is no one else's business.

If we choose to engage in same-sex sexual behavior, no one but us is equipped to judge our choice. If Nixon feels this was her choice, so be it.

But at a minimum, it is imperative to clear up the confusion between sexual attraction and sexual action -- not because a same-sex sexual attraction has anything wrong with it (indeed, the problem with bracketing the moral question of choice is that it wastes an opportunity to argue that, in the words of the late Frank Kameny, "gay is good"), but because the suggestion that we chose our sexual attractions does not make sense (it's not just wrong; it's literally meaningless).

Then we can move onto questions of choice about our actions.


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Hate the Gays? Imagine the World Without Us

via Huffpost Gay Voices, by Kergan Edwards-Stout

In our current political discourse, right-wing politicians continue to demonize the LGBT community in sad and desperate attempts to rally their base.

While, happily, their efforts have not been as effective as in the past, any attempt to make gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people feel anything less than equal can lead to devastating consequences, as the ongoing string of youth suicides so painfully highlights.

Any preventable loss of dignity and human life must be stopped. The question is, "How?"

While prior efforts have focused on the issue of harassment, it is time for the LGBT community to take the dialogue one step further.

When you are a teen, simply waiting for your next birthday can seem like an eternity. Telling our youth that life will indeed get better, some years into the future, is not enough.

We must instead create a world in which there is no longer any shame in being gay. We must show that each and every one of us has something of value to contribute to this world, period.

The first step is creating discussion with the haters around where their anti-gay beliefs come from, and challenging those beliefs with facts.

But we then need to take that dialogue even further and examine more closely what they hope that such convictions will ultimately achieve.

Typically, those who hold negativity toward those who are LGBT can be placed into two main camps: those who believe that being gay is unnatural, going against nature, or those who believe it goes against religious teaching.

With either group, the case can be made to counter such beliefs with facts.

For example, those who believe that being gay is unnatural may be surprised to learn that homosexual activity has been observed in close to 1,500 species, and that such scientific certitudes should be spotlighted. For those who believe that homosexuality violates religious principles, pointing to texts such as the Bible as justification, and dialogue around translation issues, intent, and historical context, might be beneficial.

However, in both situations, while factual evidence might change some minds, most will still be unwilling to let go of long-held beliefs.

My question to them then becomes, "What do you hope these beliefs will achieve?"

Most have never looked holistically at their views, nor tried to fit their beliefs into a larger framework. They were simply told by others that being gay is less than ideal, for whatever reason, and have not challenged that assumption.

If they truly believe that being gay is a sin or abnormal, what then? Does that mean they support the harassment of LGBT individuals?

Do they hope to "convert" LGBT folks to heterosexuality, which no reputable medical or psychological association supports or validates, even going so far as to consider such "conversion therapies" potentially harmful?

Do they want us to remain celibate and single, never experiencing love and affection? Do they wish LGBT people would simply disappear?

If anything, they are creating an environment where gay youth feel that suicide is preferable to life.

But imagine, for a moment, that there were no LGBT people on the planet. Just what would this world look like?

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Foolish Thing Desire

via MetroWeekly, by Sean Bugg

A few years ago, before I began dating my husband, my then-boyfriend took me to a summer cookout with a local gay Asian group.

It was a fun Sunday afternoon of volleyball, hotdogs and chả giò, meeting new people, and all the enjoyment you're supposed to get out of a Sunday afternoon party.

While scarfing down some pasta salad and Korean barbecue, I overheard one of the few single white men in attendance, who'd been pretty openly cruising around the party, lecherously questioning a guy across the picnic table from me: ''So, what country are you from?''

Dude, you're not doing white people any favors with that crap, I thought.

The intersection of sex and race is just another of those things that brings out the worst in a small number of people, who then go on to make headaches for everyone else.

I've been pondering this again lately, in part because of sudden surge of interest in a 2010 Metro Weekly opinion column by Daniel W.K. Lee on sexual racism in the gay community, as well as Alexander Chee's essay last week for Out, ''No Asians!'' both of which delve into the increasing sexual segregation of the gay community.

It's of more than passing interest to me, given that my husband is Asian. (If you're wondering ''What is he?," he's Vietnamese).

So I tossed the subject out on Facebook and a couple of email groups to see what my multicultural circle of friends and acquaintances think about the issue.

The short and polite version: We seem to lack consensus.

On the one hand, people of color have a pretty strong case that dismissing entire classes of people solely for racial and ethnic backgrounds is, at its core, racist. (I would add that desiring people exclusively because of their race is just as problematic.)

On the other, there's an equally strong case that you can't force people to experience sexual attraction, and it's immoral to label as ''racism'' a response over which people lack any conscious control.

Still, I'm more sympathetic to the former (although I pull back from declarations of racism, because I understand the latter).

During my days of very enthusiastic dating and hookups — back in the earliest days of using the Internet to find sex partners — I never had the experience of scrolling through person after person declaring ''No whites!'' But black and Asian guys?

I can see exactly how they could walk away from that with a different take on the racial harmony of the gay community.

The embarrassing thing is, back then I was skipping past most of those guys who were black and Asian. My own history of sexual desire is a history of change – I grew up where it was actually pretty rare to see anything but white people, which I believe shaped much of my young gay life.

It wasn't until later that I understood that desire is fluid; what turns you on at 25 may not do it when you're 40.

I've learned a lot from being in an interracial marriage, the main thing being that it doesn't make me a special snowflake. I'm just a guy who's lucky enough to have found a good relationship.

And I'm thankful that my own youthful tunnel vision expanded to the point where I was open to it when I found it. We all turn away too much happiness because of our own unexamined expectations.


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Is there enough training to care for LGBT People?

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Andrew Silapaswan

After relocating halfway across the country to New York City, finding an LGBT-friendly and culturally competent doctor was not high on my priority list.

However, my priorities changed when I required medical services in November. I quickly realized I would have to find a new primary care physician who is both knowledgeable in LGBT health care, and who will treat me with understanding and respect.

My experience is not unique, as many others in the LGBT community face similar challenges.

In a 2005 survey 22 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual patients reported having experienced some form of discrimination in a health care setting.

So why are so many health care providers ill-equipped to handle the health care needs of LGBT people?

As a medical school candidate with my sights set on starting medical school in fall 2012, I am cross-comparing prospective M.D. programs and actively examining components of medical school curricula.

A medical school's curriculum must meet rigorous standards established by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) to receive accreditation.

Nonetheless, recent studies and testimony on behalf of medical school administrations indicate that there are significant gaps in curricular content.

More specifically, the quality and breadth of LGBT health-related content is lacking and remarkably uneven across medical schools.

One of the most comprehensive studies examining the incorporation of LGBT content in medical education was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The report indicated that the median time dedicated to teaching LGBT-related content was five hours (during the entire four years of medical education) in the 132 U.S. and Canadian medical schools that were surveyed.

Additionally, nine schools reported zero hours taught during the preclinical years, and 44 schools reported zero hours of clinical training.

In terms of overall assessment of quality, the results are equally discouraging. A majority of medical school administrators revealed that their coverage of LGBT-related content was fair or worse.

Thirty-two deans responded that their school's coverage of LGBT health care was "good" or "very good," while 58 reported that it was "fair," and 34 indicated that it was "poor" or "very poor."

The results are especially problematic given the fact that LGBT people have historically faced barriers in accessing competent medical care in addition to having specific health care needs.

Research findings reported by the American Psychological Association indicate that LGBT individuals may be at an increased risk for negative health behaviors and outcomes and experience a number of health disparities compared with their heterosexual peers.

For example, gay men and lesbians report higher rates of smoking. Cardiac and cancer risk factors are also more prevalent among lesbians compared with heterosexual women.

A large-scale study published in 2000 found that breast cancer rates and several associated risk factors are higher among lesbians and bisexual women.

Furthermore, men who have sex with men (MSM) continue to face disproportionate rates of HIV and are the only demographic in which new infections are rising in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), MSM represent 2 percent of the general population yet accounted for 61 percent of all new infections in 2009.

Clearly, the health care needs of LGBT individuals, which are largely complicated by stigma, homophobia, and other structural factors, underscore the necessity for comprehensive LGBT-related content in medical school curricula.

Medical students' ability to effectively care for LGBT patients has also been measured.

Survey results from an online study in 2006 indicated that third- and fourth-year medical students with greater clinical exposure to LGBT patients reported performing more frequent sexual history assessment with their patients.

This is a critical component of comprehensive health assessment and management and provides patients an opportunity to indicate their sexual experiences.

Furthermore, the students had more positive attitude scores and achieved higher knowledge scores compared to their peers with less clinical exposure to LGBT patients.


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Op-ed: Let Your Money Talk to Help LGBT Organizations

via Advocate, by Jimmy Nguyen, op-ed contributor

I repeatedly hear and see criticism of LGBT organizations and their leaders.

The chatter machine gripes about why the Defense of Marriage Act hasn’t been repealed yet, why transgender persons are not always included in proposed legislation, and even why there is a glut of gay charity summer pool parties.

LGBT people sure like to talk about the work of gay social justice groups; but far too often, they criticize without doing much to help.

While serving on the board of directors for Equality California for the last few years, and while helping support other groups financially or otherwise, I found myself immersed in dialogue about the LGBT rights movement.

I’m all for constructive criticism. No entity or person is beyond reproach, and feedback from the community is always good.

But much criticism comes from people who donate no money to any LGBT group (let alone contribute time to serve).

In 2010, less than 3% of LGBT adults in the U.S. gave money to any national LGBT organizations; the number of donors who gave $35 or more to LGBT non-profits dropped 12%.

These disheartening statistics were reported by the Movement Advancement Project in its recently released 2011 National LGBT Movement Report. (Fortunately, the report found LGBT organizations remain fiscally healthy due to support from other sources.)

If the LGBT community wants progress toward full equality, the other 97% of us need to financially support the organizations that fight our fights.

With the holiday season and tax year-end upon us, now is the perfect time to contribute and let your money talk for you.

Why don’t LGBT people give money? Let’s debunk the most common reasons I hear.


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Gay Culture and Sex Addiction

via Huffpost Gay Voices, by Alexandra Katehakis

Support for gay marriage is on the rise. Every new survey shows greater tolerance and greater acceptance of the fact that homosexuality is a personally integral and relational truth that warrants equal rights.

With this support, we also see the rise of greater diversity in gay culture depicted by the media. Certainly the suburban gay parent is a fairly recent standard prototype in the collective consciousness that has gained traction from popular fiction, namely Modern Family and The Kids Are All Right, and from real-life celebrity parents like Rosie O'Donnell and Neil Patrick Harris.

The suburban gay parent does much to humanize the prevailing stereotype that depicts lesbians and gay men solely as promiscuous and unstable, propagated just last month by the conservative, religious website LifeSiteNews in response to Newsweek's recent cover story on sex addiction:

"[H]omosexuals are known for having superficial, short-term relationships and hundreds of lifetime sex partners..." (That's perhaps the least offensive quote in their homophobic article.)

I have to wonder about the degree to which any so-called "deviant" lifestyle traits displayed by LGBT people are ultimately an inherent psychological reaction to institutionalized homophobia at every level.

Let's take this trip. First, there's the closet, this toxic idea that it's not OK to be gay, compelling LGBT children to hide their truth.

Gay kids live in silence for fear of the repercussions of disclosure, which can include rejection, abandonment, and bullying to the point of suicide.

Gay bullying is perpetrated by peers, parents, teachers, community leaders, and world leaders.

While many minorities suffer oppression, from disenfranchisement to outright discrimination to persecution, few minorities additionally experience such extreme degrees of intimidated relational repression during formative years as the LGBT community.

What effect does this have on people? As a result of this coerced repression, there exists insufficient co-regulation to explore appropriate relational valuing, which is the process of integrating personal reality with authentic expression that results in healthy, intimate relationships.

Instead, an abyss has to be crossed where a child "comes out." For LGBT people, this is a rite of passage with a wide range of emotions that is experienced mostly in emotional isolation.


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2011: A Good Year to be Gay

via theguardian, by Aaron Hicklin

A funny thing happened in America in 2011. With the US political establishment in deadlock and Republicans bowing to Tea Party mandarins over a raft of issues from immigration to curbs on trade unions, one area of American civil liberties celebrated a watershed year.

After decades in which gay rights have polarised US opinion, the country barely shrugged in September when a two-decade old law prohibiting gay men and women from serving openly in the military was finally repealed, prompting thousands of gay soldiers to post coming-out videos on YouTube – just one more example of how the web has transformed gay visibility.

Less than two months earlier New York became the sixth, and biggest, state to allow same-sex couples to marry.

To put that in context, there are more people living in New York than in the Netherlands, which in 2001 became the first country to legalise same-sex marriage.

The struggle for marriage equality has been one of the most bitterly divisive issues in America, but after a series of defeats for gay-rights advocates, the tide appears to be shifting irrevocably in their direction.

A series of national polls this year has shown support for same-sex unions outgunning opposition for the first time since polling on the issue began in the 1980s – a dramatic turnaround from even three years earlier, when voters in California approved a ballot measure overturning same-sex marriage.

In the 2004 election, under the keen encouragement of Karl Rove, no fewer than 11 states passed ballot initiatives banning gay marriage — a cynical get-out-the-vote ploy that helped swell Republican ranks at the polling booths.

The perception that marriage equality was a poisoned pink chalice persisted up to the 2008 election, when even Obama was careful to clarify that he wasn't in favour of gay marriage, apparently heeding warnings from Bill Clinton to give the issue a wide berth.

Yet in this year's debates between the ragtag pack of Republican presidential nominees, the usual rhetoric denouncing gay marriage has been noticeably absent.

Even Obama, facing precarious odds for a second term, has said that he favours repealing the notorious Defense of Marriage Act that has prevented federal recognition of gay marriages, even those performed in states where they are legal.

What changed in those few short years? In many ways the transformation of attitudes has been ongoing for decades, accelerated in large part by the impact of Aids, which reconfigured gay identity around community and relationships.

In TV shows such as Glee and Modern Family, gays are no longer comic stooges or punchlines, their relationships treated with the same respect as those of their straight counterparts.

They hold hands, they kiss, they even share the same bed. This was a quantum leap on 1990s shows such as Will & Grace, in which the gay characters had the whiff of "confirmed bachelors", to use the archaic euphemism of obituary writers, rarely presented in functioning relationships, much less in love.

To young gay men and women today the idea that they will be able to marry and raise kids no longer sounds outlandish or controversial. It sounds axiomatic.

They see gay couples getting married in states such as New York and Massachusetts. They see Neil Patrick Harris, a popular television actor, posing on the red carpet with his partner, David Burtka, and their two children.

They listen, alongside their straight friends, to gay anthems by Lady Gaga, and watch popular gay-inclusive shows such as True Blood.

Most of all, they communicate with a diverse group of friends on Twitter and Facebook, where gay and straight teens revel in their shared cultural interests.


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It's about the "Weekend"

via ThinkProgress, by Zack Ford

The Sundance Selects film Weekend has to be one of the most honest portrayals of gay dating I’ve ever seen, and it deserves the positive reviews it has been getting.

Though people of all sexual orientations will relate to the themes of romance and courtship, Weekend shines in the way it offers a Queer Theory lens on the most primal aspect of gay life: hooking up and dating.

The premise is simple enough: Russell and Glen hook up on Friday night, but end up spending the weekend together, realizing that there’s something more than sexual chemistry between them.

Glen, of course, is leaving the country Sunday afternoon, so the magic has to happen fast.

It was disappointing that the film reinforced the stereotype that gay men use a lot of drugs, but with the short timeline, the alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine take the characters to a very vulnerable and honest place with each other, allowing for the film’s most compelling dialogue about gay relationships.

Weekend thrives on its simplicity, using conversations between the two archetypal characters to dissect the script gay courtships are supposed to follow as the two learn and grow from each other’s influence.

Russell is the classic closet-case, who’s out as gay, but not really to anyone. He pursues sexual liaisons, but is afraid of commitment because it means being out and having to own his identity.

 Instead, he interviews his partners about their own coming out experiences and tries to live vicariously through them in his journal. Glen, on the other hand, is out and proud, but has sworn off of relationships after being hurt by a cheating boyfriend.

 He also interviews his partners, forcing a tape recorder in their face in hopes of exposing queer sexuality through some sort of eventual art project.

Both are searching to understand the other’s archetype: Why is Russell so afraid and ashamed of his sexuality that he feels he has to hide it at all times? How can Glen be so comfortable with himself when he lets his sexuality define him?

The exploration of these questions reflects the internal homophobia that impacts all members of the LGBT community, complicating our relationships as we attempt to pretend they are no different than those of our heterosexual friends and neighbors.

Towards the end of Glen and Russell’s hurried courtship, the topic of marriage equality comes up. Tapping into his queer radicalism, Glen condemns the gay community for trying to embrace the heterosexual norm, suggesting “no one gets married for the benefits.”

 Russell’s yearning for true love betrays his inhibitions as he implores that maybe two people just want to declare their love in front of their friends because it’s meaningful to them. Ultimately, though, the movie makes a point greater than either side of the debate.

 Given how the variable of being gay in a homophobic society complicates same-sex relationships, marriage equality would create a venue in which gay men and lesbians could be celebrated both for their unique identities and for the normal lives they can nonetheless live.

Neither Glen nor Russell are ready to marry, but marriage would honor how both of them feel about their identities.

Weekend asks more questions than it answers, but it does so in a refreshingly unvarnished way. As public sentiment about the LGBT community changes, so too does the culture of the community itself, and this film creates a foundation for discussing the impact of those changes.

And despite the archetypal nature of their identities, Glen and Russell are unsensationally realized such that audience members will relate to them both. The film itself is about relationships, but its biggest offering might be an opportunity to better understand ourselves.

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Halloween: America's Gay Holiday

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Irene Monroe

Halloween is America's gay holiday.

In the words of the lesbian poet and scholar Judy Grahn, Halloween is "the great gay holiday."

And this weekend of lavish costumed theatricality will attract everyone, but especially lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) revelers.

Back in the day Halloween, the night before All Hallows Day (All Saints Day), was linked to the ancient Celtic festival Samhain in the British Isles, meaning "summer's end."

And because the celebration is associated with mystery, magic, superstition, witches and ghosts, the festivity, not surprisingly, was limited in colonial New England because of its Puritanical belief system.

But today it's an LGBTQ extravaganza that rivals -- if not out-showcases -- Pride festivals.

Long before June officially became Gay Pride Month and October became Coming Out Month for the LGBTQ community, Halloween was unofficially our yearly celebrated "holiday," dating as far back as the 1970s, when it was a massive annual street party in San Francisco's Castro district.

By the 1980s, gay enclaves like Key West, West Hollywood, and Greenwich Village were holding their annual Halloween street parties.

And the parades the night of Halloween did and still do draw straights and gay spectators out to watch.

Gay cultural influence on Halloween has become such an unstoppable phenomenon here and abroad that anthropologist Jerry Kugelmass of University of Florida published a book in 1994 on the new trend, titled Masked Culture, describing Halloween as an emerging gay "high holiday."

"The 'masked culture' first developed by the gays of San Francisco has reached across the lines of orientation -- and now jumped across the boundaries between nations and languages.

It's not just a party. It's an ideal of personal emancipation, self-expression and self-fulfillment -- an ideal that loses none of its power when it takes the form of a sexy nurse's outfit," CNN contributor David Frum wrote last year in "Halloween craze started in gay culture."


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Ins and Outs of Gay News Sites

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by David Badash

As gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans -- and their news -- become mainstream, will the gay news sites that have long supported the LGBT community be able to survive?

I spoke with nine different well-known LGBT publishers, writers, and industry insiders about the current state of gay media -- and if it has a future.

Towleroad partner and creator of Out magazine, Michael Goff, Pam's House Blend's Pam Spaulding, John Aravosis of AMERICAblog, the Vice President of the Human Rights Campaign, and many others share their unique perspective.

Is there a future for the gay news and politics sites and blogs that focus on and advocate for the LGBT community, or will we continue to see them consolidate -- or just disappear?

Why are so many gay news sites finding it so challenging to stay afloat? Are advertisers leery of being associated with distinctly gay sites? Is this niche just too "niche?"

"Whether corporate-run or a one person shop, the outlook for gay news blogs is that most of them are not turning a satisfying profit," writes Nikki Usher, at Harvard's own niche journalism site, Neiman Journalism Lab, in a recent article, "How niche is too niche? The case of gay news blogs."

Publishers of gay news sites talk about the issues Usher's piece raises: inconsistent advertising and few advertising network options, and lack of support from LGBT organizations.

While visits at many LGBT sites are growing, most journalists and bloggers work very hard to attract and keep each and every reader.


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