BRITAIN: Half Of 18-24 Year-Olds Say They’re Not 100% Heterosexual

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A new survey in Great Britain has yielded results that will no doubt have the Christofascists foaming at the mouth and hysterically claiming that the "gay agenda" is turning youth gay.  The study found that 49% among 18-24 year olds classified them selves as not 100% heterosexual.  Interestingly, only 72% of the adults surveyed said they were 100% heterosexuals.  Tony Perkins, Victoria Cobb, Albert Mohler and Maggie Gallagher will be having the vapors!  Here are some of the findings from the YouGov survey:

Invented by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s, the Kinsey scale plots individuals on a range of sexual dispositions from exclusively heterosexual at 0 through to exclusively homosexual at 6. Where the original study had a large number of methods for placing people, YouGov simply asked people to place themselves on the sexuality scale.

Taken as a whole, 72% of the British public place themselves at the completely heterosexual end of the scale, while 4% put themselves at the completely homosexual end and 19% say they are somewhere in between . . .

With each generation, people see their sexuality as less fixed in stone. The results for 18-24 year-olds are particularly striking, as 43% place themselves in the non-binary area between 1 and 5 and 52% place themselves at one end or the other. Of these, only 46% say they are completely heterosexual and 6% as completely homosexual.

More than anything, it indicates an increasingly open minded approach to sexuality. In a further set of questions asking if respondents could conceivably be attracted to, have sex with or have a relationship with someone of the same sex (if the right person came along at the right time), level 1s were at least 35% more likely to say they could than level 0s.

Given the Millennials seeming growing indifference toward religion and more open acceptance of gays, one has to wonder if similar findings would occur in America. 

Nature’s Case for Same-Sex Marriage

One of the constant cries of the Christofascists is that gay sex and same sex romantic love are "unnatural" and against "natural law."  David George Haskell, a professor of biology at Sewanee, The University of the South, has an op-ed in the New York Times that debunks this myth used incessantly by the Bible beaters who prefer to cling to the writings of uneducated nomads rather than face the facts shown by science and modern knowledge.  The truth is that homosexuality and bi-sexuality are found all across nature.  It is only in man-made "natural law" first concocted in the Christian realm in the 13th century that homosexuality isn't normal.  Here are op-ed excerpts:

BIOLOGY has returned to the nation’s highest court. It’s not Darwin’s theory of evolution on the docket this time, but the nature of sex. Defenders of Proposition 8, California’s ban on gay marriage, base their case on what they call the “objective biological fact” that procreation is an exclusively heterosexual process. Citing the 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, they argue that marriage should be “founded in nature.”

References to biology coat these arguments with a gloss of scientific rigor. But before we write nature into law, let’s take a stroll outside the Supreme Court’s chambers and check those biological facts.

If these birds and bees were the first to teach us about sex, we’ve forgotten part of the lesson. Just as some species that are mostly hermaphroditic contain unisexual individuals, some insects and vertebrates cannot be simply called male or female. Human biology joins in this rejection of binary claims of male and female. 

Of course, sexuality is more than an arrangement of cells. Bonds form between sexual partners that help define the social structure of each species. What does nature on the Mall teach us about these relationships? Look, for instance, at the mallards paddling in the nearby reflecting pools. If they are like mallards elsewhere, then one in 10 of them engage in homosexual sex. 

Stepping from the northern border of the Mall into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, we come face-to-taxidermied-face with our great ape relatives. Before these apes were sequestered in museum cabinets, homosexual bonds were a natural part of their lives. This is especially true for our closest living cousins, the bonobos and chimpanzees. 

The facts of biology plainly falsify the oft-repeated notion that homosexuality is unnatural. Every species has evolved its own sexual ecology, and so nature resists generalizations. Does humanity’s natural inheritance include homosexual bonds and behaviors? Certainly. This conclusion is reinforced by the growing evidence that our sexual orientation is influenced by both our genes and the environment that we experience in the womb. 

A wide, living rainbow arcs across the natural world. Diversity rules in sexuality, just as it does in the rest of biology. This natural variety does not provide ready-made moral guidance. But to claim that the only natural forms of sex and pair bonding occur between unambiguous males and females is to ignore the facts of human biology. Let those who wish for marriage to be “founded in nature” take note: the view outside the Supreme Court is full of life’s beautiful sexual variegation.

Haskell gives many other examples of bi-sexuality and homosexuality in the op-ed, but you get the point.  Like so much else that the Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP claim, the claim that homosexuality is "unnatural" is a lie. 

Clark Gable Bi-Sexual?

I guess the moral is that if you were famous in life, you are open game in death. A new biography of Clark Gables is out and it seems to focus principally on Gable's sex life, which obviously must leave out much about the actor who to me defined the role of Rhett Butler. Here's a portion of a Yahoo News review:

The author tags virtually everyone who shows up here as straight, gay or bisexual, the majority falling into the latter two categories. Like previous accounts, this one alleges that early in his career Gable was "gay for pay" and for career advancement. He squired older women, some of them perhaps closet lesbians, and had close personal, possibly sexual relationships with a number of openly gay men. He was, as well, a serial seducer of women.

Bret's sourcing is unclear throughout; he qualifies most assertions about Gable's sexuality with phrases like "it could be" and "it was alleged." As for insight into the star's films and acting, look for it elsewhere. The author lavishes far more care on the details of Hollywood's sexual roundelays than on his flat summaries of Gable's films, including eight unnecessary pages on the plot of "Gone With the Wind."

Gable starred with leading ladies like Claudette Colbert, Vivian Leigh, Myrna Loy, and his third wife and co-star, Carole Lombard, who died tragically in a plane crash. He was married five times. Of course, as I can personally testify, being married does not make one straight. Gay, straight, or bi, he was a great actor, which should be all that matters.