Fearfully, Awkwardly Avoiding the Gay: My Experience With SSA

What were your early impressions of the word "Gay?"

At a young age, I suppose I didn't understand it. I was a bookworm and a recluse, preferring my family, social only in so far as I was dragged by sibling into street hockey and kickball at first, and then later social among only extremely comfortable friends. As a home-schooler, I was outside of mainstream school culture, and understood words not by their slang meanings, but dictionary definitions. Gay was very much still slang when my generation was growing up, so as a non-insider, I'd hear the word 'gay' and assume it meant "merry."

My first introduction to another possible definition was on the basketball courts near my home. My older brothers' friends constantly teased me, as part-and-parcel of their duty and loyalty to my elder bros. Something which I accepted in stride (while pugnaciously fighting it back.) Smack talk was passed back and forth as much as the basketball, and amidst it, someone called me "gay," asking if I was a "lesbian."

A Matter of Nurture: Why the Wound of Homosexuality Claims It's Nature

I've been yelled at by professors, been eaten alive by an area full of students (some I had considered pals) who happen to overhear my thoughts on this, and lost a couple friends who found my opinion just too emotionally unbearable. I've had gay friends disagree, but take it in stride, while straight friends threw absolute fits at the mere suggestion that, no we weren't "born this way." I tried, but I could never get out of them why this suggestion hurt so badly. All I was told was an insult to the dignity of their friends, to the suffering homosexuality attracted individuals had gone through, believing that environment and experiences were the primary determinate for a person's sense of sexuality. They plead that I "just can't know," which is ironic, because they don't know that I do know.

Transgender Reporter Zoey Tur Butts Heads With Ben Shapiro

Transgender reporter Zoey Tur butted heads with Ben Shapiro during a heated discussion on the Courage award granted to Cathryn (formerly Bruce) Jenner. It must be stressed that "butting heads" is  in reference to the confrontational attitudes of Zoey Tur and his fellow liberal panelists on the Dr. Drew show, and not literal, because the subsequent behavior most of them makes this statement confusingly plausible. Billy Hallowell at The Blaze reports that, at one point, reporter Tur placed his hand on Ben Shapiro's neck, stating very firmly that he would "go home in an ambulance" if Shapiro didn't cut out what he viewed as personally offensive and incendiary comments. [Video after the break.]