Ok, so news reports to the contrary, not every male member of the Republican Senatorial and Congressional caucus is covertly homosexual. But as Susie Bright says sometimes it seems that way. I’ll have a bit more to say about the consequences of closeted people attempting to regulate other people’s sexual behavior in a later post but for now I’ve got a little advice for other straight men.

Back in 1982 Judith Martin published Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Freshly Updated, mainly a collection of her syndicated column that dated back to around 1979. Martin was the real deal back then, the legitimate successor to ettiquette experts Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post.

So it was a big deal when she was asked

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
What am I supposed to say when I am introduced to a homosexual “couple?”

And Martin replied

GENTLE READER:
“How do you do?” “How do you do?”

When you unpack that completely revolutionarily brief, not to mention revolutionary-for-a-mainstream-columnist, advice it expands into “homosexuals are people deserving no more or less courtesy than any other people.” Pretty brilliant as far as I was concerned.

As far as I know, though, she never addressed another issue that I and literally countless other straight men have felt a little awkward about: fielding a proposition from a gay man. So without further ado here’s how I think she would have answered:

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
If I’m not interested what am I supposed to say when I am propositioned by a homosexual?

GENTLE READER:
“No thank you.”

I’ve got to say that over the last 35 years or so that’s worked every time.

I say this not least because I think the police in progressive cities like Minneapolis, let alone in more, um, “sheltered” cities like Titusville, Florida feel obliged to setup anti-cruising sting operations in public men’s restrooms is that most straight men, fueled perhaps by our own sense of heterosexual entitlement towards women, don’t realize that in the gay community not only does “no mean no,” no also means “no hard feelings.” And since there’s none of that frustrated/outraged sense of outrage between gay men the way there seems to be between straight men and women, all you really have to say when proposition, really, really, is “no thank you.”