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From: tag@ucbvax.ARPA (Todd Gross)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Perspective on homosexuality
Message-ID: <3715@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 8-Dec-84 21:37:09 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.3715
Posted: Sat Dec  8 21:37:09 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Dec-84 01:45:09 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 29




I have seen that there are people who question the nature of homosexuality.
Personally, I like to compare it with left-handedness (of which I happen to
be both).  Both of these traits are apparently with us from birth (that is,
congenital).  And both ARE changeable; that is a person born with left-
handedness CAN learn to be right-handed, and a person born with tendencies
toward homosexuality CAN become heterosexual.  But neither of these pro-
cesses is natural, and the foisting of the desired trait (right-handedness,
hetersexuality) often results in abnormal phobia.  In the first case, the
result is known as levophobia--literally, a fear of the left.  People with
this condition are afraid to make left-handed turns, etc.  In the second
case, the cdondition is called homophobia, and I'm sure we all know some-
thing about this one.

You might think it strange to compare the two, but in ancient Greece and
Rome the left side of a person was considered to be evil (thus we get the
word sinister, the Latin word for left).  And in Victorian England chil-
dren who were left-handed sometimes had their left hand place in boiling
water to make him learn to use his right hand.  In fact, a very latent
form of "levophobia" exists to this day (When you first learned to dance,
did they tell you that you have two RIGHT feet?).  Any guesses on the
effects of latent homophobia 400 or 500 years down the road?

						I thank you all...

						Todd Gross
						(tag@ucbvax.ARPA)