User:Tom/FAQ

This is a draft FAQ I'm working on

Is there something wrong?
No. Being lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) isn't wrong. You aren't weird or freaky or abnormal and you haven't done anything bad or evil or wrong.

If you think you are lesbian, gay or bisexual, it may feel like it's a bad thing, or you may have heard that it's a bad thing from family members, religious leaders or others in society.

Everywhere people exist, there are gay and lesbian people – that is people sexually and/or romantically attracted to members of the same sex – and bisexual people – people who are sexually and/or romantically attracted to members of both the same and the opposite sex – and transgender people, people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.

How do I know whether I'm gay or not?
The vast majority of lesbian and gay people say they report feeling romantic or sexual attraction to the same sex for a long time, or that they simply felt different. Other people don't know until later in life, but just as heterosexual people know they are attracted to people of the opposite sex, gay and lesbian people know they are attracted to the same sex.

Some people may say "well, how do you know you aren't straight unless you try having sex with someone of the opposite sex?" Sexual orientation isn't simply about who you have sex with: it's about who you feel attracted to.

There's no reason you have to hurry in finding out if you are confused. Some gay people grew up going on dates with members of the opposite sex, and may have even had sex. Sexual orientation is complicated: we can often feel romantically inclined towards certain things which override a person's gender, or be romantically but not sexually attracted to certain people.

Some people also identify as either straight or gay or lesbian while not being exclusively hetero- or homosexual, but without concluding they are bisexual. The sex researcher Alfred Kinsey described sexuality as a spectrum, with some people exclusively heterosexual, some people exclusively homosexual, some people being bisexual, and some areas of leeway between them: some people who are straight but "bi-curious".

The fact that people have sex with people of the same sex even if they identify as straight rather than gay has led to a lot of phrases like "bi-curious", on the "down low" (or "DL"), "men who have sex with men" and so on. Simply having sex with someone of the same sex doesn't make one gay, nor does feeling a one-off attraction to someone of the same sex make a person gay.

Is being gay a mental illness?
No. No reputable psychiatric or psychological bodies accept that being gay, lesbian or bisexual means you are mentally ill. Homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1974. Psychiatrists from the American Psychiatric Association and the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the United Kingdom do not consider homosexuality to be a mental illness, and the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases in 1992.

According to good scientific research, it is perfectly possible to be gay, lesbian or bisexual and lead as happy, fulfilling and satisfying life as anyone else, although discrimination gay people feel is often the source of mental health problems. That said, it's perfectly possible to have strong, long-lasting and high quality same-sex relationships, and in a lot of countries it is now possible to get legally married or enter into a civil union or civil partnership.

Coming out: why do gay people feel the need to 'come out'?
From my perspective:


 * The need to come out is very simple. Honesty is a good thing in my book, and being open and honest is much better than not telling. Not being open about your sexual orientation isn't lying in the same way as other forms of lying are. It's private information anyway, but if you don't disclose your sexual orientation, people will assume the social default of heterosexuality. It's very boring and tiresome to live in a state where people make the wrong but default assumption about you. By coming out, you reduce the fear that you will be outed by mistake, and you do not have to keep track of who knows and who doesn't know. It frees you from worrying about it, and allows you to get on with life without fear. I don't regret coming out, the only thing I regret is not doing it five years earlier than I did.

You can see a whole range of stories about coming out linked from the page Coming out stories.

Why can't gay people just shut up about being gay? Why do they need to go on and on about it and have parades?
This is rather linked to coming out. Let's be clear: there are some people who think being gay is the only important thing about themselves. Similarly, there are some straight men whose only topic of conversations is how many women they've had sex with. The fact is, sex and sexuality are pretty interesting topics because humans like gossiping about who is up to what with whom, and why, and so on.

As for specifically why gay people go on about being gay? Well, not all of us do. Some of us like to make bawdy jokes about sexuality, but we'd probably be making bawdy jokes about sexuality even if we were straight. Some people are political and like to shout and get angry about gay rights issues and equality and so on.

As for the rubbing it in people's faces? Well, heterosexuality is rubbed in our faces quite a bit too. From an early age, every kiss, from the most romantic and elegant of on-screen Hollywood romances to the sleaziest of drunken slobberings outside pubs and clubs... the whole world bangs on about heterosexuality all day, every day, from every billboard, from every TV, from every newspaper, in our language, in our thoughts. Even when addressing gay male couples, we are asked whether we are the "man" or the "wife" in the relationship (which sort of misses the point: in gay male relationships, both the men are the men of the relationship, in lesbian relationships, both the women are the women in the relationship).

What does rubbing it in people's faces mean? Holding hands with a partner? Is that a problem? How about kissing in public? Is that rubbing people's face in it?

But aren't you all hypersexual?
Some people look at gay pride parades and see people displayed very sexually: people in short and skimpy clothes, grinding their hips to disco music, or in leather gear. People like sex. Sex is fun and awesome and pleasurable and there's nothing wrong with that. There are some people who are addicted to sex.

But that's because they are human beings. Some of us really like sex, and some of us like shaking our asses and getting whipped and tied up in chains and so on. That's not all gay people though. Hop onto your local alternative sexuality or fetish website and you'll find plenty of straight people who get up to equally freaky stuff in the bedroom, some of which will make you quite, quite horrified. There's crazy sex stuff I've seen only straight people get up to, and gay people give a wide berth to.