What an interesting topic.
During the last ten years or so, I have been thinking more and more about why so many people dislike, feel disgust or even outright hostility towards homosexuals. Why?
To start this, I have always defined myself as a heterosexual. But increasingly I have started to think think that sexual labels are quite useless. I have grown to believe that we as humans are all capable of feeling some sort of sexual attraction to persons of different genders, given the right circumstances. Most people might not act on it, but that does not mean that it didn't happen.
The reason that the vast majority of us regard ourself as nothing but heterosexuals
must be seen in the context of the societies we live in. For millennia societies dominated by the Abrahamic religions have oppressed, criminalized and murdered homosexuals. This still goes on in parts of the world and it is really only in the last two, maybe three decades that gay people have been able to be relatively open about their way of life in some western countries. That is a blink of an eye from a historical view-point, and in
other countries it is still as bad as ever. In that context I find it surprising that
anyone dare define themselves as gay, I put it down to human courage.
Let me give you one rather clear example of how utterly disgusting that oppression has been/is.
Alan Turing was born in the UK in 1912. During WWII he was instrumental in the breaking of the
ENIGMA code. As an individual, Turing probably made as great a contribution to the defeat of nazi-Germany as any statesman or general did. You would suppose he was honoured and cherished until his dying days? No. In 1952 he was convicted of 'gross indecency' and sentenced to chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. His crime? It had come to light that he was gay. Two years later he committed suicide.
In 2009, 55 years later, PM Brown issued
an apology. Rather late, one might think. Better late than never, of course, but what kind of a society treats its heroes in such a way?
Let me give you another example of a very different society. In ancient Sparta (you know,
300) homosexuality was institutionalised. All young Spartan men where brought up to be fearless, perfect warriors.
And to be gay. Here we have a society which, quite opposite to ours, expected and demanded their males to have homosexual relationships. All of a sudden, everyone it seems, were gay.
KILLTHEHIPPIE,
Blondie14 and
-TP-. Had you been born as ancient Spartan males, would had you been the only straight ones?
Peril, would you have?
My point is that different sexual feelings/orientations are quite natural to human beings. Are we as individuals more inclined to one side or the other? Maybe. But I think that the biggest reason for us wanting to put specific labels on ourselves (and everyone around us) is because that is what our society expects us to do. Had this been a 100% percent neutral subject, I would expect you, me, as well as most Spartan warriors, to have had different sexual experiences during our life-times, not thinking too much about what gender our partner(s) might have had.
