Gay men public
TAIPEI — Under a moonlit canopy of bare tree branches, two men in black leather jackets lean against a brick wall. Their exchange is wordless, with only slow movements forward: A lingering gaze, twice over the right shoulder. A hand, stretching over the tense distance between them. One’s fingertips meet the other’s thigh, gradually wrapping around as a claim over the other’s body for the nighttime. But just as a breeze rustles the canopy above, the other clicks his tongue almost inaudibly. He pushes himself off the wall and away from the grips of this dusky park corner, emerging into the streetlamp-lit expanse of Taipei’s streets.
I think of this scene, from the Taiwanese film “Where is the Love?” by the lesbian director Chen Jo-fei, whenever I walk through Peace Park, formerly known as New Park, in central Taipei. In the latter half of the 20th century, it was one of the city’s most well-known gay cruising districts, where men picked up other men through a social code of gazes and grazes.
The news media painted the park as a den of iniquity. As early as , Unite Responding to the flogging of two university students in Indonesia’s Aceh province for having consensual same-sex sexual relations, Amnesty International Deputy Regional Director Montse Ferrer said: “Indonesia’s flogging of two gay men is a horrifying act of discrimination. Intimate sexual relations between consenting adults should never be criminalized, and no one should be punished because of their true or perceived sexual orientation. “Having already had their privacy brutally invaded when they were ambushed by members of the public while having sex, these men were then humiliated in public today and physically harmed. “These flogging punishments are cruel, inhuman and degrading, and may amount to torture. Aceh and Indonesian central government authorities must take immediate activity to halt these practices and revoke the bylaws that permit them to take place. “Such laws must be brought in line with international human rights law and standards, and with Indonesia’s obligations under its own Constitution. Aceh’ Is being gay just about sex? It’s difficult to imagine anyone asking the scrutinize today. If the taglines used to market lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans to the country’s mainstream—“Love Wins,” “It Gets Better,” and “You Can Play”—have led to unprecedented levels of inclusion and visibility, it is precisely by shoving sex aside and presenting gay people and straight people as essentially the same at heart. In the process, as the outsider status attached to being gay disappears in more and more contexts, some of gay culture’s radical roots risk being expunged from memory. This is what historian Jim Downs aims to remedy in his latest book, Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation, by resurrecting the gay print culture and religious life that flourished in the s. Among the root causes of the erasure, Downs argues, is the AIDS crisis; the sexual behaviors and promiscuity of the s have been historicized as not only connected to, but also largely responsible for, the unsparing devastation that followed the spread of HIV. Stand by Me As the UK’s first gay male dating illustrate I Kissed A Boy airs on BBC Three, gay men discuss some of the discrimination they’ve faced for their sexuality. “I’m always very conscious of who is around and trying to make sure what I’m doing doesn’t draw too much attention.” Subomi says being a gay noun can mean he’s sometimes guarded in public when meeting people he doesn’t know. The year-old, who is taking part in the UK’s first gay male dating show I Kissed A Lad, remembers at least one instance of being harassed in adj, when he was on a busy train on the way home from a concert with his sister. “The guy opposite us was staring me down,” Subomi says, adding that the male then began to rant about gay people. He even asked Subomi: “Is your family arrogant of you?” A May BBC Three-commissioned poll, of gay men over 16 years old, suggests 55% of respondents have experienced discrimination in public because they are gay. And 53% of gay men say they have experienced some sort of discrimination while engaging in public displays of affecti
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