Assuming you’re straight, if I asked you what it means to be so, you’d likely say something like, “I’m attracted to the opposite sex”. Wrapped up in that statement is, perhaps the word “sexually” but would it be accurate to say that your attraction to the opposite sex is purely physical? Of course not.
If I told you that your attraction to your husband or wife was purely physical, you’d probably vehemently disagree with me. You’d argue that you love your spouse and, while you’re attracted to them physically, you love things about him or her that have nothing to do with sex or physicality. Maybe you love her nose, smile, or laugh. Maybe you love his strength, compassion, or the way he selflessly helps others. Unbeknownst to you, you are also attracted to the scent of the opposite sex. Not their perfume or cologne, but the actual scent of their sex.
Knowing all of this, if I asked you when you choseto be attracted to all these things, you’d likely tell me you don’t remember choosing at all. It just feels “natural” and always has – minus the cooties days from your youth, of course.
So if this is true for straight people, why would it not also be true for gay people? In fact, it is. Gay people experience sexual attraction to the same sex but they also experience love and all the other forms of non-physical, non-sexual attractions that straight people do – including an attraction to the scent of the same sex. This latter attraction is known as olfactory attraction.
It’s also true that gay people cannot recall a time where being gay didn’t feel natural once they come to terms with being gay. Often any confusion about orientation is not about experiencing the attraction, it’s about how to feel about the attraction and whether to tell anyone about it or act on it. This is not the same as being confused about the attraction itself.
This is an important tenant of my book because it forces those who are uncomfortable with homosexuals to see us as more than sexual deviants. We’re your next door neighbors. We’re the nice gentleman who held the door open for you at the grocery store when your hands were full and we’re the clerk who rang you up there. We’re your judge in traffic court and we’re the police officer who wrote you the ticket that sent you there. We’re the soldier who fought for your rights and the doctor who fought to save your life from cancer. And not one of us feels “unnatural” or that we had a choice in the matter at all, just like you don’t.
I once saw a comic strip that had two characters talking about gay marriage. The conversation went like this:
Character 1: "I’m against same-sex marriage."
Character 2: "On what basis?"
Character 1: "Because traditional marriage is one man and one woman. The Bible says so."
Character 2: "Actually King Solomon had 700 wives and traditional marriage according to Deuteronomy means that a man who rapes a woman must marry her, so try again."
Character 1: "I think gay people are icky."
Character 2: "There you go."
In my experience, those whose basis for opposing homosexuality is that homosexuals are “icky”, are usually way too focused on the sex part and are ignoring and/or minimizing the love part.
Over the life of a typical committed relationship, sex happens 58 times per year on average. If each act took 30 minutes, that would mean that in a given year, we spend approximately 0.3% of each year having sex. Wouldn’t it be silly to define our relationships and entire sexual orientation – gay or straight – on something we spend such a small portion of our time doing?
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