Glenn Ligon, a black visual artist who is openly gay, recalls that as a child coming of age in the 70's, he always felt there was a space in black culture for openly gay men. ''It was a limited space, but it was there,'' he says. ''After all, where else could we go? The white community wasn't that accepting of us. And the black community had to protect its own.''

Ligon, whose artwork often deals with sexuality and race, thinks that the pressure to keep homosexuality on the DL does not come exclusively from other black people, but also from the social and economic realities particular to black men. ''The reason that so many young black men aren't so cavalier about announcing their sexual orientation is because we need our families,'' he says. ''We need our families because of economic reasons, because of racism, because of a million reasons. It's the idea that black people have to stick together, and if there's the slightest possibility that coming out could disrupt that, guys won't do it.'' (That may help explain why many of the black men who are openly gay tend to be more educated, have more money and generally have a greater sense of security.)

But to many men on the DL, sociological and financial considerations are beside the point: they say they wouldn't come out even if they felt they could. They see black men who do come out either as having chosen their sexuality over their skin color or as being so effeminate that they wouldn't have fooled anyone anyway. In a black world that puts a premium on hypermasculinity, men who have sex with other men are particularly sensitive to not appearing soft in any way. Maybe that's why many guys on the DL don't go to gay bars. ''Most of the guys I've messed around with, I've actually met at straight clubs,'' says D., a 21-year-old college student on the DL whom I met on the Internet, and then in person in New York City. ''Guys will come up to me and ask me some stupid thing like, 'Yo, you got a piece of gum?' I'll say, 'Nah, but what's up?' Some guys will look at me and say, 'What do you mean, what's up?' but the ones on the DL will keep talking to me.'' Later he adds: ''It's easier for me to date guys on the DL. Gay guys get too clingy, and they can blow your cover. Real DL guys, they have something to lose, too. It's just safer to be with someone who has something to lose.''

D. says he prefers sex with women, but he sometimes has sex with men because he ''gets bored.'' But even the DL guys I spoke with who say they prefer sex with men are adamant that the nomenclature of white gay culture has no relevance for them. ''I'm masculine,'' as one 18-year-old college student from Providence, R.I., who is on the DL told me over the phone. ''There's no way I'm gay.'' I asked him what his definition of gay is. ''Gays are the faggots who dress, talk and act like girls. That's not me.''

That kind of logic infuriates many mainstream gay people. To them, life on the DL is an elaborately rationalized repudiation of everything the gay rights movement fought for -- the right to live without shame and without fear of reprisal. It's a step back into the dark days before liberation, before gay-bashing was considered a crime, before gay television characters were considered family entertainment and way, way before the current Supreme Court ruled that gay people are ''entitled to respect for their private lives.'' Emil Wilbekin, the black and openly gay editor in chief of Vibe magazine, has little patience for men on the DL. ''To me, it's a dangerous cop-out,'' he says. ''I get that it's sexy. I get that it's hot to see some big burly hip-hop kid who looks straight but sleeps with guys, but the bottom line is that it's dishonest. I think you have to love who you are, you have to have respect for yourself and others, and to me most men on the DL have none of those qualities. There's nothing 'sexy' about getting H.I.V., or giving it to your male and female lovers. That's not what being a real black man is about.''

Though the issues being debated have life-and-death implications, the tenor of the debate owes much to the overcharged identity politics of the last two decades. As Chauncey points out, the assumption that anyone has to name their sexual behavior at all is relatively recent. ''A lot of people look at these DL guys and say they must really be gay, no matter what they say about themselves, but who's to know?'' he says. ''In the early 1900's, many men in immigrant and African-American working-class communities engaged in sex with other men without being stigmatized as queer. But it's hard for people to accept that something that seems so intimate and inborn to them as being gay or straight isn't universal.''

Whatever the case, most guys on the DL are well aware of the contempt with which their choices are viewed by many out gay men. And if there are some DL guys willing to take the risk -- to jeopardize their social and family standing by declaring their sexuality -- that contempt doesn't do much to convince them they'd ever really be welcome in Manhattan's Chelsea or on Fire Island. ''Mainstream gay culture has created an alternative to mainstream culture,'' says John Peterson, a professor of psychology at Georgia State University who specializes in AIDS research among black men, ''and many whites take advantage of that. They say, 'I will leave Podunk and I will go to the gay barrios of San Francisco and other cities, and I will go live there, be who I really am, and be part of the mainstream.' Many African-Americans say, 'I can't go and face the racism I will see there, and I can't create a functioning alternative society because I don't have the resources.' They're stuck.'' As Peterson, who says that the majority of black men who have sex with men are on the DL, boils it down, ''The choice becomes, do I want to be discriminated against at home for my sexuality, or do I want to move away and be discriminated against for my skin color?''