I'm sorry, but that essay is a lot of shameful, self hating shit.
Everyone I know is perfectly happy to be gay.
As kids we were in the closet, as is Barnabas, so I can see that aspect of relating to it.
But all that self hating crap is for the birds.
And I know PLENTY of long term gay couples.
SHAME on that writer.
I met him a few times.
He told me that he thought all DS fans had "something
wrong" with them.
Shame on him.
David... respectfully...
That last bit about DS fans having something wrong with them, that's bad... but I don't get your hostility toward the rest of what he said. Most of what was said came out of real personal feelings, which he then generalized to include gays overall, and if he generalized too much, then fine, he made a mistake. You're making sweeping generalizations based on your personal experience, too.
"Everyone I know is perfectly happy to be gay." In this society? Where so many different kinds of people are shamed over what they are? Everyone you personally know isn't everybody. And we're not talking about grown-ups who have made their adjustments to life and society, but kids growing up on DS. The most troubling thing here is that you seem to feel it's a crime or a sign of something horribly wrong with a person to be insecure, or to be "unhappy". It's not.
There wasn't self-hatred in the article. You know this person to some extent, so you have that to go by, but it didn't make its way into print. I just saw his acknowledgement of feelings of isolation and alienation. And should someone be attacked for "self-hatred"? I'd think sympathy is the right response to that, and maybe support.
My response to the comments about gays not having long-term relationships was to say... all groups have that problem. If gays were the exception, that would be remarkable.