So yesterday I was watching the movie “The Longest Yard” again…B-movie featuring Adam Sandler as a point-shaving quarterback who goes to jail and then takes a bunch of inmates and makes them into a football team to play the guards. Anyhow, that isn’t the point…while watching the movie, I remembered a debate my friends and I had, and I wanted to bring the question we debated to you: what constitutes gay?
The reason that this movie brought that back that conversation was that in this movie there are some men who are the ‘girls’ of the jail – dress up in women’s clothing, perform sexual acts on the other inmates etc – and there is a humorous scene where you see one of the inmates kisses another. Anyhow, during our conversation one of my friends said that anyone who engages in a homosexual act is gay. So, I asked, would this make those men in jail who get sexual acts performed upon them by other men gay?
Does a lone act of homosexuality mean you are gay? Yes? No? If not, then where is the line, if there is a line, drawn? 5? 10? And if yes, is the definition different for men and women? I know a number of girls who have made out with other girls, but no one calls them gay. Why? Is it because they are doing it to mess with the heads (no pun intended) of the surrounding males, stimulating the fantasy of being with two women at once, and thus, because they are doing to tease and not for pleasure, they are not gay? Or is it because society is more lax when it comes to women (if two men did that would the reaction be the same)?
Or is being gay a frame of mind? The dictionary says that being gay (homosexual) means “Of, relating to, or having a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex”. So, if we take that to be general definition, then what do you tell my friend is the sexual orientation of those prisoners that have sex, oral or anal, with other prisoners? Are they gay, or simply out of loneliness/desperation/desire, have resorted to same-sex experiences?
Just some random questions I thought I would boil down into a post…Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Taps
