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 hy do so many of us have trouble finding out what we’re passionate about? I’m not talking about sexual heat or passionate relationships, although that excitement is certainly important. I’m thinking of passion in the broadest sense: an interest in life, in something beyond ourselves. Our society suffers from a sort of low-grade depression. Many of us may not actually be hurting, but we’re pretty disinterested or disconnected. What’s going on, and what can we do about it?
Finding the juice in your life is important if you want to be truly happy. So what gives your life meaning and purpose?
In our consumer society, it’s easy to distract ourselves from concerns that seem too abstract by substituting the pursuit of material things like bigger pecs, the latest car or dancing at the hottest club. That’s fun, but it rarely scratches that deepest itch, the one about whether life is ultimately fulfilling.
People who are parents often find ready-made purpose in life because of the importance human beings place on the rearing of children. The continuation of the species is important, but let’s faces it: biological reproduction is not such a big accomplishment. And when children grow up, parents speak of the empty nest syndrome, and end up facing many of the same challenges as everyone else.
Rather than adding more people to an already-crowded planet, many of us find other ways to make a contribution. Some of us volunteer our time with organizations we value; others choose professions that put our nurturing instincts to work in other ways. Many of us make the world a better place through the arts. Others find that participating in the natural world – gardening, environmental awareness – fulfills our yearning to make things better.
One of the interesting things about finding your purpose is that no one else can find it for you. Maybe your parents or the minister at your childhood church tried to give you answers, and maybe those worked for a while. Ultimately, however, success in life depends on you living your life the way you choose to do live it.
So what can you do?
- Slow Down
Give yourself a break from multi-tasking. Take a deep breath and relax. Life doesn’t become more meaningful if you simply fill it up with more busy-ness. Try doing less, and allow yourself to appreciate completing something you do well.
- Stop Distracting Yourself
Pay attention to what’s going on around you right now. What clues do you find to what makes you happy?
- Act Now
If your life ended tomorrow, what would you want to have accomplished that you haven’t done yet? It’s probably not just spending more time at the office. How would you like to be remembered? How would you like your epitaph to read? What do you want your legacy to be?
- What Makes You Happy?
Too many of us live as if existence was supposed to be deadly serious. Passion happens when we’re feeling playful and exuberant. Start noticing your senses and what they have to teach you.
You’re in touch with your passion when you’re doing something just because you love it – not because you’re especially good at it, or other people tell you that you should do it, or because you make a lot of money when you do it. Fun is the fuel that life runs on. How full is your tank?
By John R. Ballew, M.S.
 oming out as gay or bisexual is a life-long process that is both internal and external.
A person who is internally wired to respond sexually to someone of the same sex is often aware of that fact from an early age – five or six is not uncommon. But negative social attitudes about childhood sexuality in general, and about homosexuality in particular, lead many children to hide or deny their true feelings. They do this externally in relation to others but also internally in terms of how they think about and feel about themselves. So coming out, accepting the truth about yourself, and sharing that truth with others, is both an external and an internal process. And the internal process is, perhaps, the more important of the two.
I was talking recently with a 57-year-old gay man who was raised in a Catholic family. He knew he was attracted to boys from the age of five, but he also knew that his society and religion were telling him his desire was wrong. His religion also taught him that God had made him and that God was perfect. By the time he was thirteen, this man had reached an astonishing level of self-acceptance. He reasoned that if God made him the way he was, desiring and finding pleasure with other boys, and God was perfect, then there was nothing wrong with him. It was those with negative attitudes about homosexuality who did not understand the true nature and purpose of God. Through self-acceptance this man found internal strength to go through junior and senior high school as an openly gay adolescent even before the beginning of the current Gay Rights movement in 1969.
By contrast, another 57-year-old gay man who also experienced himself as gay from an early age continued to believe there was something wrong about the way he was wired. At the age of thirteen he decided that being gay and going through the public shame involved in coming out were not worth it and that he would go straight. He eventually fell in love with and married a woman and had children, suppressing his homosexual desire with a firm belief that God disapproved. But suppressed sexuality does not go away, and at the age of 45 this man found the way to true self-acceptance with the mantra, “God made me gay. God may me this way. God wants me to be happy this way.” Internal coming out led to external coming out. This brought a more integrated sense of self and a stronger feeling of connection to and acceptance by others.
It is often difficult to come to terms with your true self and live your authentic life, but it is important to realize that you are not alone. There is a world full of people just like you, and a strong community of supporters.
Source: Mervin J. Fry, MDiv, PhD.
 recent study by researchers at the National Institute of Health has added to the body of knowledge on the relationship between genes and sexual orientation, according to a recent issue of Human Genetics.
“Although the research was concluded two years ago, the small number of people working on the issue resulted in a delay of two years before the research was published,” lead investigator Dr. Dean Hamer said this week.
The investigation builds on studies that suggest clusters of gays within a family. In 1993, a group of researchers under the direction of Hamer, who was also a researcher on the recent study, examined DNA from gay men and their family members and found that gay men within a family share a segment of DNA on the X chromosome, which men inherit only from their mothers.
“This told us that genes play a role,” said Brian Mustanski, one of the researchers on the genomescan. “But it doesn’t tell us where the genes are or what they do.”
In order to develop a more precise picture of how genes might be involved in sexual orientation, researchers examined the genes of 456 individuals from 146 unrelated families – 137 families with two brothers and nine families with three gay brothers.
Researchers reasoned that brothers are expected to share an average of 50% of their genes, but that genes that influence sexual orientation would be shared more than 50% of the time by gay brothers.
The researchers placed 403 markers across the genome.
This strategy revealed three chromosomal areas that are shared by the gay brothers around 60% of the time. This frequency of shared markers is not a significant link, according to Mustanski but it does rise to the level of suggestive link.
Mustanski said that the idea that these chromosomal regions are related to sexual orientation is very compelling because the areas identified through the scan are known to contain genes involved in sexual orientation. “I think it’s important because it reinforces the theory that sexual orientation is at least partially genetic and that there are many different genes, not just one or two,” Hamer said. “I think it is important knowledge because homophobes often argue that sexual orientation is a choice, which simply isn’t true. It is important to have concrete data showing that it is not simply a choice,” he added.
Research into genetic aspects of homosexuality is controversial. Hamer said that the effect of politics on science can be seen in the fact that there have only been five papers on the subject in ten years.
“In 1994, our lab discovered a gene involved in anxiety, and there have been 850 papers on that,” Hamer said.
The Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG), a Cambridge, Massachusets-based group founded by scientists to educate the public on genetics issues, has issued a position paper on the hunt for the genetic basis of sexual orientation.
CRG said that the focus on what causes individuals to be gay or lesbian arises from homophobia and that reports that genes code for behaviours such as schizophrenia, bipolar manic depression, and alcoholism have all been contested and then withdrawn.
CRG warns that the scientific argument for a biological basis for sexual orientation remains weak and that the political argument that it will bolster gay pride or counter bigotry runs counter to experience.
Researchers say that the next step in the search for the genetic basis for sexual orientation is to replicate the genome-wide scan with another group of families.
Mustanski said that research into genes related to sexual orientation has many important scientific implications.
“It can teach us about neural development, about the role hormones play in brain development and it may teach us some interesting lessons about evolution,” Mustanski said.
Source: Eartha Melzer – National News, May 13, 2005
 ow do we develop our sexual orientation? Very little can be said for sure, but this much psychologist Michael Bailey, Ph.D., can say: A lot of sexual development doesn’t depend on modeling yourself on your parents.
In a study he conducted – the largest ever – of homosexual fathers and their adult sons, he found that few offspring grow up to be gay. The overwhelming majority are heterosexual. And whatever the sexual orientation of the sons, it bears no relationship at all to the amount of time they spend with their fathers.
Among 55 fathers who were gay or bisexual there were 82 sons at least 17 years old. Whether sexual orientation was measured by behavior, fantasy, or identity, 9% of the sons were gay. “It’s no higher than you would expect based on genetic studies, since fathers and sons are related genetically,” says Bailey, an associate professor at Northwestern University, USA. Gay sons lived with their fathers for an average of 6.4 years, versus 11.2 years for the heterosexual sons.
For Bailey, the study provides supporting evidence that homosexuality is not environmentally transmitted. “It probably starts much earlier,” he says.
Source: Psychology Today
hen I was about six years old, I was on vacation with my father at Lake Don Pedro, a little man-made lake east of Modesto, California, USA. I asked him what his rainbow necklace was for. I can remember his face exactly; he was shocked and nervous. He looked at me and said, “Well, it just means that I have boyfriends instead of girlfriends.” I was confused, as I should be, and just kind of blew it off as something I would understand later.
When I got home my mom asked me how the trip was and I looked at her and said, “Did you know that daddy has boyfriends?” My mom was shocked and just sat there with a blank look on her face.
When I was a kid I loved to ask questions as I had to understand everything. So after a few minutes I asked my mom how I was born if daddy didn’t have girlfriends. I don’t remember if she answered me but I know that she later told me the story of how they met.
My mother was a manager at [a family restaurant] Jack-in-the-Box in Lafayette. On my fathers first day at work, they were extremely busy. My dad was running orders and kept telling my mom that he really needed this scrambled egg breakfast. So after asking one too many times, my mother finally lost her cool and gave him the scrambled egg breakfast… she threw it at him. She ran off in tears and he followed to comfort her. And that’s the story of how they met.
Some of my first memories are in that Jack-in-the-Box dining room. They would set me in a playpen in the dining room where they could watch me and I think that’s why we all love food so much.
I moved to Virginia shortly after that because my step-dad enlisted in the Navy and was stationed there. I didn’t really see my dad much while I was in Virginia. He flew me out to California one summer to stay with him. I was confused about this ‘gay’ thing. I was only seven but I wanted to understand why my dad wasn’t in love with my mom. No matter how many times my mom explained it I just couldn’t get it.
My dad being gay never really hurt me in any way; it just gave me headaches from thinking too hard. When my dad left to dance on a cruise ship I was back in California living with my mom and her husband. Once he came home I began to see him more and finally understood it all. When I was 11, I met a guy named John who my dad said was his boyfriend. That is when everything came together. I don’t know why but after that I didn’t question it anymore. John and my dad moved into a house together in Dublin and I accepted him as my dad’s boyfriend. When I was 12, I moved in with them and lived in a reality that I never thought I would.
Some of the people I met were very intolerant to my father because of his sexuality but most people were accepting. My family supported him and even included John at family functions. I was always commended for transitioning so easily in my move. It took me a while but I started to see John as a family member, and that my father was happy. That’s all I cared about. I was never ashamed of my dad and wasn’t afraid to tell anyone about his lifestyle. My friends accepted my dad and no one really made it hard on me, except for those people who made fun of everyone. I always stand up for gay people. I went with my dad to his musical rehearsals and met many gay people. From what I have seen they are the nicest people I’ve ever met and have become almost like my family.
My dad has taught me to be myself, and to stick up for everyone. He was never ashamed of his sexuality and has treated me very well. It’s always nice to be able to look at flowers and shop with my dad. (How many girls can say they have that kind of quality time with their fathers?) Once I was in high school I joined the Dublin High Gay/Straight Alliance to support everyone who had an alternative lifestyle. This past year I became the President of GSA and even led a Day of Silence in honor of people who have to be silent about their sexuality each day.
Basically, growing up with a gay dad has been a very positive experience for me. I was pushed to open my mind to many new things, and I think the free-thinking open mind I developed will end up being one of my best attributes. Being involved in community theatre has given me the chance to develop an extended family that will always be with me. My father never judged me for things I did; he was never afraid to help me with any problem. I think he has taught me a lot and I love the fact that he’s gay and OK with it. The best thing is that my dad can do things no other father will ever do. He can do my make-up and even taught me to walk in heels!
Source: LambdaGroup News.
s the debate over same-sex marriage engulfs the world, parents should be prepared for children’s questions. Parenting columnist, Dana Williams, shares age-appropriate suggestions for talking to kids about the issue.
The hit TV sitcom Will & Grace was first to spark the questions in my house.
“Why does that man want a boyfriend,” asked my son once during an episode of the show. That was a few years ago and I struggled to answer his question honestly without overloading him with information he wasn’t equipped to understand.
“Sometimes men love men and women love women”, I told him. That answer was enough at the time, enough to satisfy his curiosity and enough information, I felt, for a five-year-old to process.
Two years later, the questions are more detailed and the issues are more visible. Same-sex marriage is now front-and-centre on TV newscasts, radio Talk Shows, in everyday conversation, and many places of worship.
Like sponges, children soak up each comment and look to adults to make sense of it all. For parents who don’t want their children soaking up intolerance, being prepared to answer children’s questions or counter bigotry when it occurs is the key.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of same-sex marriage or your religious beliefs, it is both possible and important to answer children’s questions with honesty and with intolerance.
Continued next column
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Continued from previous column
Here are some age-appropriate suggestions for talking to your kids.
For children aged 3–5
- Keep it simple
“You’re not going to swamp a five-year-old with a bunch of details,” says Jennifer Jacobson, a marriage and family therapist. “The key is to keep it basic and concrete.” Using your own family to describe others is one way to describe same-sex relationships to young children. For example, if a child asks about a friend with two fathers, the parent might say, “Frank and Phillip love each other the way Mommy and Daddy love each other.”
- Focus on love and relationships
When young children ask questions about same-sex relationships, they are not asking about sex. Any discussion with a young child on this issue is a discussion about love and relationships. It’s important to stress to kids that people love each other in different ways.
- Stay on the child’s level
The National Mental Health Association recommends concise answers for young children’s questions. For example, after seeing two women neighbors holding their new baby, your three-year-old might ask, “Who is the mommy and who is the daddy?” You may simply explain that both are mommies, perhaps adding that two mommies are a family and can make a home for a baby.
For children aged 6–12
- Use correct terms
It’s important to bring the terms Gay and Lesbian out of the closet. Negative slurs about gay men and lesbians can be heard on any school playground. When parents are open about these terms in the home, children are less likely to use them in a negative manner.
- Discuss different viewpoints
With older children it’s important to bring up different opinions about the issue of same-sex marriage. You may want to stress that some churches or religions really do not believe this is an OK thing to do. Children should know that those who believe that way have every right to express their beliefs, just as those who disagree have a right to express theirs.
- Teach respect
No matter what your religious background, it’s important to teach children that we all have a responsibility to treat others with love and respect. It is not our place to tell anyone that who they love is wrong.
For Teenagers
- Be honest
When a child is old enough to understand heterosexual sex, he/she is old enough to understand homosexuality. Parents should never ignore a child’s questions and if uncomfortable answering them, should look to books or films for guidance or suggestions.
- Foster ongoing dialogue
Young people are very comfortable talking about gay and lesbian issues. Regardless of what adults think, the fact is that gay and lesbian people are woven into the very fabric of our lives and communities. They are a group of people striving to have full civil rights. Parents can use news segments and other programs addressing the issue to launch a dialogue with their children.
- Lead by example
It’s important for parents to take a stand against intolerance and anti-gay bigotry. No matter what parents say, kinds learn by what the parents do. If Uncle Fred comes over and uses gay-bashing language and nobody says anything, kids put up on that and believe the gay bashing is OK. Parents should view such incidents as teachable moments and always take a stand against homophobia.
study into bullying in British schools has found that boys as young as nine frequently use anti-gay bullying “to establish their masculinity.”
The research was done by Dr. Emma Renold of Cardiff University, in Wales. She found that young boys often use the words gay and girl as insults to other boys.
Her report calls for new efforts to combat homophobia and bullying at an earlier age than previously thought necessary.
The study was released at a weekend LGBT conference sponsored by Stonewall Cymru, the Welsh LGBT Rights groups. “These are key findings because it is very much time to make the link between gender and sexuality in bullying in the schools,” said Stonewall Cymru director, Dr. Alison Parkin.
“What Emma is saying is that gender and sexuality are connected within the school environment and it seems there are still very narrow ways of being a boy and being a girl.”
The study shows a link “…beyond the lesbian and gay sexuality issue to gender and sexuality for all children. Any intervention that is done in schools must begin in the early primary years.” Parkin said.
Source: 365Gay.com
 urfing the Net for gay porn? Spending half your day in Chat Rooms? You could be a Cyber-sex addict.
A California sexologist says most of us surf for sex, but about 6.5% of male Internet users are compulsive about it, so much so that Dr. Al Cooper of the San Jose Marital and Sexuality Center says it is affecting their lives.
These are the people who live out their fantasies online to the exclusion of real relationships.
Cooper, who has conducted a series of surveys probing the growing world of Internet sex conducted this study for MSNBC. “We know a lot of people are using the Internet for sexual activity. We need to figure out how people get in trouble with it,” said Cooper.
He examined a random sample of some 7,000 male respondents to an online survey and farther narrowed the group down to 384 who indicated they had problems with online sexual activity.
“These respondents reported that they engaged in cyber-sex for an average of about 5.7 hours per week, or twice as much time as the rest of the sample. Spending more hours trolling the Internet’s porn sites and sex Chat Rooms was only one signifier of online sexual compulsion,” Cooper said.
Most of those who reported cyber-sex addiction said they went online to relieve stress, rather than for entertainment or sex information.
“People do it again and again and again, instead of running or talking to their partner,” Cooper said. “There are alternate ways of relieving stress that are probably healthier.”
They also said they spent time engaging in cyber-sexual activities that they would never attempt in real life.
Cooper said his next survey, due out in several months, will take a broader look at cyber-sex compulsion and would include data from women – statistically believed to have a lower rate of cyber-addiction than men. Recent statistics show that between December 1999 and February 2001, the number of individual visitors to sexual sites grew by more than 27% to nearly 28 million from 22 million. Over the same period, retail sites showed growth at less than half that rate.
Source: 365 Gay.com
hen they applied for a grant to study shaving, there were many who raised their eyebrows at public money being spent on such seemingly unimportant research. But the scientists at England’s Bristol University got the money, and the results of their study may make you look at your Track 111 in a whole new way.
In short, shave daily and you’ll live longer. Think of it as shaving on years to your life.
The findings, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, show that men who don’t shave every day enjoy less sex and are 70% more likely to suffer a stroke than daily shavers.
The researchers examined the link between shaving, coronary heart disease and stroke in 2,438 middle-aged Welsh men. Over the course of the 20-year study, 45% of the men who shaved less than daily died compared with 31% who shaved at least once a day. The findings also show that men who don’t shave every day are less likely to have a spouse or domestic partner and are more likely to be blue-collar workers. They also have fewer orgasms and tend to be shorter and to suffer from a type of chest pain called angina. “The association between infrequent shaving and death is probably due to underlying smoking and social factors, but a small hormonal effect may also exist,” said Professor Shah Ebrahim in the Department of Social Medicine. He said the association with stroke did not fall away after discounting lifestyle factors and remained unexplained.
After other factors tied to health were accounted for, such as testosterone levels, social factors and whether or not men had heart disease when the study began, the researchers found that men who shaved less than one a day were 24% more likely to die from any cause, 30% more likely to die of heart disease, and 16% more likely to have a coronary heart disease event such as a heart attack compared to men who shaved daily.
Ebrahim says the link between circulating sex hormones and beard growth was first established when a man on a remote island in the Hebrides noticed that his beard grew vigorously when he was about to join his girlfriend on the Scottish mainland. He said the low frequency of orgasm in men who did not shave regularly might be because they had low levels of testosterone or might simply reflect the fact that they were unpartnered and had less opportunity for sex.
Source: 365Gay.com
alling it a unique opportunity for scientists and public health specialists to review that latest advances in combating AIDS, a major international conference on the pandemic will be held in Rio de Janeiro, organizers have announced.
The Third International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment will take place from July 24–27, bringing together 6,000 health professions from 150 countries.
“The conference will open space for a dynamic forum where scientists and public health specialists and community leaders can explore how the latest scientific knowledge can be applied to the reality of developing countries,” said Dr. Helen Gayle, president of the International AIDS Society.
Gayle said Brazil was chosen in recognition for the country’s aggressive efforts to halt the spread of the virus, along with its programs to provide free medication to those infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
In 1990, the World Bank predicted Brazil would have 1.2 million people infected with HIV, but because of programs to distribute free condoms, as well as openly and frankly addressing the issue, the number of HIV positive people in the country is about half the World Bank’s forecast.
“Over the last five years there have been dramatic changes in the global response to AIDS and the access to medicines for people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries has become a global imperative,” said Mauro Schechter, chief of AIDS research at Rio de Janeiro’s Federal University.
Organizers said scientists at the conference would present 2,060 papers on the latest developments in fighting the disease drawn from research in 114 different countries. While organizers concede they didn’t expect any major breakthroughs to be announced at the conference they said the incremental advances were encouraging.
“Even if all the most promising therapies at the moment live up to their promise it would take at least ten years to develop a vaccine and nobody expects all of them to live up to their promise,” said Gayle. The conference is a biannual event, with the two earlier versions held in Paris and Buenos Aires.
Source: Associated Press
n African proverb states, “Before you get married, keep both eyes open; after you marry, close one eye.”
Before you get involved and make a commitment to someone, don’t let lust, desperation, immaturity, ignorance, pressure from others, or a low self-esteem make you blind to warning signs. Keep your eyes open and don’t fool yourself that you can change someone or that what you see as faults isn’t really that important. Once you decide to commit to someone, over time their faults, vulnerabilities, pet peeves, and differences will become more obvious. If you love your mate and want the relationship to grow and evolve, you’ve got to learn how to close one eye and not let every little thing bother you. You and your mate have many different expectations, emotional needs, values, dreams, weaknesses, and strengths.
You are two unique individuals who have decided to share a life together. Neither one of you is perfect; but are you perfect for each other? Do you bring out the best in each other? Do you compliment and compromise with each other, or do you compete, compare, and control? What do you bring to the relationship? Do you bring past relationships, past hurts, past mistrust, past pain? You can’t take someone to the altar to alter him or her. You can’t make someone love you or make someone stay. If you develop self-esteem, spiritual discernment and a life, you won’t find yourself making someone else responsible for your happiness or responsible for your pain. Manipulation, control, jealousy, neediness, and selfishness are not the ingredients of a thriving, healthy, loving and lasting relationship. Seeking status, sex, wealth, and security are the wrong reasons to be in a relationship.
What keeps a relationship strong? Open communication, intimacy, trust, a sense of humor, sharing household tasks, plus regular getaway time without business or children. Daily exchanges (i.e., a meal, shared activity, a hug, a call, a touch, a note). Leave a nice message on their voicemail or send a nice e-mail. Sharing common goals and interests also creates a closer bonding. Growth is important too. Grow together, not away from each other; give each other space to grow without feeling insecure. Allow your mate to have outside interests. You can’t always be together. Give each other a sense of belonging and assurance of. Don’t try to control one another. Learn each other’s family situation. Respect his or her parents regardless. Don’t put pressure on each other for material goods.
Remember, for ‘richer or poorer’. If these qualities are missing, the relationship will erode as resentment, withdrawal, abuse, neglect, dishonesty and pain replace the passion.
“Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never raise higher than your thinking.”
 hiladelphia scientists collected samples of underarm sweat from 24 donors of ‘varied gender and sexual orientation’ and then asked 82 heterosexual and homosexual men and women to test these for any potential appealing qualities.
According to the researchers quoted in the Guardian Unlimited, homosexual men and women showed preferences that were not those of heterosexual people of either sex.
Gay men preferred the scent of gay men and heterosexual women, they said. But the scent of gay men was the least preferred by heterosexual men and women and by lesbian women.
“Our findings support the contention that gender preference has a biological component that is reflected in both the production of different body odours and in the perception of and response to body odours,” says Charles Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Centre.
A separate study by Swedish scientists did a more substantial research into what it is about male sweat that might trigger response in the brains of gay men and heterosexual women.
According to them, the hypothalamus region of the brain became activated when men detected an oestrogen steroid known as EST, and women’s brains lit up when they got a whiff of a testosterone derivative known to biochemists as AND.
They used brain imaging equipment to test the responses of homosexual men, and heterosexual men and women, to EST, AND, and other scents such as lavender. AND set the hypothalamus alight in homosexual men and heterosexual women. EST worked for heterosexual men alone.
So the research shows that the human brain responds differently to these potential pheromones (agencies of attraction in the animal world) and that there could be a link between sexual orientation and brain function.
Source: The Queer Collective
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