Outspoken: Casey
Jaywork

For young queer men, there aren't many outreach tools more accessible than Internet porn. It's proof not only that there are other homosexuals but that there are other homoSEXuals. When you're 14 and confused, there's a big difference between marching on Washington and seeing two men go at it.

This is important to remember at a time when the Human Rights Campaign tries to sell queers as politely platonic and shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy reduce our sexuality to interior decorating skills. We've replaced Allen Ginsberg with entertaining eunuchs, bathhouses with community centers.

Since Stonewall, gay life has been strongly rooted in sex: queer sexual freedom, the bar and club scene, sexual experimentation, love of the body. By removing sex from our gay identity, we risk losing part of the glue that keeps us together. There are gay rights, and then there's hot, sweaty sex. Both are worth fighting for.

The safe, pretty "just like you" version of gays needs to become passe. Our community knows puritanical marginalization too well--we should realize that acceptance of watered-down queerness is not true equality. We must ensure the right not only to be gay but to be explicitly sexual. We can't allow the mainstream to desex us.