What is homosexuality?
Something you try in summer camp. And college. Once or twice in your thirties, but that’s it.
Please don’t start being weird this early.
At the basest definition, homosexuality is erotic behavior between two similarly-sexed members of the same species.
Same species? There can’t be interspecies homosexuality?
No.
Why not?
Because I said so, and if the raccoonfuckers out there have a problem with it, then they can leave a comment. Homosexuals have enough problems without being lumped in with farm pervs.
We’re straying from the topic.
We tend to do that.
You said “species.” This implies homosexuality is widespread within the animal kingdom.
And you inferred it. Good job. Sure, yeah: animals are gay as shit. Slapping their weird dicks together, rubbing their scary cooters on each other.
Why?
They like it.
Sure. Which animal is the gayest?
Gibbon.
Least gay?
Anteater.
So: humans can also be homosexuals?
Wow, do you sound like a Martian when you say shit like that.
I am not a Martian.
You know when I say “Martian,” I refer to all alien species. I’m using the word as a bit of a synecdoche.
Not from any planet other than Earth.
Earth’s awesome.
The best.
The best? How could you know that unless you have something to compare it to?
Please stop accusing me of things.
Got my eye on you, Mork. Yes, humans can be homosexuals.
Always?
I don’t understand. Like, are homosexuals always homosexuals? Yes, except for some people who are only gay during full moons. They are called werehomosexuals.
I meant: has there always been homosexuality within the human experience? History and all that hooey.
Yes and no. People have always been getting it on, but “homosexuality” as a concept in western civilization has only been around for 150 years or so. German guy thought it up.
What? How do you invent homosexuality?
You don’t. But this guy–Ulrichs–argued that it wasn’t that people did gay stuff, but that some people were gay. Intrinsically so. He took the descriptor off the act and put it on the actor. He wrote a very influential book.
What was it called?
Research on the Riddle of Man-Manly Love.
I’m guessing that’s a poor translation.
Poor? It’s perfect. Now, Ulrichs didn’t invent the term “homosexual,” but he really was what could be called the first gay rights activist.
How’d it work out for him?
Germany criminalized sodomy the year after he wrote his book.
That was fast.
Efficient fuckers.
Sodomy?
Buttfucking. Or buttfucking in the mouth. Whichever, but not man-on-lady buttfucking. I mean: that was frowned upon, but sodomy laws are always aimed at gays.
Have there been many sodomy laws?
So many. Guess when they started. Just guess.
Was it immediately after the Roman Empire turned Christian?
It totally was.
Wow. Why was the Church so against sodomy?
Because they felt guilty about doing it themselves. And it’s a good method of control, but mostly the psychological stuff: the One True Church is gayer than Epcot Center.
Epcot Center’s gay?
Married his longtime boyfriend Universal Studios last year.
Good for them. So, governments have been officially anti-homosexual for almost 2,000 years?
Yup.
You almost have to admire the tenacity.
I’m not going to. Fuck ’em all forever for what they did to people.
You’re holding a grudge against the Visigoths?
As should all right-thinking people.
Can we talk about America?
I love talking about America.
We’ve noticed. What is the history of homosexuality in America?
One morning, Lewis turned to Clark and said–
Stop that.
–“Open up those golden gates. California, here I come!” Then Pocahontas ate Lewis’ ass while he got his fuck on.
None of that is true.
No. The levels of hygiene necessary to eat ass would not have been available on the frontier.
No wet-wipes. Be serious.
The Puritans were not fans of the gay lifestyle.
I am shocked.
They didn’t even want you touching your own dick, let alone the dick of some stranger you met on Bucklr.
Bucklr?
Dating app for gay puritans.
Sure. Let’s move forward in time.
Turn of the century saw two things: first American gay rights activist, and the first vice raids on gay establishments.
Who was the first American gay rights activist?
Emma Goldman.
From the Statue of Liberty?
The very one.
I don’t believe you. Next, you’ll tell me that Helen Keller was a Communist.
All true.
Raids?
There was no internet. You wanted to get laid, you had to leave your house. You went to a bar or a bathhouse, but they were all illegal and run by criminals and the cops could come bursting in any minute. You’d be arrested just for being in the place.
Why?
Because some people will be as cruel as they are allowed to be.
That makes me sad.
It fucking should.
Things are better now, though.
So much. This is the best time to be a member of the LGBT community. Or maybe two years ago. Right now is a little worse than two years ago, but things are much better for a general definition of now. Ancient Greece was pretty good, but we have medicine and cartoons.
LGBT?
L is for Lesbian.
We haven’t mentioned lesbians.
It’s okay. They’re used to it.
I don’t understand.
Lesbians are the most ignored demographic in society. They always get subsumed by the G in the initialism, which is for Gay, and they resent it deeply.
You would think gays and lesbians would get along.
Only if you didn’t know anything about humans, Martian.
Not a Martian.
I suppose you think poor people all band together and fight The Man instead of forming gangs and fighting each other. People fuck whoever’s closest; people fight whoever’s closest.
Could be. What about B?
Bisexual.
Right. They’ll fuck anything.
No. That’s offensive and just plain wrong. Bisexuals will not fuck anything. They’ll fuck anyone.
Big difference.
There is. You were insinuating that bisexuals were rubbing up against lampposts and shit.
Explain bisexuality.
I can’t, but Alfred Kinsey did. Well, he halfway did. Kinsey said that an individual’s sexual preference fell somewhere on a scale from one to six. Completely heterosexual with a visceral revulsion to homosexual acts would be a one; vice versa would be a six.
Why one to six?
I don’t know. That’s the dumb part. Makes more sense if you think of the Bell Curve.
I’m picturing a Bell Curve.
All natural human behavior and attributes can be plotted on a Bell Curve. Height, weight, acuity of vision: small number to either extreme with the majority regressing to the mean. Sexuality, too. Some folks are pathologically gay, some are clinically straight, and most everybody else is in the middle.
So why are there so few bisexuals?
Society frowns upon it, and people are taught it’s wrong.
You’re giving too much weight to culture. We’re talking about primal urges here. Sexual desire is not programmed by society.
Oh, shut the fuck up. Tell that to the guy with the boner for the chick with the ashtray implanted in her lip. Sexual behavior is human behavior and therefore highly dependent on context. Nature demands we get boners–and ladyboners–but culture decides what we get them to.
So your theory is that the great mass of humanity is bisexual by nature, but straight because of society.
It is, yes.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever?
I don’t, no.
Moving on. Is homosexuality genetic?
Possibly. Some think so.
Could it be learned, or influenced by outside factors?
Maybe. Others think so.
Who’s right?
Probably both sides. It might be a genotype/phenotype thing. Raise LeBron James in North Korea and he’s not 6’7″. Linking behavior and mindset to genes is a tricky business, and usually reductive and half-right at best. Besides, genes only want two things: to not die, and to make copies of themselves. From that point of view, homosexuality looks like a terrible strategy. On the other hand, a lot of genes keep you from reproducing.
You seem dismissive of the genetic theory.
I’m dismissive of any theory positing a one-to-one relationship between genes and behavior that entirely discounts culture. Humans aren’t a pile of DNA acting on instinct. We’re the product of our environments. There’s no such thing as a “pure” human, untouched by the soiled hands of society. Children have been raised like that, brought up without any human contact, and they weren’t pure. They were broken. Culture tells us how to eat, sleep, work, and fuck. It tells us how to go crazy: psychological disorders that exist in one culture don’t exist in the next. Schizophrenics all hear voices, but they say different things in different countries. Culture is everything.
Okay. Anything else you don’t like about the theory?
Yes. It stigmatizes homosexuality. To say that it’s purely genetic is to imply that no one would choose such a thing; it turns homosexuality into a chronic condition.
What does the T stand for?
Transgendered. It’s a whole thing. Skip it for now.
Last question.
Shoot.
Why are there so many homosexuals in show business?
The dental plan.
Sure.
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