Coupla quick ones:
Thanks Esprix, your response second time around to my query about outing was most satisfactory, as were the subsequent posts. By the way, it’s petards 
Pepperlandgirl: Pages around here are taking forever to load. Your post made the three times I pressed reload more than worth it. Thank you.
picmr
“I don’t mind if you’re Jewish, as long as you don’t go to synagogue.”
Well, mostly just writing to show I did pop in like I said. I haven’t read the original ATGG pages…as you can see, I’m fairly new to the message board and there’s so much to read!
I don’t really have any questions that I can think of. I have several homosexual and bisexual friends, we all get along great, and there seem to be few to no misunderstandings among us. So if I did have a question about a particular practice, I’d probably just go ask one of them. 
I’ll also add that I do believe that sexuality has a strong genetic determinant. If it was a “choice”, as so many people claim, then I would have “chosen” several years ago to be bisexual rather than hetero. I even did the typical experimentation to see if I had latent bisexuality that hadn’t been awakened yet, only to find sadly that if I did, it was really well hidden. (On the flip side, as I’ve stated in other posts, I feel that I was born polyamorous, and attempting to “choose” monogamy failed miserably.)
Blessings,
Eposia
Thanks for checking in, Eposia - much appreciated.
I like your little quote - “If I really could choose I’d have chosen to be bisexual.” Actually, I agree - there are a few women in my life I wish I could be attracted to, and the one time I went to a sci-fi con dressed in a pseudo-military costume (a Psi Cop from “Babylon 5”) I think I got 5 marriage proposals from women as I walked through the hall. 
Of course, if bisexuality is as rampant as I believe it is, there are a lot of people who did “choose” their orientation; that is, they chose to only participate in opposite-sex relationships, even though they were capable of being involved in a same-sex relationship. It’s my own pet theory over why fundie straights are so adamant that it’s a choice.
Esprix
OK, Esprix, you told me to ask over on this thread, so I’m asking - what did you think of that episode of Malcolm in the Middle?
matt_mcl wrote:
Thank you! I’ve often said that if you’re going to argue that homosexuality is a choice, then it shouldn’t matter any more than your choice of religion, eh?
Esprix
If it’s the one I’m thinking of, where Malcolm’s older brother (the one in military school) is helping backstage at a beauty contest, and all the girls think he’s gay, it didn’t inspire nor offend me - seems fairly standard comic fare. Was there a part I missed that was particularly controvertial? I admit I was only half watching at the time.
Esprix
Maybe not controversial, but so funny I nearly passed a kidney.
Maybe you missed that particular scene. Francis was giving one of the girls a massage, and started to feel “unfamiliar” feelings. He was wondering if he could ever become hetero. Seductively, the girl looked at him and said, “I bet you can turn straight, and I’m just the girl to help you with that.” Needless to say, Francis was psyched that his little plan worked.
Next scene, he’s in a bible meeting, where the minister is telling all of the guys to “Pray not to be gay.” When they turn around to pray, one of the boys winks at Francis, who has this look on his face that says “get me the hell out of here.”
LOL!
{hee hee} That’s good. I’ll have to catch it in reruns.
Esprix
I got up to page 9 of “ATGGI”, and my eyes are killing me. I’ll finish the rest later, and if someone else brought the topic up earlier, I apologize.
A few years back, I wrote a law review article that argued that gay advocates should press for legalization of gay marriage on the basis of the best interests of the child. I can’t create a link to it, it’s on a subscription service, but the argument went as follows:
Several states (if not most) now allow second parent adoption (adoption of your partners’ child) by gay partners. The rationale for this is that the child is best served by another having adult who is legally responsible for their support and upbringing, and from whom governmental and work-related benefits flow. Since these same states allow individual homosexuals to adopt, it flows that gays can now adopt in these states as couples. (Not sure if there are cases like this, but I’ll bet the farm that this would be the result).
One of the traditional rationales against gay marriage is that one of the functions of marriage is procreation. Since gay couples can adopt, this argument goes out the window. Further, ALL GAY COUPLES ARE NOW POTENTIAL PARENTS.
Since all gay couples are potential parents, and children gain financial and psychological benefits from being the child of a married couple (N.B. I am NOT bashing single parents here), it is in the best interests of the actual or potential children of gay couples to allow those couples to marry.
When I wrote the article, most of the gay input was from fellow legal types, who mainly looked at what I was writing on the basis of whether it was a legally tenable argument. I did get one comment from an attorney at LLDEF, who didn’t like my argument on philosophical grounds (the argument for gay marriage should be made on its own merits, not on the benefits to mostly theoretical kids).
My question is: was the attorney at LLDEF right? Does arguing for gay marriage on purely material grounds denigrate the argument? To some extent I agreed, even as I was writing the argument, but I wrote the argument around the same time as the loss in Hawaii. My idea was to present an argument that might work, not necessarily be “pure”.
Anyway, Gay Guy, what do you think?
V.
P.S. I’ve been out of Philly for several years, but I thought Woody’s was played out.
Oh Great and Powerful Gay Guy,
Yesterday I read a story in the newspaper about a married transexual couple (the bride was a male-to-female, the groom a female-to-male) and a question came to me. What would happen if one member of a married heterosexual couple decided to have a sex change operation, and the couple did not wish to get divorced? Would their marriage be dissolved under laws banning gay marriage? Has a case like this ever come up?
Hummm.
I first got a crush on a boy when I was 10 or 11.
When I was at [all-male, boarding] school between the ages of 13 and 18, I had all manner of crushes on people at school, and got up to all sorts of things (in some respects, I had the time of my life. Communal showers were really great).
Here’s the problem.
When I was 12/3/4 I fancied 12/3/4 year olds. When I was 15/6, I fancied 12-16 year olds. When I was 17, I fancied 12-17 year olds. When I was 18, I fancied 12-17 year olds. Now I’m 19. I still fancy 12-17 year olds.
I see this as a problem (or at least, society tells me it is. It depends entirely on whereabouts on this planet that you live, but I live in the UK, and the UK tells me that this is WRONG).
What in the hell can I do about it?
I believe in England there was an instance when a transsexual went from male to female, but legally married a woman since she was still “officially” a man. Kind of points up the absurdity of doing a chromosome/genitalia check at the door, IMHO.
Yup, I remembered right. Source: Lesbian and Gay Marriage, History and Culture
I didn’t notice that before, that there were people discussing choice versus not choice.
I’m firmly on the “not choice” side of things.
One problem I’ve found when discussing such things is that people disagree what being gay is.
If it just means “having sex with people of the same sex” then sure, it’s a choice – you can choose not to have sex with boys/girls/dogs/whatever. But that doesn’t stop you from being gay/lesbian/bestial/weird. It just means that you don’t have sex with boys/girls/dogs/whatever.
However, a number of people I have “spoken” with claim that that is the “choice” you make to be gay. It’s not. It’s choosing who you have sex with.
What you can’t choose is who you get pathetic school-girl crushes over (personally, it’s Jon Brandis, or at least, “Jon Brandis in seaQuest DSV”, not “Jon Brandis as he now is with horrid facial hair”). Who you long for. Who you can’t stop thinking about for one second. Who you fall in love with. That is the bit that makes you gay/straight/bisexual/trysexual (bad joke, no biscuit for you, PeterB).
I don’t imagine that any straight person would claim to have chosen such things. I don’t know why they claim that gay people choose such things.
Christ, I had gay feelings before I even knew what gay was. Before I knew what sex was. Yet still people think I chose? Why the hell would anyone choose to be gay? So that they can be victimized? They enjoy being bullied at school? They enjoy being loathed by (ex)-friends and family? Yeah. That must be it. They must like being outcasts – and yes, gay people are treated by many people as second class citizens.
It pisses me the hell off, it really does.
Question about terminology: in a previous post you used the terms, “gay, lesbian…” I’ve noticed in news articles references to gay groups (encompassing men and women) but then later in the article, gays, lesbians… Is a lesbian gay? My theory on the use of these two terms: the word “homosexual” is loaded - turns people off immediately (though not me), and spawned the epithet “homo” so someone came up with “gay.” But lesbians (in general) don’t mind being called lesbians? Is it incorrect to call a lesbian “gay”?
Question about terminology: in a previous post you used the terms, “gay, lesbian…” I’ve noticed in news articles references to gay groups (encompassing men and women) but then later in the article, gays, lesbians… Is a lesbian gay? Why a new word for male homosexuals and not for female homosexuals? Is it incorrect to refer to a lesbian as gay?
Interesting, although not exactly what I had in mind. In the 'States a person can legally become a member of the opposite sex. Were someone to do this while engaged in a heterosexual marriage, then the marriage would no longer legally be one between a man and a woman. Would the marriage be dissolved under laws banning gay marriages, or would it be considered okay since the couple consisted of a man and a woman at the time that they were married?
Even though usages like “gay groups” or “gay youth” is still standard, it’s more modern to say “gay and lesbian”… Of course, then you end up with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Transexual… as Lea Delaria puts it, by the time you’re done saying it the parade’s over. Some lesbians call themselves gay occasionally, but lesbian is essentially the standard word.
The civil code of Quebec actually specifies that only unmarried people may apply to have the sex on their official records changed. I expect that once we get real gay marriages this passage will be stricken.
Under the laws of several states, the old marriage = procreation rubric still holds. Therefore, in these states, if one of the partners no longer had the plumbing to match their partner and therefore could not theoretically procreate, the marriage would be voidable, although not necessarily void. In other words, either partner could get an annulment, but until such time, the marriage is not automatically dissolved. In general, once the state issues the marriage certificate, the state feels its job is done.
New York a few years back, had an illuminating case that was actually the reverse. Two women got involved - they considered themselves married, don’t think there was any legal recognition, one of whom was in the process of undergoing a sex change. The prospective transsexual later changed her mind and didn’t complete the series of operations, hormone changes, etc. The non-transexual partner left, and sued for support. The NY court said that this wasn’t a marriage and ** couldn’t be a marriage ** as the prospective transsexual never had the correct plumbing to perform the duties of marriage.
Personally, I think this is stupid, as marriage=procreation would logically mean that post-menopausal women and infertile persons could also not marry. Imagine the stink if that law was enacted.
V.