My only point was that despite his stated appetite for women(facebook?). He is in fact gay. At least I’m 99.99% sure he is.

I don’t know him and I don’t want to contact him so I don’t see how stating the obvious is messing with him. The fact that he’s gay makes him more interesting to me as a gay man. I’ll follow his progress in the Olympics now.

But you know, these conversations still really make me angry. There is the unspoked but clear subtext that people who are gay HAVE to be out, and that men who do not conform to our society’s stereotype of manliness or masculinity, men who are “effeminate,” MUST be gay. Well, I beg to disagree on both counts.

I think one larger thing that our LGBT struggle for acceptance should be about is people’s right to be whoever or whatever they are without being judged and without being catalogued. An element of that is liberating people to not feel or be forced into strictly binary categories of gay or straight. As well, I think what our community at its best stands for is the notion that gender roles are not black and white. But the comments that precede mine go starkly the other wat.

Have you thought that:

Maybe this 18 YEAR OLD BOY is confused and hasn’t decided what his sexual orientation is?

Maybe this young man isn’t ready to come out even if he knows he’s gay?

Maybe that he is one of the not stereotypically masculine men whi is in fact straight? And trust me, folks, there are a lot of them.

Maybe that it’s none of our business and that we’re engaging in sort of demeaning speculation about another person’s private life? (And no, I don’t care that he’s a kind of public figure. He’s a world class amateur athlete who wants to win medals, I don’t think that SHOULD fairly make his whole life fair game for public discussion.)

There is nothing about what I am writing that means to suggest (nor do I for a minute think) that there would be anything shameful for this young man about his being gay if he were. But let’s face it, sexual orientation is not yet a trivial aspect of a person’s personality and identity. It’s not like hair color (and how many of us LIE about that, I ask you honestly!).

Someday maybe it will be. And people’s inclination to be more rather than less casual and matter-of-fact about it in the future will help get us to that point. On a macro level we can all hope for that. But in the meantime, on this micro level, this is an individual person we’re talking about. And I would defend to great extents his right to say he is whatever he wants to say he is. It’s personal. Leave him alone.

Why is it so bad to state the obvious. Being gay isn’t bad.

ummm…… yeah. He’s not straight. One of the points made on the board was that he could be one of those mythical heterosexual guys who’s just very effeminate. I made the point that I had never met a very effeminate guy who was in fact straight and then a few other people spoke up and said the same thing.