I like gays

Homos. Queers. Fags.

I like them. I can hardly say a word against them. Unlike heteros.

Gays don't bash people. They don't bully kids at high school.

They don't get drunk at cricket matches and hurl racial abuse at my Japanese girlfriend.

They don't have fights on trains after football matches and molest young women.

They don't start riots at Cronulla beaches.

They don't start wars, bomb countries or send troops to Iraq.

I suspect, without evidence apart from the anecdotal, that gays are better educated, more sophisticated, and more socially skilled than the average hetero.

It's even true to say I've hardly met a gay man I haven't liked. Only once was I the acquaintance of a gay man who was unpopular, the widely-despised bully at Uniworld. As there were several gay men in the office, one woman observed 'There are three gay guys here, and they are all so different.'
Which caused Justin to sardonically remark, 'Just like normal people.'

Meanwhile the number of gay men who have positively influenced my life is substantial. I cannot shake the idea that they are friendlier, funnier and more reliable than straights.

I cannot become gay, but if the world were free of homophobia I would wish it. Fergus and others have urged me to try, but I do not believe what is sometimes said, that everybody can be gay or bisexual. My attraction to women is monumental, compulsive, irresistable, even if it is sometimes destructive. But if I could become gay, I would consider it. Gay sex is a candy shop.

I'm not sure how I feel about lesbians. Bisexual women I have known and loved, but women who are solely attracted to women seem to me, at times, dismissive of men. Disdainful. I wonder if they would like a world without men. I think it remarkable that while many gay men have heterosexual female friends, faghags, lesbians seem to have few male heterosexual friends. I have wondered about that, thinking that something is there that needs explaining. Just what is going on there? Can you imagine a group of lesbians welcoming a masculine, ocker man into their circle of warmth and friendship, in the same way that gay men welcome feminine women, Sex in the City style?

But I still like gays.