I have no idea (as a biologist, I might add) whether gayness is inherited, acquired, or a mixture of nature and nurture. What's more, I don't care. It's a red herring. The reason I don't care is that, as far as I'm concerned, your predilection for either a homosexual, heterosexual or any points-between lifestyle is simply not a moral issue. It's an entirely private matter (unless you try to force your lifestyle on unwilling people, of course - I feel, as a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, exactly the same about religious belief, though the forcing of the latter on unwilling people, billions of children for example, is vastly more widespread, endemic even). I can't understand, robustly-heterosexual chap that I am, why it bothers anyone else what people want to do in private or how they wish to categorise their relationship. I don't get it, but they probably don't get me either, and I have no moral high ground from which to lecture them. We're equals. Different but equal. I wonder what sickness of mind (and I don't think that's putting it too strongly) leads to what people like Ake and Guffo are worrying about. If you want to worry about threats to the fabric of society there are plenty of far more threatening targets to aim for than gay people who simply want to get on with their lives, unencumbered by the sort of bigotry that has kept this thread going. You oppose gay marriage? You have no reason, no excuse. You are automatically a homophobic bigot. There is no kinder way of putting it.