H uman sexuality has always been clear to humans in every age
and every clime. People have always known what sexuality was,
what range it had, what variations it manifested and what specific
types were deemed normal or abnormal, approved or disapproved.
Without any academic understanding of statistical distribution
patterns, and without any resort to legislative action against natural
scheme of things but by collective communal consent, human
societies determined for themselves what was okay and what was
queer; what was normal and what was deviant.  And the societies
survived and advanced.

In advancing, they established social institutions and acquired
bodies of memes by which the each society was characterised
and governed beyond the cold dictates of enactments - whether
legislative or decreed. By their nature, these social characteristics
would dynamically adjust themselves via self-repair and
self-improvement in a way not dissimilar to price determination by
free market forces. Invariably, governments would be involved
especially to set regulatory environment but in the final reckoning,
only those which were premised on the collective will and nature of
the people would survive. Nature abhors dictatorship of the
minority.

Nature always ensures that the will of the majority gets to be
defined as "normal", and that alone will survive eventually. Such an
outcome is invariable regardless of whether the institution is fully
home-grown or introduced from external sources, such as a
conquering overlord. Only the things which are acceptable to the
majority will be assimilated, internalised and genuinely integrated.
Even if the majority position is wrong, then the entire society suffers
the consequences together.


Conceptual Inadequacy

The Wikipedia entry on sexual orientation defines it as the "pattern
of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attraction to males, females,
both or neither" leading to a categorisation of human beings as
heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual and asexual. These
categories are called "orientations".

This definition, though aptly descriptive of the phenomenon it
seeks to deal with, fails woefully to give objective values to the
different orientations. As a consequence of this omission (which
may be intentional), the public is left to assume that all orientations
are equally valid, acceptable and maybe even desirable. Some
have pushed this to the extent of comparing orientational variation
with the variation in the color of human hair. Herein lies the basic
deceit with sexual orientation - it presupposes that all types of
variations are normal and proceeds to pretend that any variation
will do in any area.

Not all variations are normal

The truth of the matter is that not all variations are normal.
Generally, variations of "description" (height, weight, voice, build,
eye shape, hair colour, nose size, etc) are normal except where the
values gets to a stage where it begins to interfere with function,
such as a woman of 3 feet stature and flat pelvis will have
problems giving birth to babies naturally. On the other hand,
variations of functions are frequently abnormal. This is true
whether the function is organic like heamoglobin structure/activity
or behavioural like schizophrenia.

Sexual orientation belongs to the functional (behavioural) group of
variations and its effects are best understood only in that context. In
all such situations, it is necessary to include value ratings with the
description because qualitative function is involved. The current
definition of sexual orientation which neglects to  attach values to
the different orientations is comparable to a description of
haemoglobin structure which neglects to differentiate between
HbAA, HbAS, HBAC, HbSS, HbThal, etc. claiming that "they are all
acceptable variations within normal range". Or, a karyotypic
description of chromosome 21 which neglects to disclose the
implication of a trisomy (Down's Syndrome) or other "variation" to
the political leaders just not to offend sensibilities or label anyone
as "abnormal".

It's not OK to be Gay

Therefore, just as with the schizophrenia, haemoglobinopathies and the Down' Syndrome examples, all sexual variations apart from the heterosexual are more properly recognised as sexual disorientation for they are behavioural pathological variations. Quite frankly, it's not OK to be gay. (Incidentally, the incidence of
homosexuality among the male population (2 - 4%) is quite similar
to the incidence of sickle cell disease among the native negro
populations. Hmmm... I am just wondering...)

In the next post of this series, we shall look at the current findings
of science in the determination of normal sexual behaviour.