Do You Have Any Close Gay Friends?

Most of my men friends are gay .... two I am very close to, and we go to lunch, for coffee, etc... together... We have many gays in my family and in my daughter's and grdaughter's sides of the family.... I have zero tolerance for anyone who launches criticism based in ignorance (or self righteous via 'religion') towards gays...
 
I have been asked to be the Best Man at my niece's wedding to her long time partner. After the usual punch lines, I told her I'd be honored. I'll need your help coming up with an appropriate toast, though.
 

We have several wonderful neighbors. We see them almost daily. Our neighborhood is fairly close-knit with block parties and the like fairly often. It's really not an issue. It's no different than the fact they are bald or skinny or funny or intelligent. They are good people and great neighbors.
 
GeorgiaXplant said:
Reckon there are LGBT boards where members have asked if anybody has straight friends? Is there anybody here who's so insensitive as to start a thread asking if any among us are LGBT? Asian? Muslim? Jewish? Black? B'hai? White? Christian?

When introducing themselves do straight people announce "Hi, I'm Jane/John Doe and I'm heterosexual"? Does it matter? If you met somebody new, liked them, became friends and only discovered later that the person was LGBT would it make any difference whatsoever?
If you learned that a member of our senior community here was of a faith you don't subscribe to, a race that you "don't like", has a sexual preference that doesn't mesh with your beliefs, would you put them on "ignore" immediately even though in the past you enjoyed their threads/posts? If the answer is yes, you might want to check Google for the definition of a bigot.
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I totally concur. I cannot understand what purpose this question serves or what it proves in any way. Surely to goodness it is more important that these issues are totally irrelevant to us and we cease to pigeon hole others.
 
Yes, A Fellow college classmate. We were good friends and he knew that I was aware of his "choice of lifestyle" but it never
interfered with our friendship. He used to tell me about his "gay" friends and we'd laugh about it.

One thing I admired about him was that he never flaunted it, like some one observes in the Gay Pride Parades where there
is cross-dressing and men kissing eachother.
 
Well, I guess I should have mentioned that I was engaged at 20 to a gay man. Not that I knew he was a gay man, mind you. He was quite a bit older than me, very urbane and sophisticated. I was quite fascinated by him and the "forbidden" aspect of our relationship....he was one of my professors in college and, as it would have been a giant no-no for us to date, I dropped out after the spring semester so that we could be a couple. Finally, I got to sport the ring and make wedding plans.

Then, he left me for a guy. Yep, a guy. It seems that I was his experiment in going straight and the experiment failed. I was a pretty innocent 20-year-old and it didn't occur to me that the fact he wasn't jumping my bones at every opportunity (ok, to be truthful, at ANY opportunity) was not because he was such a gentleman and wanted to honor my wish to be a virgin bride.

It was pretty traumatic.
 
I have gay friends and family. I yearn for a day when questions such as these are irrelevant, and I no longer must comfort the grieving parents of LGBTQ offspring who have died from the "plague" of homophobia. Even in tolerant Canada, which has embraced same sex marriage for a decade, it still happens. Shame. Shame.
 
fureverywhere said:
Kinda gave me a bad impression of the "fidelity" of gay people

I dunno if that makes sense thinking of all the kooky things straight people have been known to do in their relationships...jus' sayin' Who you love doesn't have bearing on how faithful you are.

Oh and Ike, incomplete answer there son...No, not that you know of.

With so many friends and family in the rainbow community I try to be an advocate. It's like pit bulls...with education and understanding they can be accepted ya know?
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I think I'd have to classify a couple of my good friends as "Bi" since they've both been with both men and women over the years. My first real experience with the gay community was while working in the STD (V.D.) clinic. They had some outrageous stories and did some mind blowing, sick things which I won't even go into here. Once a gay male patient asked us to do mass testing of a group of gays who were, to their credit, concerned about keeping safe for the lifestyle they chose to lead. That being lots of anonymous sex with lots of people. Some of these guys admitted to having sex with strangers in the baths in NYC, in public restrooms or whom they picked up on the street. The event was held at a unitarian church one of them secured. We did lots of testing. One of our investigators, who was straight as ten arrows, got spooked and came walking out of the restroom like a zombie. He had witnessed one of the men giving another a "head job". There was a lot of hugging and kissing as they milled about. I just thought it was very disrespectful to be doing those things in a church.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that all gay people behave in this way. In fact, many of our patients who did, died from AIDS. It was sad, really, to see them dying one by one and most of them were young people in their 20's and 30's. One poor guy was planning to sue his doctor because he thought the report of him having HIV was false. I'll never forget him...a nice looking young man named Larry who was a "regular".
 
One of my very best friends died recently - a gay guy. In the 70s I owned a duplex in the Sf bay area and he rented one unit, I lived in the other. It was a superb friendship, I could talk to him about anything whatsoever since there was no sexual tension. We spent a lot of time playing table games, and a lot of the time he had gay friends joining us. Some of the best times of my life happened there, just unencumbered companionship. We both lived there for some 17 years, then kept in touch after that. We both got married - well, he didn't officially, it wasn't possible then. I miss him.
 
GeorgiaXplant said:
Reckon there are LGBT boards where members have asked if anybody has straight friends? Is there anybody here who's so insensitive as to start a thread asking if any among us are LGBT? Asian? Muslim? Jewish? Black? B'hai? White? Christian?

When introducing themselves do straight people announce "Hi, I'm Jane/John Doe and I'm heterosexual"? Does it matter? If you met somebody new, liked them, became friends and only discovered later that the person was LGBT would it make any difference whatsoever?
If you learned that a member of our senior community here was of a faith you don't subscribe to, a race that you "don't like", has a sexual preference that doesn't mesh with your beliefs, would you put them on "ignore" immediately even though in the past you enjoyed their threads/posts? If the answer is yes, you might want to check Google for the definition of a bigot.
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Well stated GeorgiaXplant !!
 
Outside of one of our grandsons, (out of 13 grandkids) I don't think that I have any gay friends. Not because it's a problem for me, I just don't happen to have any. The same could be said for many "types" of people. I doubt that I'll run around looking for a gay person or any other "type" of person. If they come into my circle of friends, I'd welcome them - -just no more or less than anyone else.

My wife spent quite a few years working with local theater groups and I met and knew some gay folks involved with the theater. They were really no different than anyone else, to chat with, and with some there were no mannerisms that put them apart from anyone else. I think that it's more of a problem for insecure people than those who are well adjusted. Times change and we should be capable of changing with them. After all most of us use matches to light a fire today - -we're not still rubbing sticks together to start a blaze.:)
 
I've not yet met a gay or lesbian person that i have befriended. I have met a couple at my former work but they were just work colleagues and not friends.
 
I had one I was close with briefly. He was a lot of fun. We would get crocked and do karaoke at his place. It was like being a kid again and playing. I loved him dearly. But most of the people in my life won't bother with me anymore so, we went our separate ways.
 


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