Closeted gay
I’m a closeted queer man.
When I first typed that sentence, it felt great. The more I looked at it on my screen, the less great it felt. I want the courage to delete the word “closeted” and to not confine my declaration to written words that will never be attributed to me by name.
I’m a closeted gay male, but of a different sort. I’m attracted to other men – always have been – but I feel in a traditional view of marriage. And I’ve been an evangelical pastor for more than thirty years. Who knows, I might be your pastor.
Gays started using phrases like “coming out of the closet” in the 1960’s, the same decade when I was figuring out that I had this huge problem that I did not want, did not understand, and that I had no one with whom to talk it over. I didn’t know the closet metaphor – I was ten, eleven, twelve in my period of self-discovery – but I knew I needed to put my attraction to other boys and the tingle they caused inside of me away, out of sight, out of anyone else's contact, behind other stuff.
My family’s sexual morality contradicted godly wisdom in every way, but even in our house, I knew that boys being attracted to boys would be condemned and met with my father’s lea
How times have changed for LGBTQ … or have they?
There is no doubt that we have seen an increase in acceptance of LGBTQ over the past two decades. I never thought in my lifetime that I would ever be recognized for being an out homosexual man nor be able to legally marry my husband of 28 years.
Of course, we still see people who are LGBTQ attacked by the society at large for, of course, being LGBTQ. Hate crimes are on the rise nationally and according to the Human Rights Campaign, “Hate crimes based on sexual orientation represent 16.7% of hate crimes, the third-largest category after race and religion.”
Source: I-Stock by Getty Credit: Tat'yana Mazitova
While acceptance of us LGBTQ folks have risen, I’ve been surprised at how people who are perceived to be closeted gays are being attacked for entity closeted!
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I filmed a video on TikTok, and expressed an unpopular view about how straight men can still enjoy sex with men.
I was surprised by all the comments I’m still getting from people who saw the video and assumed that I was either a closeted gay or attracted to both genders man. In reality, as a sex therapist and educator, I was sharing one of the ma
The Closet
Teaching and Learning
by Amin Ghaziani | September 27, 2017 | Summer 2017
How many Americans do you consider are gay or lesbian? Take a minute, think about it, and get your best think.
You’re probably incorrect.
Like most of us, you may have overestimated the population. “The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian,” notes the Gallup polling organization. The table below shows the responses that Gallup received in 2011 and then in 2015 to the question, “Just your best speculate, what % of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian?”
Only 9% of Americans correctly estimate the size of the gay and womxn loving womxn population at somewhere under 5%. Why are we so far off? Part of the explanation comes from people’s misunderstanding of social statistics. We construct similar mistakes when we estimate the size of racial and ethnic populations. Gallup remarks, “Americans estimate that a third of the U.S. population is black, and trust almost three in 10 are Hispanic, more than twice what the actual percentages were as measured by the census.” The excel educated you are, the lower (and m
First published at 365gay.com on May 14, 2010
When I was a high institution sophomore, one of my classmates had the misfortune of popping an erection in the communal shower after gym class. I doubt “Paul” was lgbtq+. Most likely, it was a typical teenage case of Mr. Happy having a mind of its own. But fellow students at our all-boys Catholic school teased him mercilessly, calling him a fag, and I joined in.
That’s right: I joined in.
Please understand: at the time I was NOT GAY. Sure, I had “gay feelings,” which I kept mostly to myself. I also lacked any straight feelings, and I had a decent enough grasp of logic to know that people with “gay feelings” but no “straight feelings” are homosexual. It was denial, pure and simple, and my teasing Paul was a way to deflect attention away from myself.
When people ask me how I can even for a split second feel sadness for hypocrites like Reverend George “I hired him to carry my luggage” Rekers, the anti-gay crusader who was recently caught hiring an escort from rentboy.com for a European vacation, I answer: Because I know what denial feels like.
True, I came clean about my sexuality at 19, whereas Rekers is still dissembling at 61. True, I parti