Brian,
We are a culture in motion and I wonder what sort of force it would take to stop us now.
You have been outspoken about your concerns with current perceptions of homosexuality and many have publicly and silently accused you. For my part, I have remained mostly quiet. The reason is almost shameful to admit. I fear not only what my own friends already think of my opposition, but also what my children and grandchildren will be taught to think. Continue reading
I concluded Part Three by asserting that “society does and should take a hand in directing sexuality towards good results and away from bad ones”—but what counts as a “good” result, and how are good results to be encouraged? These are very important questions, but they are not the questions I am dealing with here. I will say only, in passing, that the authority to answer these questions is entrusted primarily to We the People (and not to the Supreme Court).
What I am dealing with here is not sexual morality, but sexuality simply as such: what is it? I have given no complete answer, but I have suggested that sexuality is NOT something that just happens to us. In particular, I have argued that (1) sexual orientation is not an immutable (i.e., unchangeable, inherent) characteristic of our natures, and (2) our culture should not impose on individuals a sexual identity based upon that orientation. Currently, our culture does impose such an identity by attempting to place everyone in one of four “immutable nature” boxes—homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual. Continue reading
I claimed, at the end of Part One, that “the potentiality for sexual interest in either gender is natural in nearly all people in some degree.” In Part Two I explained my own experience, which bears this out. Here I mean to appeal to more general experiences that I’m sure I share with almost all readers to prove this point. Continue reading
I think I became aware of the fact that sexual orientation is supposed to be an important part of one’s identity around 4th or 5th grade. I made a special homemade valentine’s card for another boy who had moved in. I was not romantically interested in him; I meant it as a special gesture of welcome. But he avoided me thereafter. In middle school, my male peers would talk knowingly of which female classmates were “hot,” but would profess utter ignorance about which male classmates were attractive. Female peers did the same. Being male (and straight, though this part went unspoken) meant, so we thought or affected to think, that the attractiveness of the other gender was transparent and that of our own opaque. Which, of course, is utter nonsense.
For as long as I have been attuned to the beauty of the human form, I have been attracted by male beauty as well as by female beauty—though my appreciation of male beauty more easily remains purely aesthetic, while my appreciation of female beauty more easily becomes erotic. Continue reading
There is reason to doubt the veracity of our current taxonomy of sexualities: a person (we think) is by nature homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual. Admittedly, this system has an intuitive appeal: there are two genders (basically); one may be attracted to one, the other, both, or neither. There are no other possibilities. This satisfying quality of logical completeness is misleading, however.
The first and most important piece of evidence against our system is that people never thought of sexuality in this way prior to the 19th century. Continue reading
When an engaged couple comes to me for lessons, they come onto the floor smiling at each other, holding hands. And just before we start, he leans over and kisses her on the forehead. It’s an adorable picture, one for a newspaper, until they start to dance. That’s when the fighting begins. Sooner or later (and usually sooner) nearly all engaged couples will fight while learning their first dance. Romantic images of waltzing across clouds with your new spouse quickly fade when you realize dancing isn’t as easy as it looks. As a dance instructor, I feel funny asking these adult students to stop fighting and listen to what I am saying. At times, I want to remind them that they are planning to spend the rest of their lives with this person and it’s not a good sign if they can’t even make it through a dance lesson. Of course that might be an untimely thing to say to an engaged couple, but the impulse can be hard to resist. Continue reading
