Canada is about to give homosexuals the right to marry. No church or religious leader is under any obligation to perform the ceremony, under the proposed law.

Stephan Harper is the leader of the official opposition party, and is firmly against the law, and not just because he is supposed to oppose. Harper is a raging homophobic.

A.C. Kinsey was a sexual scientist in the 1930s, when gay sex was illegal, sinfull, and never talked about. Regular sex between a man and a woman was a sin too, out side of marriage... and you are a sinner if you ENJOYED sex inside marriage. Harper would be much happier in that age.

Men and women were lousy at sex, Kinsey proposed, and the frustration was likely a big factor in the amount of domestic violence in those days... its bad now, but much worse back then, as it was seen a normal behaviour, just a man staking his position within the household.

The religious attitude in those days preferred a narrow range of behaviors within civilised society. In fact, they believed that narrow range of behaviours WAS civilisation defined.

Now, we see "individualism that doesn't interfere with anyone else" as the height of civilised behaviour - to be able to balance our uniqueness and the need to get along and co-operate.

Seen this way, homosexuality is merely an individual preferance that makes no demands on others. People who are homosexual have managed to live without any interferance whatsoever on social life. Even the proposed gay church weddings rely on total wilingness of all concerned. This is a great achievement for civilised individualism, evidence that a narrow range of behaviors is not necessary for a civilised society.

It ranks up there with the acceptance of masterbation. Until almost 1970 [and even now in some minds], masterbation was made out to be a sin, something to be ashamed of - how much neurosis came from that? Likely even more than homophobia's effect on gay people, because masterbation is universal, everyone can do it, and so everyone was feeling guilt.

Sex became such a major source of anxiety during the time where "a narrow range of behaviours" was promoted. Guilt mostly, but more than that for some.

It was the thrill of doing something bad that really got people messed up, and all we had to do to get around that would be to stop making it out to be a bad thing. But we persisted in making sex out to be a sin , over several generations,until it became ingrained.

It would be folly to think this has all gone away now, that people are not still suffering from the taboo. There is a spiritual illness , a crisis of values, when something so natural and nessessary as sex is seen as a sin, when something so harmless as masterbation has so much shame ingrained in it.

Homosexuality is even a tougher problem. Natural attractions that are taboo create a terrible confusion for a spiritual person. Harmless, yet outlawed. We might have progressed to the point where we change that law, it will still be at least a genertation or two until there is no more guilt over it, and longer if people like Harper continue to live in the dark ages of sexual taboo.

Accepting the full range of human sexuality, other than those acts that interfere with another life, seems to me to be essential for society to move towards being actually classed as civilised.

Kinsey collected over 100,000 Gall Wasps, and examinded them closely, under a microscope, and made detailed notes about each one. Guess what he found - NOT ONE OF THEM WAS ALIKE. He founded his views on sex from this research on Gall Wasps: individualism is the reality, we all all unique and as long as we are not interfering with others, its all good.

Karlin