Tag: The Essence of GLBTQ

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The Essence of GLBTQ by Michael King

I was four or maybe five when I asked my grandmother why Aunt Ethel’s son wasn’t at any family gatherings. I knew she had a son but I had never met him and no one ever mentioned him so it all seemed strange to me. My grandmother held her head high and announced, “He is not welcome. He likes boys,”

I didn’t understand but I knew without a doubt that I could never like boys, whatever that meant. Around the same time since I was always sick the doctor suggested that my family find some activity for me to do when I was bedfast. My grandmother taught me to crochet. I liked to dress up, dance and in general I would now consider myself to have been the “sissy” that I was often teased as. I now think that my parents accepted that I was queer. They seemed to be very surprised when I got married.

I have always been naive. I wasn’t influenced by religious fundamentalism, sin, hellfire and damnation. I was instead very concerned with rejection, hatefulness, and not being accepted. I was very curious about male genitalia. I didn’t get to do any athletics because of asthma so I didn’t get to see other guys to satisfy my curiosities. I just knew that it wasn’t OK to like boys.

I did have numerous advances made by older men and a few curiosity jack offs with guys my own age. I chalked it up to satisfying my interests not to liking boys. In the case of older men it would now be classified as having been molested. If ever it had been a satisfying experience perhaps I would have lived a different life. Those experiences were without my consent and uncomfortable, not pleasurable.

Even in college the few times I was having sex with guys I didn’t know how or what to do and neither did they. I did want to get married, raise a family and be like a man was supposed to be. I was also curious about having sex with a woman but had accepted that you waited to get married and then you were supposed to celebrate your 50th wedding anniversary surrounded by children, grandchildren and a large and perfect family.

I was introduced to my first wife by an older friend that I met in a summer class. He thought that we would be a perfect match. We met in August and married in December and my first daughter was born in October. I was 20 years old. We did enjoy sex and were living a pretty good and acceptable life for 13 years. My children were very important to me and she neglected them. I couldn’t deal with that so I divorced her and got custody of the children

I didn’t do much about my curiosities. I didn’t even realize how much fear of being unacceptable controlled my life. I seemed to know the rules and had to appear to follow them. I had the fear that if I explored and got caught that the world would fall apart or worse. I still couldn’t like boys. If there was any sex it could not be accompanied with intimacy or affection. I fell in love with a straight guy who was my best friend. He knew it and wanted the friendship but sex was out of the question. That was the closest I came to thinking that I could like another man and have intimacy and love. It took another 38 years for me to meet someone that I could love. I did have several girlfriends after the divorce and enjoyed the sex but couldn’t let myself fall in love. Then I met my second wife. I guess you could say she seduced me. Of course I let her. That was my MO. She came to my place and never left.

I had my three children and I decided that if we were going to live together we needed to be married. We got married. I was more and more aware that men appealed to me but since I couldn’t be intimate with a man I settled into a pretty good 12 year marriage.

I somehow couldn’t come to grips with being gay if I didn’t have a boyfriend. I also didn’t think I could be gay and keep my job. Women seemed to present themselves and I had girl friends but I didn’t have sex with most of them. I just wasn’t interested but I did like the attention and it helped me to live as the acceptable straight image that I thought I had to have. Finally I attended the Gay Pride activities 4 years ago, got involved in Prime Timers and then the GLBT Center and 6 months later had my first boyfriend. It lasted 2 months but I came out, introduced him to my kids and have been a flaming queen ever since.

So what is the essence of GLBTQ? It’s being who you are even if it takes a lifetime. I am happier now than I have ever been. I have the most wonderful partner and my kids all love him too. Could I have found the essence of being gay earlier? Probably not. Through the “Telling your Story” group I have gotten in touch with all those rules and requirements that made being queer impossible. “He likes boys” is the best part of my life. The journey was a wonderful way to grow and mature spiritually as well as emotionally. That maturation process is the essence of being, finding out who you are and being who you are.

July 13, 2013

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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The Essence of GLBTQ by Phillip Hoyle

For me, the essence of being GLBTQ(Aetc.) is first a recognition of being other, by which I mean being a person whose sexuality leaves him or her on the outside: a sinner, pervert, mentally ill, or more generally put, queer. Second, it means a dedication to some kind of community building within that outsider existence, by which I mean recognizing oneself as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, etc., and sometimes connecting as a couple or friend with others that attract you and who feel somehow attracted to you. Third, it means dedication to improving the lot of such outsiders through coalitions of community-building (as in GLBTetc) through communication, valuing, participation in GLBTetc groups, and sometimes activism related to political process. But I don’t here want simply to write an essay on philosophy. Let me tell you some stories.

I was attending a professional meeting in a Denver hotel in 1977 studying Jungian psychology as it relates to religious education. While alone in my room one afternoon, Jung’s Shadow concept about which I had been writing and thinking took the form of a vision hovering over me, and I realized the shadow experience was in fact my homosexuality.

A year later I was in seminary. My encounters with gay persons and my experience of falling in love with a man caused me to realize that my homosexual shadow was more than the flipside of my sexual self. I was walking down a street with the man when I found myself singing love songs to him. This experience helped me realize my homosexual desire was situated at the core of my sexuality. I then “knew” and came to prize my bi-sexual experience in a new and more essential way. I kept singing!

I studied sexuality; I experienced my bisexuality; I loved myself. My homosexual desire and experiences provided me joy and pain—the joy of feeling one night in a hotel that my heart was going to beat itself right out of my rib cage as I was making love to my male companion, the pain of realizing that same lover was never going to express his love for me in the ways I was willing to express mine to him. Still for years I nurtured that relationship—my smallest gay community—all the while knowing that its existence, should it become outwardly known, could spell the end of my marriage and of my career as a minister because my desire and experience occurred outside the cultural norms of religion (I was a sinner, probably the worst kind), failed to be monogamous (against the law), and beyond the psychological, medical, and psychotherapeutic norms (a pervert or mentally ill to many health professionals).

Eventually I did reveal these things—my alternate needs and complementary community. I paid a high price and entered a gay-male world that opened the way for me to enter into an LGBTQAetc. essential experience. I had know, loved, and supported lesbians. I had known and loved gay men. I had known and loved my own bisexual self. I had not known transgender persons, but in my fledgling practice as a massage therapist I was ushered into such a relationship. My transgender client intrigued me with her story. I saw her generosity and worked hard to adjust my own assumptions. I appreciate to this day her tolerance of my bungling attempts to adjust my language. Too often with her I felt like when I was a seminarian dealing with images of God. My miscommunication then was to address God as Father in the opening prayer of a feminist organizing effort—one I supported and promoted. My thirty years of prayer language resisted. Luckily I giggled aloud at my misstep. But with my transgender client, I did not giggle but realized that her good nature helped me understand that in order to be an LGBTQ, I’d have to concentrate and accept others and myself like never before in my whole life because old images and old language always want to interrupt the flow of love and acceptance. For me, the essence of GLBTQ is plain hard work. That’s what I know about such things.
Thanks for listening! What I most appreciate about being in this storytelling group is that weekly I get to practice GLBTQ essential experience. Here we can giggle together as we learn.

Denver, 2013

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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The Essence of GLBTQ by Merlyn

Michael and I get tested every six months at the STD clinic at 17th and Pearl St. We went on Friday after he got of work at The Center’s front desk. While we were waiting for our turn I was watching two young male couples.

I realized how much different their lives are today compared to what my life was like when I was at their age.

Both couples are used to being who and what they are sexually around anyone and they don’t care what anyone thinks.

The youngest couple were in their late teens and looked like the punks you see on the street, both of them were around 5ft 9, 120 lbs, dirty, mated hair, piercings all over their faces and torn clothes. They were making a statement that they were gay both bottoms and they were really nervous about the test results. They were both OK and were very happy when they got the results.

The older couple were mid 20s, 5′ 11″ 190 lbs and in real good shape. They were dressed in comfortable clothes that did not make any kind of statement about who or what they are sexually. But the way acted around each other you could tell they are lovers that have been together a long time and probably act that way anytime they are together.

I can only imagine what it would be like to have the freedom to live your life in a world where you never have to hide anything about yourself and no one cares if you are having sex with a man this week or had sex with a woman last week.

I believe in a generation or two from now most of the labels we have today will only be talked about in the history books.

The world is changing and as the world changes more and more people will not allow anyone to judge or make them feel guilty about who they are.

Denver, July 15, 2013

About the Author

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.

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The Essence of GLBTQ by Lewis

Wiktionary defines “essence” — in usage relevant to this topic — as 
     1) “the inherent nature of a thing or an idea” and 
     2) “a significant feature of something.”

Therefore, the “essence of GLBTQ” might be otherwise stated as, “What is it about gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer people that makes them unique from everyone else?” The inclusion of the terms “transgender” and “queer” complicates the answer to a degree that makes generalizations meaningless. In fact, the word “queer,” when appropriated to describe oneself, seems intended to obviate any attempt to characterize it in any meaningful, shorthand way. “Transgender,” because it has nothing to do with sexual attraction but is rather gender identity related, seems to me to also lie outside any attempt to describe the “essence” of the first three letters — GLB — which are primary referent to an individual’s sexual attractions.

Those who condemn homosexuality invariably do so on the basis of same-sex erotic behaviors. Those behaviors are not the “essence” of homosexuality but the manifestation — or “womanifestation,” if you prefer — of it. The essence is the innate part of our nature that is drawn to members of our gender, rather than the opposite gender. This seems to fly in the face of everything we know about Adam and Eve and Charles Darwin’s theory on the survival of the species. Consequently, it is subject to accusations that we are operating against the Will of God and Nature and, therefore, must be deviant, if not evil. It is as if we are the ugly duckling whose ugliness is on the inside and, therefore, never changing.

What distinguishes gay and lesbian individuals from heterosexuals is our being forced into the position of having either to conform to erotic behaviors that are unnatural — even repugnant — to us by repressing those desires that are such a vital part of who we are in order to appear “normal” or to act on our own natural inclinations at the risk of being ostracized by a significant portion of society. Our “essence,” in my opinion, is the strength of our characters that has developed during what is an existential struggle to be both true to ourselves and successful members of an intolerant society.

There are many gay men and women who have never allowed the prejudices of our society to interfere with what they see as their own natural and true behavior. A tip of my hat to them. They have displayed a courage and self-knowledge that I can only admire from a distance. Their “essence” has been knowing their own heart and following it wherever it might lead. This is a rare quality, even among those who have never experienced self doubt and the fear of social opprobrium.

For some who count themselves among the “GLB,” however, finding some sense of authenticity has come only with the undertaking of behaviors that are in themselves self-defacing — drug or alcohol abuse or unprotected sex, for example. For these, “essence” might well be overcoming addiction or dealing with the life-long consequences of HIV/AIDS.

Others of us have “gone along to get along.” We married in the traditional way, perhaps even had children. For these — and I count myself among them — our “essence” might be qualitatively analyzed in how we have related to our opposite-gender spouses and children, how we “came out” to them, whether or not we were faithful during the marriage, and what kind of relationship we have with them after moving on toward a state of greater authenticity.

I’m certain that there are gay men and lesbians who do not fall into any of the aforementioned categories. That is why I do not think that the notion of a “GLBTQ essence” is all that pragmatic. If anything, there may be an added layer or two of “essence” on our psychological auras. But, at the same time, we are all 99-94/100% pure human being, with, perhaps, a few more rough edges and/or a more highly-polished-surface here and there. I think the rest of the world is coming around to this view … and fairly rapidly. May it continue to be so.

We, the GLBTQ members of the most remarkable species of animal in the known universe have been granted a very special charter. We have been commissioned by the Great Mystery of All Existence not only to share our very special talents with the world but, in order to do so, to first learn to look in the mirror and see, not the “ugly duckling” that some of those we have loved may have so ignorantly and, perhaps, unknowingly branded us, but ourselves as whole and wholesome human beings whose lives will encompass a level of adventure that will make for many wonderful stories that beg to be shared.

[Everything that I have said above about “GLB” people would also apply to those on the “third rail” of sexual attraction discourse — men and women who are attracted to juveniles of either sex. Unfortunately, this subject is so fraught with phobia and loathing that merely to state that the sexual attraction toward children is akin to same-sex attractions to adults tends to elicit reactions one might expect from confessing to mass murder. I merely would state that none of us picked the type of persons to whom we are sexually attracted from a list like choosing the color of our next car. There are still perhaps 40% of Americans who believe that having same sex attractions is immoral. Those of us with a “glb” orientation should be the last to condemn anyone for attractions over which they have absolutely no control, unlike actions taken on those feelings, which are properly proscribed, just as statutory rape is properly proscribed.]

© 15 July 2013


About the Author


I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Building Worldwide Community by Louis

We gay people have a choice. We can continue to be the eternal victims of religious fanatics or we can organize and become a world power. Let’s choose the empowerment option.

I recently sent an e-mail to Shari Wilkins, Program Director of the Center. I suggested the Denver Gay and Lesbian Center set up a foreign language club. I set up such a club at the Center on West 13 Street in Greenwich Village in New York City about 30 years ago. The announcement for the group was put into their monthly newsletter. 65 people showed up for the first meeting. There were so many people that the Center had to put us in the garden. I mainly listened to the suggestions of people who were interested. It was a very informative exchange. The main message was that an international style of education would give everyone a better understanding of gay liberation as a worldwide movement.

I kept the group going for about a year. A Lesbian couple from Switzerland showed up and shared their experiences. They said that in Switzerland, the laws were liberal because the Swiss culture believes in science, including more modern views on human sexuality.

One evening a good looking young man from the Catalan region of Spain showed up and explained the differences between Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. Everyone was fascinated. At another meeting a small group of people from the Czech Republic showed up and tried to explain the basics of their language.

I kept the group going for about nine months until I got burn-out. It was kind of exhausting scheduling all the time. If groups like this could be set up on a permanent basis, it would be better.

Another group I set up was la petite Ecole française. I wanted to do grammar and such, but it just turned into a general French club where gay and Lesbian French people could gather in a safe environment. The first session of the group drew 35 people. I sort of let the group go where it wanted to go naturally. One evening a group of three gay ice hockey athletes from Quebec, Canada, showed up and told about their experiences as athletes at the Olympic Games that were taking place back then in Quebec or Montreal. Another participant, Gaston, kept us up to date on how gay liberation was going in Paris. He was in New York because he worked for IBM.

We also tried to keep up with ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association. I believe they attempted to set up a permanent mission to the U. N.

I wonder how that is going. If ILGA could accomplish what they envision as their mission, our worldwide community could start registering human rights violations complaints with the U. N. about hostile legislation such as what is now happening in Africa and the Soviet Union. Then I saw a new group, International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Is it for real? How does one obtain further information?

I think another important educational tool we need in the various Gay and Lesbian Centers is perhaps a retired lawyer who knows how to keep up with changing case law regarding our civil rights issues. He could make a monthly report to the community in the Community Center. Events like this were held at the Center in New York. Invariably, large numbers of people showed up to hear what is going on once the events were held.

Denver, 2013

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Feathers on the Wing by Pat Gourley

“It has been my experience that gay and lesbian people who have fought through their self-hatred and their self-recriminations have a capacity for empathy that is glorious and a capacity to find laughter in things that is like praising God. There is a kind of flagrant joy about us that goes very deep and is not available to most people. I also think that something about our capacity to live and let live is uniquely foreign – that we have learned in the crucible of the discrimination against us how broad our definitions must be for us to be fully human.” 

Paul Monette 
(From an interview in Mark Thompson’s Gay Soul, 1995). 

My what a slippery concept “the essence of GLBTQ” is as I begin to think about it. Much of my gay adult life has been spent in pondering this but pretty exclusively from the perspective as a gay man. It was work with the Radical Fairies where cultivating our difference, our otherness, was often the stated goal. My thinking in this area has been most emphatically influenced by Harry Hay but also by John Burnside, Don Kilhefner, Mitch Walker, James Broughton, Mark Thompson and Will Roscoe along with many other Fairies brothers.

John Burnside, Pat Gourley, Harry Hay, 1983
Photo by David Woodyard

We know we are different, most of us from a very early age, but the questions have always been ‘how?’ and ‘does it go beyond the bedroom?’ Are we primarily shaped as little queer beings in response to societal pressures and oppressions or is their something much more intrinsic? Are we really “born this way” and then of course certainly flesh out individual responses to our otherness in part based on how we are received by parents, siblings, peers and the larger society? This debate today is largely mute as far as the masses of LGBTQ are concerned and occurs if at all really only in rarified academic, queer and mostly University connected enclaves. The take over of the LGBTQ liberation movement by the issues of military service and marriage equality have at least superficially provided us with an escape valve in the form of the meme “we are no different from anyone else and we’ll prove it if you just give us our rights”.

We have as a group largely abandoned pursuing the old Mattachine questions of ‘who are we,’ ‘where do we come from,’ and most importantly ‘what are we for?’ And perhaps this is OK; life does present more than enough daily struggles that can legitimately keep us from philosophizing about our intrinsic natures. The economic benefits alone that can come from marriage equality are real and beneficial for many. However, that we would need the hetero establishment to validate our relationships seems to me to have a bit of a pathetic groveling component to it.

Harry Hay would on occasion taunt those listening to him by twisting around the old bromide of “we are just like you except for what we do in bed” to and I am paraphrasing here “we need to realize that the only thing we have in common with straight people is what we do in bed”.

Hay used to talk frequently about our unique “gay windows” on the world. We see the same world as straight people do looking out of their windows but the view can be very different. This different window has the potential to provide us with outlooks and viewpoints that potentially could be very different in a beneficial way to society.

I think the above Monette quote is a great concrete example as to how that might look. I do not mean to imply that we have the market cornered on empathy as a result of the oppression we have experienced. The world seems to have lots of oppression to go around and I am sure that it can at times invoke great empathy in the compassionately oppressed. We GLBTQ are however uniquely exposed to it often in our own biological families and in our own communities. So often our oppression comes from within our “inner circle” if you will rather than from without. Ironically perhaps this is our greatest gift and can provide us with something “uniquely foreign” to bring to the human banquet, a very broad definition of what it is to be human and the great joy that can convey.

Let me venture far out on a limb with a very sharp saw. Hay had preached for many years that we are actually a separate people but in later years he began to refine this into the possibility that we are actually a separate gender. He began speaking in terms of a third gender. Not intending to piss anyone off here I think we could safely take this and run with it i.e. why not 4th and 5th and 6th genders as well. For a much more detailed and nuance discussion of the “other genders’ concept I would refer to Radically Gay and the section entitled “Our Third Gender Responsibilities”.

In being questioned by Mark Thompson in an interview with Hay published in the 1995 anthology Gay Soul the topic of third gender came up and in one partial response to a question from Thompson, Harry used a metaphor for us that is I think very beautiful and on topic for today.

“…I believe that gays are a specific development of humanity who have a specific contribution to make to the culture. We’re about multidimensionality, among other things. You might say we are the feathers on the wing.” Harry Hay, 1995.

I’d like to close by saying that coming here every week and interacting in such an intimate fashion with you all reinforces for me repeatedly just how we are all the feathers on the wing.

Denver, July, 2013

About the Author

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.