Page 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 - Next

AE: [laughing] It's OK. I was just asking, in your own experience, whether you had known men that were bisexual.
JB: Oh, right, yeah. I don't like to label. I think of myself as a man. I am a man, who, if you have to put me in a category, I am a man who likes men, I would be a gay man.

I do believe that there are people who can like men and women, because, although I wouldn't choose to sleep with a woman, I still find women attractive. And when I say ‘choose to sleep with a woman', it's not a choice that I have made [to be gay], it's just not in me to sleep with women. I wasn't created this way to sleep with women.

And with men who like both men and women, that's fine, but there's a lot of confusion goes on in that instance, because men sometimes do use bisexuality as an excuse not to admit to their families, their friends, and publicly that they really are gay. And what that does in the long run--you have a lot of men who marry women, have children, but are living a secret gay life.

AE: Brokeback Mountain.
JB: Brokeback Mountain, classic example of it. That's why I say that I'd like to think that we are progressing, but to me, the US seems to be going backwards in that aspect as opposed to forwards.

The whole thing about gay marriage. I particularly don't like to associate a civil partnership, which is what I call it, with a marriage. Because--and I have arguments with people in the gay community about this a lot--why do we want a word that is synonymous with a religious ideal [belonging to] a group of people that hates us? Why do we want to be part of that? Why do we want to have that word attached to us, why can't we create our own word?

And you know what else has happened, the conservatives have turned it into a political battle, so every time they want something done, they just say “Oh, gay people will be married, and marriage is a sacred thing”. Well then--excuse my French-- let's f*** it, let's just get rid of the word. Let us use ‘partnerships', it's still the same thing. The thing that we need the benefit from is--

AE: The legal rights.
JB: The legal side of it. And also the fact that, for people who don't want to accept homosexuality, it shoves it down their throat, to coin a phrase--sorry, I'm on my soapbox here-- it forces them to accept us, and to respect us.

AE: Yup. Well I wanted to ask you about that, because I think it's quite an interesting debate, the whole question of civil unions versus marriage. There is partly the religious aspect. But also it seems that some gay people are quite keen on the idea of having a different phrase, and in a sense a different system for gay partnerships. Because they see them as having something that's inherently slightly different to a heterosexual relationship. I was wondering what...
JB: Well it is, I mean it is different. We are homosexual and they are heterosexual. It is completely different.  

AE: Yeah. But the essential relationship, don't you think, is... I don't know, I have mixed feelings...
JB: Well, the essential relationship is the same.

AE: In terms of what you feel and what you go through when you're in love with someone, and...
JB: Well absolutely, it is exactly the same as what [heterosexuals] go through. Love is love, no matter who you fall in love with, love is love, it can be painful, it can be wonderful.

The fact that you have people who are married men and women who are saying that gay men are promiscuous--well, you know what, there are a lot of straight people who are promiscuous. There are a lot of straight people who have affairs and don't tell their wives or husbands. As do gay men and women.

There are gay men and women who have committed relationships, who [only] have sex with their partners, and there are straight people who do that. There are gay people who swing, there are straight people who swing. So, [in that sense] we are the same. And for people to try and say that gay people are different [in a negative way]--we're not. We're the same.

Page 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 - Next