FILM DIRECTOR Gregg Araki was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 17, 1959. The only child of Japanese parents, he grew up in Santa Barbara, eventually earning a masters degree in film production from the USC School of Cinema/TV. He currently lives in Los Angeles. …
MoreFollowing is a statement issued by the Alternative Lifestyle Foundation (LGBT Humanitarian Project) of Nigeria. This unsolicited report describes a dire situation for gay men and lesbians in one of the world’s poorest countries, and announces the formation of an organization whose mission is to fight anti-gay persecution and to lobby for sexual equality. We publish this report as a public service in the hope that some readers will respond to the group’s plea for help in getting this organization started. [The editors.]
MoreCIRCUIT PARTIES are weekend-long, erotically-charged, drug-fueled gay dance events held in resort towns across the country. There’s at least one major circuit party every month somewhere in the U.S.-New York’s “Black Party,” South Beach’s “White Party,” Montreal’s “Black and Blue Party,” and so on-and people travel far and wide to take part. …
More… Conceptions of sex, after all, vary from one cultural epoch to the next, but also during the lifespan of an individual. The urge to reproduce is an arc, you might say, that rises into the sky, like a rainbow, and then returns to earth. Once it occurred to me to ask a friend who’d sired six children if this had lessened his sex drive, and it made no sense when he said No. …
More… I interviewed Bill Condon by phone last April just before the DVD release of Kinsey. Highly recommended, the DVD includes many bonus features, including an informative documentary about the making of the movie, The Kinsey Report: Sex on Film.
MoreIT WAS over twenty years ago that a major sex study disclosed what was then a rather startling finding: lesbian couples engaged in sexual activity significantly less frequently than did both heterosexual and gay male couples …
MoreTHE GAY COMMUNITY has a long history of alcohol and drug abuse above the rate that occurs in the heterosexual population. Research suggests that gay men use drugs in specific situations, such as during sex or during visits to specific “homosocial” venues like bars, clubs, sex parties or bathhouses. Thus, for many gay men, a unique aspect of gay culture is that drug use is very often specifically connected to seeking or having sex. …
MoreON THE AIR since 1990, HBO’s documentary series Real Sex has proven to be hugely popular with millions of cable subscribers curious about the sexual practices and fantasies of their fellow Americans. Ostensibly unscripted and nonfictional, the series’ ring of authenticity adds to its appeal. …
MoreIT WAS SEEING the movie Kinsey that triggered a heated discussion about bisexuality between me and my girlfriend Meg, whom I had “accused” of being bisexual in light of her history of dating men several years earlier. She vehemently denied that this earlier life made her bisexual, giving rise to that age-old discussion of just what makes a person “bi”: …
MoreMANY YOUNG GAY MEN are perceived by themselves and others as “whores,” but it’s a label that other gay youth are consciously rejecting. An earlier generation of gay men embraced sexual liberation as the driving goal of gay liberation itself, and found it empowering to be a “whore” or a “slut.” “Sexual objectification is a focus of our quest for freedom,” declared “A Gay Manifesto” of the 1970’s (by Carl Wittman). But gay youth culture has changed dramatically since then. Gay young people in general have veered toward a more heterosexual definition of their sexual relations. Few would agree with the sentiment expressed in another manifesto of early Gay Liberation, that of Martha Shelley in her classic essay “Gay is Good”: “straight roles stink.”
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