Big Mick -

"I remember when a pretty well known musician friend married her longtime companion and I was trying to figure out what the best thing I could say to her was. I told her that I wished her all the happiness that I have with my wife."

I bet I know who you mean, Mick. If it's who I think...she's a great, great songwriter and she wrote the most wonderful love song to her partner. I got to hear it at this year's Mariposa Festival. That's obviously a case of a deep and abiding love.

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When one is a youngster growing up it is natural to be a bit scared of the possibility of being "come on to" by an older male. Why? Well, because men are the aggressive parties in sexuality, physically speaking. So if you are smaller and weaker then you are naturally afraid that a bigger and stronger older male might use physical force on you against your will. You're afraid of being raped. This is the reason that both women and younger males fear a possible sexual assault by a male.

People don't fear sexual assault by a female...for obvious physical reasons. She doesn't have the equipment to make an invasive sexual assault. Oh, she could harass you some, all right, if she decided to, but that's more just an annoyance than it is a genuine sexual assault...except in the rarest of cases.

So there is always going to be some fear in society regarding aggressive sexual behaviour by males, correct? And that is one reason that people, specially youngsters, fear male homosexuality.

That fear gets translated into a general level of hostile reaction against the very idea of male homosexuality....whereas there is far less of such a reaction against female homosexuality, because people don't fear it nearly as much. They may be prejudiced against it, but they don't physically fear it.

None of that should be brought to bear on the majority of gay males, because the majority of them do not go around assaulting people...specially when they live in a society where they are allowed to freely have relationships of their own choice with other gay males.

It's when things are totally suppressed and denied in a society that things get way out of hand...as was the case, for instance, in the long and tortured history of the Catholic Church. Official celibacy and denial resulted in a lot of sexual abuse behind closed doors.