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The Times On-line - Gay goes Straight

  • 21-01-2010 12:32am
    #1
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭


    I came across this article and it struck me on a few levels. Its been a while since we have had a guyness thread in the forum.

    A guy a journalist changes his life a becomes a pilot pops in for a haircut and comes out wanting to be straight.

    Once i read the article what struck me was that people make fundamental changes all the time. Careers - I knew a guy who left insurance in London to be a vicar and a barman who has become a teacher.




    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article6990013.ece
    From The Times

    January 18, 2010


    The day I decided to stop being gay

    Twenty years after he came out, Patrick Muirhead, 41, explains why he is suddenly feeling the appeal of the opposite sex


Comments

  • #2
    Smallbit
    Closed Accounts Posts: 159 ✭✭Smallbit


    It seems obvious on reading the article that the man involved simply wants to a father in the traditional sense. His apologetic tone when he describes his homosexual life leads me to suspect that he has some issues around his own sexuality - many homosexual many feel a tinge of self-loathing which may or may not be linked to the way society judges their preferences. Sexuality isn't black and white, nor are there three simple classifications like Straight, Bi, and Gay. It's a sliding scale with all manner of preferences in between.

    This isn't a story of a gay man going straight. Those words cannot possibly describe the complex and sometimes fluid sexuality that most humans experience. It's a story of a man with bisexual tendencies who is prepared to compromise to achieve his goal of traditional fatherhood.

    The headline should have read "The day I decided to shift the emphasis of my bisexuality"


  • #3
    OldGoat
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,640 ✭✭✭✭OldGoat


    A broody man, single if the constant references to his past relationship of 10 years are anything to go by, is seeing life passby and casual relationships are not satisfying him.
    He's just in a phase - a broody phase - reassessing his life and looking to his future. It's a mid life crises manifesting as doubting his own sexual preferences.
    I get the feeling that if his ex turned up on the doorstep with a big-eyed puppy the author would instantly find himself compleatly out of the closet again.

    I'm older than Minecraft goats.



  • #4
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    That crossed my mind too.

    But lots of people make life changes -Robert Downey junior gave up drugs, people change or give up religion ,players get married.

    George Melly who he cites married. Tom Robinson the rock singer and broadcaster who wrote the gay anthem "Glad to be Gay" got married and has kids.

    He became a pilot and hangs around with pilots and thats as hetero as you get. No pressure on him to conform.Free will.


  • #5
    Smallbit
    Closed Accounts Posts: 159 ✭✭Smallbit


    CDfm wrote: »
    That crossed my mind too.

    But lots of people make life changes -Robert Downey junior gave up drugs, people change or give up religion ,players get married.

    George Melly who he cites married. Tom Robinson the rock singer and broadcaster who wrote the gay anthem "Glad to be Gay" got married and has kids.

    He became a pilot and hangs around with pilots and thats as hetero as you get. No pressure on him to conform.Free will.

    Addictions are completely different to sexual orientations. People give up addictions because they are damaging, they don't swap one for another, like deciding one day to give up smoking and take up gambling (well not intentionally!)

    I still maintain that you cannot simply change your orientation, but that you can work within your own band of 'acceptable' sexual practice. It's just that some people have a wider band than others.

    My previous relationship was with another woman, but I am now living with a man. I didn't just decide to stop being lesbian and become heterosexual. I just met the right person, and being with either sex doesn't feel like a compromise of my sexuality.


  • #6
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Now I have no inclination, but have teenage kids that ask me things usually on car journeys which I answer as best I can. Never in my wildest dreamsvwould I have had the same conversations with my father.

    I have a married friend since college who did have a gay college relationship and married a girl in the flat next door. So in one way I think opportunity counts for a lot.

    There is another side to it too. What some women call male spinsters -guys deciding not to get married. Guys women may not have been attracted to before and thought were geeks might be attractive or potential partners.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article4833106.ece

    You also have books like The Game which are self help books for picking up girls.


    Thats without ever getting into the territory of the christian boot camps

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4893735.ece


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