"New York Times" Discusses Straight Men's Changing Attitudes About Gay Men

This past weekend the New York Times featured two columns that had interesting things to say about the state of straight men's views on gay men and gay male sexuality. The first was the column "Gay? Whatever, Dude" by Charles Blow which discussed the recent Gallup poll that showed for the first time ever, a majority of Americans — 52% to 43% — find gay relationships to be morally acceptable.

Blow looked deeper into the poll results and noticed that for the first time ever, more men than women say gay relationships are fine by them. Yeah, kind of shocked me, too.

Not unexpectedly, the change is being driven by younger men, but older men are changing pretty dramatically as well and are now actually more tolerant than women of the same age. Go figure.

But actually, the more I thought about it, the less shocking it seemed. When I came out to my parents, both pretty much held the same views about homosexuality, but my dad came around much more quickly than my mom.

Who knows why that was and you certainly can't generalize to the general public from my parents, but Blow did talk to a sociologist and a researcher who speculate on the various reasons for men's changing attitudes towards gays. These include the standard gay-rights mantra, the more of us who are out, the harder we are to discriminate against because folks actually know us, as well as the fact that men are becoming general more tolerant. 

Most interesting to me was the idea that it's also due partly to the fact that so many virulent homophobes have been outed as gay themselves and that being seen as anti-gay now means, as we've long said, "someone doth protest too much." Or as Blow says, "It’s like being anti-gay is becoming the old gay. Not cool."

Whatever the reason, Halle-fricking-leujah.

The second item was Deboarah Solomon's "Questions" column which this week featured writer Christopher Hitchens and included this exchange: 

Christopher Hitchens

What did you mean to suggest by including the detail about your long-ago flings with two men who became part of Margaret Thatcher’s administration?
There are still people who want to criminalize homosexuality one way or another, and I thought it might be useful if more heterosexual men admitted that they are a little bit gay, as is everyone, and that homosexuality is a form of love and not just sex.

Not everyone is “a little bit gay,” as you say. Do you think your basic sexual confusion underlies your political confusions?
No, I wouldn’t call it confusion. I’d call it a punctuated consistency. I argue in the book that my principles were the same throughout.

Kudos to Hitchens for not being ashamed to discuss his past relationships with men and for trying to get those men with somewhat fluid sexualities to feel comfortable enough to discuss them (not to mention pointing out that gay isn't just sex, but love).

Indeed, that ties in nicely with a quote from Professor Ritch Savins-Williams who told Blow that in his research on human sexuality, the fastest growing group of men on the sexuality continuum are those who call themselves "mostly straight." 

I guess that makes me "mostly gay" if we're all going to be exact. And we definitely should be.

But what was with Solomon's comment about Hitchen's being "sexually confused?" It's fine if she doesn't think that everyone is "a little bit gay," but to say Hitchen's doesn't know his own sexuality and is confused because he had relationships with two men seems to discount the fact that tens of millions of people don't identify as either gay or straight and have had relations with the same-sex.

Perhaps someone is letting their own biases show through.