A really interesting post from Joe Kort, over at Straight Guise…

Many religious homes are very judgmental about homosexuality. Ex-gays go through exaggerated attempts to repress, control and avoid their sexuality—in a way that parallels the dynamics of sexual anorexia.  Ex-gays have come to see me talk about believing their homosexual urges were sick and wrong. They believe their homosexuality is a sexual addiction and try to use Patrick Carnes’s model to set boundaries around their “sexual acting out” behavior. They speak of hating themselves for having these homoerotic urges and would never consider acting them out. Instead, they work hard at repressing them. Preoccupied with any feelings toward the same gender, they’re extremely judgmental toward those who do live out their homosexual orientation, sexually and romantically. They tell me they don’t believe me when as I say I’m happy in my life as a gay man.

Ex-gays go to extremes to avoid sexual contact with the same gender, even if it means behaving in hateful ways—such as trying to pass legislation against gays. I strongly believe that those in the forefront of the ex-gay movement suffer from sexual anorexia and self-hatred about homosexuality, which was taught to them as children. So many come from families, cultures, and communities that disdain homosexuality, and have incorporated this to such an extreme that they can never fully actualize themselves as the gays and lesbians they were meant to be and truly are. Along with their true sexual orientation, they have shut down their capacity to be loving and accepting, particular toward other gays and lesbians.

Joe’s site deals with a topic I’ve often thought about…why essentially heterosexual guys have sex with other guys.  Joe takes pains at the top of his blog to assure us he’s not doing "reparative therapy"…

This site is about men who have sex with men (MSM) who question their sexual orientation. This is not intended for reparative therapy, religion or pornography. This site is about the many reasons men engage in sexual contact with other men that are not about homosexuality. It will educate readers on the differences between sexual identity, sexual behavior and sexual fantasy.

I say this topic is of interest to me, as a gay man, because I’ve often found myself, irritatingly, on the receiving end of a straight guy’s attentions.  In my college years, it occasionally came from other straight friends.  Often after they’d just broken up or had a fight with their girlfriends.  I always tried to handle those as tactfully as I could, and I’m still friends with some of them all these years later, but it’s demeaning.  And especially so when I have to live in a society that treats gay people as second class citizens. Sure buddy…you can have a little fling with me…the day I can wear a wedding ring like yours… 

You hear a lot of joking among gay folks about picking up not-so-straight straight guys.  In Memphis a couple years ago I was told by a guy working at a gay bookstore, that the community there in Memphis was mostly married men, who had sex with guys on the side.  And I was hearing from some friends who’d been on an ocean cruse that the sexual pickings on a gay cruse are vastly more limited compared to that on a regular, mostly heterosexual one.  It’s, I’m happy to hear, easier to find a willing straight guy on a mostly straight cruse then a guy on a gay cruse who would cheat on his boyfriend.  I’m sure a lot of deeply closeted gay men do that sort of thing.  But the fact is that there are essentially heterosexual men who do it too and I’ve never thought that was healthy.  I’m finding that Joe’s blog is shining a helpful light into that kind of behavior on the part of straight men.  It’s certainly reinforcing my belief that it isn’t healthy.