Side note: I'm bi, and still don't care "where the gays are at".

He doesn't seem to do much in the way of gay activism -- his blog bio used to mention his partner by name, but it's been dropped. I sort of wish he'd do more, but on the other hand, his quiet, unassuming but unabashed acknowledgement of his sexuality is really the ideal I feel we should be aiming for.

Me, I overcompensate, but that's because I'm still angry about high school :-) It gets better, kids!

My side project http://gaygeeks.org is also probably pretty relevant here, if you'll excuse the (second) shameless plug :-) It's not specifically for hackers, but there are a lot of tech people in there, unsurprisingly.

Yes, definitely. Considering YC has funded hundreds of companies, I expect there are quite a lot of them, but one of the characteristics of hackers is that we tend to talk about ideas instead of personal lives, even at social gatherings, so it's not something that comes up often. The ones I know of were friends of mine before they did YC.

Someone posted that Joel Spolsky is gay. I remember hearing something about that a while back, but had honestly forgotten about it. What matters isn't that he's gay, but that he's smart and gets things done. Same goes for everyone else!

Finding a community of "People Like You" can make or break someone's journey into a new field. That means the hacker community at large needs to be equally supportive of queer hackers, or a queer hacker sub-community must form.

I'm all for the former, but let's face it: historically, us straight white males (who make up the vast majority of contemporary hackerdom) are pretty awful at making people who "Aren't Like Us" feel comfortable & welcome. (Hell--we have a hard enough time staying comfortable with eachother.)

I don't think it's a coincidence that the Bay Area is a mecca for both geeks and gays. Something about the culture here accepts people of all varieties.

However, this is not true for old-school business types. Golfing to network, sports talk, trophy wives, talking about Entourage... all that is very foreign to me and yes I feel out of place around it.

I want to be outraged when someone isn't treated equally because they're gay, I don't want to celebrate when someone who's gay isn't treated negatively.

Does a gay man deserve anything more than a straight man?

Basically, why would we want to section ourselves off? We have reddit for that. (http://www.reddit.com/r/interdimensionalhyperducks is still available!)

In that example, the Ruby "sub-community" (panel) serves 3 functions: It gives skeptical Rubyists a "safe place" to base their experience; it gives curious non-Rubyists an entry point to start learning; and it creates an organizational "bucket" for Ruby-related discussion, so it doesn't clog other panels (as much, maybe).

Of course, "Ruby" is a separation by technical necessity, whereas "Queer" is a cultural one. I'd be remiss in claiming that the exact same forces were at work. My main point is simply:

In a perfect world, sub-communities would not be necessary. In the real world, sub-communities--when managed properly--can be a huge asset to prospective novices who don't belong to the majority.

I can trace my current job situation back to a boyfriend I had in college. Job prospects were low in 2002, but he knew someone who could use a CS intern. The acquaintance created a job for me and I've been in similar fields ever since.

If there really is someone downvoting every comment here, they're homophobic. I promise.

I've been to a few of their SF events, but they are usually sparse on hacker attendees.