djiefu

Recently I found a dictionary site that invited people to give word definitions in limerick form. They aren't up to letter H yet, but I tried my hand anyway with the following anyway. Maybe someone else could try something similar. Homosexual?s a hard word to say, So two young guys they worked out a way. ??Queer? is odd, don?t you think?? ??Poof? reminds me of pink!? ?Let?s settle for simple: we?re gay!?

Gabe asked in his original post about what he called ?elders? and role models, and after having read so many follow up posts I?d like to add my few cents worth, the fruit of close to 70 years of life. I have been oriented towards other males since I was 4 years old. I grew up before the word gay was ever used to refer to those of us whose emotional, psychological and sexual attraction is to people of our own sex. Homosexuality was never mentioned publicly and the first time I was aware that someone I knew was supposed to be a man who liked men was when I was a teenager. I wanted to talk to him but I was terrified. It was many years later and only when I joined our local gay group and met him that I had the old story confirmed. So who were my role models then? There were none. I stayed well and truly in the closet. It was after all the 1950s, the era of conformity, and I was already a non-conformist in the worst way: a political activist in movements for peace and social justice. I became a teacher in a small rural school. It was enough that I was political. Had I come out as a ?poof? I hesitate to think of the local reaction! So I remained closeted. In 1971 I attended the first public meeting held here to campaign for an end to the discriminatory laws against male-male sexual activity. The founders of the movement became my first gay role models (and personal friends later on) but I still didn?t come out. But my gayness began to bubble to the surface. I began to read as more books with gay characters began to be published. I became aware of the contribution that men and women same-sex lovers had made to humanity. To achieve my personal liberation I went overseas and returned five years later, having learned to love and be loved, to join the gay movement in a variety of very active roles. And in the years since my retirement from teaching, I have come further and further out of the closet, to the point that I was featured in a display, ?The Gay Museum?, that ran for months at the State Museum here in 2003, and participate each year now in the annual gay pride parade as a member of our teachers? union glbti group. As a teacher, I never came out to my students, (though later, some - gay boys - told me they suspected it) I did not have the courage, unlike some close friends and colleagues?but then the laws of my state ending, as far as possible, legal discrimination against gays and lesbians were only enacted in 2002, and there is still a long way to go in promoting the changes in the Australian community. The point I am making is that coming out is a process. A theory of stages of coming out was developed by a lesbian psychologist in Western Australia, Dr Vivienne Cass, in the late 1970s. Brew Maxwell in Chapter 6 of the final segment of the Foley-Mashburn Saga, Boyhood?s End, summarises the theory for those interested. (You can find the story through links in The Mail Crew?s site if you haven?t yet read it.) It is very easy to tell gay people of any age that they should come out. Coming out is not easy, as Drake and Graeme and others have pointed out in this discussion. It is and will always remain a personal decision, determined by a huge variety of factors. I hope the time will come when we have no need for ?Coming Out?, but for now, let us rejoice that over 30 years ago, many brave people, in many countries around the world, began the process of making us visible and thus helping to create the conditions for our eventual liberation. They are worthy role models. I will end here with what I have said elsewhere: let us all keep on developing our gay consciousness. Let?s take advantage of the internet and the many publications now available, both fiction and non-fiction, to read widely and keep abreast of the developments in all over the world which, bit by bit, are leading in the direction of true gay liberation, the time when we will have no need to proclaim our difference.