In fact, two-thirds of seventy-six societies studied by American scientists Clellan Ford and Frank Beach actually consider homosexual activities normal and socially acceptable. That may be hard for most people to believe who live in North America and a few countries in Europe, but it is true. In some societies, including the Arunta (Aranda) people of central Australia, homosexuality is almost universal. Other societies, including the Sambian tribe of Papua New Guinea and some Melanesian tribes, not only viewed homosexuality as acceptable, but actually consider someone to be deviant who does not engage in homosexual activities. These people also practice pedophilia regularly.
Other nations, including Great Britain and Germany, have legalized homosexual activity among consenting adults. Throughout most of Europe, this attitude is prevalent. In countries such as Greece, homosexuality has been a fact of life for centuries, millenia even. And in the Netherlands, homosexuality is openly embraced, as seen by the patriotic fanfare the townspeople of Amsterdam gave to the competitors in this year's Gay Games. Very few citizens there even flinched at the homosexuality that was paraded in the city streets in their faces during the entire length of events. The Netherlands has become one of the most open industrialized countries in the world when it comes to homosexuality.
It is a different situation altogether overseas here in America, supposedly the land of the free and equal rights for all. Only a stubborn and rather stupid ultra-patriot (or ultra-racist) would not dispute the fact that America has hardly had a good track record for equal rights for anyone but rich white males until recently, and even now racism and sexism is rampant. The massacre of the Native Americans, a holocaust too easily pushed under the rug by the Puritan American pride in the country's early days, is the first major example of American hypocrisy.
Then came slavery, followed by segregation, that deprived the black man of all rights. In the early days, the Republican Party was the one that spouted anti-discrimination rhetoric and the Democrats were the bad guys. Not so in today's America. The Republicans, while aligned with the "righteous" Religious Right, also tend to oppose affirmative actions and other pro-black programs. Today, some powerful leaders in the Republican Party are openly racist, such as neo-Nazi defender and madman Pat Buchanan. The pop up of numerous militia groups around the country pose an even bigger threat, as some are both terrorist organizations and hate groups.
Women were also subjugated in America for far too long. Suffrage movements caught steam in the 1800s and eventually women were given the right to vote. Recently, when feminist groups got the Supreme Court to legalize abortions, women were given more rights. Now the Republican backlash has caused some women's rights to erode, and threaten to take even more as time goes on.
Then there is the persecution of the gay population. Nowhere in the world is homophobia more prevalent in mainstream society than in America and Canada. America is the worst by far. A vast majority of Americans oppose anything gay, and most states have even passed laws forbidding gays from discrimination protection. As recently as the 1940's, homosexual acts were classified as felonies, with punishment up to life imprisonment in all the states. By the early 1970's, at least ten states had legalized such acts between consenting adults, and earlier this decade, Hawaii became the first state to recognize gay marriages.
Though North America is by far the least tolerable place to live for gays, one third of societies studied by Beach and Ford gave little sanction to homosexuality; its practice often leads to long term imprisonment. At the very least, it can result in the loss of job, housing discrimination, government blacklisting, and social ostracism.
Even in North America though, there are locations that are "safe" for gays. These usually are major cities. San Francisco, Orlando, and Miami are by far the most gay-friendly locations, along with San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York City, and Washington also following close behind. Most of these cities have little gay communities or neighborhoods within their city limits, like the Castro in San Francisco, Hillcrest in San Diego, South Beach in Miami, and Greenwich Village in New York. Orlando created a contraversy earlier this year when it hosted a gay pride day, which religious groups toted as intolerable.
Much of the misunderstanding of homosexuality stems from the fact that during the 19th century, homosexuality came to be known as a disease, a "hereditary neuropathic degeneration" aggravated by excessive masturbation, according to German neuropsychologist Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Sigmund Freud believed homosexuality consisted of a constitutional predisposition, although he also stated that childhood environment factors may also play a role.
Some members of the legal and medical community still regard homosexuality as a destructive perversion that may lead to criminal proclivities and to a further deterioration of socially accepted norms and morals. Such considerations result from those instances of destructive homosexual behavior brought to the attention of law enforcement, such as the rape of children and juveniles by men, male prostitution, and sadomasochistic practices. These activities however represent only a minute percentage of the total number of homosexual encounters, and can just as easily occur among heterosexuals as among homosexuals, and in fact, occurs more frequently among heterosexuals than by homosexuals.
Refuting the disease hypthesis was a study made in 1957 at UCLA involving a battery of psychological tests administered to both homosexuals and heterosexuals which revealed no distinguishing pathological differences. Similiar studies and lobbying by activist groups led to a decision in 1974 by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders.
The argument over what causes homosexuality boils down to nature vs. nurture. Recent genetic tests seem to show a gene that may predispose homosexuals to be gay at birth, and preliminary medical examinations seem to indicate the possibility of structural differences in the brains of heterosexuals and homosexuals, but these tests are by no means certain. Some homosexuals are also coordinately heterosexual, or in other words bisexual, so these tests on brain structure would raise contraversy about why bisexuals show an attraction for both sexes. No conclusive studies on brain structure have been devised to spotlight bisexuality.
Often people who are unhappy with their sexuality opt for one of two options - sex change or psychiatric therapy. The first measure is by far the most serious, as there is no way to reverse the process. The second measure is the most contraversial, as most psychiatrists agree that sexuality is too ingrained in our personality to be altered. Despite a few successful "conversions" by ex-gay ministries to turn a homosexual into an operative heterosexual, often by intimidation and repetitive religious denouncement of sexuality, most "conversions" ultimately fail, sometimes with tragic consequences. A larger number of homosexuals opt instead for asexuality - sexually neutral abstinence.
In terms of relationships, some homosexual unions are intense and enduring monogamous relationships that closely parallel conventional heterosexual unions. Recently some gays have been allowed to legally adopt children, and in some locations, like Hawaii, have been allowed to actually marry. Most locations, however, still ban homosexual marriage. Places like San Francisco do have locations, however, that perform "symbolic" marriage, called "unions".
Other homosexuals are more promiscuous, sexual activities focusing upon occurance and variety of partners, or around needs for other neurotic drives. There are homosexual prostitutes in major cities. It is this type of sexual abandon that most heterosexuals stereotypically portray homosexuals as - carefree in their sexual choices and engaging in multiple sex partnerships concurrently. This is a minute percentage of the whole homosexual population however. Heterosexuals are often more promiscuous than homosexuals. It is for this very reason that AIDS is a primarily heterosexual disease in nearly all major countries worldwide, with the exception of course, the United States. AIDS originally was portrayed in the United States as a "gay man's disease" and was used to stereotype and degregate the homosexual community. Recently, even the gay community itself seems to be unconsciously propagating these same myths to the public. In recent years, AIDS cases have slowed among homosexuals, while, not surprisingly, an unwary heterosexual community is blindly engaging in risky sexual behavior, and thus, seeing a huge epidemic of AIDS exploding amongst themselves. AIDS in America is no longer a gay man's disease. What most people don't realize is that it truly never was "just a gay man's disease".
