Gays life
How to Be Happy as a Gay Man
I’m an advice columnist for the Advocate.com. Here’s my acknowledge to the following scrutinize, sent by a reader.
Dear Adam,
I have a superb boyfriend, interesting job, pretty dog, and enough coins to buy most things I want. This is supposed to be lgbtq+ heaven. And yet, I’m not happy. I often feel like “is this all there is?” Why can’t I just be grateful all the good I have?
Signed,
Disappointed in Denver
Dear Let down in Denver,
You’re not alone with these feelings. In fact, they are cute common. But we rarely talk about it. If we do, we dread we’ll sound spoiled.
There’s a lot of research existence done on happiness these days.
We think what will make us most delighted is a great employment, a devoted boyfriend or girlfriend, and a pretty apartment.
However, the research makes it clear that the strongest source of happiness is the feeling of being connected and part of a larger whole.
That sounds old-fashioned. Like we should all be in church on Sundays. And the majority of LGBTQ people lost interest in religion a long second ago, especially when it became clear that we weren’t welcome in most churches.
And yet, the feeling of “is this all there is?” pers
What’s Behind the Rapid Ascend in LGBTQ Identity?
Newsletter Rally 6, 2025
Daniel A. Cox, Jae Grace, Avery Shields
Since 2012, Gallup has tracked the size of America’s LGBTQ population. For the first few years, there was not much news to report. The percentage of Americans who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual person, transgender, or queer was relatively low and inching up slowly year over year. Recently, the pace has sped up. Gallup’s newest report recorded the single largest one-year grow in LGBTQ identity. In 2024, nearly one in ten (9.3 percent) Americans identify as LGBTQ.
The unwavering rise in LGBTQ culture among the public is worth noting, but it’s not the most key part of the story. Most of the uptick in LGBTQ identity over the past decade is due to a dramatic increase among young adults, particularly young women. In less than a decade, the percentage of new women who identify as LGBTQ has more than tripled.
The gender gap in LGBTQ identity has exploded as well. A decade earlier, young women were only slightly more likely to identify as LGBTQ than young men. For instance, in 2015,
They lived a 'double life' for decades. Now, these gay elders are telling their stories.
In the 1950s, when Ray Cunningham was just 19, he served in the Navy as secretary to the personnel officer aboard the USS Ranger. He was responsible for preparing discharge and reassignment paperwork, and sometimes he would have to dishonorably discharge men for being gay.
“It was difficult,” Cunningham, now 82, told NBC News. “At that time I realized that I was gay, and it was just complicated to know that people were being discharged for the same thing that I was in my life.”
“What bothered me the most was having to talk to the guys that were being discharged, and they were not in a good articulate of wellness anyway, because at that time, it was illegal or considered mental problems to be gay,” he said.
Cunningham spent the next four decades in the closet until he and his loved one of 30 years, Richard Prescott, 78, came out after retiring in their 50s.
The two men, who are now married, joint their stories as part of “Not Another Second,” a new multimedia art exhibit in Brooklyn, Brand-new York, that features 12 LGBTQ elders, many of whom spent most of their lives in the proverbial close
Pre-war Homosexual life
Prior to the Holocaust and the Nazi rise to power, queer contact was legally banned under Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which was introduced on the 15 May 1871. Despite this, there was still a thriving queer community in many areas.
In Berlin there were a large number of openly homosexual, transvestite and dyke bars where people met and socialised. The same-sex attracted community was so well-known it even appeared in some tourist guides at the time.
At the twist of the twentieth century a growing gay rights movement formed, reaching its height in the 1920s. This movement was headed by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish physician and homosexual. Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Study in 1919, the first institute of its gentle across the world.
Hostility towards gay men intensified obeying the Nazi rise to power. Homosexuals were viewed as weak and unlikely to make good soldiers, or contribute to the ‘Aryan’ race by having children. As such they were catagorised as ‘ a-social ‘ by the Nazis.
Homosexuals were imprisoned, tortured, and deported to concentration cam
.