Gay Love in the Age of Dating Slop

Gay Love in the Age of Dating Slop

We’re drowning in algorithm-optimized relationship slop, social media sob stories about the supposedly toxic gay dating scene, and ragebait on worn-out subjects like monogamy vs. open relationships. It can feel surprisingly hard to find real gay men talking honestly about what it’s actually like to be in a relationship. Even in the history of gay writing and thinking we talk about on this podcast, it’s easier to find depictions of sex, yearning obsession, or doomed love than of two men figuring out what it means to be together. In this episode, we talk about one exception to the rule: A groundbreaking 1978 feature in CHRISTOPHER STREET that interviewed two men, Philip and Neil, about the drama and power dynamics of their relationship. The article included the beautiful—and sexy—photos they took of each other while they were together. We revisit Philip and Neil’s story a half-century later as a springboard for talking about our own relationships and experiences, and cover topics including: * How sex is different in a relationship vs. as a single person * How sexual positions and gender expectations shape gay relationship dynamics * What’s unique about the male-male couple * How gay lovers are different than gay friends * What you should NOT talk to your boyfriend about Chapters (00:00) Why love is a perfect topic for Pride (06:50) A groundbreaking look at a gay couple (22:27) Philip and Neil’s images of each other (30:10) Cruising and hookups vs. relationship sex (42:24) How neuroticism and overanalysis kills desire (48:00) What’s unique about the male-male couple (56:44) Boyfriend twins, similarity, and competition (01:04:34) Sexual attraction vs. common interests (01:09:54) How we decided Philip is the villain Sources Michael Denneny, Philip Gefter, and Neil Alan Marks, “Anatomy of a Love Affair [https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/anatomy-of-a-love-affair-michael-denneny/],” Christopher Street, February 1978. Michael Denneny, Lovers: The Story of Two Men [https://archive.org/details/loversstoryoftwo00denn] (1979). Michael Denneny, Decent Passions: Real Stories About Love [https://archive.org/details/decentpassionsre00denn] (1984). Adam Mars-Jones, Box Hill [https://amzn.to/3Py9LZg] (2020) and Waters of Thirst [https://amzn.to/4dLD6Hy] (1994). Renaud Camus and Farid Tali, Incomparable [https://amzn.to/439HaMU] (1999) Jackson Davidow, “Two Lovers [https://thebaffler.com/latest/two-lovers-davidow],” The Baffler, September 7, 2023. Adelle Waldman, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. [https://amzn.to/4dS1EQF] (2010). Pillion, directed by Harry Lighton. Don Jon, directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Annie Hall, directed by Woody Allen.

Why Gays Tried to Cancel ‘Cruising’ (w/ Domenic DeSocio)

Did gay men invent cancel culture? Even before it was filmed, William Friedkin’s gay serial-killer thriller Cruising (1980) attracted massive publicity and protests from gay writers in New York, who feared it depicted the gay men of the city’s leather bars as sex degenerates in a moment of rising homophobia and right-wing politics. In this episode, we talk about Christopher Street editor Charles Ortleb’s strange screed against the film, which also served as a political statement for the magazine’s desire for gay men to become a “people” with a collective identity. We talk about how the controversy over a film now seen as a cult classic foreshadowed contemporary debates about representation and cultural appropriation, the long history of gay men analogizing homophobia to fascism and the Holocaust, and whether there’s a kind of identity politics that might be less dumb than what we experience on social media today. Chapters (00:00) Introduction (07:29) The making of ‘Cruising’ (14:16) How ‘Cruising’ became a gay controversy (18:34) Charles Ortleb’s importance in gay intellectual life (24:21) The “zap” and 1970s gay media politics (31:47) The gay fascism analogy and Holocaust comparisons (42:11) Gay identity politics vs. liberal universalism (50:09) Why Ortleb’s paranoia was better suited to AIDS (57:58) Defenses of ‘Cruising were insane, too! (01:04:01) Art doesn’t need permission from minority groups Sources Domenic DeSocio, “Christopher Street Hits Fifty,” Gay & Lesbian Review, May-June 2026. Blake Smith, “In Defense of Cruising,” Air Mail, November 9, 2024. Arthur Bell, “On Cruising: The Hollywood Hassle,” The Village Voice, September 3, 1979. Charles Ortleb, “The Context of Cruising,” Christopher Street, April 1980. Michael Denneny, introduction to The Christopher Street Reader (1983). Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet (1996). Janet Maslin, “William Friedkin Defends His Cruising,” New York Times, September 18, 1979. Ramzi Fawaz, Queer Forms (2022). Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street (1982). Jonathan Mahler, The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990 (2025). John Rechy, “A Case for Cruising,” The Village Voice, August 6, 1979.

What's So Casual About Casual Sex?

We read gay novelist Andrew Holleran’s 1979 column “Fast-Food Sex,” in which he performs a playful exhaustion with gay promiscuity. Now cheap and abundantly available, gay sex has supposedly lost its power to thrill or even to signify. Already at the peak of post-Stonewall gay life, we see the outlines of discourses that persist today in the perpetual rants against Grindr, “hookup culture,” and open relationships. In this episode, we talk about how gays often make promiscuity into a questionable binary: casual sex vs. intimacy and coupling, for example, instead of seeing sex as something that means different things in different contexts, and is part of different modes we move between in different spaces and seasons of life. Chapters (00:00) Andrew Holleran and "fast-food sex" (17:56) Fast-food sex vs. home-cooked sex (27:00) Growing up with evangelical ideas about sex (28:45) Romanticism is a threat to domesticity, too! (31:58) Is democratic abundance less hot? (37:58) The myth of hypersexual-but-lonely gays (40:02) The uniqueness of gay intimacy (43:04) Why straight romance ideas are bad for gays (48:25) The manosphere and sex-negative feminists (50:31) Sex is both amazing and boring Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack [https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/] for bonus content! Sources Andrew Holleran, “Fast-Food Sex [https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/fast-food-sex/],” Christopher Street, April 1979. Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance [https://amzn.to/3R3GTIt] (1978). Andrew Holleran, “Dark Disco: A Lament [https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/dark-disco-a-lament/],” Christopher Street, December 1978. Priya Krishna, “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery is Reshaping Mealtime [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/dining/food-delivery-apps-doordash-uber.html],” New York Times, January 30, 2026. Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking [https://amzn.to/4tSDlHO] (2009). Tim Dean and Oliver Davis, Hatred of Sex [https://amzn.to/4tSDlHO] (2022).

The Messy, Sordid Spectacle of Gay Republicans (w/ Daniel Lefferts)

By day Terry Dolan coordinated the fusion of free-market radicalism and evangelical fundamentalism known as the New Right. By night he cruised DC's steamrooms and gay bars. In 1982, his face appeared on the cover of Christopher Street with an article about his radical, norm-breaking politics and his hookup with a federal employee. DANIEL LEFFERTS(author of the novel Ways & Means [https://amzn.to/48Fy9hK]) joins David and Blake to talk about the contradictions of right-wing gays past and present. We discuss the pleasures both of being an insider and of hating insiders, and why the right-wing homosexual stirs the gay imagination to fascination, disgust, and sympathy.  FOLLOW US ON SUBSTACK [https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/] to get bonus content! Chapters 00:00 - Our first threesome 06:27 - The important question: Was Terry Dolan hot? 09:55 - The “Rich and Powerful Queens” of the Reagan right 12:03 - Gay hustlers, strippers, and spies  16:25 - What type of gay was Terry Dolan? 21:35 - Why it gets harder to be gay in the GOP 27:04 - Who was screwing who in the New Right? 32:25 - Dolan as a pioneer of norm-breaking 40:54 - Why do we want to confront closeted gays? 48:04 - Right-wing gays and the pleasures of power 50:22 - Dolan’s hookup with a federal employee 54:32 - Daniel’s descent into the world of gay MAGA 57:42 - The petty-bourgeois class position of OnlyFans boys 1:03:08 - The good boys who love Red Scare 1:09:20 - Gay attractions to transgression and order 1:13:50 - The weird homoeroticism of MAGA SOURCES Perry Deane Young, “God’s Bullies [https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/gay-masculinity-and-its-discontents/],” Christopher Street, August 1982. Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980 [https://amzn.to/4tvVuug] (2021). Neil J. Young, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/style/gay-men-trump-administration-republicans.html] (2024). James Kirchick, “The Secret Life of a Gay Political Strategist in Reagan’s Washington [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/gay-politicians-washington-secret-city-book-james-kirchick-dolan-1387755/],” Rolling Stone, July 28, 2022. Shawn McCreesh, “Donald Trump’s Big Gay Government [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/style/gay-men-trump-administration-republicans.html],” New York Times, August 26, 2025. Shawn McCreesh, “In South Dakota, Neighbors Feel Sorry for Kristi Noem’s Husband [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/kristi-noem-husband-photos-daily-mail.html],” New York Times, March 31, 2026. Daniel Lefferts, “My Afternoon With the ‘Normal Gay Guys’ Who Voted for Trump [https://www.gq.com/story/my-afternoon-with-the-normal-gay-guys-who-voted-for-trump],” GQ, February 10, 2025. Jack Crosbie, “Hasan Piker: A Progressive Mind in a MAGA Body [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/style/hasan-piker-twitch-youtube.html],” New York Times, April 27, 2025.

Gay Masculinity and Its Discontents

Gays being masc has been making people mad for half a century now, and in this episode, we read Seymour Kleinberg’s 1978 Christopher Street essay, “Where Have All the Sissies Gone?” to find out why. We discuss the rise of “gay macho” in the 1970s, exemplified by the clone, the leather bar, BDSM, and urban gay male promiscuity. We talk about different gay male stances toward feminism, the enduring belief that effeminacy is inherently radical, and the tendency of gays of all styles to declare that “all” gays are being gay in a way that excludes them. We talk about the origins of our erotic fascination with masculinity and the importance of being able to revel in what we find hot without overthinking it.  Subscribe to our Substack to get our longer texts that go with the episode and bonus content [https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/] Sources Seymour Kleinberg, “Where Have All the Sissies Gone? [https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/kleinberg-where-have-all-the-sissies-gone/],” Christopher Street, March 1978. Bruce Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Society, Culture, and Politics [https://amzn.to/3PQ0dIB] (2002) Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism [https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum42/fascinatingfascism.pdf],” New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975.   Edmund White, “Fantasia on the Seventies [https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/fantasia-on-the-seventies/],” Christopher Street, September 1977. Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 1970s [https://amzn.to/3PF1m5N] (2009) Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant [https://amzn.to/3PBIO6w] (1968) Seymour Kleinberg, Alienated Affections: Being Gay in America [https://amzn.to/4bGNwZq] (1980) Midge Decter, “The Boys on the Beach [https://www.commentary.org/articles/midge-decter-3/the-boys-on-the-beach/],” Commentary, September 1980. Larry Kramer, The Tragedy of Today’s Gays [https://amzn.to/4tjwC96] (2005) Brian Pronger, The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex [https://amzn.to/3NTiQLh] (1990)  Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex? [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n06/amia-srinivasan/does-anyone-have-the-right-to-sex],” London Review of Books, March 22, 2018. Anastasia Berg, “Wanting Bad Things: Andrea Long Chu Responds to Amia Srinivasan [https://thepointmag.com/dialogue/wanting-bad-things-andrea-long-chu-responds-amia-srinivasan/],” The Point, July 18, 2018. Leo Bersani, Homos [https://amzn.to/3PNcXzJ](1995)