To be or not to be gay

Are they gay by choice or is being gay genetic? New research explores social attitudes about sexual orientation and one-off same-sex acts. They would have to make a home elsewhere. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in the United States encounter extensive prejudice, discrimination, and violence because of their sexual orientation.

I remember seeing them in the kitchen, poring over a copy of an atlas of the world. Why do we gays have such an intimidating internet presence? So my parents always maintained that they viewed their leap into the unknown as an adventure. The partner gets to decide whether he's straight or not as people themselves are the arbiters of their own sexual orientation.

The partner gets to decide whether he's straight or not as people themselves are the arbiters of their own sexual orientation. For them, America was an outline on a page, a web of thin purplish lines. As a thirteen-year-old, I found myself in a clearing in a wood outside of Moscow, at a secret—one might say underground, though it was out in the open—gathering of Jewish cultural activists.

It’s also possible to think you’re gay when you’re actually bi, or think you’re bi when you’re actually gay, for example. For some it’s the option of anonymity that allows us to live a semblance of a life we’ve only been able to dream of. That is, they sang the same three or four songs over and over.

Anything can be. Does a single same-sex act make you gay? Everything about it seemed self-evident—once I knew what I was, I would just be it. New research explores social attitudes about sexual orientation and one-off same-sex acts. I have also raised kids of my own. Straight people can be in relationships with queer people without being queer themselves.

Because we’ve had to live there. Straight people can be in relationships with queer people without being queer themselves. More than two years would pass before the visa was granted, but from that day on I have felt a sense of precariousness wherever I have been, along with a sense of opportunity.

Was Shakespeare Gay?

I think that worked for them: as Jews, they never felt at home in the Soviet Union—and when home is not where you are born, nothing is predetermined. By default, it connects you to thousands of fellow gays who dominate the digital space. I looked at them and thought, This is who I am.

In fact, the people in front of me, singing those songs, were trying to figure out how to be Jewish in a country that had erased Jewishness. I have emigrated again as an adult. It’s also possible to think you’re gay when you’re actually bi, or think you’re bi when you’re actually gay, for example.

This was our application for an exit visa to leave the Soviet Union. Your sibling decides whether they're LGBT or not, but if they're non-cis they're of course included by default, anyway. They did know that if they left the Soviet Union, they would never be able to return like many things we accept as rare certainties, this one turned out to be wrong.

If anything, with every new step I have taken, I have marveled more at the courage it would have required for my parents to step into the abyss. A friend was fond of asking them, jokingly, whether they could really be sure that the West even existed. Estimates as to the number of gay people in the population range from 1-in to 1-in, so why are some people gay?

Does a single same-sex act make you gay? Your sibling decides whether they're LGBT or not, but if they're non-cis they're of course included by default, anyway. Intense prejudice against lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people was widespread throughout much of the 20 th century.

The simplest answer is to look at the definition of the word "gay." The term gay is a synonym for homosexual, which is defined as, 1,2 "Of, pertaining to, or exhibiting sexual desire or behavior directed toward a person or persons. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in the United States encounter extensive prejudice, discrimination, and violence because of their sexual orientation.

Simple—it’s better to be a gay blogger. People went up in front of the crowd, one, two, or several at a time, with guitars and without, and sang from a limited repertoire of Hebrew and Yiddish songs. They are a pair. Intense prejudice against lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people was widespread throughout much of the 20 th century.

I was surrounded by strangers, sitting, as we were, on logs laid across the grass, and I remember their faces to this day. This essay was delivered in a slightly different form as the Robert B. Thirty-nine years ago my parents took a package of documents to an office in Moscow.