Damn! I'm glad to be gay

Stonewall is long ago, the Supreme Court gave sodomy laws a kick in the ass, in a few places gay men can marry their beloved. How many gay men care about the origin of their sexuality?

Off on a wild goose Google chase I found myself browsing a couple of old articles on the topic.

Silly social scientists have proposed a fraternal birth order effect. According to this quaint nonsense about a sixth of queer men are gay because they had 2½ (half a brother is better than none?) older brothers. Heck, I don't really know it is nonsense. I only had a much younger sister. Maybe seeing appealing young naked bodies when you were a kid would make you more appreciative. (What if you had fat, ugly older brothers: is that a cause of homophobia?)

Biologists say we have a thicker corpus callosum . Gay men and women. Really? Do fem boys and butch men, tops and bottoms all have this? It isn't like there's just one style of homo available at the fag ranch.

Oh yeah, and our hypothalami are tinier than straight men's. Again like women. Do crossdressers have teenier ones that butch tops?

One of a pair of identical twins stands better than an even chance of being gay. So we can smile at the gay gene as we pass by this theory. (The only identical twins that I've ever known were equally nelly and gay.)

Gay women don't need to pay any mind to the scientists who say they might've become that way because their mommas were given certain drugs.

Weirdly enough, searches for biological explanations of queerness can lead you to promises of nude photos of Britney Spears. There's nothing porn website owners' won't try to exploit, however uselessly.

Some say it is a "well documented fact" that we were sexually abused as kids. I wasn't, bet you weren't either.

Many members of the evil class known as fundamentalist Christians say we do it to piss off God. (Aside from His nonexistence, it might be worth it just to upset the fundies.) And their most venomous subspecies claims we can be cured (of what?) if we pray to Baby Jesus hard enough.

Let us not ignore an amazing crazy who say we decided to become gay before we were born because we had "a hatred of the feminine aspect of God, a hatred of the mother." (This is from the "Real Jesus" no less.)

And there's that superstitious, double-talking politician the Dalai Lama who tries to politely evade his statements that sodomy is 'sexual misconduct' (as is heterosexuals using the mouth or the 'other hole'). Really, that doesn't address cause but I've wanted to take a cheap shot at him for a few weeks.

I think the old saw that we come from homes with a rough, domineering mom and a weakling father is still the most popular heterosexual prejudice.

But I do favor the nurture theory. At least for me. In my case my father was a mean roughneck and momma was quiet, patient and accommodating. As soon as I discovered my faggotry that was my own guess as to the source of my love of a lovely guy. Having never read anything about gay people or given 'them' any thought it was pretty much sui generis.

Identifying, empathizing with momma was (surely still is) a much-despised explanation for queer erotic orientation among gay men when I came out. I'd never say it made you a homo. I don't even claim I'm sure it did that to me. But it has remained the best working hypothesis I've ever had for my own sexuality. That I'm 'butch' or a 'top' doesn't mean that little Richard didn't want to be like his mother.

And.

I appreciate the silly good intentions of Clive Bromhall in declaring us evolution's highest achievement. From the moment I knew I've always been glad but, hey, hetero people are just as good as us. (I know I shouldn't.) Some of my best friends are straight.

I do like Bruce Bagemihl's description as being gay as another example of "biological exuberance."

Like anybody with intellectual curiosity I'm (mildly) interested in the origins of the various sexualities we can express. But no explanation can ever diminish me. Happiness and pleasure: without them why bother being alive. Diversity and pluralism are good in themselves.

Damn! I'm glad to be gay.