The 1997 polls: how our readers responded to the year's headlines.

We asked readers who visit the Advocate Web site what they considered the top five subjects of the year for lesbians and gay men. Not surprisingly, the fight for gay marriage ranked first, with the push for the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act a close second.

Throughout the year The Advocate polled readers on numerous topics relating to stories that appeared in each edition of the magazine. The questions forced them to think about civil rights, coming out, sexuality, and health and AIDS, among other issues of relevance. Their answers provide a glimpse into how the world is shaping the minds and attitudes of gay men and lesbians.

CIVIL RIGHTS

* How important are domestic-partner benefits compared with other gay goals? Which of the following is the most important goal for gay rights activists?

15% Getting employers to offer domestic-partner benefits

31% All are equally important

7% Repealing sodomy laws

24 % Getting employers to adopt policies forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation 

22% Legalizing same-sex marriage 

1% Achieving some other goal

* Is the religious growing more dangerous to gay and lesbian civil rights or so?

13% The religious right poses somewhat less of a threat now than in recent years past

10% The threat from the religious right remains about the same

77% The religious right poses a greater danger than ever.

* Would you be in favor of a woman's right to choose to have an abortion, even if that means some women might terminate their pregnancies on the basis of generic markers for homosexuality?

23% No, I believe abortion is wrong and this is just another reason

41% No, I generally believe in a woman's right to choose, but not in this case. Doctors should be discouraged from giving out such information if abortion is the goal.

36% Yes,I think a woman should always have the right to choose whether to bring a pregnancy to term, even if some women might end up aborting fetuses they think could end up as gay children.

Regardless of a nationwide increase in awareness of gay and lesbian issues in 1997, homosexuals continued to be an unprotected class. Consequently, gay men and lesbians made the fight for civil rights a top priority. Whether the debate was over domestic-partner benefits, marriage, job protection, or a woman's right to choose -- even in the hypothetical situation of a mother's wanting to abort a fetus because the child might grow up gay -- readers responded to such poll questions in huge numbers.

COMING OUT

* Do you think a gay teacher has an obligation to come to his or her students?

42% No, a person's private life, gay or straight is no one's business

12% Yes gay students need role models

46% It depends on the cost to the individual teachers. In some communities they could lose their jobs

* Have you ever had difficulty discussing your sexual orientation with your gynecologist or primary care physician?

55% Yes

45% No

* Have you come out to your parents?

63% Yes, and they took the news well

11% Yes and they rejected me

26% No

This was the year comedian an Ellen DeGeneres made coming out hip. After the television-sitcom star appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the headline YEP, I'M GAY, other gays followed suit. In towns big and small. from Mr. USA International Gene Kuffel to former Who's the Boss? child star Danny Pintauro, announcing one's gayness or lesbianism seemed to come a bit easier. Even Vice President Al Gore recognized this, lauding DeGeneres for giving gays another role model.

SEXUALITY

* Do you think sexuality is fluid or fixed over a person's lifetime?

46% Sexual orientation is fixed. If you have a falling-in-love surprise, it means you were kidding yourself before

13% We are all bisexual

41% Sexual orientation can change response to meeting a special person or for other reasons

* Should lesbians and gay men support the advancement of human cloning technology?

10% Yes, it would be an important step in separating reproduction from heterosexual sex

52% Maybe, but this is not a gay and lesbian issue

38% No, cloning is unethical and impractical

* Do you think gays who are troubled by their sexual orientation are more likely than other people to join cults?

65% No, people who join cults have deeper problems that aren't found any more frequently among gays and lesbians, even unhappy ones, than among straights

14% Possibly, but conflict over sexual orientation is a relatively unimportant factor

21% Yes, internalized homophobia makes such people more vulnerable to the promise of an escape from hard personal decisions

The year raised a number of questions regarding our sexuality and how we deal with it. Ellen DeGeneres's girlfriend, Anne Heche, who said she'd never been with a woman before, caused us to take a second look at bisexuality. Medical breakthroughs raised an even more perplexing question: Could we be cloned?

HEALTH & AIDS

* In your experience, how severe is the problem of drug and alcohol abuse among gay men?

37% It's very severe and getting worse

21% It's confined to a small group and doesn't really affect most gay men

42% It's a problem but only about the same as it always was

* In the face of new therapies, are we at risk of becoming complacent about the fight against AIDS?

52% Yes we are in danger of forgetting that the war isn't won

24% It's too soon to tell

24% No, people I know are still angry, scared, and struggling

Some would say that when it comes to health issues, 1997 was a year of excess. Reports of a decrease in the number of deaths attributed to AIDS permeated the news media, and protease inhibitors were hailed as a wonder drug by the mainstream press. And while national newspapers and newsmagazines spread the word that AIDS may have become a manageable disease, reports of gay men's engaging in unsafe sex and drug abuse began to surface, causing activists to wonder if the events were somehow linked.

Seldom are lesbians or gay men -- or their critics -- at a loss for a good sound bite. Passion brings thoughts into focus and loosens tongues, with the result being a quote that's sometimes eloquent, sometimes arrogant, sometimes half-cocked. A little of everything can be found in the archives of the Sex Panic! debate that consumed so much of 1997.

On one side were activists who reminded us that sexual freedom is a cornerstone of the gay movement; on the other were activists who reminded us that sexual promiscuity doesn't help curb the spread of AIDS. During the past year The Advocate has been a forum for both sides. Here are some of their voices:

I believe sex is wonderful, have had plenty of it, and still have great, hot sex. I also believe that being `sex-positive' means treating sex as the gift that it is and thus being wise and responsible. To me, sex-negative actually means treating sex in an overly self-indulgent fashion, not caring about your life or others'."

-- Michelangelo Signorile, author

"Liberationist, like liberal, has become a term of abuse. In place of democratic activism, some writers willingly endorse government regulation of sex. They denounce the sex lives of queers and the culture we've made."

-- Michael Warner, Rutgers University English professor, editor of the book Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, and an intellectual leader of Sex Panic!

"What's being lost in the Sex Panic! debate is the reason we're having the debate at all: the AIDS epidemic. Calls for safe, more responsible sex aren't about ending the hard-fought sexual freedom gay men and lesbians only recently have begun to enjoy; they've been made because a deadly, sexually transmitted disease has ravaged the gay community. Sex doesn't cause AIDS; a virus causes AIDS. Until we find a cure, using condoms is one of the most effective preventive measures for all of us. Let's not got sidetracked."

-- Christie A. Hefner, chairman and chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises Inc. and a longtime AIDS activist

"Everybody is going to act the way they're going to act Who am I to judge? Being responsible kind of works for me. I would never assume to understand otherwise"

-- Greg Louganis, Olympic gold-medal diver

"Where are women in the sex panic? Role models for gay men?"

-- Margaret Cerullo, Hampshire College professor and panelist for a Sex Panic! town hall meeting at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change conference

"Twenty-one states still ban private sexual acts between consenting adults of the same gender. This is not a panic. It is an outrage."

-- Kerry Lobel, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force 

"There is room for monogamous gay couples and sex pigs in the same big tent of community."

-- Eric Rofes, former executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center and author of Reviving the Tribe: Regenerating Gay Men's Sexuality and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic

"Those who demand the right to have sex anywhere, anytime, are rebels against societal strictures, but they are hardly revolutionaries For aeons patriarchal men have been aggressive about their 'right to ad on their sexual desires."

-- Arlene Zarembka, a Missouri attorney who has represented men arrested on suspicion of lewd conduct in undercover park sting operations

"Our need to appear absolutely sex-positive shuts down our curiosity and anxiety in a way that is not unlike those who would shut us down with preaching and moralizing. Am I the only one tormented with nagging curiosity, anxiety, and doubts when I learn that another friend has seroconverted?"

-- Richard Elovich, director of HIV prevention for the Gay Men's Health Crisis