Me objecting to the prudery, arrogance, and homophobia of someone who thinks Pride Parades are “indecent” and “lewd”.

C.D.: This is essentially why I so often don't get along with GLBT people: they have polarized from the religious right so far that they have wound up in a totally morally ambiguous territory.

Gary Cottle: I find this statement to be very troubling.

C.D.: "Gary, excuse me if the grammatically ambiguous phrasing there is what is throwing you off. If you read on, I state that I am gay and accepting of homosexual relations given the right ethical conditions. Given that, you should be able to see that I was [not?] intending to make a blanket statement about GLBT people. I was referring to a common subset among us."

Gary Cottle: There isn't anything throwing me off, [C.D.]. I found your comment to be offensive, and your comment here does nothing to restore my assessment of you. Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean that you can’t be an intolerant prig.

Like so many fundamentalist asshats, you don't seem to make a distinction between your opinion and fact. So let me set a few things straight. You don’t get to decide for the rest of us what is “the right ethical conditions” for anything. You don’t get to decide for the rest of us what is decent, and you don’t get to decide for the rest of us the definition of prudishness. You may offer your opinion, but that’s all. And if someone disagrees with you, that doesn’t mean they’re immoral, amoral, morally ambiguous, or lacking a “strong rational faculty.” They may see something you don’t. They may have experienced something you haven’t. They may have different values, deferent beliefs.
And before you launch into your speech about the “chasm of ethics and worldview” that separate us, let me say that I am merely offering you my opinions. I don’t pretend to have everything figured out. I don’t know if there’s a god or not. And I’m not interested in accepting anyone’s dogma, least of all yours. If you want to call this moral ambiguity, then so be it. But I see value in reminding myself that my opinions are only my opinions. I see value in not being very strict in judging others because I know I don’t have all the answers, and I know I don’t know what’s going on in the lives of others or exactly why others do what they do. I try to stand up and speak out when I think someone is being harmed, but I know I have my blind spots and limitations. I also know what it’s like to be judged by self-righteous people who don’t understand me.

Unlike some people, I don’t expect to walk out my front door and only see things that I understand and agree with. And I certainly don’t expect all gay people to be like me. I know that they’re all over the map in regards to beliefs, temperament, attitude…just like straight people.
I figured out I was gay when I was 11 years old, but I couldn’t tell anyone until I went away to college seven years later. And one of the first gay people I met at college was a boy named Nathan. He’s the first boy I had sex with in college. Nathan is also the one who took me to a gay bar for the first time in my life. He’s the first boy I ever danced with. And one Saturday afternoon, Nathan led me into a parking garage, took me to the top floor and we fooled around right there in that public place. Other people have judged me when I’ve told them this story, and I lived through it, so if you want to judge me, go ahead. I really don’t care. It’s not something I would repeat. It’s not something I would generally recommend. I realize that what we did was foolish and thoughtless. We could have been caught. We could have been arrested. Thugs could have used our indiscretion as an excuse to physically attack us. And I would have been mortified if some sweet little old lady had seen us. But we weren’t caught, and on that day, the experience was liberating. After hiding and living in fear all those years, I was finally, at long last doing it with a boy, and we were doing it in a public place.
Nathan and I didn’t become boyfriends, and the sex soon ended, but we were very close friends for years. Nathan was always much more adventurous than I was. And he had numerous sex partners. He was one of those people who could step out for a breath of fresh air and come back an hour later and tell you he just did it with the guy who mows the grass. Nathan went around the world and slept with different guys all along the way. Those stories you hear about gay men who have sex with hundreds of partners…Nathan was one of them. If Nathan had been in a Gay Pride Parade, he would have worn a Speedo and simulated sex acts with his fellow revelers. But anyone who thinks Nathan was all about sex would be mistaken. He was a kindhearted, witty, funny, intelligent young man who spoke French fluently, loved art, travel, and he was someone who had survived a great deal of abuse and rejection because he was one of those boys who was obviously different from a very early age. He taught me a lot about following your own light regardless of what others think. He taught me a lot about courage and self-acceptance.

When he was about 24, he met a man and fell in love. He’s been in a monogamous relationship with him ever since. He also became an Episcopal priest. We lost contact for a long time, but a couple of years ago, he called me up and we talked for several hours. We talked about how his life had changed so dramatically. He said that when he found his partner, he knew he was the person he wanted to be with and playing around with other men just didn’t interest him anymore. I asked him if he regretted his youthful escapades, and he said he didn’t. And when I asked him why he felt compelled to sleep with all those guys all over the world, he basically said that he was finding his way.

I understand this and accept it. I was finding my own way when I fooled around with Nathan in the parking garage when we were young. And all these years later, I’m still finding my way.