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I was initally drawn by the titty board (because who doesn't like tittys?) but stuck around because I liked the community. There's not a lot of places even online where you can have the sort of frank and open (and mature) discussion of as many diverse topics as you can on TFP.
As far as gay men go, the cynic in me thinks that they feel a need to hide that's been sort of bred there by the way we treat them at large. I think it's safe to say that most of the people here are pretty open minded (they wouldn't last long if ther weren't), but the fact is that in the world at large it's still hard to be gay. Yeah, there's a double standard out there and it sucks.
Being heterosexual myself I don't have first hand experience and therefore may be wrong, but living with two gay roomates in the past sort of opened my eyes to the whole thing. And I got over the whole insecure thing pretty quickly, although I'll admit that it was there at first.
I don't think popular culture in the western world helps the issue. I've yet to see what I'd consider a 'normal' gay man on television or in movies. I used to watch hockey and football with my roomates (and lacrosse and stock racing and basketball, for that matter), whereas on tv they seem to prefer stars on ice and antiques roadshow. While I'm sure that's true in some cases, it's not a universal truth with gay mena any more than it is with straight men (or gay or staight women, for that matter).
Again, first hand input is the most useful here. I can only offer conjecture.
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