In 1969, a group of gay men fought back against the police when they tried to raid the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan, kicking off the modern battle for gay rights.

It is now 2011. One of the most popular shows on television has a gay jock struggling with his sexuality. An engaged-with-children gay man plays a womanizing cad in one of the most identifiable roles on TV. The reigning Olympic gold medalist in the men’s 10-meter platform diving did interviews with his boyfriend at his side after winning. Men who played professional basketball, baseball, and football are living their lives as openly gay men.

You might think from the examples in the last paragraph that, in the intervening 42 years, society has gotten over the idea that all gay men are effeminate and that effeminacy is a sign of being gay. However, it hasn’t, and I’m getting tired of it. Gay men, just like straight men, run the gamut of masculinity.

Pop quiz time: Which of the men in the photo below is openly gay? Don’t worry, I don’t think that the straight one will be offended if you get it wrong. (h/t to Outsports for the photo)

Chances are, unless you’re Welsh, read the gay blogosphere/press or follow the sport of rugby, you don’t know either of these men. Gareth Thomas, on the left, came out publicly in 2009; he is a living legend when it comes to rugby union, having played more than 100 matches for the Welsh team and more than any other player (“most capped”, the British would say). Nick Youngquest, on the right, is straight, also plays professional rugby, and posed for beefcake pictures in this month’s Out magazine.

Thomas’ coming out was remarkable for the lack of controversy. The only negative was some homophobic chanting by fans of an opposing team, which was quickly punished by the league. This is, of course, how these sorts of things are supposed to go in an ideal world. Nobody got into a panic about sharing a locker room with a homosexual; nobody thought of himself as less of a man because they had been tackled by a gay man. (Or, if anyone did do either, they didn’t go making public statements about it.)

I am not particularly surprised that the first openly gay superstar in a men’s team sport plays rugby (Thomas was past the peak of his career, but remains an active player.) In my dealings with rugby players, including a couple of weeks of tryouts/practices/bars in college before deciding that I didn’t have the stamina or the knees to be able to keep up, masculinity is something you prove on the field, not in the bedroom, and I was given more shit about not drinking beer than I was about not sleeping with women. I’ve heard similar statements about elite military units. (There was a good quote going around shortly after the death of Osama Bin Laden from a Navy SEAL(?) about a gay comrade that went something like “everyone knows; he’s a good guy and he kills people”, but I can’t track it down right now.) Update: “We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He’s big, he’s mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.” Thanks to BenjaminTheAss in the comments for remembering this when I couldn’t.

I am, as gay men go, somewhat masculine in my mannerisms and behavior, although I’ve never had a rock-hard body and probably never will. Inasmuch as “gay” and “man” are separate societal roles, I draw a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B. I listen to Madonna and Metallica. I appreciate good tight ends and nice, tight bottoms. I feel too masculine for gay culture but too gay for masculine culture; to some extent, I fit in well with the bear community for both my physical attributes and my outlook on manhood, but it feels oddly separate and ghettoized.

Because I do fit some parts of the typical “guy” role, I’ve gotten some surprised reactions at times. The most recent was a few weeks ago during the NBA finals when I surprised someone by being able to discuss the Dallas Mavericks but then admitting that I had no interest in cheerleaders. I later commented that “apparently, preferring JJ Barea in the bedroom precludes me from preferring Dirk over LeBron on the court.”

On board the USS Lexington floating museum; as close as I’ll ever get to being a fighter pilot.

It is perhaps because of my own insecurities that I have developed an enjoyment for displays of pure alpha-maledom: World’s Strongest Man competitions, rugby, American football, etc. (Appreciating the aesthetics of those engaging in the displays is a secondary, but unavoidable, factor.) I will never live up to that sort of masculinity because I lack the competitive drive, but it holds a fascination that I can’t shake.

It was as a result of this fascination that I watched a Discovery Channel show called One Man Army last week. It features four men competing in a series of physical and mental challenges similar to those faced by the military. The winner was a man named Jeff, the youngest and smallest of the four competitors, beating a US Marshal, a former “security contractor” in Iraq, and a retired Delta Force officer in challenges like pulling oneself several dozen yards down a rope, running over obstacles, and then shooting at a target with a handgun. (In fact, he won all three rounds of the competition by pretty good margins, even though all he had to do in the first two was not come in last.)

When asked why he had never served in the military, he was truthful (video):

“When I wanted to go in, they said that they didn’t want gays. I’m a rule follower and I wasn’t going to be able to lie. I spent a lot of my life kind of battling that.”

(There are good discussions to be had here about the bravery of Discovery to make this the first episode of the series to air and how this is an example of the ways in which Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell weakened our military, but those aren’t germane to the topic at hand.)

Getting far more press last week than the guy who won a competition of traditional masculinity and then said he was gay is the man who apparently describes himself as straight (or is, at least, in a long term relationship with a woman) but doesn’t give off very much typical masculinity in his appearance, Marcus Bachmann.

Bachmann is a therapist engaging in reparative therapy, which attempts to “cure” men of their same sex-attractions. If you haven’t seen the video of him referring to gay men as “barbarians”, “mincing” is the only word I can use to describe his body language, and he has a high-pitched voice with pronounced lisp. The reparative therapy alone should have been enough to draw criticism, but many commentators are opening fire on his sexuality as well. As with so many cases where politics and sexual identity collide, Dan Savage is at the forefront, calling Bachmann a “lying closet case.”

For someone who was once in the closet himself to deny anybody the right to describe his/her own sexuality by telling them that their self-described identity is a lie based solely on superficial evidence is hypocrisy, no matter how much he seems too fem to be a straight man or no matter how anti-gay his actions. Nobody but Marcus Bachmann knows what his actual biological orientation is, and he has the right to choose his identity, even if the rest of the world doesn’t have to believe it. (Also, whether or not he’s hiding same-sex attraction and who he’s married to are irrelevant to the fact that reparative therapy is an abhorrent practice for anyone to be conducting, especially if charging Medicaid for it.)

I suspect this may be controversial among transgender individuals, but I compare being in the closet or in denial of homosexuality to being transgender in the respect that one’s biology doesn’t have to match one’s identity. It would/should be off limits to call a trans person a liar because (s)he is living as a different gender or make jokes about how a trans woman is actually a man deep inside, but yet society allows it when you talk about how someone’s actual sexual orientation must clearly be something other than what they claim to be.

In the end, all men, whether born as men or coming to it without a Y chromosone, have to choose what it means to be a man and what it means to be straight, gay, bisexual, queer, asexual, or whatever other gender and sexual identity they choose. Every meaning is individual and colored by that person’s life and biology; you could probably ask every man on earth and get four billion different answers. Whether we choose to fit in, or where we choose to fit in matters to us and it’s not up to anybody else to say that we don’t get to because of some other part of who we are contradicts it in their mind.

Edited 7/19/11, 10 AM CDT to add a paragraph describing Bachmann’s appearance, mannerisms, and use of reparative therapy and specifically naming Savage as the source of the “lying closet case” quote.