Within my wider social circle (including church), there are some five gay male couples who have been in stable relationships for years, in one case, over thirty-five years. At least two of these couples were married in church ceremonies, and are considered married by their church and their friends, whether the laws of the State of Washington recognizes their marriages or not.

One gay man is a member of the writers' group my wife and I belong to, and he and his partner have been together in a stable relationship for at least five years that I know of.

None of them has HIV/AIDS.

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I find the only web sites that substantiate Ake's figures and GfS's contention that gender orientation is a matter of choice, hence curable with therapy, are sites such as NARTH, "the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality," and a number of religious sites, including the Mormon Church, which was largely behind California's Propostition 8, and which also tried to push a proposition in Washington State to overturn a recently passed law allowing same-sex domestic partnerships. It lost in the election. Some of the anti-gay web sites are downright rabid, and display little regard for scientific evidence or rational thought. Not unlike our resident homophobes.

Two questions usually raised by opponents of the genetic basis of same-sex orientation:   since homosexuals rarely if ever sire or bear children, why doesn't homosexuality simply die out? The opponents maintain that this proves that homosexuality is not genetic, but a matter of choice. And why is it that the "homosexual gene" seems to be so elusive? Because, they maintain, it doesn't exist. Marked differences in brain structure in homosexual males has been established, but this fact is simply ignored.

Okay, both questions are answered by the fact that the "homosexual gene" is carried by one or more females in the family into which the homosexual male is born. And the gene in question seems to relate to an inconsistency, or "mis-timing," in when particular hormones are released to the male fetus when the female in question is pregnant.

Don Firth