Out in All Directions

An unnamed member of the U.S. Congress, when asked recently by Daniel Zingale of the Human Rights Campaign Fund if he would support a bill guaranteeing the right of all gay men and lesbians to work without fear of being fired simply for being gay, replied that he thought it was a good law. “But,” he said, “I don’t think I have any gay people in my district. After all, I haven’t heard about this issue from any of my constituents.”

This not atypical response was based on several common myths about gay men and lesbians, the biggest ones being that there aren’t very many gay people in the world, and that all gay people are “out” and obvious to spot. (By the congressman’s statement, it is clear that another myth was operating too: the myth that all gay people have a “gay agenda” and are politically organized.)

Despite all the science and research that has been done, myths about lesbians and gay men persist. When people subscribe to these myths, a productive dialogue about gay people is nearly impossible. On a recent television talk show addressing gay parenting, for example, a homophobic fundamentalist was placed on the panel, supposedly for “balance.” Instead of being able to discuss the complex legal, moral, and social issues surrounding gay parenting, the lesbian and gay panelists spent almost the entire hour debating with the fundamentalist panelist about whether gay people are child molesters and want to have kids to “turn” them gay.

If straight people hold beliefs about gay people that are not necessarily based on fact, the same is true for many lesbians and gay men about each other. Even within the lesbian and gay community, there is a lot of confusion and debate surrounding many questions.

In this chapter we have tackled a number of tricky issues in an attempt to explain some facts and discuss some of the more common misperceptions about gay men and lesbians. The public dialogue about gay people and politics will not progress beyond myth-dispelling until we can move past these misperceptions.

The Most Common Myths about Gay Men and Lesbians

1. Gay people recruit because they can’t reproduce. Can you imagine the advertising campaign to attract potential recruits? “You too can be a member of a despised minority. Join us and your parents will reject you, your boss will fire you, and absolute strangers will call you names or hit you over the head with a baseball bat for holding hands with your boyfriend or girlfriend in public.”

This is a multipart myth. First, gay people can reproduce and do, but their children are no more likely to be gay or lesbian than the children of heterosexual parents. Second, the recruit myth suggests that homosexuals seduce unsuspecting heterosexuals into becoming gay. Even if gay people wanted to recruit, they can’t make a heterosexual person a homosexual. It doesn’t work that way.

At best, gay and lesbian people can serve as positive role models for those who are struggling with their gay and lesbian identities. We can show by example that you can he homosexual and lead a full and happy life—atleast as happy as anyone else’s. But despite what some people may claim, gay and lesbian people do not recruit heterosexual children or adults.

We have Freud to thank for this myth. He came up with the theory that homosexuality in men results from having a passive, indifferent, or hostile father and a strong mother. But this flawed theory can’t explain families in which passive, indifferent fathers and strong mothers raise heterosexual children, or families in which strong fathers and passive mothers raise homosexual children. And what about a family in which the parents are both dominant? Does that mean the kids will be bisexual?

Bottom line: The personalities or power dynamics of mothers and fathers have no impact on whether a child is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.

This hateful myth just won’t go away, when the truth is that the most likely person to molest children is a heterosexual male, and his most likely victim is a female child who is a member of his own family. Men who molest prepubescent boys almost always identify as heterosexual and are heterosexual in their adult relationships.

It would be nice to say that there are no child molesters who are gay. That would be a lie—but gay people are no more likely than heterosexuals to sexually abuse children. In fact, according to a study conducted in the early 1990s by Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado, gay people are far less likely than heterosexuals to molest children: During a one-year period, only one of 387 cases of suspected child molestation there involved a gay perpetrator.

If every woman who had a bad experience with a man became a lesbian, there wouldn’t be a heterosexual woman left on the planet.

There are indeed men who wish to be women and women who wish to be men, but this has nothing to do with sexual orientation. These are conflicts regarding gender. Most gay and lesbian people, like most heterosexual people, are perfectly content to keep the male or female bodies they were born with.

6. Gay and lesbian people don’t have lasting, loving, couple relationships.

Lasting, loving relationships are tough for heterosexuals. Just look at the divorce statistics. And heterosexuals generally have the support of their families, communities, and the state. Against all odds, many gay and lesbian people have found lasting and loving relationships. Unfortunately, because gay people remain largely hidden, there are no accurate statistics on the number of gay and lesbian couples or the average length of these relationships.

As a blanket statement, this is simply untrue, though some gay men hate women and some lesbians hate men, just as some heterosexual men hate women and some heterosexual women hate men. Let’s not forget that some gay people hate heterosexuals, and more than a few heterosexuals hate gay people. And, of course, some people hate everyone. Hate is, after all, an equal opportunity emotion.

Not all gay people are rich, white, or male, despite the myth to the contrary. Here, Gay American Indians (GAI) and AIDS activists joined together in 1985 to protest the lack of federal funding for AIDS programs and Native American health care. (Rink Foto)

This relatively new myth is an unfortunate conclusion drawn from misleading marketing studies of the “gay community” that suggest all gay men are affluent, urban, white, and well-educated, drive nice cars, and drink expensive designer coffee. Compared to the older myth that all gay men are child molesters, this is quite an improvement, but it’s still way off the mark. How many times do we have to say it? Gay people are both male and female, come from all walks of life, all racial, ethnic, and religious groups, all parts of the nation, and all socioeconomic groups.

If you believe what some people say about gay men, you would think that all gay men have had a thousand or more sexual partners by the time they’re thirty. Some very sexually active men—straight and gay—have had a thousand or more sexual partners by the time they’re thirty, but most single gay men feel lucky to have a date on a Saturday night.

This may look like two myths, but it’s really one. The myth is that what is true about one gay person is true for all. It’s not. The truth is, some lesbians love cats, and some lesbians hate cats. No scientific survey has ever been conducted to establish whether or not lesbians own more cats per capita than any other group of people, but you can bet that it’s only a matter of time before one of those new gay marketing companies starts one.

When it comes to gay men and fashion, how do you explain Elton John and Liberace? They are proof that not all gay men have good fashion sense. Of course, plenty of gay men do indeed have better fashion sense than many straight men, but the reverse is also true.

The Prevalence of Sexual Inversion (1901)

Concerning the wide prevalence of sexual inversion, and of homosexual phenomena generally, there can be no manner of doubt. In Berlin, [Albert] Moll states that he has himself seen between six hundred and seven hundred homosexual persons, and heard of some two hundred and fifty to three hundred others. I have much evidence as to this frequency both in England and the United States. In England, concerning which I can naturally speak with most assurance, its manifestations are well-marked for those whose eyes have been opened.… Among the professional and most cultured element of the middle class in England there must be a distinct percentage of inverts, which may sometimes be as much as 5 percent, though such estimates must always be hazardous. Among women of the same class the percentage seems to be at least double—though here the phenomena are less definite and deepseated.”

Urnings Are Not Rare

Contrary to the general impression, one of the first points that emerges from this study is that ‘Urnings,’ or Uranians [from Uranos, ‘heaven’; the idea being that the Uranian love was of a higher order than the ordinary attachment] are by no means so very rare, but that they form, beneath the surface of society, a large class. It remains difficult, however, to get an exact statement of their numbers, and this for more than one reason: partly because, owing to the want of any general understanding of their case, these folk tend to conceal their true feelings from all but their own kind, and indeed often deliberately act in such a manner as to lead the world astray (whence it arises that a normal man living in a certain society will often refuse to believe that there is a single Urning in the circle of his acquaintance, while one of the latter, or one that understands the nature, living in the same society, can count perhaps a score or more) and partly because it is indubitable that the numbers do vary very greatly, not only in different countries but even in different classes in the same country. The consequence of all this being that we have estimates differing widely from each other. Dr. Grabowsky, a well-known writer in Germany, quotes figures (which we think must be exaggerated) as high as one man in every 22, while Dr. Albert Moll gives estimates varying from one to every 50 to as low as one in every 500.

art DID YOU KNOW…

The U.S. government completed its first-ever attempt to enumerate the number of gay and lesbian couples in the nation as part of its 1990 census. Data suggests that there are 145,130 such couples heading households in this country. California had 25 percent of all those responding; Massachusetts 6.6 percent; New York 5.8 percent; Minnesota 5.1 percent; and Georgia and Washington, 5 percent each. States with the smallest percentages were Wyoming (0.6 percent), South Dakota (0.6 percent), and Idaho (1.7 percent).

Where Do They Get Those Numbers?

Any lesbian or gay man in America today, if asked how many gay people there are, would probably respond almost automatically with “10 percent.” This 10 percent figure, which is so often quoted, is apparently a misinterpretation of the data presented in Alfred Kinsey’s two reports: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, published in 1953.

In fact, Kinsey never actually stated that 10 percent of the population was actively homosexual. Drawing from a pool of approximately 6,000 male Americans, Kinsey and his staff found that 37 percent of the male population had had some homosexual contact after adolescence, 13 percent had been more homosexual than heterosexual for at least three years between adolescence and age fifty-five, and 4 percent were exclusively homosexual after adolescence. Among the 6,000 American women studied, 13 percent had some homosexual contact after adolescence, and, compared with the male subjects, “there were only about a half to a third as many of the females who were, in any age period, primarily or exclusively homosexual.” In other words, approximately 2 percent of women were exclusively homosexual.

Kinsey did not say that 10 percent of American men and women were actively homosexual, but he did invite that impression by ambiguous wording. “Kinsey was trying to show that homosexuality wasn’t rare and perverse and so he was sometimes imprecise by not always making a clear distinction between active and cumulative incidence,” says Paul Gebhard, Kinsey’s co-author and successor. The 10 percent figure became famous in 1977 after the National Gay Task Force requested an update from the Kinsey Institute on the incidence of homosexuals in the United States. Gebhard replied with a memo that read, in part:

“In the 1948 and 1953 studies, it was stated that 13 percent of the male and 7 percent of the female population had more homosexual than heterosexual experience or psychological response for at least three years between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five, for a combined percentage of 10 percent for the total population. These figures have been criticized for including psychological response along with overt experience. However, I have been recently reworking the 1938 to 1963 data to include only ‘experience’ (defined as deliberate physical contact intended by at least one of the participants to produce sexual arousal).

“Tabulations based on these criteria indicate that 13.95 percent of males and 4.25 percent of females, or a combined average of 9.13 percent of the total population, had either extensive (21 or more partners or 52 or more experiences) or more than incidental (5–20 partners or 21–50 experiences) homosexual experience. I wish to point out that although the Institute did interview members of homosexual groups and organizations as part of its research, all such persons were excluded from the above tabulation.”

In 1993, the Alan Guttmacher Institute published a study conducted by the Battelle human Affairs Research Center in Seattle which was based on face-to-face interviews in 1991 with 3,321 men, ages twenty through thirty-nine. The study concluded that 1 percent identified themselves as homosexual. Tom W. Smith, who directs the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, said that the new findings are in line with a series of surveys of sexual practices done in each of the last four years by researchers at the University of Chicago and with recently published reports from Britain, France, and Denmark.

The Battelle study has several obvious problems. Among them are the fact that the age group sampled (twenty to thirty-nine) leaves out a lot of sexually active people; all the respondents were male, which omits more than half of the U.S. population; and the studies were face-to-face. Many gay people will not admit their sexuality to a total stranger.

THE CONFUSING COUNT

How many gay people are there? One in 100? One in 10? There arc no clear answers. For years, gay activists clung to figures from studies Alfred Kinsey conducted in the 1940s and 1950s that suggested 10 percent of Americans are homosexual. But those numbers—based on interviews with the institutional populations of schools, hospitals, and prisons—have been considered less reliable in recent years. Yet finding studies with more definitive numbers hasn’t been easy. A look at some of those studies:

Alfred Kinsey (1940s and 1950s) 10%

National Opinion Research Center (1988–91)

Men having sex exclusively with men in past year 2%

Women having sex exclusively with women in past year 0.7%

Men and women who had engaged in homosexual activity during adult lives 5’6%

Alan Guttmacher Institute (1993)

The study was limited to men between the ages of 20 and 39.

Adult men who have engaged in homosexual sex 2%

Adult men who think of themselves as exclusively homosexual 1%

The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior (1993)

Study drew from a non-random national sample of adults Women who identified themselves as homosexual 2%

Men who identified themselves as homosexual 4%

— THE KANSAS CITY STAR, MARCH 30, 1994

Voter Research & Surveys conducted a survey of voters on Election Day 1992 for the four television networks, and found that 3 percent of men and 2 percent of women who voted that day said that they were gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

Murray Edelman, director of the company, estimated that because people are reluctant to identify themselves as gay or lesbian the actual homosexual vote was slightly higher, at around 4 percent of the total.

In the 1990 Census, the U.S. government tried in a roundabout way to determine the number of gay men and lesbians living as couples in the country by including questions regarding the number and sex of any unmarried adults living in the household. The breakdown of the unmarried couples living together in the largest twenty cities follows.

In February 1992, the Campaign for Women’s Health and the American Medical Women’s Association released the results of a survey of 1,000 women chosen by random and conducted by telephone. The overall purpose of the survey was to gather information about women’s health needs. Only one question dealt with sexuality: “Have your sexual partners been mainly men, women, or both?” Twenty women said they had sex with women exclusively, and another twenty said that they had sexual partners of both sexes. The total, forty, represents 4 percent of the women surveyed. Yankelovich Partners, who have been tracking consumer values and attitudes since 1971, included a question about sexual identity in its most recent Yankelovich Monitor survey, the results of which were released in June 1994. The result among the 2,503 people participating in the 1993 study was that 5.7 percent, or 143, described themselves as “gay/homosexual/lesbian,” which was one of fifty-two questions on personal topics. Out magazine editor Michael Goff was quoted in The New York Times as saying about this survey, “That almost 6 percent of the people say they’re gay is incredibly important,” because “it’s the first real hard study done by a gold-standard research company” to indicate what percentage of the population identifies itself as gay or lesbian.

In 1994, when a University of Chicago survey team asked 3,432 men and women between the ages of eighteen and fifty-nine about their sexual behavior, 10.2 percent of the men and 2.1 percent of the women in the country’s top twelve largest cities acknowledged having had sex with someone of the same sex in the year preceding the survey. Asked about their entire adulthood, 16.4 percent of the men and 6.2 percent of the women said they had had at least one sexual partner of their own sex.

In rural areas, the figures drop considerably: Only 1 percent of men and 0.6 percent of women reported same-sex sexual behavior in the past year. For their entire adulthoods, the figures were 1.5 percent for women and 2.8 percent for men. Again, it is important to keep in mind that these surveys were face-to-face in respondents’ homes. These questions were part of a much larger survey on the sexual behavior of Americans; 20 percent of the sample group refused to participate in the survey at all. It can be assumed that many gay men and lesbians, especially in rural areas, self-selected out of the survey, skewing the statistics even further. On the other hand, it is great to see the large number of gay people willing to be honest about their sex lives.

Despite all the studies, all the numbers, and all the graphs, we think Kinsey came closest to speaking the truth when he said, “The number of persons in the world who are homosexual and the number who are heterosexual is unanswerable.”

ARE YOU BORN THAT WAY?

Since the medical-scientific community began studying homosexuality in the late nineteenth century, there has been speculation as to whether homosexuality is biological, psychological, or both. Often the debate has centered around whether or not gay people were born “that way.” Arguments of “nature” vs. “nurture” have been staples of opponents to gay rights, who talk about the “lifestyle choice” of homosexuals as a way of trying to invalidate demands for civil rights.

Biological research into the origins of homosexuality has taken a new turn in recent years. Both Dean Hamer and Simon LeVay are openly gay scientists who have done research with the hopes that their findings will assist gay rights causes. A study of female twins in 1993 found that nearly 50 percent of identical twin sisters of lesbians are lesbian themselves. Psychologist J. Michael Bailey, who conducted the study, argues that it shows a genetic link in female homosexuality. But all three scientists are quick to acknowledge that biology is not the only cause. Most scientists, like most gay people, feel that the discussion of sexuality should not be based on the “either/or” dichotomy of “nature” vs. “nurture“; rather, we should be looking at how both factors influence our development as sexual beings.

Gay rights activists have mixed feelings about this new science of “homosexual biology.” Many feel that people who are reluctant to support gay men and lesbians will become more sympathetic to gay rights if they believe being gay is not a choice. Parents of gay people will be able to reject the whole question of whether it was their “fault” and focus on embracing their children more readily. People who are struggling with their own homosexuality will be more able to appreciate that their sexual feelings are natural.

Other gay men and lesbians argue that trying to find liberation through science is about as likely as the eradication of racism in this country during our lifetimes. Science, like everything else, is shaped by the attitudes and values of the societies in which research is conducted. If society is homophobic, then the discovery that homosexuality is genetic will be used against gay people; opponents of gay men and lesbians will simply declare that homosexuality is a genetic disease and should be eradicated.

Still others say that the entire discussion of causes should be moot anyway. This philosophy holds that gay liberation is about individual rights; as long as gay men and lesbians aren’t harming anyone, the biological (or nonbiological) basis of homosexuality is irrelevant. Simon LeVay concurs with this point, saying in a 1993 Advocate interview, “I don’t think that gay rights should depend on proving that we can’t help being gay. We should have equal rights even if we are gay out of sheer wanton perversity.”

The issue of biology is complex. And whether or not science is the answer, the research into the causes of homosexuality will continue. The struggle will be to try to change public biases against lesbians and gay men before technology creates a means of eradicating the “nature” part of the equation.

The Sex That Is Not One

In 1908, when Edward Carpenter expanded the same-sex chapter of his most popular book, Love’s Coming of Age (1897), into the book The Intermediate Sex, it quickly became one of the most widely read books on the subject of homosexuality. Along with Havelock Ellis, Carpenter was considered one of the foremost authorities on homosexuality in the English-speaking world. Unlike Ellis, Carpenter was homosexual, and lived in a life-long partnership with George Merrill. In the excerpt below, Carpenter details the theories of Austrian doctor Karl Heinrich Ulrichs as an early scientific explanation of homosexuality:

More than thirty years ago…an Austrian writer, K.H. Ulrichs, drew attention in a series of pamphlets (Memnon, Ara Spei, Inclusa, etc.) to the existence of a class of people who strongly illustrate the above remarks [about homosexuality].… He pointed out that there were people born in such a position—as it were on the dividing line between the sexes—that while belonging distinctly to one sex as far as their bodies are concerned they may be said to belong mentally and emotionally to the other; that there were men, for instance, who might be described as of feminine soul enclosed in body (anima muliebris in corpe virili inclusa), or in other cases, women whose definition would be just the reverse. And he maintained that this double-ness of nature was to a great extent proved by the special direction of their love-sentiment. For in such cases, as indeed might be expected, the (apparently) masculine person instead of forming a love-union with a female tended to contract romantic friendships with one of his own sex: while the apparently feminine would, instead of marrying in the usual way, devote herself to the love of another feminine.

art DID YOU KNOW…

“A survey conducted among 200 girls who had been riding horses male fashion showed that nearly all of them received pleasant sexual sensations due to the continuous bounce and friction established between the saddle pommel and their clitoris. Many of the riders admitted that they especially became fond of horseback riding for that reason alone. Several declared that it started them on the road to homosexuality because males no longer were desirous to them.”

DR. ARTHUR GUY MATHEWS, FROM IS HOMOSEXUALITY A MENACE? (1959)

People of this kind (i.e., having this special variation of the love-sentiment) he called Urnings; and though we are not obliged to accept his theory about the crosswise connexion between “soul” and “body,” since at best these words are somewhat vague and indefinite; yet his work was important because it was one of the first attempts, in modern times, to recognise the existence of what might be called an Intermediate Sex, and to give at any rate some explanation of it.

It’s in the Jeans: Biology, Culture, and the Struggle for Gay Liberation

The July 1993 release of a study that links male homosexuality to an area on the X chromosome met with mixed reactions from gay rights advocates. The Human Rights Campaign Fund, the Washington-based gay lobby, welcomed the findings and said, “We believe it will help increase support for gay and lesbian rights” (New York Times, July 16, 1993). Others were less enthusiastic. Many gays are suspicious of attempts to find the cause(s) of homosexuality, because historically the search for a cause has been part of the search for a “cure.” Antigay forces, on the other hand, have decried the recent research as “pro-gay” and contend that the “hypothesis of recruitment” and the “traditional psychological model of disturbed families producing more homosexuals” should be given greater attention (Wall Street Journal, August 12, 1993). A 1991 study by Simon LeVay that found differences in the size of the hypothalamus of gay and straight men met with a similar reception. Researchers, meanwhile, have found themselves in the spotlight on a politically “hot” issue that has been exploited by the right wing in distinctly nonscientific ways. And women, as usual, have been ignored: both studies have dealt exclusively with men.

For all of the uproar, however, the biological research on sexual orientation is still inconclusive, and in any case it is unlikely to affect either the lives of gay people or the opinions of those who hate them.

The most recent study, conducted by Dr. Dean Hamer of the National Cancer Institute and published in the July 1993 issue of Science, found that more than 75 percent of a group of pairs of gay brothers had inherited identical DNA markers on a particular region of the X chromosome, suggesting that same-sex attraction may have some hereditary disposition. But even those who consider this finding interesting or significant are quick to acknowledge that sexual orientation is a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon whose determinants are, at best, partially genetic. Hamer’s study did not isolate a “gay gene,” and it is still a matter of total speculation as to how likely carriers of a “gay gene”—or, more likely, genes—would be to become gay as a result of such a genetic makeup. Moreover, the study has been criticized for omitting a control experiment checking for the presence of the genetic markers among heterosexual brothers. The results have not yet been replicated, and the small number of cases involved in the study (forty) is further reason for a cautionary reading of the results. Nevertheless, Hamer’s study has generally won acclaim and will certainly encourage similar research.

Gay proponents of biological research on sexual orientation argue that discovering a biological cause of homosexuality would strengthen the case for legal protections against discrimination. A crucial part of equal-protection law is built on the concept of an “immutable characteristic.” If sexual orientation were considered an immutable characteristic, like race or gender, efforts to decriminalize homosexual sex, outlaw discrimination, and legalize marriage would have improved chances of enactment. That a biological basis for homosexuality could help the legal case for gay rights is indisputable, but it is important to note that such a basis is neither a necessary nor a sufficient argument for legal protections. Religion is constitutionally protected and considered an “immutable” characteristic in this context, and yet there is clearly no biological basis for religion. In addition, legal victories have been won for gays on the basis of immutability despite the lack of conclusive biological evidence.

More instructive than the success of the immutable characteristic argument sans biological determinants, however, is the historical failure of biological differences to inspire tolerance and equal treatment. As the experience of African Americans should make abundantly clear, hereditary difference is no guard against oppression. The argument that skin color was an illegal (and immoral) basis for discrimination gained purchase only after decades of calculated legal struggles and a considerable popular mobilization on its behalf. (The same can be said for gender differences, of course—and both are battles that are still far from over.) The lesson is an important one: Unless Americans are persuaded that homophobia is wrong, no amount of biological evidence will suffice to dismantle legal discrimination against gays and lesbians. The argument of biological difference can be a tool gay activists can use to help their cause, but without a movement that challenges heterosexist norms, it is ultimately useless.

The focus on legal advances is, of course, only part of the broader goal of overcoming ignorance and hatred for gay people. Supporters of biological research hope that demonstrating that sexual orientation is not chosen will compel bigots to see gays in a different light. However, religious intolerance of lesbians and gays—which provides much of the fuel that feeds the current antigay hate—already acknowledges the immutability of sexual orientation (or its possibility, at least). The argument of many antigay Christians has long been that one may not be able to help having homosexual feelings, but one definitely has the capacity and obligation to resist acting on them and to learn to adapt to heterosexual habits. In biblical jargon, this is known as “loving the sinner, hating the sin.” The religious argument against homosexuality is not based in a distinction of whether the behavior is voluntary or not, and hence biological evidence that it is inborn or hereditary will not lessen the prejudice of those who consider it immoral.

Discovering a biological basis for homosexuality is at best a two-edged sword. Far from helping erode prejudice, grounding difference in biology has a long and horrible history as the basis of persecution. People of color, Jews, the disabled, and the mentally ill have all suffered unspeakable crimes in the name of racial or genetic inferiority. The very premise of Nazi anti-Semitism was the claim that Jews were a biological threat to German racial purity. Indeed, biological difference is typically used not to demonstrate that people are similar despite genetic variations, but rather to argue that people are morally different because they are biologically predisposed to certain behaviors. (Abnormal sexual appetites in particular have frequently been ascribed to biological or genetic predispositions—for instance, in the racist image of black men as sexual predators.) There is no reason for gay people to expect a more enlightened interpretation than others have been subjected to throughout history. Lest readers should consider this an unnecessarily dark and pessimistic view, I offer the London Daily Mail headline reporting on the Hamer study as a possible omen of what the future could hold: “Abortion Hope After ―Gay Gene’ Findings” (New York Times, August 2, 1993).

Enthusiasts of biological research are at heart interested in showing that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice. The importance of demonstrating the involuntary nature of homosexuality lies in its usefulness for the strategy of appealing to a common humanity as a basis for tolerance and acceptance. Gay people are people like everybody else, except they happen to be gay. This approach has unmistakable echoes of the assimilationism of the homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and risks limiting the gay rights agenda in similar ways. While asserting that our human similarities are more important than our sexual differences—which is certainly true—it runs the risk of undercutting our claim to the right to he different.

An overemphasis on the biological determinants of sexual orientation leaves gays and lesbians more vulnerable to cultural intolerances. Someone might argue, for instance, that basic vanilla sex and traditional relationships between same-sex couples is okay (because homosexual inclination is involuntary) but that cross-dressing is unacceptable, or that butch women and effeminate men should alter their behavior. Someone might say that S/M or cruising are immoral behaviors. Earrings, pierced nipples, pink triangles, short hair, and black leather would all be open to the argument that since predilections toward them are not biologically determined, they need not be tolerated. But the fact is that if all these things were taken away from gay people, a very large part of what makes being gay fun and expressive would be gone. And that is because fighting for the right to be gay means fighting for the right to act gay, whatever that means to the individual.

art “I might as well say it now. I think that gay people are special. To a friend who also has a gay son, I say, ‘Gay people are more creative, spirited, and have a zest for life.’ She disagrees and says that gay people are just like everyone else. They work, pay taxes, and rear children. I agree, but these qualities come from the father’s genetic material. I’m convinced that my son’s leather jacket with all the political stickers, his earrings, and his backwards red baseball cap come from me, the X chromosome only a mother can supply.”

LAURA SIEGAL OF P-FLAG IN AN OPINION PIECE, “A VERY SPECIAL X CHROMOSOME,” IN THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

Gay people are not essentially a biological minority but a cultural minority. Moreover, the source of most people’s prejudice against gays is not the (mistaken) view that homosexuality is chosen; therefore the struggle against homophobia cannot be advanced by demonstrating that it is not chosen. Rather, the source of bias is a complex field of cultural/ideological beliefs (expectations about gender roles, including appropriate sexual-object choice for each gender, religious teachings, general hang-ups about sex, and so on) and thus the terrain of struggle for gays and lesbians must also be cultural.

Coming out has been the quintessential gay political act since the Stonewall Riots. It is at once an act of individual liberation from a life of lying and hiding, and a challenge to social norms. But the battle against the closet is a cultural battle; the closet has no biological meaning. Clearly, there is no biological basis compelling people to come out, and yet the right to be out is at the very core of the struggle for gay rights.

A misdirected emphasis on biological determinants in fact undercuts our claim as a cultural minority. If gayness is focused on biology instead of culture, then people are more likely to question whether we should dress distinctly, socialize together, have gay neighborhoods, and so on. They can say—and some have—there is no such thing as gay culture. In truth, of course, there not only is gay culture (many gay cultures, some more visible than others) but it is the existence of gay culture and the community it sustains that has made the daily life of gay people better. We need our community centers, our networks, our newspapers and magazines, our traditions, our trademarks. Our claim to them, however, has nothing to do with our genes.

Gay people are born into a diaspora; in addition to the deaf and disabled, we are the only minority whose biological parents do not necessarily share our minority status. Our collective identity and survival depends on the ability to transmit our culture to each new generation. Randy Shilts has said that a biological explanation “would reduce being gay to something like being left-handed, which is in fact all that it is” (New York Times, August 2, 1993). Apart from the fact that left-handed people until recently were routinely forced to switch, making this a very unfortunate choice of analogy, Shilts is simply wrong. It’s much more in the jeans—and the bandannas in the back pockets, the matching boots, and the pose—than in the genes.

Born Republican

The startling discovery that affiliation with the Republican party is genetically determined was announced by scientists in the current issue of the journal Nurture. Reports of the gene that codes for political conservatism, discovered after a long study of quintuplets in Orange County, California, has sent shock waves through the medical, political, and golfing communities.

Psychologists and psychoanalysts have long believed that Republicans’ unnatural and frequently unconstitutional tendencies result from unhealthy family life—a remarkably high percentage of Republicans had authoritative, domineering fathers and emotionally distant mothers who didn’t teach them how to be kind and gentle. But biologists have long suspected that conservatism is inherited. “After all,” said one author of the Nurture article, “it’s quite common for a Republican to have a brother or a sister who is a Republican.”

The finding has been greeted with relief by parents and friends of Republicans, who have tended to blame them-selves for the political views of otherwise lovable people—their children, friends, and unindicted co-conspirators.

One mother, a longtime Democrat, clasped her hands in ecstasy on hearing of the findings. “I just knew it was genetic,” she said, seated beside her two sons, both avowed Republicans. “I just knew that nobody would actually choose that lifestyle!” When asked what the Republican lifestyle was, she said, “Well, you can just tell from watching TV, like at the convention in Houston: the loud outfits, the flaming xenophobia, the flamboyant demagogy—you know.”

Both sons said they had suspected their Republicanism from an early age but did not confirm it until they were in college, when they became convinced it wasn’t just a phase they were going through.

Despite the near-certainty the medical community holds towards Republicanism’s genetic origins, troubling issues remain. The Nurture article offered no response to the suggestion that the startlingly high incidence of Republicanism among siblings could result from the fact that they share not only genes but also psychological and emotional attitudes, being the products of the same parents and family dynamics.

And it remains to be explained why so many avowed Democrats are known to vote Republican occasionally—or at least to fantasize about doing so. Polls show that three out of five Democrats admit to having had a Republican experience. In well-adjusted people, however, this experimentation rarely outlasts adolescence.

Surprisingly, some Republican activists hail the findings as a step forward, rather than an invitation to more conservophobia. They argue that since Republicans didn’t “choose” their unwholesome lifestyle any more than someone “chooses” to have a ski-jump nose, they shouldn’t he denied civil rights to which normal people are entitled.

Other Republicans, recalling nineteenth-century scientific studies that “proved” the mental inferiority of blacks, find the frenzied search for the biological cause of Republicanism pointless, if not downright sinister.

But for most real Americans, the discovery opens a window on a brighter tomorrow. In a few years, gene therapy could eradicate Republicanism altogether.

If conservatism is not the result of sheer orneriness (as many suspect) but is something Republicans can’t help and probably don’t even like, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t tolerate Republicans in the military or even high elected office—provided they don’t flaunt their political beliefs.

MYTH MAKING AND UNMAKING

Both inside and outside of the lesbian and gay community, gay people are dogged by myths and stereotypes and misinformation. While many of us can dismiss them as ridiculous, we still find ourselves in situations where these myths have harmful effects. To the informed and gay or gay-friendly, the myths are obviously based in ignorance, hate, and misunderstanding. But to a great many Americans, these myths continue to surface—in conversations around the office cooler, in books and magazines, in our church and military, and in our own families—and are assumed to be true.

Lies and stereotypes about gay men and lesbians give people false impressions of gay men and lesbians as individuals and as a community. Sometimes nongay people act upon these assumptions, lashing out against gay people with discriminatory legislation, restrictive sexual laws, harassment, and physical violence. For many gay people, part of coming out is shedding the internalized homophobia we feel in a society that nurtures these myths as facts.

The Degradation of Love—How Homosexuals and Lesbians Have Sex

The lesbian (female homosexual), since she cannot have intercourse with another female, can only offer herself as a mechanical device for the performance of masturbation. She usually excites her female partner by a variety of devious and often degrading techniques. She will kiss and fondle passionately in a masculine role, extending manipulations from the mouth to the breasts, ultimately exciting the victims to the peak of a sex climax through abnormal contacts with the clitoris. In all cases, the lesbian uses her mouth in a variety of unnatural acts. The female who is held captive by the lesbian soon becomes a mental and physical wreek, who suffers from the pangs of hell and remorse, but like a drug addict she is unable to ward off the repeated advances made toward her by the octopus-like creature who continually saps her strength, the lesbian.

The male who is held captive by a male homosexual suffers mentally and physically equally as much as the female victim. In addition to being mentally and physically destroyed, he loses all control of willpower, dignity, and sense of self-preservation, and often becomes involved with sadistic, cruel, possessive, jealous maniacs who would destroy him completely if he tried to shrug them off.

Quite often, homosexuals accommodate each other in a variety of sex-deviating roles, but usually, they seduce normals who are in mental conflict, or alcoholics, drug addicts, and others who have an outright fear of sexual intercourse. The lesbian believes that she is a substitute for a male, and the male homosexual believes he is a female substitute. Both will claim to be superior in performance than what they are substituting for. This is the common sales talk given to those they are attempting to seduce.

The Most Frequently Asked Questions about Gay Men and Lesbians

Life would be simple if this were a one-word answer, but like all human sexuality, being gay is more complicated than that. So here goes… Just as heterosexual people don’t choose their feelings of sexual attraction, gay and lesbian people don’t choose theirs. All of us become aware of our feelings of sexual attraction as we grow, whether those feelings are for someone of the same sex, the opposite sex, or both sexes. For almost all people who lead a gay or lesbian life, the only real choice is between suppressing these feelings of same-sex attraction—pretending to be asexual or heterosexual—and choosing to live the full emotional and physical life of a gay man or lesbian.

There are exceptions. While most people who live a gay or lesbian life don’t have a true choice between a homosexual life or a heterosexual life, there are men and women who have feelings of sexual attraction to both sexes and for that reason have the option of choosing a same-sex partner over an opposite-sex partner.

This question assumes that you can turn a heterosexual person into a homosexual person through seduction. You can’t. A heterosexual person can’t he seduced into being a gay man or a lesbian any more than you can seduce a gay man or lesbian into being a heterosexual. Plenty have tried. Virtually all have failed.

The key to knowing whether you’re heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual is to pay attention to your feelings of attraction. In other words, if you look at or think about or have consistent fantasies about being with someone of the same sex, then there’s a good chance you’re gay or lesbian. If you have feelings of sexual attraction for both men and women, then you may be bisexual.

The challenge for many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people is being honest with themselves about what they’re feeling, because society is, in general, so unaccepting.

At one time, homosexuality was thought of as a disease and/or mental illness. In that context, you could talk about treatment and cures and not be laughed out of the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Today, the only people who speak of trying to cure homosexuals are in need of treatment and/or reeducation themselves.

5. Isn’t it sinful and immoral? (Or, Isn’t it against God and the Bible?)

Some people consider homosexuality to he sinful and immoral. Other people consider homosexuality to he without sin and perfectly moral. Fortunately, in our society religion and morality are a matter of personal choice.

Some people like to quote Jesus on the subject of homosexuality, but despite what anyone says, it’s a subject he never addressed.

There’s no mystery about what gay and lesbian people do to stimulate each other sexually, because what gay and lesbian people do is essentially what heterosexual people do. Generally, people do what makes them feel good. That means looking at each other, talking to each other, kissing, holding hands, massaging each other, holding each other, licking each other; in short, stimulating each other in some way that makes you feel aroused. Of course, some things feel better than others, because some parts of the body are more naturally sensitive, like nipples, breasts, buttocks, the clitoris, the penis, the anus, lips, and for some people, that tender spot on the back of the neck or behind the knee. People use all kinds of things to stimulate the parts that feel good, including fingers, hands, the tongue, the mouth, the penis, toes—you name it, people use it.

Why does anyone have to play any role? In gay and lesbian relationships, couples have the same household chores and tasks on a day-to-day basis and have to make the same kinds of decisions as do heterosexual couples. How those tasks are done and how those decisions are made is not intrinsically dependent on gender, so men aren’t limited to doing stereotypically masculine things, like fixing the car and making the final decisions. And women aren’t limited to stereotypically feminine things, like cooking and cleaning and deferring to their husbands.

Plenty of heterosexual couples still play out traditional gender roles, as do some homosexual couples. But in general, for homosexual couples, who prepares dinner is based more on who has more time or is better at making dinner than who is more masculine or feminine.

There is no such thing as a gay lifestyle, just as there is no such thing as a heterosexual lifestyle. The fact is, gay and lesbian people, like heterosexual people, live in a variety of ways, from fast-lane urban single life to suburban split-level family life, to everything in between and beyond.

You cannot, repeat, cannot intentionally raise a child to be gay any more than you can intentionally raise a child to be heterosexual. From everything that is known, a parent cannot affect a child’s sexual orientation, other than helping a child to feel comfortable with who he or she is.

Unless you meet in a setting where you know for sure that everyone is gay, you have to look for clues. The ability to identify and sort through clues is sometimes referred to as “gaydar” (as in, “gay radar”).

Sometimes it’s easy to tell, and sometimes its not. For example, if someone is wearing a button or jewelry that indicates support for gay causes, then you don’t even need gaydar to figure out that this person is in all likelihood gay. Another clue might be if a man or woman’s style of clothing or haircut conforms to what’s popular among gay and lesbian people. Or if a man or woman exhibits some of the characteristics that are stereotypically associated with homosexuals—but that doesn’t always work. Not all effeminate men are gay, and not all masculine women are lesbians. Most gay and lesbian people aren’t stereotypically anything, which can make it difficult to positively identify who is what.

In the end, answering this question comes down to a simple but wholly inadequate answer: You can just tell. Sometimes.

If Gays Have No Choice, Why Are They So Hated?

Gay men and lesbians come in all shapes, sizes, and ideologies. Often voices that run counter to the majority of openly gay people are silenced or dismissed. But in many ways, these voices, however problematic, need to be acknowledged as a part of the multidimensional community in which we live. It is an important part of breaking down the myths that have haunted our communities for generations. The letter below reflects just such a voice.

It amazes me that I any actually writing to you. Mine is a story I am sure you have heard before. I am a homosexual, and nobody knows it. I am the typical “boy next door.” My friends and family would be shocked if they knew the truth.

My longtime companion died recently of AIDS, and I feel very much alone. Both my friend and I worked for very conservative business firms, and the disclosure of our sexual orientation would have meant professional suicide. I am trying hard to accept my loss, and I hope someday that I will be able to feel good again.

I guess the reason I am writing is to plead for a little understanding and compassion. I watch the news and read the papers every day and wonder why homosexuals are so despised. Do these haters actually believe we had a choice? Why would anyone choose to be a constant object of ridicule and hate?

If I could be “normal,” I would grab that option in a heartbeat. But a series of failed heterosexual relation-ships and the pain they inflicted on the women I became involved with have taught me that I really have no right to try to be straight.

I simply do not understand how people who profess to care about their fellow man can spend so much time and energy perpetuating a climate of hate directed at a segment of society that has no choice.

I’m not particularly comfortable with the image some flamboyant homosexuals project. It makes it difficult for those of us who choose not to go public, but perhaps bizarre behavior is their response to rejection. I just wish we could all learn to live together and be a little nicer to one another.

art DID YOU KNOW…

In 1994, two male flamingos at the Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands got the nesting urge and set up a same-sex co-habitation. After the two repeatedly sought to steal eggs from female flamingos to hatch them as their own, the zookeepers decided to provide them with a fertilized egg. The proud parents successfully hatched their own little chick, and remained faithfully by the side of the baby flamingo for a while. However, six months later, one of the two gay birds turned straight and found a female mate.

Dear J.C.: Thank you for a letter that just might open the door a crack. It never ceases to amaze me that in this day and age, so many people fail to understand that homosexuality is not a lifestyle that is chosen. That “choice” was made at birth. Maybe one day, those haters will understand this.

Gay Sheep Come out of the Closet

Eight percent of the male sheep at the United States Department of Agriculture’s Sheep Experimental Station in Dubois, Idaho, are gay, officials confirmed in late November 1988.

“These animals are homosexual. They are responding physically to how they are,” explained Anne Perkins, a doctoral student at the station who is completing her dissertation on “Reproductive Behavior in Rams.”

“It’s a very interesting model and we can learn a great deal about homosexuality from it,” Perkins said. “They are not morally or culturally or ethically behaving like humans. These sheep are just doing what their bodies are telling them to do.”

Homosexuality among animals is “nothing real unique,” according to Perkins, who said gay sex has been observed in sixty-three distinct mammalian species. “It’s not considered aberrant in farm animals at all,” she said.

One of the biggest arguments used by opponents of gay rights and of governmental funding for lesbian and gay services, art, and education is that homosexuality is unnatural. Natural law is based on a lot of different factors, but one of the primary, and most obvious, definitions of “natural” is “that which is done in nature.” In other words, if the animal kingdom does it, then it reflects the natural state of affairs. Here is a partial list of other animals that commit the “crime” of same-sex coupling:

The gay sheep, like some gay men, practice anal intercourse, according to Perkins, although some achieve orgasm simply by rubbing their penis around another male sheep’s tail.

There is, however, a serious social problem currently in gay sheep culture in that most gay sheep. Perkins said, only want to be on top.

“The difficulty for homosexual sheep is that it’s difficult to find another male who will stand still,” Perkins explained. “If there is a ram that is hurt or caught in a fence, then they can mount him, but otherwise there are so few receivers that it becomes difficult for homosexuals to express themselves.”

Lesbian sheep, meanwhile, are apparently wrestling with a major “invisibility” problem in the gay sheep world, a difficulty that has plagued human lesbians too.

“It’s very difficult to look at the possibility of lesbian sheep,” Perkins explained, “because if you are a female sheep, what you do to solicit sex is stand still. You don’t mount. So it’s very rare that a female sheep would mount another female sheep.”

“Maybe there is a female sheep out there really wanting another female.” Perkins speculated, “but there’s just no way for us to know it.”

A Reverse Questionnaire

• Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?

• If you’ve never slept with someone of the same sex, is it possible that all you need is a good same-sex lover?

• To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? How did they react?

• Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Why can’t you just he who you are and keep quiet about it?

• Studies show that more than 95 percent of child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers?

• With all the social support marriage receives, the divorce rate is still 50 percent. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?

• Heterosexuals are noted for adhering to narrowly restricted, stereotyped sex roles. Why do you cling to such an unhealthy form of role playing?

• Techniques have been developed that might enable you to change. Have you considered aversion therapy?

• Why do you make a point of attributing heterosexuality to famous people? Is it to justify your own heterosexuality?

• Considering the menace of hunger and overpopulation, can the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual like yourself?

• The group with the fastest-growing number of AIDS cases is heterosexual. Shouldn’t we prohibit sex between heterosexuals?

When You Meet Gay and Lesbian People: Hints for the Heterosexual

CAN YOU SPOT THE HOMOSEXUAL?

The idea that all gay men and lesbians are easy to spot is a myth. Gay people are not an explicitly visual minority. Unlike being a person of color, being gay does not automatically provide visual clues. Many gay people can blend into the folds of mainstream society—if they choose to. For people uncomfortable with homosexuality, a “hidden” minority is incredibly threatening. And for those who wrongly believe in a “Gay Agenda,” or who think that gay people are going to try seduce them or their children, hidden homosexuals could be lurking on every bus and park bench.

Of course, many gay people would love to have a surefire way to tell who is and who is not. Even a gay person with sophisticated “gaydar” (the ability to detect gayness) will fail sometimes. (What about that rancher with her cowboy boots and no-nonsense look?) So while sometimes “you can just tell” by looking, the reality is that you can never be quite sure.

For over a century, people have tried to establish rules for what a homosexual looks like and how he or she acts. Any code for identifying gay people tells much more about the assumptions of the individuals responsible for creating the rules than it does about gay people. We’ve included here some classics of the “how to tell” genre, as well as some more contemporary approaches.

How to Tell If Your Son Is Gay, According to the Weekly World News

1. Clothing style: Watch for feminine touches in your son’s clothing. Soft, clingy fabrics and pale, girlish colors are definite warning signals.

2. Reading: A boy who hangs out indoors and reads instead of playing ball with the other guys most likely has problems. Certain periodicals—like Playboy—are okay, but if your son is reading something romantic, like Gone With the Wind, he’s probably teetering on the verge of homosexuality.

3. Friends: Watch out if your son is bringing home “buddies” who wear earrings, tight T-shirts, or heavy perfumes. And, of course, if he’s hanging out with male flight attendants and people like that, it’s a good indication that he’s running with a homo crowd.

4. Hobbies: All red-blooded males enjoy sports like hockey and basketball. If your kid doesn’t like sports, or chooses hobbies like knitting or flower-arranging, he needs help!

5. Music: Normal kids like rock music, or country and western tunes. They don’t listen to classical pieces or recordings of Liberace.

6. Dating: After the age of eleven or so, boys learn to worship members of the opposite sex. If your son usually hangs out with guys and avoids dating, have a little talk with him.

“You don’t have to despair if your son shows some—or even all—of these signs,” says South African sociology professor Dr. James Packer. “But you roust take action immediately. I advise getting the boy into some red-blooded sports programs.”

—DOROTHY STEELS IN THE WORLD WEEKLY NEWS, A GROCERY STORE TABLOID, DECEMBER 12, 1992

How to Recognize Homosexuals

While most knowledgeable people who have counseled in this field agree that there is no positive way to tell whether or not a person is overtly homosexual, listed are some ways to tell a homosexual. Normal men may demonstrate a few of these tendencies, while homosexuals will usually demonstrate most of the listed characteristics.

Newly Misinterpreted

On October 31, 1969, Time magazine ran a seven-page feature story on “The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood,” and offered its readers a field guide to the various “homosexual types”:

The Blatant Homosexual: This is the eunuch-like caricature of femininity that most people associate with homosexuality.… He may be the catty hairdresser or the lisping, limp-wristed interior decorator. His lesbian counterpart is the “butch.”

The Secret Lifer: Their wrists are rigid, their s’s well-formed; they prefer subdued clothes and close-cropped hair.… They fake enjoyment when their boss throws a stag party with nude movies.

The Desperate: Members of this group are likely to haunt public toilets (“tearooms”) or Turkish baths. They may be pathologically driven to sex.

The Adjusted: They lead relatively conventional lives.… Often they try to settle down with a regular lover, and although these liaisons are generally short-lived among men, some develop into so-called “gay marriages.”

The Bisexual: Men and women who have a definite preference for their own sex but engage in occasional activity with the opposite sex and enjoy it.

The Situational-experimental: A man who engages in homosexual acts without any deep homosexual motivation.… In prisons and occasionally the armed forces, men frequently turn to homosexual contacts in order to reassert their masculinity and recapture a feeling of dominance.

art CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

According to Dr. Arthur Guy Mathews, in Is Homosexuality a Menace? (1959), bisexuality is a sport for the rich and idle. He says that “bisexuality is common among women who have too much money on their hands and not enough to do at home. Such types usually go in a crowd to places where lesbians work or patronize. In time, they are induced by a lesbian to give homosexuality a try. In some cases, like men, they attribute such behavior to a state of frigidity, also blaming their spouses for a complete lack of sex attention. It may be true in some cases, but it is more likely a case of idleness leading to mischievous conduct.”

Just What Is the Much-Feared Gay Lifestyle?

In 1994, a political struggle between antigay forces led by a fundamentalist housewife, gay activists, and Apple Computer ensued in Williamson County, Texas, over whether or not to grant a $750,000 tax break to Apple Computer Company. The issue was not the $80 million that Apple wanted to spend on a new factory, nor was it the 700 jobs with which it would provide the county. Local homophobes were afraid that the gay-friendly company’s employee benefits policy that includes same-sex partners would attract “the wrong element” to their community. After a heated debate, the commissioners voted in favor of the tax break. Vicki Torres wrote this article in response to the attitudes of the antigay people of Williamson County.

What is the gay lifestyle?” To me, that makes as much sense as talking about the black lifestyle or the Latino lifestyle or even the white lifestyle. In fact, try making a generalization about whites and you’ll get all sorts of resistance along the lines of “How dare you assume this or that about me!”

We know it’s not PC (politically correct) to assume that all blacks like Motown or all Latinos eat tacos, but the religious right still wants to impress everyone with the idea that all gay men and lesbians like drag, Barbra Streisand, and promiscuous sex.

For me, the responses would be: occasionally, only when she sings “Somewhere;” and I really try not to.

In truth, the idea of a gay lifestyle probably rears its head in the life of ever gay person, especially those who previously considered themselves straight.

“OK, now I’m a lesbian,” I thought years ago as I stared at the mirror trying to perceive the difference in myself.

Nope, it was still me looking back out: long, unruly hair, slightly crooked nose, and brown eyes. Same old me, just a different gender in bed.

I looked around at the gay women I was meeting at the time and they all seemed to be driving Datsuns. Aha! I thought, the lesbian car, an idea quickly abandoned once I got on the freeway.

I tried wimmin’s music, lesbian bars, and lesbian separatist philosophies, and found that I preferred Brahms, a glass of wine in a small, quiet restaurant (straight or gay), and mainstream liberal political thought. And I still considered myself a lesbian.

But even if every queer finally concludes that there is no definitive gay male or lesbian lifestyle, others still think so. A few years ago, a straight woman rejected me as a lover, in part, she said, because she couldn’t commit to the gay lifestyle.

During the heyday of the 1970s, San Francisco’s Handball Express “Red Hanky Party” (above) brought in large crowds to dance the night away. While this may be what many people mean when they talk about the “gay lifestyle,” this just one of many types of gay “lifestyles.” (Rink Foto)

Darn! I thought to myself as I looked around my apartment at the gay couch, gay stereo, gay dining room table, and gay cupboards filled with my gay coffee, gay pasta, and gay apples. They had given me away!

More recently, my father, in his always well-intentioned but slightly skewed way, tried to reassure me that he “accepted” poor, abnormal gays like myself and felt sorry for us. Yes, well, pity is the proper response to a populace portrayed as emotionally unstable, suicidal, drug- or alcohol-addicted, lonely, sex-driven, abused, maligned, desperate.

But, as one sharp-eyed straight friend said to me recently, a Mexican American man who has been dealt his share of prejudice in the world, “You haven’t had it so bad as a lesbian, have you, Vicki?”

(But then, that just might be because as a woman, never mind a lesbian, my behavior, like that of children, generates extreme indifference from a society in which men are considered the real people, the real movers and shakers. Thus, apathy provides freedom.)

There are advantages to being a queer woman. Lesbians learn and acquire independence, and don’t need the acceptance of men because you don’t really have to depend on them for anything, exposure to a wide spectrum of thought within the small populace that comprises lesbians, a sense of community, and a commitment to working for social justice.

That, finally, may be the true gay lifestyle, and why others find us so objectionable. Independent people not in thrall to others and able to define life for themselves are always scary to those bound and gagged by their own fetters.

To live one’s life in freedom and self-responsibility is a terrifying prospect because it means questioning the basic assumptions of day-to-day life. Most people are not up to it. And like the Texas housewife, they fear freedom so much, they will try everything in their power to stamp out a force that, historically, will never die. It’s a losing fight.

CHAPTER 6

Myths and Facts

The Most Common Myths about Gay Men and Lesbians

The Prevalence of Sexual Inversion (1901)

Urnings Are Not Rare

Where Do They Get Those Numbers?

ARE YOU BORN THAT WAY?

The Sex That Is Not One

It’s in the Jeans: Biology, Culture, and the Struggle for Gay Liberation

Born Republican

MYTH MAKING AND UNMAKING

The Degradation of Love—How Homosexuals and Lesbians Have Sex

The Most Frequently Asked Questions about Gay Men and Lesbians

If Gays Have No Choice, Why Are They So Hated?

Gay Sheep Come out of the Closet

A Reverse Questionnaire

When You Meet Gay and Lesbian People: Hints for the Heterosexual

CAN YOU SPOT THE HOMOSEXUAL?

How to Tell If Your Son Is Gay, According to the Weekly World News

How to Recognize Homosexuals

Newly Misinterpreted

Just What Is the Much-Feared Gay Lifestyle?