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Gay Youth Guide By Edward H. Sebesta, 1/3/2026
Foreword I wrote this book to have a stronger Gay community. To have a community of Gays prepared for Gay life and have successful Gay lives. To have a community of Gays with an absolute sense of Gay self-worth. Having led a successful Gay life, having observed Gay life for five and half decades and whose involvement with Gay liberation started in the 1970s, I feel that I have real practical knowledge to pass on to young Gay people.
Page 2 of 61 This guide has the specific things that you will need to know to be successful based on the real experience of Gays and not lectures about some ideology of what Gays should be or to recruit Gays for some movement. The guide also doesn’t see Gay life as being the imitation of the lives of heterosexuals and challenges the reader to think about what their life could be to live the best life possible for them. Finally, the guide hopes to help young Gays avoid the snares, traps and hazards that Gays can face. Introduction Given that books for young Gay people are being banned from the schools, I thought that I would write one for young Gays and have it available online for downloading for free. Another reason for this book is that often what is written is not specifically for Gays, but for some LGBTQXYZ+ which can be up to 14 letters long, a wide variety of identities, and they are full of ideological nonsense, such as a transman can be a Gay man, are full of silly happy thoughts, discuss things of no relevance to Gays and they avoid hard truths. Also, they don’t have the important and practical things that a young Gay person needs to know. They are often written in denial of the Gay community’s folk knowledge. That is in denial of what the Gay community has learned through its experiences and handed down orally from one Gay to another. The scope of these books is limited to self-acceptance and maybe some basic information about sex. They usually are assimilationist in their assumption that your life is going to be just like the straight peoples except that you have a same sex partner. In the future they might be written to comply with some other ideology held by some group about what Gays should be and should want, rather than what Gays need. This book will instead give you the information to be successful as a Gay person and be a stronger Gay person and avoid the hazards that Gays can and often face. This book is written specifically for Gays. The author doesn’t presume to write for Lesbians or others. Again, it will focus on the practical things a young Gay person needs to know to be successful in life as a Gay person. Though some of the things that this guide will suggest might apply to straights as well, this guide will explain why these things are especially important to a Gay person.
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It isn’t expected that the reader will agree with everything in this book, but the hope is that it will lead to serious thinking about the issues discussed and what you need to do to have a successful future. The goal is that the young Gay person won’t be running into obstacles unaware until he collides with them. It isn’t going to be a morality tale, it is about issues, choices, consequences. You make the choices. This book will explain what the consequences might be. If some things are sharply expressed, it is to cut through rationalizations, and other selfindulgent stuff and nonsense. There are challenges living as a Gay person. The challenges are more than just overcoming homophobia. Gay life is different than straight life due to the circumstances of being a small minority with a different situation and constraints and needs versus straight society, in addition to homophobia, as you live in the straight world. You need to decide whether you want to be successful living as a Gay person or not. Time The issue of time and its perception and use and the future is applicable to everyone and isn’t specifically a Gay issue. However, any guide book for any group of young people needs to discuss time and its use for multiple reasons. For Gays in school to achieve what they need to do, it is extremely critical to understand time. Discussing time may seem esoteric and unimportant, but its loss is especially bad for Gays since they will need to use their time in their school years to the most effective use they can. First, during these years in high school, what you do will have a huge impact on how the rest of your life unfolds. A lot of the possibilities in life as well as the limitations you will face are being determined in these last years in the school system. Some doors will open and some will close depending on what you do in school. Those these years are few, their impact on your life is going to be great. What you do with this short interval of time is important. Second, time can slip by. People say, “Where did the day go?” when the day is nearing the end and people don’t feel they got much done. Similar questions are asked about other periods of time. People who aren’t managing their time find that time has gone by and they have failed to finish a task or even start it, or not achieve goals they wanted to achieve. Since the time between now and graduation is short and critical to your future, you really need to make the best use of it. It is alright to have a lazy afternoon or time when you just relax, but they should be times which you intended to do that, not a day where there was no recreation or time of relaxation planned, but you didn’t get anything
Page 4 of 61 done or wish you had gotten something done. Time can slip through your fingers like water. It is not accidental that Benjamin Franklin, in the late 18th century, a time when the modern world was getting underway, had multiple sayings regarding time. Some are: “Lost time is never found again,” and, “You may delay, but time will not.” Third, the perception of time by most young people is different and it can be a hazard. It is one of the happy things of being young, but also some care needs to be taken that it doesn’t lead to bad outcomes. Time in physics in regular life is constant, and it is likely none of us will ever go even ¼% the speed of light. However, that doesn’t mean our sense of time and of time elapsed, and in particular the perception of time in the future isn’t shaped by human factors. Young people perceive time differently than older people. For older people, time is rushing by and the urgency to get things done is readily perceived. For many people when they reach 40, 50, and 60, they will say it just seemed like yesterday that they were in their 20s. Where did the time go older people ask. Some will have mid-life crises, since they imagined when young doing many things and now, time had slipped by without them thinking about it, and now that they are in their 40s, they realize that they have not done many of the things they dreamed of doing when they were young. Unaware of time rushing by, they have unknowingly let decades slip by. For many young people, and for the author when he was young, the future seemed endless and there was all the time in the world. A summer or a year can seem like a huge amount of time. Part of that is because you haven’t been existing for that many years, and an additional year is very significant in terms of the years you have lived. Also, there are large and significant changes each year as you grow up making a year seem like a big block of time, and in some ways, it is because big changes are happening. As for all the things you dream of doing or expect to do, you are young and there is the seemingly limitless vast future to do it in. It feels like there is no need for urgency or carefully watch your time, since future seems vast and it seems like there is plenty of time someday in the future to do what you hope to do. It is this perception of time that is the hazard. The event horizon in a young person’s perception can be just the time for the end of the quarter or semester when grades are given out, or the approaching end of the school year. I remember when I was maybe 12 or 13, I read a story about a married couple. They had gotten married and they set aside a desk for the husband to write the great American
Page 5 of 61 novel, and an area where the wife could continue painting. However, years later, not much had been written and nor much painting done. They had been busy and their dreams were forgotten. I resolved that wasn’t going to happen to me. Don’t let it happen to you. To plan for your remaining years of school just start out just imagining what you want your life to be like when you are 30 years old. Take your time thinking about where you want to be in your life, and what you want to be doing when you are 30 years old. Once you start thinking about it, you might realize you don’t have a clear picture or no picture of what you might want. That is okay, at least you have started thinking about it, and you should take your time thinking about it. What you imagine yourself to be when you are 30 may not come to mind all at once either. Take your time, but not too long. If you end up thinking that you have no idea, then you don’t. Work with that. The word used here “picture,” is not accidental. The goal is to imagine the life you want to be living, not to choose a major or a specific career or profession. The author imagined he wanted a house as large as the house he was growing up in, no worries about money and money to live well, have the money to do things and have position in life doing something important. That might not be your choice life, the author is just giving an example. You don’t need to have detailed picture, just some general idea, but you do need to have some idea. Then you do the following two items. 1. Write a statement of what you want to do with your life. Don’t make it long. Don’t worry how well it is written; you are the only person that is going to read it. Just write something. It can be rewritten and revised if you want to. It is simply to get you started in thinking about your goals. It isn’t going to be chiseled into stone. 2. You need to come up with some timeline of what you need to be doing while you are in school so you can do what you want to do with your life. It doesn’t need to be super detailed or formal. It just needs to be written out. Once you have done any sort of timeline, your thinking about the future will be changed and you will be thinking about your future and what you need to do and when you need to do it. The actions in the timeline will need to be thought out to provide you with as many choices of possible futures you might want. You might not know what profession you
Page 6 of 61 want, or what you might think you want can change, but you will realize that good grades will be necessary for whatever you choose and start choosing classes in school to keep your options open to be able to choose. You might not know what industrial profession or professional career you want, but you realize that good grades will be important and you will want to be taking the classes to keep your options open for your career. If you have a definite idea of what you want to do you will want to make sure the classes you take will allow you to pursue further education to be able to pursue that career. In particular if you have no idea what you want to do, pick classes and plan studies that will give you the widest range of choices. What you want in the future may well change and your plan may change, and that is okay. The goal is to be conscious about time and planning your future. When you start thinking about your future and start planning to achieve your life goals, you won’t end up being 30-years old and not have done what you had dreamed or hoped to do and limited options to do what you dreamed of doing in the future. Instead, you will have the choices to do what you want to do, and also you have planned when you are going to do it. When you plan, you are the master of time. When you don’t plan you are the victim of time sneaking by. With these exercises, you will realize that there is a difference between how you feel time is passing, and the reality of the passing of time. You will start seeing time in two ways and your sense of time will develop. Time is your most valuable thing, and you can’t purchase time for any amount of money. If you plan, you won’t waste your school years. You won’t end of up saying, “I wished I had ….”. Instead, you will graduate high school with the best possible preparation and situation to pursue whatever you want to do with your life. You will be most prepared and able to follow your dreams. The same applies to training or education after high school, such as junior college and college.
Immediate and urgent items. The next few following chapters will be about immediate and urgent things that you need to start right away, start today and an explanation as to why they are important. The discussion about Gay life and other issues can come after these chapters, since they can be thought about over time and don’t require immediate action.
Page 7 of 61 Preparing for a career. You need to have a strategic position in the economy. You need to immediately start focusing on getting the best grades you can and start thinking about your career. You will want a career that provides you with the best income you can get, a good job and personal security. The goal is to achieve the most you can with your abilities. This means you will have to push yourself, not rely on your parents or teachers pushing you. Being able to have selfdiscipline, having an ability to push yourself, and being responsible are in themselves valuable and will greatly help in making your life successful. They become habits by regular use, and they are strengths that get stronger by regular exercise. Having good grades, self-discipline, being able to push yourself, and being responsible are good for anyone, but for Gays it is especially important. Again, you will need to have as much an advantage and strategic position in the world as possible. You will face discrimination in many ways and having an advantage and strategic position in the system will enable you to overcome discrimination or compensate for the disadvantages caused by discrimination and even thrive. Many of the charities which assist people in distress are run by homophobic religious groups or they have a families’ first policy for those who have children or they are both discriminatory and have a family first policy. You won’t want to have to rely on them. Ending up homeless would be especially bad for a Gay person. If your family and relatives are homophobic, they probably won’t help you when you are in financial distress and you really don’t want to move back in with your homophobic family. Even if your family isn’t overtly homophobic, you might find that you will get less support than if you were straight. They might take you in, but not your boyfriend or spouse. If you have good job prospects and adequate savings you are very much less likely to have to face these issues of being broke. Adequate savings for emergencies require an income from which you can save. In terms of hiring, promoting, and layoffs you face an environment tilted against you. Managers when making choices as to whom to layoff, sometimes will consider that the other person has children and will choose to layoff you instead even if they consider themselves supportive of Gays.
Page 8 of 61 In interviewing, a certain percentage of interviews will be a waste of time since one or more hiring decision makers are homophobic. As you get older and are not married they can figure it out that you are Gay. Maybe you live in the Gayborhood1 and your address will be on your resume and application. Maybe you are married and spouse information is requested on applications. Now days people know that Gay persons don’t fit stereotypes and know enough to be able to ascertain that you are Gay without asking. Also, there can be a subtle unconscious bias against you, even by a person who considers themselves to be against homophobia, which will result in you not getting hired. If there is strong competition for the job, a small differential can be the reason you didn’t get hired. Discrimination can occur even if there are anti-discrimination laws. Even if you could make a case in court in a year or two, you will be wanting to focus on getting a new job immediately. You will want to be in a position where you have choices in what job you want to take. Some job categories of employment are very likely to be openly discriminatory and are allowed to be because of a religious exemption. In the future governmental policy might prohibit Gays from certain jobs. Jobs in rural areas might mean social isolation from other Gays and those job opportunities you might want to exclude from your search. At least you will want the rural job be a choice and not because the alternative was no job. Other jobs can be exposed to the homophobia of society. School teachers are particularly exposed to the homophobia of crazy parents. Religious schools likely won’t hire you. It isn’t necessary to review all the disadvantages you might face in employment; it is just necessary for you to realize that you need a strategic advantage to counter disadvantages. With good grades in school, you will have a better chance to get into the college or trade school of your choice resulting in better job opportunities when you graduate from the college or trade school. Good grades can be why you are chosen over another candidate to enter a school, get a job, or a scholarship. Good grades could be why you can participate in better programs in the trade schools for better opportunities. By good grades I mean the best that you can get. What is a good grade depends on the student’s abilities. A “B” in math is a good grade for a student that got it because they really worked hard, but would be a bad grade for a student that not only should 1
The term “Gayborhood,” is a neighborhood where a lot of Gays live.
Page 9 of 61 have gotten an “A,” but should have been in the advanced class getting an “A.” A “C” in math is a good grade for someone who worked very hard to get it and had the courage to take the class. A good grade is the grade you got with your very best effort. The goal is to get the best grades your full efforts and abilities can give you. Some schools attract better or more employers than others to recruit their students. Some credentials or certifications from some training programs have more credibility with potential employers. The education in some schools is much better than others. So having good grades to get into the better school will mean more and better opportunities in the future. Where the number of entrants to a college major, school or training program is restricted, you will have a better chance of being accepted with good grades. It isn’t just about getting into the school. The better your education was when you were in high school the greater will be your ability to do well in the college major or a training program and score well and learn more and as a result you will have greater opportunities when you graduate. Good grades in high school will prepare you to do well in trade schools or on the job learning also. Thus, getting good grades leads to advantages that lead to more advantages. You get a better education or training which then leads to a better employer who has better benefits and opportunities which leads to better connections and better opportunities. The advantages accumulate and compound. This applies to industrial careers also. You get into a training program which pays well which means that you can afford to pay for additional training or certification. If you are running a business, you will want a solid education. The world gets more complex and technologically advanced all the time. People are jealous of those who do well academically. These jealous people sometimes apply negative labels to smart people. There is the cliché of the really smart person who have poor social skills which continually appears in entertainment. This idea of the smart person lacking social skills is a way of persons lacking achievement in studying feel better about themselves. While studying hard you need to consider which career direction you want to go. Some careers have limited employment possibilities. They might be what you really want to do, but you might find out that it is extremely difficult to get a job in that area.
Page 10 of 61 As a result, you could end up doing work that isn’t your intended career and isn’t very desirable in terms of what you would like to do, as well as in its compensation, opportunities, and long-term prospects. You could end up doing a job that you don’t like, has no prospects, no future, but you have to do it to pay the bills and also maybe either live with your parents or share an apartment with five other people. What will you do if you can’t follow the path you desire for your career? What might be an alternative? What is your plan if your intended career isn’t possible? Ask these questions before you start college or trade school. Don’t wait to ask these questions after you graduated and can’t find a job in your intended career, though better late than never. If you really want to go into a certain field against all odds, then do so, but also have a plan if it doesn’t work out. You don’t have to make a decision immediately as what direction you want to go, but you need to start thinking about it and doing some research on the job prospects of a possible career. You don’t want to be making a hasty decision because of an approaching deadline so start thinking about it now. A lot of students graduate high school and they really don’t have a plan. They were clueless and basically pushed through the system and then sent out. They are basically drifting through life waiting to be told what to do. Don’t be like that. There is a popular belief that Gays have special talents in the arts such as music, art, dancing, acting, and theater. There is no proof of that. However, for those that do go into those fields it is often brutal disappointment for a great many of them. You had better be extraordinary and plan on really working very hard to achieve your goals or get a teaching degree to go with your arts degree to teach art in the schools. When public schools are in a financial difficulty, cutting music and art is often proposed. The humanities require going to school for a lengthy period of time, you will often need a doctorate as a minimum, and then you will still have poor job prospects. Or a bachelor’s degree and a degree in education. If you do decide to go into the humanities, you need to push yourself to the limit. If you go into the field, you need to understand the challenging job market and strategize how you will succeed. You will need to be the hardest working student. The professions, such as doctors, nurses, accountants, and those fields which are involved with technology; the sciences, engineering, mathematics and computer science offer great opportunities.
Page 11 of 61 For those going to trade schools, there are opportunities to keep the infrastructure of society working. These generally have good job prospects. Basically, careers that lead to jobs that provide high value to society in terms of goods and services, that require hard to acquire skills, will be those which have good employment. For those torn between what they would like to do and what will pay the rent, consider that you will have extra time because you don’t have children which will enable you to have a dual career. The author became a principal engineer in semiconductor processing and was the co-editor of two history books published by university academic presses. As graduation approaches you need to research different fields and get an understanding of the opportunities and risks in each field. The situation can change so you need to monitor developments. If your school has a career day, make sure you make the most of it. A caution about career information you might get. University departments need students to justify their existence. The author remembers before his freshman year his father and him were getting presentations by each engineering department. At the time, employment in aerospace was really bad with massive layoffs. When the aerospace engineering department gave their presentation, they emphasized that each graduate had gotten a job. It was true, but they weren’t all in aerospace, my father had hired one of the graduates for a job in remote rural location that had nothing to do with aerospace. Trade schools also need students to exist. Industries need labor and want people to choose the occupations and professions they need for their business and will present the opportunities in their industry as being great to attract people. They don’t have to compete as hard for labor if more people chose their industry or type of business. Their industry might be great, but it might not be. Be skeptical of what you hear on career day. The author was going to go into chemistry until he learned that Ph.D.’s in chemistry weren’t getting jobs. He went into chemical engineering which led into semiconductor processing and a successful career. His late ex back in the 1980s was a major in biology and was considering getting a master’s in zoology, which would have been a choice to be unemployed. The author advised microbiology which led to a successful career for him. While he was getting his masters, the field of immunology was starting and biotechnology was starting. One objection is sometimes made that something or another career choice isn’t their true desire. However, anything with challenging problems and opportunity for
Page 12 of 61 achievement can be interesting and satisfying and you can learn to love it. Unemployment or being poorly paid or being forced to have a bad job isn’t anyone’s desire. People like to say, “Money isn’t everything,” and that is true, but poverty isn’t anything. You need to consider is what your strategic position in the job market will be with your career choice. The situation is very different between eleven people competing for ten jobs versus ten people interviewing for eleven jobs. You want to be in the latter situation. The company in the latter situation is hustling to hire someone, but you will be in the situation thinking about whether the company is a good choice. Usually, when the studies or preparation for a job is difficult there are fewer people who study it and learn it. The jobs requiring skills based on it will pay more and have other benefits. Usually, the jobs requiring difficult to acquire skills are critical in some important activity and have fewer people who have the necessary skills. You need to learn about looking for work and interviewing before you graduate. It doesn’t matter if your schooling ends with high school, college or trade school. You want to be able to choose and get the best of your opportunities. Also, some colleges and fields of study interview applicants to determine who to admit, if so, and for that you will need to learn job interviewing skills. When there is a really good job opportunity and strong competition for it and many people interviewing for the position, having sharp strong interviewing skills can mean you get the job and not the other persons. A lot of people put little effort for preparing for an interview and knowing how to interview well gives you a big advantage. You need to have a good resume and have read about looking for work and interviewing. You need to have someone practice interviewing you with tough questions. If you get an opportunity to interview for a promising job, you need to make sure that you have the best chance of getting the job. Being prepared for the interview is an advantage. People can tell if you have put effort into it and being seen as a person who put a lot of effort into their interview preparation helps convince people to hire you. Beware of jealous people. As you do well in school and later in life, those who didn’t make an effort, will be jealous of your success and be angered by it. It is because they could have put in the effort and been as successful as you and they didn’t and so they
Page 13 of 61 feel bad. Or your being successful challenges their current decision to not put effort into achieving goals and so they don’t like it. They will try to come up with criticisms to dissuade you from continuing your efforts or to make you feel bad, but they are losers and if you realize they are losers, the criticisms of losers won’t impact you. When you graduate, chances are you won’t see them again. With a good education, careful consideration of your career choices, and strong interviewing skills you will have an excellent start in life. The chances will be in your favor of being successful and strategically able to overcome prejudice rather than being a victim of prejudice. You will be able to have an income to be an independent Gay person and afford a comfortable life.
Curriculum Parents, political and social movements, religious leaders, business interests and others are very concerned about what you are taught in the humanities such as history, literature and social sciences such as government and economics. They wish to control what you think and are afraid of what you might think if they don’t actively shape your thoughts. It is grooming, but don’t tell adults that. What is taught to you about those topics will be selected such that the school board won’t have to face angry groups at school board meetings. The school board members themselves may have been voted into office based on what they said would be taught by the school district. A lot of the education in these topics is propaganda. What is taught to you may seem credible, but that is because you don’t know anything outside of what they are teaching you. As a consequence of political choices about what you are taught, the value of these classes is limited. However, you need to get good grades in them to get into a good school. Also, you do need to know the basic information they provide. However, you also need to realize that they also partly propaganda. Learning how propaganda works is a valuable skill. The teachers that will tend to remain at your school will be those that believe in what the school wants to teach.
Page 14 of 61 When you leave school and enter a wider world you will realize that there were omissions in what you were taught and also rubbish in what you were taught. You don’t want to invest more effort than you need to get good grades and be basically informed. If you have an interest in the humanities, you will have plenty of time to study them on your own after you graduate, unless you decide to adopt children. The material you find on your own to study a subject will likely be much better than what was provided in your school. The social studies and humanities taught will essentially be about and for straight people. The literature, history and social studies likely won’t acknowledge that Gays exist let alone have any content. In the unlikely event there is Gay related content it will likely be the content that straight people and Gay social workers (do gooders) would approve of. One of the good things waiting for you when you graduate and leave home is art, literature, music, history and entertainment that is actually created for Gay people. Your focus in school should be those things which are useful knowledge or skills. Music and art classes are fine to take for fun. There is nothing wrong with having fun in school. As an adult you will consume art and music and an education in either will be useful. Just don’t consider them as part of your critical school educational goals unless you are going into the fields of either art or music. If you are going into those fields, you need to be the very hardest working student in your school in those classes. Science and math are particularly useful subjects. Geography is important. For those going into the trades shop classes are good. Languages are a useful area of study. The world is global and communication is important. Speech class is important so that you can give presentations. English classes focused on grammar, punctuation, reading and writing are important to be able to write reports, proposals, and presentations. Classes in literature aren’t so important in the cultural learning, I wasted some hours reading “Silas Marner,” but learning to read critically and write book reports helps develop your skills in reviewing written materials and writing reports. In life you will be reading materials proposing you take certain actions, like buy a product, purchase a home, make an investment and you will need to identify how they are working to shape your decisions. Some level of familiarity with computer science is useful. These skills are mostly free of ideology and are useful.
Page 15 of 61 Whining about math classes does you no good. Yes, it is difficult. It is your opportunity to have an advantage over competitors. Persons blathering on social media that they never had a use in their lives for a particular type of math, are people who likely living lives that don’t amount to much. People never brag about having poor reading skills, poor judgement, being illogical or a lack of cultural knowledge in music, history or literature, but are very public about having poor math skills. People discussing how they never needed math, are those trying to convince themselves that their failure in math is okay. People who celebrate failing to achieve are losers. When students go to the university and take American history, they are astounded how much their high school American history was propaganda. In contrast, the only regret they will have about their algebra class is that they wish they had done better and forgotten less. You need to look at your school’s curriculum critically with skepticism while considering how these classes will support you in the future.
Summers Don’t let your summers go to waste. Put your summer to good use. Have some fun during summer, you aren’t in school and there is time for activities and just resting and relaxing. However, think of how you might use it for summer schooling, for income or a project. A summer job is always good, since it gives you experience what the world of work will be like. It is an environment where you aren’t part of the goal, but a means for the business to achieve its goals. It also provides income which can lead to savings which can provide emergency money and help you in the next stage of life. It will look good on your resume when you are applying for your first job when you graduate. Volunteer activities are also somewhat like the world of work where you support an institution achieving a goal. Summer school or summer training of some type is good since you are learning skills. Participation in some athletic program is good. You are active in pursuing a goal and will have to plan and drive yourself to achieve it.
Page 16 of 61 However, it might be your own project which you have conceptualized. It might be a series of hikes across the landscape, or a series of books to read, or learning cooking skills, or bird watching or listening to a comprehensive range of harpsichord sonatas. You might self-study a language. Any project needing planning and goals is good. At the end of the summer if asked what you did, it should be more than just hung around. Responsible people are desired people for relationships There are people who can’t seem to manage their lives. They are lazy, don’t plan for the future, have no sense of responsibility, make excuses, exercise poor judgement, are often late, made no preparation for life and are going nowhere. They may have many emotional behaviors and dramatic performances. One of the slang adjectives for such a type of person at the time of writing of this guide is “hot mess.” Other Gays won’t want a hot mess for a partner. A person who is a hot mess and is very attractive might find people who are willing to put up with his behavior. But in the immortal words of Riff-Raff, in the “Time Warp,” song, “time is fleeting.” You won’t be young and cute forever, in fact you will be 30-years old before you know it. Learning self-discipline, responsibility, and pushing yourself towards your goals, will not only help you in your career and navigating the challenges of life, but will be seen as an attractive trait for a partner. Having financial security You need to have a good secure income. The chapter on preparation for a career is important not only to have a strategic position in the economy to counter and overcome job discrimination, but it is also important to provide you with financial security. You will need your own place and get out of your parents’ place. You need a car. You need to save money so you don’t have to rely on anyone else in case of losing your job, which is more likely because you are Gay, or emergencies. You will need to make sure that you don’t have to move in with your parents, if that is possible or end up homeless depending on 1st Hysterical Homophobic Baptist Church for meals. In profiles on the apps in which Gays meet each other, profiles will often say, “You need to have a job, car, and a place.”
Page 17 of 61 Supposing person A has a place and a car, and person B, 5 miles away doesn’t have a car or place of his own, that is he lives with his parents or a shared living arrangement. If A wishes to meet B for a social engagement, A will have to drive over and pick up B, drive B to his place, later drive B back to B’s place and then drive back home. It is a total of 20 miles of driving and the burden of being the host is always upon A. If both persons have a place and car, it means one of them has to drive 10 miles every other time. That would be an average of 5 miles each person for each meet-up, the burden of driving both split and cut in half. The burden of being the host is cut in half also. Even worse, to find a place to live, might mean you live with others in an apartment or house, some of them whom are homophobes. You might find living there difficult or you are kicked out. Christians kicked out my spouse of a shared apartment when he was just starting out in life. Most Gays aren’t so concerned that you have some high paying career, what they are concerned about is someone living off them, or being a burden because they have one economic crisis after another. Don’t exclude people because they don’t earn as much as you do. Meeting other Gay people will cost money. Only about 3% of men are Gay. Though it isn’t impossible that you might meet a Gay person in the ordinary ways a straight man might meet a woman, the odds are against it. The percentage of men in some places are going to be less than 3% since most Gays have concentrated themselves in specific geographical areas, in cities, and in that city in an area often call the gayborhood. Since Gays are concentrated geographically, there will be geographic areas where the percentage of men who are Gay is less or much less than 3%. Also, chatting face to face with a man to determine if he is Gay needs to be done with caution and has its risks. Living in or near the gayborhood can be expensive or becomes expensive. A Gay club will likely have a cover charge you pay for and the drinks can cost more. Public mass transportation often shuts down before clubs close. You will want to either have a car or use a taxi or Uber or some transportation service to get to and from the club. Gay friends often meet at restaurants and you will need to pay for your meal. Gay campgrounds, Gay cruises, Gay vacation places cost money. Gay events cost money.
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Gymnasiums cost money. Healthy foods cost more. Not eating junk foods can cost more. A good smartphone will be necessary with a good plan to use the apps. The Gay apps have different pricing tiers for increased functionality. For medical care you will want a doctor that has Gay patients already and a medical plan that allows you to select him. In choosing a doctor, you might have to choose a more expensive doctor and to avoid a cheaper but homophobic doctor. You don’t want to be going to some public health service; you might end up with a homophobic doctor. Because of anti-Gay prejudice you can face restricted choices for goods and services which might mean having to choose more expensive choices. You will sometimes want or need some goods or services more oriented for a Gay person and they might be expensive since they have a smaller market. It is recommended in general that a person have six months of salary saved, you might want seven or eight months depending on your field. To be saving money means you have to be earning enough to be able to save money. If a place where you live becomes more homophobic, you will want to have good prospects of getting a good job elsewhere and the money to afford moving elsewhere. If the management of your work place because more homophobic, you will want to be able to leave quickly. When you become a senior, you will want to avoid having to be moved in with straight people in some seniors’ home and be forced to re-enter the closet. Having a good secure income also means that you will have money to donate to Gay charity. It will also mean that if a friend is in a financial crisis, you can help them out. If a friend lost a job because of anti-Gay prejudice, you could financially help him. Focusing on having good grades, choosing a career, planning your future, and learning to interview will determine what type of Gay life you are going to be able to live. Spending and saving and debt There is a huge sophisticated machine to get you to spend. They look deeply into the psychology of people and find ways to motivate them to spend. They know your desires, fears and weak points. The online stores have sophisticated algorithms to select the
Page 19 of 61 products to present to you to purchase. Retail runs the most advanced, effective propaganda machine in all history by a wide margin. This is what you are up against. You absolutely need savings and you need to avoid debt. Debt, besides needing a flow of payments, charges interest. Over 5 to 9 years, people will have paid as much interest on their credit card as what is on their balance. Interest slowly and insidiously undermines your finances. The interest rate on consumer debt is high. It might not seem high since it is 2 or 3 percent per month, but that is 24% to 36% in a year, assuming you didn’t let it compound. If you are in debt, you aren’t likely to have saved. You needed to borrow, because you didn’t have the money or savings to cover your purchases. Once in debt it can be a struggle to get out since your habits of spending aren’t correct and you now have interest to pay. Savings are the critical thing to have to survive in the world. If you are in debt and lose your job you face an immediate financial crisis. People making a lot of money can get into debt, and those with little income can often have savings. It isn’t so much about how much money you make. There are people who make lots of money, but even when their income goes up substantially, still end up in debt. Having savings or being in debt is about managing your money in the face of a sophisticated psychological propaganda machine wanting you to spend it. Having savings and avoiding debt is about understanding why you spend money and have strategies to not spend money. The author had two strategies. One was to consider that when he saw something was strongly wanting to buy, to reflect that 15 minutes ago he didn’t know it existed and he was quite content with life. Then he would consider if he really needed it. The second strategy was to give himself permission to purchase it in three days if he still really wanted it. Often the item would be forgotten or the author realized he didn’t really need it. Putting some of your money into savings directly from your pay check or when getting paid helps, since out-of-sight the money is out of mine, or as the slang expression, “the money isn’t burning a hole in your pocket.” Though we don’t use physical money much anymore. You will need to have your own mental tricks to avoid shopping. Recreational shopping is a way to debt. Going to the mall because you don’t know what to do otherwise is a way of being parted from your money. You need to find something else to do. People have yard sales because they purchased a lot of needless things. Notice when you visit houses, how often they are cluttered with stuff. Generally, in 2026 what is being sold is not so much the object or service, but an identity. For example, you might feel that the purchase of a shirt gives you cultural credit, social status, or an identity. The reality is that you are out some money and the
Page 20 of 61 store has made a good profit. You are still the same person with the same abilities and attributes. Develop an identity through things you do and goals you pursue, don’t try purchasing an identity, because you can’t and the identity you end up is a person with debt. You can’t purchase glamour. There are Gay stereotypes which drive needless spending. There is the stereotype of Gays being elite consumers of fashionable clothes and other items. There are Gay people working in the fashion industry and other luxury goods. They are involved in the selling of these goods, when you purchase these types of goods, you aren’t the same as them. The cash is leaving you and going to the industries and business in which Gays are employed. The designer you buy from through retail might be flying to Milan or Paris or someplace, but you are still in suburbia and aren’t flying anywhere, and are out some money. Owning your residence is much more important that cars, jewelry, clothes and other status objects. People who spent their money on these things instead of acquiring a place of residence are perceived as foolish. Having a good credit rating and no payments is critical to being able to get a mortgage to purchase a place. Rents perpetually go up. In the end, it doesn’t matter how you do it, how you control your spending, all that matters is whether you have savings or not. If you don’t have savings, you need to figure out how you will have savings, which means you need to understand why you spend money. Excuses aren’t savings.
Eating, exercise and health You generally observe that many individuals were thin as students or young people and now are heavier and sometimes much heavier later in life. The author was skinny until about a couple of years afterwards graduating college and then had to watch his weight for the rest of his life. You might think that it is as simple as watching what you eat and weighing yourself. You might think that the older overweight people were neglectful and you conclude that it won’t happen to you. The older overweight people likely thought the same when they were younger. You need to develop healthy eating and living habits proactively as a young person to avoid ending up being overweight. When you are in school you are growing and your body is using up a lot of food calories to do so. What weight that you do have is being distributed over an ever-increasing height as you grow.
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When you are in high school you walk between classes, you have physical education classes, and maybe you are involved with a sport. You might do bicycling or hiking. In college you are walking all over the campus to classes, the library, the gym, and to friends. In high school or college you might not have a car and so do more walking to get to places. You might not have money for transportation services. Growth in height generally stops about 17. The brain fully matures by 25. Even before you graduate high school the amount of food calories you need starts to drop towards the end. What you need to eat needs to change immediately upon reading this section if you don’t have healthy eating habits already. When you graduate high school or college you stop most sports you might have been doing, no physical education classes, no walking on the campus, and less physical activity in general. You will likely own a car or can afford transportation services. Perhaps you have a desk job. However, having graduated, you can now afford to drink and eat foods you previously couldn’t afford. The school cafeteria meals might have lacked quality, but likely were healthier than what you might be eating later. Not too long after you graduate, you will suddenly realize that you have gained weight and have to diet. Then you will be learning what foods to eat, what to cook, thinking about what exercise you might want to do. You will be battling hunger. It is better you learn now than later after you graduate. The time to avoid this fate is while you are in school and skinny. Again, you need to start developing healthy eating habits now. You still need to get food calories because you are still growing. However, how you get your nutrition needs to be healthy and not in excess. The cessation of physical activity is one of the immediate problems that you will face when you graduate. In the schools in physical education classes, you likely will be playing some type of ball: volleyball, baseball, football, soccer, dodgeball or basketball. A few people might play some of these sports for maybe a decade after graduation, but it isn’t going to be a life-long physical activity. For nearly all of you, the last ball game you will play will be in a high school gym class. Swimming, running, walking, bicycling, dancing, hiking, including urban hiking, aerobics and camping are activities that you can do for the rest of your life. Tennis is a good activity, but how often will you be able to do it per week?
Page 22 of 61 Gymnasiums might be good, but it takes time to go there, change into gym clothes, exercise, shower, change clothes and then drive home. However, gymnasiums can be opportunities to meet people, make sure you go at last three times a week. Do some running or swimming while you are there. Exercise equipment at your residence is good. Choosing an apartment should involve understanding how the location can facilitate getting exercise. Can you walk to places from your apartment? Is it a good place to go for walks, bicycling? Are there parks nearby? Having a plan for physical exercise needs to be an immediate concern when you graduate. Your plan needs to be sustainable, not one depending on heroic effort or not have other things competing for your time. Your eating habits can start changing immediately while you are in school. You don’t need an austere diet. You can start by stopping the worst type of eating habits first. Fast food in particular is bad. Avoid junk food. Avoid fried food. You can eat it occasionally, but not often. Learn to eat a salad that isn’t smothered in high fat salad dressing. You will need food as a growing teenager, but you need to eat healthy to acquire healthy eating habits and a taste for healthy foods. You need to start learning how to read food labels on packages and understand them. Learning basic cooking is important. You will have more control over what you eat in life. You will be less likely to order out, or get fast food if you are able to cook food at home. Or be able to cook food for a week. If you are busy, you will want something in the refrigerator you can grab and heat up. Start drinking carbonated flavored water (seltzer water). If you are drinking soft drinks that have sugar, you need to stop immediately. There is a lot of wrong or unsubstantiated advice on losing weight, but generally less fats and sugars and more vegetables is good. As you start developing good eating habits, you likely will encounter people who are obstacles. People who have bad eating habits and are overweight, even if you don’t say a word about them, can have negative feelings observing your healthy habits. They are confronted by their failings by what you do successfully. Comments that you are too skinny shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Page 23 of 61 As will often be the case in life, when you are doing something to be successful, those who aren’t doing anything, or are failing, will try to pull you down. They may have joined Future Diabetics of American, but you don’t have to. People will push food and make comments. Learning to say no will be important. Avoid those who push food and have bad eating habits when possible. It is important to exercise and keep your weight under control. There are tremendous health benefits for you in your life. There will be less time at the doctor and lower medical costs. Eating less saves money. As a Gay person you will want to be attractive to Gays who are attractive. The Gay community in general watches what they eat, exercises, and strives to be in good physical health and not being overweight very much more than straight men. There is a lot of propaganda about being overweight as being okay. There is both a fat liberation movement and a body positivity movement. These movements are just propaganda for those who aren’t going take responsibility for their bodies, or are failing to take responsibility for their bodies and are jealous of those who do. Being overweight is generally harmful to your health. It makes it difficult to be active. You may convince yourself that your morbidly obese body is beautiful, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the other person. Whether a Gay man that you find attractive will depend on him, not you, thinking that your morbidly obese body is attractive. It isn’t impossible, some Gays are into obesity, but it is very unlikely. Attractive Gays have the opportunity to attract attractive men and so will chose attractive men. If you want to be chosen by attractive men you will need to be attractive. What is considered attractive varies widely, but generally obesity isn’t. The obese individuals might talk up body positivity, but they will be going after thinner men, unless they are settling for who might find them acceptable. You will want to be in shape physically when you leave school. You don’t have to be a super model or bodybuilder, there are Gays into all types, but being obese and flabby is going not going to be popular. To be in shape you need to exercise and eat healthy and so your health benefits and you are more attractive. If you are already obese in school, you still can change. You are still growing and you are still changing. Your body is consuming a lot of calories for growth. You will have to make immediate changes in what you eat and how much physical activity you are doing. Swimming is a good activity since the water will support your body.
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People will tell you things such that you are “big boned” or it is “genetics.” These are excuses. There are various ethnic groups where in one geographical area they are thin and, in another area, they are chubby and it relates to diet. It is eating and life style. You can change your diet and lifestyle; you can change your future. A healthy lifestyle also gives you a strategic advantage in life. You will have fewer visits to the doctor, less expense for medicine, and a longer life span. It will help with interviews. A Gay person needs all the strategic advantages in life he can get. It might be hard, but in the end what type of Gay life do you want?
Physical safety. Gays are often subjected to bullying and violence. The ability to defend ourselves is an imperative. Generally, the actions against bullying have been to persuade students that bullying is wrong. There is nothing wrong with doing this and to the extent that it works it is good. However, it is questionable that it will be entirely effective in stopping the bullying of Gays. Also, changes in the school administration and the school district administration can result in varying amounts of support of programs against bullying including there being no support. Some schools will have no programs against bullying. Depending on who is doing bullying, like members of the football team, the administration may not be interested in taking effective actions and have leading athletes investigated or reprimanded. For many Americans the priority for a high school is to have a good football team and education is just a reason to have a high school to have a football team. Scandals where football athletes are given unjustified good grades by teachers pressured to do so, is a perennial thing in American education. Exercising to build muscular strength and learning self-defense could reduce or eliminate bullying. At least it could make the homophobic bully regret his actions. Gays shouldn’t seek out conflict, but should be able to defend themselves when assaulted. Do not initiate conflict by words or actions, but don’t just take being hit without defending yourself. Exercise is also good for your health and appearance. Learning self-defense can be an interesting endeavor and an opportunity to meet others who are learning self-defense. Learning self-defense involves determination and self-
Page 25 of 61 discipline and those are very useful life skills. Perhaps knowledge that you are learning self-defense can be a deterrence to aggression. It would likely be helpful if it was generally believed that bullying Gays could result in in the bully being harmed. The current stereotype about Gays, gives a picture of a person incapable of resisting aggression. Being in good physical shape should include the ability to run fast. In the choice between fight and flight, flight is better. Running is a good activity in later life and it can be a social activity. Running helps the heart and helps your health. It is good activity to avoid obesity. Physical strength to climb over obstacles is useful in escape. If they catch up with you, but they are out of shape and are exhausted, that gives you an advantage if you are not exhausted or less exhausted than your pursuers. The school principal and other persons in the operation of the school may tell you to tell them who is bullying you and they will address the problem. Do not take them seriously. If they were serious, the problem of bullying would have already been taken care of in your school. You surely aren’t the first person or only person being bullied or who fears being bullied in your school. Bullies especially target those who report them to deter other victims reporting them. Your principal can’t just act without hearing their side of the story. The bullies will then will seek you out for severe retaliation. The principal isn’t going to provide someone to follow you while you are at school for your security and there won’t be police to protect you off grounds. Also, unless the bullying is caught on camera, the bullies will deny everything. It is just your word against theirs. The bullies’ parents will likely defend their child, and likely the bullies’ parents have mental issues, otherwise why are their children bullies. All the principal really wants to do is just say that they are concerned about bullying if the topic comes up in discussion. They will lament that they want to do something, but they are unable to convince students to come forward with complaints. They know full well how bullying works and that students are afraid to report bullying. They don’t really care or are just idiots on the topic of bullying. Either way you should avoid notifying the principal. Do not use weapons. It will involve police, possible criminal charges and expulsion to a reform school which would likely be horrible.
Page 26 of 61 The suggestions in this section are speculative and not based on any study. Do any of self-defense at your own risk. However, being the target of violence is a risk also. The author is extremely unlikely to be able to help you if you have a problem. What has been suggested to Gay students what they might do in response to bullying has been limited by the what educators are willing to discuss. Educators generally wallow in sentimentality or concerned about what the public will think. They won’t like the idea of learning self-defense. Of course, it will be good when bullying is eventually eliminated, but you are in danger of being hit in the here and now. Your physical safety is the highest priority and certainly higher than the sentimental feelings of others. If the school administration was really sincere about eliminating bullying you wouldn’t even have to be thinking about your physical safety. Don’t let their insincere nice sounding words result in you not being able to defend yourself. The time when Gays just got beaten without fighting back needs to be over. Smoking drugs sun and alcohol and aging. Smoking ages you, including your skin. The burning of vegetable matter makes all sorts of nasty compounds and they get absorbed into your blood and circulate through out your entire body including your skin. It is like an aging potion. If you want to look like your 40 years old when you are 30 years old, smoking will be a powerful aid to prematurely age your face. Of course, it is a health hazard which you can learn about elsewhere. Some guys don’t like kissing guys that smoke. Also, with smoking nowadays not being allowed in clubs, you stink to those who don’t smoke. Further, a person might meet up with you for a night of fun, but why would they choose a long-term partner for which the future could involve them visiting you in the hospital and discussing with you your cancer therapy. Smoking or vaping costs money. It is a steady loss of money. As a Gay person you need to have financial reserves. Nicotine is a member of the alkaloid family of chemicals which includes caffeine, morphine, heroin, cocaine, and others with the “ine” ending. Plants produce them because they are neurological poisons for insects. Human chemistry is different so they act more as drugs with psychological effects. This chemical information is given to make it clear that though nicotine drug addiction isn’t illegal, it is still powerful, chemically classed among other powerful addictive substances.
Page 27 of 61 Finally, with smoking or vaping, the habit owns you. You constantly need it. It is an addiction. Making sure you have some nicotine product will be a routine chore. If you are hiking or at some place and complaining about needing a cigarette or vape, others will find your whining irritating. Sunlight has ultraviolet rays and they can break up chemical bonds, and your biochemistry involves a lot of chemical bonds. Exposure to sunlight ages your skin. The practice of tanning in tanning salons or laying in the sunlight is particularly bad for aging. If your skin is dark, you are much more protected from ultraviolet damage, but not entirely. In Southeast Asia both men and women use umbrellas, even when it isn’t raining, if they are out in the sun for extended times. If you used an umbrella, it might mean that you could get laughed at but growing up means you don’t care what foolish people think. You should wear a hat that shades your face or sunscreen. Illegal drugs are not checked for quality by federal agencies. You really don’t know what they have mixed it with or what their quality control procedures are. Marijuana can have all sorts of bad things added to it. Illegal drugs are distributed by criminal organizations to make vast profits; they are not public-spirited charities nor known for being humane or having serious ethical concerns. Deaths due to drugs is a regular news item. Homophobic police might not check all the other patrons at a concert or event for marijuana, even though it may be obvious that it being used, but they might decide to check you. Other drugs are also are cut with different substances. Most drugs can result in addiction and the destruction of your life. All of them involve you steadily losing money. The only guys who will want to get involved with you are other persons using illegal drugs. Alcohol consumption needs to be moderate. As time has progressed over the years the amount of alcohol that medical research has found as being safe to consume has declined. Drinking large amounts of alcohol is hard on your body and your brain and accelerates aging. Your facial features can swell. Again, it is expensive. You might have an impulse to disregard the cautions mentioned here because you might be hearing them from some adult who is a pompous moral scold or perhaps it seems that it gives you social credit with your peers or makes you feel that you are a rebel. Squelch these impulses. One of the big strategic advantages in life is using your mind to not act upon strongly felt impulses.
Page 28 of 61 You don’t want to end up like those older people whose faces are ravaged by time, to do so avoid drugs, smoking, sun, and drink moderately when you reach the legal drinking age. The greatest hazard for Gays is that they never achieve a true sense of selfworth. The following sections are going to approach issue of overcoming internalized anti-Gay belief systems using multiple approaches. You can observe Gays that say all sorts of slogans, but in the end lack a sense of self-worth. Approaching the topic from different directions will hopefully help you escape from some internalized anti-Gay belief you might have. Systems of Belief and being Gay The single biggest problem Gays have in life is achieving self-respect as a Gay person. To expect and demand that your humanity to be respected as much as a straight person. To not see yourself as something to be tolerated and not feeling that you have to justify your existence. This is challenging since you don’t grow up within a Gay family, and rarely within a Gay community and so don’t receive positive reinforcement. A Gay person often starts out as having already incorporated the anti-Gay beliefs of his family, his family’s religious group, his community, and his society. Even when a young gay person isn’t in a homophobic environment, he can grow up with attitudes of toleration, that still place him at a lower level as a person seeing themselves as failing to be straight. Even in progressive families there can be subtle narratives that being Gay is negative. The language of tolerance implies that something is needing toleration. All Gays when growing up, have little or no flow of information about being Gay that might support a positive self-image. A large proportion of Gays, likely the majority, start out being below zero in their valuation of themselves being Gay, almost all with a diminished value of their humanity. A Gay person is often isolated and doesn’t have another Gay person to talk to about being Gay until they leave high school. They are surrounded by straight role models.
Page 29 of 61 As a consequence, most Gays grow up within straight society and see straights as being the standard of life, as having the superior life, and being the standard to copy. They try to fit their Gay lives into straight molds. The beliefs of straight people are just the beliefs of straight people. Their beliefs aren’t some cosmic standard, there are just more of them than Gay people. Their beliefs are shaped by the fact that their lives are heavily involved with reproduction including the decision to reproduce. How well their beliefs work for themselves is a constant topic and frequent controversy among straight people. Certainly, don’t let their beliefs bring you down. There are Gays worried concerned about what the straight people might think about themselves since they regard straight people as being the reference standard for living and live thinking that being Gay is an imposition on straight society. When you start out at less than zero, as an anti-Gay Gay, how well you do in life will depend on much you progress in coming to value your own humanity, and even better, feeling that in being Gay you won the lottery. To work hard for a good future for yourself you need to see yourself as a being worth working hard for. Anti-Gay Gays don’t respect other Gays. They won’t value any relationship they are in and as a result they are not likely to have any long-term relationship. They will be closety, because they see being Gay as bad and an embarrassment, and have fewer Gay friends. They will often end up as older bitter Gays who are alone. The challenge for young Gays is though they are starting out with anti-Gay views and attitudes they change and achieve self-respect, a sense that they won the lottery. Gays need to not see straight life as superior and the standard to live by, but instead that being Gay opens up all sorts of wonderful possibilities. That is quite a challenge and many, if not most, Gays just acquiesce to being Gay. In their minds they are just making the best of it. Some Gays will state all sorts of things about being proud to be Gay, but careful observation of them can reveal their actual feelings. It seems that the reason people are Gay is largely unknown, but whatever the reason, if you are Gay, it is not going to change. Recognition of this fact is good to avoid wasting time and effort trying to change yourself, and for others to leave Gays alone and stop trying coercive efforts to change them. For some Gays, the fact that they can’t be changed becomes a refuge, a “We can’t help it thing.” They feel that if it was a choice they could be blamed, but since they can’t change,
Page 30 of 61 they can’t be blamed. These Gays might say all sorts of slogans, but in their hearts, they see being Gay as a flaw. There are Gays who feel their existence is an imposition on society won’t have selfrespect, or demand respect. These Gays that don’t value their humanity will allow themselves to be bullied by various groups across the political spectrum since they constantly feel they have to justify their existence to straights. They will grovel for acceptance by any social movement that criticizes the Gay community. They are desperate to let some movement know that they are one of the good Gays and not like those other Gays who are the bad Gays. They will seek to imitate straights instead of developing a life for themselves as a Gay person. They won’t pursue thinking about what Gay life might be or support a Gay cultural program. They won’t value any Gay social program. A young person needs to free themselves from anti-Gay viewpoints and straight role models. In doing so, a young Gay person will be free to pursue the opportunities in Gay live and develop as a Gay person. To develop a self-respect a Gay person needs to critically think about themselves and the straight society they are in, and also the homophobic movements in their society. More about Beliefs One of the major problems Gays confront is that they were born into some belief system of their family or they join some belief that is anti-Gay and as a result see being Gay as a flaw or failing. Often, even after they are part of the Gay community, they are hostile to other Gays, endlessly worry about what some group or another thinks of Gay people, they criticize the behavior of Gays, and wants some group of straights to know that they are one of the good Gays unlike the other Gays which members of some belief system perceive as bad. If it is an anti-Gay belief system it is a stupid system. However, that is easy to accept if it isn’t your belief, but hard to accept if that is your system of belief, the belief you grew up with, or the belief of your family or your local society. Often when you get older you have a more skeptical view. You have had more experience, you have had some education, you have been exposed to a wider range of people and their different opinions, possibly you have traveled, and possibly seen some things that you thought were absolutely true turn out not to be true, or have had life experiences that will show you something that you thought to be true isn’t.
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However, being young all these things that make older people more skeptical have yet to happen to you. Also, your brain is still developing and you have yet to have your full mental abilities which is another limitation in your ability to critically review belief systems. Worse yet, often when you are a teenager you think you are smarter than most adults, the author certainly thought so when he was a teenager. There are two issues with this. First, the ability of your brain is different thing than how effectively you use your brain. Many adults are mentally lazy, uncritical in their thinking, and rightly appear stupid. This is a matter of them having a brain that they can use, but they don’t use it. It doesn’t mean your brain is fully developed or smarter, it just means they aren’t using theirs. So, seeing so many adults for whom you are obviously more intelligent in your thinking, can lead you to be over confident in your own critical thinking. Second, we exist within our own brain, our own mental capacities. It is really hard to see our own limits in our general thinking. Mostly, you realize these limits, when something happens and you can see how you completely failed to understand or perceive something in the past. Unfortunately, you don’t have much past yet. Since your brain has yet to fully develop, you won’t be able to perceive the resulting limits in your mental capacity. The point of this discussion about your limitations as a young person in thinking critically is to make you aware that you are easier to be convinced of something, or be scammed. Many belief systems make a point of having a youth outreach because young people are more likely to be recruited into a belief system or have their current belief system reinforced. St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order, famously said, “Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” which is about how indoctrinating the child, will fix his thinking for life. V.I. Lenin, said “Give us the child for 8 years and it will be Bolshevik forever.” A lot of your beliefs are imprinted upon you when you are young and don’t have the ability to critically evaluate them. It can be called grooming. People when they are influencing children, call it guidance. When people discuss groups that they oppose which are influencing children, they use terms like brainwashing, conditioning, propaganda, and indoctrinating.
Page 32 of 61 As a result of this early child grooming, a lot of the systems of belief which you are exposed in your particular place in society may seem very credible. Additionally, they are beliefs likely shared by your parents, the rest of your family, friends and people in the society in which you find yourself in, further making these beliefs more credible. Of course, you are aware of people in the world with different beliefs, but likely you and people in your immediate social circle see those people as misguided and unreasonably clinging to their beliefs which to you seem obviously wrong. They very likely feel that your belief system is obviously wrong and your family and social circle as misguided and unreasonably clinging to your beliefs. Yet, in another place there are people who think that your social circle and the other social circle is obviously wrong. These different groups were raised by different people when they were young. This essay is not arguing that there are no right or wrong beliefs, some beliefs have severe negative consequences, others harmless, some are helpful. The point is that much of your beliefs are because of the social environment which you were born into and learned before you had much critical thinking ability. Commonly the beliefs of people in the historical past can seem nonsensical and we wonder how could they have had those beliefs. They were raised then; you were raised recently. Older people can often seem to have outdated beliefs originating from when they were young. Young people often think that they are so much smarter than seniors and that they surely know it all. Younger people understand all the mistakes committed by previous generations, and believe that surely, they will do much better. This often leads younger people to have overconfidence in whatever they happen to believe. Then decades later they are amused that they believed in one thing or another when young. Or it can be a bitter experience. The Marxists used to believe that homosexuality was a result of capitalist decadence. Back in the 1970s and 80s Marxist Gays to prove themselves worthy to straight Marxists would be strenuous supporters of anti-Gay Marxist regimes and would write Marxist analyzes of Gay Liberation and were generally suspicious of fun. Then Marxism was seen as a credible contender for the world. Now Marxism seems to be that of the historical past. The Soviet Union which was the communist adversary in the Cold War (A struggle for the world in the 2oth century after World War 2) is no more. The remaining communist regimes have some of the most aggressive capitalist corporations in the world. Now Marxists are supportive of sexual minorities and see anti-Gay sentiment as part of reactionary thinking.
Page 33 of 61 The point isn’t to argue what the future of Marxism will be. The future is opaque to our perceptions. Nor is the point to argue about Marxism in general. The point is that a lot of Gays in the past worried about their homosexuality being decadent or counter revolutionary, they didn’t live their life, they were apologetic for their existence, and it was completely unnecessary. The belief system that a Gay person might be agonizing over today or in the future may be gone in a couple decades later or reversing itself in its opinion regarding homosexuality. Your generation isn’t special out of the hundreds of generations in recorded history. The human experience isn’t changing because your generation has arrived. History isn’t stopping for you. It can seem like your generation is surely smarter and won’t make the mistakes of the past. Likely you will make new types of mistakes. The point this discussion about how beliefs can just be that of a particular time and temporary in history is to have Gays question their beliefs that are harmful to Gays, that is to themselves. It would be a tragedy if a Gay tormented himself over being Gay as a believer in some movement and then sometime in the future that belief is perceived as nonsensical. Surely you believe that burning witches at the stake in the past was horrible and based on beliefs that were nonsense. Don’t inwardly psychologically burn yourself at the stake for some belief system of the present. All these systems of belief are made by straight people for straight people and their lives and cycles of reproduction and have incorporated into them whatever their feelings or anxieties were about homosexuality at the time of their formation. People grasp systems of belief for emotional reasons though they might think that they have rational reasons for their systems of belief. You have emotions like anyone else. You aren’t some super-being floating above the human experience. There are four major things which drive emotional attachment to belief systems. First, the world is full of problems and suffering. It is very comforting to believe that something will save the world and make everything wonderful. Communism and Christianity promise to save the world. They both have historical records of horrific atrocities and also arguments, rationalizatons to morally detach themselves from their historical records. The point here is that you might be wanting to believe in some movement to feel there is hope for the world, but the movement is also anti-Gay. This would be self-destructive.
Page 34 of 61 The future will likely bring new movements that will make claims to save the world. If you are more self-aware of why you are motivated to believe in the movement and are informed of what the actual performance of these movements have been you can more easily prevent yourself from getting mentally trapped inside an anti-Gay belief system. Homophobia isn’t saving the world, and it should be a clue that movements that think homophobia is part of saving the world, are crazy. Second, the world is also a place full of danger. People die from diseases, in accidents, during crimes, are murdered, in wars, in natural disasters, from starvation. There is human trafficking. There are genocides. There have been mass enslavements. There have been death camps. There are nuclear weapons. It would be very comforting to believe that some divine being or beings or some supernatural force was protecting you. It is one of the major reasons religions exist. Perhaps there is a benefit from not being plagued by worry, but also a danger of lacking sufficient caution in a dangerous world. Instead of relying on an anti-Gay belief system, focus on real actions to reduce your risk. Third, beliefs can give a person meaning and purpose in a meaningful reality ordered by some system or metaphysical force instead of a meaningless existence in a meaningless world. If they are anti-Gay, they are likely a belief system full of nonsense and resulting form historical accident and full of fear mongering for people fearing the world. A foolish belief system isn’t giving you purpose or meaning. Instead get involved in doing something that is real and worthwhile. Fourth, some systems of belief provide a community for people. They provide a social network. Gays, like anyone else, would like a community of friends. A Gay person should however remember the words of Jean Cocteau, “It is better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for who you are not.” In the future understand that building Gay community social groups is important to keep Gays from falling into homophobic traps. A Gay person might want a belief that will save the world, provide security, and give them a purpose and meaning in a meaningful world, and a community like any other person. Just don’t adopt a belief that believes saving the world includes eliminating homosexuals, making the world safe from homosexuality, and your meaning evil and your purpose to terminate your Gay existence. Understanding your motives to choose certain beliefs will give you a degree of detachment to break away if they are toxic to you as a Gay person The belief systems of the world are created by straight people for straight people. That doesn’t mean that they are inherently bad, it just means that they were created for
Page 35 of 61 straights, largely to manage them and their cycles of reproduction and these belief systems incorporate what straights thought about homosexuality at the time and place they were formed. Thinking of movements and beliefs as the creations of persons different than yourself, will provide a degree of detachment so that you can break free of homophobic movements if you happen to be born into one or fall into one. You should always have as a default that some system or belief or practice is for straight people until you determine otherwise. Don’t be quick to decide that something isn’t just for straight people. Nor should you feel that you have determine whether something is for Gays and straights or just for straights right away. Of course, things like algebra or astronomy or oceanography are for Gays and straights. It is for social issues that you need to ask the question on whether something applies to Gays. Say to yourself, “XXXX is for straights,” and then consider whether that statement is true. This exercise separates you from belief systems and ideas to give you mental space to critically evaluate them. If you said, “Jesus is the straight people’s god,” it might be a statement that you reject, but you have opened up a space in your thinking to consider Christianity without assumptions, and also make sure that you aren’t tormenting yourself about being Gay. Christianity is mentioned here since it is the most common reason Gays have negative feelings about being Gay, but I well could be other things. It isn’t just about rejecting beliefs which are homophobic either. It can be activities that don’t provide a benefit to Gays or are irrelevant to Gays. You can avoid struggling for years being in conflict with being Gay, and avoid never freeing yourself from internalized homophobia. Adults talk at you. Adults talk at young people for multiple reasons. There is practical information you need to be successful in life. Adults talk to promote certain ideas and shape your thinking. Adults are also often in a panic over something that they feel will be destructive to youth. Observing your fellow students, you will notice that a lot of them are drifting through life waiting to be told what to do. Many people are like this after they graduate. School administrators and institutions know this and spend effort to tell them what they need to do and they can shuffle along through life.
Page 36 of 61 The direction they give is for the 97% of society that are straight and conceived by the straights who compose 97% of society. Some of it will be of use to Gays but a lot will be just for straights, such as discussing heterosexual marriage and child raising and the cycles of reproduction. A Gay person can’t afford to just drift along in life. A Gay person needs to be planning their life and conceptualizing their future on their own without help. You can’t be clueless and need to keep your wits about you. As for the ideas that adults are promoting, some will be good and some just the fad of the times. You should be skeptical, but not automatically reject everything either. Usually, you will only be presented one side of an issue. However, with the Internet you can search for opposing materials also. You might ask an artificial intelligence program what the different views on a specific topic or issue are. Even if you think something is nonsensical, only express it to fellow students that might approve your opinion. Nothing will be accomplished by speaking up to the adult speaker except to annoy adults who might seek to correct your attitude or wonder if there are some psychological problems and probe into your life. One purpose of being skeptical and making inquiries about opposing views is to avoid being entrapped by some belief that is negative about being Gay or isn’t compatible with Gay life. Developing critical and questioning skills are beneficial for everyone. For Gays it will be specially important since they face so many anti-Gay belief systems. For Gays it will be good when you face people trying to sell you things and ideas contrary to leading a successful Gay life. Psychology and counselors Psychology has a very long history of follies. There was drapetomania, a supposed mental illness that a physician, Samuel A. Cartwright, suggested in 1851 caused African American slaves to flee plantations. More recently, there was the psychological theory of Reclaimed Memory, which gained some popular credibility in the 1990s, that individuals could have repressed memories of sexual abuse that psychologists could recover. It sent innocent people to jail. Sigmund Freud's theories of psychoanalysis were thought credible by the academic world for decades, but now are discredited. Psychoanalysis held that homosexuality was caused by mental illness.
Page 37 of 61 There have been the horrors of prefrontal lobotomy and electroshock therapy applied to individuals by psychologists and psychiatrists. Currently, while this section is being written, it has been discovered the original research which was used to establish the theory of cognitive dissonance, is rubbish. For many decades the idea of cognitive dissonance was frequently referred to in explaining certain behavior. There are fads in psychology. There was the Luscher color test which said a personality type could be determined by their color preferences. There was the Rorschach ink blot test where the patient looked at ink blots and it supposedly reveal psychopathologies. Currently scientific publications report that the field of psychology is having the reproducibility crisis. That is where in the repeating of important foundational experiments in psychology the results didn’t repeat. In science, it is repeatable experiments that support a theory and make it valid. More than one scholar has pointed out that psychology is just ideology and prejudice wearing a mask of scientific truth. If physics was like psychology, the speed of light would vary depending on what theory was currently popular in a given year. One year it might be 300,000 kilometers a second, another year 900 kilometers per hour, another year the speed of light in a vacuum would vary by color. Yet in another year wanting to know the speed of light would be seen as a pathological symptom. Psychology gets involved with popular panics about youth. In the 1920s Jazz was held to be mentally harmful to young people. In the 1950s there was widespread fear that comic books were causing juvenile delinquency. Psychology needs to be considered by thinking about cash flow. If students have more mental afflictions, there is the need for psychological therapists which collect fees or earn salaries, the possible need for medicines which need to be purchased. There would be the need for institutions which research youth problems (product development) and train “experts” (product marketing) and therapists (product providers). A high school counselor who recommended lots of students for psychological help and medicine would initiate a lot more cash flow than a counselor who made few referrals for both. Likely the counselor making a lot of referrals would be seen as caring. The counselor would see himself as a great caregiver, but he is just a believer in whatever the reigning psychological theory is at the moment and wants to imagine himself as some type of hero. Services providing psychological services and firms selling drugs for “therapy” would have a positive opinion of the counselor making a lot of referrals and might suggest the counselor who wasn’t making a lot of referrals is neglectful.
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It shouldn’t be surprising that there are so many different diagnoses (products) that have arisen concerning youth. Your counselor might want to have some sessions to explore your anxieties, they earn their salary by providing counselor services. Talking to a counselor might seem desirable. You have the attention of an adult who is seriously listening to your anxieties. Your life has a little drama now. Maybe other students are talking to the counsel and talking about it with friends and you want to have something to talk about too. You don’t want to get involved with your school counselor for personal problems. Their work involves talking to teenagers and understanding the teenager’s motivations. They are trained how to talk to teenagers, have lots of experience talking to teenagers, and have ways of talking to teenagers to get them to talk about things they don’t want to talk about and are very experienced in how teenagers might avoid topics. Much of the aspects of your life are interrelated and you can’t easily talk about one issue in isolation without it leading to another. The counselor might already suspect that you are Gay and now when you are in the office talking about your problem it is an excellent opportunity for him to probe with subtle questions. You run the risk of outing yourself. Records are supposed to be confidential, but they can leak. People see you visiting the counselor and can be curious. The counselor might have found Jesus and now wants to let your parents know you are Gay. Life is full of challenges and problems. They aren’t necessarily mental afflictions. You want to avoid a life-long career of being a patient. In the past counselors would seek to have you be cured of homosexuality. Today that is still a risk. Another danger is that the counselor might think that you are trans and convince you to take drugs that will stop your puberty. Maybe he gets social justice bragging rights for advocating this. You run a risk that he will want to lecture you on what a Gay person should be like or shouldn’t be like. Straight professionals don’t understand what it is like being Gay. Their ability to advise you is limited. Even if the counselor is Gay, he likely is a respectability Gay, that is a Gay who is concerned with following the norms of straight people to be respectable. He will want to
Page 39 of 61 impress upon you the current ideologies of the LGBTQXYZ+ or whatever is the current thing. Currently that involves lecturing Gays to consider women who think they are men, known as transmen, as part of their dating pool. In the future it is likely to be other nonsense. He likely regards a circuit party as a parade of pathologies or most anything that the Gay subculture finds is fun. Being Gay is wasted on some people. More generally, seeing the counselor involves pulling others into your private affairs along with your parents, who the counselor might want to talk to, and telling you how you should run your life. Also, live your life without getting into trouble so you aren’t sent to the counselor.
Religion – In Particular Christianity. Religion is a major reason, perhaps the greatest reason why Gays don’t fully accept themselves, have a positive sense of being Gay and fully support their own humanity. They can end up wasting a lot of time and mental energy agonizing over their religious beliefs. They can participate in Gay life, but regard it as sinful and hope that they can give it up in the future. These Gays crippled by religious guilt find the idea of Gay Liberation makes no sense and so are in opposition to any Gay liberation that isn’t confined to begging for toleration. So, they are opposed to any real Gay Liberation. This section is not to argue that religious Gays are to be denied participation in the Gay community. Gays come from all social backgrounds and have a place in the community. However, Gays with a clearly anti-Gay belief system, with an anti-Gay agenda, and are actively attacking the Gay community don’t have a place. For example, some closet preacher who is denouncing Gays. Religious Gays can have different interpretations of religious texts and the religious beliefs of some Gays don’t think being Gay as sinful at all. In that case there is no issue to discuss. The one drawback of some religious participation where the denomination or church isn’t Gay, is that the Gay person is part of religious denomination which is mostly straight people who have heterosexual norms of behavior. Gay Christians to have the good opinion of the straight members of their denomination or Christians in general will
Page 40 of 61 adopt heterosexual norms of behavior and be upset that the Gay community in general doesn’t adopt heterosexual norms. This section concerns itself with religions which are hostile to Gays. If your religion isn’t hostile to Gays, again there is no issue to be discussed. The premise of this section is that if a religion is anti-Gay, it is a stupid religion. Globally Christianity is the major anti-Gay religion and so it is the major cause of Gays having internalized homophobia. So, it is the topic of this section. For many Gays, exiting a homophobic religion is easy. The obvious illogical nature of Christianity is comprehended and leaving Christianity is easy. However, religious people tend not to be analytical thinkers and religion meets emotional needs. They are called Christians, not Logicians and they follow Jesus not Aristotle. Christianity has been questioned logically for 20 centuries and has developed an answer to any logical criticism for its followers. The answers may not seem logical, but they are answers that Christians will see as logical because Christianity is what they want to believe in. To provide an escape hatch for Gays bound by homophobic Christian beliefs is the purpose of this section. The reason most Christians are Christians is that their parents are Christians. The reason most people are a member of a particular Christian denomination is because their parents were a member. Growing up in a religion believed in by your parents when you were a child makes it feel credible. You family and likely your relatives believe in the religion. The church your family goes to has people who find Christianity credible. There are major Christian institutions such as universities and really architecturally impressive places of worship. The majority of people in your society are Christians. Even time itself has Christianity embedded into it with Christian holidays. So emotionally it feels very credible. As a result, your religion which practices ritual cannibalism where they devour their god, the eucharist, seems reasonable, but the beliefs of others, such as Hindus seem strange. Gay Christians need to ask whether their faith is a result of social conditioning. Christians are quick to dismiss other religions elsewhere as social conditioning and
Page 41 of 61 ignorance of the Christian religion. Christians wonder how can those people believe in what Christians see as fanciful and clearly superstitions or even demons. They do not consider that they believe in Christianity for exactly the same reasons that people in other religions believe in theirs. Most people are Christians because at some point in time their ancestors faced a decision of either accepting Christianity or be killed. In many cases an invading army conquered their ancestors, destroyed their temples and enforced by the sword or death by horrible means their conversion. In other cases, a ruler found Christianity useful to enhance his power and in exchange allowed Christians to persecute non-believers. Those that resisted were killed and have no non-believing descendants living today. Murder and mayhem are the origin of most of the widespread Christianity of today. If you are a Christian it is most likely because of an empire, Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, and others. The historical origins of Christianity have been purposefully forgotten and additionally sanctified by long-term practice. The reality it is that you are likely Christian because of social conditioning in a particular locality and historical amnesia of the suffering of your ancestors for whom you betray their suffering by your religious practice. You are tormenting yourself about being Gay because of a religion that has this historical record and you are dishonoring your ancestors who suffered. Christians have an answer for this. The bad things Christianity does is because of people and the good things are because of their god. It is like saying “heads I win, tails you lose.” Reflect your ancestors who were crushed might have felt about this rationalization. Homophobic Christians use the Bible to justify their opposition to homosexuality. They argue that it is the literal word of God and not subject to debate. The Bible is fairly solid in support of slavery, but the same Christians have all sorts of arguments that it isn’t. The anti-slavery understanding of the Bible didn’t start until 17 centuries had passed and this wasn’t nearly universally understood until after slavery was abolished and then it was something that Christians did not want to believe. Historical practices of burning people at the stake for witchcraft or heresy were justified by reference to the Bible. Now nearly no Christian would advocate burning at the stake. Consider Matthew 10:34 King James Bible. There are many different Christian understandings of this, depending on what they want to believe it means.
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“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Christian theology is flexible to a degree that puts mathematical topology to shame. The Bible that the Christians use to justify their homophobia is a construction of the Christian politics of early Christianity. The Ethiopian Bible has 81 books, 15 more books than the King James Bible which has 66 books, and the Ethiopian Bible comes from ancient texts. Some of these books in the Ethiopian Bible that aren’t in the King James Bible are mentioned in the books in the King James Bible. If the supposedly inerrant word of god refers to another book as truthful, shouldn’t it be added to the King James Bible as a restoration of a lost book? Western Christians plans no such thing. There are other books referred to in the King James Bible which aren’t in any of the Bibles. There are early Christian books that have been found in the Egyptian desert. There is the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library with its early Christian books. They are rejected as being books of the Bible. The Nag Hammadi library was books hidden in the desert where with a dry climate they would last over a millennia. There are books mentioned in the Bible for which no copy now exists. Not being accepted into the Bible, they were allowed to be lost. Somehow the inerrant word of god referred to books that were later lost because weren’t considered valuable even though the inerrant god had the Bible refer to them. The Bible is a construction created by the theological politics of early Christianity. Which books that were to be part of the Bible wasn’t decided upon until the late 4th century. There are other Bibles besides the King James Bible and there is the Catholic Bible which have other books in addition to the King James Bible. Consider that Christians are Christians for emotional reasons and define their Christianity to meet their emotional needs. Consider that their anti-Gay interpretation of the Bible is self-serving to have the drama of being against the modern world for their god. Consider that the Bible didn’t fall out from heaven, but is a thing derived from theological politics.
Page 43 of 61 Then stop allowing a particular form of Christianity to torment you. Maybe Jesus is just the straight people’s god. If you feel you must remain Christian choose what books you want. Probably choosing comic books might be going too far, but then the comic book might be divinely inspired, it is up to you. If you want, get few Christian friends together, declare it to be a council and make your own Bible. Decide what you want your chosen texts to mean. Stop tormenting yourself. Stop burning your Gay self at the stake. Being Gay You didn’t choose to be Gay. Usually, you didn’t even realize that you were Gay until you were a teenager. The realization that you are Gay, likely came gradually with different observations of yourself. You might have been wanting to deny that you were Gay and blocked out self-observations of yourself that indicated that you were Gay. Prior to realizing that you are Gay you might have felt that being Gay was undesirable. But here you are, you are Gay. Avoid the evasions of telling yourself that you are pansexual, bisexual, fluid, or whatever. Also, no one is fooled by the argument that you don’t like labels. These identities are a warning to other Gays that you have still negative feelings about being Gay and they will likely not want to get involved with you. As to why you are Gay nobody knows. There have been theories, but they have been discarded as junk as many psychological theories have been. Speculating on why you might be Gay is a waste of your time since it won’t be useful and tends to be morbid. There are books written on how psychology is often ideology or prejudice in disguise. As to whether sexual orientation can be changed, there have been many claims that it can be and these claims have been proven false. There people claiming that they are exGays and there are ex-ex-Gays. Probably there is always going to be someone claiming that they can change sexual orientation. Bogus quack medical claims by those hoping to gain something have been around for generations and will likely continue for generations. Being Gay is mostly a self-declared identity. Very rarely is a person measured with a penile plethysmograph to determine sexual orientation. The supposed ex-Gays weren’t measured either before and after their supposed change from Gay to straight.
Page 44 of 61 So, it isn’t scientifically known that sexual orientation was actually changed, that they are actually ex-Gay since they weren’t verified as being Gay in the first place nor verified as ex-Gay later. There are many people who are mentally ill or just lack orderly thinking. They might have concluded that they are Gay for any number of crazy reasons. They may claim later on to be ex-Gay, but they were never Gay in the first place. Also, society has mentally ill people and some of the mentally ill are Gay. They might decide that they are no longer Gay for any number of reasons. Further, there are religious zealots, and some of them are Gay and for them denying their homosexuality makes them feel they are some sort of special person. Some of them live in a drama in which they are the star. The reality is that you are Gay and you will be Gay until the day you die, though those who are delusional will argue otherwise. Being preoccupied with wondering why you are Gay is just going to bring you down. It is a preoccupation of those who wish that they weren’t Gay. No one spends time wondering why am I beautiful or why am I smart? People dwell upon the origins of misfortunes. The focus on the fact that you can’t change sexual orientation as a reason not to discriminate against Gays sometimes misses an important point. Of course, if a characteristic can’t be changed discrimination makes no sense. However, some aspects of a person, their religion, political opinion, and cultural preferences are choices. Though you can change your religion, political opinions, and cultural preferences, the fact that they can be changed isn’t considered a justification to persecute or oppress people because of their religion, political opinions, and cultural preferences. Even if being Gay was a choice, it isn’t a justification to attempt to coerce us not to be Gay. A lot of Gays realizing that sexual orientation can’t be changed and that it is a waste of time wondering why, just acquiesce to being Gay. Their thinking is that they are just making the best of being Gay, that is they are making the best of a bad thing. They tend to think that their existence is an imposition on society and want to be the good Gays to show that they are worthy of being tolerated. Since these Gays are tolerating being Gay, that is all that they expect from society. Don’t be that type of Gay person. Expect respect. Expect that your value, dignity and humanity be entirely respected and guard it.
Page 45 of 61 There is variety in creation whether it is plants, animals, stars, places, and many other things. Maybe all the other roses are red, but you are a blue rose. Also, feel that being Gay is winning the lottery. You will have all sorts of opportunities that straight people don’t have. To realize that you have opportunities, you need to think about what you want to do with your life as opposed to trying to copy being a straight person. Being outside of heterosexuality and its social systems, you have a lot of freedom and flexibility to decide what your life might be. Not raising children will give you time to pursue many activities. You are part of a global community. If people live some place, some of them are Gay. The Gay community involves peoples from the entire world, all nationalities, social classes, places, religions, races, and ethnic groups. Being Gay is an integral part of who you are. It isn’t the only thing that you are, but it is again an integral part of who you are. Seeing being Gay as something that will open many life possibilities and as having won the lottery will be essential to living a happy Gay life and realizing the opportunities of Gay life. The “Lost Language of Cranes.” David Leavitt wrote a novel, “The Lost Language of Cranes.” The title comes from a fictional case described in the story of a baby left in a cot by mostly absent parents. While the parents were absent the only activity the baby saw thru a picture window was construction cranes operating next door. As a consequence, he was imprinted by the construction cranes with life-long effects. As an adult he was always interested in construction sites with cranes. It is the story of something like what are known as feral children, but located in an urban setting. The story had protagonist who grew up with his parents. He has a relationship with another young Gay person who was adopted by a Gay couple as a child. Though the protagonist’s father turns out to be closeted and comes out in the novel after the protagonist comes out to his parents, the protagonist has essentially been raised by straights, allegorically they are the construction cranes, and his boyfriend raised by Gays.
Page 46 of 61 The protagonist has grown up in a straight household, his Gay boyfriend has grown up in a Gay household. Very few Gays grow up with Gay parents. Reproduction is a consequence of heterosexual activity. Essentially, we grow up imprinted by straights. Subconsciously our thinking has been formed by straight life. It will always be our task to be wary that our thinking isn’t directed by our imprinting but instead towards what will support us as Gay persons.
Coming out You will want to come out at some point. When depends on circumstances. First, some caution needs to be considered as to when you come out. The best situation is when you are completely self-sufficient. That is when you have a job and your own place. Regardless of how your parents react, they can’t harm you. You won’t be homeless. Your education won’t be interrupted as what might happen if you come out when you are going to school or living at home. Your parents may support the rights of the neighbor's Gay teenager, but it is another thing when they realize that they aren’t going to be having grandchildren by you. The negative aspects of waiting until you have a job and place is that you are in the closet longer when you are young. You have to judge your situation carefully. There is often the situation where the son informs the parents and they have known for some time, but were waiting for their son to initiate the conversation. In other cases, Gay youth end up homeless. Or their parents have them kidnapped and incarcerated for some supposed “treatment.” If your parents are religious zealots, you need to wait until you leave home. In all cases you need to have some plan if you come out accidentally. How much cash do you have? Who will let you stay with them? Who might feed you? Where can you shower? If you have to leave in a hurry, do you have a back pack with supplies like a toothbrush, snacks, change of clothes? Parents might tamper with your car so you can’t drive it. Knowing whether the title deed for the car you are driving is in your name or your parents is important to know. Are there homeless shelters for Gay youth in your area?
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Again, if you come out accidentally, be alert. Your parents might have you kidnapped for so-called therapy. It is important to know when you are legally an adult in your state. Again, sometimes your coming out with your parents won’t be something that you planned. It might be by accident. Don’t be so sure about anyone. They may seem accepting, but you never know until they find out about you being Gay. I had a great Aunt whom my mother cautioned me was, “liberal for a giggle.” Later in life I learned that was true. When you do come out don’t indulge bad behavior ranging from screaming to little snipping comments and manipulative questions about you being Gay. Absolutely don’t tolerate homophobia. People will continue bad behavior if it is tolerated. Don’t accept excuses for their bad behavior because of their background. It is 2026 when this book is being written. It is 56 years after the Stonewall Riot. The Gay movement has been around for a long time. There are plenty of Gays visible in everyday life. There is an abundance of information about Gays available. For various self-serving, self-indulgent and sloppy stupid thinking they have chosen to be homophobic. That is their problem, not yours. You aren’t responsible for other people’s homophobia. If you won’t defend yourself worth as a human being you might as well give up on having self-worth. As a Gay person you have all the challenges the straight people face plus those because you are Gay. When you do come out you will have an opportunity to more fully participate in Gay life and you will have plenty of things to learn. You don’t need to be wasting time and effort interacting with homophobic fools. Don’t waste time trying to change their opinions. It’s 2026 or later and their homophobia is held onto in defiance of reason. Don’t listen to excuses that are made for them that often starts with the words, “You have to understand …” You don’t have to understand their nonsense. They all need to understand that you demand respect.
Page 48 of 61 Sometimes you need to just drop people. When they try to tell you their homophobic opinion, just tell them to shut up and leave. A lot of times a person’s behavior will improve when they realize that you aren’t going to tolerate their mental rubbish, but also you still might want to disassociate from them knowing what they think. Some people like to tell you that they are hurt or disappointed that you didn’t think that you could tell them. This is some type of imagined drama that they decided to star in. It is an opinion obviously ignorant of a whole life transition of Gays. You shouldn’t try to explain coming out to them because this is a person who thinks your coming out is all about themselves and this person is probably not someone who will not be in your future. Some straights will come to you to let you know that they think it is alright that you are Gay and they support your rights as if it is a special accomplishment of themselves. Support of your humanity and rights should be your minimum expectation. This is like someone coming to you and saying they oppose serial killers as if it is an accomplishment. This is about them wanting you to acknowledge their special virtue, but it is special only on the basis that accepting Gays is difficult. Some straights are worse; they think that their toleration of you despite their anti-Gay feelings is doing you some special favor. They often think that they can disrespect you. They are often surprised that you have expectations of being respected. If they were previously a friend before you came out, you might be tempted to explain things and change their attitude. You are wasting your time, and there are other people in the world that can be your friends. It is 2026 or later and they still have anti-Gay attitudes, something is wrong with them, not you, and it is questionable if it is worthwhile for you to have them as friends. Some will want to discuss some Gay item they saw in the news, in a movie or series and they actually know a Gay person and you are it. You aren’t the brand ambassador for Gays. Humoring straights is a skill to learn when you come out. You aren’t responsible to educate all the straight people. Their ability to comprehend Gay life is limited. Whereas you live within the straight world and see it from the inside and also exist in the Gay world, straights live within the straight world and see the straight world as the entire world. They assume their world is the way things are is for everyone, the standard, and perceive Gay life in comparison to the standards values, and practices of straight life. You will have to judge individuals, but in general you are wasting your time. In many cases you will find your straight friends don’t want to know somethings. They might be discussing some woman who they desired, but they really are not likely to want to hear you talk about a desirable man. They might pretend it is okay because they don’t
Page 49 of 61 want to be perceived as homophobic. You will find that what you can talk about with Gay friends will be different than with straight friends. Some might lecture you about some ideal world where that wouldn’t be true, but you don’t live in utopia, you live in the now in the real world and need to survive in it. For your parents you can allow them 90 days to become supportive of your Gay life. After that they are either on board with your Gay life or out of your life. Actually 30 days is plenty of time for your parents to be sensible. The only reason 90 days is suggested, is that for some Gays they might feel guilty about dropping their parents with only 30 days. (Get a grip!) After 90 days of nonsensical parental behavior, a Gay person will be quite ready to call it quits. If you aren’t ready to call it quits after 90 days, you really believe that being Gay is bad, regardless what you might say. Often, parental behavior will improve once you make it absolutely clear that you aren’t going to tolerate disrespectful behavior. Their little games will stop. They may continue to occasionally test you though. Each and every time crack down on them in all situations. Be willing to just end the phone call immediately when the conversation is homophobic. They need to know that your expectation of respect is absolute. With some people, as the cliché goes, “If you give them an inch, they will take a mile.” Don’t try to buy the approval of family members by being the Gay relative that can help out with things or give or loan money. You might think that you are changing their attitudes, but you aren’t, and you might later find out that they think you owed them in compensation for being Gay. Giving up anti-Gay views is a benefit for persons who have had anti-Gay views. They aren’t doing you any favor, they are the beneficiary if they stop being homophobic. Parents who choose their homophobic beliefs over their children are doing so in willful ignorance. It is 2026 and information has been available for decades. They have chosen their beliefs which serve their emotional needs and delusions over you for self-indulgent and self-serving reasons. You owe them nothing. Don’t let them drag you down. Don’t let them hold you back. You have a life ahead of you and you need to start living it. If you have a boyfriend, don’t expect him to forgo his self-respect and tolerate your parents or relatives. The boyfriend maybe supportive of you in your situation out of love, but part of him is realizing that you don’t respect being Gay entirely, which means you also, along with your parents, don’t respect him entirely.
Page 50 of 61 If you don’t have a boyfriend, a potential boyfriend may not want to be dragged into a toxic family. Demanding respect is acting out your belief in your own self-worth and humanity as a Gay person. It is a positive self-affirmation and reinforcement of your belief in yourself. Every time you stand up for your humanity you reinforce yourself, every time you compromise yourself you tear yourself down. Some Gays stay in the closet even after they have an independent situation in life. They have many rationalizations that they give. You will not get the lost time back. People that come out nearly always regret the time that they lost due to needless delay. Closets are small cramped spaces and you should not expect anyone to stay in there with you for too long. A boyfriend will get tired of having to constrain their behavior because you fear someone will find out. Your Gay friends will get tired of your concerns when you ask them to modify their behavior. The question to ask yourself is when do you want to start living your life rather than living some other life for others. Common anti-Gay arguments. This section won’t cover every anti-Gay argument that you will face, but it will provide responses to the most common ones so you aren't blindsided by them and don’t have to waste time and effort developing a response. “Don’t flaunt it” is a statement when you are not invisible as a Gay person. Straights were rings, often with gemstones, to let others know that they are in an exclusive sexual contract with someone. They have wedding ceremonies to make these sexual contracts. They publicly celebrate anniversaries of their sexual contract. They have pictures of their children display and the author presumes that you know where babies come from. Nothing is wrong with these things straight people do, it is mentioned to show the hypocrisy when they complain about you and your boyfriend holding hands. “How do you know you are Gay.” The answer is “How do you know that you are straight.” “It isn’t natural.” Lice, disease are natural. There are ants that practice slavery. Male lions practice infanticide of male cubs that aren’t their own. The reason butterflies have
Page 51 of 61 to lay so many eggs is because Ichneumon wasps lay eggs in caterpillars which hatch and devour their host. Nature is full of horrors. Many of the good things in life are not natural. Hot baths and deodorant, shoes, clothing, housing, and many other things aren’t natural. Art is created by humans. Musical instruments are created by humans. Without the domestication of plants and animals what would our diet be? “How do you know if you haven’t tried it?” This is often said to Gays with the idea that surely if they had sex with a woman, they would realize how great it is and would become straight. You should ask them how do they know if they haven’t tried homosexual sex that they wouldn’t like it. The fact that arguments against homosexuality are inane and easily refuted is why many anti-Gay people turn to religion as an argument. They don’t have to give a reason or make a logical argument, which they likely aren’t generally capable of anyways, they just have to say it is god’s will. Religious people have their god as an all-purpose argument. If in a discussion of the age of the earth someone mentions radioisotope dating, they basically say, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…” A sneaky argument is where a person expresses concern about the discrimination you will face. This expressed concern will have an assumption that it might be a reason not to be Gay. Theoretically it could be a real concern, in real life it would be obvious that any Gay person already knows that they will face discrimination and wouldn’t need to told. Safe sex You need to always practice safe sex. People can have HIV virus at a young age and you can get it. To keep this book free of any reason for it to be banned I am not going to describe what safe sex is. You can find that information on line. You also need to consider how you will get treatment and pay for it if you contract a sexually transmitted disease. It could result in your unplanned coming out with your family. Safe sex reduces this risk. If you choose to have sex, in addition to practicing safe sex, you should also definitely know where you can get confidential treatment for an STD. At the time of writing this book, it has been 45 years since the HIV pandemic started and there is no cure and no vaccine. Don’t accept the rationalizations and excuses otherwise it will be 2125 and there will be no vaccine or cure.
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Suicide When there is no crisis there is no cash flow for social problems. There is a cash incentive to find social problems that need funded programs. The are claims made by organizations that 40+% of LGBT youth are thinking of suicide. Coming out in the 1970s Gays faced a very much more adverse environment than today. We weren’t thinking of suicide. We were survivors. The experience of older Gays who came out in the 1960s was much the same. The author spot checked four publications of one group concerned with suicide and all four were with journals that had author publishing charges (APC). That is where the author pays to be published in the journal. One of the four journals selected had a reputation of being what is called a predatory journal. The group by mentioning their publications in these publications would give themselves seeming academic credibility with a public that didn’t know about problem journals. The problem with suicide is that it can be a social contagion. One student does it or attempts it and other students get the idea. Claiming that high percentages of LGBTQ+ think about suicide brings to the attention of Gay youth the topic of suicide and suggests that maybe they should be thinking about suicide. It has to be asked whether anything could promote social contagion for suicide more. Another problem is that on social media some seek attention by having an endless drama about their feelings, moods and mental sufferings real or imagined. Attention seeking behavior is obvious to most and thought as obnoxious. There is absolutely no reason to feel suicidal about being Gay. Gay life has many advantages and you will join a world-wide community of Gays. Focus on achieving your desired future and working hard to achieve it. Then you won’t have time for morbid thoughts or be depressed. There are a lot of hot lines mentioned on the internet where you are invited to discuss emotional problems. They say they are confidential. There is a difference between being confidential and anonymous.
Page 53 of 61 If call you a suicide hotline or psychological help line and they decide that there is an immediate risk to yourself or others you could find emergency services show up at your home. There is more cashflow to individuals and organizations if they either get you to go to some service or decide you are a risk. Maybe you will be spending the night at some facility. Your parents will ask questions. Even if you manage to get yourself out that situation your parents will be watching you closely. Likely you will have to be talking to some counselor or psychologist. The risk of coming out when you weren’t planning on doing so is likely to be extremely high. Of course, if you are severely depressed do seek help.
Fundamental elements of being Gay This list is meant to define the key elements about being Gay and not discuss all the implications of these elements. 1. We homosexual men. That is men who have sexual attraction to other men. We are not homogender or other theoretical speculations. 2. We are universal. We are of all races, nationalities, peoples, tribes, and of all places where people are, because we are born of all humanity everywhere. Our collective intelligence contains the entire experience of the human race. We are collectively another La Raza Cósmica, the cosmic race. Our relatives are very unlikely to be Gay and so the majority of peoples everywhere have at least one Gay person who is a relative. This is our great potential strength in that the majority of humanity will tend to have some degree of sympathy to our situation. 3. Every Gay person under goes a great transformative process in life sometimes called, “coming out to themselves.” From not knowing that you are Gay to knowing that you are Gay. Then this unchosen transformation, regardless how you might feel, and often against how you might feel, you change from being like your peers, to realizing that you are profoundly different, that you are the other, you have different desires and your task is to accept your new self. Straights never experience coming out and so the process of coming out is a great difference. 4. Meeting each other for typical social activities, romance, sex, organizing requires methods of collecting ourselves and concentrating ourselves since we are only about three percent of the male population, but dispersed in the general population. The usual means by which straight people might meet each other, is largely not possible for Gays. Even without the issue of potentially there being violence due
Page 54 of 61 to a straight person being angry at a Gay person’s expressing interest, there are challenges. In everyday life, you might see some person which interests you, but the odds are 30 to 1 he isn’t Gay. Gays outside Gay venues and in general life have elaborate practices of verbally “dropping pins,” glances, returned glances and other things to identify whether a person might be Gay prior to expressing an interest when such practices are possible and they aren’t always. The usual matchmaking methods of family, co-workers, associates, are unlikely to facilitate you meeting someone. 5. The process of concentration means that in those places where Gays do meet each other, or by the means they meet each other, they will meet a wide diversity of people of different races, social classes, religious backgrounds, occupations, ethnicities, political beliefs, and geographical origins. They will potentially meet Gays from anywhere people are born. There is a lot of cross cultural exchange in the Gay community enriching Gay life. 6. For nearly every Gay person, there is a time when a fundamental part of who they are, that they are Gay, is also a deep secret kept from their family, from the moment of self-realization of being Gay. It is a secret that can be kept for a short period of time or for years or decades. It is a deep secret since the family is now a potential danger. There is a time in a Gay person’s life where they need to consider how dangerous their family might be to themselves. Even if not a danger to themselves, how they might lose support of their family and relatives, in ways that might not be overtly homophobic, but more subtle. Even if the parents have professed support for their neighbor’s son being Gay, they might not be prepared for their son being Gay. It is very likely that the support of some relative will be lost because they are Gay. Often Gays are victims of violence and verbal denunciation by their parents and are thrown out of the house. Whereas the family is generally a support for straight people, for nearly most Gay people, their family needs to be carefully studied to see if it a danger, and often it can be a serious danger. 7. Your family is very unlikely to give you any useful advice about living a Gay life however well-meaning they may be. It simply isn’t their lived or felt experience. You will learn about being Gay from other Gays in the Gay life you are going to live. Your family, however well meaning, imprints Gays growing up with ideas and expectations for straight life which misdirects Gays in dealing with life.
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8. Gay sexual activity doesn’t result in reproduction. Thus, most Gays will not be raising children except if they consciously chose to do so by adoption. Nearly most Gays won’t be part of the infrastructure of the heterosexual cycles of reproduction. Instead, they will have time and resources to direct into activities of their choosing opening up many opportunities for them. 9. Gays, being men, will have abundant opportunities for much more sexual activity than straights and in different venues and different ways than straights. Their sexual activity can exist entirely outside of heterosexual roles, restrictions, customs and practices. Given that we are a global community drawing from widely different backgrounds and need be concentrated together outside regular social networks, sexual activity across social differences will be way more common than it is in heterosexual life. The average Gay person will have the opportunity meet a much wider range of people socially and sexually than straight people. 10. Society, in law, social practices, religion, customs, music, art, drama, theater, literature, and in most everything, is mostly structured around heterosexuality and its cycles of reproduction in ways that are obvious, and in many ways that aren’t so obvious, for heterosexuals. We might not see how heterosexuality permeates the structuring of society, because these practices are done by nearly all of society, and so they seem to be the ordinary general practical choice. Gays exist outside the structures of heterosexual society and being outside, they can see into it. Since society is structured around heterosexuality, it isn’t structured for Gays. Some existing social structures might also serve Gay interests, but they does so incidentally, not with intent to do so. 11. Gays will experience unreasoning prejudice from different individuals, organizations, religions, movements, governments. Even from people that seem to be unprejudiced, there can come the moment when you realize they have always regarded you as a lesser person because of your homosexuality. Gays will face potential violence and crime as a result of prejudice or criminals opportunistically taking an advantage of Gay vulnerability in certain situations. Gays need to be the determined implacable enemies of those who are our enemies. Gays need to consider means of self-defense. 12. The great challenge Gays face is that they might internalize the prejudices of society towards Gays, rather than having a view that they won the lottery in being Gay. Gays that internalize the prejudices of society will emphasize they had no choice, to relieve themselves of moral responsibility for what would be in their
Page 56 of 61 minds a bad choice. These Gays will tolerate homophobia and being tolerated since they are themselves homophobic and tolerating being Gay. 13. Straight people, however, well meaning, regardless of what efforts they might take to understand Gay life, won’t really fully understand Gay life though they might think they do.
Discrimination and division The Gay community can’t afford discrimination and division. Gays are about 3% of the men in a population. We are already a small minority and won’t be effective in protecting and supporting ourselves if fractured into small fragments. Gays are born wherever there are births. As a consequence, we will come from every ethnic, racial, religious, class and social background. We will have Gays with a wide variety of political, social, and economic beliefs. Part of the genius of the Gay community is that we have within us the collective intelligence of all these diverse groups working on the issues Gays face. In the general society there are parts of society which are prejudiced against racial, ethnic, religious, and other groups. Further there are members of some social classes which feel that they are superior to others. Persons born into different segments of society often acquire the beliefs of their social environment. Since Gays concentrate to meet each other in bars, clubs, organizations, and neighborhoods, Gays from these diverse groups of society will be in close proximity to each other. Sometimes Gays with discriminatory views will try to bring the practice of discrimination into the Gay community. Realizing that you are Gay doesn’t necessarily eliminate prejudice. Prejudice in the Gay community absolutely can’t be tolerated. It fractures the Gay community, undermining its strength. It fragments the pool of intellectual resources the Gay community has to draw on. Further, Gays from every background are essentially liaisons to their background social group. We have Gays within all the social groups of society which can be our advocates.
Page 57 of 61 For individual Gays, prejudice prevents that person from benefiting from the opportunity to meet a wide range of individuals in the Gay community locally, nationally, and globally and benefit from a broader perspective. Persons who have one prejudice are often also prejudiced against Gays. Prejudiced Gays need to realize that the prejudiced people in their social background are likely to be prejudiced against them and the Gay group most likely to help them will include those for whom they are prejudiced against. Being willing to meet different people in the Gay community will help overcome your prejudices as will avoiding Gays who persist in being prejudiced. There is a door in the Gay community for you to meet the world. Don’t lock yourself out.
Behaviors and conformity You will see some Gays having various stereotypical Gay behaviors consisting of effeminate behaviors. You don’t have to adopt any of these behaviors. There is no inherent tendency to be effeminate because you are Gay. Nor is effeminate behavior contagious. So, relax and don’t worry about it. Historically there have been theories and popular beliefs that Gays were women in men’s bodies or similar ideas. The public is often confused and doesn’t understand the difference between being homosexual and a transvestite. Some Gays have believed in these theories or something similar. Gays who are transvestite or adopt effeminate behaviors are the visible members of the Gay community and so many people assume that all Gays are like them. Gays often hear straight people say, “You don’t seem Gay,” even in 2026. Gays on social media satirize this. I would say something like, “The Supreme Gay Council has threatened to decertify me.” Rolling your eyes is another option when you hear this. The media often conveys these stereotypes to public to get viewers. Gays can adopt effeminate behaviors for a variety of reasons. One, is that they have accepted these stereotypes as how they should behave. Two, when Gays are repressed and have to conceal their identity, when they do get the opportunity where they don’t have to conceal their identity, they might want to feel their freedom and want to find a way to express their identity strongly. These Gays, when they can finally breath, want to scream and shout
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Three, people who are members of clubs or groups often have specific behaviors which indicate being members of the group. They might have special handshakes, sayings and phrases, types of dress, and symbols they wear as part of being members of their group. Some Gays will engage in certain behaviors to express their identity being a member of the Gay community. Four, sometimes people have decided that this is the identity and behavior that they want. They are adults and they aren’t harming anyone. Some Gays are upset with Gays that stereotypically behave or have behaviors that they don’t think are masculine. These Gays who get upset are worried about what the straight people will think about them. Many in society are hostile to men, Gay or straight, who have behavior that they don’t consider masculine. Some Gays have these beliefs. They are embarrassed by the Gays who do what they consider unmasculine behavior. The reality is that people who are prejudiced against Gays will be so regardless of how Gays behave. People who aren’t prejudiced realize that the world is full of people different from themselves. Being afraid what the straight people will think is a good indicator that the Gay person lacks a strong positive sense of being Gay. It is a big distraction from thinking about how you want to live your life. When these Gays criticize these behaviors, it is annoying. You might have negative feelings about certain Gay behaviors. You are just starting out as a Gay person and it would not be surprising that you do. How you wish to deal with these feelings is up to you. Know that the consequences are that you are cutting yourself from people, needlessly wasting energy over something that you won’t be able to change, and you might end up in a social group which spends its time gripping about the Gay community. There isn’t a standard of behavior for Gays that you have to conform to either. Some Gays expect the entire Gay community to conform to some form of being Gay which is wrong. Some activities are popular with some segments of Gays, but if you aren’t interested, you aren’t obligated to be involved. Some activities are not popular with some segments of the Gay community, but if you are interested, then your interest, not the approval of others is what counts. Some Gays expect the Gay community should conform to some standard of political beliefs. Unless your belief is specifically anti-Gay, you can believe in what you want.
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It is a waste of time and energy to try to dictate to the Gay community what their lives should be. LGBTQXYZ+ Moral Scolds There are individuals and groups that are thought to be a part of what is called the LGBTQ+. Some of these initialisms has grown to 14 letters and there are different ones. Many of these individuals and groups are moral scolds which seek to police the behavior of Gays. Unfortunately, Gays seeking refugee from homophobia or seeking community will sometimes fall into their hands. Gays who are conflicted regarding being Gay and feeling that they need to prove they are one of the good Gays will give in to the LGBTQ+ moral scolding. People who aren’t Gay have absolutely no right or competence to tell Gays how to live. It is an attack and arrogance when they attempt to do so. They have not lived our lives and they don’t have our experiences, our feelings, and our situation. If they aren’t Gay, they can shut up. Groups have a right to self-determination. So, if they aren’t Gay, they should shut up. Gays in LGBTQXYZ+ groups are beholden to the LGBTQXYZ+ and aren’t Gays independent of the ideology of the LGBTQXYZ+. These Gays might have intelligent things to say, but they are constrained within the agenda of the LGBTQXYZ+. For example, currently the LGBTQXYZ+ consider Female-To-Male transmen (FTM), that is women who state they are men, and who also state they are Gay to be actual Gays. Gay men, those who have XY chromosomes, are expected to consider these Gay transmen as Gays and as possibilities for dating. Gay men who state that they wouldn’t date transmen are denounced and subject to slurs. The LGBTQXYZ+ establishment thinks that you should be attracted to all physical types, including the morbidly obese, because that is body positivity, and not have attractions to specific types of men. Some get outraged by age differences. You don’t owe anyone sex, and no one is owed sex. Sex should be consensual and if both of you are consenting it isn’t anyone else’s concern. A lot of Gays go to the gym, and this is denounced. Gays who go to what are called circuit parties are looked down upon and there was even a movie ridiculing them. Generally, if Gays are having fun, there are some members of the LGBTQXYZ+ to find fault with it.
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There are groups whose agenda is strongly influenced by organizations and groups outside the Gay community. There are groups which need funding from the government and are concerned to have an image of Gays that they think is appealing to straight people. There are groups whose members part of movements in straight society and believe the agenda of their movement should be the Gay Agenda. These groups might be setting the agenda of the LGBTQXYZ+. As a Gay person you don’t give up your autonomy or right to be an independent thinker. Additionally, your desires between consenting adults, are not to be dictated by others. In the future the term “LGBTQ+” might not be used and how sexual minorities are conceptualized could be different. Likely there will be moral scolds among whatever the new grouping is called. However, only the discussions by Gays who are Gay centric with other Gay centric Gays are legitimate discussions concerning issues Gays face. That includes defining who is Gay and who isn’t.
Conclusion The basic ideas of this guide are as follows. 1. You can't just drift through life. You need to have a direction and a plan. You need to very carefully choose what education and career you choose. You need to have an advantage to compensate for the disadvantages of discrimination. The social support systems that provide for the general public may not be there for you. Having financial resources can be very helpful in living a good Gay life. 2. You need to come out strategically when it is safe to do so and have a contingency plan if you come out when it isn’t safe to have done so. When your situation is such that you can come out, you shouldn’t delay. 3. You need to start seriously thinking of your health and be physically fit and develop a life of healthy eating and exercise. 4. Don’t allow yourself to be victimized by systems of belief. You need to have critical thinking abilities so as not to be ensnared by homophobic thinking.
Page 61 of 61 Otherwise, you will live a life without self-respect questioning your right to be Gay. You will be pathetically living with you being your own personal homophobe. You need to be skeptical and critical of opinions and beliefs communicated to you. 5. You need to understand that straight people aren’t the reference standards for you to live your life by. Their life and social structures are built around their cycles of reproduction. Growing up within the straight world you will tend to see how straight people live as a model for your life. This would be a mistake. Your life has possibilities and constraints that straight people don’t have. You aren’t just a variation of straight people who does something different in the bedroom. 6. You need to value being Gay. It has many wonderful opportunities and possibilities. Focused, prepared, self-liberated, and critically thinking, you can have a great future.