As a gay person, how important is it for you....

Not important.
It's so hard to make good, long lasting friends that to filter them by sexuality is crazy.

And gay-straight friendship can have tons of shared interests (besides sexuality) and stuff which can help you relate to each other.

 

not really important, but would like to have 1 or 2 but you can connect with straight friends just fine

 

It isn't important to me. In fact, I don't have any queer friends, save for one. IRL, anyway. There are many aspects to the human experience, and being queer only covers a few. I can relate to my friends on other levels. And it isn't really the case that it's impossible to relate to people of other sexualities. Sure, a gay man might not see what his straight friend does in women, but that doesn't mean that the relationships would be vastly different.

 

I agree with HM03. I think that having a gay friend (or several) can be a good thing in that you can find someone to relate to and be fully open with, but I definitely think that a good friend is a good friend, regardless of their sexuality.

 

For myself it's somewhat important, but at the same time it's not. As long as those heterosexual friends accept me for who I am. But it is nice to actually have friends of various parts of the LGBTQ+ community.

 

As far as I know all of my friends (even casual friends from work) are straight. My best friend is female and i am masculine, but we do relate to each other better than you would think. We talk about guys all the time about the only things we don't relate to each other on is I like receiving anal sex and love giving head where she really doesn't enjoy either. Other than that we both enjoy the same types of activities (outside the bedroom), we are both the rough and tumble sort, and both have the same dirty minded sense of humor.

 

I think it is probably less important to me as I get older. In my twenties seriously almost everyone I knew was gay. Now, while most of my close friends are gay I definitely number quite a few straight people among my close friends.

 

It's important to me but I do not consider it all of me . I have mostly straight friends I wish I had more gay friends .

 

I prefer a bit of variety in my circle of acquaintances and friends: gay, straight; male, female; white, black; cis, trans; atheist, religious; whatever. It gives me a bit of an edge over those who only surround themselves with others of similar backgrounds, I'd like to think. We're all human, the world is becoming smaller, and only associating with those who have one thing in common with you is boring.

 

I think it's good to have a balance. I would like to have a few friends that are gay because a lot of times I have difficulty relating to my friends that are straight.

 

For me as of right now its a bit important. I've moved a lot so I can't say I have actually any friends in real life atm. But the several people I have met at school that where straight where bothered when I brought up gay angst and when I would say that's why I need a lesbian friend to understand this they would get upset. Even my sister who is one of my best friends she would ignore anything I said about gay crushes etc.

Sure if you're straight friends are open and understanding about gay issues its amazing and sexuality doesn't matter at all. But the majority of straight people in my life right now are still disgusted with homosexuality so its a bit hard to open up to them or even want to try a friendship with them.

Though I do have several straight close friends online and they let me rant about my gf or gay issues and it's really really nice (the only way I stay sane); I still wish I had some lesbian friends (bc me and my girlfriend are the only gay women I know). I guess it just depends what community you live in.

 

I don't have any gay people that I hang out with, so it's not really important to me. Would it be nice? Yeah. Am I looking? No. The fact of the matter is that whether or not I get along with a person is far more important than their gender or sexual orientation. And it just so happens that I get along very well with straight guys.

 

I can relate to this .

 

I'm guessing the gay people you meet probably have mostly straight friends because straight people make up about 95% of the population.

Anyways, I would like to have 1 or 2 gay friends, but I'm not going out of my way to find them. I'm just letting the friendships happen naturally.

 

I do think having LGBT friends is important for LGBT people, but that doesn't mean to exclude straight people altogether.

I have a few straight friends I can talk about it comfortably with, but it would be nice to connect with more gay youth, especially with the situation I'm currently in. Of course, that very situation is why I can't go to this awesome drop-in resource center in my area for LGBT youth.

 

Having gay/bi friends is important to me. I wish the friends I do have that are gay would rally around me a little more than they have knowing how hard it is to be an LGBT Christian. I will remember this if one of my friends comes out and needs support. There aren't that many of us.

 

How ridiculous! That's like a straight person saying that they only want straight friends.
Don't choose your friends based on their sexuality.

 

When you first come out and have pushback from your parents, I think they are invaluable.