From the outside, the gay community has made more progress on legal and social acceptance over the last 20 years than any other demographic group in history. On the other hand, the rates of depression, loneliness and substance abuse among gay people remain stuck in the same place they’ve been for decades. In the latest edition of HuffPost Highline, Michael Hobbes explores why that is, and the state of gay men right now.
Hobbes brought to light important facts about the gay community. Perhaps most startlingly, gay people are now, as always, between 2 and 10 times more likely than straight people to commit suicide. For ethnic and religious minorities, living in a community with others like them is linked to lower rates of anxiety and depression. For gay men, it’s the opposite. A survey of 740 gay men in New York City found that the ones who lived in gay neighborhoods and had predominantly gay friends were more likely to use drugs, had higher rates of risky sex, meth use and had worse relationships with their partners.
“The drugs were a combination of boredom and loneliness,” he says. “I used to come home from work exhausted on a Friday night and it’s like, ‘Now what?’ So I would dial out to get some meth delivered and check the Internet to see if there were any parties happening. It was either that or watch a movie by myself.”
In one qualitative study of HIV providers, a nurse at a gay men’s clinic in D.C. told researchers: “It’s not a question of them not knowing how to save their lives. It’s a question of them knowing if their lives are worth saving.”
Read Hobbes full Highline piece here to learn the reality of what it’s like to be gay in 2017.
Cultural Marxism is destroying gay people.
Life is not sex and drugs. Life is family. Monogamy and fidelity are the keys to happiness. Not materialism and indulgence.
You can still be gay and love and marry someone and not be part of the gay lifestyle.
I’d gladly live outside of the gay lifestyle if only I could find a truly caring and loving man to share life with until death do us part. I moved from rural CT to suburban FL hoping to find a mate in a ‘gayer’ area and my attempts are going nowhere. This is why I’m depressed, and is about loneliness and solitude. I need the warmth and affection of a loving man beside me.
I feel sympathy. I am gay and I find dating really hard. I I am attracted to someone he is either straight or doesn’t have time. If someone has a crush on me, I may not realise in time! I have a lot of straight friends and find them easy to talk to. I wish gay guys would socialise in more “normal” bars like my straight friends do. Unfortunately, where I now live the gay nightclubs do not facilitate conversation! They exist for these hyperactive, highly-strung kids who don’t want to talk. I am over 40 but still get complimented on my looks. I have lots of friends. Do other gay people not know how to relate to people in a non-pretentious way?