From: "Dan" 

On Mar 29, 11:52 am, carte...{at}gmail.com wrote:
> On Mar 29, 10:53 am, "Dan"  wrote:
>
> > This is not strictly true. There is a segment of the gay population
> > whose identity is pretty obvious to one and all. In men, this is
> > usually because of what most people would characterize as effeminate
> > behaviors. There is good reason to believe that this is often not a
> > matter of choice. These are the people who have been and who are most
> > vulnerable to discrimination and abusive treatment. They are a
> > "visible minority".
>
> This depends. Transvestites aren't necessarily gay. I have a friend
> who is a respected businessmen who likes to 'dress up.' He is married
> with children, and in fact is son is the high school quarterback at
> the most prestigious school in the area.
>
> Transsexuals aren't gay, either. In my former career as an attorney, I
> had frequent contact with transsexuals, and you could generally tell
> them by looking at their hands and Adams Apples. Over the years, I
> talked with a number of these, and without exception they all denied
> that they were homosexual.
>
> In the American South, some men have a way of acting that is viewed as
> effeminate. I didn't realize this until I joined the military service
> as a young man and discovered that some characteristics I had were
> looked on as 'queer' or 'pansy' by men from other regions.

Americans often think that French men are gay. But when they find out who
they are, their reaction is, "Oh, he's just French."

> By the same token, I have know gay men were where very masculine, and
> lesbian women who were very feminine.

Certainly, but I wasn't claiming to speak about all gay people, just about
a subset who find it very difficult to hide. I have known straight men with
extremely effeminate mannerisms who were treated abusively and with the
same contempt traditionally reserved for gay people. But they are rare.
That is why they atr not given the benefit of the doubt.

> It's possible for a Negro to 'pass' but in most cases, skin color,
> hair texture, facial features, etc.,  mark a person as of African
> extraction.
>The same simply isn't true for homosexuals. I know several
> people who have been cured of homosexuality, and this is something
> that isn't true of racial identity.

They were "cured" because they were "curable". The
subset I was pointing to are not gay by choice, but by accident of birth.

>You can't be 'cured' of being
> Black.

Yes you can, if you are one of those who can "pass". You are
investing a lot of extraneous meaning in this by the use of the verb
"cure".

Anyway, the American definition of "Black" is quite arbitrary,
including people with any hint of African ancestry, some of whom are 99%
White. People who are not "Black" by any reasonable genetic
standard, are considered to be "African Americans" because of
this arbitrary cultural standard.

>We also have issues involved acting out which don't occur in
> the racial context. For example, men in prison sometimes engage in
> sexual activity with each other, even though they do not claim to be
> gay, and female prostitutes will sometimes perform sexual acts with
> each other for hire, even though they may not be lesbian.
>
> For all of these reasons, I think it's EXTREMELY dangerous to attempt
> to peg a person's sexual identity from appearance or behavior alone.

I agree; my point was that some are stuck with the appearance whether they
want it or not, and that appearance is more often than not related to their
sexual orientation. Unlike those with the ability to hide, it is these
people who have been singled out for persecution over the ages. They are
the people whom St. Paul probably meant when he referred to the"soft
ones", and I have just finished reading texts from Philo of Alexandria
in which he heaps contempt on people involved in homosexual behavior and
assumes a connection between that behavior and certain mannerisms and
tendencies.

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