Innehållsförteckning för February - March 2017 från The Advocate

When one out of five self-identified straight men reports watching gay porn, it prompts the further question: Are these men really straight? Anew study published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour, which examined the porn-viewing habits of 821 gay, straight, and bisexual men from around the country, found a number of unexpected results. Among them: that 55% of gay men watch straight porn, and 21% of straight men watch gay porn. So what gives? It’s no giant leap to hypothesize why gay men might enjoy watching straight porn: to watch straight guys. But when one out of five self-identified straight men reports watching gay porn, it prompts the further question: Are these men really straight, or are they down-low/straight-identified bisexual men? Dr. Martin J. Downing, the study’s lead researcher, had…

Before I sprouted out of the closet as a little gay sapling, my mother had never met a single homosexual person in her life. And in the suffocating southern Christian confines of Texas, her limited perception was open to the most horrific creative interpretation. The nightmares of evil drag queens and insidious perverts quickly faded away, however, once her son told her that he liked boys. The majority of gay men know how it feels to secretly live in the presence of someone who is blindly afraid of you, yet that blind fear is exactly what we inflict on HIV-positive men. It is because of this that I write an open letter to gay men young and old. Your friend is living with HIV. It doesn’t matter who you are…

On an early September evening in the Aegean, somewhere between the Greek island of Lemnos and the mainland, seven gay men and everyone’s new bestie, singer Abigail Zsiga, are literally hanging out over the bow of a gorgeous clipper ship. We are tanned from the day and tipsy on mai tais, laughing and taking pictures as we zip over the deep blue toward the horizon under fiery slashes of an orange and pink sunset. We’re hanging on tightly to our smartphones, as there’s no going back for anything that falls through the thick rope net that holds us up over the flashing sea 30 feet below. This moment is exactly the kind I’d hoped the trip would offer. I didn’t think twice when offered the chance to board that dramatic…

The Home Office often places LGBT refugees with others whose religion and culture are intolerant to their existence. A friend was recently attacked in a hostel after his roommate found out he was gay. He threatened to beat my friend up and told him he was going to hell. As an ambitious young lesbian I knew there was no way I would be able to live openly in Zimbabwe. When my family discovered my sexuality, they took me to church and tried to “exorcise my demons and bad spirits.” Forced to conform, I tried to hide who I was and live a heteronormative life, living with secrets and shame, for fear of abuse, harassment, and persecution. It was because of this uncertainty that I left my country. Our president, Robert…

My 15-year-old daughter cried all night after the election. Larry Kramer said this was a good first line. Larry had asked me to come over because he was in despair. I wanted to see Larry because I think that of all the people I have ever seen, he knows how to turn despair into action. Larry is old, and this deepens his despair. “I am 82, and I feel it,” he says. “I almost died twice.” He does not have the strength to do what he did 35 years ago, when he screamed and wrote and screamed more about AIDS, until people listened, and then screamed again until they acted. Larry has a book to finish, the second volume of his novel The American People, and only so many hours…

As the singer lay in what would become his deathbed, his beloved boyfriend was down the hall, the woman he called the love of his life was across the pond, and medication coursed through his veins, introduced into his bloodstream via an expensive Hickman catheter implanted in his neck. The medication, and a faithful servant, would stave off pain and nausea so he could enjoy his elaborate Japanese gardens and lovingly curated London home a bit longer. By the time he decided to go off of AZT, a gaggle of paparazzi and celebrity-watchers were stationed outside his home, each trying to get a glimpse of the much-loved man as he withered away. It seemed that even at the hour of his death, everyone wanted a piece of Freddie Mercury. In…

After the interview was over, [Mike Wallace] turned on me. He said, “You seem to be able to answer all my questions very nicely, but I don’t believe that in your heart you actually believe what you’ve been saying.” On March 7, 1967, 40 million Americans tuned in to watch CBS Reports: The Homosexuals, network television’s first documentary on homosexuality. Near the top of the program, host and interviewer Mike Wallace calls homosexuals “the most despised minority in the United States.” The hour that follows is filled with salacious location footage, sermonizing therapists, and shadowed interviews with distraught homosexuals. But The Homosexuals is not without virtue. Wallace interviews Warren Adkins, an untroubled 28-year-old homosexual who capably breaks the 1960s gay stereotype with an attitude of positive self-reflection. Adkins talks about…

Certain factors in LGBT populations increase our risk of some serious health outcomes, including cancer. A recent and unscientific polling of some LGBTs about human papillomavirus (HPV) ventured some guesses: “Isn’t that the name of the warts people get on their junk?”; “That’s what women get that causes cervical cancer.”; “Doesn’t it give lesbians throat cancer?” The depth of our common knowledge about HPV isn’t substantial, which is to say it’s kind of like everyone else’s understanding of it. But certain factors in LGBT populations increase our risk of some serious health outcomes, including cancer. “Pretty much everyone is infected with HPV at some point in their life,” says physician Judith Shlay, interim director of Denver Public Health and director of immunization at the health department’s travel clinic. “It’s been…

During the eight tumultuous years of the Obama presidency, anyone would have killed to have a chair “in the room where it happens,” to quote one of the best numbers in the Broadway smash Hamilton. Among the very few people who can lay claim to that privilege is Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to President Obama. Sitting in her office at the White House, a few months before the Administration would vacate 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Jarrett spoke to The Advocate with undimmed pleasure of the moment she heard word of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage the law of the land. That morning, the president was preparing a eulogy to be delivered in Charleston for the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney (a victim of the…

“GREENLAND HAS ICE, and Iceland is green.” So said everyone who knew I was Greenland-bound. They all admitted the factoid was something they learned in fourth grade, but that’s where their knowledge of the world’s largest island stopped, as if it were the edge of some unfathomable glacial cliff. My knowledge wasn’t much better. I thought Greenland was part of Denmark (it’s an independent country with strong ties to Denmark) and volcanic (it’s not; that’s Iceland). But as one of 40 people attending Location Greenland 2.0, a seminar hosted by the country’s film and tourism boards to promote Greenland as a destination for production, my knowledge would be increasing exponentially. For most transatlantic travelers, Greenland is a flyover. From a jetliner, the shock of vast white initially appears to be…

Before the Internet existed, feminist bookstores were my Google, my Craigslist, my OKCupid—and, of course, my Amazon. When I moved to Madrid in 1989, my first stop was the Librería Mujeres. Sure, I wanted something to read, but I also needed a place to live and to get the scoop on the social scene. I’d spent the previous few years working at Lammas in Washington, D.C., and I was betting that the Spanish store would have its own equivalent of the thick binders of flyers about groups, meetings, and gathering places that women came to Lammas to consult. Sure enough, although the books on its shelves were different, and it had no softball team, the Librería Mujeres provided the connections I couldn’t have found anywhere else. A few days later,…