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Originally Posted by Kizzume
I’ve been on a couple forums recently where a really active member of the gay community keeps going off about how the most important issue to the gay community that “should” be worked on by individuals and organizations like GLAAD, is AIDS. I disagree with that. AIDS is a humanitarian issue, it shouldn’t be a “gay” issue. AIDS/HIV affects straight people, gay people, bisexual people, it affects everyone. It should be researched and dealt with. To me, the organizations for gay liberation shouldn’t make that their main priority. Organizations dedicated to AIDS should make that their priority.
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In some ways, I think that's a matter of semantics.
Although, obviously important semantics to you.
I think I would quibble with you on the
preventative front, which I don't think was your primary focus. The gay community should utilize focused education campaigns to help make sure that we don't get complacent.
But as for the disease itself, I think you've got a valid point.
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Originally Posted by Kizzume
I cannot accept a lifestyle where people believe they can have as much sex as they want with NO repercussions. I just can’t accept that, especially since, unfortunately, everyone that I know who has gotten HIV had and still HAS that belief system that they should be able to just go around having as much sex with as many people as they can. I don’t understand it, it doesn’t make any sense to me, and it really pisses me off that because I’m out of the closet, people ASSUME that I have that same belief system. I don’t.
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That makes two of us.
Several years ago, I joined a Yahoo group on "bug chasers" cause I was really interested in the mindset (from a clinical perspective).
The things they said were positively bat-**** crazy, IMO.
They said that they would brook no debate on the issue. If anybody spoke out against their mentality, they would eject them from the group.
It was a small group with low activity, and I never figured out the trolls from the serious people. And Yahoo shut down the group before I got to have my say. (I figured I would observe and then throw out a single post explaining how insane their comments were before I left).
I digress a little bit, but I empathize with your comment.
However, I do have to add that it REALLY depends upon the crowd you hang out with. I've been with my partner several years, and we hang out with a variety of other gay couples. One of our single gay friends is Republican, which we laugh about from time to time cause he shares most of the same values we have.
I think as human beings, we can often make relatively small differences seem big...
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Originally Posted by Kizzume
I’ve been in open relationships, I’ve tried them before—I’ve gotten told by people that it’s “the only way”, well that’s bull****. If that’s the only way then I guess I’ll never be in another relationship. I was open-minded to open relationships for many years and I’m not open to them anymore. I think they make the people in the relationship become complacent in the sex component of their relationship. Since they can get sex elsewhere, they’re not going to continue working on keeping the sexual part of their relationship fresh and new, and sex is quite an important element in just about any relationship unless it’s purely a platonic relationship.
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I know some people in a "three-way" relationship, and I really don't get it. I think it depends upon the person, and most people are just too innately "jealous" to be able to do it successfully.
And I don't think "jealousy" is always a bad thing. If a person is promising to do something for another, and expects the same in return, there is nothing wrong with that.
I've had a couple "open" relationships in the past too. Amusingly enough, the other guy started getting jealous of me doing exactly what he was doing.
It depends upon the person. Some people can do "open relationships".
Some can't, but like the freedom of them being able to have it.
And IMO, quite frankly some married couples have an implicit "open" relationship of quiet denial and looking the other way.
I have heard women make comments about men that just boggled my mind. How men were incapable of being faithful, indicating a very jaded past.
But these women WERE married, which means they could complain with thinly veiled comments, but they would stay married...
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Originally Posted by Kizzume
Another thing is—open relationships are VERY VERY rare in the straight world.
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"open" relationships, with the partners ADMITTING what is going on? Yes.
"Open" relationships, where the partners recognize what exists in their marriage but never put a name to it, and never make an issue of the infidelity? I think that's more common to one degree or another.
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Originally Posted by Kizzume
Most of the time, a guy having multiple sex partners while in a relationship is looked at as either infidelity, cheating, or just being a slut—EVEN if it was agreed upon when getting into the relationship.
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True.
Dude. I've already made this post longer than I would have liked, but let's just say that being in the Navy was EYE-OPENING on multiple fronts.
Pattaya Beach Thailand is a "liberty port", and the only thing locally there is the prostitutes. And the Navy knows this, cause the corpsman was all prepared with an STD slide-show.
And having talked to some of the wives, when the husband leave port, it's often quite a similar thing. One husband came back to her wife pregnant of four months, and we had been to see for six.
She "persuaded" him it could medically happen. I never wanted to ask him what he really thought on the issue.
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Originally Posted by Kizzume
There are plenty of shows on TV that deal with that very subject. Are those shows homophobic because they don’t promote open relationships? I don’t think so.
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Not sure exactly what you're saying here.
I think some people (even gay) try to CLAIM a "gay lifestyle" that is supposed to define all gays.
They are very wrong.
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Originally Posted by Kizzume
This comes into place with people’s judgment against gay marriage. It’s the thing that is never talked about because to actually say it means that you’re a “bigot”, even if a whole lot of people are thinking it.
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Most gay couples I know are into the monogamy thing.
It all depends who you talk to.
I remember talking to one gay guy who thought gays were all shallow and incapable of relationships. Turns out that he simply meets all his relationships AT A TWINK BAR...
And quite frankly, with a 50% divorce rate, heterosexuals have their own problems of relationship maturity and stability as well.
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Originally Posted by Kizzume
To me, when gay people can be considered just another part of society, when people stop automatically assuming that because someone is out-of-the-closet-gay that they're going to have multiple sex partners or that if someone is partnered that it's automatically going to be an "open" relationship, when gay people who are out of the closet can be in higher positions in government than mayor on a regular basis, when gay people can get married, when gay people start to be looked at as an important part of society, THAT is when we will start to see equality.
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In some ways, I thought "catch-22" from your description. (and I don't think that was your point)
We have to show our
committed relationships as stable (I guess at least 50%,
) before we can get married. But how can we do that (and have it tracked) before we're allowed to marry...
And on another level, most people do not want other people nosing about their business. So when a gay couple is seen on TV, people don't know if they've been together two hours, or 20 years.
And for those people who routinely chastise and condemn gays, it's not like they're going to ask, or even really care.