Jun 24, 2005  ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG | COMMENTS     

Gay sex is everywhere these days. Flip on the nightly news to find lawmakers and pundits debating the validity of private relationships and public commitments.

Change the channel and see that the recently won freedom of privacy in the bedroom brought on graphic gay sex on shows like “Queer As Folk,” “The L Word,” “Six Feet Under” and even ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.”

The culture wars are bringing gay lives into everyone’s living room, and often it’s promiscuous sex that’s depicted. But is that the reality of gay sex today?

Interviews with several people in cities up and down the East Coast show that the answers fall all over the map. Yes, there is promiscuity. But there are also long-term relationships and personal codes of conduct based on a variety of complex factors.

According to men and women in a wide range of occupations and age groups, there’s decidedly more nuance to our sex lives than television — or anti-gay pundits — would have us believe. And old stereotypes of gay men who are just out for sex and lesbians who mate for life simply no longer apply.

In a still-evolving era of activism, gay men and lesbians have more freedom than ever to define their own sexual code of conduct, but the interpretations of that freedom are as widely varied as the people who make the choices.

“The hardest part of this is making generalizations as if the LGBT community is one community because it’s not,” said Michael Hendricks a psychologist and sex therapist at the Washington Psychological Center in Friendship Heights.

Sex too soon
Waiting to have sex or jumping into bed on the first date can have negative and positive consequences, according to some sex experts.

Hendricks said that when two people have sex too soon, the relationship is more likely to be based on a fantasy.

“You don’t really know who the person is,” he said. “You’re filling in the rest with fantasy. The longer you know the person the more it’s based in reality.”

Often people hope an incredible sexual connection will translate to an emotional connection. That, of course, is not always the case.

“Sometimes the sexual attraction is so great that you want — more than anything — for there to be an emotional attachment as well,” wrote Adena, a 21-year-old bisexual D.C. resident who filled out a Blade sex survey. “Sometimes I think it’s better to date people who at first are less physically attractive to you, but with whom you immediately form some sort of emotional bond.”

But having sex early on isn’t always doom and gloom.

“I think if you’re just into having a good time, enjoying sex, exploring your sex, learning more about yourself that way — some people get a lot of fun out of that,” said D.C. sex therapist Alice Penner.

But, she warns, sex with no strings attached can get “tiresome and dangerous.”

Adena agreed that casual sex can be healthy but warned that too much of anything is usually not good.

“It can be fun to just go at it because you find the other person hot and this feeling is mutual. I think there is a place and time for that kind of sex in everyone’s life. I’m a firm believer that everyone needs one good, passionate, completely immoral romp in their lives … But how many of those does a person need? For me, at least, I know that sex with emotional attachment is far better than the one-night stand thing.”

Sex lives are influenced by emotional and superficial factors: race, age, level of comfort with being gay, how drunk or high you might be, your relationship history, a broken heart and health status. Rejection and self-esteem also greatly affect decisions to wait or to have sex right away, experts say.

Sex can be used to bolster lacking self-esteem, Penner explained. Others may avoid sex out of fear of being rejected, Hendricks said.

“Bad break-ups tend to make it easier to have some sort of false logic in terms of sleeping with someone soon after your heart was stomped on,” Adena wrote. “Sometimes it’s more about feeling wanted than sex.”

Adena said that, at times, low self-esteem has influenced her sex life.

“Sometimes I’m very insecure, so this makes it hard to even think ...