the Guppie Life

June is certainly the gayest month yet in 2008!

• Last weekend was D.C. Capital Pride. I didn’t go (and have never been) but I heard it was a fun weekend.
• Gay people got married in California this week, some of them for the second time. (Congratulations to Sam and Bronson! Do those two travel with their own personal lighting crew or what?)
• The L.A. Times wrote about research on gay brains, and it caused quite a stir.
  

  The area of the brain that processes emotions also looked much the same in gay men and straight women — and both groups have higher rates of depressive disorders than heterosexual men, researchers said.

  …

  Vilain said his hunch was that the entire brain was not feminized because “gay men have a number of masculine traits that are not present in women.” For example, he said, men regardless of sexual orientation tend to be interested in casual sex and are stimulated by sexually suggestive images.

  So, gay men sleep around, but then we feel really bad about it afterward? … Actually that sounds about right.

• More discussion of gay brains at the Broken Cupid blog.
• Slate magazine took the gay brains idea a step further. If sexual orientation is caused by chemistry, people are going to want to change that chemistry. Do parents have a right to give their children vaccinations against being gay?
  

  If the idea of chemically suppressing homosexuality in the womb horrifies you, I have bad news: You won’t be in the room when it happens. Parents control medical decisions, and surveys indicate that the vast majority of them would be upset to learn that their child was gay. Already, millions are screening embryos and fetuses to eliminate those of the “wrong” sex. Do you think they won’t screen for the “wrong” sexual orientation, too?

  Liberals are slow to see what’s coming. They’re still fighting the culture war. The Toronto Star, like other papers, finds a neuroscientist who thinks the new study “should erode the moral judgments often made against homosexual preferences and rebut any argument that it is a mere a lifestyle choice.” Well, yes. But then what? The reduction of homosexuality to neurobiology doesn’t mean your sexual orientation can’t be controlled. It just means the person controlling it won’t be you.

• Gallup released data from a new poll that says Americans are evenly split amongst those who think gay sex is morally acceptable and those who are in denial about how utterly hot it is.
  
  
• Chris Ford of The Generation Y Conservative blog, a fellow member of the Brazen Careerist Network, shared his very special thoughts on gay marriage. It caused quite the controversy. Over 75 comments so far! My advice to people who oppose gay marriage: Don’t get one.

The New York Times magazine wrote an article about gay marriage amongst the twenty-something set.

One thing I’ve noticed in my few years as a gay boy is that millennial gays generally seem to want to get married some day, and they’re confident that it’ll be legal in their lifetimes. They want to have kids, a house in the suburbs, and a Golden Retriever. Maybe a Cocker Spaniel.

Gay boomers have their own established culture. In my experience, they don’t want a wedding, and they don’t want to register at Crate & Barrel. Kids aren’t even a consideration (unless from a prior hetero relationship), and oftentimes partnered gay boomers maintain separate residences.

(This is all highly subjective conjecture, based on the few older couples I know personally and what I read in the gay blogosphere. Please feel free to send counter-examples.)

A few older gay guys I know have derided me for wanting a monogamous marriage to a man. They say only, “You’re young and idealistic. You’ll understand when you’re older.” I think the implication is that these men have some sort of sexual arrangement with third parties.

That kind of argument doesn’t fly with me. I might be young, but I know what I want. After coming out, it didn’t even occur to me that I wouldn’t settle down and get married. I can relate to the desire for stability and legal validation expressed by the men from the NYT article.

After all, gay guys of my generation were raised on headstrong Disney heroines who ended up happily ever after with their princes. Why shouldn’t we expect the same for our own lives? Ariel mournfully singing about not fitting in and wanting something more… that was me, only at eight years old I hadn’t quite realized it yet.

Even so, I’m generally freaked by the idea of marriage, gay or straight, before the age of 30. The kids in the NYT article look like Pod People (or Log Cabin Republicans, whichever is worse). They’re too saccharine, and the photos accompanying the article are deliberately evocative of Leave It to Beaver. They look like they’re trying too hard to impress.

Maybe I’m cynical because I’m a child of divorce. Most of my friends growing up had divorced parents. Every member of my family in my parents’ generation has been divorced at least once, and we even have a family pre-nup.

I might be young and idealistic about gay monogamous marriage… but I am so getting a pre-nup.

A recent post by Mike from Broken Cupid reminded me about the very awesome OK Cupid Dating Persona Test.

I first took the OK Cupid test back in sophomore year of college, so in terms of the internet, this test has been around forever. If you haven’t taken it before, I highly recommend it. The test only takes about 5 minutes and is completely free. You don’t even need to give away your email address. And it’s pretty funny.

I should mention that the test was not designed specifically for gay people, but it has a special place in my heart for being one of the first online dating tests to ask (rather than assume) sexual orientation. It also gets props for automatically changing the pronouns in your results, but unfortunately the accompanying clip art depicts only heterosexual couples.

A few minutes ago I took the test for the first time in years. My results:

All these years, and I’m still the Slow Dancer. I know it doesn’t sound all that bad, but they might as well have named this personality type “Nice Guys Finish Last.” Also did you catch the reference to being stuck raising unwanted kids? Yeah, somehow I don’t think that’s going to be a big concern in my social circle.

I really wanted to score as Brutus the Uterus. Oh well, maybe next year.

Take the test for yourself, and let me know how you did in the comments section. I’m really hoping to meet a Genghis Khunt.

For an internet professional, I’m not really into a lot of the bells and whistles available on ‘teh interwebz.’

In fact until a few weeks ago, I had never subscribed to a podcast. I just didn’t think I could ever get into it. Too much work for too little payoff.

But that all changed a few months ago when a kinky friend recommended the Savage LoveCast. These days I am positively obsessed.

The podcast is call-in advice show about sex, kink, and relationships. It’s hosted by gay sex advice columnist Dan Savage. One of the things I love about the podcast is that gay callers are highly disproportionately represented. Holla!

Dan’s attitude can be abrasive, and he says some things that are unpopular with Disney-style romantics. For example, Dan is sometimes okay with a person having sexual needs met outside of that person’s relationship, and he’s blatantly disenchanted with mainstream religion. If I had to summarize his attitude with an analogy, I would say that Dan Savage is to sex advice what Penelope Trunk is to career advice.

(There’s also a regular column on the website in case the podcast doesn’t whet your appetite.)

So sign up, subscribe, tune in, whatever, and then let me know what you think.

And it goes without saying, Savage Love is NOT safe for work (unless you have a very chill boss).