“People would say, ‘You’re gay - why aren’t you helping the gay couple?’ I’d say, ‘Because I always side with the underdog.’ The poor dog was in animal prison at animal control, with nobody to advocate for it.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said, recalling the time he represented a heterosexual woman in a case against gay neighbors who were trying to have her dog put down. I asked him why a man who identifies as gay was involved with A.I.B. It was hard enough to convince them that I was gay.” To come out as bisexual now would be like starting over in some way. seems to think I’m a closet bisexual,” he said, “but there are a host of emotional reasons why I choose to identify as gay. “More bisexual-themed puns and plays on words than any human should have to endure.”Ī lawyer in his late 40s, Kane likes to call himself A.I.B.’s “token gay board member.” Though he had a relationship with a woman almost 20 years ago (and recently met a “French actress and rocker” to whom he was attracted), he’s primarily interested in men. “This is what happens when you’re stuck in a car with bisexual activists,” said Brad S. “We could go either way, really,” he told us. In the back seat, Sylla lifted his eyes from his phone and suggested an alternate course. “When I did, I assumed I’d probably just live a supposedly straight life in the suburbs somewhere.” “For the longest time, I didn’t even realize I was bi,” Sylla said. Tall and pale, with an easy smile, Sylla offered me books from A.I.B.’s bisexual-themed bookshelf and marveled at the unlikelihood of his bisexual activism.
headquarters, a modest two-room office on the first floor of a quiet courtyard in West Hollywood that’s also home to film-production companies and a therapist’s office. When someone suggested that we try another route, Sylla, A.I.B.’s friendly and unassuming 55-year-old president, opened the maps app on his iPhone. board meeting, where members would decide which studies to fund and also brainstorm ways to increase bisexual visibility “in a world that still isn’t convinced that bisexuality - particularly male bisexuality - exists,” as Allen Rosenthal, a sex researcher at Northwestern University, told me. I was sandwiched in the back seat of the car between John Sylla and Denise Penn, two board members of the Los Angeles-based American Institute of Bisexuality (A.I.B.), a deep-pocketed group partly responsible for a surge of academic and scientific research across the country about bisexuality. We were headed south from Los Angeles to San Diego on an overcast morning last spring, but we hadn’t moved in 10 minutes. The traffic was bad, even by the warped standards of a Southern California commute.