Ground Zero mosque imam Abdallah Adhami says homosexuality the result of 'violent emotional abuse'

It makes sense he believes this as there is a problem in middle eastern countries of male rape due to restriction of sex with women before marriage. I have seen many of the male survivors of rape and childhood sexual abuse in my practice and they worry they might be gay because of the abuse and they are not. I have a website on this
www.straightguise.com

Ground Zero mosque imam Abdallah Adhami says homosexuality the result of 'violent emotional abuse' - Telegraph

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Sexually Open Relationships--Can They Work?

I'm seeing an increase in open relationships in my practice and it is not the reason they are entering therapy. In other words, it is not the problem nor contributing to it. The sexually open relationship is working for these couples. Do you believe open relationships can work? Open Relationships - Good in Bed

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Hawaii Senate overwhelmingly passes Civil Unions!

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2011/01/28/30127

The state Senate on Friday approved Senate Bill 232, relating to Civil Unions, at its regular daily session.

The bill says unmarried, unrelated couples may have a judge or clergy solemnize their civil union, which will provide the same responsibilities and benefits of marriage under state law.

The bill passed the full Senate 19-6.

Religious Teachings Against Homosexuality is the Biggest Abuse Toward Gays.

This is an example and the result of teaching children in religious institutions that homosexuality is wrong.
Chaos erupts at funeral of Ugandan gay rights activist - CNN.com

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No Strings Sex. Just sex. Can it work?

Two movies this year - "No Strings Attached," out now, and "Friends with Benefits," releasing this summer and starring "Black Swan" actress Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake - explore the hook-up dynamic, where sex is simply sex and nothing else. But do they work? Are they - assuming there aren't more Skeletors in the area - dangerous?

Nationally known psychotherapist and author Joe Kort, who practices in Royal Oak, is all for them. "People are seeing what people used to do didn't work, and they're making up their own rules," Kort says. "They're like, 'This works for me better than what should work for me.' They're getting rid of the 'should.' It's almost like, 'Fuck what I should do; I'll do what feels right to me.' And I think it's great."

To read this entire article go to http://pridesource.com/article.html?article=45147

Orthodox Judaism and Homosexuality

By David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer
Steven Greenberg was a 20-year-old Orthodox rabbinic student from Ohio, studying in Jerusalem, when he realized his affections were "ripping me apart."

So he visited a sage, an esteemed interpreter of Jewish law.

"Master, I am attracted to both men and women," he told Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv. "What Shall I do?"

The ultra-Orthodox Eliashiv's answer came as a surprise.
Philly.com : Orthodox rabbi teaches what it's like to be gay

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Sex in the Time of GPS

The iPhone app “Grindr” is the biggest boon for gay sex since Craigslist. Clark Harding experiments hooking-up in all kinds of weird places, from traffic jams to mid-flight.

Technology is bringing men closer together—even to the point of penetration. With the help of the iPhone, mobile application use has grown exponentially from elite tech fashion to an entire culture of app whores. No, really. If there’s an app for anything from emergency medical advice to language translation, is it any surprise there’s one to calculate distance to sex?

Welcome to Grindr, the iPhone app that tracks its gay male user's every move and can find him a hookup nearby.

Sex in the Time of GPS

Superbowl Commercial

I love the use of homoeroticism. We have come a long way.

YouTube - The Sauna - 2011 Doritos Superbowl Commercial Ad

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Homophobia in Michigan

Andrew Shirvell, the former assistant state attorney general fired for antigay harassment against the University of Michigan student body president, had previously been warned about using state resources for antigay attacks on politicians.
Fired Mich. Assistant AG Was Warned | News | The Advocate

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Coming to London, England for a Gay and Lesbian Couples Workshop!

http://www.joekort.com/GTLYWEngland.htm

I just purchased my airline tickets and am excited to be doing London, England's FIRST Gay and Lesbian IMAGO Relationship Therapy couple's weekend workshop.

Ask the Expert with Dr. Joe Kort: I'm a gay man but only attracted to straight guys'

Ask the Expert with Dr. Joe Kort: 'I'm a gay man but only attracted to straight guys'

This is one of my most popular videos. This is a common question that I receive in my practice.

Gay marriage getting closer!

Civil unions will be signed into law in Illinois on Jan. 31 | Breaking News | Wisconsin Gazette - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) News

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What Would You Do If Your Son Wanted A Doll?

What Would You Do If Your Son Wanted a Doll, Challenging Gender Stereotypes? - ABC News

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A Little Anal Retentive How the Far Right Tried to Rebrand a Conversation about Sex Education

A Little Anal Retentive How the Far Right Tried to Rebrand a Conversation about Sex Education
By Bill Taverner

It was one workshop in particular that really caught the attention of our detractors, so much so that they made sure to attend that workshop – from among 40 course offerings – to get all the juicy details.  The workshop was appropriately titled “Healthy Endings:  A Workshop on Anal Health and Sexual Safety.”  Why a workshop about the anus?  As the workshop description notes, about 40% of adults report having engaged in anal intercourse.  (As comedians have noted, the other 60% have a "friend"...)  Public policy professionals have long been aware of the association between unprotected anal intercourse and HIV, as well as other sexually transmitted infections.  So the question isn’t so much why we would have a workshop teaching about the anus and sexual safety – but why wouldn’t we?  The course reviewed physiology and recommendations for health and risk prevention.  It also included a fact sheet that provided comprehensive information about the anus.  One fact on this fact sheet cited research and commentary from scholars in the field on sexual safety in the context of butt plugs and other toys, being responsive to the common usage of such toys among adults.  It is important to know that almost half of the sex educators who attended the conference identified their primary audiences as adults.  However, those heckling our conference were trying to paint the picture that we were training middle school teachers to teach their students how to more effectively use their butt plugs.

Anti-male and anti-sex falsehoods that rule discussions of porn.

This is an important conversation about porn.

The Anti-Male, Anti-Sex Falsehoods That Rule Discussions about Porn and Sexuality | | AlterNet

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Sex on the Download: A Four part teleclass

Find out what is wrong and what is right with looking at porn on the internet and chatting with others on the internet.

SEX ON THE DOWNLOAD:
Part 1
A four part teleclass with Joe Kort and Tammy Nelson

"Sex on the Download" is a reflection of our current culture of internet relationships where the growing societal influence of connecting in cyber relationships can create real time intimacy, but may also lead to compulsive sexual behaviors, porn addiction and compulsive infidelity.

Is it inevitable that in the not too distant future we will ultimately download all of our intimate and sexual connections?

For some users, this time may already be here. And it may be effecting real life partnerships, jobs, and the ability to create healthy sexual connections.

Therapists, educators, sexuality counselors and medical practitioners will benefit from this training to assist anyone who uses the internet as a pathway to relationship, connection, sexuality or pleasure and who finds themselves caught in a web of cyber chaos, pain, addiction or crisis.

Learn direct interventions, insight oriented and nonpathologizing behavioral changes, and directed attempts to connect for couples and individuals. We will use lecture, case example and worksheets and handouts. Supervision, group discussion and ongoing support is included in this LIVE teleclass.

Four Tuesdays: Jan 25, Feb 1, 8, 15, 2011
12pm – 1pm EST

COST: $200 (student discount may be available)

Week 1 - Participants will learn to provide appropriate diagnosis of sexual disorders such as sexual compulsivity, sexual addiction, porn addiction, compulsive infidelity and other sexual behavioral disorders that manifest as internet disorders. Is there such a thing as sex addiction? Is porn addiction real? Can it be something else? What is healthy use of the internet? Can pornography use ever be healthy?

Week 2 - Participants will learn ways to work with partners to accept responsibility for the repair of sexual dysfunction as it relates to object relations and personal sexual history. Work with couples to repair relationships after infidelity, after porn addiction, after betrayal or trauma. Move partnerships through specific stages of erotic recovery necessary for healing.

Week 3 - Participants will learn ways to address the nonsexual meanings of sexual behaviors or lack thereof including cracking the code of fantasy and desire as it relates to internet behavior. Learn ways to share fantasy with partners to decrease anxiety and bring erotic energy back in to the relationship instead of splitting it off to outside exits.

Week 4 - Participants will learn ways to explore their own countertransference, assumptions and assertions and the difficulties this presents in the treatment of internet relationships. The non-pathological use of the internet is reflected in positively framed couples work using fluidity, intuition and sexual empathy.

Tammy Nelson, PhD, LPC, is a Certified Sexologist, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Imago Therapist and the author ofGetting the Sex You Want: Shed Your Inhibitions and Reach New Heights of Passion Together, and lectures and trains internationally on sex and relationships. www.DrTammyNelson.com

Joe Kort, PhD, LMSW, is a psychotherapist and Board Certified Sexologist who specializes in sexual identity issues, IMAGO relationship therapy, sex therapy and sexual addiction. He is the author of two books on gay male identity and relationships, Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician and has a chapter for female partners who are involved with men who have sex with men in Mending a
Shattered Heart. www.joekort.com

Showering with other men is a privilege

Recently I posted on my Facebook page my anger at the men who are opposed to showering with openly gay men in the military. This came after reading an article on Alternet.org entitled, "Homophobic Group Argues Gay Soldiers Should Shower Apart From Straight Soldiers". I labeled these straight men as nothing more than scared, ignorant, homophobic and threatened. I regret having such a strong and narrow mindset now however I don't know that I am completely wrong and I do recognize that I was having an overreaction

Here is a direct quote from me on my wall:

This is about patriarchy where straight men feel their sexual erotocism is central and dominant and G-d forbid women and gay men share sexual power. Straighten are frightened of losing their power.

My anger reaction comes from the mindset that people believe that gay equals sex and that all gay men want to do is hump the next guy with whom he comes in contact. I remember vividly my mother telling me in the summer before 6th grade that I would be showering with other boys for gym class. As a gay child and one moving rapidly toward puberty this was overwhelmingly exciting and titillating. Imagine if heterosexual boys were suddenly told they were going to have access to the female locker room. Quickly I realized that this was not going to work out well as erections were not so easy to control and I knew that I would have them in the locker room. All I remember thinking that summer is of being humiliated and exposed as a "fag" right there for all to see me standing at attention--literally!

So, like other gay boys who are placed in situations with other males in locker rooms, I learned to look straight ahead and think of anything other than the naked males who were around me. This was stressful and I remember being full of anxiety. However, I learned to get used to it and become desensitized to the images while I was in the shower. I admit that I would go home and masturbate the images that I had seen and fantasize that anything but just showering was going on in that locker room.

Gay boys like myself learn to be appropriate and respectful in the locker room. While it is true there are some gay males who are not respectful and gawk and sexualize other men openly in the locker room, they are the minority.

That said, I have to admit that as a gay man I do see showering and changing in the locker room as a privilege that I take seriously. I know it would make people more comfortable if I said, "No there is nothing sexual about it and it is neutral for me" but it is not.

The argument that if straight men were allowed to shower with women is not a good comparison for gay men showering with other men in the military or anywhere else because we gay men have been showering with other males our whole lives whereas straight men have not been doing so with women. Gay men develop ways to cope that straight men would not have as adults suddenly thrown in with naked women.

A former college roommate and friend of mine gave me permission to post his response to me on Facebook wall here on my blog:

All joking and intolerance of heterosexuals aside, what DO we do about people who genuinely feel uncomfortable about showering with overtly gay people who might be titilated by seeing them naked? You're attitude can't seriously be, as that article suggests, "oh, those backwards bigots! Get over it!"---can it? Just because someone is uncomfortable being naked around strangers of the opposite sex (whether literally the opposite sex, or just constructively---i.e., gays) doesn't make them bigots. Are women bigots who don't want to change in front of strange men? Seriously, we should be adults and be responsive to people's sensitivities and vulnerabilities. It's not unreasonable to be uncomfortable at the possibility, let alone likelihood, of people leering lasciviously while one showers or undresses in a communal setting. And you must admit, in the general population, there WILL be people who gawk or leer. C'mon---we're men---it's what we do, a thousand times a day. If it walks, wriggles or crawls, we're looking at it coming or going, sizing it up, giving it a score, storing it in our camel-hump memory for emergency use later if necessary. Sure, changing the DADT policy won't change the ratio of hetero to homo, but the key consideration is that DADT affords an "ignorance is bliss" benefit. I can understand why, for some people, it's uncomfortable to shower in front of people who are covertly gay and, by definition, turned-on by members of your "sexual category."
Either it's "Don't Ask Don't Tell", and "ignorance is bliss," and people just go on not knowing who might be susceptible to titilation, and keep showering together, and no one is the wiser but the gays get their red meat and the "homo-phobes" (i.e., those who are uncomfortable showering with gays), get their state of denial. Or else we have "Nobody Asked But Look At Me, I'm Telling Anyway", and gays don't get court-martialed out of the service, and get to live freely, but we have separate showers because we're sensitive about people's sexual issues and vulnerabilities. But you can't have both!---can't have your cake and eat it too. i.e., you don't get the communal showers as if no one knows and its no big deal, at the same time you get to trumpet that you're gay and harbor a sexual preference for the group you're showering with!
It just doesn't seem bigoted, prejudiced, unreasonable, or backwards to me. It's just considerate, to have separate showers in such situations. I would LOVE being able to shower with the women at the gym, and pretend like it's no big deal, I'm just there to work-out, and how dare women PRESUME I'm automatically turned-on by them just because I'm heterosexual and turned-on by women as a group. But seriously---there would, in any general population of women, be some I'm leering and gawking at! And they would be completely reasonable and within their rights to require separate showering facilities, just SUSPECTING that, given the law of averages, there would be men like me out there!
I can hear the howls of protest already, at my impudence in contesting this position, or in unknowingly using some politically-incorrect words or phrases; some of your fans, I've noticed, simply have no tolerance for disparate opinions and principles, and assume those who disagree are bigoted louts. Still, I welcome all of you "educating" me, if I'm wrong on some premise or conclusion. But I do wonder---is the "gay agenda" about being treated equally, under a fair application of The Rule of Law, and about the freedom to be yourself without repercussion and blow-back (no pun intended!)? Or is it about dispensing with the cumbersome art of persuasion, and instead FORCING an expedient change in attitudes?

I cannot say I disagree with my former college roommate. I also feel that my side makes sense too. Some men are overreacting while others are not and have to struggle with this and work this through. What do you think?