CORRECTION: Andrew Sullivan's essay cited in the previous post is apparently not on his website, at least not so I could find it. It is in The New Republic's online edition, which requires registration, or maybe subscription, too.

Gore Vidal: right again... Mr. Vidal always says that "homosexual" is an adjective, not a noun, and two recent essays vindicate his position. Andrew Sullivan, in his essay in The New Republic and on his website www.AndrewSullivan.com , titled "The End of Gay Culture", far from being the pessimist manifesto that title might imply, is actually a chronology of victories--some subtle and some loud and clear-- achieved over the last fifty years or so by gay men and women and their friends. He shows what used to be called "gay youth" as taking diverse sexualities in stride, more matter-of-fact and less constrained by the labels of "gay" and "straight"; without the terror and shame that bedeviled those of us who began exploring sex in the 60's.
Likewise, Ritch C. Savin-Williams, in his essay "The New Gay Teen: Shunning Labels" in the latest issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, cites the "fluidity" of the young in their approach to sexuality and their rejection of sexual labels.
It was always a goal of mine to maintain a sparkle in my eye as I grew old and resist the boxes and structures of life that seemed to bear down on and smother the future. Maybe the young can realize this freedom.

Cool essays to ponder... Two recent essays about Iran arrive at similar views of the country, namely that it is a religious state with a very thin veneer. Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair in July of this year, also on his website www.hitchensweb.com ("Mind Over Mullahs") paints a picture of Iran that so surprised me that I was disappointed when the religious-backed candidate actually won the subsequent election. He seemed so optimistic about the future of Iran as a place that actually had a strong yearning for the possibility of a more secular state, free of the mullahs' control. He may have presumed that the outcome of the election was a foregone conclusion and that so predictable an outcome really didn't need mentioning, but I was excited by the sense of possibility he brought to the terrain and confused when the winner won.
The other essay, "Soldiers of the Hidden Imam", in The New York Times Review of Books, www.nybooks.com (thanks to a forward from Arts and Letters Daily) by Timothy Garton Ash says much the same thing with vignettes of the privately-expressed scorn for the muzzle of the mullahs, but a public adherence to all the oppressive forms and rules. Mr. Ash then goes on to predict some hope for the more secular-minded Iranians, in those whom he calls the "Young Persia".
Both these essays brought me an insight into a very complicated situation. Happy reading.