It's been forty years since British parliamentarians signed the Sex Offenses Act, thus decriminalizing faggotry. The social sea change helped millions of homos ride on out of the closet. It also thrust homosexuality into the cultural spotlight, making gays - and their sex lives - one of the most talked about subjects in all the land.

Now, British journo Simon Fanshawe wants everyone to "bloody" shut up about the queers and focus on the person, not the sexual position.

How things have changed even since I came out, in 1976. Endlessly now, I get asked on to chatshows and debate programmes to discuss the state of homosexuality. Over a hundred years after the wonderful Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde termed it "the love that dare not speak its name", it has become the love that won't bloody well shut up.

Eeks! Do you think he's talking about us?

CONTINUED »

• Having wrapped up its annual conference, the National Education Association is still sticking to its talking points: it does not endorse gay marriage. It just wants to. [CNS News]

• It took Out a little while to get around to the Ryan Smith gay bashing story, and now that the magazine finally did, readers are livid the story came so uncomfortably close to blaming Smith for his own attack. [Out]

• Now that New York's highest court has made its decision regarding gay marriage, the question begs: Is that it? [Advocate]

• Forget how you'd feel if Jake Gyllenhaal or Vin Diesel came out. What would it mean to their straight girl fanbase? [After Elton]

• It's not a summer in P-town if Andy Towle isn't there. [Towleroad]

• D.C.'s most narcissistic gay explains the rules for playing Kings when your white ass isn't surround by your frat guy-cum-yacht club member crowd. [VividBlurry]

New York Giants' defensive end Michael Strahan isn't going to great lengths to defend against rumors of his being gay, despite his ex-wife's claims. The trouble began last March when Strahan filed for divorce from his wife Jean, who then proceeded to file a domestic violence complaint against him (which was quickly dismissed). Fast forward to last week to divorce court when Jean claimed Michael lived an "alternative lifestyle." But, as the New York Daily News' Michael O'Keeffe notes, Strahan didn't take the typical route of a professional athlete denying he's gay (read: He's not Mike Piazza, who held a press conference to announce his heterosexuality).

The New York Giants' defensive end didn't hold a hastily organized press conference to loudly proclaim his love for the ladies. He didn't head to a trendy nightclub and pose for the paparazzi with the finest-looking women he could find.

Instead, Strahan went to a gym in the West Village, the birthplace of the gay rights movement. He went to dinner at a Meatpacking District hotspot with Ian Smith, the TV doctor Jean Strahan had suggested was his lover (Smith, who is married, says he is not gay). He told a New York radio station that he had many friends who were gay or bisexual and that he was cool with that.

"This is New York City," Strahan said during a brief phone call to the station. "If you can't accept people for being people, then you have no business being here."

Cue the requisite debate over whether professional sports are becoming more tolerant toward gays in their midst. Is one professional athlete – who still holds the small possibility of not even begin gay – having a more rational reaction to homosexuality going to change the industry? Certainly not. But a move like this could certainly be Giant.

Strahan's handling of `gay' tag a breath of fresh air [NYDN]

Not that the gay community needs much more convincing that homosexuality is tied to biology, but new research finds a correlation between men being gay and their having older brothers. From exploring the lifestyles and biology of of nearly 1,000 Canadian men, the "fraternal birth order effect" study author Anthony Bogaert concludes there's a link between the sexuality of a man and whether he's got older brothers — even if he wasn't raised with them.

Researchers have known for years that a man's likelihood of being gay rises with the number of older biological brothers. But the new study found that the so-called "fraternal birth order effect" persists even if gay men were raised away from their biological families. [...]

Bogaert and a colleague first reported the older-brother effect a decade ago. According to Bogaert, men with no older brothers have about a 2 percent to 3 percent chance of being gay. If they have three or four older brothers, the rate goes up to about 5 percent. [...]

To find the answer, Bogaert examined surveys of 944 Canadian men, both gay and straight, about their sexuality and their families.

The older-brother effect was constant regardless of whether the men were raised with natural, adopted or stepbrothers. It also didn't matter if they weren't raised with their biological mothers.

Homosexuality Again Linked to Biological Factors [Health Day News]

Nothing pleases us more than seeing gay young people accepted in their schools. We scoffed at our high school's gay-straight alliance (we were still in the closet and struggling to self-identify, cut us some slack); but some schools don't even have them. So to hear California's Murrieta Valley High School senior Chad King crowned prom king is good news for all of us — we thought. King, who's been out since his sophomore year, was awarded the honor at prom alongside queen Taylor Osland, who has both Down syndrome and alopecia — a fact that didn't make us feel all that comfortable.

On one hand, King's winning the crown suggests his fellow students accept him as their peer, regardless of sexual orientation. But voting for him alongside a mentally disabled person connects two dots that shouldn't necessarily be associated. Don't misunderstand: We've got nothing wrong voting for the underdog, and there's no reason why a gay or mentally disabled student shouldn't be crowned king or queen. But the student body's concerted effort to get these two to sit in the prom thrones side-by-side sounds more like a pity vote and suggests an equating of homosexuality and mental retardation. Nonetheless, congratulations to them both.

Homosexual prom king, special needs prom queen shatter norms at Murrieta Valley [NC Times]