Once again folks, it's very simple. You want to find openly gay folks, look for an environment where open homosexuals are accepted (not "tolerated", as was pointed out before).
But many gays don't live in those environments. Some keep to themselves. Others have trouble admitting their homosexuality to themselves. Many of those repressed souls you can find at certain parks in your town, hanging out in the public restroom, meeting each other for a quickie. It's sick, but that's the price of societal repression.
Look, I've seen a bit of the world, and I'm a little slow, so folks have tried more and less subtle ways of picking up on me.
(By slow I mean it took me three years to realize that when she let the nightgown fall open, she was coming on to me -- and I was interested in her)
So, sure, I've had men and women come on to me in various parts of the world. I still haven't given in to the men yet. But in my experience, the less accepting a culture is of homosexuality, the more intrusive and brazen those encounters are.
So in other words, the sordid stories I see here as excuses for why "we should keep them studmuffingots in their place" are justifications for perpetuating a system that is sick for both hetero- and homosexuals. That for me is an illness we need to fight.
(and in case you're wondering, the extreme is a nation on the US list of sponsors of terrorism, where male homosexual behaviour is some sort of capital offense).
And yeah, there will always be "swingers" who are an insult to whatever sexual orientation they might have.
And a "sidewinder up the tailpipe" is about as much a part of male homosexual love as its heterosexual equivalent. Sure I think about female genitalia all the time, but when I'm in love with a woman, sex is a small (but important) part of the equation.
If sex were the major reason, we'd all avail ourselves of prostitutes: they're cheaper for god's sake!
Oh yeah, and don't mix pedophiles in. The Boy Scouts ban decent family-man homosexuals (like Robert Baden-Powell), but those spooky pedophiles always seem OK by their book. Thankfully I was never the smallest, most lonesome boy in the troop. Still I remember those campouts, where we heard from the Asst. TL's tent "Hey Steve, wanna see where the horse bit me?"
