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The Moral Outcry of Homosexuality
The True Cross and Gay Marriage
Sex Education
Circumcision
Toleration: The Middle Way Between Ban and Compulsion
Polygamy: Why Sharing is Not a Good Idea
The Passions
Free Pornography
Islam, Civilization and Homosexuality
Masturbation: Theory and Practice
The Meaning of Life
Family Values in The Bible
Gay Atheists
Homosexuality is a real enigma. How can it survive when it seems so obviously destined to cause its own extinction? Why are so many straight men so concerned about it? Why are gay men the victims of violence?
I really don't know why so many men react violently to homosexuality. Do they resent being targeted by lustful gays, or resent it if they are not? I have always been very laid back about it. Wanting to have sex with men is not unusual, at least half my ancestors have had sex with men. It is also not at all unusual for people to lust after people who do not wish to be lusted after. Most teenage girls probably do not realize it but they are lusted after by more than half the adult male population, pretty much all the time. I quite sympathize with a man turning down an unwanted advance without being particularly polite about it but that is quite different to understanding why some men will go out of their way to meet gay men deliberately to beat them up.
I remember myself being invited into the toilets by another boy who wanted to masturbate in front of me when I was about 10. The idea didn't appeal to me. I didn't feel excited or repulsed, it just wasn't what I wanted so I didn't do it. It didn't scar me mentally and I didn't feel the need to beat him to a pulp either. It was as traumatic as being invited to play football when I preferred to watch the girls do handstands; err, no thanks, I don't think I will.
I work with a very openly gay young man and he is a real asset to the team. He is basically doing a job that normally only women do, he stands at the front of the shop taking payments and handling complaints. It is very easy to see him as as female in many respects. His brain obviously works in a way that is more typical of a woman. He empathizes well and he cares a lot about his appearance. Looking at a photograph of him you would not think there was anything unusual about him. But a video would reveal the truth. He moves gay. He holds himself gay and he talks gay. Unless you are being deliberately ignorant I expect you know what I mean.
Why gay men sound gay has long been a mystery to me. Most of us can recognize certain gay men immediately by the way they talk. This is easy if they speak with a familiar accent but it is also fairly easy to spot a gay even when talking in a less familiar accent. I really want to know any theories you might have as to why this is. I find it hard to imagine that it is entirely mimicry. I have heard quite young boys sounding very camp and fey. They cannot have picked it up from hanging around in gay bars.
Theory of homosexuality
It survives because it is useful in single dose form. Like the gene that causes sickle cell anaemia carrying a small dose of homosexuality can help you spread your genes in some way, but a double dose makes you a screaming queen with no hope of breeding. It is not proved, but at least this theory makes some sense of the pattern of a persistent minority turning up in populations in all cultures. This theory is also helped by evidence that many men and women who are predominantly homosexual do still manage to achieve breeding success. Am I the product of this factor? I don't know if my mother is a lesbian, but many of the women she sleeps with certainly are. I have also come across several people whose fathers have left home to live with another man. This may explain some of the mystery of homosexuality.
It is quite possible for a homosexual to father children when he only has heterosexual sex on one or a few occasions. The human body's power to conceive is very powerful, and quite out of conscious control. It is perfectly normal for a man to have fathered two children despite having had sex only two or three times. People who have been trying to conceive and failing to do so might raise their eyebrows at this but it is true. The body becomes a parent when it wants to. Many homosexuals can attest to this, they have managed to hide their sexuality behind marriage and have had children despite not having sex very often.
Homosexuality, even in full dose, doesn't necessarily stop you breeding and it may offer some other genetic benefit to "symptomless carriers". Sickle cell genes in a single dose protect against malaria, it has been suggested that cystic fibrosis genes in single dose protect against The Black Death. Perhaps the brothers and sisters of homosexuals have some advantage? It would be a good theory but even without a benefit to the homo-homozygote, to coin a phrase, such recessive genes will continue to survive. Blue eyes, red hair and albinism are all caused by recessive genes, are you aware of any great genetic advantage to them? If a gene doesn't kill its host it will be passed on.
The bisexual fallacy.
How many people are homosexual? Many people would answer 10%. It is a figure that has been widely quoted but it has precious little evidence to back it up. The figure was first revealed by the Kinsey report, a fascinating piece of work and research but with very little claim to being based on independent unbiased data. Kinsey did very detailed work on individual volunteers. The sample was self-selected. It is hardly surprising that a sample taken of people willing to talk about sex in great detail in the society of that time would be very far from typical. No other research since has come close to that figure, with the exception of a telephone poll taken in San Francisco, again not exactly what you might call an unbiased sample. Most studies show figures significantly lower than this. 3% is a much more common finding. Does it matter? You bet it does. 10% gives a minority a much greater legitimate right to make some noise than 3%. Down at 3% a minority looks a lot more like a dysfunctional group, like criminals, than a significant respectable minority. Unfortunately the 3% figure is much nearer the truth.
Depending how the definition is drawn the minority can be shown to be nearer 1%, by excluding those people who have had only one or two minor homosexual encounters. Whatever the size of the minority it obviously does exist, and it seems to exist in all cultures that have been studied. It is important also to separate out two different aspects of homosexuality; activity and attraction. It has long been recognized that certain men will behave in homosexual ways when they have no heterosexual outlet. Prisons, ships and boarding schools are obvious examples. Many of these men abandon all their homosexuality as soon as they reach a normal environment in which they can pursue their preferred sexuality. Classing these people with homosexuals does no justice to either group. True homosexuals have no attraction to the opposite sex. Many homosexuals do manage to engage in heterosexual activity but not out of desire. It is statistically certain that several of the Kings of Europe must have been in this category, sex was merely their duty to God and the Kingdom. There are also many well known homosexuals who have married; Oscar Wilde, John Maynard Keynes, and Kinsey himself.
So how many people are truly bisexual, truly equally likely to want a male or female sexual partner? It seems to be a relatively small number. Smaller than, and included within, the 3% who are homosexual. Most people are either one thing or the other. The idea that we all exist on some great swinging continuum running from the few pure heteros to the pure homos with most of us gender-bending in the middle but caught up in the straight jacket of heterosexist propaganda is a great myth.
Most boys are pre-programed to be boys and will grow up wanting to behave in a masculine and heterosexual manner no matter how you treat them. My son is five and a half. He has been kept away from violent toys and violent cartoons, he has been allowed all the scope he could need to grow up in whatever direction he wants except violently masculine. He is all boy. He loves trains and planes, he wants to be a Concorde pilot and have children with a pretty wife. He is growing up with a healthy attitude to masculinity and he is comfortable with it. Now I have stopped trying to fight the urge he has to be a real boy. At five and a half he has learned the important cheat codes for Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3D. You just can't stop boys being boys, whatever you do, the genes will win out.
My daughter in contrast is healthily female. She shows empathy with people, cares about people and animals and loves babies. She has had every opportunity to develop an interest in construction toys but they do not hold her attention for long. Now she likes to listen to Steps and S Club 7. Following in the footsteps of her mother who followed the Bay City Rollers and later Kajagoogoo and became a children's nanny. I do my best to keep her options open and her horizons wide but she is happy being a little girl. She has already had a few secret crushes on boys. Today she has told me she wants to be a dress designer. I keep trying to aim her at law or medicine or research science, but she knows what she wants.
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How time flies! Now my son plays James Bond on his PS2 and my daughter has a boyfriend and an alarmingly mature figure. |
My point is that nature defines sex roles and sexuality. Gender is a myth. The social nature of gender roles is a liberal myth. Words have gender, people have sex, with those people they want to have sex with, not who society tells them. You cannot turn a person into a homosexual just by having a culture that is open to it. Neither can you eradicate homosexuality even in a society that punishes it with death. We are what we are born to be, unless something rather more traumatic than regular socialization changes us.
The idea that homosexuals are made rather than born is hard to credit. It might explain a few tragic cases that are prompted by child sexual abuse but I strongly doubt that this is common.
One thing that a lot of people don't seem to realize is that sodomy is enjoyable, especially for a male. You don't need to be gay to enjoy it. Many boys who have found themselves engaging in homosexual activity for whatever reason can mistakenly pigeonhole themselves as gay simply because they found the experience satisfying. There is a widespread myth about that queers are different, if you enjoy what queers do then you must be queer. This is nonsense. Many women engage in anal sex and enjoy it, because it is intrinsically enjoyable. Men have an even greater potential to enjoy anal sex because they have the prostate gland, which is easily stimulated by penetrative sex. The G-spot in women is formed from the same embryonic tissues, women who enjoy deep vaginal stimulation will testify that it is an additional focus of sexual response. Many male rape victims will be stimulated to ejaculation by the ordeal. The orgasm no more means they are gay than it means they consented. This is not a pleasant subject to discuss but it is pertinent, some men identify themselves as gay simply because they are men to whom homosexual acts have been done. They can be recruited. This is not what the gay rights activists want to hear but I believe it is true.
Most gays are born and have no choice, some make a choice because of trauma and maybe a tiny handful will also make that choice for their own strange reasons. It is not unheard of for men to act as homosexuals for several years and then suddenly "snap out of it", to realize that they might have been attracted to having sex with men but they were not attracted to men, they prefer women. They then go on to lead ordinary lives and never look back. I must stress that this is not by any means common but the phenomenon is real.
I think that society should be prepared for people to define their own sexuality. It should allow men to marry men if they chose, and to divorce them. It should be willing to let people change and to be true to themselves.
Homophobia, it's normal
Why do some men find the sexuality of others to be a cause for concern? My theory is that other people's sexuality is always a problem, it is just that in most cases we can control our feelings. Young people shudder at the thought of old people having sex. Older people fume at the idea of young people having sex, how dare they? Young limbs, painless joints and sex too, they don't deserve it. The Catholic Church hates the idea of anybody having sex, it only tolerates it in marriage because to oppose it would be bad for the future tally of souls, the income of the Church and would make recruiting new priests and nuns a little difficult in a few years time.
If you ever want to put your children down then simply dance, that is terrible, it suggests that you are a sexual being, not just a provider for their needs. Almost all children find it hard to cope with, especially teenagers.
So many of our curses are aimed at the sexuality of others; whore, slut, fucker, wanker, bugger, sod and the rest. Even bastard is in a way an attack against sexuality, that of your parents. Also son-of-a-bitch, fatherless son of a camel etc. It seems that other people having sex is usually problematic for us.
If I examine my own motivations I can see that if I had a real choice I would rather like to be able to reserve sex for me and a hand selected bunch of friends. In the case of homophobia our natural distaste and aversion to the sexuality and sexual behaviour of others can find an outlet and an excuse. It's not natural. The Bible's against it. It's wrong. It's disgusting.
My point is that homosexuality is not unique in being found disgusting. People have a natural tendency to find any sexuality disgusting but in general they can cope with it. However unusual sexuality can find itself the target of all that pent up antipathy to sex in general.
I do not fall for the idea that homophobia is anything to due with latent homosexuality. Most people do not have a latent desire to be homosexual any more than they have a latent sexual attraction to frogs. Bigots are not afraid of their own desires, they simply find the sexuality of others to be offensive and this is a form of sexuality that they can work up a justified feeling of revulsion towards. If they could they would also like to beat me up for having sex with my wife but that urge doesn't get allowed to the surface, objecting to heterosexuality is too hard to rationalize.
The moral?
Morality has nothing to do with it. Homosexuality is not a sin and should not be a crime. It is a normal, although a minority, form of human behaviour. Society should be tolerant of it for two reasons, firstly because it is normal and secondly because it will not go away even if you don't tolerate it.
The third main reason is the liberal argument that it does not affect anybody else and so should not bother anybody else. This argument, after John Stuart Mill, is a little weak. Nothing you do has no effect on me. Every action has some fallout, makes some impact on the lives of others. We cannot have perfect freedom and a life without conflict, freedoms will always clash. On the whole though the choice of who you have sex with is of much less concern to me than the colour you paint your front door or the music you play as you wait at the traffic lights.
To a violent bigot the existence of gays in your town is a real affront. But there is not much that a society can do about that. We can stand up and denounce bigotry but that will not stop it completely. If you are gay I suggest that you remember that a large number of people find your lifestyle choice to be offensive and they probably always will. They don't like you. But there is no need for this to be a problem. Gays should be careful not to be deliberately provocative and those who find gays objectionable should keep their attitudes to themselves. Both camps are normal and are likely to remain with us for all time. We will just have to live and let live.