"Dude I'm Not Jewish"

With all this marriage nightmare going on with Prop 8 I thought I would share with you a stand-up routine I did in June, 2008 after an 8 week class on doing comedy. Adding a bit of comedy into this dark part of the world helps me!

Keith Olbermann Special Comment: Proposition 8

Many of you are aware by now about the passing of Proposition 8 in California on November 4, 2009.

According to Wikipedia:

Proposition 8 was a California State ballot proposition that amended the state Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman. It overrode a recent California Supreme Court decision that had recognized same-sex marriage in California as a fundamental right. The official ballot title language for Proposition 8 is "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry." The entirety of the text to be added to the constitution was: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."I found the best response to the passing of Propostion 8 to be by Keith Olbermann who did a special comment about it on his MSNBC show Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

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Now on the Hallmark aisle: Gay marriage cards

I have been waiting what seems like my whole life for this! Hallmark if finally offering cards for lesbians and gays. Read this:

Hallmark, seeing a new market after California ruling, rolls out gay marriage greeting cards

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Most states don't recognize gay marriage -- but now Hallmark does.
The nation's largest greeting card company is rolling out same-sex wedding cards -- featuring two tuxedos, overlapping hearts or intertwined flowers, with best wishes inside. "Two hearts. One promise," one says.

Hallmark added the cards after California joined Massachusetts as the only U.S. states with legal gay marriage. A handful of other states have recognized same-sex civil unions.

The language inside the cards is neutral, with no mention of wedding or marriage, making them also suitable for a commitment ceremony. Hallmark says the move is a response to consumer demand, not any political pressure.

"It's our goal to be as relevant as possible to as many people as we can," Hallmark spokeswoman Sarah Gronberg Kolell said.

Hallmark's largest competitor, American Greetings Corp., has no plans to enter the market, saying its current offerings are general enough to speak to a lot of different relationships.
Hallmark started offering "coming out" cards last year, and the four designs of same-sex marriage cards are being gradually released this summer and will be widely available by next year. No sales figures were available yet.

"When I have shopped for situations like babies or weddings for gay friends I have good luck in quirky stores," said Kathryn Hamm, president of the Web site gayweddings.com.
"But if you are just in a generic store ... the bride and groom symbol or words are in most cards," she said. "It becomes difficult to find some that are neutral but have some style."

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates that more than 85,000 same-sex couples in the United States have entered into a legal relationship since 1997, when Hawaii started offering some legal benefits to same-sex partners.

It estimates nearly 120,000 more couples will marry in California during the next three years -- and that means millions of potential dollars for all sorts of wedding-industry businesses.

Hallmark, known more for its Midwest mores than progressive greetings, has added a wider variety lately. It now offers cards for difficulty getting pregnant or going through rehab.
It pulled a controversial card that featured the word "queer" in the punch line after it was criticized by some customers and gay magazine The Advocate last year. At any given time, Hallmark has 200 different wedding cards on the market, including some catering to interracial or inter-religious marriages and blended families.

The Greeting Card Association, a trade group, says it does not track how many companies provide same-sex cards but believes the number is expanding.
"The fact that you have someone like Hallmark going into that niche shows it's growing and signals a trend," said Barbara Miller, a spokeswoman for the association.

Rob Fortier, an independent card maker who runs his company, Paper Words, out of New York, added same-sex wedding cards to his mix after thinking about what he would want to receive.
"A lot of people think a gay greeting card needs a rainbow on it," Fortier said. "I don't want that."

But for some time, it was difficult to even find the words for what anyone wanted to say, he said.
His first card poked fun at the challenge.

On the outside it featured lines that had been scratched out: "Congratulations on being committed!", "Congratulations on being unionized!" and, finally, "Congratulations on being domestically partnered!" The inside wished the couple congratulations on choosing to be together forever.

"It really comes down to language," he said.

John Stark, one of the three founders of Three Way Design in Boston, which makes gay-themed cards for occasions from adoption to weddings, has several new designs sketched out and ready.
But he has hesitated adding more wedding cards to his mix until after the November election, when California voters will decide a constitutional amendment that would again limit marriage to a man and a woman in the state.

"What is scary is to produce a marriage line and then November comes and it's recalled, then we have thousands of dollars of inventory waiting," he said.

The gay-friendly business can be challenging, companies said.

Hamm said although she has found many vendors willing to work with her company, some have asked to be removed from the Web site because of hate mail or some other backlash.

Hallmark says all of its stores can choose whether they want to add the latest offerings.

Joe is now on Facebook.

I am now on Facebook and loving it!

Are You Two Guys Brothers? by Brian McNaught

Author and sex educator Brian McNaught has been someone to whom I have looked up to throughout my gay adulthood. He is a man with integrity, passion for what he does, and a mission to teach the world about gay issues making it safer to be gay and lesbian. I have also admired his openness, honesty and genuineness as a person and gay man.

This book adds another level to all of this.

We all need someone to turn to who has been there before us to give us guidance. That is the role often of parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles. However in the gay culture we often don't have that and with this book you now do! McNaught talks about his life with his partner, his suicide attempt, his sexual life including some childhood sexual abuse, and how he managed his successes as a gay men in the 1970's and how he feels about gay life today.

We need more men like Brian McNaught who are willing to talk openly, freely and frankly about being a gay man. I first heard of Brian McNaught in 1993 when PBS was regularly running his talk, Homophobia in the Workplace.

I was mesmerized by the casual way he talked about being gay and the way he taught his beliefs to his audience. I was particularly interested in the guided imagery he used in his presentation in which he asks people to imagine the entire world to be gay but that you are straight. He walks the listener through what it would be like to be a child and for the world around you to be gay when you are straight. He takes you into your first day of high school, your first date, kiss and sexual experience with someone of the same gender.

After the guided imagery he asks people what it was like to go through the visualization to which people say, “scary”, “lonely”, “frightening”, and more. He then points out how lesbians and gays go through this very thing while growing up and calls it a form of sexual abuse. He asks folks to consider the profound trauma and abuse that would be inflicted on heterosexual young people if there were forced to date, have their first kiss and sexual experience with someone of the same gender.

This guided imagery is highly sought after particularly after I use it in my gay affirmative talks so I published it in my latest book, “Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician”. It can also be found in Brian McNaught’s book, Gays in the Workplace.

In his current book he admits that he was sexually abused by his father but had not been public about this lest others think he was gay because of it. On page 52 of, Are You Guys Brothers? He writes:

“As a gay man raised Catholic, I would argue that I have been sexually abused
far more effectively by Pope Benedict XVI, also known as Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, than I ever was by my father, and that the impact of his carefully
chosen, gratuitously hostile, erroneous, and dehumanizing words about my
sexuality have left far deeper and more significant scars than the inappropriate
touch engaged in by my father. I’d suggest that this is true for gay men and
women throughout the world. But who would dare charge the Pope with the crime of
sexual abuse?

I take McNaught’s thinking further and call it “covert cultural sexual abuse” which you can view here as well as address it throughout Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician.

Thank you Brian!

Queer eye for kids!

I applaud the librarian in Colorado who supports keeping a book for children in the library about two gay uncles getting married! I have longed for a book to teach my niece and nephews about my marriage to my partner and finally there is a book that is about my life and not only about a gay mother or father.

An article posted on Yahoonews.com yesterday talks about a new storybook on a child's fear of losing a favorite uncle to another is challenged by a mom unhappy that the adults in question are both males.




Colo. librarian defends gay-marriage storybook
Wed Jul 16, 6:52 PM ET

A new children's book that treats a child's fear of losing a favorite
uncle's affection has been challenged by a Colorado mom unhappy that the adults
in question are both males.

"Uncle Bobby's Wedding," by Sarah Brannen
(Putnam; $15.95), was challenged this month by a Douglas County mom who wants it
removed from the county library, library director Jamie Larue wrote on his blog
Monday.

Larue, who researched the issue for his response to the parent,
said it appears to be the first formal protest of the book, which was published
in March.

In the story, Chloe the guinea pig is devastated when she
learns her Uncle Bobby plans to wed. Bobby and his fiance, also guinea pigs, win
her over by doing fun things like going to the ballet and roasting marshmallows,
until, she declares, "It's like having two uncles!" When the tuxedo-clad
critters hold their spring wedding, Chloe is the beaming flower girl.

"I
think you're right that the purpose of the book is to show a central event, the
wedding of two male characters, as no big thing," Larue wrote the apoplectic
parent.

"The emotional center of the story, of course, is Chloe's fear
that she's losing a favorite uncle to another relationship. That fear, I think,
is real enough to be an issue for a lot of young children. But yes, Sarah
Brannen clearly was trying to portray gay marriage as normal, as not nearly so
important as the changing relationship between a young person and her favorite
uncle."

To the parent's second objection, that the book is
"inappropriate" to its age group, Larue replied, "Children's books deal with
anything and everything," noting that even such horse chestnuts as "Hansel and
Gretel" handle troubling issues such as hunger and abandonment. (Barbara Wilcox,
The Advocate)

Boys Beware: 1959 film on the dangers of Homosexuals

The clip is taken from a film dealing with a perceived danger to young boys: Homosexuals!

Is there any wonder after watching this why people fear gays relating to children and teenagers? These lies and myths have been perpetuated into the 1970's!

Genetics, Environment Shape Sexual Behavior

MONDAY, June 30 (HealthDay News) -- Genetics and random environmental factors each play a major role in determining both gay and heterosexual behavior, say British and Swedish researchers.

This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single 'gay gene' or a single environmental variable which could be used to 'select out' homosexuality -- the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here -- heterosexual behavior is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors," study co-author Dr. Qazi Rahman, a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, said in a prepared statement.

Environmental factors are specific to an individual and may include biological processes such as different hormone exposure in the womb, the researchers noted.
The researchers studied more than 3,800 same-gender twin pairs, ages 20 to 47, in Sweden. The twins were asked about the total numbers of opposite sex and same sex partners they had ever had.

"Overall, genetics accounted for around 35 percent of the differences between men in homosexual behavior and other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared be twins) accounted for around 64 percent. In other words, men become gay or straight because of different developmental pathways, not just one pathway," Rahman said.

Among the female twins, genetics explained about 18 percent of the variation in sexual orientation, non-shared environmental factors 64 percent, and family environment 16 percent.
It's important to note that heredity and shared environment had roughly the same influence in women, while shared environment had virtually no impact on men's sexual behavior, the researchers said.

The study, which was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, shows that while genetic factors are important, non-shared environmental factors are dominant in determining sexual orientation.

"This study is not without its limitations -- we used a behavioral measure of sexual orientation which might be okay to use for men (men's psychological orientation, sexual behavior, and sexual responses are highly related) but less so for women (who show a clearer separation between these elements of sexuality)," Rahman noted. "Despite this, our study provides the most unbiased estimates presented so far of genetic and non-genetic contributions to sexual orientation."

More information
The American Psychological Association has more about sexual orientation.

Warning! The new "Get Smart" movie is "disgusting".

I took my nephews (between the ages of 5 and 11) to see the new Get Smart movie. It was funny and very good especially if you enjoy slapstick comedy. They kept it much the same as the original television show and I thought they did a great job.

While watching the movie there is a scene in which Maxwell Smart (played by Steve Carell) kisses another male on the lips in slow motion. During this scene a man with three children (between the ages of 14 and 8) behind us contemptuously says out loud, “Disgusting!”

I was thrown back to 1978 watching the movie Midnight Express where two naked men in a shower scene kiss each other. I was a gay 15-years-old and was excited and aroused by the scene having never viewed anything like it before. The audience shouted anti-gay slurs screaming epithets like, “gross”, “fags” and then clapped when one of the men pushed the other away. The message sent to me at that time was, “never tell a soul about your homosexual interests or people will insult you”.

Back to the movie, Get Smart, 30 years later there is at least now only one man in the audience making a shaming and negative remark about two men kissing.

I sat there angry and hurt not knowing what to do. Had I not been there with my nephews I would have turned to him said something about this homophobic statement. But I didn’t.

When we got back into my car I told my nephews that the comment made by the man behind me hurt me and angered me. My 8-year-old nephew said, “Because you are gay?” and I answered, “Yes”. He then said something very wise, “But maybe to people who are not gay it is disgusting to see two men kissing”. I responded by saying, “Maybe so but people should not say that out loud you hurt people’s feelings. I kiss Mike like that and it is not disgusting to me”. He agreed.

I was glad I said something to my nephews so they do not think that what that man said in the movie was okay. What about this man’s children and the other children in the audience? Homophobic messages of hate and contempt go into the minds and psyches of children and perpetuate anti-gay beliefs.

What would you have done about this at a movie theatre?

Lady Sitters (HUMOR)

Now this is every straight guys dream when they just don't want to do what their wife wants them to! Very funny!

This was created from the Man Show

Federal Law Presents Hurdles For Gay Marriages

(Joe Kort and his partner, Mike)

People misunderstand the legalization of gay marriages at the stat level and not at the federal level. An article was written at KPSP Local 2 news website does a great job explaining the differences.

By David Wohl

KPSP Local 2 Legal Analyst

As of right now same sex marriage marriage is not recognized under Federal law. Here is a look at some important differences that will affect gay couples:

Federal Income Tax laws make a sharp distinction between those involved in a traditional marriage and those in a same sex marriage. While married gay couples must file their state tax returns as married filing jointly or separately, they must file their federal income taxes as single or head of household. This can lead to more Federal taxes being paid by gay couples.

Immigration laws treat same sex couples differently as well. If an American citizen marries a foreign citizen of the same sex, the foreign citizen will not gain residency rights from the marriage, as would a spouse from a traditional marriage.

While surviving male/female spouses are entitled to a dead spouse's Social Security benefits, this is not the case with same sex couples. A deceased gay spouse's benefits could go to another relative, or could escheat to the state instead.

While a surviving straight spouse can roll over a deceased spouses individual retirement account into his or her own IRA, thereby preserving the tax benefits, a same sex spouse or domestic partner cannot. He or she must begin taking fully taxable distributions from the inherited IRA
One more difference between domestic partnerships and gay marriage. Domestic partners must live together when their partnership is established. This is not a requirement for same-sex married couples.

Inside Gay Unions on Tom Ashbrook's On Point

I was interviewed by Tom Ashbrook on gay and lesbian relationships on his show "On Point" on NPR.


Inside Gay Unions Aired: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11-12PM ET

It may be beautiful, but everybody knows marriage isn't easy.

Who pays the bills?

Who works or stays home?

Who unloads the dishwasher?

So what about gay marriage?

Gay partnerships?

Yesterday, California was ringing with gay wedding bells, on its first full day of legal gay marriage. But gay marriage is not new anymore. Civil unions and long-term gay commitments have been around even longer. So how does it work, day to day, down in the weeds, when it's not "his and hers" but "his and his" or "hers and hers"?

This hour, On Point: Gay marriage, and how it actually works.

Listen here

The R. Kelly Trial

A case of discomfort
Man on video in R. Kelly trial: He did what?
By Rex W. Huppke
In the Chicago Tribune

June 8, 2008


The elephant in the room at the ongoing child pornography trial of R&B icon R. Kelly is the fact that the man shown in the amateur sex video—the prosecution's key piece of evidence—seems to take pleasure in urinating on his sex partner. Tearing away from the heinous possibility that the girl in the video may be underage, a question on the minds of many who have followed Kelly's case is: Who on earth would want to urinate on someone else, or be urinated on themselves? The question might not make for polite dinner conversation, or even a topic normally discussed in a family newspaper. But that has not stopped people from talking about it.

The act performed in the video has gained widespread notoriety in the realm of popular culture. An episode of "Sex and the City" once explored the practice. Comedian Dave Chappelle brought the issue into millions of homes in 2003 with a mock music video in which he dresses and croons likes R. Kelly, guzzling a gallon bottle of water, spraying dancers with a garden hose and singing a song titled "[I Wanna] Pee on You."

The intermingling of sex and urine—known by the euphemism "watersports"—has been around for centuries, but it still makes most people cringe.Lawyers in the Kelly case warned prospective jurors that they would have to witness "acts you've never seen before." Journalists reporting on the case have had to tiptoe gently around what is often viewed—some would argue incorrectly—as a deviant act.

Sex therapists say that while watersports are not a common practice, plenty of healthy, consenting adults engage in them for an array of reasons."There are indeed people who do it as an act of anger," said Gloria Brame, a Georgia-based licensed therapist and author of the book "Different Loving." "But there are a lot of people who think it's groovy. . . . It's a breaking of taboo."Taboo breakers, however, are rarely viewed fondly by mainstream society, and many assume people who engage in unusual sex acts suffer some form of mental disorder.

The American Psychiatric Association puts sexual fetishes under the category of paraphilia, a disorder that could involve all manner of acts that deviate from what is considered normal sexual activity. But for the disorder to be officially diagnosed in a person, the sexual act in question must result in "clinically significant" mental distress or social impairment.

Until 1973, the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health listed homosexuality as a paraphilia. Clearly, psychiatry changes with the times."As American society gets more open about sexual practices, the APA is loath to put in a disorder category any act that's happening between two consenting adults," said William Narrow, associate director of the APA's research division.

"There has been some scientific debate as to whether these paraphilias should actually be classified as mental disorders or not."Margie Nichols, a New Jersey sex therapist and member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists, puts it this way: "If it's consensual between two adults, who cares? It's unusual, that's all."Many in the sexual education field are pushing for the APA to further de-pathologize non-typical sexual acts like watersports and S&M, with the caveat that they are performed between consenting adults."People are going to stigmatize sexual behavior anyway, you don't need a diagnostic manual to do that," said Russell Stambaugh, a sex therapist in Ann Arbor, Mich. "This is not a public health menace. An act doesn't constitute a mental disorder."Which is not to say the behavior lacks a psychoanalytical component.

Many believe the enjoyment of more adventurous forms of sexual activity has roots in an individual's past.

"Tell me how you were loved as a child,
and I'll tell you how you make love as an adult," said Joe
Kort, a therapist and an adjunct professor of gay and lesbian studies at Wayne
State University.

Patients who engage in watersports, Kort said, have often traced their
desires back to issues surrounding potty training. Or perhaps moments when they
wet their pants and were humiliated."Some of these moments can become so painful
to deal with, the psyche blocks it, buries it down," Kort said. "But nothing
stays locked down. It will come out somewhere and you will re-enact it until you
heal it. It's sort of like trauma turns into triumph.

The event becomes eroticized."

Then there are those, experts say, who, despite our societal norms, simply find the act of urinating sexy."It's a very intimate sort of act," said Susan Wright of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, an advocacy group based in Baltimore. "It's a little naughty, a little exciting, a little titillating. I think it really is considered a very innocuous sort of activity."

Rex W. Huppke is a Tribune reporter.

rhuppke@tribune.com

Is Dr. Phil Becoming Dr. Laura?

Recently I discovered where television psychotherapist Dr. Phil stands on pornography. He believes that looking at porn is "never okay" and that it is "always cheating" on a partner.

WOW!

Those are strong and harsh beliefs to make a blanket statement about all pornography and those who view it. It reminds me of syndicated talk show host Dr. Laura stands on so many topics around sexuality. She has a black and white thinking about things being either right or wrong. Oh if it were so easy and simple. But it is not! We therapists teach our clients--and especially our couples--never to say the words "always" and "never" because they are seldom true. While I agree that pornography can become an addiction and not be healthy for some people, it is for many others.

Here is what Dr. Phil writes on his website:

Internet pornography is a growing trend that has many people worried about their relationships.

Is it cheating? And is it a "normal guy thing"? Here's what Dr. Phil believes:

It is not OK behavior. It is a perverse and ridiculous intrusion into your relationship. It is an insult, it is disloyal and it is cheating. Consider how it makes your partner feel. If it makes your partner feel ugly, hurt, deceived, lied to or inadequate, then it needs to stop. If it is eroding your relationship, it's gone too far. Pornography isn't real, it's a fantasy. It's makeup, beauty lenses, hair extensions, camera angles, lighting and silicone! It's also somebody's daughter who has taken a really, really wrong turn. She's demeaning herself, debasing herself, humiliating herself and she's being exploited by people who are funded by you.

It is a sick, demented, twisted world. It's not healthy, it's not natural and it's not normal. Viewing Internet pornography or engaging in cybersex is a short step to taking cheating to the next level. You need to tell your partner that viewing pornography is absolutely, unequivocally unacceptable in your relationship.

Draw a line: Your partner needs to choose between the pornography or the relationship. Ask yourself or your partner:

Would you do it with your partner standing right there?

Are you turning outside of your relationship to meet a need that should be met within the relationship?

You can't change what you don't acknowledge, so find out if you or your partner have a problem.

Do you justify the behavior by saying, "It's harmless," "Everyone does it," or "It's just the Internet"?

Does it intrude on your relationship? Which is more important: pornography or your relationship?

I completely disagree with Dr. Phil's position.

Here are my responses to his questions:

Would you do it with your partner standing right there?

Some people would and, in fact, I have advised some couples (both gay, lesbian and straight) to do so. It can enhance intimacy in couples. Also there are many instances where individuals don't want their partners to see their porn. It is private and personal. Partners sometimes need to have this outlet. It has nothing to do with their significant others. It is not cheating and does not mean that the person viewing the porn is going to set out to make the scenerio happen. That said, there are many people who have significant shame about looking at pornography and the content of what they are looking at. I think this might be what Dr. Phil is addressing. Even so, every person needs to have their own separate sexual fantasies and desires that may not involve their significant other.

Are you turning outside of your relationship to meet a need that should be met within the relationship?

You can't change what you don't acknowledge, so find out if you or your partner have a problem.This can be about anything--not just pornography. With any behaviors that are excessive or are interfering with your relationship, you must ask yourself this question. I do think that partners benefit from talking about their sexual interests and not hiding the fact that they might enjoy pornography. It is the hiding and secrecy that is usually the problem, not the pornography in and of itself.

Do you justify the behavior by saying, "It's harmless," "Everyone does it," or "It's just the Internet"?

For many folks, it is harmless and it is just the internet. I have had clients over the years tell me that they enjoy certain fantasies that their partner will not--or cannot meet. For example, one straight male client of mine enjoyed extremely muscular women who entered muscle building contests. His wife, a petite woman, did not visually fit this image. So periodically he enjoyed looking at images of these muscular women online and it offered him an outlet for his interest without his going out of his marriage.

Does it intrude on your relationship?

This is a great question and should be asked to one's self by all. I have many clients for which the use of pornography does intrude on a relationship. But the reasons vary. Some partners are threatened by the use of pornography by a spouse. The question here is "why are they threatened?" It isn't always because their partner is abusing porn. It may very well be their own insecurities being raised by their partners viewing images that they cannot match. This is more of an issue that the non-pornography using partner has than the one viewing the sexual material. Couples need to communicate openly their feelings about pornography use within their marriage. The worst is to keep it a secret or to pretend it is not a problem if one or both have a problem with it. However to assume that the use of pornography alone is the only issue is narrow focused and as harmful as pretending it is never a problem at all.Which is more important: pornography or your relationship? For some, it is both. There is nothing wrong with that. For others it is one or the other which, of course presents a problem.

If you do have a problem with pornography I recommend an excellent new book, "The Porn Trap" By Wendy and Larry Maltz.

Workshop for Gay & Bisexual Men June 21-22, 2008

A WORKSHOP FOR GAY & Bisexual MEN:

JUNE 21-22, 2008

Reclaiming the Man in the Mirror
A workshop for Gay men on Sex, Love and Intimacy

Based on the book 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Find Real Love


Click here to register.

Click here to listen to the podcast about the workshop

We live in a sexually illiterate society. There is little to no permission to
examine openly our sexuality in terms of orientation, behavior and fantasies.
Most people, gay and straight alike, do not know if their sexual fantasies
and/or sexual acts are healthy versus unhealthy. While gay men are more inclined
to act out their sexual desires and fantasies more openly than their
heterosexual counterparts, there still lies confusion as to what is positive and
self-affirming and what is not.

There is also confusion about what is
sex, what is love and what is intimacy. This workshop will explore the
definitions of each of these and how to integrate them all together for gay men.
Much of our culture as gay men, as well as for our heterosexual counterparts,
are confused about how to make this integration. There is also confusion about
how to have healthy sex, love and intimacy without having to have all of them
combined. This workshop will help clarify all of this.

How do you define
sex?

What is healthy versus unhealthy sex?

Do you understand the
secret logic of your sexual fantasies?

What is your sexual shadow?

Are you sexually addicted, compulsive or just have a large sexual
appetite?

Do you carry sexual shame?

How do you feel about your
body?

Do you want to improve your sex life?

Are you getting the
love you want in your relationship?

Are you keeping the love you find
when you think you found Mr. Right?

What is your definition of love?

What is your definition of intimacy?

The goal of this workshop
is to learn more about yourself as a gay man, develop tools and practices to
live in integrity and be accountable, and to be able to identify your needs and
communicate them effectively without your reactive mind getting in your way. It
will also help you to develop strong relationships (both intimate and
non-intimate).

These are just some of the questions we will be examining
at the upcoming workshop. The workshop will include guided imagery, experiential
exercises, communication exercises and lectures.

We will explore sexual
behavior and fantasies with understanding, compassion, and without judgment.

This workshop is based on the article from the magazine, “In The Family”, The Men In The Mirror: Understanding Gay Men and Their Porn, Summer, 2002 by Joe Kort.

For more information regarding workshops, contact Joe at (248) 399-7317 or joekort@joekort.com

Young Gay Rites

April 27, 2008

Young Gay Rites

By BENOIT DENIZET-LEWIS

LAST NOVEMBER IN BOSTON, Joshua Janson, a slender and boyish 25-year-old, invited me to an impromptu gathering at the apartment he shares with Benjamin McGuire, his considerably more staid husband of the same age. It was a cozy, festive affair, complete with some 20 guests and a large sushi spread where you might have expected the chips and salsa to be.

“I beg of you — please eat a tuna roll!” Joshua barked, circulating around the spacious apartment in a blue blazer, slim-fitting corduroys and a pair of royal blue house slippers with his initials. “The fish is not going to eat itself!”

Spotting me alone by a window seat decorated with Tibetan pillows, Joshua, who by that point had a few drinks in him, grabbed my arm and led me toward a handful of young men huddled around an antique Asian “lion’s head” chair. “Are you single? Have you met the gays?” Joshua asked, depositing me among them before embarking on a halfhearted search for the couple’s dog, Bernard, who, last I saw him, was eyeing an eel roll left carelessly at dog level. (At the other end of the living room, past a marble fireplace, the straights — in this case, young associates from the Boston law firm Benjamin had recently joined — were debating the best local restaurants.)

As the night went on, the gays and the straights — fueled, I suspect, by a shared appreciation for liquor — began to mingle, and before long the party coalesced into a boisterous celebration. Joshua looked delighted. And in a rare moment of repose, he sidled up to his taller, auburn-haired mate.

“Honey,” Joshua said, “we may be married, but we still know how to have a good time, don’t we?”

Benjamin, sharply outfitted in green corduroys and an argyle sweater over a striped dress shirt, smiled. “Josh is extremely social, and he keeps us busy all the time,” he told me. “I think we may be proof that opposites do attract.”

“If it were up to him,” Joshua said, “we’d barely leave the house! We’re actually a terrific team. He calms me down, and I get him out at night. I’ll say: ‘Honey, this is what we’re doing. Now put this on.’ ”

“I think a lot of straight married couples start hibernating at home once they get married,” Benjamin said.

Joshua kissed Benjamin on the cheek. “No, honey, that’s just your parents.”

“No, that’s a lot of people,” Benjamin insisted. “I think. . . .”

“And I love your parents to death,” Joshua interrupted, “but it scared me senseless to think that if anything were to happen, if you ended up in the hospital, your mother would get to make the decisions.” Joshua looked at me with a devilish grin. “I dare her to try! I’d say, ‘Woman, get away from my man!’ I’m 24, I’ve been with Ben for a long time and we’ve been married for three years. I think I’ve earned the right — the responsibility — that comes with that.”

Benjamin chuckled. “You’re 25.”

“Oh, God,” Joshua said, looking as if he’d just been sucker-punched. “I keep forgetting that I’m 25. I think I’m probably having some issues around that number. Am I desperately trying to hold onto my youth?” He grabbed Ben’s arm. “Honey, am I a gay cliché?”

Benjamin shook his head. “You can’t be a gay cliché when you get married to a man at 22.”

JOSHUA AND BENJAMIN had each only recently come out of the closet — and certainly didn’t have marriage in mind — when they became friends seven years ago during Benjamin’s freshman year at Brown University.

Benjamin first realized his attraction to men his senior year of high school, but at Brown he tried to put it out of his mind. He flirted with female students and played beer pong with his straight friends. When that became too tedious to bear, he slowly began coming out to friends. Soon he was dating other male students.

Joshua, who was a freshman at Curry College, about 40 miles north of Brown, had also recently acknowledged to himself that he was gay. But unlike Benjamin, he had long experimented sexually with boys. In high school, he was a gregarious presence who was beloved — and protected — by the school’s popular girls. While many students assumed he was gay, Joshua insists he was “the last to know” about his orientation, even though he spent an hour or two each night in AOL gay chat rooms and, he says, occasionally had furtive sex with members of his high school’s football team.

Joshua broke through his denial before graduation, but he was in no mood to settle down with Benjamin when they fooled around their freshman year of college. “I was like, ‘Well, that was fun, but I’m going to the gay club to find someone to do that with again!’ ” Joshua said.

“And I was like, ‘Well, we had sex, so I guess we’re dating now,’ ” Benjamin recalled.

Before long, Benjamin’s persistence paid off: Joshua moved into his dorm room. “It was all very lesbianish of us,” Joshua told me. “It happened pretty quickly, and we did everything but rent a U-Haul.”

(Joshua was referencing a longstanding joke —What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul! — that is supposed to satirize the way some lesbians rush into cohabitation. The joke is sometimes paired with a second one about gay men rushing into bed: What does a gay man bring on a second date? What second date?)

Joshua and Benjamin were deeply committed to each other by the time Benjamin graduated from Brown in May 2004, the same month that Massachusetts began issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Marrying “seemed obvious and inevitable,” Benjamin told me, because he and Joshua had no doubt that they would spend the rest of their lives together. “It seemed silly,” he said, “not to get married when we were fortunate enough to live in the only state where we could.” (Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey have legalized civil unions for same-sex couples, while Maine, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, California and the District of Columbia allow domestic partnerships. More than 40 states prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages from Massachusetts.)

Both of their families were supportive. “My parents didn’t have a problem with me marrying a guy,” Benjamin said. “Their only question was, ‘Aren’t you a little too young to be doing this?’ ”

“Oh, my parents said the same thing,” Joshua huffed. “But you know what I told the parental units? I said, ‘I don’t want to hear it, because at our age you were married and pregnant with us.’ That shut everyone right up, and soon enough our parents were fighting over who would get to pay for the wedding!”

IN 2004, when I was 28, CNN asked me to gather together a group of my Boston friends in their 20s for a short segment about gay marriage. The network wanted to know what young gay men in Massachusetts thought about our newfound right.

For nearly an hour, seven of us — five working professionals in our 20s and two college undergraduates — sat in a coffee shop and talked theoretically about what a young gay marriage might entail. In the end, most of us agreed that we would like to be married — just not yet. We still had a lot of living, and growing up, to do. While many of our heterosexual peers undoubtedly did as well, we were immune from the pressure some of them felt to marry. No one — not our friends, not our families, not the gay community — expected us to wed.

For the next few years, I didn’t give young gay marriage much thought. While thousands of gay men and lesbians in their 30s, 40s or 50s married in Massachusetts, none of us at the table that night did, even as several of us inched into our 30s. I assumed that marriage — what the gay playwright Terrence McNally recently called “the final civil right; the right to love as anyone else loves” — was a right appreciated only in gay middle age.

But then something strange happened. During a 10-day span last August and September, two friends of mine — Brandon Andrew, who was then 25, and Marc Brent, who was 24 — announced their respective engagements. Brandon called from his apartment in Boston to deliver the news. “You’re not going to believe this!” he told me, pausing for dramatic effect. “I’m engaged!”

He was right. It was hard to believe. Not only was the prospect of two Brandons marrying each other surreal (his boyfriend, who was then 24, is named Brandon Lehr), but Brandon A. didn’t strike me as the marrying type. Not at this point in his life, anyway. An outgoing, freethinking art student in his last year at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he seemed far too busy DJ’ing at eclectic dance parties and breaking into construction sites for his installation art projects to worry about marriage.

Marc, a dental-office manager who still lived at home with his parents in a Boston suburb, didn’t call to tell me about his engagement. I learned about it instead on Facebook, when, with little fanfare, he changed the relationship status on his profile from “In a Relationship” to “Engaged.” He had been dating his fiancé, Vassili Shields, who was then 23, for a year.

“Are you actually engaged,” I called to ask Marc, “or is that just your way of saying you really like Vassili?” He replied that he was, in fact, engaged. They planned to marry in a few months.

I didn’t know what to make of these engagements — or of my subsequent discovery that more than 700 gay men 29 or younger had married in Massachusetts through last June, the latest date for which numbers are available. On the one hand, I wondered why these guys were marrying so young. What was the rush? It seemed to me that one of the few advantages of being young gay men — until gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, at least — was that we were institutionally protected from ever appearing on “Divorce Court.”

But I could also relate to young gay men yearning for companionship and emotional security. Had gay marriage been an option when I was 23 and recently out of the closet, I might very well have proposed to my first gay love. Like many gay men my age and older, I grew up believing that gay men in a happy long-term relationship was an oxymoron. (I entered high school in 1989, before gay teenagers started taking their boyfriends to the prom.) If I was lucky enough to find love, I thought, I’d better hold onto it. And part of me tried, but a bigger part of me wanted to pitch a tent in my favorite gay bar. I wasn’t alone. Everywhere I looked, gay men in their 20s — or, if they hadn’t come out until later, their 30s, 40s and 50s — seemed to be eschewing commitment in favor of the excitement promised by unabashedly sexualized urban gay communities. There was a reason, of course, why so many gay men my age and older seemed intent on living a protracted adolescence: We had been cheated of our actual adolescence. While most of our heterosexual peers had experienced, in their teens, socialization around courtship, dating and sexuality, many of us had grown up closeted and fearful, “our most precious and tender feelings rarely validated or reflected back to us by our families and communities,” as Alan Downs, the author of “The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World,” puts it. When we managed to express our sexuality, the experience often came booby-trapped with secrecy, manipulation or debilitating shame.

No wonder, then, that in our 20s so many of us moved to big-city gay neighborhoods and aggressively went about trying to make up for lost time. And no wonder that some of us — myself included — occasionally went overboard.

“The expectation for many years was that if you did any dating in your 20s, they were essentially ‘practice relationships’ where you did what heterosexual kids get to do in junior high, high school and college,” says Jeffrey Chernin, a Los Angeles psychotherapist and the author of “Get Closer: A Gay Men’s Guide to Intimacy and Relationships.” “But for many gay men, your 20s were about meeting a lot of different people, going out to bars with your friends and having a lot of sex. That has long been considered a rite of passage in the gay community.”

But young gay men today are coming of age in a different time from the baby-boom generation of gays and lesbians who fashioned modern gay culture in this country — or even from me, a gay man in his early 30s. While being a gay teenager today can still be difficult and potentially dangerous (particularly for those who live in noncosmopolitan areas or are considered effeminate), gay teenagers are coming out earlier and are increasingly able to experience their gay adolescence. That, in turn, has made them more likely to feel normal. Many young gay men don’t see themselves as all that different from their heterosexual peers, and many profess to want what they’ve long seen espoused by mainstream American culture: a long-term relationship and the chance to start a family.

“For many young gay men today, settling down in a relationship in their 20s — or getting married if they live in Massachusetts — will feel like a very natural thing to do,” says Joe Kort, a psychotherapist and the author “10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives.”

But with no model for how to build a young gay marriage, I was curious about how gay men in their 20s would choose to construct and maintain their unions. What would their marriages look like? And would the expectation of monogamy, a longstanding cornerstone of heterosexual marriage, be a requirement for their marriages as well?

To find out, I spent time over the next few months with a handful of young married and engaged gay couples — including Joshua and Benjamin. All were college-educated and white. (A 2008 study of gay and lesbian couples in Vermont, California and Massachusetts — three states that offer some form of legal recognition for gay couples — found that “couples who choose to legalize their same-sex relationships . . . are overwhelmingly European American.”)

Although more than twice as many lesbians 29 and younger have married in Massachusetts than have gay men of that age, I chose to focus on the latter. The dynamics of lesbian and gay male relationships are often different. “Women — straight or gay — tend to want to settle down years before men do,” says Dan Savage, a sex-advice columnist and the author of “The Commitment,” about the same-sex marriage debate and his decision to marry his long-term boyfriend. Gary Gates, a demographer, who studies gay and lesbian population trends, adds that “lesbians are more likely to be partnered than gay men, tend to cohabitate quicker and are more likely to have children — which is a motivator to get married.” But what, I wondered, was motivating the first generation of young gay married men?

On a weeknight in October, I sat down with Marc and Vassili at the restaurant where Vassili used to work as a waiter. He recently told his former co-workers about the engagement, and two waitresses kept coming over to our table to congratulate the couple. Tall and boyish, with big lips and soft, round features, Vassili beamed with joy and scooted his chair closer to his preppy, dark-haired fiancé.

They met a year before in this restaurant. “I thought he was cute the first night he came in with his friends,” Vassili recalled, “but he had one of them climb through the window of the restaurant, instead of walking around and in the front door. So I yelled at him.”

“And I’m ridiculously stubborn,” Marc said, “so I wasn’t about to apologize. For the next month, it was basically a series of dirty looks the times I went in there.”

Vassili eventually broke down and asked Marc on a date to the aquarium. Other dates followed, and nearly a year later, while hanging out at Fritz, a gay sports bar, they decided to become engaged. As Vassili explained it, they considered themselves best friends and planned to be together forever. “So, why not get married?” he said. “I always knew I wanted to spend my life with one person. And I know I’ve found him.” Besides, they both want to be young dads. They plan to adopt before they turn 30. (Most of the couples I spent time with for this story said they eventually want children.)

There was no formal exchange of rings to commemorate the engagement, no romantic dinner followed by either of them on bended knee. They also didn’t plan on having a wedding ceremony. When I asked them why, they insisted that such formalities were unnecessary. “We don’t think there is any set way we have to do this,” Vassili told me. “We’re not following anyone’s model for how an engagement or marriage should go.”

That philosophy also applied, they said, to when they would break the news of their engagement to their families. Vassili said he wasn’t sure how his parents would react. “They know that Marc is my boyfriend, but my gayness is not something we ever really talk about,” he told me. “My guess is my parents would want to be at any ceremony we have, but I don’t know.”

Marc said he had no doubt that his own parents would be supportive. “My mom knows and loves Vassili, and one time she asked, ‘Why don’t you guys just get married?’ ” he said. “And I was like, ‘Well, maybe we will!’ But sometimes I wonder if they would be as excited, or as supportive, about me marrying a guy as they would be if I was marrying a girl. But I’m going to tell my parents soon. I just want to have everything planned out first.”

By that, Marc meant that he wanted to know the specifics of when he and Vassili would move in together before announcing to his family that they were going to marry. Both men were living at home with their parents (Vassili had recently moved back to save money).

I asked Marc and Vassili if it was wise for any couple to become engaged before testing their domestic compatibility. Why not live together for a year? The couple deflected the question with a you-must-not-really-understand-the-power-of-our-love look common to so many lovesick young couples. “We just know we’ll be fine,” Vassili told me, rubbing Marc’s back. “We love each other, and that’s all that matters.”

“We know we’re compatible,” Marc said. “We’ve thought a lot about household roles. I’m going to clean, and Vassili is going to cook.”

“I like doing laundry and ironing,” Vassili told me. “He likes yardwork.”

“I don’t think either one of us is really going to be the wife, per se,” Marc said.

Still, they insisted they would be “traditional” in one important way: they vowed to be monogamous. “I know that some gay couples who’ve been together awhile open up their relationships,” Marc said, “but we’re not going to do that. I mean, we wouldn’t be getting married if we didn’t plan on being monogamous. To me, that’s a fundamental and important part of marriage.”

It is for many young gay couples. Frederick Hertz, an attorney and mediator who co-wrote the book “A Legal Guide for Lesbian and Gay Couples” and who has helped gay couples of all ages negotiate prenuptial agreements, told me that young gay men get the most impassioned when talk turns to monogamy. “A very common thing I hear them say in my office is, ‘If he has an affair, he’s not getting any alimony!’ ” Hertz said. “That’s just not something I hear among older gay men, who often make a distinction between emotional fidelity and sexual fidelity. There’s an emerging rhetoric around monogamy among young gay couples. In that way, they’re a lot more like married heterosexual couples than they are like older gay couples.”

I SPENT THE FOLLOWING DAY with the Brandons. They met a year before on MySpace, although this was a source of some embarrassment for the couple, who instead told friends they’d met “at a concert.” “I saw his MySpace profile and sort of e-mailed him as a joke,” Brandon A. told me inside the spacious, sun-filled Boston apartment he shares with his fiancé and another roommate. “I was like: ‘We’re both named Brandon. We’re both skinny white boys from California. We’re both gay. We both listen to indie rock. You must be my Doppelgänger. We have to hang out.’ ”

Like Marc and Vassili, the Brandons said they planned to pick and choose what elements of “traditional heteronormative married culture,” as Brandon A. put it, to appropriate. (He loves using words like “heteronormative.”) But the Brandons had different ideas from Marc and Vassili about what appealed to them about “traditional” marriage.

For one thing, the Brandons eagerly told their families about the engagement and planned to incorporate them into their married lives. Their parents responded, in turn, with great enthusiasm. Brandon A.’s mother proudly accompanied her son and his fiancé to a monthly “queer” night at a Boston club (I was there, too, and couldn’t quite get over the sight of mother and son on the dance floor), while Brandon L.’s mom, whom I met briefly at the couple’s apartment, demanded to know the couple’s “song.”

“This is so weird,” Brandon A. told me at the time. “I feel like I’m doing girl talk with my future mother-in-law!”

The young men’s mothers were delighted to learn the details of how Brandon L., a Ph.D. candidate at M.I.T., had proposed — after a romantic dinner, on bended knee, by a roaring fire, their “song” (“This Modern Love,” covered by Final Fantasy) playing on the stereo.

“I even got him a ring,” Brandon L. told me “It was made of titanium,” Brandon A. said, laughing. “He knew I would probably break or lose anything else.”

The Brandons agreed that they would wait a year or two before marrying; they wanted to finish school before having a formal wedding ceremony. Unlike Marc and Vassili, the Brandons said a wedding ceremony was important — not as a “political statement” or “to get approval from anyone,” but as a way to communicate their love to each other.

“Ever since I was 19 or 20, I knew that I would want to give myself over to one person in a formal way,” said Brandon A., who had been in two previous gay relationships lasting more than a year before meeting Brandon L. “And it didn’t even really matter to me if the politics of the world were going to bend in my favor so that my marriage was considered legal. Legal or not, I was going to have a commitment ceremony in front of the people who matter to me. I’ve always been oddly traditional about that.”

But the Brandons suspected they were untraditional when it came to their thinking about monogamy. As they saw it, one enduring lesson of heterosexual marriage is that lifelong monogamy is unrealistic for most people — especially men. “Most straight people like to talk a great game about monogamy,” Brandon A. said. “But what are they actually doing? Many of them have affairs at some point or break up because they want to sleep with somebody else. We’re two guys, we’re in our 20s, we haven’t been sexual with that many people, and to pretend like we’re never going to want to experience sex with another person until the day we die doesn’t make sense to us. We’re open to exploring our sexuality together in a way that makes us both comfortable.”

Negotiating questions surrounding monogamy was a critical issue for most of the young married and engaged couples I spent time with. But so, too, was the larger question of how they would fashion their social lives.

Several couples lamented the fact that they had never met another young gay married couple. This left them without a model to help them shape or understand their own relationship, and it seemingly left them without anyone who could relate to their unique circumstance.

“I sort of feel like we’re on this island out here by ourselves,” said Anthony Levin, a 26-year-old account executive in Boston who met his husband, 23-year-old Daniel Levin, while both were undergraduates at the University of Minnesota. (They legally married in August 2006 after moving to Boston, where Daniel was starting law school; Anthony took Daniel’s last name. They were the only couple I spoke with in which one man took the other’s name.) “That’s probably the biggest difference between us and straight married couples,” he continued. “They see other married people like them everywhere. We don’t. It would be great to have young gay married couples who we could hang out with.”

“I actually met one the other day,” Daniel, who sat by Anthony on the couch in their apartment in Brookline, said matter-of-factly.

“You did?!” Anthony said, nearly spilling his glass of wine. “Did you get their number?”

Daniel hadn’t. This momentarily crushed Anthony, who seemed to yearn to interact with other gay people — single or married — more than Daniel did. (Anthony joined Boston’s gay flag-football league the previous fall, partly in an effort to meet other gay people.)

Other couples, like Joshua and Benjamin, had an abundance of gay friends of all ages and clearly reveled in having their cake (marriage) and eating it too (a social life that rivaled that of many of their young single gay friends). It was hard to keep track of the many social engagements the couple invited me to. There was a fancy Oscar party. There were many dinner parties, including one attended by their friend David Cicilline, the openly gay mayor of Providence.

And there were nights out at gay bars. “No one assumes we’re married when we’re out at a club with our friends,” Joshua said. “Maybe it’s because I look like I’m 12, but people see my wedding ring and are like: ‘What? Is that a fashion statement?’ They just hit on us anyway, which, really, is kind of fun. I’ll flirt right back, and I’ll say to Ben, ‘Oh, look at the butt on that one!’ ”

For Joshua and Benjamin (and for several of the couples I spent time with), there is no use pretending they aren’t attracted to other people. “I think it’s healthy that we don’t have to lie about that like so many straight couples do,” Joshua said. “We’re also two gay guys in the couple, so we’re attracted to the same gender. We can both appreciate a hot guy walking down the street.”

But not all of the couples I spoke with were so open about men they noticed. “Pointing out a cute guy wouldn’t fly with us,” Anthony Levin said. Fortunately for him, Daniel has never had much of a wandering eye. “Flirting with guys, or trying to get attention from random guys, has honestly never appealed to me,” Daniel told me. “I don’t know why, but it’s just not the way I’m built. It came as no surprise to people who knew me well that I would be the type to settle down in a relationship. And I’ve never been attracted to some of the drama that I’ve seen in the gay community.”

WHEN I FIRST LEARNED that some young gay men were marrying in Massachusetts, I wondered if their marriages might be a repudiation of the gay world fashioned by previous generations of men — men who reacted to oppression and homophobia in the ’70s and ’80s by rejecting heterosexual norms and “values,” particularly around sex and relationships. Many older gay men would have scoffed at the idea of marrying and having kids. To many of them, their “family” was their network of close gay friends.

But most of the young married men I spent time with insisted their marriages weren’t a “reaction” to anything. They valued their connection to modern gay culture, and they weren’t interested in choosing between being a married man and a young gay man. They could be both, and they could make it work.

Still, it wasn’t always easy. “Joshua and I have had to do a lot of work around learning to communicate to each other what’s O.K. and what makes each of us uncomfortable,” Benjamin told me, adding that they have attended a couples’ counselor. “I think that maybe we assumed that because we’re two men, that we would think the same way about things or know where the other was coming from. But the way we communicate is so different, so that’s a challenge.”

Jeffrey Chernin, the psychotherapist, who works with both gay and straight couples, told me that gay couples tend to open up in therapy with less prompting. “Many of them are already used to talking honestly and openly about many issues,” he said, “because there is no assumed model for how their marriage should function. Everything is on the table to be negotiated. Nothing is taken for granted. Everything is talked about — from monogamy, to power dynamics, to domestic responsibilities.”

Most of the couples insisted they shared those responsibilities in “an egalitarian way.” While Joshua occasionally referred to himself as a “gay housewife,” other young gay married men bristled at the notion that they would fashion their domestic lives around heterosexual stereotypes.

“It never ceases to amaze me how many people will say to us, ‘So, who’s the woman, and who’s the man, in your marriage?’ ” says Jason Shumaker, who lives in a Boston suburb with his husband, Paul McLoughlin II, who is an assistant dean at Harvard. They met eight years ago when they were 25, and they legally married at 29 (registering to wed on the first day gay couples could do so in Massachusetts). “I just think that’s the dumbest question ever,” he added. “Yes, we’re married, but we’re also two guys, so neither one of us has to be ‘the woman.’ ” (And “with no ovaries drying up,” as Paul put it, they don’t need to rush into having children. They plan to adopt in the next five years, once Paul finishes his Ph.D. in higher-education administration at Boston College.)

During a break from opening the door to trick-or-treaters at their home last Halloween, Jason and Paul — who wore matching lizard outfits — told me about the T-shirts they’d donned at the end of their reception. The front of Paul’s shirt read, “I Am the Husband,” while the back read, “I Am the Wife.” (Jason’s shirt had the opposite emblazoned on each side.) “It was fun to make a little bit of a social statement and poke fun at the idea that we would fit neatly into these heterosexual roles,” Jason said.

AFTER A FEW MONTHS of barely hearing from Marc and Vassili, I was starting to worry: could they be having premarriage trouble? (I knew the Brandons were fine. They regularly posted pictures of themselves together on their Facebook profiles and had even started a Facebook group, appropriately called “The Brandons.”) When I finally did hear from Marc and Vassili in February, they had good news. They had filled out the requisite forms at City Hall and were just waiting the three state-mandated days before collecting their marriage license. In the meantime, they were celebrating by luxuriating for a night at an upscale Boston hotel. They invited me to drop by.

When I did, I saw dozens of rose petals in the bathtub. Apparently, while they had been enjoying hourlong massages and a full-course meal, Vassili had arranged to have the hotel staff festoon the room with the petals.

“What are those doing in the bathtub?” I asked the couple.

“He moved them there,” Vassili told me, rolling his eyes. “He’s not very romantic, and he got embarrassed that you would see them.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m the bad guy,” Marc said with a laugh.

A few minutes later, I asked the couple how their parents had reacted to the news that they would soon be married. Silence filled the room. “You still haven’t told your parents?”

They offered many justifications, everything from “we haven’t found an apartment yet” to “marriages become a dog-and-pony show when parents and families get involved.” But in Marc’s case, I really couldn’t understand what the problem was. He had told me many times that his parents loved Vassili and that they would be supportive of the marriage. What was going on?

“I know my parents will be fine with it, but I want to do this myself,” Marc told me. “If I tell my parents, they’ll just want to get involved, and that will annoy me. I hate when people try to tell me how I should do something.”

Vassili nodded and repeated something I heard the couple tell me many times. “There’s nothing conventional about gay marriage,” he said, “so I don’t feel like we need to do this in a certain accepted way.”

Marc, who had been leaning back on a sofa, suddenly sat up in protest. “Hold on,” he said. “I think it’s conventional. Why do you say it’s not conventional?”

“I mean, there are more complications because we’re gay,” Vassili told him. “But the most important thing is that we love each other. We don’t need to have a big fancy wedding to prove anything to anyone.”

“I hear you,” Marc said, “but I think we’re kidding ourselves if we say that we absolutely wouldn’t want a ceremony where our families and friends were there and totally on board. I’m not going to lie. It would be nice.”

I had never heard Marc talk this way. Neither, apparently, had Vassili, who seemed perplexed by the sudden change to the couple’s longtime narrative, which they had used to justify not telling their parents and not having a wedding ceremony. “You would hate that,” Vassili insisted. “Wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t get up in front of everyone and give vows.”

“Maybe,” Marc said, “but it would still be nice to have the option. And I’d still like to have a party. It would be cool to get the coffee machine, the blender, all the stuff that straight couples get when they start their marriages.”

IN 2004, MTV broadcast a documentary chronicling the lives of two gay couples — one male, one female — as they prepared to marry in Massachusetts. The male couple, Aaron Pike Shainwald and Stephen Schonberg, were both 22 when America watched them become the 44th same-sex couple to wed in the state.

Aaron and Stephen met two years before at Axis, a Boston nightclub (since closed) with a popular weekly gay night. Their first date lasted “three days,” Aaron told me, and nine months later they moved in together. They were both still college students at the time (Aaron at Brandeis, Stephen at Boston University), but as their relationship deepened, they were equally eager to formalize it. “We both wanted to get married and commit our lives to each other,” Aaron said. (Stephen declined to be interviewed for this article.)

A year and a half into the marriage, though, Aaron said they started growing apart. They went to couples’ therapy for a year, but soon Stephen asked for a divorce. “We really, really worked hard to save the marriage,” Aaron told me, “but he decided to move on. And it’s hard not to feel like a complete failure sometimes. People who saw the show still stop me on the street and ask how the marriage is going. Most of the time I just lie and say: ‘Great! Wonderful!’ Let me tell you, being 26 and gay and already divorced is soooo much fun.”

I met up with Aaron at Joshua and Benjamin’s house party in November. He arrived with his new boyfriend, an affable 50-year-old (“I’m done with the young ones!” Aaron joked) who also happened to be divorced. “But I suppose I went the more conventional route,” Aaron’s boyfriend told me. “I was married to a woman.” (As he spoke, I couldn’t help thinking of what Jason Stuart, a gay comic, once said: “Come on straight people . . . if you let us marry each other, we will stop marrying you!”)

Aaron lamented that he didn’t know any other young gay divorced men, so he seemed delighted when I called a few months later to tell him about George — 26, gay and recently divorced from his husband. (He asked that his first and last name not be used to protect his privacy; George is his middle name.) I suggested to George that he, Aaron and I meet to talk.

At a Boston coffee shop, Aaron and George bonded over their unique experience — “I thought I was the only one.” “Me too!” — and apologized for having a negative impact on Massachusetts’ divorce rate, which is one of the lowest in the nation. (The state doesn’t yet have divorce statistics for gay and lesbian couples. Though I’m not sure the numbers would tell us much. Many of the first wave of same-sex marriages involved couples who had been together for 10, 20 or even 30 years, presumably making them less likely to divorce than heterosexual couples who hadn’t been together as long before marrying.)

“The ironic thing is that I really don’t believe in divorce,” George told us at the coffee shop. Tall and handsome, with dark hair and angular features, he sat by a corner window and was still dressed in his work clothes — black dress pants and a dark blue vest over a light blue dress shirt. “I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, and my parents stuck it out. I tried my best to make my marriage work, but we both decided it couldn’t be saved.”

George was still struggling to understand where his marriage went wrong. He met his ex four years ago, when George was 22 and living what he called “a carefree postcollege life” in Northern California. George said he wasn’t looking for a serious relationship, but he fell in love with his ex (who was several years older) after meeting him through mutual friends.

“At the time I was thinking, Wow, I really wish I had met you eight years from now,” George recalled. “But I met him when I met him, and I wanted to be with him. I knew I had a lot of growing up to do if I wanted to make the relationship work, and I did. I grew up pretty fast.”

The couple registered as domestic partners in California (partly for the health insurance) and then moved to Massachusetts a year later, where they were married in 2006 in front of a couple hundred people in a church in the suburb where George was raised. Most of the attendees were family members and friends — some of his ex’s extended family, George said, weren’t supportive of the marriage.

“And in a million other ways we were constantly reminded that our relationship wasn’t equal to a straight relationship, even though we were legally married,” George told me. “Whether it was doing our federal taxes, or hearing that most states weren’t going to recognize our marriage, or just not being able to walk down the street and hold hands without getting snickers or comments. Like many gay couples, I think we brought unresolved shame and deep-rooted feelings of unworthiness into the relationship. You don’t even realize it’s there sometimes, but it definitely affected us.”

Both George and Aaron said they’d also felt an added pressure in their marriages to “prove to the world,” as George put it, that gay relationships can last. “My ex and I really wanted to be an example to our families and straight friends that a gay marriage can work,” he said.

Dan Savage, the sex-advice columnist, told me he worried that some young gay men in Massachusetts might rush into marriage as a way to have their relationships validated by their families. “Once, our relationships were only respected if we had remained together for a long, long time,” Savage said. “Only longevity earned us some modicum of respect. Straight couples could always rush that validity by getting married. Now I just worry that some gay kids, desperate to have their gay love taken seriously, will wield their new marriage licenses and say: ‘See how real our love is? We’ve only been together five months, but we’re already married. You better respect us now!’ ”

George said he hadn’t been looking for respect when he told his grandfather about his marriage. “When I first got engaged, everyone told me that he would ‘just die’ if I told him about it,” George said. “But one day I walked over to his house and said: ‘Listen, I’m getting married to a man that I love, and it’s going to be your choice if you’re going to be in our lives. I’m not going to make that choice for you.’ He sat back in his chair and said, ‘Well, I don’t really understand, but do you love him?’ I told him I did. To that he said, ‘Well, I know love, so I want to meet him and learn all about you guys.’ I still can’t bring myself to tell him about the divorce.”

The day we met at the coffee shop was a particularly trying one for George. Hours earlier, he signed papers giving his soon-to-be-ex-husband sole ownership of the house they had owned. “In return,” he said, “I got some debt, a car and a painting.”

“Wow, and all I lost in my divorce was my cat,” Aaron said. “We hardly had anything, so it wasn’t difficult to decide who got what. The cat’s living with my ex on Long Island now.”

IT WAS A BLUSTERY WEEKDAY morning in February when I tagged along with Marc and Vassili to pick up their marriage license at City Hall. Marc pulled the couple’s Honda Accord to a stop at a red light in the city’s South End neighborhood. Vassili sat in the passenger seat, sipping an ice coffee.

“We really wanted a BMW,” Marc explained, but they settled on the Honda as an exercise in premarriage fiscal responsibility. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

“We did a budget the other day,” Vassili said. “That was really scary.”

“We definitely need to reel in our spending,” Marc told me. “We need to stop going out so often. I mean, we’re getting married today! We can’t be acting like little kids, running around and spending money everywhere.”

After parking, we trudged through the snow toward City Hall, a mammoth nine-level concrete bunker. Marc and Vassili often dress alike, and that morning was no different. Each wore stylish jeans, black dress shoes, and a peacoat (Marc’s was brown; Vassili’s black) over a T-shirt. “We’re the same height and have kind of a similar style,” Marc explained as we passed through the building’s metal detector, “so we’re always wearing each other’s clothes.”

On our escalator ride downstairs to the marriage-license office, Vassili leaned into Marc and kissed him on the lips. Marc didn’t fight it, but he smiled awkwardly when it was over. “Marc’s actually gotten a lot better about not freaking out over public displays of affection,” Vassili told me. “The first fight we ever had was because I leaned up against him a little too close at Starbucks!”

“Vassili is just so comfortable with himself, much more so than I am or probably ever will be,” Marc said. “He’s really comfortable in his skin. That’s so endearing about him. It’s probably one of the reasons I love him so much.”

In the basement, Marc and Vassili approached the marriage license counter.

“I’ll be right with you,” the clerk told the couple. “You picking up something?”

“Our marriage license,” Vassili said proudly.

“Gays here!” Marc quipped. The clerk smiled, and Marc turned to me. “This is so weird,” he whispered. “We’re actually doing this. It’s starting to hit me that we’re actually getting married.”

The clerk eventually brought Marc and Vassili a copy of the marriage-license application they filled out on their last trip here.

Vassili beamed as he looked over the form, which had a column for “Party A” (Vassili) and “Party B” (Marc). (Before gay marriage was legalized in the state, the form listed “Bride” and “Groom.”)

Feigning outrage, Marc grabbed the form from Vassili’s hand. “Hey, why are you Party A?” he demanded to know.

“Because I’m the man, of course,” Vassili said with a laugh.

“We decided to combine our last names,” Marc explained, pointing to his typed name on the form: Marc Harrington Brent-Shields. “We thought about Shields-Brent, but that didn’t sound right.”

“Shields-Brent sounds like a verb,” Vassili said. “It sounds like I’m trying to shield Brent from something.”

When the clerk finished typing up the marriage license, she walked back to the counter. “Are you going upstairs?” she asked the couple.

“What’s upstairs?” Marc asked.

“The city clerk. She can marry you.”

“Does she like gay people?” Marc said.

“She loves gay people,” the woman assured them. She looked at the document in her hand.

“Is that our marriage license?” Vassili asked excitedly.

“Yes, it is. Do you want it?” She started to hand it to him and then stopped, toying with him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, please!” he said.

“Wait!” Marc said dramatically. “I think I’m having second thoughts.”

The woman froze.

“He’s kidding,” Vassili said.

“Totally kidding!” Marc assured her.

The woman laughed, handed Vassili the license and wished the couple well. As we walked away from the counter, Marc, who had tried to mask his nervousness with humor, looked as if he might pass out. “I need to go to the bathroom,” he said. “I’m feeling lightheaded. Don’t get me wrong — this is very cool. But it’s actually happening. I’m actually getting married — to a man!”

We searched for the men’s room while Vassili accosted random people in the hallway and shared the news. “We’re married! We just got our license!” he said breathlessly.

While Marc splashed water on his face in the bathroom, Vassili told me that he hoped to persuade Marc to go upstairs and make it official. “That lady really wanted us to go upstairs,“ he said. “I kind of want to make Marc do it. I mean, we’re already here!”

But Marc was adamant that he wanted to wait. ‘’I just want to be sure we find the right person to marry us,” he said once he was out of the bathroom. “I don’t want to rush into this.”

What Marc wanted instead was something to eat, and he was relieved when we came upon a Girl Scout selling cookies near the building’s exit. He and Vassili bought five boxes and began devouring the cookies as we walked back to their car.

“You know what I figure?” Marc told me. “I figure that now that I’m practically married, I can start letting myself go. Isn’t that, like, the main advantage of marriage? I’m definitely not going to the gym anymore!” He looked at Vassili and laughed. “Will you still love me if I’m fat?”

“Of course,” Vassili said, wrapping his financé in a bear hug. “In sickness and in health. Until one of us dies — or, you know, until we kill each other.”

Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the author of “America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life” and
“American Voyeur: Dispatches From the Far Reaches of Modern Life,”both to be published in January.

Hate against gays still exists in 2008 from Judith Reisman

Recently I came across the work of Judith Reisman, Ph.D. whose work is largely known for her criticism of the work of Alfred Kinsey.

With a Ph.D. in communications she is the president of the Institute for Media Education.

I came upon her work recently as she distributed an article she wrote called, "Crafting Bi/Homosexual Youth".

I found it to be the most repulsive, prejudice and evil article I have ever read by those with an agenda to promote hate toward a group of people!

In 1995, she wrote a logroll for Scott Lively's "The Pink Swastika". Scott Lively is one of the founders of the dangerous hate group Watchmen On the Walls and an anti-gay holocaust revisionist.

The thesis of his book is that the Nazi movement was, at its core, a homosexual movement -- and Nazism is the natural product of what happens when gays take over. In other words, gay power = Nazism. Reisman wrote:

"As a Jewish scholar who lost hundreds of her family in the Holocaust, I welcome "The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party" as courageous and timely... Lively and Abrams reveal the reigning "gay history" as revisionist and expose super male German homosexuals for what they were - Nazi brutes, not Nazi victims."

Those watching anti-gay folks spewing hateful messages have been tracking the Watchmen On the Walls for some time. They are truly hateful and potentially dangerous.

To my horror when I shared Dr. Reisman's work with others, people would say, "Everyone has the right to their opinion and that both sides of an argument should always be considered."

Is this really true--always? Aren't some things simply unacceptable?

Dr. Reisman is quoted as saying the following things in her articles and interviews:

In the article, Rape of a sacred trust: How pedophiles have targeted the Boy Scouts of America By David M. Bresnahan in © 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. she is interviewed saying the following:

*Contrary to the popular view that there is little crossover between homosexuality and pedophilia, she says homosexuals are anxious to recruit young boys -- a practice that is becoming easier thanks to sex education and "diversity programs" in schools that teach children to consider homosexuality as both acceptable and normal.*

*But Reisman says what 90 years of police blotter statistics prove -- that young boys are in real danger of sexual molestation, and that the BSA has sound reasons to ban homosexuals.*

*Reisman conducted two recent scientific studies that challenge the popular mantra of homosexual activists who insist that: 1) they are "born that way,"
2) homosexuals make up 10 percent of the population, and 3) youths should be able to have sex at an early age.*

*"Crafting 'Gay' Children: An Inquiry into the Abuse of Vulnerable Youth Via Establishment Media and the School Room" and "Partner Solicitation Language as a Reflection of Male Sexual Orientation," are continuations of the work Reisman began with her study, "Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences." *

"They're claiming that homosexuals are not looking to have sex with boys, yet you have this massive number of boys out there prostituting themselves.*

*And how do you have all these Internet sites if they're not looking for boys? This is not heterosexual. By definition, when you're having sex with someone of your own sex, that's homosexual," Reisman said. *

'The ideal situation' Boy Scout camping trips provide a perfect setting for homosexuals to pursue their forbidden desires, according to Reisman, who added that any organization that provides opportunities for homosexuals to spend time with young boys will become a magnet for homosexual child molesters.

Under the guise of research and protection of children this women is spewing hate and prejudice. As long as she is given a forum and opportunity to publish and preach her hateful agenda against gays, the LGBT community is at risk for harm both physically and psychologically.

Some things are just simply wrong. Child abuse is wrong. Rape is wrong. The Holocaust was wrong. And the work against gays linking them to pedophilia by Dr. Judith Reisman is wrong!