Last night at the University of West Florida, more than sixty students spent two hours listening to Michael Jasek, an associate dean of students, discuss his dissertation, which took him two and a half years to complete, about the moral developments of the gay male. The talk was rife with religious references, including Jasek mentioning his “priest saying it was immoral” to be gay. Then audience member Logan Hartwig, a sophomore criminal justice major, spoke up, telling Jasek: “The process that a gay man goes through for accepting his homosexuality, I found myself going through as a straight man.” Huh! [The Voyager]
the others
You Know How Gay Men Have to Accept Their Sexuality? Straight Men Do, Too
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aalan brickman
it’s true…..
Peter
AAlan….What is true? That everyone is going to Hell; or that Leviticus was written for the Jews of that day, and no one else?
ChrisM
I guess we can’t entirely criticize the kid until we know exactly what he means. But, chances are this kid is trying to “relate” to gays by saying “I questioned my sexuality once, and came to the conclusion that I was retarded for ever having to really think about if I was attracted to men.”
I think the school paper, which put this quote in the middle of their article without any setup, is trying to do the same – relate to the straight kids. The message of equality they’re trying to get across is good, but I think they’re missing the entire point. We want it so that nobody has to struggle with their sexuality. I don’t think they realize that Jasek was urging people to get rid of the stigma that religion associates with LGBTs, not to scrutinize their own sexuality by the same harsh standards as bigots.
ChicagoJimmy
Isn’t that called puberty? Not sure what everyone else experienced at that age, but back then bare skin turned me on. After a time, I realized the dreams and fantasies I was having meant a bit more than just my body being full of hormones, it meant I was really attracted to the other boys. A bit more time and I realized that while I enjoyed other people touching my penis, I wasn’t really into what the girls had to offer. Thus, gay.
I imagine that straight guys go through a similar experience, and I’ve been told such by friends. Suddenly at a certain age, they just can’t keep that hard-on down. Being turned on by the sight of the boys showering after gym class or getting a hand job by a high school classmate doesn’t necessarily mean someone is gay. At some point, they might realize the girls have something interesting going on and they aren’t really into the boys so much.
What’s the big deal with the idea that all men, gay or straight, go through similar experiences at puberty when our bodies are telling us to have sex, have sex, have sex and it takes us a bit to figure out what we’re truly attracted to?
alan brickman
all orientations have their troubles….not just gays….
Michael
I would imagine straight men have to come to grips on having to jump through endless hurdles to get laid and then ending up with one real crappy-ass blowjob.
mk
Maybe the straight guy came from a family unit that didn’t include any other males? Or a really uptight religious family where masturbation and everything else sexual was terrible sin? I could see how that could lead a straight guy to relate to some of the things the gay student says in the article about coming to understand and accept his sexual nature.
LoganH
Hi, this is the young man whom the newspaper quoted. I would just like to clarify that I was misquoted. The statement about myself going through the same process as a straight male was in reference to the acceptance of homosexuality as a natural occurance, rather than something bad or evil, not in reference to the discovery that I am straight.