[bypeTeenehalT]

Liam, I momentarily asked myself the same question. Then I looked at the book. I don't think that the homosexual love of adolescents was a subject that was casually broached in fiction in Norway in 1966. Anyway, from the horse's mouth, and the first page of the novel:

Out on the bridge the young boy Torvil... He was eighteen years old lived beside this bridge... Torvil stood thinking about his girl, his friend Aud. ***

As for what gender is really, I can't see any complication:

*The majority of people fancy or fall in love with the opposite sex.
*A minority fancy of fall in love with the same sex.
*Some people manage to have their cake and eat it by fancying of falling in love with both.
*Some people like part-time status regarding the other sex; they dress up to show this.
*A very small minority are born with the organs of both sexes.
*A small minority also decide that the sex of their body is intolerable and have a medical operation to alter it.

Where the problem arises is not in the West. It is in countries like Iran and other Muslim ones where they string you up or throw you from the roof if you're homosexual. But I've never seen any serious discussion in the British or American press about, for instance, lesbianism within Islam. So I haven't a clue whether lesbianism is acceptable in Islam.

But we live in the West. The West has waged war against sexual proclivity bias for about a century, with people such as Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall initially bringing up the subject. Whether the West needs to be constantly vigilant so that "queer-bashing" and other nasty forms of bigotry don't return as a vogue or fad, or whether we should live and let live and not worry too much about the neighbours, is something I have no answers about.