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By Dr. Jim Malcolm, Psychologist
 f you are coming to GAMMA, it usually means one of two things. Either you are confused about your sexuality, or you are confused about what to do about your sexuality.
You may have had sex with a man recently for the first time in many years, or perhaps for the first time ever. You may have been having sex with other guys for years but recently have begun to feel somehow not OK, or dissatisfied about what you have been doing. Or maybe you have been spending a lot more time thinking about having sex with men, spending time on the Internet having cyber-sex with other guys and getting more and more confused about who you are.
GAMMA attracts lots of guys who are confused. The issue of sexual identity is confusing. How do you really know what you are? For many guys, both gay and straight, this isn’t an issue. Many just know. Other guys spend a lot of time – sometimes many years – agonising over identity issues, trying to figure it out. “Am I really gay? Am I just bisexual? Am I really straight but just like having sex with guys sometimes?”
For married guys who have sex with men, any of these answers might be true. It seems that some married guys who have sex with men are fundamentally homosexual, some are fundamentally bisexual, and some are straight.
I have spent a long time trying to figure this out, trying to find answers for myself as well as for other guys. So what does it mean that you can be having sex with men, but be gay, bi, or straight? What’s the difference? What is it that makes you one or the other?
After talking to lots of guys over many years, my conclusion is that we have trouble working this out because we confuse three separate things about sexuality. The three things are:
- What we do (our behavior)
- What we call ourselves (our identity)
- What we really are (our orientation)
My conversations with men who have sex with men has taught me that sexual behaviour and what we call ourselves (our identity) often has little to do with what we really are.
Firstly, let’s talk about what we do (or behavior).
Men, being men, can often have sex just because they want to have sex, and sometimes they don’t care much who it is (or even what gender) they have sex with. That is, straight men have sex with other guys just because they are horny and they want to have sex. And just to confuse things even more, guys who are very clear about the fact that they are gay sometimes have sex with women because they like to. So who we have sex with often doesn’t tell us a lot about who we really are.
What about what we call ourselves?
Trying to work out what we really are from what we call ourselves can also just muddy things up sometimes. Lots of guys call themselves bisexual for a while before they start calling themselves gay. In the course of my life, I first identified as a heterosexual and then as a bisexual, before becoming comfortable about calling myself gay.
Identifying as gay or homosexual can be a very difficult thing for many men to do. These sexual identities for many of us have lots of associations that we don’t feel comfortable with.
So whether we are gay, bi, straight, or something else is not about what we do and it’s often not about what we call ourselves. So what is it about?
One of the ways I went about trying to find this out was to talk to lots of married men who have sex with men and ask them how they defined themselves – so I talked to men who defined themselves as gay, as bisexual, and as heterosexual – three very different groups of men. I then asked men in each of these groups what the differences were in their sexual feelings for men and women.
Here is a typical response from each of these three groups:
Heterosexual:
“Sex with men is just so easy, no foreplay. Just get off and you are gone. I don’t have the time or money for female prostitutes”.
Bisexual:
“Attraction towards men is more physical, attraction towards women is more emotional”.
Homosexual:
“My sexual feelings for men are more intense… when I am with a man, my feelings are more exciting, more in tune with my inner self”.
When I had a close look at some of the characteristics of these three groups of men, there seemed to be some clear differences between them.
It seemed that the men who defined themselves as heterosexual were pretty much just focused on having sex. There was little, if any emotion attached to their sexual activities with men. These guys often just fell into having sex with guys – it wasn’t planned – they liked it the first time it happened; they were happy if it happened again but they didn’t worry too much about whether it happened or not. It was just sex. Many of these guys did not have sex with other guys when they were growing up and their first sex with men was often, but not always, as an adult.
The guys who defined themselves as bisexual tended to say they liked to have sex with guys and often hunted for it. They talked a lot about finding men’s bodies (or sometimes a particular part of men’s bodies) physically attractive. Many of these guys said that they first started having sex with other guys when they were growing up. But they also said very clearly that they could not fall in love with a man – their emotional attachment was to women.
The men who said they were homosexual were much more likely to talk about being in love with a man, or being very emotionally attracted to men. They also were physically attracted to men and sex was important, but it was the emotional issues that were much more important. Some of these men had sex with other guys when they were younger, but many did not.
I also found that these men differed in terms of the numbers of male and female sexual partners they had had in their life and the average ages they said they first felt sexually attracted to men and women. Not surprisingly, the heterosexual guys tended to have sex with women at younger ages and had more female partners that the guys who defined themselves as gay. Most of the guys who defined themselves as gay had had only one female partner. The bisexual guys tended to be in the middle – they tended to have sex with both males and females when they were fairly young and although they tended to have more male partners than female partners, they nonetheless tended to have more than one female partner.
One other thing was important in distinguishing these groups. The men who defined themselves as gay were almost always aware of being attracted to other males long before they acted upon these desires. Most of the men in the other two groups did not report long term same-sex desires prior to having same-sex experiences.
So how do know what you are?
The first step is to stop thinking that whether you are gay, straight, or bisexual is about who you have sex with. It’s not. It’s about who you can fall in love with – who you feel at home with – who you feel fulfilled by. The trouble with this way of looking at sexuality is that it still requires us to look inside ourselves and discover our feelings.
And discovering our feelings can be difficult if we think there is something wrong with our feelings.
So the second step is recognize that there is a lot of evidence to support the idea that being attracted to one gender or the other is built-in to us. That is it is a biological given. This statement is not without controversy and some don’t accept it. However, as a psychologist, it is the only perspective that makes sense to me and also seems to fit most of the evidence that we currently have available. So if you have same-gender attraction, this is not a question of morals but a question of biology.
The trouble is that we are given lots of messages both as we were growing up and now, that having same-gender attraction is somehow not OK. These persistent messages can be very difficult to manage and over time, many of us tend to take them on board and believe them; that is, we develop a long term feeling that there is something wrong with us. For many of us, it was the attempt to deal with this something wrong that lay behind our decision to marry.
So discovering our real feelings later in life can be a difficult and sometimes protracted process – men at GAMMA speak of a journey – that it can sometimes take a long time to work out it, and working it out seems to be easier when we start to open up to other people who understand our feelings and don’t judge us.
If we have spent most of our life thinking that we are an ugly duckling, discovering the swan inside us can take some time – but it’s ultimately pretty liberating. Some guys that I talk to find this ugly duckling analogy a helpful one to start reflecting about the way they have been thinking about themselves. If you aren’t familiar with the fairy tale I would strongly suggest you get hold of a copy of it and read it. Just try putting ugly duckling into your favorite search engine on the Internet and you will soon come up with a version of the story.
Does it really matter that we try to find out what we really are? I think it does – and I think it matters very much. A few years ago, I was asked to go and talk to a group of wives of bisexual men. At the time, I was still regularly facilitating the GAMMA group. I was pretty aware of the suffering of men who came to the group in trying to figure out who they were and what to do about – but I knew that presenting that to the wives would not be an easy thing to do.
I was forced to reflect on what GAMMA was really all about and I came up with a model that reflected what we did at GAMMA meetings so that I could explain this to a group of wives. I realised that GAMMA was about four things, and that these four things were all stages on the road or part of the journey. The four stages, or the four goals of GAMMA, are:
Discovery: Discovering who we are
Acceptance: Accepting who we are
Authenticity: Being who we are
Integrity: Taking responsibility for who we are
So who we are is important. We have to discover who we are to begin to make sense of our lives and accept ourselves. Feeling good about ourselves is essential if we are going to be authentic in our lives. We all have a choice to be ourselves or to pretend to be something we are not. Each of these choices has consequences but fundamentally we decide to live a life of pretence or we choose to no longer pretend.
Once we decide to live more authentically we can then make choices which help us take responsibility. Not living authentically has consequences. Those of us who married, fearing that we were gay, but pretending we were not – have involved others in our lives – wives and children.
How we manage our past decisions, and any future decision we make to come out or not, has consequences for ourselves and others. After nearly 20 years of working with married men who have sex with men and experiencing my own journey, I am convinced that authenticity and honesty, however painful, are in the long-term psychologically and emotionally healthier for all concerned.
That is, if we want to be who we really are, then that means taking responsibility both privately and publicly. One of the things I have found as I have talked to guys and watched their struggle is that our fears of terrible consequences when we come out are rarely realized. Sometimes significant people in our lives do reject us, but mostly they don’t. More importantly, for those married men who feel primarily attracted to other men, psychological and emotional health is improved among those men who separate compared to those who don’t.
These are really hard issues to grapple with. They take time to sort out, and each one of us has to find our own answer in our own time. There are lots of resources and information available. The more we find out, and the more we talk to other guys like ourselves, the clearer things become. Ultimately though, is about who we are, not who we fuck, that is important.
By Benedict Carey, The New York Times.
 ome people are attracted to women, some are attracted to men. And some, if Sigmund Freud, Dr. Alfred Kinsey, and millions of self-described bisexuals are to be believed, are drawn to both sexes.
But a new study casts doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.
The study, by a team of psychologists in Chicago and Toronto, lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.
People who claim bisexuality, according to these critics, are usually homosexual, but are ambivalent about their homosexuality or simply closeted. “You’re either gay, straight or lying!” as some gay men have put it.
In the new study, a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men.
The study is the largest of several small reports suggesting that the estimated 1.7% of men who identify themselves as bisexual show physical attraction patterns that differ substantially from their professed desires.
“Research on sexual orientation has been based almost entirely on self-reports, and this is one of the few good studies using psychological measures,” said Dr. Lisa Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender identity at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the study.
“The discrepancy between what is happening in people’s minds and what is going on in their bodies,” she said, presents a puzzle “that the field now has to crack, and it raises this question about what we mean when we talk about desire.”
“We have assumed that everyone means the same thing,” she added, “but here we have evidence that that is not the case.”
Several other researchers who have seen the study, scheduled to be published in the journal Psychological Science, said it would need to be repeated with larger numbers of bisexual men before clear conclusions could be drawn.
Bisexual desires are sometimes transient and they are still poorly understood. Men and women also appear to differ in the frequency of bisexual attractions. “The last thing you want,” said Dr. Randall Sell, an assistant professor of clinical socio-medical science at Columbia University, “is for some therapists to see this study and start telling bisexual people that they’re wrong, that they’re really on their way to homosexuality.”
He added, “We don’t know nearly enough about sexual orientation and identity to jump to these conclusions.”
In the experiment, psychologists at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto used advertisements in gay and alternative newspapers to recruit 101 young men. 33 of the men identified themselves as bisexual, 30 as straight, and 38 as homosexual.
The researchers asked the men about their sexual desires and rated them on a scale from zero to six on sexual orientation, with 0–1 indicating heterosexuality, and 5–6 indicating homosexuality. Bisexuality was measured by scores in the middle range.
Seated alone in a laboratory room, the men then watched a series of erotic movies, some involving only women, others involving only men.
Using a sensor to monitor arousal, the researchers found what they expected: gay men showed arousal to images of men and little arousal to images of women, and heterosexual men showed arousal to women but not to men.
But the men in the study who described themselves as bisexual did not have patterns of arousal that were consistent with their stated attraction to men and to women. Instead, about three-quarters of the group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.
“Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight, or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal to one sex or the other,” said Geruff Rieger, a graduate psychology student at Northwestern and the study’s lead author.
Although about a third of the men in each group showed no significant arousal watching the movies, their lack of response did not change the overall findings, Mr Rieger said.
Since at least the middle of the 19th century, behavioural scientists have noted bisexual attraction in men and women and debated its place in the development of sexual identity. Some experts, like Freud, concluded that humans are naturally bisexual. In his landmark sex surveys of the 1940’s, Dr Alfred Kinsey found many married, publicly heterosexual men who reported having had sex with other men.
“Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual,” Dr Kinsey wrote. “The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats.”
By the 1990’s, Newsweek had featured bisexuality on its cover, bisexuals had formed advocacy groups, and television series like Sex in the City had begun exploring bisexual themes.
Yet researchers were unable to produce direct evidence of bisexual arousal patterns in men, said Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and the new study’s senior author.
A 1979 study of 30 men found that those who identified themselves as bisexuals were indistinguishable from homosexuals on measures of arousal. Studies of gay and bisexual men in the 1990’s showed that the two groups reported similar numbers of male sexual partners and risky sexual encounters. And a 1994 survey by The Advocate, the gay-oriented news magazine, found that, before identifying themselves as gay, 40% of gay men had described themselves as bisexual.
“I’m not denying that bisexual behaviour exists,” said Dr. Bailey, “but I am saying that in men there’s no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men arousal is orientation.”
But other researchers, and some self-identified bisexuals, say that the technique used in the study to measure genital arousal is too crude to capture the richness – erotic sensations, affection, admiration – that constitutes sexual attraction.
“Social and emotional attraction are very important elements in bisexual attraction,” said Dr. Fritz Klein, a sex researcher and the author of The Bisexual Option.
“To claim on the basis of this study that there’s no such thing as male bisexuality is overstepping, it seems to me,” said Dr. Gilbert Herdt, director of the National Sexuality Resource Centre in San Francisco. “It may be that there is a lot less true male bisexuality than we think, but if that’s true, then why in the world are there so many movies, novels, and TV shows that have this as a theme – is it collective fantasy, merely a projection? I don’t think so.”
John Campbell, 36, a Web designer in Orange County, California, who describes himself as bisexual, also said he was skeptical of the findings.
Mr. Campbell said he had been strongly attracted to both sexes since he was sexually aware, although all his long-term relationships had been with women. “In my case I have been accused of being heterosexual, but I also feel a need for sex with men,” he said.
Mr. Campbell rated his erotic attraction to men and women as about 50/50, but his emotional attraction, he said, was 90/10 in favor of women. “With men I can get aroused. I just don’t feel the fireworks like I do with women,” he said.
About 1.5% of American women identify themselves bisexual. And bisexuality appears easier to demonstrate in the female sex. A study published last November by the same team of Canadian and American researchers, for example, found that most women said they were bisexual showed arousal to men and to women.
“Although only a small number of women identify themselves as bisexual,” Dr Bailey said, “bisexual arousal may for them in fact be the norm.”
Researchers have little sense yet of how these differences may affect behavior, or sexual identity. In the mid 1990’s, Dr Diamond recruited a group of 90 women at gay pride parades, academic conferences on gender issues, and other venues. About half of the women called themselves lesbians, a third identified as bisexual, and the rest claimed no sexual orientation.
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In follow-up interviews over the last ten years, Dr. Diamond has found that most of these women have had relationships both with men and women.
“Most of them seem to lean one way or the other, but that doesn’t preclude them from having a relationship with the non-preferred sex,” she said. “You may be mostly interested in women, but, hey, the guy who delivers the pizza is really hot, and what are you going to do?”
“There’s a whole lot of movement and flexibility,” Dr. Diamond added. “The fact is, we have very little research in this area, and a lot to learn.”
By Sandi Doughton, Seattle Times.
n his book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, Seattle biologist Bruce Bagemihl estimates 450 species display some form of homosexuality, which can include same-sex courtship, displays of affection, sexual activity, long-term pairings, and parenting.
Up to 15% of Western gulls pairs are female. The birds woo each other with gifts of food and form bonds that last for years. They build joint nests and tend clutches of unfertilized eggs. Occasionally, one or both females will mate with males, but they always raise their young together.
In some penguin species, males form lifelong same-sex partnerships – especially in captivity. A pair named Roy and Silo in New York’s Central Park Zoo incubated rocks until keepers gave them an egg of their own.
Male giraffes spend most of their time in bachelor groups, where they entwine necks and rub against each other for up to an hour at a time. These necking sessions often culminate in mounting, and can outnumber heterosexual encounters 9-to-1.
“It’s rare for animals to be exclusively homosexual,” Bagemihl said, “but bisexuality is common. While male orcas seem to relish their same-sex romps, they mate with females, too. Virtually all bonobos, or pygmy apes, are bisexual.”
None of this is surprising to field biologists, but many omit or gloss over homosexual behavior in their scientific reports. Others have tried to explain it away as a form of aggression or confusion.
“In species like bonobos, same-sex behaviour seems to help cement relationships and defuse conflict,” said University of California biologist Marlene Zuk, author of Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can’t Learn About Sex From Animals.
“Though it’s tricky to impute motives to animals, the fact that homosexuality is so widespread shows it is not unnatural or biologically aberrant,” she said. “But I’m leery of trying to use animals for models of our own behavior.”
“If the animals stories hold any lesson for human societies,” Bagemihl said, “it could lie in the dazzling variety of sexual behaviour nature offers.”
By Randy Dotinga, HealthDay Reporter.
 esearchers have called on the federal government to impose new restrictions on Viagra because studies suggest it makes gay men more likely to use illegal drugs, have unprotected sex, and become infected with sexually transmitted diseases.
But a prominent physician said the finding of the researchers, based on a new analysis of 14 studies, doesn’t prove that Viagra is responsible for changing anyone’s behavior.
“To blame the drug is foolish,” said Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School. “Just because two things happen to go together – in this case, risky behavior and Viagra – doesn’t mean Viagra caused the risky behavior.”
Since the introduction of Viagra in 1998, health advocates have worried about the impact on the gay community. Viagra and its newer rivals, Cialis and Levitra, are designed to treat men who can’t sustain erections, but they’ve also gained a reputation as basis sexual enhancers.
Researchers at the San Francisco Department of Health examined 14 studies that looked at Viagra use among gay men. Their findings appeared in the June 2005 issue of the American Journal of Medicine.
Most of the studies surveyed gay men in San Francisco, many of the studies polled men at sexually transmitted disease clinics. All the studies were published between 1999 and 2004.
Eleven of the studies looked specifically at gay and bisexual men, seven of them reported that 10% or more of gay men said they used Viagra.
Five studies reported that gay men who used Viagra were 2–5.7 times more likely to have put themselves or their partners at risk by having unprotected sex with a person whose HIV status they either didn’t know or was the opposite of their own.
Studies in San Francisco suggested that Viagra users were 2.5 times more likely to test positive for HIV than other gay men, two times more likely to get diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease other than HIV, and 3.5 times more likely to have used methamphetamines within the past four weeks.
Viagra “is the only sexual health product that’s associated with increased risk for STIs,” said study co-author Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, Director of STI Prevention and Control Services at the San Francisco Department of Health. “Condoms, birth control, emergency contraception – they’ve all been shown not to be associated with increased risk of STIs.”
“It’s possible that Viagra increases the risk of STIs by prolonging sexual contact during intercourse,” Klausner said. However, Morgentaler, the Harvard urologist, pointed out that Viagra “doesn’t affect how you think or how you reason and make judgments.”
Klausner acknowledged that it’s possible that Viagra users are just risk-takers in general. “But even if it was true that more risky people were more likely to use Viagra, shouldn’t those people be protected as well, and offered education and opportunities to reduce their risk?”
On that front, the study authors are calling on the government to mandate more extensive warning labels to alert consumers that their risk of STI infection may go up if they use Viagra. The authors also want the government to consider making Viagra a controlled substance.
According to Klausner, the latter move would eliminate free samples and make it harder for drug traffickers to sell Viagra.
While the study didn’t look at use of Cialis and Levitra, the government should examine those drugs too, the investigators wrote.
Pfizer Inc, the maker of Viagra, did not respond to a request for comment.
Morgentaler, author of The Viagra Myth, The Surprising Impact on Love and Relationships, opposes further restrictions based on poor scientific conclusions.
“Viagra has been a tremendous boon for millions of men,” he said, “The fact that there’s a small population that abuses it should by no means penalize the rest of the population.”
ometimes it takes a women’s voice to speak up clearly about men, even when the talk turns to men needing men.
Helen McDonald* says an article in a rural newspaper has prompted her to speak out.
“The item was small, about a man of barely middle age that walked out to the shearing shed and never walked back. He topped himself there, leaving a wife and two children to find his body hanging off a rope from a roof beam. It sent the shivers right down me. The story was simply too close to home.”
“I’m a middle-aged woman with two children too, and that lady he left behind could too easily have been me. That’s why I’m speaking out. I think that people need to know such deaths are needless and pointless.”
“The fellow in the newspaper story had, in middle life, decided he was sick and tired of living his life amidst a lie. He was gay, or even more accurately bisexual. But rather than dealing with that he walked away and killed himself. It just shook me to the ground, the tragedy and waste of life and the loss to the kids of their dad.”
“My man sat me down at the dinning room table about three years ago and told me that he had had gay feelings and had seriously thought about doing himself in. He said that what saved him was a phone call to a help line that gave him somebody to talk it over with. That phone call and the support that followed saved his life.”
“When I heard this, I was pretty badly shaken, first by the news of his sexual interest in men, then by the fact that my children had almost lost their father. After all, he and I had been together for nigh on twenty years, on the land and had done fairly well for ourselves. And those two youngsters didn’t come about exactly by way of osmosis either. We’d had some good times.”
“We sat there and talked for hours, with me slowing coming to grips with what he was saying. The long and the short of it was that he still cared for me and loved the kids deeply, but felt he wanted to stop living a lie. And this is where he told me about an outfit that helps men like him. It’s called GAMMA NSW, a group that provides a positive outlet for men who may either be married or living in a de facto relationship but find themselves attracted to men. GAMMA stands for Gay and Married Men’s Association and helps gay men in transition from a heterosexual relationship. I reckon this outfit saved his life, and it could have saved that other fellow too, if only he’d known.”
“When we eventually sat the kids down and explained that dad wanted to switch sides, they gob smacked us with views of their own which surprised us. Admittedly they are 16 and 18 now, but their overall reaction was much less than we thought it might be. It was basically, “Yeah, so what’s for dinner?” They said that gayness was no big deal, as the old perceptions didn’t matter so much in a world where girls kissed on stage and Sydney’s biggest yearly bash was a Gay gparade. I must say it helped us parents keep our balance.”
“The children still see a lot of their dad and we’ve come to get a grip, as the kids say. Makes me think of the fellow that hanged himself and what his kids would say today. The thought makes me sad.”
“I was a bit cheered up however by something else I read that helped put things into perspective. It was an old quote from Mark Twain that said, “Denial is more than a big river in Egypt.” And I say, “Yep, sure is!”
For some men, receiving peer assistance and support can be a matter of life and death. A telephone hotline allows those living outside Sydney to phone GAMMA direct, free of charge. The toll-free number is 1800 804_ndash;617.
(Helen McDonald’s name has been changed for confidentiality reasons)
t can be one of the most awkward moments for an unprepared parent, when little Johnny asks why the two men walking down the beach are holding hands and kissing.
Talking with kids about sex is never easy, but explaining homosexuality can be particularly thorny because of the different views held by people and the ongoing debate about gay rights and same-sex marriage.
Fact is, children learn about homosexuality at a relatively young age through television and their friends – whether parents want them to or not. So experts suggest moms and dads talk about the subject when the child is young in order to impart information and the family’s values.
In fact, they believe parents should seek out teachable moments – a scene on a TV show, for instance – to bring up the subject gently. Talking about sexual orientation early will help a parent pass on values, while remaining silent may be interpreted in a way a parent doesn’t intend. An added benefit of starting early: it will open the doors of communication between parent and child for future talks about other topics.
Silvia Rimm, a Cleveland-based child psychologist and author of parenting books, says it is likely that most kids will begin posing questions in preschool or early in their elementary school years. “A lot depends on their exposure, where they live, who their friends are, how verbal they are.” Rimm adds, “But if they have a friend with two moms, you can bet they’ll ask, ‘Where’s the dad?’ because they think in those terms.”
Such a question may set off alarms, but experts say parents should listen carefully to what is being asked. In other words, you don’t need to launch into a treatise on sex when you talk about sexual orientation. In fact, sex is just one part of being gay or lesbian. Your answer should contain only the information the child can handle.
As Anne Rambo, associate professor of family therapy at Nova Southeastern University puts it, “Answer the child’s question and don’t go off on long tangents. When difficult questions in general and questions relating to the touchy area of human sexuality in particular, parents sometimes tend to give long speeches when the child asks a simple question. This just conveys anxiety about the topic and is unclear.”
An appropriate response to the question of two men kissing might be: “Some men have girlfriends and some men have boyfriends. This man has a boyfriend.”
As the child grows older and becomes more aware of his/her sexuality, expect more probing questions. Again, listen to what the child is truly asking. He/she may want to know how gay people have children, or why some girls dress like boys and some boys have effeminate gestures.
“For older children, they are quite capable of understanding that humans can love in many different ways,” says Jennifer Mendoza, president of Broward Chapter of the Florida Psychological Association. “The idea is to talk to them in an open and honest way. The one thing you don’t want to do is get angry or upset because they are asking these questions.”
By the time children are 11 or older, they may hear the word gay or fag used as an insult on the playground. This is an opportunity to explain what those terms mean – and, more important, to discourage harassment and teach respect.
The message parents should impact? “Just like with any minority group, it’s not right to ridicule or put down people who are different than you,” says Margaret Crosbie-Burnett, chair and associate professor in the Department of Educational and Psychological Studies at the University of Miami. “Certainly no one should be abused or harassed for who they are.”
When children reach adolescence, sexuality becomes a larger part of their lives. They begin to date and their sexual orientation – as well as that of their classmates – becomes apparent. As their bodies change and their hormones move to overdrive, both sexual curiosity about the opposite sex as well as attraction to others of the same sex are a normal part of growing up.
In dealing with such feelings, a child may ask a parent, “Am I gay?” – a question most parents would be at a lost to answer.
“If they say something like that, it’s important to tell them. ‘It’s possible and it’s also possible you’re not.’ You don’t have to make a decision,” Rimm says. “It’s important not to close the doors of communication.”
Child psychologists say teens are coming out earlier than ever before yet anti-gay prejudice is still prevalent in high schools. Kids can feel pressure to conform, or to drop friends who don’t. The worst thing a parent can do, experts agree, is to turn his/her back on a child who is struggling with his or her sexual orientation.
“Emphasize that, no matter what, they can come talk to you,” Mendoza says.
Though a parent’s religious beliefs may condemn homosexuality, she should still teach her children the value of respect for everybody, experts say. An estimated 5–10% of the population is gay or lesbian. The American Psychiatric Association quit classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973.
From family therapist Rambo, “It’s fine to give your opinions, especially when the child is older. But, be really careful not to teach hate. Even if you are personally uncomfortable with gay and lesbian relationships, keep in mind your child will be going to school with children with gay and lesbian parents, will grow up to work with gay and lesbian colleagues, and is living in a more openly diverse world than the one you may have experienced as a child.”
Source: The Miami Herald
 he risk of AIDS spreading in Asia is higher than ever before and there is a danger of an explosion of the deadly disease if prevention efforts are not intensified now, the top United Nations AIDS official said recently.
One in four new infections occurs in Asia, with the disease having spread to all provinces of China amid its economic boom, while India now has the world’s second-highest number of AIDS/HIV patients after South Africa.
“The AIDS epidemic is still mainly found among vulnerable groups such as homosexuals, injecting drug users, and sex workers, but it could spread to the general population unless intense efforts are made,” said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the U.N. agency devoted to fighting the epidemic.
“When I look at what’s going on in many countries in Asia there’s a vicious cocktail of risk factors,” Piot told Reuters before the start of an international conference in the western Japanese city of Kobe.
“An explosive cocktail of risk factors that means that if ‘business as usual’ continues there will undoubtedly be an explosion of AIDS,” he added.
“Low condom use, limited access to HIV testing, gender inequality, widespread injecting drug use, and sex work could lead to a rapid expansion of the deadly disease.”
“If ‘business as usual’ continues in terms of responding to AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, within the next five years 12 million people will be newly infected with HIV,” he said.
“With hard work over the next two years it could be reduced to six million, but it would require major political will,” he said.
The U.N. estimates that 8.2 million people live with HIV in Asia, some 5.1 million of them in India. The Chinese government says there are 840,000 patients in China. Worldwide, about 39 million people have HIV/AIDS, including 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
But targeted prevention programs are reaching only 19% of sex workers and 5% of injecting drug users in Asia. The figure for gay men is no higher than 2%.
Funding to fight AIDS in the region is seen rising to roughly $1.6 billion by 2007, but this is still far from sufficient, UNAIDS said recently, estimating that $5 billion will be needed.
Asia’s vast cultural and political differences complicate the battle. Blood-selling scandals were initially covered up in China, where fear of being stigmatized has prevented many from getting tested, a situation echoed across many parts of Asia.
There are other common threads, such as a need to promote the use of condoms, educating sex workers and injecting drug users to the dangers of the disease, and empowering women, who make up more than half of the new HIV infections worldwide.
The report called on world leaders to make tackling AIDS in Asia and the Pacific a global priority as with AIDS in Africa, since the disease can worsen existing issues such as poverty.
“AIDS must become a priority for prime ministers and presidents, because it is something that touches on the stability of their nations,” Piot told a news conference.
Even affluent and well-educated Japan is at risk due to a lack of awareness, official apathy, and the stigma that prevents many from being tested.
The number of Japanese cases is still relatively low at 10,070 over the last decade, giving Japan, along with nations such as the Philippines, a chance to ward off a serious outbreak.
Piot said, though, that there have been encouraging signs in several nations, including Thailand and Cambodia as well as China, which is now stepping up its fight against the disease after an initially slow start.
“We must not lose sight of the fact that 99% of people and the Pacific remain uninfected,” he added. “Effective prevention programs must be scaled up now more than ever.”
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