[trubreTab]

I smiled when I read Aloka mention how the buddha discouraged speculation about karma. It's so tempting to do it though!

Not that you get anywhere... Everything always trails off into the distance back to adam and eve or some disappearing monkey...

We know that people are commonly attracted to the same gender. The frequency of the occurance of that attraction is a job for the sociologist to catalogue, but i assume that homosexual fantasies cross the minds of most healthy women and men... I reveal my bias so there's no suspicion about what it is.

As a gay man, I question what it means to be gay. I don't feel different from heterosexuals. I don't feel like I'm a woman trapped in a man's body, as pat robertson might theorize. I don't, even as my own grandmother suggested to me some time ago, have a testosterone deficiency. I would have to shave much less frequently if that were the case. Hell, I'd almost welcome that (ouch!)

my consciousness is not different. It's that I project my mind towards different objects than straight men do. I allow myself to cultivate a sense of self that is labeled "gay"

Being "gay" is a choice. I choose to have sexual relationships and indulge in sexual fantasies of that sort because that's my comfort zone. I trust men on an intimate level to a degree that I don't with women. I don't have the sanity to pick apart why that is and ascribe crude freudian formulas to try to twist myself into the shape of someone who has socially acceptable sex. It's just not a priority for me to do that. I'm sure that sort of psychological transformation is possible, that a gay or lesbian man could enjoy straightness... eventually, with practice... But for heaven's sake, why? It's just sex. And that sounds like a lot of work anyway. I have enough on my plate just trying to accept my self as I am during and after meditation

At a certain point I think the most helpful way for the buddha to come to the rescue in this arena is to assert that we need to start seeing reality the way it is... that means stop seeing healthy sexuality as a problem. Humans have sex. That's realistic, and we practice in order to accept truths of our existence. And I say this with the desire to mention that I have lots of Gay friends who are completely chauvinistic, completely homophobic (and yet they're gay! can you believe that?), hateful towards straight people and women, degrading the female anaotmy... and I think it's just as wrong-headed as the cliche of the roughneck straight guy that votes republican and watches fox news.

now i'm just ranting. sorry.