Being gay is quite incredible, it is a daily wakeup call that helps us to grow; it’s an opportunity to accept OURSELVES, which is key. I was watching a special on HBO this week called We’re Funny That Way, and a lesbian said, “Every time we ‘come out’ to a person we are giving this sad, tired, mean old world a chance to grow.” Wise lesbian. Being gay is not a cry for attention or a demand for pity. Being gay is not a cause to fight, a team to side with, or a war to win; it is a natural state of existence. Being gay is not about parades or little rainbow stickers, it's not about earrings or crossdressers or exotic dancers. It can be summed up simply in one short phrase. "It's about loving differently." ...So if you want to, you can brag that you know all nine major brands of water and oil based lubrication by memory, their benefits and drawbacks. How many clubs you've visited, how many studs you've nailed, and how many jaws you've dropped in the process. But being gay will always be simply about "loving differently." It's not a child's rebellion or an adult's sexual desire; it's about loving differently at any age. It’s some sort of satisfaction I guess, knowing that when we are living in truth, simply our existence is sufficient to change the world.

I had just turned 15 and was struggling with my sexuality; I remember it vividly. Ages 13 and 15 were when I was entirely bouncing off the walls sexually. When the people around you are all one way, and you're not, you can't help but feel like there is something wrong with you. I spent all my time wrestling with the idea, "Every part of me that makes me who I am is telling me I am gay, and everything I've been taught is telling me that it is wrong." I tried rejecting the thoughts that entered my mind that had to do with other guys… I kept telling myself the only reason I couldn't stop from having these thoughts was because I was too weak to fight them. No matter what I tried, or how I changed my thought patterns, I could not change that part of me… and that is a very powerful statement coming from a person who prides himself in his ability to regulate his emotions and dictate his thoughts. I would apologize and make promises to God… and I would break those promises just as sequentially as I vowed them. Even then I knew it was a battle that amounted to nothing more than a hollow conflict; the internal battle with homosexuality has no victory and no defeat, the war we wage inside is as senseless as a dog chasing his own tail. When we stop running around in circles we realize it's been a part of us all of our lives.

I went to Disney World last week, and on one of the rides they were talking about the constitution, and it said “A country where you have the right to life, liberty, and happiness… the right to be yourself.” And I was ready to jump up on the stage and yell, “I’m gay and I’d like to ask all of the other gay people in this audience to please stand up and take a bow.” It was so empowering, even though it wasn’t intended it evoke that particular response. :) I know that I will live my life completely openly one day. I never thought I would… How could I be respected if I was open? What would my bosses think? I don’t care now; the threat of a lower salary no longer silences me. The threat of not being liked by every individual doesn’t change who I am. I can either pad everything for everyone else, wearing my “straight mask” so everyone around me can feel okay, or I can be myself, stop lying, and let everything that happens, happen because I’ve done what I know is right. Then when people love us, they are loving who we really are… otherwise I just feel like others are loving my disguise, and not really me on the inside. It’s a pity I’ve had to apply this coat of paint over my beautiful, strong, solid, brick home. My neighbors’ wooden houses all were painted, the siding and the trim, and they said mine had to be that way too. So I colored mine, I coated the brick walls with a thin layer of white paint to make it unmistakably average. Eighteen years have passed and I don’t want my home white anymore… I want the maintenance free brick I was blessed with from the start.

I’ve been inquiring about the casualty of sex. I saw a documentary called ‘The Science of Sex’; It talked of the characteristics that attracted the opposite sex to one another – waist/hip ratios and such… then it spoke of how homosexuals behave just as their straight counterparts, only without the ability to procreate… then they said what made homosexuals different is that they had hundreds, sometimes thousands of partners. Hundreds, sometimes THOUSANDS! Yeah right… SO in the eyes of the producers of that documentary, to constitute as a “homosexual” you must have had sex with at least a hundred men. Thank you Mr. Producer, for just distancing all of the viewers from the truths of homosexuality. I’ve got a theory for Mr. Producer… What if Mr. Producer, and Mr. Producer’s girlfriend couldn’t walk in public holding hands? And what if Mr. Producer couldn’t talk about his girlfriend to anyone because he had to be afraid of his or her response? And what if Mr. Producer had to speak quietly and plutonicly to his girlfriend in a restaurant? To what end? I have a theory… All aspects of Mr. Producer and his girlfriends’ relationship have been destroyed… except for when Mr. Producer calls up his girlfriend and suggests they meet at his place because he’s feeling a bit frisky. If you can’t live life together in public, you’re stripped of a large portion of the qualities of a relationship, and you lose the ability to have a strong foundation that comes with those qualities. The fact that homosexuality is made to seem like a dark secret only makes sex more desirable… and it drastically increases the likelihood of having a relationship based purely on sex. – The world doesn’t want you to have anything more; it certainly chastises you when you do. And pardon me, but I don’t think male/female relationships mirror Leave It To Beaver today either (thank God)… It’s not about homosexuals having more sex… it’s a global casualness towards sex, and the repercussions of suffocating a love.

It’s hard watching straight couples isn’t it? They walk around happily holding hands, she looking up at him with a contented grin plastered on her face, that little aura around them… Sometimes I just want to walk over and scratch their eyes out, just because their clear relationship success is the smiling bastard baby of societies acceptance. Asking a gay person to stop being gay and start being attracted to the other sex would make the same sense as a gay person asking a straight person to start being sexually attracted to the same sex. GUYS DON'T choose what makes us hard. At age 10 I didn't have a discussion with my crotch and tell it to respond only to males. It's not about an experience as a child, it's not about an absent parent. We are gay because we are meant to be gay, just as black people are meant to be black, and blond haired people are meant to be blond. Just as straight males find the idea of dating another male disgusting and unnatural, and straight women can't fathom the thought of dating another female, gay males and females find it just as disgusting to date the opposite sex. So the next time I see some straight person act uncomfortable when I show a public display of affection with my partner, I'm going to walk over there, poke them in the eye and say, "Hey, gay people have been forced to watch the opposite sexes doing this and that and everything else for thousands of years, so you're going to stand there and be respectful when gay people do it too."