So let's be clear from the start. This is only theory. It may even approach operational theory for me, but it is only my best guess as to the way things may be. So then...
I don't believe in homosexuality, bisexuality, or heterosexuality. Well, not in any such way as they should be considered rigid descriptions of the way people are. Instead, I believe in sexuality.
It seems to me that people are not one thing or another. It is not a matter of gay vs. straight. People are sexual by nature and that sexuality will pour, burst, or drain out in any number of ways. Sometimes a man will ache for a woman, sometimes for a man, sometimes for a sheepdog, and sometimes for an awesome, awesome shoe.
I'm not saying that one's preferences will alter willy-nilly with the turbulence and unpredictability of a sweaty stick of dynamite. What I am saying is that people aren't as static as they may prefer to think.
No, I think that while one may be born with certain tastes intact (as I was born with an instinctive distaste for most vegetables), much of our choice of sexual expression is taste acquired—acquired by any number of those ten thousand environmental and circumstantial variables that shape who we are and who we will come to be. If the rise and apparent popularity of bisexuality were not enough to prompt a different understanding of homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, then even a cursory glance at the sexual life of prison society ought to be. Homosexual activity in prisons is common to the point of stereotype in men who in mixed-sex environments choose heterosexual partnerships. The reason is not that such men are closeted homosexuals but simply that they are sexual at all, and desire release for that particular appetite. Further extrapolation might even demonstrate that every heterosexually-oriented kid who ever masturbated was in that moment engaged in a sort of bisexual sexual expression—homosexual in physicality and heterosexual in mentality.
Orientation is, I think, a tricky word so long as we presume it to mean something unwavering and unalterable. But so long as we imagine it to mean nothing more than one's vector in a given moment, I think it becomes a worthwhile term. Despite self-perpetuated rumours to the contrary, my current orientation (and, really, lifelong) is toward a common heterosexual partnerships. Do I believe that it is possible that thirty years from now I could be differently oriented? Of course I do.
That doesn't, however, mean such a change is likely. After all, my formative years are long behind me. I imagine it would take, at this point, some sort of extreme environmental or circumstantial catalyst to redirect my sexuality toward other men, children, animals, or objects. Not that it couldn't happen, but the impetus for change would probably have to be a stronger one than it would when I was six or sixteen.
So yeah, theory. I think it's viable and I think it tends toward promoting both understanding and tolerance, placing all humanity in the same boat sexually. Other people might pursue sexual expressions that are more harmfully either to themselves or to society (e.g., child molestation), but this doesn't mean that they are so different than us and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be able to empathize.
Labels: sexuality
