No, there is no nudity in this site, as per Geocities policy, and given that same policy I can't link to a page where you can find it, though I imagine that the more resourceful among you already know about Men on the Net.
My
purpose here, though, isn't nudity, just presenting some beautiful men
for your enjoyment, along with some thoughts on where the Net is heading
and what this means for our community. A strange mix, I know, but
it makes sense in a way, and the next page is nothing but pictures, so
please bear with me.
To begin, where did we get this notion that the Net should be in all ways perfectly inoffensive even to the most innocent child or sheltered adult who happens to wander onto it? We don't think the same about libraries and bookstores, which freely carry materials intended for adults, nor do we think the same thing even about cable television, which broadcasts some genuine trash. But when it comes to the Internet, we are suddenly driven down to the level of Saturday morning network television.
This is a special threat for
the gay community because of the isolation that is part of many of our
lives. For the vast majority of us who do not live in cities, the
Net is often the only source of information available. In my own
case, it was accurate, unbiased information on sexuality, found on the
Net, that played a major role in my coming to accept myself after many
hard years. The Net is still the best way for someone like me, living
in a small town, to follow gay news and politics.
What,
then, about those other young people who have recently come up against
some hard truths of their own? Where will they find the information
they need? After all, it is not only the Net that is under assault.
From the federal level to the local school board, there are increasing
attacks on young people's access to information. In one New Hampshire
school district, a teacher was suspended simply for telling her students
that Walt 
Whitman
was gay. Federal lawmakers have attempted to deprive of funding those
few districts that provide counseling for gay students on the grounds of
"promoting homosexuality." The Bush Administration, under pressure
from the religious fanatics who held it captive, tried to suppress a federal
study that found dramatically higher rates of suicide among gay and lesbian
teenagers. And so on--you've heard all the stories.
In short, the issue of Net
censorship is a life and death matter because it attempts to take away
the only means many gays and lesbians have of learning about themselves
and gaining a feeling of community in a world that is generally hostile
to them. That alone is reason enough to oppose all attempts to control
content.
Doing this fairly, however,
means looking honestly at the motives of our opponents. Clearly those
who attempt to remove all gay and 
lesbian
information from public access are motivated by prejudice, whether or not
they will admit it. It's a complicated issue--I know from my own
religious upbringing that these people genuinely believe that sexual orientation
is a choice and that by "protecting" children from anything positive about
gays and 
lesbians
they can prevent them from making the "wrong" choice. Their belief
is sincere, though the results are certainly hateful and their prejudice
just as real as that of any bigot, no matter how well-intended they might
be. And, given the increasing evidence that sexual orientation is
not and has never been a choice, something we have known since Freud, their
ignorance can only be willful.
Of course, there are those who cynically exploit
the issue for personal gain, like Pat Robertson, the Family Research Council,
D. James Kennedy, Jerry Fraudwell, Focus on the Family, Jesse
Helms, and others. They deserve only contempt, and we should
oppose them by any legal means possible, no matter how 
dirty.
(The "outing" of Jimmy Swaggart comes to mind here.) We should expose
these people for what they are and we should do it at every opportunity.
Opposing censorship of the Net, however, also means
dealing with those who give strength to the idea that the Net is full of
pornography. One such group is those who spam porn ads into newsgroups
that are presumably intended for the general public. Even groups
devoted to such topics as bread-making, fonts, and painting are now filled
with messages that I cannot repeat here. The effect is that there
is literally 
nowhere
in Usenet (save the handful of moderated groups) where a responsible parent
can let a child read, and all those responsible parents are right to be
disgusted. Hell, I'm not a parent and I get angry every time I go
into a politics or art group and find that half or more of the messages
deal with porn. (alt.politics.homosexuality
is pretty much dead now because of spam--most readers have apparently grown
tired of wading through it and there is little of the lively discussion
that made that newsgroup such a pleasure only a few months ago.)
But parents are also at fault
here because of their 
desire
to abdicate their responsibilities and let the computer be their baby-sitter,
just like the television.
Which brings us to another
issue dealing with far more than just the Internet. Why do so many
parents seem to assume that the whole world should accommodate them simply
because they have children? The rest of us should pay more taxes
so that Uncle Sam can pay them to produce as many babies as possible.
The rest of us should simply smile when their dear young'uns make it impossible
for us to enjoy a meal or a movie. We should say not a word when
eight-year-olds are invited to join the poker game (with daddy playing
their hand and explaining every single move over and over while everyone
else struggles to calculate odds or at least remember what's in their hands).
We should see nothing amiss when the adults cannot watch a PG-13 movie
on the old VCR until after midnight because the kids don't 
feel
like going to bed yet and it might hurt their feelings to tell them to
stay out of the living room for a while. And the rest of us should
simply be polite when they bring their darlings into our homes and allow
them to destroy them piece by piece. After all, they are children!
Of course, most of us knew better than do such things when we were children,
but then most of us didn't have the kind of parents who thought "counting"
or a "time-out" was severe discipline.
This might seem like a digression,
but it's not. This notion that the entire world should reduce itself
to the level of small children is most of what's behind the whole controversy
over what we can and cannot discuss on the Internet. 
Parents
love this approach for obvious reasons--it saves them a lot of trouble--and
politicians find in the notion of saving the children a sure issue that's
bound to offend almost no one. And where censorship is concerned
we're not just talking about scat pictures here. Some providers have
actually censored discussions of AIDS and cancer because they contained
such filthy words as breast and penis.
After so many struggles, we're right back to the age when Tobacco Road and Lady Chatterley's Lover were under legal assault.
Could it be, perish the thought,
that there is some substantive difference between the Internet and Captain
Kangaroo? Could it be that there should be some space where adults
can talk to adults about adult concerns? Could it be, if you can
pardon my boldness, that parents have some responsibility for their own
children's upbringing? Is it possible that the whole world is not
their baby-sitter?
I hope so, and I hope the majority insists on it. Otherwise the first truly democratic means of publication in history will become simply another form of mindless entertainment. It's sobering to read early pronouncements on the great educational potential of first film and then television because we know what's happened with them.
Sorry to go on so long, but
I do think that the infantilizing of American culture, particularly as
it is exemplified in Net censorship, is enough of a threat to merit
some discussion.
But enough of that.
My real point is to give you some beautiful pictures of men, and so here
we go.
If you want to go on to the collection of perfectly innocent, clean, wholesome pictures, suitable for the observation of any small child or Southern Baptist, then please continue....
Or,
if you're a prude or closet case, please choose the following link:
NO, I NEED TO GO SOMEWHERE
SAFER!
LINKS--
Here are some admittedly incomplete links to progressive, pro-gay sites:
Mother Jones: one of the best magazines ever published.
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays: positive support for our loved ones.
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: a civil rights organization
Human Rights Campaign: another civil rights organization.
The Advocate:
the definitive gay newsmagazine.
Datalounge:
current news, gossip, and more, including a dating service.
The American Civil Liberties Union: the pioneer defender of civil rights.
The Nation: one of America's oldest magazines, and unashamedly liberal.
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation: defending freedom of speech on the Internet.
A brief note--To see these pages as they were meant to be seen, you should have the font named "Verdana" installed on your system. It is available free from Microsoft, for both Windows and Mac, and is designed specifically to be clear and readable on both web browsers and the printed page. (I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they did a great job on this one.) Downloading this font and the others in the package is well worth your time.
Also, Netscape gives the best results with this site, but is that really any surprise at all?
Get your own Free
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