🚩 A Note from the Author Growing up, I noticed that to be masculine you could only like girls. If you liked other guys, you were probably a feminine guy. But what if you were masculine and liked other masculine guys? After much reading, I found that such was pretty common in the Greco-Roman world. The result of my research is the free (priceless?) book below, also available as a YouTube playlist, mp3 download, and printable PDF. After a hiatus, I'm (trying to) upload new videos more regularly on a broader range of topics. Questions? Send emails 📨 to whatisgrero at gmail dot com.

Once upon a time, there was a world where the love between men wasn't merely tolerated but understood as an attribute and requirement of masculinity. Their philosophers debated just how much better was the love between men. In their epics that codified their sacred virtues, their mythical heroes loved one another just as often as their gods took mortal men as boyfriends. As lovers, male couples slayed tyrants at home and vanquished enemies abroad. In politics, almost all of their emperors loved men. But this is not a fairytale: such was the documented history of the Greco-Roman world spanning a millennium. What changed? And how?

Homer's recounting of the bloody Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey illustrates the real life "military culture based on permanent warfare in which masculinity was highly valued." Given our current prejudices, it is then shocking to discover that one of the most celebrated military units, the Sacred Band of Thebes, was comprised entirely of male lovers. Plutarch tells us the reason for such an arrangement:

For when the going gets tough, tribesmen don't give much thought for their fellow tribesmen, nor clansmen for their fellow clansmen. But a battalion joined together by erotic love cannot be destroyed or broken: its members stand firm beside one another in times of danger, lovers and beloveds alike motivated by a sense of shame in the presence of the other.

After half a century of victories, the Sacred Band was finally defeated by Phillip II of Macedon who wept at the thought of such noble pairs dying. As he had many male lovers himself, Phillip's remorse is easy to understand. His son Alexander the Great in turn grieved "uncontrollably" at the loss of his "dearest friend" Hephaestion by "flinging himself on the body of his friend and lay there nearly all day long in tears, and refused to be parted from him until he was dragged away by force by his companions." A heart-broken Alexander died a few months later. There was no shame in those days about open male-male love, sex included.

The real life warrior couple, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, was honored in poems for assassinating the tyrant Hipparchus. Is it any wonder that tyrannical regimes always have had suspicions of same-sex relationships and sought to outlaw them?

These mortals merely imitated the king of their gods Zeus who as an eagle in one account carried his lover Ganymede back to Mount Olympus. Homer confirms:

Tros, king of the Trojans [ ] had three noble sons, Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymede who was comeliest of mortal men; wherefore the gods carried him off to be Zeus's cupbearer, for his beauty's sake, that he might dwell among the immortals.

The inclusion of such an unmistakable same-sex relationship (verified by numerous graphic plates) in perhaps the most well-known literature from the era boggles the mind but only if we let our current culture convince us that the love between men cannot be masculine and belongs to a certain stereotypically weak-jointed minority. The Ganymede myth is merely a reflection of a wider custom. To be masculine and reach full adulthood, a Cretan adolescent needed a sexual relationship with another male, the fake abductor in a "prearranged mock kidnapping" who prized the youth not for his handsomeness but his manliness. If the younger abductee's friends determined that the abductor was of equal or superior rank and suitably masculine character, they would cheerfully send the pair off to spend the next two months hunting, feasting, and having sex in the countryside. Upon return, this rite of passage ended with the newly-minted adult receiving a military outfit and a drinking cup, signifying his equality with men and difference from women and children. You had to get with a guy to be a guy.

Zeus was not the only god to be madly smitten by a male mortal. His brother, Poseidon, the god of the sea, was "overwhelmed with desire" for Pelops. The poet Pindar addresses the beloved mortal:

Your father Tantalus had invited the gods

to banquet in his beloved Sipylus,

providing a stately feast in return for the feast they had given him.

It was then Poseidon seized you,

overwhelmed in his mind with desire, and swept you on golden mares

to Zeus' glorious palace on Olympus,

where, at another time,

Ganymede came also

for the same passion in Zeus

After his expulsion from Olympus (his father bootlegged the immortality nectar of the gods), Pelops tried to win the daughter of the king of Elis who had challenged every previous suitor to a chariot race and promptly killed each after their loss. Pelops called in a favor to his former lover Poseidon who granted him victory with a "golden chariot and winged horses." Peloponnesus, the large southern peninsula of Greece, derives its name from this Pelops.

Certainly, anyone can write a story. However, the origins of the poem give insight into the whole of Greek culture rather than just the imagination of a single writer. The poem was commissioned by Hieron I, tyrant of Syracuse, to celebrate his Olympic horse-race victory, a sporting event from which women were barred. We can conclude it was no insult to be compared to the male lover of a god: it was an honor. The macho all-male set encouraged same-sex sex in those days.

The Iliad also mentions a pair of close warriors, Achilles and Patroclus. When told of the demise of Patroclus, "by far the dearest to him of all his comrades":

A dark cloud of grief fell upon Achilles as he listened. He filled both hands with dust from off the ground, and poured it over his head, disfiguring his comely face, and letting the refuse settle over his shirt so fair and new. He flung himself down all huge and hugely at full length, and tore his hair with his hands.

Achilles is so heart-broken that he vows revenge on Patroclus's killer, Hector, even so knowing that his own death is prophesied to follow soon after Hector's:

I will pursue Hector who has slain him whom I loved so dearly, and will then abide my doom when it may please Zeus and the other gods to send it. Even Hercules, the best beloved of Zeuseven he could not escape the hand of death, but fate and Hera's fierce anger laid him low, as I too shall lie when I am dead if a like doom awaits me.

While Homer is not sexually explicit about the two, only pudding-headed puritans could conceive otherwise. As Aeschines believed twenty-three centuries ago, their "extraordinary degree of goodwill towards one another would be self-explanatory." Indeed, the contemporary Greek debate about the sexuality of the two focused on just how the pair confirmed to the age-structured ideal of Greek relationships not whether or not any sexuality was implied. Aeschylus argues Achilles was the older one; Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium calls this "nonsense" as Achilles was more beautiful, had not yet grown a beard, and was chronologically younger. Homer in his sequel, the Odyssey, is explicit about another male couple. He has a married Nestor encouraging a young Telemachus to sleep with the former's son Pisistratus, despite that both of them later marry women. Such fluidity was the mundane norm, not the exception.

In Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates and his friends are invited to a dinner to discuss the nature of love. He concludes that "Achilles is depicted by Homer gloriously avenging the dead Patroclus not because he was his favorite boy but because he was his companion" (8.31) reasoning that one "should consider love of the soul more important than intimacy with the body" creating a dichotomy between love and lust (8.28), not a refutation of the sexual relationship between the warriors. The rest of that very dialogue shows that the Greeks took same-sex sex between men as an obvious given.

For example, Critobulus starts the initial conversation by answering that he takes greatest pride in his looks (4.10) and that he lusts after a (male) Cleinias "with more pleasure than I watch all other beautiful things in the world" (4.12). However, Critobulus had recently married a woman (2.3). He furthermore creates equivalence between liking boys and girls when he boasts to Socrates that he "could persuade this boy and this girl to kiss me sooner than you could, Socrates, even if you were to give a very long and clever speech" (4.18).

For Xenophon then, it's not that Achilles and Patroclus couldn't have loved one another but that as idealized mythical heroes they should be understood as having the self-control to not act on such carnal same-sex temptations, temptations that were taken for granted. We can surmise as much from when Socrates compliments Callias that he finally managed to fall in love with the (male) Autolycus (a fact the "whole city knows") who wasn't "weakened by softness" but rather had "strength, endurance, courage, and temperance" (8.7-8). You can like men, as long as it is for more than sex, according to Xenophon.

Whatever the exact nature of Achilles-Patroclus and the gods, we don't have to settle for fiction to understand a different culture. The first twenty Roman emperors provide possibly the most concise indictment against the quaint Western folk belief in the exclusive heterosexuality of the vast majority of males. Of these twenty leaders, eighteen are recorded to have had male interests on the side or outright lovers, one of whom was deified after death. That's ninety percent:

Emperor (term) Source material Julius Caesar (49 BC  44 BC) and being dispatched into Bithynia to bring thence a fleet he loitered so long at the court of Nicomedes as to give occasion to reports of a criminal intercourse between him and that prince; which received additional credit from his hasty return to Bithynia under the pretext of recovering a debt due to a freed man his client. The only stain upon his chastity was his having cohabited with Nicomedes and that indeed stuck to him all the days of his life and exposed him to much bitter raillery. I will not dwell upon those well-known verses of Calvus Licinius: "Whate'er Bithynia and her lord possess'd / Her lord who Caesar in his lust caress'd." [he] entrusted the command of three legions, which he left at Alexandria, to an old catamite of his, the son of his freed-man Rufinus. Augustus (27 BC  14 AD) In his early youth various aspersions of an infamous character were heaped upon him. Sextus Pompey reproached him with being an effeminate fellow; and [Mark] Antony with earning his adoption from his uncle [Julius Caesar] by prostitution. Lucius Antony, likewise Mark's brother, charges him with pollution by Caesar; and that, for a gratification of three hundred thousand sesterces, he had submitted to Aulus Hirtius in the same way, in Spain; adding that he used to singe his legs with burnt nutshells to make the hair become softer. Tiberius (14 AD  37 AD) In his retreat at Capri, he also contrived an apartment containing couches, and adapted to the secret practice of abominable lewdness, where he entertained companies of girls and catamites, and assembled from all quarters inventors of unnatural copulations He likewise contrived recesses in woods and groves for the gratification of lust, where young persons of both sexes prostituted themselves, in caves and hollow rocks in the disguise of little Pans and Nymphs It is also reported that during a sacrifice he was so captivated with the form of a youth who held a censer, that, before the religious rites were well over, he took him aside and abused him Caligula (37 AD  41 AD) He never had the least regard either to the chastity of his own person, or that of others. He is said to have been inflamed with an unnatural passion for Marcus Lepidus Mnester, an actor in pantomimes, and for certain hostages; and to have engaged with them in the practice of mutual pollution. Valerius Catullus, a young man of a consular family, bawled aloud in public that he had been exhausted by him in that abominable act. Besides his incest with his sisters Claudius (41 AD  54 AD) [We find in Edward Gibbon's 18th century History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 1 on page 38 footnote w: "Yet we may remark that of the first fifteen emperors, Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct."] Nero (54 AD  68 AD) Besides the abuse of free born lads [he] gelded the boy Sporus and endeavoured to transform him into a woman. He even went so far as to marry him, with all the usual formalities of a marriage. Settlement, the rose-coloured nuptial veil, and a numerous company at the wedding. When the ceremony was over he had him conducted like a bride to his own house and treated him as his wife. He prostituted his own chastity to such a degree, that after he had defiled every part of his person with some unnatural pollution, he at last invented an extraordinary kind of diversion; which was to he let out of a den in the arena covered with the skin of a wild beast, and then assail with violence the private parts both of men and women while they were bound to stakes. After he had vented his furious passion upon them, he finished the play in the embraces of his freed man Doryphorus, to whom he was married in the same way that Sporus had been married to himself; imitating the cries and shrieks of young virgins, when they are ravished. I have been informed from numerous sources, that he firmly believed, no man in the world to be chaste, or any part of his person undefiled; but that most men concealed that vice, and were cunning enough to keep it secret. Galba (68 AD  69 AD) In his lust, he was more inclined to the male sex, and such of them too as were old. It is said of him, that in Spain, when Icelus, an old catamite of his, brought him the news of Nero's death, he not only kissed him lovingly before company, but begged of him to remove all impediments, and then took him aside into a private apartment. Otho (69 AD) [After he] got into Nero's good graces, he soon became one of the principal favourites, by the congeniality of his disposition to that of the emperor; or, as some say, by the reciprocal practice of mutual pollution. Vitellius (69 AD) He spent his youth amongst the catamites of Tiberius at Capri, was himself constantly stigmatized with the name of Spintria, and was supposed to have been the occasion of his father's advancement, by consenting to gratify the emperor's unnatural lust. In the subsequent part of his life, being still most scandalously vicious, he rose to great favour at court being upon a very intimate footing with [Caligula], because of his fondness for chariot driving, and with Claudius for his love of gaming. But he was in a still higher degree acceptable to Nero, as well on the same accounts, as for a particular service which he rendered him. Vespasian (69 AD  79 AD) [Vespasian is mentioned as "desirous to gain, by all possible means, the good graces of Caligula" but this is too vague to count. Otherwise the count would be 19/20 or 95%.] Titus (79 AD  81 AD) Besides his cruelty he lay under the suspicion of giving way to habits of luxury, as he often prolonged his revels till midnight with the most riotous of his acquaintance. Nor was he unsuspected of lewdness on account of the swarms of catamites and eunuchs about him, and his well-known attachment. Domitian (81 AD  96 AD) He is said to have spent the time of his youth in so much want and infamy, that he had not one piece of plate belonging to him; and it is well known, that Clodius Pollio, a man of pretorian rank, against whom there is a poem of Nero's extant, entitled Luscio, kept a note in his hand-writing, which he sometimes produced, in which Domitian made an assignation with him for the foulest purposes. Nerva (96 AD  98 AD) Some, likewise, have said that he [Domitian] prostituted himself to Nerva who succeeded him. Trajan (98 AD  117 AD) I know, of course, that he was devoted to boys and to wine, but if he had ever committed or endured any base or wicked deed as the result of this, he would have incurred censure; as it was, however, he drank all the wine he wanted, yet remained sober, and in his relation with boys he harmed no one. Hadrian (117 AD  138 AD) During a journey on the Nile he lost Antinous, his favourite, and for this youth he wept like a woman. Concerning this incident there are varying rumours; for some claim that he had devoted himself to death for Hadrian, and others  what both his beauty and Hadrian's sensuality suggest. But however this may be, the Greeks deified him at Hadrian's request, and declared that oracles were given through his agency, but these, it is commonly asserted, were composed by Hadrian himself. Antoninus Pius (138 AD  161 AD) In my father [Antoninus Pius] I observed mildness of temper, and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation; and no vainglory in those things which men call honours; and a love of labour and perseverance; and a readiness to listen to those who had anything to propose for the common weal; and undeviating firmness in giving to every man according to his deserts; and a knowledge derived from experience of the occasions for vigorous action and for remission. And I observed that he had overcome all passion for boys Marcus Aurelius (161 AD  180 AD) [In his teens to his tutor Fronto:] "Go on, threaten me with hosts of arguments, yet shall you never drive your lover, I mean me, away; nor shall I the less assert that I love Fronto, or love him the less, because you prove with reasons so various and so vehement that those who are less in love must be more helped and indulged. So passionately, by Hercules, am I in love with you, nor am I frightened off by the law you lay down, and even if you shew yourself more forward and facile to others, who are non-lovers, yet will I love you while I have life and health. [In his 50's:] I thank the gods that I never touched either Benedicta or Theodotus, and that, after having fallen into amatory passions, I was cured Lucius Verus (161 AD  169 AD) When he set out for Syria, however, his name was smirched not only by the licence of an unbridled life, but also by adulteries and by love-affairs with young men. Commodus (177 AD  192 AD) Commodus lived, rioting in the Palace amid banquets and in baths along with 300 concubines, gathered together for their beauty and chosen from both matrons and harlots, and with minions [puberibus exoletis], also 300 in number, whom he had collected by force and by purchase indiscriminately from the common people and the nobles solely on the basis of bodily beauty. Pertinax (193 AD) He held a sale of Commodus' belongings, even ordering the sale of all his youths and concubines, except those who had apparently been brought to the Palace by force. Of those whom he ordered sold, however, many were soon brought back to his service and ministered to the pleasures of the old man

While lending support to the overwhelming sexual difference from today, the histories still sound rather homophobic. Why? First, the English translators superimposed their hysterical Victorian morality on the ancient past. These translations (and contemporary medical books dating from the late 19th century) either bowdlerize out the naughty parts (brought to you by the letter X) or leave them in the original Latin to prevent the pious reader from contracting the vapors bibliologically.

Second, the cause of the negativity was not homophobia as the Romans lacked a concept of homosexuality (and without it, homophobia cannot exist). What some busybody Romans objected to was what they considered feminine behavior. They objected to men taking it up the ass and sucking dick not because they were homophobic but because they were misogynistic: a man should not submit to another man like a lowly woman. (Obviously, those who partook must have disagreed with such sexual mores.) Notice then that Augustus is accosted for submitting to his predecessor Julius Caesar, but Julius Caesar is not accosted for fucking Augustus. Likewise, the only stain on Caesar was his early relationship with Nicomedes, not his later relationship with a younger man. The restrictions on submission applied only to free men and not slaves or foreigners, relationships in which neither men would be negatively judged: Nero crime's was the "abuse of free born lads."

A Stoic trend also called for moderation, hence the negative tone concerning orgies and throngs of prostitutes. But such denunciations provide evidence of sexual flexibility: it is assumed without hesitation or comment that the emperors enjoyed both men and women. The outrage is often directed at the number of partners, not their genitalia. Underscoring that point is the commentary on Vespasian: despite not divulging any same-sex partners for this emperor, Suetonius viewed negatively his insatiable whoremongering of the opposite sex. Similarly, Trajan's love of wine and boys does not arouse rebuke from Dio: rather, the omnipotent emperor's moderation shows his good character (or a strong liver and cock).

It is with these men of power we close this introduction, neither providing an exhaustive review nor a model to slavishly emulate. We are not re-enactors. I don't want slaves or emperors. However, the contrast could not be more clear between their past and our sexually inflexible present, the false homosexual-heterosexual dichotomy included. This jarring contrast between then and now illustrates that the love between men was not just merely tolerated but so surprisingly common leading one modern scholar to conclude that " it would be a monumental task indeed to enumerate all the ancient documents in which the alternative 'boy or woman' occurs with perfect nonchalance in an erotic context, as if the two were functionally interchangeable." They seem so different from us but they are us. They share our genes and in many cases, we have actual Roman or Greek ancestors. The only tangible difference between the Romans, Greeks and us is culture. Culture does not cause men to like women, a biological inevitability for most males. However, culture must cause the majority of men to not like other men and to only and exclusively like women.

These men married women (and sometimes other men). They certainly liked women, but it's undeniable that they also liked men. Despite giving a somewhat muddled history lesson on the origins of our sexual orientation system, actor James Franco correctly notes that our current system precludes the sort of sexuality we saw with the Greeks and Romans: "Because of those [current] labels, you do it once and you're gay, so you get fewer guys who are kind of in the middle zone." As the Romans did not have the our genital-based classification system for sexuality, they did not have to worry about straying from the good label "heterosexual" by refusing to engage in what today we would call "homosexual" acts. He continues: "It sounds as though I'm advocating for an ambiguous zone or something, but I'm just interested in the way perception changes behavior." It sounds like grero: while most men do like women, our current culture prohibits them from acting on (or in most cases, even consciously realizing) their innate attraction to other men because of our erotic gatekeeper, the fascist heterosexual orthodoxy. In the absence of Judeo-Christian culture, masculine likes masculine, or grero for short. Another way of looking at it would be to compare the sexuality of then and now using the modern standard of the Kinsey scale. The Kinsey scale gives the average of the total of heterosexual and homosexual relationships, from a scale of 0 to 6. If you mostly have male sexual partners but also some women, you'd be a 4 or 5. If we plot all men on the scale, we would get something like the figure below. Most men in the modern West allege themselves to be 0's or exclusively heterosexual. However, based on this chapter, it's safe to assume that most men in the Greco-Roman world would not be exclusively heterosexual but somewhere in James Franco's middle zone:

This conclusion that our current culture retards an innate sexual flexibility as seen in the Greco-Roman world raises more questions than it answers. What about gays incessantly droning on about being born that way? Surely, they weren't made gay by culture. What about straight men who insist that they only like women? Surely, they're not lying. We have to untangle quite a bit of gobbledygook to answer these questions.

If you watch TV (which you shouldn't, but if you do) you'll come across The Gay Debate: are they born that way or did daddy not take them hunting enough? The gay rights activist will insist that gays are born that way and thus entitled to rights. The representative of the 14th century will at best admit that perhaps gays have a predisposition, but, just like with alcoholism, this ill too can be overcome with plenty of prayer and costly quack reparative therapy. "Damnation! No donation, no salvation," to quote the game Grand Theft Auto 2.

The meticulous thinker should be skeptical of the gay side's view of the origins of this strange species called the gays because the premise itself is illogical and shaky: supposed inborn traits do not give rights. On the contrary, every genocide has been started when a detestable minority group was found to have an incorrigible flaw, i.e. they were born that way. The Nazis believed that Jews were born that way and couldn't unjew themselves, no matter what. Those given to same-sex inclinations could change or at least control their urges enough not to be a public nuisance, so these brilliant thinkers thought. That's why under the Nazi regime six million Jews died, while perhaps only six thousand died of those arrested under Paragraph 175, the old Prussian law that made sexual acts between males illegal.

So why do gays hammer home the point that they are born that way? While logic does not grant rights for inborn traits, the judiciary of the United States has a distinct bias against reason and logic. They think that "groups with such immutable characteristics as race or sex entitle them to equal protection of the law." If gays are part of a protected class, they get the rights. Apparently, I have more right to collect coins if I can show that my numismatic urges are congenital rather than acquired in later life. Methinks that's a more limiting view of rights but a critique of the legal system of our banana republic is outside the scope of this work and will have to wait until a forthcoming volume.

The cleric shares a conflict of interest with the gays and needs truth bent his way too: he doesn't want gays to have been born that way because it contradicts his view that God created a perfect world. If gays were born that way, their interpretation of the Bible is wrong. Why would God make people who by nature tend not to go forth and multiply? Why would God endow people with desires that they cannot partake in? God cannot be a Hermes.

So are gays born that way or not? And more importantly, how do our numerous Greco-Roman colleagues figure into this? Well, given the logical flaws and conflicts of interest, let's instead resurrect the now dormant debate between scientists and historians.

Scientists have confirmed that gays are probably born that way, though the exact reasons remain elusive; the main culprits are genes and prenatal hormones. They point to myriad studies that show that perhaps 2-10% of the population would be in the catch-all category of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (or LGBT) that deviates (quite literally) in development from the heterosexual norm, the vast majority, at the very least 90%.

This 90% is an awfully familiar number, it's also the number of Roman emperors with boyfriends. So what's going on? Why are the homo-hetero numbers inverted for the past if homosexuality is a fixed trait? There may be a few more gays in a culture without homophobia, but science does not expect the 90% figure, and thus shrugs it off as an irrelevant blip on the radar of massive contra-evidence. Opposed to these essentialists, some historians, social constructionists, and classicists hint at culture as an overlooked driver of sexuality. They are skeptical of the science because history shows a great deal more variety of sexuality between men, including dozens of cultures like the Greco-Roman world in the previous chapter.

Are the scientists making stuff up? Is all of history a big hoax? There is a way for both seemingly mutually exclusive views to be correct. While both have much to offer, science and history speak mutually unintelligible languages so their differences have not been reconciled. How does a scientist interpret historical data that rejects everything seen in the lab? How does a historian interpret scientific data that rejects everything seen in history? A review of both history and science is needed. Spoiler alert: both are correct, as contradictory that may seem.

As a child, the Urning manifests an entirely unmistakable inclination toward girls' occupations, toward the company of girls, toward playing with girls' toys, especially dolls. How terribly lamentable to such a child that it is not the custom for boys to play with dolls, that Santa Claus will not bring him any dolls, too, and that he is forbidden to play with his sister's dolls!

Even a cursory review of the science tells us that gays indeed are born that way. But there's an important caveat that the gay activists don't mention when trumpeting this good news. The science ties sexual orientation to gender, the sense of being masculine or feminine. Namely, gay men are shifted towards the feminine: "what's striking is the large number of traits in which gay people's minds are at least part-way shifted in gender-atypical direction" according to Simon LeVay, a neuroscientist whose own research on sexual orientation is often invoked by the "born that way" side.

To put another way, even pro-gay researchers have found that under controlled experiments some well-known stereotypes about effeminate gay men contain at least a "kernel of truth." While confirmation of these stereotypes goes relatively unmentioned in most of the press, this gay effeminacy is foundational to the conclusion that gay men are born that way.

The prevailing theory is simple: "Differences in levels of circulating sex hormones [of the fetus]  usually testosterone  during one or more critical periods of development cause the brain to develop in a more-male-like or more female-like direction, and these differences influence a spectrum of gendered traits in juvenile life and adulthood, including the preference for male and female sex partners." More simply, prenatal hormones circulating in the mother's womb influence the sexual orientation of the fetus. In the case of gays, the hormones make them more feminine. Their effeminacy and sexuality are tied together and flow from the same gender-shift. Thus, if gay men are not feminine, there is no mechanism for them having been born that way. If gays don't acknowledge that gay is on average more effeminate, then they can't insist that they are born that way.

One exception to the lack of interest in the details of what exactly gays are born with was a 60 Minutes piece in 2006 on the "Science Of Sexual Orientation." Intrepid reporter Leslie Stahl profiled two sets of identical twins to illustrate the overlap of sexual orientation and gendered traits. The first of two sets of twins:

The bedrooms of 9-year-old twins Adam and Jared couldn't be more different. Jared's room is decked out with camouflage, airplanes, and military toys, while Adam's room sports a pastel canopy, stuffed animals, and white horses. When Stahl came for a visit, Jared was eager to show her his G.I. Joe collection. "I have ones that say like Marine and SWAT. And then that's where I keep all the guns for 'em," he explained. Adam was also proud to show off his toys. "This is one of my dolls. Bratz baby," he said.

Adam's mannerisms matched his feminine interests: there was no difficulty telling which boy was more effeminate. But why is Leslie Stahl bothering small children whose gender and interests don't conform to societal expectations? Because childhood gender expression relates to adult sexual orientation in that the former predicts the latter: a feminine boy, more often than not, grows up to become a gay man.

To prove this correlation, a group at Northwestern University

recruited homosexual and heterosexual adults who had videos from their childhood (i.e., from ages 0 to 15 years), and we also videotaped them during an interview. [ ] Subsequently, we recruited homosexual and heterosexual adults to rate the degree of gender nonconformity from both the childhood and the adult video clips.

The raters found that "prehomosexual children were significantly more gender nonconforming than preheterosexual children" and that these differences persisted into adulthood. Another study at UCLA followed two groups of boys: one feminine and the other unspecified. Of the feminine group, 75% were gay as adults while none of the control group was gay.

The other twins on the 60 Minutes program were Steve and Greg, two young adults. There too the gay twin was visibly more effeminate in both speech and dainty hand movements. These adulthood traits have evidence in research.

To test the accuracy of the so-called gaydar, premised on the idea of gendered traits distinguishing gays, some members of the previously mentioned Northwestern University group did another study using videos, this time using only adults:

We videotaped homosexual and heterosexual men and women answering an interview question about their interests. We then recruited two additional sets of participants to rate various aspects of brief excerpts from these interviews. The first raters judged targets' sexual orientations from unedited videos and from partial information extracted from the videos (e.g., video without sound for ratings of movement or sound without picture for ratings of speech).

The results: 87% of heterosexual targets and 75% of homosexual targets were accurately judged. In other words, people can pick up on non-sexual cues like movement, speech, and appearance to correctly assess whether someone is gay or not.

According to a study at Tufts University, this assessment is accurately perceived in merely 50 milliseconds without even videos but just photos showing faces. A New York University study found that computer-generated animations depicting human silhouettes effeminate swaying walks were judged to be homosexual.

These differences are not just superficial mannerisms either, but are deep inside the brain. Within a part of the hypothalamus (which regulates male-typical behaviors) exists a cell group that is larger in males than females. In humans, this sexually dimorphic region is called the INAH3. Simon LeVay's research has found that the size of INAH3 in gay men mirrors that of women, while straight men's are considerably larger than both. Similar findings in animal studies confirm this pattern in rats and sheep.

Gay men perform worse than straight men at certain visuospatial tasks like mental rotation and targeting while women and gay men use the same navigational strategies of nearby-landmarks. The verbal fluency and memory of gay men exceeds that of other men, mirroring that of women.

Science, though, is late to linking sexuality with gender expression. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first openly gay man, argued in pamphlets starting in 1864 that " an Urning [his coinage for a gay male] is not a man, but is a type of hermaphrodite, a man-woman with the sexual orientation of a woman," a "third sex." Ulrichs used the Latin phrase anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa (the soul of a woman in the body of man) to sum up his theory: "Distinct from the feminine persuasion of our sexual drive, we Urnings have still another feminine trait in us which, so it seems to me, offers the most positive proof that nature developed the physical male germ in us, yet mentally, the feminine one." These traits are so obvious, "one is forced to assume that these traits are congenital." Predating the current medical establishment by a century, Ulrichs noticed that this mental femininity was present in gay men from "earliest childhood," as the opening epigraph bears witness. He says that "the Urning avoids the company of boys, their occupations, their games" while today we know that feminine pre-gay boys are not homosocial, preferring the company of girls, contrary to most boys who are well-aware of the dangers of cooties. Coming out to his family in a series of letters in 1862, he mentions that pre-gay boys do not like scuffling and throwing snowballs; science now tells us pre-gay boys do not like rough-and-tumble play.

A century before Ulrichs, molly houses existed in 18th century England whose participants engaged in feminine behavior. A contemporary witness: "they rather fancy themselves as women, imitating all the little vanities that custom has reconciled to the female sex, affecting to speak, walk, tattle, curtsy, cry, scold, and to mimic all the manner of effeminacy that ever has fallen within their several observations."

Historical examples of possibly gay men include the Greek/Roman kinaidos/cinaedi and Native American berdaches. The former were thought of as effeminate not just because they took the receptive role in anal sex, but because they were also feminine in dress and manner. The berdaches, like the kinaidos, were feminine in both ways and also had an element of spirituality. Both give credence to the idea that gays exists outside of our culture.

Of course, there's nothing shocking about any of these. They merely confirm what most of us have instinctively suspected and experienced. In the interest of working with a common source accessible to all, can anyone find gay men on YouTube who are not at least somewhat effeminate? Or take a Canadian show called "1 girl 5 gays." With a rotating cast of about twenty gay men talking about "love and sex," you'd think one would be masculine but all exhibit varying degrees of effeminacy not generally seen in straight men. (And twenty? How many of them could have been Roman emperors?)

An effeminate ex-boyfriend of mine could flirt with women better than any other man I've seen. So I asked him why he didn't want to have sex with women. The response betrayed a feminine self-identity: "Ew, I'd feel like a lesbian." This explains the gay obsession with divas like Britney Spears, Cher, Madonna, and the like. Gay men identify with struggling women who overcome the odds because they often see themselves in a similar light. They often even use feminine pronouns amongst each other, and as much the same happened in the molly houses in the 1700's and during Ulrichs's time in 1864: "When Urnings get together, they mostly give themselves feminine nicknames; I suppose this is because they feel like women, even if only subconsciously: for example, 'Laura,' 'Georgina,' (instead of George), 'Mathilde,' 'Madonna,' 'Queen of the Night.' They also call each other 'sister,' for example, 'Sister dear.'"

On the "Born This Way Blog" readers send in childhood photos with a descriptive anecdote. While the blog claims to be a "photo/essay project for gay adults (of all genders)," I have not come across a post that did not highlight childhood gender nonconformity. Most of those on the site say they knew they were gay at an early age, before puberty. If gay is merely a sexual orientation, how did children know they were gay? Were they having sex? No, they remember being different in their mannerisms, interests, and habits.

Dan Savage, a professional gay columnist and founder of the "It Gets Better" project, and his husband adopted a son. In an interview with NPR, he described how he knew their son was straight:

Miller and Savage are the fathers of a 13-year-old son named D.J. He's in 8th grade, likes skateboarding and has never been harassed for having gay parents.

"If anything, we joke, that we're raising the kid who beat us up in grade school," says Savage. "If he didn't have us for parents  he's a little thuggy snowboarder-skateboarder dude  and I like to think that he's blessed to have us as parents because you can see in him the capacity to be a bully. But he's sensitized to the issue from being from a different kind of family."

Watching D.J. grow up, he says, has made him realize just how much of sexual orientation is hard-wired.

"From the time he was very young, I have been saying, 'Oh my son is straight,' because he is just straight," says Savage. "My mom, when she got over [my being gay] admitted that she kind of thought, all along, that I was gay. I liked to bake and I liked to listen to musicals and for my 13th birthday, I asked my parents for tickets to the Broadway tour of A Chorus Line. That's all I wanted. So I've always known that he's straight."

Always known? Again, if you can tell a child's sexual orientation without any actual sexuality, you must be describing more than just sexual orientation. That's common sense. Some gays do acknowledge this, but the way in which they do reveals ambivalence towards full acceptance of the gender-shift:

I am masculine, but at the same time still gay.

Or so says the online dating profile of a guy who says he's an acrobat who has been doing gymnastics since he was five. His pictures show an obviously gay man. Certainly, not as gay as unicorns farting out rainbows, but it's easy to spot the gayness even from still shots. Maybe there's a desire to be masculine or even in reality less effeminacy compared to other gay men, but even so there's an internal recognition that gay is a limiting factor for masculinity.

Then there are others who are outright hostile to the idea of effeminacy, despite their own effeminacy. And yet, with this overwhelming multitude of evidence, it's hard to bring this topic up. When referring to the lack of masculine gay men and asking where the real men were, an online poster to a gay forum was met with hostile remarks like:

It is difficult to reply to this thread and stay civil. You insult pretty much everyone with your post. There are a lot of masculine gay men out there. Sadly there are also a few out there with the same attitude like you.

Or sarcastic ones:

Could you provide a better explanation of what's for you the masculine super macho man (as you surely are) you're looking for? I mean only to see who could possibly fit in that category. Sigh.

A possible answer to this self-delusion from a gay man:

Most of us grew up with our masculinity being called into question, and usually in a rather harsh and possibly violent manner. And most of us eventually stopped spending time with such people, and the ones we did hang out with didn't mention our femininity - partially because they didn't care, and partially because they (perhaps instinctively) knew that it was a sore spot growing up, and perhaps it wasn't a good idea to dwell on that topic.



So as time went on, and people stopped mentioning our feminine ways, we grew to believe they didn't exist. Hey, nobody said anything, so they're not there, right? It's certainly easier on our still-fragile ego to think that we're 100% straight acting than it is to think that the thing we got bullied for as a kid is still visible for the world to see.

Gay men set themselves backwards when they refuse to acknowledge their feminine traits. Not only do they undermine the idea that they were born that way but also shame themselves, especially the most visibly effeminate. There certainly is nothing wrong with effeminate, so why deny the obvious? Ulrichs says gays ought to be true to themselves: " let us not be ashamed of our soft, emotional, feminine traits which nature gave us Do not let us waste our energy by artificially adopting manly prerogatives." This is rather good advice. In fact, it's rather pathetic that gay men cannot acknowledge this self-evident truth when the first gay guy could two centuries ago.

Not only do gays set themselves back when they refuse to acknowledge the obvious, this self-denial has harmed greros the worst. While there have been efforts at infusing masculinity into the same-sex debate since the late 19th century, there hasn't been a word to fully define the love between fully real men, or at least one that has stuck around. The love between men is grudgingly tolerated for men who are "that way": varying degrees of effeminate. The masculine are left out. By embracing their effeminacy, gay men foster greater tolerance for themselves while allowing grero to not be associated with it. Of course, there's nothing wrong with effeminacy itself, but you wouldn't compliment a woman on her moustache either. Same with grero: masculine men are much less likely to acknowledge their attractions if those are said to only occur with what they are not: effeminacy. It's better for both of us to acknowledge these facts.

The first of the two politically-correct Gay Dogmas states that gay men are no different from other men except in their sexuality. This is refuted by the science we have just reviewed: gay men are different: they are gender-shifted towards the feminine. While working in the right direction concerning gay gender, the current scientific mainstream is at fault for upholding the second Gay Dogma that males liking males is a small minority: maybe 2%, maybe even 5% but definitely not more than the oft-cited 10%. Our Greco-Roman colleagues beg to disagree with such low figures and so does the overlooked mathematical, scientific, historical, and anthropological evidence sampled in the next chapters.

He said it didn't matter if a guy was married or not. He said half the married guys in the world were flits and didn't even know it. He said you could turn into one practically overnight, if you had all the traits and all. He used to scare the hell out of us. I kept waiting to turn into a flit or something.

We are at an impasse. If gay is a minority gender, then what about the Greeks and the Romans? Our imperial Roman colleagues can hardly be recognized with their debilitating masculine dystrophy. And their overwhelming majority contradicts the view that those who like members of their own sex or gender are a small minority. What are the odds that of first twenty Roman leaders, eighteen were not entirely straight by today's standards?

To answer that, a peek at numbers: Currently, the number of males aged 14-44 in the American Empire who self-identify as gay or bisexual is 2.8% while those who self-report any same-sex sexual behavior is 5.2%. Using either number, the odds that so many were attracted to other men are nearing the mathematically impossible. 2.8% yields 0.000000000000000000000000020088 (2.00877E-26), while 5.2% gives the odds at 0.000000000000000000001319564007 (1.31956E-21). That's a lot of zeroes so it may help to compare numbers to another evil vice, gambling.

Visualize a roulette table. Now bet on the same number for twenty spins in a row. Do you expect to win eighteen times? You would also suspect something had gone awry if your poker buddy got four royal flushes in a row? That's what we're talking about here.

Or imagine the destruction of the Earth by the enlarged Sun, forecast for about five billion years from now. Not only would the Roman Empire have had to survive past such an inhospitable event, but at least a billion times over. Not a billion more years, but a billion times five billion years. Only then could we expect to see a series of so many sexually flexible emperors, given the current numbers. What are the odds they hit jackpot on their first try? Not very much.

The Roman emperors could not have been gay (or bisexual) by the current numbers; however, we cannot have been born straight by theirs. Even though science ignores history that it cannot replicate in a lab, there are studies with faint echoes of ancient Greece and Rome.

A study on homophobia conducted at the University of Georgia may help us to understand the discrepancy between ancient and current statistics. The study sought to "investigate whether homophobic men show more sexual arousal to homosexual cues than nonhomophobic men." By "cues" they meant showing porn to the test subjects while a penile plethysmograph measured their erections. The men were college students mostly in their twenties, self-proclaimed exclusive heterosexuals in experience and arousal, and divided into homophobic and nonhomophobic groups based on a questionnaire.

Shown lesbian and heterosexual porn, both groups showed similar arousal patterns. However, the two groups diverged in arousal when viewing same-sex porn:

Group No significant tumescence Moderate tumescence Definite tumescence Homophobic 20% 26% 54% Nonhomophobic 66% 10% 24%

Yes, homophobes have latent same-sex attractions as 80% of them showed sexual arousal to gay porn. How Romanesque! Two important observations. First, the homophobic group represents a large real-world population, by no means negligible. (In the study, the homophobes made up a small majority which doesn't seem at odds with current social attitudes and polling.) Second, even among the nonhomophobic men, one-third got hard watching gay porn. That's exactly one-third higher than expected by reading the definition of heterosexual.

So if we extrapolate the numbers onto the general male population, napkin math predicts that about 60% of males would get hard watching same-sex porn. You read that right: a clear majority of straight men would get hard watching gay porn. Now those are Roman numerals! And maybe without the cultural bias against the love between men, the numbers would be even closer to imperial measurements.

Some have argued that the homophobic subjects displayed erections due to anxiety. I disagree with that interpretation. Anxiety is surely there, but it is an effect, not the cause. The erections caused the anxiety, not vice versa. How do I know all this? Unbeknownst to me, I was part of a similar study a few years later. In high school, while watching same-sex porn, I, too, frequently got erections. In the homophobia study, all men gave honest responses to their level of arousal except the homophobic men to same-sex porn. They essentially denied having erections. In my study too, I remember rationalizing the very clear evidence starting me eye-to-eye. The cognitive dissonance between actual reality and desired reality felt like a split personality. I knew I liked seeing other guys naked but a nagging force inside of me would be outraged, not at me personally, but at the general concept of such perversity as if the topic was some intellectual matter disconnected from the matter at hand, my raging boner. It is not surprising that such latent desires bubble to the surface in the form of homophobic slurs or physical attacks against gay men. These men do not have a way of acknowledging their attractions. Grero solves that.

In conclusion, something is rotten with the state of sexual orientation theory if 60% of men get erections to same-sex porn while none of them admit to same-sex attractions, while only 5% of the general male population does. Am I suggesting most men are secretly lusting after other men? Some could be. But the majority is fine with the current situation they find themselves in. They do not actively pursue their subconscious attractions, attractions that they may not even realize but are there and just as in-born as effeminacy to gay. Culture tells all men to get a girlfriend, go the prom, get married while tarring relationships between men as morally wrong and personally effeminizing. Until recently, such relationships were illegal as well in the West. Is it surprising that with all the stigma we only have maybe 5% willing to either admit to wanting or having same-sex relationships? Not at all.

Neither the participants in the homophobia study nor I are alone in our latent attractions bubbling to the surface, despite culture working its hardest to prevent as much. Such experiences have been chronicled in print below.

Get the fuck off me! We don't fuck, Vince! We're buddies, we're pals, we're partners, we're a duo. We love each other, but we don't fuck! We're fucking stars. We can - we can travel together. We can hang out together. We can live together, but we can't be queers! It's not funny!

We don't need to dig in studies or the ancient dustbins of history to find grero. Even within our homophobic society, there have been plenty of masculine men who have had relationships with others like them. I don't want to review or copy the entire record of anything that could be labeled "homosexual" as that has been done better elsewhere and needlessly includes the non-masculine. Instead, I've compiled five short excerpts that highlight just grero. Two are fictional accounts that not only represent universal truths exceptionally well but also have relevant back stories.

In 1826, two young men from South Carolina exchanged letters. Addressed to Jim from Jeff:

I feel some inclination to learn whether you yet sleep in your Shirt-tail, and whether you yet have the extravagant delight of poking and punching a writhing Bedfellow with your long fleshen pole  the exquisite touches of which I have often had the honor of feeling? Let me say unto thee that unless thou changest former habits in this particular, thou wilt be represented by every future Chum as a nuisance. And, I pronounce it, with good reason too. Sir, you roughen the downy Slumbers of your Bedfellow  by such hostile  furious lunges as you are in the habit of making at him  when he is least prepared for defence against the crushing force of a Battering Ram.

Jeff signed the letter with the valediction, "With great respect I am the old Stud." In two short decades, Jim became James Henry Hammond, the governor of South Carolina. Later in the US Senate, he popularized the term King Cotton in reference to the South's most famous crop. His "elongated protuberance" (to quote Jeff) took an interest in multiple young women, causing a whisper campaign that he dismissed as "a little dalliance with the other sex."

His writhing bedfellow Jeffrey grew up to become the Honorable Judge Withers, a signatory to both South Carolina's secession and the Confederate Constitution.

150 years later, two boys would also become writhing bedfellows in a small town in a big Southern state. Recounting the experiences in his 40's, Luke writes:

When I was 17, in 1971, a boy moved to town from my state's biggest city. I am sure this was quite a culture shock for him. He was 16 years old, a freshman and his name was Stephen.

Luke invited Stephen to his grandfather's ranch to hunt and spend the night. After deciding that it was okay to sleep in the same bed,

We continued to talk and the conversation turned to sex, specifically Stephen asked me if I masturbated. I answered yes I did. To say that I was sexually naive would be a gross understatement. My experience with girls had been limited and I was not what you would call sexually bold. That said, Stephen then asked if I had ever jacked off with another guy. Well, no, I hadn't. It was at this point he said he wanted to show me something that he and a buddy of his from the big city used to do.

They both enjoyed it:

It was like I had been electrified. I could not believe the indescribable feeling of his hand on our cocks together, He stroked once, twice and I came as powerfully as I ever had. The first ejaculate hit me directly under the chin; the second landed splat on my chest. My head was literally spinning because I had never felt this kind of pleasure solo.

[Another] time we played it for all we could, wrestling closely together, then moving apart and fondling one another, moving closer together with our legs entwined, both of our hands grasping and stroking our dicks until finally we came, almost simultaneously while sitting facing one another. I collapsed into Stephen and then I kissed him full on the lips, my tongue curious for his and he returned the kiss, urgent and hot.

The hunting trips became a tradition and two grew on each other:

Sometimes we had little wrestling matches, sometimes we were gentler and sometimes we were extremely physical. It was all good and I never tired at looking at Stephen's face, as he was about to come. He would get the most beatific look; his eyelids fluttering slightly as he gasped and made little noises. That, in and of itself, was enough to get me off, big time.

Sometime, around Thanksgiving, as I recall, I told Stephen I thought that I loved him. He admitted that he thought he loved me too. I have to admit, although I was conflicted about the nature of our relationship, I was over the moon.

Alone in the woods they were safe, but at Stephen's house they were ultimately caught having sex:

Suddenly, someone burst through the locked door. I looked up and saw that it was Stephen's father. I jumped up and the Colonel began yelling at Stephen, calling him a little faggot and how he should kick his ass and how could he do this, etc. etc. I was embarrassed by my nakedness and a bit intimidated by the Colonel. He was a pretty big guy and he had definitely blown a gasket. After a minute, I jumped in and said I didn't think that this was Stephen's fault and I told him we hadn't done anything wrong. At this point, the Colonel backhanded me. I had never believed in the old saying "seeing stars" when you've been hit hard, but I did, literally, see stars and the next thing to hit the floor was my ass.

Luke would never see Stephen again.

While Luke and Stephen had to meet secretly, the first novel to unabashedly describe such a relationship was written two decades before in 1948, when The City and the Pillar invented homosexuality. Better its author Gore Vidal than me explain:

I knew that my description of the love affair between two "normal" all-American boys of the sort that I had spent three years with in the wartime army would challenge every superstition about sex in my native land... Until then, American novels of "inversion" dealt with transvestites or with lonely bookish boys who married unhappily and pined for Marines. I broke that mold. My two lovers were athletes and so drawn to the entirely masculine that, in the case of one, Jim Willard, the feminine was simply irrelevant to his passion to unite with his other half, Bob Ford: unfortunately for Jim, Bob had other sexual plans, involving women and marriage.

This earned Vidal a ban from the New York Times reviewing his five next books. Poignant, but not explicit:

They were very still. Jim found the weight of Bob's arm on his shoulders almost unbearable: wonderful but unbearable. Yet he did not dare move for fear the other would take his arm away. Suddenly Bob got to his feet. "Let's make a fire."

"There," he said, looking into the yellow flames, "that's done." For a long moment both stared into the hypnotically quivering flames, each possessed by his own private daydream. Bob's dream ended first. He turned to Jim. "Come on," he said menacingly. "I'll wrestle you."

They met, grappled, fell to the ground. Pushing and pulling, they fought for position; they were evenly matched, because Jim, though stronger, would not allow Bob to lose or to win. When at last they stopped, both were panting and sweating. They lay exhausted on the blanket.

Then Bob took off his shirt and Jim did the same. That was better. Jim mopped the sweat from his face while Bob stretched out on the blanket, using his shirt for a pillow. Firelight gleamed on pale skin. Jim stretched out beside him. "Too hot," he said. "Too hot to be wrestling."

Bob laughed and suddenly grabbed him. They clung to one another. Jim was overwhelmingly conscious of Bob's body. For a moment they pretended to wrestle. Then both stopped. Yet each continued to cling to the other as though waiting for a signal to break or to begin again. For a long time neither moved. Smooth chests touching, sweat mingling, breathing fast in unison.

Abruptly, Bob pulled away. For a bold moment their eyes met. Then, deliberately, gravely, Bob shut his eyes and Jim touched him, as he had so many times in dreams, without words, without thought, without fear. When the eyes are shut, the true world begins.

As faces touched, Bob gave a shuddering sigh and gripped Jim tightly in his arms. Now they were complete, each became the other, as their bodies collided with a primal violence, like to like, metal to magnet, half to half and the whole restored.

So they met. Eyes tight shut against an irrelevant world. A wind warm and sudden shook all the trees, scattered the fire's ashes, threw shadows to the ground.

But then the wind stopped. The fire went to coals. The trees were silent. No comets marked the dark lovely sky, and the moment was gone. In the fast beat of a double heart, it died.

The eyes opened again. Two bodies faced one another where only an instant before a universe had lived; the star burst and dwindled, spiraling them both down to the meager, to the separate, to the night and the trees and the firelight; all so much less than what had been.

They separated, breathing hard. Jim could feel the fire on his feet and beneath the blanket he was now uncomfortably aware of small stones and sticks. He looked at Bob, not certain of what he would see.

Bob was staring into the fire, face expressionless. But he grinned quickly when he saw Jim watching him. "This is a hell of a mess," he said, and the moment fled.

Jim looked down at himself and said as casually as he could, "It sure is."

Bob stood up, the firelight glittering on his body. "Let's wash up."

Pale as ghosts in the dark night, they walked to the pond. Through the trees they could see the light from their fire, yellow and flickering, while frogs croaked, insects buzzed, river thundered. They dove into the still black water. Not until they had returned to the fire did Bob break the silence. He was abrupt.

"You know, that was awful kid stuff we did."

"I suppose so." Jim paused. "But I liked it." He had great courage now that he had made his secret dream reality. "Did you?"

Bob frowned into the yellow fire. "Well, it was different than with a girl. And I don't think it's right."

"Why not?"

"Well, guys aren't supposed to do that with each other. It's not natural."

"I guess not." Jim looked at Bob's fire-colored body, long-lined and muscular. With his newfound courage, he put his arm around Bob's waist. Again excited, they embraced and fell back onto the blanket.

Dedicated "for the memory of J.T.," Vidal's novel was inspired by his real life relationship with Jimmie Trimble. While the two's relationship was short and any hope of a reunion was undercut by Jimmie's death on Iwo Jima during World War II, Vidal says that Jimmie was the only he ever loved, his unfinished business:

I not only never again encountered the other half, but by the time I was twenty-five, I had given up all pursuit, settling for a thousand brief anonymous adhesions where wholeness seems, for an instant, to be achieved.

Unrequited love and unfinished business are the fate of many such relationships when they have neither a name nor acceptance. In cinema, grero has no better illustration than in My Own Private Idaho. Taking a page or two from The City and the Pillar, the pivotal scene in the movie features two young hustlers around a campfire:

Scott (Keanu Reeves): Getting away from everything feels good.

Mike (River Phoenix): Yeah, it does.

Scott: When I left home, the maid asked me where I was off to. I said, "Wherever, whatever, have a nice day."

Mike: You had a maid?

Scott: Yeah.

Mike: If I had a normal family, and a good upbringing then I would have been a well-adjusted person.

Scott: Depends on what you call normal.

Mike: Yeah, it does. Well, you know, normal, like a mom and a dad and a dog and shit like that. Normal.

Scott: So you didn't have a normal dog?

Mike: No, I didn't have a dog.

Scott: Didn't have a normal dad?

Mike: Didn't have a dog nor a normal dad anyway. That's alright. I don't feel sorry for myself, I mean, I feel like I'm well-adjusted.

Scott: What's a normal dad?

Things get more emotional:

Mike: I don't know... I'd like to talk with you. I mean I'd like to really talk with you. I mean we're talking right now, you know, I don't know, I don't feel like I can be... I don't feel like I can be close to you... I mean we're close, right now we're close but I mean you know...

Scott: I mean, how close?

Mike: I don't know, whatever... What do I mean to you?

Scott: What do you mean to me? Mike, you're my best friend.

Mike: I know man. I know I'm your friend. We're good friends. And it's good to be, you know, good friends. That's a good thing.

Scott: So?

Mike: So, I just... that's okay. We're gonna be friends.

Scott knows what Mike can't say:

Scott: I only have sex with a guy for money.

Mike: Yeah.

Scott: And two guys can't love each other.

Mike: Yeah. Well, I don't know, I mean, for me, I could love someone even if I wasn't paid for it. I love you and you don't pay me.

Scott: Mike?

Mike: I really want to kiss you man... Goodnight, man. I love you though. You know that. I do love you.

[The two embrace but we see nothing else.]

While the director Gus Van Sant is gay, he originally wrote the scene about a horny Mike needing a quick fuck, instead of anything committal:

In the original script he doesn't tell Scott that he loves him, but he does ask him if he fools around with guys, and Scott says, "Well I only sleep with guys for money." And River says, "Yeah but we're out in the desert and it's boring."

However, by rewriting the script, River Phoenix changed not just the scene but the rest of movie. In a later scene after Scott picks up an Italian chick (his future wife), an annoyed Mike puffs smoke into the girl's face. Without the campfire scene, Mike is merely annoyed at a distraction from the broader goal of finding his deadbeat mother; with it, we see an interplay of jealousy, fear of abandonment, and grero.

As with The City and the Pillar, art imitates life:

While filming his previous movie, Dogfight, Phoenix had received oral sex from another male actor, saying he needed to do it because he was going to play a gay [sic] hustler." He had other brief involvements with men over the years, and it was no big deal to friends who knew. Phoenix simply didn't censor his affections. "If he loved somebody, male or female," says one of Phoenix's longtime girlfriends, Suzanne Solgot, "he felt he should check it out."

"River dropped clues about his sexuality, but I never really followed them up," says Van Sant, who is gay. Phoenix asked ceaseless questions about Van Sant's relationship with his boyfriend: "What, exactly, do you do in bed? Which side do you sleep on? Do you ever tell him to shut up? If you're angry at him, do you still buy him an expensive birthday present?" Van Sant says, "I would laugh because these questions were so personal, and he'd say, What? What?'"

In late 1992, a gay filmmaker (not Van Sant) staying at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles heard a knock at midnight and discovered Phoenix outside, drunk and wanting to talk about his struggles with bisexuality [sic]. The filmmaker reassured him that it would all work out.

Noted author and professional atheist Christopher Hitchens had relevant experiences in boarding school:

Mr. Chips's feminist-socialist wife had phrased it in a no-nonsense way by saying that official disapproval of public-school homosexuality was the equivalent of condemning a boy for being there in the first place. I knowingly run the risk of absurdity if I offer the spiritual or the transcendent in opposition to this, but actually it was my first exposure to love as well as to sex, and it helped teach me as vividly as anything could have done that religion was cruel and stupid. One was indeed punishable for one's very nature: "Created sick: commanded to be sound." The details aren't very important, but until this I have doubted if I would ever be able to set them down: "He" was a sort of strawberry blond, very slightly bow-legged, with a wicked smile that seemed to promise both innocence and experience. He was in another "house." He was my age. He was quite right-wing (which I swiftly decided to forgive) but also a "rebel" in the sense of being a cavalier elitist

The marvelous boy was more urbane than I was, and much more knowing, if slightly less academic. His name was Guy, and I still sometimes twitch a little when I run into someone else who's called that  even in America, where in a way it is everybody's name.

Were poems exchanged? Were there white-hot and snatched kisses? Did we sometimes pine for the holidays to end, so that (unlike everybody else) we actually yearned to be back at school? Yes, yes, and yes. Did we sleep together? Well, dear reader, the "straight" answer is no, we didn't. The heated yet chaste embrace was exactly what marked us off from the grim and turgid and randy manipulations in which the common herd  not excluding ourselves in our lower moments with lesser beings  partook. I won't deny that there was some fondling. However, when we were actually caught it must have looked bad, since we had finally managed  no small achievement in a place where any sort of privacy was rendered near-unlawful  to find somewhere to be alone. The senior boy who made the discovery was a thick-necked sportocrat with the unimprovable name of Peter Raper: he had had his own bulging eye on my Guy for some time and this was his revenge.

The usual "thing" would have been public disgrace followed by expulsion. But "things" were made both more cruel and more arbitrary, and also less so. Various of my teachers persuaded the headmaster that I was a good prospect for passing the entrance exam for Oxford: a statistic on which the school annually prided (and sold) itself. The same could be said of Guy, though he didn't eventually make it. Accordingly, having been coldly exposed to public shame, we were allowed to "stay on" but forbidden to speak to each other. At the time, I vaguely but quite worriedly thought this might have the effect of killing me.

No comment needed.

For, according to one possibility, the tribesman isn't really gay  he just spends half his life having oral sex with other males

Grero obscures itself in half-forgotten ancient Western history, hides in today's laboratories and studies, and lurks around a suspiciously large number of campfires. Before Christian sexuality completed its subsumation of the rest of the world in the 20th century, this singular sexual norm we take for granted as natural was not the experience of other cultures. There was no norm, though common threads existed. People generally had two feet in other cultures. Another commonality was the masculine-masculine relationships, existing beside others.

Similar to Roman emperors, "all of the chiefs" (ali'i) of late 1700's Hawaii had male sexual partners. These aikane were treated as real men: like the chiefs, they had wives and had typical male occupations. The Hawaiians thought such relations were so natural, they assumed the visiting Brits had a similar setup. As such, the chiefs attempted to procure British junior officers for themselves, much to the shock of the Captain Cook's crew, denigrating the near-universal "sodomy" as:

a shocking inversion of the laws of nature, they bestow all those affections upon them that were intended for the other sex.

How can a law of nature be inverted? Can you violate physics? You can violate cultural norms but that shows just how artificial and unnatural such "laws" are. "Very nearly ever male" islander of Melanesia must have had supernatural powers that violated natural laws:

it is considered a kind of duty to obligingly accede to the demands of an older man, but also, with young men of the same age, homosexual interaction often occurs between persons who are merely good friends, sometimes even brothers At some time during his life, very nearly every male engages in extensive homosexual activities it usually begins with foreplay, which consists of mutual masturbation or unilateral masturbation, and ends with anal intercourse culminating in orgasm.

Among Amazonian tribes:

"A young man will often lie in a hammock with his 'brother-in-law,' nuzzling him, fondling his penis, and talking quietly, often about sexual exploits with women."

" most unmarried young men having homosexual relations with each other but no stigma attached to this behavior. In fact, most of these bachelors joked about it and simulated copulation with each other in public."

"Young men sit around enticingly sedate and formal in all their finery, or form troupes of panpipe-playing dancers." Occasional sex is regarded as expectable behavior among friends: "One is marked as nonfriendly  enemy  if he does not join, especially in the youth age group (roughly 15-35)... Homosexual activity is limited neither to within an age group nor to unmarried men." Moreover, intervillage homosexuality is encouraged, and some "best friends" relationships develop.

That those in Amazonia who refuse same-sex as regarded as enemy mirrors a custom of the Celts who took it as insult to reject an invitation to same-sex sex. Clearly, same-sex activities were not merely tolerated for a small minority but expected of the great majority. Equally as clear, we don't see this diversity anymore. Most cultures around the world have industrialized and absorbed our sexual ethics. Whereas pre-modern China and Japan had open same-sex relationships in the 16th century (to the dismay of Jesuit missionaries), Christian sexual ethics inculcated fascist Japan and nationalist-then-communist China. It's truly remarkable how enemies absorbed an ideology foreign to both. We see this assimilation trend in the myriad cultures across Africa, not profiled in detail here. Whereas racist African demagogues now speak out against "homosexuality" as the white man's invention, it is actually the source of opposition to varied same-sex behaviors, Christianity, that is the white man's importation.

The point is that "we're all living in Amerika." For the first time in human history, the 21st century begins without a culture that allows for masculine same-sex relationships, much less one that expects such. Other cultures had no words to describe grero because it was so obvious and prevalent; we have no words for grero because we prohibited it into extinction.

Name Frequency of male same-sex sex Shared genome with humans Bonobo Homosexual activity is nearly as common as heterosexual activity, accounting for 40-50% of all sexual interactions. Virtually all Bonobos are bisexual, interacting sexually with both males and females. ~98.7% Chimpanzee The prevalence of same-sex activities between male Common Chimpanzees is highly variable. Mounting between males constitutes anywhere from 1-2 percent to one-third to one-half of the behaviors involved in reassurance Overall, 29-33 percent of all mounting activity occurs between males. In some populations, virtually all adult males participate in same-sex mounting, although such activity may constitute anywhere from one-fifth to three-quarters of an individual's mounting activity. ~98.63% Gorilla Among younger animals in cosexual groups, 7-36 percent of mounts are between males Homosexuality occurs most commonly in all-male groups, where probably more than 90 percent of all same-sex activity between males takes place. Gorillas spend an average of six years in such groups... it appears that all males at least have the capacity for bisexuality. ~98.25% Orang-utan Male homosexual behavior is characteristic of younger Orang-utans. Mature adult males probably have a bisexual potential: although they rarely engage in homosexual activity in the wild, in captivity they often do (even in the presence of females). ~96.6% Roman Emperors Of the first twenty Roman emperors, at least eighteen (90%) had sexual relationships with other men. 100%

Marcus Aurelius is my favorite emperor not just we lived within blocks of each other at one point. While other emperors' dalliances with men could be dismissed as rumor and gossip, his two autobiographical accounts provide undeniable first-hand proof of his sexual flexibility. Suppose we cloned Marcus Aurelius and plopped him down in an average family somewhere in the West. Would he be surprised that his original copy liked other men? How vehemently would he deny the implication that he must too like men?

Did you see [Colonel] Gaddafi [at the UN] complaining that American soldiers have been sodomising Arab boys? I thought, well that's been the case since the very beginning of the republic. They blamed the sodomy on those great forests out there which they said made them horny. There was nothing else to do but bugger boys, they said.

We have seen that relationships between men are neither confined to an effeminate minority nor to a single culture. Masculine men of different eras and empires have loved each other spanning all continents. Moreover, they were unaware of each others' existence: the Hawaiians of the 18th century knew nothing about the Greco-Roman world, while Luke and Stephen could have hardly known about either. And likewise blissfully unaware of others were the warrior monks of Tibet. If separate cultures across time and space had invented the same tool without collaboration, we would either claim space alien conspiracy (if we're crazy) or that such a commonality was a sign of some innate capacity, as is the case with language. And while the specifics of languages differ in vocabulary, we recognize that humans nonetheless have an inborn capacity for language in general. Along similar lines, that men love men should be a banality no more controversial than that humans can learn to speak languages or walk on two feet.

But the acknowledgement of the universal love between masculine men faces roadblocks: silence or excuses. The history deniers ignore the obvious in hopes that if we don't give it any attention, the indecent monster will slink away. Euphemistically described as the love that dare not speak its name, same-sex relationships of all kinds were shrouded in silence interrupted only with sporadic bouts of hysteria and moral panics. I remember an old and red World Book Encyclopedia from the 1960s that did not have an entry for homosexuality. In Edith Hamilton's famous Mythology (from the 1940s), Zeus's boyfriend Ganymede receives minor billing as a "beautiful young Trojan prince who was seized and carried up to Olympus by Zeus's eagle," but absent are any sexual implications. Maybe Zeus wanted a beautiful cupbearer because lifting a cup was too much trouble for a god. Maybe not. Nineteenth century translations of ancient texts leave in Latin the descriptions of sex acts while medical books in the vernacular translate them into Latin, although such censorship may have had the unintended consequence of arousing more curiosity.

While ignoring history to marginalize taboos is infuriating, quite amusing and comical are the excuses of those who wish to explain away and cover up the past's ubiquitous same-sex relationships. The argument is that none of these people were real "homosexuals." This true but irrelevant non sequitur misses the point that their relationships with men were genuine regardless of their sex with women. Political correctness, sometimes even promoted by oblivious gays themselves, disparages such same-sex relationships by doubting their authenticity. Allegedly straight men getting hard to gay porn? It's just a reflex! Roman emperors having sex with other men? Women were not invented until 476 AD! Native and aboriginal peoples engaged in constant same-sex sex? They're faking it for their hokey-pokey tribal rituals! The excuse has many variations but generally goes under the name situational homosexuality or situational same-sex behavior, the greatest lie invented against masculinity. And you know, situational. Like something that only occurs in limited circumstances, like on all continents across millennia.

Those who provide these fanciful excuses generally make the following circular argument: Because most men are naturally inclined to women, any instance of them having sex with another man is situational, outside the ordinary. They're not "real" homosexuals, just heterosexual beings who engage in homosexual acts, in much the same way that a professional dermatologist was born that way and is merely engaging in culinary acts when preparing dinner.

Simon LeVay, a neuroscientist, in Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why writes:

In some cultures, unmarried women have been sequestered and thus were invisible to men and unobtainable as sex partners. In such environments, male adolescents were often sought after as sex partners by adult men, especially by young unmarried men. Ancient Greece is a particularly well-known example  so much so that "Greek love" has long been used as a colloquial term for homosexuality. A more recent example was the same-sex culture that existed in Afghanistan under the Taliban, when all women were hidden behind their burqas. "I like boys, but I like girls better," one Kandahar resident told the Los Angeles Times. "It's just that we can't see the women to see if they are beautiful. But we can see the boys, and so we can tell which of them is beautiful." About half of all men in Kandahar engaged in sex with boys at one time or another, according to one local medical professor interviewed for the article.

In such cultures, the choice of adolescent boys as partners probably reflects the fact that these youths, lacking beards and adult musculature, are closer to women in appearance than are adult men. Thus, it would be quite wrong to assert that many or most men in ancient Greece or in Afghanistan were homosexual in the sense of having a strong preference for males when given the choice of sex partners. What these cultures do demonstrate is the degree to which sexual desire and sexual behavior accommodate themselves to a restricted range of options, just as they do in prisons and other single-sex environments today.

Or they demonstrate completely the opposite: that maybe our culture is the one that's quite restricted. First, many Greeks did choose men, not necessarily over women but despite the presence of women. The idea that women were unavailable is outright false: many vases and plates bear witness to women freely fucking men, youths, or each other lesbianicly.

Second, notice how Islam's homophobia is not mentioned as a limiting factor of same-sex behavior, while the alleged homosexuality is merely considered some accidental byproduct of Islam's misogynous segregation. Islam forbids the very open relationships that the coining of the word grero encourages, so why are we to assume that the only same-sex relationships are those that are due to segregation? Why is only restricting heterosexuality the only bias mentioned? That oversight makes the argument rather circular: it assumes that only exclusive heterosexuality is valid and thus anything else is an aberration that must be a result of suppressed heterosexuality. Same-sex love cannot exist for its own sake: its existence must be a heterosexual dysfunction. This from an openly gay scientist!

Third, it's not true that the preference for young men is really pseudo-heterosexual, whereby the younger male is a stand-in for a woman. Has Simon LeVay never seen teenaged males or, for that matter, women? The only thing young men have in common with women (that neither shares with men) is that neither has facial hair, most of the time. Given that sports are a Big Deal in high school, the musculature of young men is often much better than that of well-marbled hams that some adults morph into. The reason for the preference of younger men is precisely because they are physically at the peak of masculinity. Masculine young men are quite the opposite of feminine Rubenesque women. The preference for such young men needs as much explanation as the preference of filet over hamburger or swordfish over swampy catfish.

Dover in Greek Homosexuality, perhaps the first work to comprehensively examine the topic, routinely makes the same mistake. Describing vase R712 as "Men and youths accost women," Dover draws note to the "physical similarities of the youths and women" as if to agree with LeVay that young men were pseudo-heterosexual substitutes for women. Dover is correct in his observation though: the youths and women do look alike. However, this does not support the desired conclusion as the women have broad shoulders and narrow hips. Whether we have a bad artist or one enamored by the masculine form, we can conclude that young men aren't proxies for women. The idea that such beautiful bodies need some sort of excuse to be appreciated isn't just plainly incorrect but also quite oblivious: what's so damn unattractive about a young fit male?

Describing the ancient Greeks more or less accurately in the first chapter to A Natural History of Homosexuality, Mondimore makes the following conclusion:

These men were not homosexual  not in the modern meaning of that term. The Greeks had no such word or concept. It is perhaps more correct to say that the Greeks practiced a sort of "bisexuality" in that, for men at least, sexual activity with partners of both sexes was accepted.

That's an acceptable conclusion. However, when explaining the current scientific theories on the origins of sexual orientation, Mondimore lets it slip that the "real" homosexuals in ancient Greece probably did not stand out because everyone was more or less into same-sex sex, even though most were "real" heterosexuals:

A homosexual person might look different in different cultures. Among the Greeks, the existence of homosexuality has been described as being "submerged within cultural mores." Those for whom same-sex intimacy was consistently and compellingly more satisfying than heterosexual relationships did not stand out from the majority. For most ancient Greeks, perhaps homosexual intimacy was merely a pleasant sensual diversion from what they experienced as "the real thing": heterosexual intimacy.

Such ill-informed musings seek to pigeonhole the Greeks into our sexual orientation framework instead of us recognizing that our framework cannot be universal (as we presume it is) if it does not describe other cultures well. Again, to think that men in Greece choose men or women over the other is the wrong paradigm, which at least Mondimore acknowledged before in the previous quote but for some reason abandoned later on. Such speculation may be from the bias that Mondimore himself, like LeVay, is gay and cannot fathom that most men do indeed like other men, at least in the absence of our culture.

The absurdities reach their zenith with a short college textbook entitled Greek Society. After mentioning Zeus and Ganymede and numerous vase paintings attesting to plenty of same-sex sex, Frost casually dismisses all that with:

Actually, the proportion of Greeks, both male and female, whose sexual orientation was unambiguously homosexual was probably the same as in any other human population in the history of the human race.

Probably the same? What's the evidence, aside from mere assertion? And what's with the straw man, Frost? No one argues that most of the Greeks were gay, but that their more diverse sexual appetites contrast jarringly to today's narrower cultural restrictions. Instead of using the Greeks to ponder our own culture's limitations, Frost tries to pigeonhole them into ours. To explain (away) the amount of same-sex sex with the Greeks, Frost argues:

Greek boys and young men were by the very structure of society thrown together from childhood on, in school, in gymnasium, and in military training. It was perhaps only natural that attachment would form and sometimes develop into sexual love; this has been true of every society we know in which an artificial, exclusively male grouping has been part of the normal structure.

It's simple really! An artificial group (whatever that means) that's part of the normal structure (whatever that means) can create attachments between men; it's only natural, but also completely artificial. The bad choice of words betrays the faulty logic: in Frost's world artificial begets natural. That seems contradictory, but we have more. The evidence of the artificiality of these natural same-sex attachments is that they happen in "every society" that has such conditions. How can a constant feature of "every society" be artificial? By definition, something that occurs in a variety of cultures must be indicative of more than just that single culture. But to Frost, the exceptionless universality of same-sex attractions proves that they are in fact artificial. The gist is that they're not really into other guys. Culture forced them! Of course, our culture's homophobia is not even a topic worthy of discussion. To recap, a culture that merely allows for same-sex attractions to flourish is biased; our own culture that actively discourages and penalizes such acts is the unmentioned standard by which everything shall be measured against. Zero self-awareness!

Frost also claims that social conditioning was responsible: "there were strong incentives and peer pressure inducing young men to court each other." Let's suppose I argue against the innateness of the idea that most men are attracted to women by pointing out that the very structure of society has forced men and women to marry, per societal customs. Men and women are told from an early age that they should marry someone of the opposite sex. In every such society that has exerted such pressure, we in fact see marriage. Therefore, most men aren't really attracted to women. That's about as stupid as what Frost is trying to sell. Why is his book in fifth edition? Who do I talk to in order to get such a cushy deal?

None of these succeed in explaining anything, but they sure wind up in a self-contradiction. How can a genuine heterosexual man have any sex with other men, outside of genuine coercion or rape, and still be considered heterosexual? Am I to believe these womenless men don't know how to masturbate (alone, of course, not each other)? And if sex with men is preferable to no sex at all or just masturbation, isn't that admission alone enough to scrap the concept of heterosexuality? You don't get to round up from mostly or primarily heterosexual to bona fide heterosexual.

At the beginning, LeVay mentioned the artificiality of prison rape. But even something as seemingly situational as prison rape can tell us about the absurdity of the current system. Along the lines of young men acting as a stand-in for women in, prison sex (whether consensual for both or not) is often thought as a situational and quasi-heterosexual. Even if nonconsensual, one partner (usually the top) is willing to have sex with another man. Since the aggressor will most likely be the top, this is dismissed as quasi-heterosexual mimicking the alleged heteronormative norm of the active male and passive female. But if we're redefining heterosexuality to include not just penis-vagina but penis-hole then we have to readjust the definition of heterosexuality's parallel, homosexuality. So are men who exclusively have sex with other men, but are always the tops, heterosexual now? Would the gay top in a gay relationship be considered heterosexual by the same standard? If penis-plowing-anyhole equals heterosexual, then certainly tops must be heterosexuals.

What about men who don't have anal sex but are "tops" orally or other positions with only other men? Mostly men? Sometimes men? What about men who are primarily tops, but not exclusively, with only other men? Mostly men? Sometimes men? What about men whose wives fuck them with strap-ons every once in a while? What percentage is the cutoff? Is it homosexual for a man to be fucked by his wife? For whom if the wife is the heterosexual male and the husband the heterosexual female? And what if he's a total top with other men? Mostly top?

Shifting the goalposts for heterosexuality but neglecting to do the same to homosexuality is special pleading. Such redefinitions that seek to rescue the concept of heterosexuality by generously expanding it have a domino effect that shows the absurdity of it all. Conclusion: it's pretty clear that the hetero-homo paradigm can neither stand up nor be rescued without collapsing.

So by radically redefining heterosexuality as to allow some homosexual contact (as long as it's arbitrarily defined to be not "real"), situational homosexuality destroys the very definition of heterosexuality it seeks to rescue. Heterosexuality is not "men have sex with women, but sometimes also men given such and such criteria." If I say that I'm not prone to anger, but only if someone drops a bowling ball on my foot, we are saying that my anger is in fact innate but only in certain circumstances. So the excuse of situational homosexuality is another way of saying that same-sex desires are natural, but only in certain circumstances. That's why we get the Freudian slip from Frost in that most awkward construction that proposes artificial conditions (an all-male military) giving rise to already existent "natural" essence (the attraction to men).

The brazen hypocrisy and double standards evaporate what little remains of situational homosexuality. Why is it that heterosexuality is never situational? (Or rather, only for gays. You know, those poor gay saps who wanted to be just like everyone else with a wife, kids, white fence, and a normal dog. But they realize it's all a farce and get invited on to The Oprah Show.) Why don't we say, "Men have sex with women in Situations A, B, and C while with men in Situations D, E, and F"? Why the double standard? Why are only same-sex relationships marked as situational? Situational homosexuality fails because it is circular and assumes what it seeks to prove: most are exclusive heterosexual therefore anything that debunks this must be false.

So homosexuality and heterosexuality are fictions? "Yes, of course." He adopts a camp voice and adds: "But it makes a lot of girls happy." Why do so many people believe it to be true about themselves if it's false? "They believe in Jesus, and that's a much bigger fiction, with more money spent on it. Prettier clothes too."

Until recently, same-sex relationships have been illegal in the West and certain relationships are still de jure illegal. In Leningrad, the comrades have begun to arrest activists for so-called homosexual propaganda, which would presumably include this very work and many of its sources. But why aren't today's legal and cultural barriers to grero not considered situational? Hypocrisy and a piss poor grasp of logic.

With Christopher Hitchens, that he went to an all-male boarding school is situational to his relationship. (Apparently, he couldn't sneak out on the weekends and never learned how to masturbate.) But that he and his friend were threatened with expulsion and forbidden to talk to each other, that's not situational. Exclusive heterosexuality is so fragile, people have to be threatened to stop doing what is allegedly so obviously "unnatural," a contradiction if there ever was one. One reviewer speaks of Hitchens' revelations as a "Window into Horny Teenage Bicuriosity" concluding that "the horniness of teenagers is a force greater than sexual orientation," in that great style of castrating heterosexuality of any coherent meaning and belittling genuine same-sex desires. The fact that Hitchens remembered the episode fondly and that he was forbidden to pursue it further speaks against the idea that it was some temporary madness caused by instinctual horniness (that, again, neither women nor masturbation could cure). And of course, if Hitchens had been caught with a girl, told never to speak to her again, and then had a same-sex relationship, you can bet anything the clueless hypocrites would start screeching about situational this and that caused by the artificial pussy prohibition.

When Luke and Stephen were separated forcefully by the latter's father, why isn't that situational? If Stephen's father was not indoctrinated by his culture to be a homophobic asshat bigot, do we really think the relationship would have ended then? Maybe at some other point, as relationships do end, but no one would dare say the attraction was never "really" there or the potential for future similar masculine-on-masculine relationships wasn't there either.

After Gore Vidal penned The City and the Pillar, the New York Times refused to review his books. Surely trying to limit people's options creates a situation But, of course, not when same-sex anything is limited. And then, when the gays hold a pride parade once a year, the bigots say the fags are the ones pushing their agenda down on everyone's throats. Any less self-awareness and such bigots risk classification as a pillar of salt.

What about the realization in three of the excerpts quoted? If you missed it, read it again. Luke, Bob, and Scott all realize that society is against what they feel:

I have to admit, although I was conflicted about the nature of our relationship, I was over the moon You know, that was awful kid stuff we did... Well, it was different than with a girl. And I don't think it's right I only have sex with a guy for money. And two guys can't love each other.

There was hesitancy in pursuing the relationship thanks to the effects of culture raping their minds. But what could be more natural than doing something that is expressly forbidden? The act of going against the mandatory shows its naturalness. That the love between young men is quite natural is proved every time it happens, especially when expressly forbidden. What could be more natural than doing the prohibited in spite of its prohibition?

This very stigma such secretive relationships overcome, for a while at least, proves grero is deep-seated not situational. One such example of the cultural tide grero had been drowning under shows a police officer propagandizing moral puritanism to middle or high school students in the 1960's:

There may be some in this auditorium. There may be some here today that will be homosexual in the future. There are a lot of kids here. There may be some girls here who will turn lesbian. We don't know. But it's serious, don't kid yourselves about it. They can be anywhere. They could be judges, lawyers. We ought to know, we've arrested all of them. So if any one of you, have let yourself become involved with an adult homosexual, or with another boy, and you're doing this on a regular basis, you better stop quick. Because one out of three of you will turn queer. And if we catch you, involved with a homosexual, your parents are going to know about it first. And you will be caught, don't think you won't be caught, b