Yes, Royston, I would say that's a good start. And I have said all through this thread (and the other) that those who try to claim that HIV/AIDs is exclusively a "gay disease" or a "gay problem" should certainly know better, but blind themselves with a personal agenda based on homophobia and bigotry.

What they can't accept is the idea that homosexual relations per se is not dangerous. It's promiscuity. And contrary to what some here claim, there is no inherent connection between the two.

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"I think society might have struggled on without several of that lot!

Rather over many media celebrities ancient and modern....dont you think   :0)"

Not hardly, Ake. Some of the most important ideas in our culture came from the early Greeks. And with the exception of a monarch or an emperor or two and a Nazi big-wig, the world would be a much poorer place if any one of the folks that Ebbie listed had not existed. Only a philistine would think that they were "over many." Would that there were more, no matter what their sexual orientation might be or have been. That is totally irrelevant to the magnitude of the contributions the majority of them have made to the sciences, the arts, and the humanities.

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GfS still seems to be hung up on the idea that the best life has to offer is breeding. Hell's bells, rabbits must have the best lives of all!

But they don't produce a helluva lot of art, music, philosophy, literature. . . .   In fact, most of the chronic, full-time skirt-chasers I have known were dumber than a sack of doorknobs. The only skill they had was for rumpy-pumpy, and some of the women they scored with said that they really weren't very good at that, either!

And the sort of talent and ability that produces the life work of the kind of people Ebbie listed comes less from genes than it does from early interest in a particular subject or activity. Genes can give one a good pair of hands, but only a passionate interest in music will turn them into the hands of a brilliant pianist; a pianist who goes on to become a composer of great music.

And no, GfS, this doesn't mean that I'm saying that sexual-orientation is a matter of early interest (which you would undoubtedly try to translate into "choice"). There is a great deal of evidence to show that sexual orientation IS a matter of genes (no matter how much the thought disturbs you personally).

Don Firth