New data have prompted questions about changes in teens’ sexual orientations. But researchers disagree on how much the numbers can really tell us.

© Octavio Jones/Reuters

Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee in New Hampshire, would make history if he won. On the campaign trail, he doesn’t dwell on it.

© John Tully for The New York Times

Since transitioning, Lane Michael Stanley has struggled with his interactions with straight men—especially the classic ‘man-hug’: brief, side-angled, all back slaps and no stomach touching. As he navigates this new territory, he reflects on his other relationships and forms of physical intimacy, examining his life and gender norms from both sides of his transition.

Straight men are generally more standoffish with me than I remember them being before. They make less eye contact, they touch less, they smile less. Do I not know how to read their friendship cues? Maybe straight men befriend other men differently from how they befriend women: no more touch of the arm that they swear is innocent, no more questions they feel entitled to ask or basic facts they appoint themselves to explain. Maybe I should learn to read a curt nod as a sign of camaraderie from men now, replacing whatever a straight man’s sly smile was supposed to convey before.

Or are they more standoffish because they can tell I’m gay? Maybe straight men want to keep me at a distance. Maybe there is a reality to the coldness I read from them, a hostility they throw my way unconsciously. Most of the gay men I know are friends with other gay men, so I’m not sure how gay/straight male friendships function, or if they really exist. My partner (a cis gay man) did have a close straight male friend, but they went barhopping and ended up trading blow jobs, so that doesn’t really count anymore. 

A mosque in London with charitable status is facing an investigation after it published sermons encouraging husbands to strike their wives and condoning the execution of gay people by "throwing them off a tall building".

The post London Mosque Encourages Worshippers to Beat Their Wives and Condones Throwing Gay People Off “Tall Buildings” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.