Homophobia is a strong word for serious condition with serious implications; it is very much in evidence both in Bubblyrat's revulsion above (16th March, 5.49pm) and his attempts to justify this revulsion as being somehow normal, and by implication natural, thus giving him the excuse to feel this way without ever wondering why. That he is not alone in this is cause for grave concern and entirely justifies the word phobia . Children (in my experience both of children & childhood) are uniformly homophobic; I know I was as a child, as were my working-class male peers - as indicated above one the sure fire ways of getting at someone was to call them a puff. However, I don't see this as being in any way natural or instinctive, rather a manipulation of our basic curiosities by way of ensuring such prejudices endure, and society (especially working-class society) is kept in place by its traditional prejudices and hostilities to anything a little different from the so-called norm.   

This has a lot to do with so-called sex-education which hypocritically deals with sex solely in terms of procreation within monogamous heterosexual relationships despite the fact that the mechanism of human sexual behaviour is determined not by its biological function rather by ensuring that such behaviour is such that procreation will upon occasion actually take place. Somewhere, no doubt, there will be statistics showing the proportion of instances of heterosexual intercourse that result in conception - and those that don't. Not only will this prove fascinating reading, but will effectively give the lie to the somewhat perverse notion that sexual intercourse is somehow about procreation and is, therefore, somehow natural to that end - the implication being that homosexual intercourse is entirely unnatural and therefore an abomination in the eyes of both God and Nature.