Reply #14: There's something I don't think you've considered. [View All]

[pnwmom]

Craig is 62 years old. He's probably been cruising for anonymous sex for 40 years. When he began, there was practically nowhere in the country where a gay couple could live openly without harassment. Most gay men hid their orientation from everyone they knew -- even themselves. How were they to identify each other? Do you think it was easy? Most of the time they avoided "temptation" -- or at least tried to -- and so were able to keep the straight image of themselves. Other times, they slipped -- then quickly tried to forget again.

Think about it. Throughout the 60's and much of the 70's, when Craig was well into adulthood, the enlightened view of homosexuality was that it was a disease. To other people, and the criminal justice system, it was a crime. Gays were arrested even for having sex in their own homes!

So gay sex was furtive, and scary -- but compelling, if you were gay. Men like Craig who spent decades pursuing gay sex in this way -- and whose whole lives and careers are bound up in being straight -- don't easily jump out of the closet, or from the sad practices that at one time they felt forced into.

You're judging him by straight, middle class standards. To be fair, we should put his actions into a much broader context. He is a member of a persecuted minority who has taken society's hatred and internalized it.

Straight people who indulge in bathroom sex are gross. So are gay people, IMO, bathrooms are dirty, smelly places to have sex. But a 62 year old closeted man who does this is far more understandable to me.