| | OK Linz,
I read Stoly's article in greater depth. (yawn.) Actually I skimmed over some of his "facts." His basic tripod premise, that homosexuality is chosen, that it is physically harmful and that it is morally harmful, is so boneheaded that the positions do not need refutation.
But on the first premise, I have a personal story to relate and an homage I would like to pay.
I have always shunned overbroad categories on issues like homosexuality. I never think just "gay." I always think, which type of gay? Some homosexuals are innately homo from birth and some choose later from life's experiences (especially traumas). I believe that others simply try it and like it - I have known some men and women in the porn industry in Brazil who claimed that. (No, I never did porn, although I did dub some professionally at one time.) Of the innate type, I sincerely believe that just as some people are born tall and others short, some left-handed and some right, it is not only possible to be born with an "inclination" toward homosexuality, it is also possible for a woman's spirit to be born into a man's body and vice versa. I have known such people. So much for Stoly's first premise. But still, I would like to illustrate.
I had a close Brazilian friend, Vicente Cechelero, now deceased, who I believe was a woman born into a man's body. (I have always had very talented and intelligent gay people around me all my life, although I am not gay.) He was a brilliant poet. His first book of poetry (Só Matéria do Mundo) won every prestigious prize that Brazil offers its artists, including the Olavo Bilac prize of the Brazilian Academy of Literature. In Brazil, this is more or less equivalent to winning the Pulitzer prize.
One poem I liked so much that he dedicated it to me (among several others), Deitei-me na Casa de Prometeu (I Laid Down in the House of Prometheus). Another poem, Está Morrendo uma Língua (A Language is Dying), starts with the dying of the language human beings use use to communicate, then with the act of communication itself between human beings, then with communication between humans and the very reality they live in, illustrating massive destruction by the image of a phallic mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb ripping open the anus of God. Despite the almost comical aspect of this image stated in this context, in the poem it was extremely powerful, conveying the horror of what happens when man abandons the world to those who would kill his spirit. Now who but a male homosexual could come up with an image like that?
I never did get him into the works of Ayn Rand, though I tried. He was always more interested in Brazilian and Portuguese authors. He was more intimate with the Portuguese language than any other Brazilian I knew.
Vicente was always troubled about his homosexual nature and told me several stories about his infancy. His father's name was Delírio, which in Portuguese means something more akin to "ecstasy" than "delirium." Nonetheless, that is one hell of a name for anyone's father, even in Brazil.
One day, when he was six years old, his father was sleeping on a hammock in the country. Vicente had been thinking about breasts from watching his mother breast-feed one of his siblings. Then he saw his father sleeping. His rationale was that if you put you mouth on your mother's breast as a baby, what about your father, from where life itself springs? (Most learn the birds and the bees very early in Brazil.) So, while his father was sleeping, he unzipped his father's pants and started fooling around with his penis. His father, coming out of sleep to that kind of pleasure, looked down and saw to his horror that it was his son. There was no discussion. He went and got his revolver and took out after Vicente, who's mother had to hide him to keep him from being shot - literally. Other family members had to take him in because his own father would have nothing to do with him for years after that.
Now how on earth is a six year old going to rationally choose something like what Vicente did?
In the end, after a tortured life of constant doubts and guilt and some brilliant poetry, Vicente died because of his inner conflict about his homosexuality. He was never effeminate. He dressed like a normal hetero man. But he was a woman inside. This manifested itself in his need to seduce mostly married men and he was strictly passive.
He once told me that he had introduced making love to men to somewhere about 800 married men after I, rather tastelessly in my own fashion, asked him how many cherries he had popped. (Incidentally, that included about 7 or 8 Protestant preachers.) I believed him because I saw him change boyfriends constantly. Most were first-time married men I presume, because the ones he introduced me to were somewhat embarrassed to be talking to me in his presence and they did not behave as normal Brazilian gay men do.
Finally, trying to get the female inside him out onto his body, he started taking hormone injections to increase his butt size and grow female-size breasts. His heart did not withstand the strain and he died of a heart attack while still in his forties.
(Note to the curious. Actually Vicente told me much of this - and more - trying to get into my own pants. I believe that for a long time he was in love with me. But I loved him like a brother and I wasn't going for it anyway. He always used to brag to his friends that I was his "healthy" friendship side.)
How I so wish that something like Solo had been around when Vicente was alive. I sincerely believe that it would have been a lifesaver to him and he would still be among us. He craved being accepted on a nonsexual basis and being appreciated intellectually by others who were intelligent and talented and didn't always put sexuality in first place. In Brazil, there is nothing like Solo I am aware of.
Anyway, to sum up, Stoly is more full of shit than a Christmas turkey. Most queers don't choose to be queers. Vicente's life is empirical proof to me, as if that were needed.
And as for Vicente, I really miss him. A lot.
Michael
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Respected Objectivists, I warn you, due to my admiration for your integrity and moral standards, not to fall into the intellectual trap that is SoloHQ, populated not by Objectivists but by post-modern nihilists/hedonists in Objectivist guise. 
