Why it is better simply not coming out, ever.

[Barbara Branden]

John, you say that no one is "born gay," that it is a choice. But several gay men I have known have told me that as early as five years old , before they consciously knew what sex was, they found themselves drawn to other boys in ways that, in retrospect, they now understand to have had a sexual component. How can that be considered a choice? Not all gay men have such memories. of course, many discovered their sexual preferences only in adolescence-- but they discovered it, they did not decide on it.

I am straight, but I certainly have no memory of choosing to be sexually attracted to men; I simply discovered that that was the case. If you believe that one's sexual identity is chosen, you need to consider the empirical evidence, and to provide significant contrary evidence of your own. Scoffing at the idea that it may be inborn does not suffice.

Barbara

[John Tate]

I don't see empirical evidence pointing to anyone being born gay, if there is any, do show me.

You didn't make a decision between women and men. How many lesbian affiars have you had, experimenting? I think I rightly assume none - if you did, the choice was made when you chose to continue them or not. The idea that a man can be born gay, brings to me the image of a hopeless zombie, devioid of consciousness, wondering around looking for penises to suck as an automatic process. How exactly did this evolve exactly? I think anyone who believes sexual preferences are some biologicial trait needs to consider that they are proposing that a genetic trait with no replication qualities spontaneously evolved. Indeed, if I did believe I was born homosexual, I would probably go to church right now and make the claim that I am proof of God!

On top of this consider that Ayn Rand's theory of sex consists of conscious values - and that this claim that sexual preferences are some naturally born tendancy completely repudiate any of Ayn Rand's views of sexuality and replace them with the old slogan that love is blind and sex is impervious to reason. That is exactly what I see being made as a claim here, that love is blind and sex is impervous to reason, and that regardless of choice or reason a man "born gay" will "act gay."

So I present as evidence your own sexual encounters, whatever they may be. Did you think about them? Do you choose who you have sex with? Or is it some random choice you are born with?

As a child I was always drawn to electronics and computers. By the standard proposed, I was born an engineer. I don't remember when my fascination with technology began. It was always there, I always would pull apart electronics and work out how to put them back together in a working state just to know what was inside. I was born an engineer, it is my caste! Sounding absurd? Because so do your gay friends.

[Barbara Branden]

John wrote: "Consider that Ayn Rand's theory of sex consists of conscious values - and that this claim that sexual preferences are some naturally born tendancy completely repudiate any of Ayn Rand's views of sexuality and replace them with the old slogan that love is blind and sex is impervious to reason."

Rand's theory was that the particular person one is attracted to represents one's values; she did not say that which sex one is drawn to represents anything at all. And by the way, she did not say that conscious values are necessarily involved; the values that attract us to a particular person may be well below the level of conscious awareness.

John: "You didn't make a decision between women and men. How many lesbian affiars have you had, experimenting? I think I rightly assume none."

You are quite right, but that is precisely my point -- that I did not make such a choice. I never decided that I would be attracted to men and not to women; I simply found that that was the case, just as gay men and women simply find that they are sexually attracted to their own sex.

You ask for empirical evidence that one is born gay or straight. My evidence, which does not prove but does suggest it, is precisely what I said earlier: that people report that they discovered their sexual orientation when they were too young to be making conscious choices in an area they knew nothing about. But I have not said that I -- or anyone else, for that matter -- could prove that one's sexual orientation is innate. My contention is only that there is considerable reason to believe it likely, and no evidence that refutes it. And by the way, I have never met or heard of anyone of either sex who described making a conscious, thoughtful choice about his sexuality.

Barbara

[kiaer.ts]

I'll second Barbara's observation that you discover your sexuality. Evereyone does this. I personally remember having a crush on both the Six Million Dollar man (and the Bionic Woman) before I knew what a crush was.

I have come to realize that the look and smell of a man are atractive as a perceptual given, in the same way that I like salty and greasy foods, and am not so fond of sugar. This is simply a biological given.

Of course no one is born gay, if that means voting Democrat and wearing leather - those things are learned. Any educated comment on the subject would require one to study what a berdache is, and who Antinous was. The idea "gay" is a prdouct of the last fifty years or so of Western culture. Even Oscar Wilde was not gay in the sense of today's identity politics. Forget "gay." Study history and anthropology for context - and study your self.

[think]

*me two cents*

I will never come out of the closet!

[tjohnson]

Is this another false dichotomy? Does it have to be either/or? There are probably some born with homosexuality and others who choose it, after all what about bi-sexual people? Sexuality is quite complex and involves many complex biochemical systems and I'm sure there are individuals in which the systems don't function normally, even from birth. As long as it remains a small enough percentage of the population it won't effect survival of the species, hell humans are surviving very well at the moment.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

*me two cents*

I will never come out of the closet!

think,

LOL...

In our humble OL abode, there are no closets...

... so far...

Michael

[Michelle]

My view on homosexuality is the same as my view on transsexualism: don't worry about what other people think, just live the way you need to live. Don't be a victim. Fight for your right to be as happy as anybody else.

That said, I hate gay pride parades.

You're a man who likes sleeping with other men? Good. Great. Fabulous. Love it.

So what part of that translates to wearing feathers in provocative leather garb, sprinkling glitter on yourself, and then parading out into the middle of the street like a goddamned idiot? Call these people "faggots" if you like, but I prefer to keep to essentials. They're 'attention whores.' Nothing more. Nothing less.

[Guyau]

Michelle,

Sometime in the 70’s Jerry and I began to fall in and join the gay pride parade in Chicago at the end of the line, in the section for individuals and couple not marching as part of some business or organization. We were the plain civilians as it were. (That was the contingent never shown on the evening news.) On that one day of the year Jer and I could hold hands in public. Do you know that song by Rodgers and Hammerstein called “We Kiss in a Shadow”? “We kiss in a shadow / We hide from the moon / Our meetings are few and over too soon / We speak in a whisper, afraid to be heard / When others are near, we speak not a word / Alone in our secret, together we sigh / For one smiling day to be free / To kiss in the sunlight and say to the sky / Behold and believe what you see / Behold how my lover loves me.”

On the tenth year of the parade, Jer and I were walking along in our usual position. We came to a rise in the road, and I happened to turn and look behind us. I told Jerry, “Look behind us.” There was by that year a sea of people behind us. The police raids on the gay bars were stopping. The times were changing. –Stephen

PS

The name gay means a homosexual who thinks it is OK to be that way. I did not like the name when it first got going, because it did not fit my own, serious personality. However, it is the correct, respectful term to use today. The name faggot is from the connection with firewood, as death by burning was Blackstone’s recommended penalty for homosexuality in Anglo-Saxon law. –S

[Reidy]

Here we go again.

Do you have a citation from Blackstone? His magnum opus was a compendium of laws that were already centuries old, so I doubt that he made recommendations about much of anything, even if he reported such a provision, and I'm skeptical of that.

A quick googling of "blackstone faggot" finds, in the first two pages, only one, highly partisan source source for this claim, with no exact citation at that.

It also turns up an alternative etymology that I find at least as plausible. An upperclassman's "fag," in the sense explained here, was in practice a catamite.

[Selene]

Reidy:

That one jumped off the page to me also:

faggot (1) Look up faggot at Dictionary.com

1279, "bundle of twigs bound up," from O.Fr. fagot "bundle of sticks," from It. faggotto, dim. of V.L. *facus, from L. fascis "bundle of wood" (see fasces). Esp. used for burning heretics (a sense attested from 1555), so that phrase fire and faggot was used to mean "punishment of a heretic." Heretics who recanted were required to wear an embroidered figure of a faggot on their sleeve, as an emblem and reminder of what they deserved.

faggot (2) Look up faggot at Dictionary.com

"male homosexual," 1914, Amer.Eng. slang (shortened form fag is from 1921), probably from earlier contemptuous term for "woman" (1591), especially an old and unpleasant one, in reference to faggot (1) "bundle of sticks," as something awkward that has to be carried (cf. baggage). It was used in this sense in 20c. by D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, among others. It may also be reinforced by Yiddish faygele "homosexual," lit. "little bird." It also may have roots in Brit. public school slang fag "a junior who does certain duties for a senior" (1785), with suggestions of "catamite," from fag (v.). This was also used as a verb.

"He [the prefect] used to fag me to blow the chapel organ for him." ["Boy's Own Paper," 1889]

Other obsolete senses of faggot were "man hired into military service simply to fill out the ranks at muster" (1700) and "vote manufactured for party purposes" (1817).

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV********************

**********************

The oft-heard statement that male homosexuals were called faggots in reference to their being burned at the stake is an etymological urban legend.

Burning was sometimes a punishment meted out to homosexuals in Christian Europe (on the suggestion of the Biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorah), but in England, where parliament had made homosexuality a capital offense in 1533, hanging was the method prescribed.

Any use of faggot in connection with public executions had long become an English historical obscurity by the time the word began to be used for "male homosexual" in 20th century American slang, whereas the contemptuous slang word for "woman" (and the other possible sources or influences listed here) was in active use.

Nice pick up.

Adam

Post Script: Stephen - I am assuming you do not have any contrary citation yes.

[Michelle]

"He [the prefect] used to fag me to blow the chapel organ for him."

Wow

[Selene]

Michelle:

I cracked up with that one.

That is a George Carlin special in itself!

Adam

[Reidy]

It must have been an effective way of getting the boys down on their knees.

[Michelle]

Get on your knees

And start pleasin' Jesus

[Selene]

Would they be blown again??

[Michelle]

NICK: So, like you heard, he had called for me, said he wanted to see me after classes in the choir room. *Pause* Him. Yes, Him. No, gorgeous doesn't even begin to describe him. I'm thinking "he just wants me to try out some instrument again." So, I got there, and the back door was open, and he was standing there, all silent, his eyes intense, and I'm thinking "no way! He likes girls. I'm not lucky enough for something like this to happen to me." He brusquely grabbed my arm and dragged me into the back room. The room was narrow at first (it twists a lot, you know), and you had all these shelves with musical instruments on them, so we were packed together in a straight line as he led me to a certain empty area with a crate where one had some room to sit. My heart was beating pretty hard now, as you can imagine, and so he had me sit down on the crate, and he said "Nick, you know, I think you might be quite talented." And I was starting to perspire and I think my heart was getting ready to explode. He had the most beautiful face at that time - wiped clean of all expression, only a few facial muscles pulled tight in preparation for what was to come. He said, very slowly, "I've just oiled my organ. I want you to blow my organ and test it out. I think you're the right person for the job." And I'm thinking that it sounds like the most laughably awful porno-movie line in the world, and yet here he is, and he can make it sound sexier than hell. "I want to watch you blow it." I think I might have been blushing. I don't know. I felt like I was dissolving from the inside-out. I lost all sense of physical reality at that point. So I stammered something to the effect of "s-s-suu-sure," because, well, you know how utterly suave I am, dear. Anyway. So he took me to the very back of the room, where there was this large space, and I saw a... pipe organ. And he walked over to it, pulled up a chair, and said "please, have a seat, please, blow it." I think I was stunned for a few seconds. Then I said: "This... is what you were talking about?" He nodded. "THIS?!" He frowned, looking baffled. "Don't you see how 'blow my organ' might be misconstrued." The confused expression just intensified. At this point I'm off the hook, and I start thrashing him with a verbal whip like an inflamed torturer: "THIS? THIS IS IT? YOU DON'T EVEN BLOW IT DIRECTLY! WHY IN HELL WOULD YOU WORD IT LIKE THAT?! WHY--" Five minutes later, my face is red and I'm out of breath from all the yelling I was doing. So he looked at me and said: "...so you won't blow my organ?" What an idiot. So I said: "Sure, sure, I'm blow your organ, no problem." I felt kind of empty walking home that night.

Edited May 31, 2009 by Michelle R

[Selene]

Well done, Michelle.

Good last line.

[thezachcooper]

John,

I think you are doing yourself a great disservice by not “coming out.” I think it’s very difficult for intellectual young men who happen to be interested in other men. Almost all subcultures have fools in abundance who let a tithe of their constitutions (creed, color, crotch or crotch of choice) govern their comportment.

I have several homosexual friends, and I know: gay guys are no exception. Yet, there are those gay men who are everything but ridiculous and irrational. You yourself say so, too. Incidentally, these men are also very faithful to their partners and are the men worth chasing after.

However, failing to broadcast your sexuality will not advertise you to your ideal man in their ranks. Consider that if you were “out and about” you’d stick out like a sore thumb among the pink nails, and maybe another rational, pensive (and handsome) guy would take notice.

I hope that between when you first posted this and your reading this that you’ve given your situation some thought. I wish you the best in life and love.

In one of your other points, you list romance as one of three elements of life.

How do you intend to live without it then?

Zach

Edited September 3, 2009 by Cooper