How important is it to know a hotel is gay welcoming when you travel?

Hollywood actress Anne Heche was until recently dating comedienne Ellen DeGeneres, and telling other gays and lesbians: “If you come out, it’s gonna be better for you.??? But earlier this year she married cameraman Coley Laffoon. So was she a lesbian? “Call me anything you want—I don’t call me anything,??? she told US magazine The Advocate. “The labelling’s about what makes you feel comfortable.??? She eventually released a book called Call Me Crazy.

After years of struggling for recognition, more gay men and lesbians are now denying the labels they fought to proudly attain, contends gay journalist Charlie Porter of Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Their sexuality is “forever subject to alteration according to whim, age or social position???, he says. Consider British singer Tom Robinson, whose song Glad to be Gay became an unofficial anthem of Sydney’s first Mardi Gras as once nervous gays and lesbians stormed out of the bars and into Oxford Street in 1978, only to face arrest. By the ’90s, Robinson had a female partner, and she was pregnant. Have we too simply divided the world into gay and straight? Deakin University psychology lecturer Daryl Higgins says it is certainly true that three key sexuality factors – emotions, erotic desires, and behaviour are not always consistent with each other, or always focused on one gender. In the 60s, this was popularly known as bisexuality.

In the ’90s, postmodernists called fluid sexuality “queer???, and told us sexuality was all about labels and social construction anyway. But the fashion for queer has ebbed, leaving us with only confusion. Dr Higgins has been interviewing gay men who were previously or currently married. Some of them, he says, discover their attraction to men during marriage. Sometimes they leave the marriage, and sometimes they stay because they still love their wives, or for the children’s sake. They see their marriage as “time contingent???. In other cases, men who know they are attracted to men early on marry because they want or need a conventional family, or because of social or religious pressure. “These are the guys that act straight, but they are quite clear about their identity and attraction,??? he says. In one or two cases, their wife will be aware of the husband’s same-sex attraction. But there’s usually denial on her part, says Dr Higgins. Max, a facilitator with the Gay and Married Men’s Association, is not enamoured with this new theory of gay label abandonment. “Its never been easier to be gay,??? he says. “More and more people are coming out.??? What some may see as a trend for celebrity gays and lesbians to dump the tag, others see as merely a symptom of blurred sexual identities in the new millennium. Dr Higgins points to the blended clubbing of gays and straights. And yet many everyday gays and lesbians are holding dearly to their sexual identities.

A relationships survey released late in 2001 by the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby of 670 participants shows that most identify as gay and lesbian rather than bisexual or queer. In what the gay lobby says puts paid to the myth that same-sex relationships are mostly short term, 81 per cent in relationships lived with their partners, and 36 per cent of the current relationships had so far lasted five years or more. As well, 41 per cent of lesbians and 41 per cent of gay men expressed aspirations to have children. For lesbians, this usually meant with their current partner, while gay men wanting children were less likely to see a partner as necessary. Getting married to the opposite sex was the last thing on their minds.

© Steve Dow 2002. Steve Dow is Melbourne journalist and author of Gay, published at www.worldwriting.com Steve was born in Melbourne and survived a childhood in south-surburban Frankston. He began his career writing vox pops for the (now defunct) 'Frankston News'. He has been a staff journalist for 'The Age', and 'The Australian', and he has written feature articles for the Fairfax and Murdoch weekend magazines. You can order Steve’s book on-line at: http://worldwriting.publisher-site.com/ProductShop/