I've been thinking about this lately and I always go back to feeling so ignorant for doing things like using the word gay to mean something bad or negative when I was younger. And it gets me to thinking about if things like that are discussed or if people even think that far into it. Which got me to thinking about what other aspects aren't being discussed or acknowledged widely enough.

Fellow LGBTQ+ ~ers, I'm hoping you can give me some direction and pointers in dating advice.

I'm a male in my early 40s who has become single after a dozen years and finally realizing/admitting that I'm gay. This isn't a huge deal (I've always identified as queer/not straight) but it does leave me in a place of total ignorance on how to proceed in meeting gay men and dating them.

I'm not intetested in sex-without-friendship, so Grindr is out. I'm not a fan of social media, so FB is useless to me. Even if there are any gay bars left, I'm not the bar type. My preferred personals site was craigslist... which shows you how out of the loop I am.

Any advice on dating sites and/or alternative ways of meeting people? I'm thinking about getting a bunch of shirts printed with a wittier version of "Introduce me to your gay friends!" and a rainbow necklace or bracelet...

If location matters, I'm a fair distance outside the Seattle area but get there often enough.

Thanks, all!

Here's an article in Australian Fairfax Media: "Fears new wonder drug could lead to STI epidemic"

It refers to this article in The Lancet: "Community-level changes in condom use and uptake of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis by gay and bisexual men in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia: results of repeated behavioural surveillance in 2013–17"

Here's the key take-away from the Fairfax article:

An international 2016 study of men who have sex with men found the chances of contracting chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis were increased 11, 24, and 44-fold respectively in PrEP users. Fears have now been raised that these staggering numbers might be replicated in Australia.

It’s one thing to read an article or see a reaction and another to find the source. I was curious myself so I dug through the World Health Organization’s website and here’s what I found.

Gender incongruence, meanwhile, has also been moved out of mental disorders in the ICD, into sexual health conditions. The rationale being that while evidence is now clear that it is not a mental disorder, and indeed classifying it in this can cause enormous stigma for people who are transgender, there remain significant health care needs that can best be met if the condition is coded under the ICD.

For mental health conditions, ICD codes are especially important since the ICD is a diagnostic tool, and thus, these are the conditions that often garner much of the interest in the ICD. These include gaming disorder, which evidence shows is enough of a health problem that it requires tracking through the ICD. Other addictive behaviours such as hoarding disorder are now included in ICD-11, and conditions such as ‘excessive sexual drive’ has been reclassified as ‘compulsive sexual behaviour disorder’.

http://www.who.int/health-topics/international-classification-of-diseases