Proof of gay cowboys.

From Pridesource.com:

Real gay ranchers, who do in fact exist,... may beg to differ that the film doesn't embellish at all. One of them is Tracy Lehman. Lehman, who is now 38, was raised on a 6,000-acre cattle ranch in eastern Washington in a town of 90 people. Growing up he filled his days fixing fences and baling hay, and he still returns home twice a year to help his family during cattle drives (Lehman now works as a truck driver and lives outside of Portland, Oregon).

And from the NY Times:

"That could have been my life," Derrick Glover said one bitter cold afternoon last week, referring to the film, which he had seen at a special screening a week before in Jackson, Wyo. A 33-year-old rancher, Mr. Glover comes from a family that has worked the land around Lusk for generations. His father still runs 300 head of cattle.

Seated at a table in the smoky Outpost Cafe alongside Highway 85, Mr. Glover laid out the story of a typical ranch-country boyhood: herding, branding, culling and haying, horses hobbled on picket lines and calves pulled forcibly from their mother's bodies during spring calving. Every summer Mr. Glover sets out with his brother in a panel truck carrying their two quarter horses, to compete in calf and steer roping competitions. "I never had any intention of leaving the cowboy lifestyle," Mr. Glover said. "Ranching is who I am."

And one of the very reasons San Francisco has such a gay presence today is because in the 1800's, a group of gay gold miners known as the Lavender Cowboys set up shop there.

Then there's the 1923 Harold Hersey poem Lavender Cowboy:

He was only a lavender cowboy,
The hairs on his chest were two,
But he wished to follow the heroes
And fight like the he-men do.


But he was inwardly troubled
By a dream that gave him no rest,
That he'd go with his heroes in action
With only two hairs on his chest.


First he tried many a hair tonic.
'Twas rubbed in on him each night.
But still when he looked in the mirror
Those two hairs were ever in sight.


But with a spirit undaunted
He wandered out to fight,
Just like an old-time knight errant
To win combat for the right.


He battled for Red Nellie's honor
And cleaned out a holdup's nest
He died with his six guns a-smoking
With only two hairs on his chest.

If there weren't any gay cowboys around, where did he get the idea? And make no mistake; "Red" was a nickname most often used for red-headed men.

Suicide Van makes one big mistake in his assumptions about gay men. He equates homosexuality with femininity. He thinks you can spot a gay man by the limpness of his wrist or the lispiness of his voice. There are plenty of gay men more masculine than plenty of straight men.

Rock Hudson was gay. Figure skater Scott Hamilton is straight. Former defensive lineman Esera Tuaolo, who played in Super Bowl XXXIII with the Atlanta Falcons, is gay. Prince is straight.

You can't assume that just because a man seems like "a regular guy" that he's straight. Gay men are around you every day. You just don't know it. Even cowboys. Even football players. Even military men.

And why don't you know it?

Because if two things are true about cowboys, and men in general, they are these: 1. They know it ain't polite to kiss and tell. And 2. Real men don't discuss too deeply their feelings with other men.

What makes one gay is not the limpness of one's wrist or the desire to interior decorate or the swish of one's hips. What makes one gay is simply the attraction to members of one's own sex. Nothing more, nothing less.

And if that manifests itself into a love of masculinity itself, enough that you want a man and want to be a man, then you're not going to set off a straight guy's gaydar.