I feel like I'm travelling ahead in time reading this post that's not visible on my main page... It's the mobile page, not sure if that matters.

Suicide is painless.

Interesting. I realize OCD can become overwhelming to where it may threaten the ability of a person to have many successes, but I can't help but wonder if a touch of this drives the Scott Livelys of the world.

This is very hard for me to understand as man who is very clear on my own sexuality.

If you are a man, you look at a human being, and you want to fuck them or you don't. If the ones you want to fuck almost always turn out to be female, then you are straight. What am I missing?

I suspect that these guys are at least bisexual, and maybe just gay, but really really don't want to be for some reason (maybe society's crushing abuse of gay people, and their own homophobia?)

It always amuses me when fundies get all worried about gay "recruitment" or the difficulty of resisting the "hedonistic lifestyle". Only someone with hidden homosexual desires could imagine it works that way. Of course, anyone who is secure in their own sexuality realizes that you want what you want. And as much as I love being a hedonist, somehow I never get around to sucking cock, cause, you know, I'm actually straight.

Such restraint in relating this story, Dan. OMG, what could have been said.

@4: As someone with obsessive tendencies, it's very easy to fixate on things that are entirely in one's head. It's a paranoia of sorts. These men seem to think "well, what if I'm gay and I'm just suppressing my attraction to men without even knowing it?"

They're gay. Get over it.

Peter LaBarbera.

@4: Even if one is sure of their basic wiring, even comfortable being gay in adolescence, at some point guys from 18 -22 or so can have a second "identity" crisis. Those are tough years.

I have a solution: fuck a guy or two. Don't be afraid of liking the cock. And don't be afraid of not liking the cock.

This wreaks of hack psychologists trying to patholigize.

Re: 5, oops, sorry, Dave. You've been concentrating on other beats so long I just assumed... Still, restraint!

If a gay and and an anti-gay shake hands, do they annihilate each other and produce an explosion?

@4 - The reason its hard to understand is because most of us do not have OCD. A person with OCD who has just spent 3 hours washing their hands with soap and bleach and scalding water over and over again is not in danger of spreading any germs, but they just keep on washing any way. You are applying logic to a situation where a person is not able to apply logic. At some point all of us have had a doubt, no matter how fleeting, about our sexuality and most of us are able to immediately resolve it with simple reasoning. Having OCD means you are not able to do this and the ridiculousness of the thought has nothing to do with it. Its frustrating as hell, but its also very real and very difficult for people who have it.

@12. No. Gay is stronger than anti-gay. Instead of exploding, the two of them get a room.

@12: This concludes our episode of "John Bailo says stupid shit about anti-matter". There are surely many, many more episodes to come.

Wow. Multiple such clients at once, and I'd never heard of such a thing. Who knew?

Thank you, @6 and @13.

When I was 13 I was diagnosed with severe OCD, one of my obsessions was that I was gay. My amazing therapist told me a) no big deal if you are b) you're probably not because OCD obsessions/intrusive thoughts are by definition irrational. His solution was--as it was for all obsessive thoughts--exposure therapy! I was handed a homoerotic coffee table book and told to look at the pictures three times a week for 45 minutes at a stretch and freak myself out that I was gay. I would either realize I wasn't and become desensitized to the anxiety, or I would embrace my sexuality. Needless to say I ended up doing many "exposure therapy" sessions in a locked bathroom with that book. BUT intrusive thoughts are real for people with OCD and anxiety over sexuality is one of them (my shrink also saw a gay guy who was obsessing he was straight). It's easy to dismiss this as closeted behavior, but in reality obsessions over sexual attractions that are different from those the patient claims to have are the kinds of intrusive thoughts that anxiety disorders feed on: they are not easy to empirically disprove, they're hard to talk about without inviting judgement, and they undermine foundational assumptions about the self.

When I was young, we just called this "trying new drugs in college," and went on with our lives.

It is a shame that people find it so easy to ignore their biases and why they feel certain ways about minorities/homosexuals/poor folks/politics/whatever, yet when it comes to why they like certain sex things, they introspect so far as to burn holes into their brains.

@15: For the dumbest motherfucker on the planet, that comment was not too bad. Can't train a dog by hitting its nose everytime it does anything. Now that I have defended a John Bailo comment, I am off for a snowball fight in hell.