Display all the Gay art you want, it is your house. They can leave if they don't like it.
Some Gay people never have any expectations for themselves.
It is your damn house, if they don’t like the Gay art they can leave.
I have Gay art on the walls of the rooms in my historic house. What always amazes me is how many Gay people visiting me are astounded that I am not worried what people will think or who will see it.
If you can’t even have what you want in your own home, what type of Gay life are you living? Even if the Gay person raising the concern in alarm acts like they are all avant-garde or radical, the reality is that they are worried what people will think.
Basically they are zero Gays since whatever radical pose they have or what they may say they really are Zero Gays. [Link to essay at the end of this post.]
This post is about some of the reasons given to reject having Gay art in your place, and also some other observations about having Gay art in your home.
BTW: At the end of the post is a link to a directory of all of the art posts of the Gay Agenda.
What if your mother sees it!
I hear this.
Your mother has seen a penis before. This is how you originated. She has also seen art exhibits. Try to have better expectations of your mother.
It might be possible that she will object if she is, let’s say, a member of the 1st Lunatic Baptist Church of East Swampy, Texas, and if so, hopefully pictures like this keep her out of your house and life.
The question is whether you are going to keep your life constrained into a little cramped space based on what your mother might be upset with, or usually what is really the case, what you imagine your mother might be upset with.
My question is, “Whan are you going to start living your life.”
What if my boss is over and sees it!
This is when they are explaining why they can’t have Gay art on their walls. If you really are worried about co-workers seeing it and impacting your job, you should already have an active plan to be looking for another job and not have a job where this is a problem.
If co-workers seeing your art is a real problem, and not a imagined problem from a closety mind, you likely are suppressing your life in other ways. It is no way to live.
I don’t want to shove it in people’s faces.
This is when they are explaining why they can’t have Gay art on their walls.
As stated earlier, if visitors feel it is offensive they can leave your house.
However, this bring up an issue about how you really feel about being Gay and whether you actually have any Gay pride. Do you think art work expressing men as objects of desire is seriously visually offensive? Something that is not photographic and just showing a nude man is offensive?
The real issue might be that the Gay art on the wall is very direct in stating that you are Gay. You might be basically embarrassed being Gay.
Don’t let closet cases/Respectability Gays try to shame you.
Just by entering your house and seeing your art, closet cases are confronted by how they live closeted lives and the Respectability Gays will be worried that you are giving Gay a bad name.
They may be sly in their attacks. One might say that he doesn’t like representational or figurative art. Or some art snobbery might be stated. Another statement might be that Gay art isn’t just about naked men, though the reality is for the person making this statement, Gay art would NEVER be about naked men and he doesn’t have any Gay art on the walls of his place of any type.
Or their might an attack that your pictures don’t have inclusiveness.
Or they will try to represent not having Gay art as some type superior virtue.
The solution to this behavior is just showing them the front door and asking them to exit. Or at the very least they aren’t invited over the next time.
Just because I am Gay doesn’t mean …
Just because you are Gay doesn’t mean you have to breath if you don’t want to.
Everytime someone says this, they are doing a tiresome misdirection, and raising a false opposite. They do this to shut down the discussion on a lot of things. No one is trying to compell you to have any art on your walls at all.
Often, it will come up that it is suggested that a person might have some Gay art, and they will immediately say, “Just because I am Gay doesn’t mean …”
The issue has been shifted from a discussion of whether it might or might not something to do on its own merits, to an issue of compulsion.
It should be noted that they likely don’t have any art, photographs, or posters which might reveal they are Gay in their house. (No, that framed poster of Marilyn Monroe doesn’t count.)
One reason to have Gay art is that it reveals who people really are.
People who like to represent themselves as avant-garde or advanced or radical or free-thinkers or something, don’t like to admit they are closeted. The fact that they find you having Gay art as extreme or unacceptable or outlandish, and further don’t have any in their place, reveals that underneath all the radical fluff they might exhibit, they really are conventional and closeted.
When you hang Gay art in your place it confronts them with their closeted life.
Or it could be that under all that public persona they really are a person who is puritanical or uncomfortable with sex.
It is fine if they want to say they are closeted and stay closeted. What isn’t fine is that they come up with some excuse rationalizing not having Gay art which is an attack against having Gay art.
Making your house/apartment a Gay space.
Art is used to make spaces special and give them an identity. That is why Churches often have art work, businesses will have symbolic art works in front of their building, and of course local, state, and federal government have numerous art works.
With Gay art you make your place a Gay space where a Gay person lives and a space which re-affirms your life.
Support yourself, and support Gay artists and get a few Gay art pieces for your place.
Subscription are free.
This page has links to all of the other posts about Gay art.
This is a link to a post about how Leslie-Lohman Museum abandoned Gays for something, not sure what.
This is about Gays who have Zero expectations for themselves as Gay people.
Excellent article.
Hi Ed, thanks for posting one of my drawings! Nice to see it again after all these years. --Douglas Simonson