I never seal either side of the gasket and see no leaks. As I mentioned above, the 235's I have seen leak have the wrong combo of rocker parts, flooding the top end/gasket.
I do not like it when I have to pull a valve cover where the gasket is glued to the cover. I always seem to catch and break the gasket on the rockers when I lift the cover off.
As Tim said,"There are often more than one way to solve a problem".
