Looking Back, Looking Forward

Even if you're only slightly familiar with male erotica from the past decades, you'll recognize this photo set is an homage to classic male imagery of the mid-twentieth century, an era when photographers took great care to avoid prosecution for obscenity. Often barely clothed males were deliberately posed in somewhat trite scenarios to fall within the penumbra of lawfully permitted art.

This modern set adds a new twist with full nudity, something only the riskiest of mid-century photographers first dared show. As the century moved forward, relaxing societal values allowed for more explicit material. If you'd like to download a free set with 46 high-quality images from this model shoot, be sure to click here.

While such images are rightly celebrated as milestones in gay rights and social assimilation, one has to recognize that the usually straight subjects in the photographs themselves were pioneers in their own way. If you were a muscular straight bloke in 1955 or so and willing to pose nearly naked for photographs you knew would provide fantasy fodder for gay men, you were far more enlightened than most males of your era. Those straight men deserve some credit for helping break down walls between ostracization and acceptance.

2010 was an important year in gay rights for several reasons. The absurdly named "Don't Ask Don't Tell" was effectively abolished in the United States. Gay marriage is on the cusp of possible full legality in America, too. The new year may bring more developments.

I know President Obama has taken considerable heat from certain gay advocates who perceived him as too slow to act on certain gay rights issues. Many people faulted him for Department of Justice actions, apparently unaware a U.S. President has only extremely limited supervisory control over the largely autonomous DoJ.

There are others of us, however, who recognize President Obama wisely realized he didn't exist in a vacuum and had to move carefully and artfully because of the powerful, belligerent right wing. In the end, his campaign promise of repealing DADT was achieved. Some people on the far left don't seem to realize that if you alienate the middle, you essentially push them into the arms and control of the right.

Had the President stridently and loudly pushed on the DADT issue, he risked losing the battle for health care reform and financial reform, amongst others, in a landscape polarized by the loudly rabid Tea Party and religious right. After all, many believe DADT came into being because President Clinton pushed too hard too fast to end the military gay ban in the 1990s, and the right pushed back harder and won.

Change doesn't always mean as soon as you want it, damn the consequences. Change is most effective when planned and achieved at the right moment, sometimes an effort best achieved quietly and civilly behind the scenes.