Older Gays Coming Out for the First Time

With all the media attention focused on younger gays, it is refreshing to see an article in the Associated Press about elderly people who are coming out for the first time.

I have had a bad experience with linking to AP articles. Typically, after a month or two, the links become defunct. I hope this one lasts. If not, search for "Gay seniors come out late, start second lifetime," by Matt Sedensky, reporting from Miami, Florida. It is quite a good read.

I think I had better read more about this "Male Lesbian Complex" mentioned in Sedensky's article. Hmm. I do wish the psychological establishment could render a more pleasant-sounding description than "Complex". Is it really so complex? Of course, psychologists use the word "complex" in the sense of a structure, which begs the question, how was the structure built--and why? The word "Complex" has a bad reputation due to its association with the Oedipus Complex. In my opinion, the word should be abandoned altogether, because it is a superfluous noun appended to self-sufficient phrases. If one thinks of a man as being a kind of male lesbian, why not call him that? Why the "Complex?" I think the word is used for show. "Complex" has scientific connotations in the realm of molecular chemistry. Psychologists are painfully aware that psychology is far from a science, and their desperate yearning for scientific credibility tempts them to borrow scientific terminology, whether necessary or not, in order to improve their standing in public opinion.

The media does a fairly good job reporting on gays these days, far better than in the paranoid past, when we were maligned as everything bad under the sun. I do remember those days, as I was a child and teenager then and grew up with the sense that the world was against me, because it was so written in the local newspaper, in magazines, on television, and everywhere, and reinforced in school and at home.

The strangest thing of all is how widespread a slur against a group of people can become, so that almost everybody, however educated and intelligent, believes in it. The lie detector in many people is not very advanced at all. Evil-doing on a vast scale becomes possible when many people cling to falsehoods. Therein lies the potential for the self-destruction of our species.