When A Man Loves A Man
I’ll update with more links as I get them, but for now I’m linking to the publisher’s web site for the release of When A Man Loves A Man. It’s the most recent book in the Glendora Hill series. And this one is focused on a couple of new characters that are introduced, one of whom is an openly gay cowboy and country western singer. I never hear anything mainstream where men sing love songs about other men and I wanted to do that with fiction with this book.
There’s an interesting twist to this one that is sort of the opposite of coming out of the closet as gay. In this particular case, without giving spoilers, it’s the opposite of what you might think.
Here’s the blurb:
Clayton’s two passionate dreams in life are marrying the man he loves, Bobby Joe, and making it big as an openly gay country western singer. He thinks life is simple until he surprises Bobby Joe one weekend in Glendora Hill at the Marshall Ranch and discovers a few secrets Bobby Joe’s been keeping from him all along.When Bobby Joe’s dad rejects him with obvious contempt, Clayton’s not sure how to deal with him or the rest of Bobby Joe’s unexpected family. His plans to ask for Bobby Joe’s hand in marriage fall through each time he comes close to the right moment.With the help of recurring characters like Sebastian, Judd, and Avery, Clayton finds some comfort in Glendora Hill, but not nearly as much as he’d hoped for. Will the obstacles that stand in his way of marrying Bobby Joe be too hard to fight? And will Bobby Joe’s hateful dad ever get over the fact that a strong handsome gay cowboy like Clayton wants to marry his precious son?
Kim Davis In Federal Custody
The Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis, who has been defying legal orders to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples based on her religious convictions, was taken into federal custody today. I’m sure the saga is going to continue.
A defiant county clerk was sent to jail for contempt Thursday after insisting that her “conscience will not allow” her to follow a federal judge’s orders to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
“God’s moral law conflicts with my job duties,” Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis told U.S. District Judge David Bunning. “You can’t be separated from something that’s in your heart and in your soul.”
The judge said she left him with no alternative but to jail her, since fines alone would not change her mind. A deputy escorted her out of the courtroom, although not in handcuffs, to be turned over to the custody of federal marshals.
The hard part for me with all this is that while I understand her religious convictions, I don’t understand her outright contempt for the law. And that’s as far as I’m taking this. It’s the law. The law has nothing to do with how you feel, think, or what you believe. If that were the case and everyone acted the way she’s been acting we’d all be living in absolute chaos.
Bisexual Israeli Guys
There have been studies lately that seem to indicate that there are a lot more people who identify as something other than heterosexual. This one is about Israeli guys…
The Israeli website Mako teamed up with the Pannels Institute to conduct a study in which they asked 600 non-religious Israeli Jews over the age of 18 about their sexual preferences, and the results may delight you.
Researchers found that 67 percent of respondents considered themselves to be heterosexual, but only 3 percent of that 67 percent said they were “100 percent homosexual.” The remaining 30 percent said they were somewhere in-between straight and gay.
I’m not all that shocked. I’ve been posting for ages about how many “straight” guys I dated when I was single, many of whom now have wives and kids. They always told me, at the time, they were bisexual. One was a big strong Marine who shocked me when he started showing interest. It’s something that wasn’t talked about as much in the 90’s as it is now…or accepted as much.
There’s more here, with a few photos.
PreP Study and HIV
I’ve posted about this before. It’s about gay men taking the drug, Truvada, as a prophylaxis. I think this is one of the first studies to actually get results that’s not considered a clinical trial.
Researchers at the Kaiser Pemanente Medical Center in San Francisco have given over 600 people Truvada to use daily.
No one contracted HIV.
The average age of the study participants was 37, 99% were gay or bisexual men and the average length of individual usage was 7.2 months.
The article goes on to mention the same arguments they’ve been discussing all along. One group supports PrEP while another considers it a “party” drug designed to keep people from using condoms. My biggest concern is the cost of the drug and the fact that like all other drugs there are side effects. However, even though it’s not something I would personally do because I don’t like taking ANY medications at all, I do think that if it helps anyone out there either emotionally or physically it’s worth the try.