Dating Website: Chicago Is Top Travel Destination For Closeted Gay Men

According to a dating website that specializes in romantic travel, Chicago is the most popular destination for closeted gay men. Via press release:

Thousands of men are secretly flocking to destinations across the globe. With many counterparts left outside of the picture, many times the real purpose of trips remains undisclosed. MissTravel.com conducted a two-part survey regarding closeted travel. The dating destination website first polled 5,184 male members seeking male travel companions, to find out if they were “out” as homosexuals. The 41% members who were in-fact closeted were then surveyed to discover their top destinations for discreet travel.

Top Closeted Destinations:
1.Chicago, Illinois
2.Sydney, Australia
3.Maui, Hawaii
4.Puerta Vallarta, Mexico
5.Vancouver, British Columbia
6.Las Vegas, Nevada
7.Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
8.Orlando, Florida
9.Buenos Aires, Argentina
10.Minneapolis, Minnesota

The press release adds: "Chicago is known as a major U.S. business hub, making it a plausible destination for prudent travel." 

This Week's National Enquirer

Details.

HomoQuotable - Shepard Smith

"News team- Good morning from Los Angeles. I came to Fox News 18 years ago because they agreed to hire me. I’ve stayed with Fox News because of my relationship with Roger Ailes. He’s my boss, my friend and my steadfast supporter both professionally and personally. Things you might read today are horseshit. As phony as 24-hour breaking news on The Plane Channel. Stand down. Big love. See y'all Monday. Unless breaking news changes everything." - Shepard Smith, responding to Wednesday's Gawker story in an email to fellow Fox staffers.

Gawker: Fox News Demoted Shepard Smith For Wanting To Come Out

An interesting claim from Gawker:

In the summer of 2013, according to multiple sources with knowledge of their exchange, Shepard Smith approached Fox News president Roger Ailes about publicly coming out. The newly attached anchor was eager, at the time, to finally acknowledge his sexuality. “It’s time,” he told Ailes and other colleagues. “It’s time.” Instead, Ailes informed Smith that the network’s famously conservative audience would not tolerate a gay news anchor. Ailes’ answer was definitive: Smith could not say he’s gay.

“This came up during contract negotiations,” a Fox insider told Gawker. “Shep wanted to and was ready to come out, and Roger just said no.” Smith, one of Ailes’s first and most loyal disciples, acquiesced to his boss’s demand, and dropped the matter. But the discussion worried enough Fox executives to prompt Smith’s removal, in September 2013, from the channel’s coveted prime-time lineup. According to a Fox insider with direct knowledge of negotiations, Smith’s desire to come out was a large factor in the dramatic move.

According to Gawker, Fox executives first went on "high alert" after Smith brought his boyfriend to a company picnic. It was shortly after that when Smith reportedly approached Ailes.

Smith and Ailes have issued a joint statement in reaction to Gawker's story: "This story is 100% false and a complete fabrication. As colleagues and close friends at Fox News for 18 years, our relationship has always been rooted in a mutual respect, deep admiration, loyalty, trust, and full support both professionally and personally."

A top Fox executive named in Gawker's anonymously-sourced story has also issued a statement denying their claims. 

"Over the past 18 years, we’ve had the privilege of working with Shepard Smith throughout his incredible rise from a field reporter to chief news anchor and his recent promotion to managing editor. Throughout his entire tenure here, Roger Ailes and I have fully supported him in both a professional and personal capacity. We have never asked Shep to discuss or not discuss his private life, and the notion of us having an issue with anyone’s sexuality is not only insulting, but pure fiction. We renewed his contract in June 2013 based on this full support as well as his exemplary journalism. He’s the gold standard of this profession and we’re extremely proud to call him the face of our news division.”

We've long known that Shepard Smith is gay and Fox management has now issued a de facto acknowledgment that they've always known too. Yet Shepard Smith has still not publicly come out. It's all so bizarre.

STUDY: 10% Of Craigslist M4M Hook-Up Ads Seek Straight-Identified Sex Partners

According to a study conducted by Columbia University, about one in ten M4M hook-up ads on Craigslist stipulate that the author seeks only non-gay-identified men, either as fantasy fulfillment or in order to keep their man-sexin' desires secret. This earthshaking revelation will truly blow the minds every single gay man who has never seen five minutes of gay porn. Or visited Craigslist.

To examine the subgroup of men seeking non-gay-identified (NGI) men in the online sexual marketplace, the researchers reviewed 1,200 Internet personal ads posted on Craigslist and selected 282 for analysis and performed comparisons of two categories of personal ads: those seeking encounters with NGI men, including straight, bisexual, married, curious, and men on the "down low" (those who usually identify as heterosexual but have sex with men); and a contrasting set of ads that did not specifically seek NGI men. Craigslist was chosen because it is publicly accessible, highly trafficked, free-of-charge, and widely used by gay, NGI men seeking men, or men who have sex with men and women to find sexual partners.

Among the ads studied, 11% were placed by men seeking NGI partners. Although men who posted NGI-seeking ads were more likely to self-identify as bisexual, married, and/or discreet and to seek out an anonymous encounter relative to the ads of comparison men, only 24% of online advertisements seeking NGI men were posted by men who were themselves non-gay-identified. This suggests that many of the posts are placed by gay men seeking NGI men, perceived by some gay men to be more masculine, dominant, or "straight-acting."

See? MIND. BLOWN. Of much greater interest is the study's observation that the authors of these ads are also far less likely to request safer sex and condom use, should one of these allegedly NGI men express interest.

The analysis revealed that men seeking NGI partners were significantly less likely to mention that they wanted to have safer sex/use condoms (15% vs. 33%) and were more likely (66% vs. 42%) to omit mention of condoms or safer sex in their advertisements. "This suggests that these men are more likely to be looking for and willing to engage in sex without a condom which may place them at greater risk for HIV/STI transmission than men who are not seeking non-gay-identified male partners," said Dr. Schrimshaw, who is assistant professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health.

The researchers speculate that older, less fit, or less masculine men may perceive themselves as having "less bargaining power" in the sexual marketplace and therefore are more willing to place themselves at risk for STDs in order to get laid. I'm guessing that most of us here have also deduced that sad fact.

Regarding the timeless "NGI men are inherently hotter" trope, years ago when hearing such claims from friends, I would pose a hypothetical scenario and ask which of two identical twins they would most like to have sex with if one is gay, one is straight, and both are equally masculine. Without exception, the straight twin was selected. Usually that was followed by inane rationalizations based on stereotypical examples of social misbehavior by gay men. "Hey, I didn't say you were gonna date him." Further prodding, however, very often elicited a confession of the belief that the straight twin would definitely be a top. Which magically makes him more masculine even though they are equally masculine. Norman, coordinate! Cue the long discussion about self-loathing and all the other baggage in its gravitational pull.

A friend once pointed out a handsome young father waiting with a stroller while his wife window-shopped on a Soho corner. He pondered, "What is it about men with babies that I find so damn sexy?" Thinking it was a rhetorical question, I gave him what I thought to be the obvious answer anyway. "Because right in that stroller is the physical proof that he has sex with women. And for you that instantly makes him more desirable than any similar gay man." The argument that followed convinced me to stop with the dime-store psychoanalysis and just let my friends lust idly for straight men they're not going to bag anyway. But I still won't let them say "straight-acting." That's a paddlin'.

Fox Anchor Shep Smith Attends LGBT Journo Gala, Does Not Come Out

Last week I reported that Fox anchor Shep Smith was the list of attendees for the annual gala held by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, which was held last night in NYC. As you can see from Don Lemon's selfie above, Smith did attend. But he did not come out despite being confronted by a reporter from the Washington Blade.

“I’m going to walk over here,” he said as the Washington Blade asked him about his sexual orientation during NLGJA’s Headlines and Headliners fundraiser at the Prince George Ballroom in Manhattan. A Gawker reporter with whom the Blade spoke outside the venue said Smith took a picture of him with his cell phone as he walked to his car. The Fox News anchor rushed past the reporter as he tried to ask him questions. Blade Editor Kevin Naff outed Smith in 2005 after Smith hit on him in a Manhattan bar. That incident was featured in the documentary film “Outrage;” he recounted the experience earlier this month. “Our company’s the sponsor,” Smith told the Blade. “I’m really happy to be here and it’s great to see a lot of old friends.

(Via Towleroad)

HomoQuotable - Josh Barro

"Being open and unashamed about being gay is just one small thing I can do to change the culture and make life easier for people who haven't had my luck. And that's why I'm mystified by prominent gay people in business and media and Hollywood who choose to be in the closet. They have the ability to help lots of people who don't have their advantages, and they're selfishly passing on it under the guise of 'privacy.' Often, they do this while living quite gaily in places like New York and Los Angeles and reaping the benefits of social acceptance in their non-professional lives.

"Imagine, for example, that you were a prominent daytime news anchor on a national cable news channel aimed at a conservative audience, and you were gay. You would have the potential, by coming out of the closet, to change millions of viewers' perspective on gay people for the better. You'd make it easier for your closeted gay viewers to love themselves, and easier for your viewers' gay children to come out. Or you could live a fabulous gay life with your boyfriend in New York City while staying closeted to the national audience. Wouldn't that be a pretty decadent choice?" - Josh Barro, in a Business Insider piece that continues his reactions to hateful emails from Duck Dynasty fans.

The Tolerance Spectrum

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writes for the New York Times:

Using surveys, social networks, pornographic searches and dating sites, I recently studied evidence on the number of gay men. The data used in this analysis is available in highly aggregated form only and can be downloaded from publicly accessible sites. While none of these data sources are ideal, they combine to tell a consistent story. At least 5 percent of American men, I estimate, are predominantly attracted to men, and millions of gay men still live, to some degree, in the closet. Gay men are half as likely as straight men to acknowledge their sexuality on social networks. More than one quarter of gay men hide their sexuality from anonymous surveys. The evidence also suggests that a large number of gay men are married to women.

There are three sources that can give us estimates of the openly gay population broken down by state: the census, which asks about same-sex households; Gallup, which has fairly large-sample surveys for every state; and Facebook, which asks members what gender they are interested in. While these data sources all measure different degrees of openness, one result is strikingly similar: All three suggest that the openly gay population is dramatically higher in more tolerant states, defined using an estimate by Nate Silver of support for same-sex marriage. On Facebook, for example, about 1 percent of men in Mississippi who list a gender preference say that they are interested in men; in California, more than 3 percent do.

Read the full analysis.

HomoQuotable - Tam O'Shaughnessy

"It’s scary to be open because you don’t realized the impact that it might have on so many aspects of your life. You worry about grants, about whether you’ll be able to continue writing children’s textbooks; we were scared that if sponsors knew the founders of Sally Ride Science were two lesbians, if that would affect our organization. I wanted to ensure Sally’s legacy reflected the integrity in which she lived her life. For her not to be open in this one way felt wrong." - Tam O'Shaughnessy [background in photo], on the decision to out Ride in her obituary. O'Shaughnessy says Ride left it up to her. "‘You decide,’ she said and that shocked me. That girl was great about surprises."

Today Sally Ride and Bayard Rustin, the gay black man who organized the 1963 March On Washington, will posthumously receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Margaret Cho On John Travolta

"I’m going to get in trouble, but I’ll just tell you. He is so gay. John Travolta is so gay. He’s not just gay. He doesn’t just like men. He is like Oscar Wilde gay. Like Lord Byron gay. That kind of crazy, incredibly flamboyant gay. I know him well because I did a movie with him and worked with him for a year. I feel bad for him; because I know he would be much happier if he could just come out. But he can’t." - Margaret Cho, during a concert in Australia.

HomoQuotable - Richard Kim

"By January 1984, New York City under Koch’s leadership had spent a total of just $24,500 on AIDS. That same year, San Francisco, a city one tenth the size of New York, spent $4.3 million, a figure that grew to over $10 million annually by 1987. The mayor of San Francisco during those years was Dianne Feinstein, who like Koch was no radical. She came from the centrist coalition that included Dan White, the city supervisor who murdered Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, whose office Feinstein assumed in the wake. Like Koch, she had a troubled relationship with the gay community (she infamously vetoed a domestic partnership bill in 1983). And like Koch, she was, above all, a political opportunist with national ambitions who happened to live in a liberal city with a large, politically active gay population. But she was straight, and paradoxically, that made a difference in how those two cities treated people with AIDS in those formative years.

"Ed Koch might not have been in a position to accelerate antiretroviral drug development or slow the transmission of HIV on a national scale, but he definitely could have made the lives of thousands of people with AIDS in New York City a whole lot more humane, which might also have extended some of those lives until an effective treatment was available. That he has blood on his hands seems likely. That he is guilty of the curious combination of paranoia, myopia, self-interest and callousness that so often attaches to closeted public officials seems undeniable. Would the fight against AIDS been helped had Ed Koch come out of the closet? Possibly. But it definitely would have been better had he just been straight. God bless his surely weary soul. I won’t." - Richard Kim, writing for The Nation.

Read the full essay.

HomoQuotable - Michael Musto

"It's a shame the ex-NYC mayor never came out. It's tragic that he hid behind excuses like the fact that he was old and wasn't sexual at all anymore. Old people are still sexual--and if you're gay, you're still gay--and besides, he could have commented on his past. But Ed was so paranoid on the subject that when I interviewed him in the '90s, he propped up a tape recorder to tape me as I recorded him. It was a creepy double game of 'gotcha!' that led nowhere (though he was otherwise gruffly charming). [snip] The world is now an emptier place, but so is the celebrity closet." - Michael Musto, writing for the Village Voice.

HomoQuotable - Azariah Southworth

"Outing Jonathan [Merritt] was not an easy decision. I mulled it over for more than a year and discussed it with friends. Those conversations always ended in, 'Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea.' So, what changed my mind? I was tired of the lies. I was tired of hearing Jonathan say that being gay is not 'God’s best.' Meanwhile he enjoys the company of men. Jonathan’s approach to LGBT people and issues may be less extreme than that of the late Jerry Falwell, but in the end the results and message are the same: Your sexual orientation is a sin and you need to change with God’s help. It’s all lies — and the conversation not only needs to change but the leaders as well. I’m tired of my humanity as a gay man being invalidated by hypocritical leaders like Jonathan, who then expect my support in return." - Azariah Southworth, writing for Salon.

Southworth says he's plagued with guilt that he didn't warn Merritt in advance, presumably to give him a chance to come out on his own. The above-linked essay contains some frank revelations of how Southworth first hooked-up with Merritt at a Chicago conference for evangelicals. Recommended.

Closet Monsters

I strongly recommend checking out Salon's excellent examination of the self-hating gay men who cause enormous damage to the LGBT community from inside their pathetic closets. Many of those cited have been well-documented here on JMG.

New York Observer On Outing

As part of their gay pride edition, today the New York Observer posted a lengthy piece on the changing ways that the media handles closeted celebrities. An excerpt:

With the number of prying media outlets—TMZ, Perez Hilton, Gawker, TV newsmagazines like Extra, a vivified set of glossy tabloids—growing seemingly by the week, celebrities have come up with a new strategy to decline discussing their personal lives until they’re good and ready. Living in the so-called “glass closet,” they can forestall the legitimate press inquiring after their home life while also ensuring that their orientation is hardly breaking news. It’s being basically out, without having to answer any questions.

Name-checked in the article are John Travolta, Anderson Cooper, Queen Latifah, and Chace Crawford.

Questions Arise In Atlanta Attack

The vicious and seemingly random beating of a 20 year-old Atlanta gay man, which last week became a viral video featured hourly on CNN, may not have been as it first appeared. Gay activists who initially backed the victim now say that he did indeed know his attackers and had threatened to out them for being on the down low.

Golden Globes 2011: Host Ricky Gervais Mocks John Travolta's Closet

HomoQuotable - Richard Chamberlain

"There’s still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture. It’s regrettable, it’s stupid, it’s heartless, and it’s immoral, but there it is. For an actor to be working is a kind of miracle, because most actors aren’t, so it’s just silly for a working actor to say, 'Oh, I don’t care if anybody knows I’m gay' — especially if you’re a leading man. Personally, I wouldn’t advise a gay leading man–type actor to come out. Despite all the wonderful advances that have been made, it’s still dangerous for an actor to talk about that in our extremely misguided culture. Look at what happened in California with Proposition 8. Please, don’t pretend that we’re suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted." - Richard Chamberlain, speaking to the Advocate.

Quote Of The Day - Kevin Spacey

"Look, at the end of the day people have to respect people's differences. I am different than some people would like me to be. I just don't buy into that the personal can be political. I just think that's horseshit. No one's personal life is in the public interest. It's gossip, bottom line. End of story. Now some people feed that. They'll go to the trendy restaurants where all the photographers are and then bitch about being famous. But if you don't want to feed that and you want your life to be based around what your work is then it ends there." - Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, taking a page from Queen Latifah in a Daily Beast interview that asks why he won't officially come out.

Glee Spoiler: Bullies & Burnett

Stay out out OUT of the comments if you haven't seen tonight's surprise and tear-laden episode. Otherwise dive in and dish the many unexpected developments. Yes, Glee is corny, over the top, and often unbelievable. But I believe it is changing the minds of millions of American teenagers. I don't see how it can't be. Now hand me another tissue.