I think that groups like “sex panic” were an over reaction, but there were plenty of other moderate voices saying” loosen up here! We’re New York!”.

Don’t get me wrong. I really like Gulianni, and think he had our best interests at heart, but when people are pushed into a certain “Pottery Barn ” conformity, you’re likely to see the nuts come out. And sometimes that’s “a good thing”.

If he had been attacked elsewhere, and had to seek emergency assistance from the American Embassy, he would very likely have had serious difficulties.

I know. I am a State Department Foreign Service Officer being disciplined for going to bat on behalf of an American citizen living with HIV/AIDS who was kicked off a plane in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1994. [Yes, this is still pending.]

Yes, the State Department apparently considers marginalized American citizens not to be worthy of effective consular protection in emergency situations.

In other words, you’re on your own, even in matters of life and death. Just shut up and go away.

And so it goes . . .

That’s why Bruce/Dan’s effort and those of other mainstream society gays is important. It’s a departure from the selfish, ego-centric, destructive gay culture that finds solace in the LibLeft Dem MoonBat camp. Think about it for a moment –these guys and far too few others are on the otherside of our culture… arguing for the mainstream, standard cultural values rather than against it. And they get villified by many voices on the GayLeft for it…. ala, “you’re working for the man, dude. Sell out.”

I don’t know if we’ll swing back.

I do know that we might, because we are not quite as far gone as Europe, and a large chunk of our society still holds the “family” or “reproductive” mindset.

And I also know that the swingback, if it happens, will not necessarily be vicious to gays. It may take the form of society saying “OK, we know you’re gay, fine, have civil unions, but use them already, and sublimate your excess sexual energy into contributions to the greater good.” (Which some gays do already.)

It seems to me that straight couples are going in the opposite direction. They already have mom and dad saying “What excuse do you have for not settling down” and the still have no respect for commitment. What makes you think that society’s approval will make gay people commit?

I remember visiting SFO a few years ago and seeing huge billboards reading “Bareback Tops Must Be Negative.” It made me happy I was living in a state where billboards were more likely to read “Got Jesus?” (Not too mention the whole aggressive-urine-soaked-vagrant -capital-of-the -world thing SFO has goin’ on.)

You can’t regulate gays. They are not in lockstep, no community is in lockstep. I know plenty of gays who are in long-term relationships that last many years. Some of them are completely monogamous. Some of them have fun on the side and say they would have split up years ago if they had to stay sexually focused on one person. I know just as many straight couples who have the same situation, only they pretend they are monogamous.

-Slap those images of the gayposterboi on the sides of buses instead graphic condom ads related to STDs and we might start impacting American voters, policy makers, and the public policy elites.-

Americans aren’t impacted by ads of cozy gay families or other safe images. Most people tune out ads. Americans are impacted by what they hear from friends, family, churches, and to an increasingly small degree, the news.

Even today, pick up any San Francisco gay newspaper, and there will be a drumbeat about how “they” want to oppress gays by restricting sex clubs, cracking down on lewd activity in public spaces, etc.

In the late 90s, I re-connected with a high school friend who is gay. He was living in Manhattan. He said he was an activist in the fight for gay rights. Thinking it must be something like Domestic Partner Benefits or gay marriage – the causes I had done my time in – I said “Great – what exactly?” It turns out he was involved in a group called Sex Panic!, whose focus was to combat the “oppression” of Rudy Guiliani shutting down New York’s public park spaces (bushes) that men had once taken over for anonymous sex.

In one of Larry Kramer’s late-1980s plays about the AIDS crisis, a sympathetic supporting character asks the gay lead plaintively, something to the effect, “Why did you guys only fight for the right to screw around? Why didn’t you fight for the right to get married?”

Today, many gays finally fighting for the right to get married. Just not always in a smart way

The trouble with the posterboy/gal approach is: you’re setting them up as representations of an ideal – i.e., as superhuman. When it turns out they make mistakes, or relapse to less-than-the-ideal, your movement is exposed/viewed as phony. Just ask the ex-gays!

There must be some other way we can change gay male culture. But I’m not sure what.

Being able to screw around appeals to the “animal” in so many gay men. (I only mean the animal that every human has inside from our common evolutionary heritage, that civilized indoctrination normally tries to limit or counterbalance, in straights.)

For 36 years, since Stonewall, gay men have fought and died (literally) for their right to have S-E-X whenever and with any willing partner they may decide. That’s “the animal part of us” at work, resisting and denying civilization.

I don’t see that dynamic changing soon. It slightly changed when AIDS deaths were a crisis, but the change never went deep, and has largely un-wound since effective drugs made HIV less of a crisis.

I know you are going to disagree with me, but I have concluded that in practice, society will have to offer us gay marriage / civil unions first. And then take the position with future gay generations, “No more excuses – why aren’t you setting down?” And even then, it will only be those future generations who change (and who then, understandably, view ours as a bunch of circus freaks).

Slap those images of the gayposterboi on the sides of buses instead graphic condom ads related to STDs and we might start impacting American voters, policy makers, and the public policy elites.

But that might be moving out the safe, preferred spot of victimhood for our community –and we’d split our political might into fragments with such a radical manuever… leaving the GayLeft and the LibLeft political culture of victimhood to fend for themselves. And I know those people will not TOLERATE moving away from victimhood as a tool –because they usually turn to “radicalism and in-ur-face activism is the only way to secure progress” approach. Just try talking with DemGayLefties and discuss whether ACT-UP harmed or helped our community long term. Yeow, there’s a screaming, heated, emotion laden instruction awaiting anyone who questions the merits of the ACT-UP movement.

Perhaps, but if they aren’t even willing to have a real discussion, then I can’t blame their immaturity on gay activists. They are in a position of power, and they often feel threatened about losing that power.