We are recording tomorrow (Wednesday) so it should be posted Thursday.

Madge is back, come on with the show already!

I enjoy hearing your opinions on the various topics and you really make people think and want to talk about these topics.

Jeff- you don’t have time to proof but you have time to post four comments in a row?

Tom- thinly veiled hostility? I though it was all out in the open hostility.

I love Vera’s bent sense of humor and her orneriness. She has reinvigorated this show.

Perhaps you can use it as a topic for discussion.

When a relationship comes to an end, why is it deemed a failure?

Thereby, is longevity the only true measure of success for relationships?

I for one disagree that because a relationships last the tests of time, it thereby successful. I also believe it is possible to have a very successful relationship and move in differing directions that leads to its end.

When you stop communicating honestly, that’s when the relationship fails.

I do understand your points Vera and I was listening.

Relationships and getting into relationships have no magic formula — So following some sort of GOLDEN RULE as it is deemed here does not equal success in this regard.

You do advocate a specific behavior. I just claim there is more to it than that. I also disagree that people are overly solispsistic as you state too many GLBT are. Blance in all.

In regards to:
If the golden rule really is an oversimplification of something more complex than nothing in Champ’s disavowing of it in his posts have uncovered anything of greater complexity.

Human’s prefer simple answers. The Golden Rule is a simple answer to a very complex question. There is no specific right or wrong way to behave. All I ask of myself is that I do the my very best as I see it at the time. I will make mistakes and so will you.

If you were so tied to your rule, then you would not suggest that exclusive Tops and Bottoms are by default boring. In fact, you would choose not to judge lest you be judged yourself. And there you have another simplistic rule that doesn’t exactly apply but is a nice simple answer to a complex question. Ahhh Humans, we do love our simple epitaphs.

ROFL

(If the golden rule truly were just for brutes in grade school than should would work better to keep them in line. It never really does, just as the world never really outgrows grade, middle or high school.)

Your top/bottom analogy is kinda stupid, but – in the end – show me a confirmed top or bottom who doesn’t occasionally like to switch roles (and be treated differently) and I’ll show you a boring fuck. For me, there very much is a level on which a bottom wants to be treated like a top, but then I do get all the trouble I can take… big, big, delicious trouble…

I think the golden rule is best applied to universal human needs. Inherent in both the terms “top” and “bottom” is the need to have sex, and certainly enough people need to have sex for it to qualify as a universal need. Better sex is always about giving it as good as you get. To confuse the specifics with the universal will, in my experience, lead to boring sex.

I should point out that I have never stated that the golden rule is any sort of key to a relationship. Internalize it and a relationship won’t materialize like magic in front of you, and I stand by my point that all my friends who have failed to reach an understanding with or internalize something as simple and complex as “doing unto others…” continue to fail in relationships over and over.

With that, I’m done. No more than three posts to any one podcast for me. I have other outlets for my communications. Champ, you stick you your KEY being communication. It is a good thing, although, I know a couple – each doing to the other what they would do to themselves – that when they stopped communicating honestly, well, that’s not when the relationship failed, it just got really, really interesting.

We’re grown now and need to move beyond that. If you think a BOTTOM wants to be treated like a TOP, then you’re in big trouble.

People have DIFFERENT needs and not everyone wants to be treated like you want to be treated.
Identify what they want and give it to them to make a relationship work.

In turn, help them identify what you want and ask them to give it to you. You need to communicate.
The KEY to any good relationship is communication.

When you stop communicating honestly, that’s when the relationship fails.

Treating others how you would like to be treated is not a simple or magic formula. Champ – your platinum rule is just one small part of it. Jeff – are you as internally conflicted as what you write?

I very much appreciate your considered and well thought out opinion. But you have misquoted me terribly and attributed attitudes and beliefs to me that are in fact antithetical to what I believe and have stated many times and in many different ways.

Either I am a TERRIBLE communicator or you didn’t hear me correctly. The points are too numerous and in-depth to go into on this forum, but I would hope you might listen to this show again (if you have time of course) and listen to what I truly said about your points of contention and how I said it.

Thanks,
Vera

What do you think Vera?

Really?!?!?

I find so few people who are not making their best efforts to be decent to each other.

I guess I just have excellent friends. Many of them single.

The Golden Rule has nothing to do with their lack of success — It has more to do with that long list they are looking for. Or an inability to stick with it because relationships require work they weren’t expecting. They are thinking it should really just be easier and flow naturally. It takes work to get to that point. Work from both sides.

In fact: AGAIN IT COMES DOWN TO people stay together because both of them want to. AGAIN — there is no magic formula for making it work.

An aside: I find it interesting that Vera is of the philosophy that there is more than one way to do something, but then contradicts it by insisting this is the key to successful relationships.

BTW: I love what Vera had to say, if I didn’t I would have stopped listening and I would not have bothered to discuss it so much. So if there is any doubt — I love your topic Vera. Although I disagree, but not completely.

Not to mention she further insults Gay by claiming they all lack character.

Huh?!?!?
And somehow I am the bad guy.

Well you go girl with insipid remarks and try not to come across as bitter.

“Treat others the way they want to be treated.” The Platinum Rule accommodates the feelings of others. The focus of relationships shifts from “this is what I want, so I’ll give everyone the same thing” to “let me first understand what they want and then I’ll give it to them.”

Vera, spot on again!

One thought I’d like to share:

Vera gripes about superficiality sound very specific to L.A. I know plenty of men here in New York where I am located who are very educated, highly cultured, have lots of character and are socially active, but still can’t find and keep a mate. The one consistency I find in all of them is an either blatant or subtle lack of internalization of the Golden Rule, that being, “Do unto others as you would have done to you.”

There is no doubt that the gay community has developed the idea that the external is something to be awarded, but like Wanda and Madge point out, this is typical across the board in North America.

Even still, this “increased emphasis” is not a product of being gay itself, it comes from somewhere and therefore is symptomatic of something more problematic which I feel is the real problem.

It seems obvious, but our relationships end because there is no social value in them plain and simple. Homophobia is the cause, both external and, from my experience as a young gay male, internal as well.

Annnyways, I don’t lack character. I don’t want to make being a product of the society I grew up in an excuse either.

I still love your involvement Vera

You are an inspiration to all of of us young queens. I wish I knew you in real life. I could use a friend that has character and integrity like you.

And about this show’s topic, I’m 20 years old and in a very happy 8 month relationship and sometimes I panic about the future and start thinking if I will have a husband 40 years from now.

It is very interesting to hear the point of view from 3 different men in different stages of life (because I consider Madge as a 40 yera old male widow, call me crazy). First, one married for a looong time, then a fairly young guy “in the market” and of course, Madge.

And about Auntie Vera, I don’t know why people are really hating her, the fact that she came late to the party doesn’t mean she has nothing to offer. I love you and I’m very proud that even though those two bloodhounds rebate your every argument, you defend it anf fight back.

I sometimes find myself constructing responses to Madge and now, Wanda in my head. Because I generally agree with you and the subjects you talk about are very close to my heart (defending your loved ones over all, not being involved in a tainted democracy, etc) You are a wonderful addition to ETHS and that lezzie would have a 20 minutes show if it weren’t for you.

But I think if you are in a relationship, you do need to think of other person, not just what you want and need. Otherwise you are just 2 people living in the same place, occasionally having sex together.