From my own perspective, since I’m asexual, I admit I find sexual relationships (of any gender combination) a bit alien, but I have no problem with others expressing their desires or identities as long as they don’t infringe on mine, even though I’m of the opinion that the world would probably be a better place if everyone were asexual — for one thing, there’d be significantly fewer sex crimes. But I’m digressing…

I do want to comment on your arguments though, since I think they’re seriously flawed. As I understand it, you argue that the statement “I dislike homosexuality” should be no more offensive than “I dislike vanilla ice cream” as each states only a personal preference rather than disapproval of others who have different personal preferences. Agreed: “I dislike homosexuals” does state a disapproval of people while “I dislike homosexuality” does not. However, there is a huge difference in meaning between “I dislike homosexuality” and “I dislike vanilla ice cream”, and since you insist on pulling out the Webster, I’ll address the linguistic issue specifically.

[Side note: You should enable Unicode support on your blog; the schwas in your pronunciations (as well as the star and snowperson in my name) show up as question marks. Furthermore, I think you are mistaken in your "correct enunciation": I think you meant "ho-mo-'sek-sh?-w?l" (or in IPA, [ho?mo?'s?k??w?l?]). The way you wrote it, the ‘u’ syllable has a very odd pronunciation, ending in a [w] sound, followed by an exaggerated final ‘al’ syllable. If you are trying to pronounce each vowel distinctly instead of schwa-ing every unstressed vowel, then a more reasonable pronunciation would be “ho-mo-’sek-shu-wal”, rather than your version with the schwa (unless that’s not a schwa, but I can’t tell since it’s being rendered as a question mark). In any case, I understand the importance of enunciating clearly, but really, no one pronounces ‘a’ as [a] or [æ] or [?] (like “Al” or “all”) and expects to be taken seriously. Stressing the ‘u’ sounds ok and appears in some regional dialects, and having a second ‘o’ that sounds like the first ‘o’ is fairly common, but the ‘a’ … no. Just ask your fellow English speakers what they think of such a pronunciation. Sorry to get nitpicky, but if you’re going to pick apart the details in the first place, do it properly.]

Phonetics aside, you give a definition of an adjective and proceed with a noun form constructed from it, making one big assumption along the way. The assumption is that the word ‘homosexuality’ as it appears in the sentence “I dislike homosexuality” refers specifically to the speaker’s inclinations. This is a valid assumption, and if we assume it, the sentence does indeed mean what you say it means. The problem is that this assumption isn’t *required* for a sensible interpretation of the sentence “I dislike homosexuality.” One could validly assume to the contrary that the subject is every human on earth; the interpretation in this case would be that you dislike the act of people in general directing sexual desires or engaging in sexual intercourse with other members of their own sex. So the flaw in your argument is that you assume something that doesn’t have to be assumed, and furthermore something that most readers will *not* assume, based on their familiarity with current affairs (your “rephrasing” is a much more natural and unambiguous way of expressing personal preferences).

Note that this is different from “I dislike vanilla ice cream.” I will be clear and address this on a technical level, but speakers of English already understand it intuitively, hence the reason why you wrote this entry in the first place.

The difference is that “homosexuality” has a thematic role (aka a theta role) by virtue of its being a noun formed from an adjective root. All adjectives start out with theta roles (loosely, they’re modifiers; they have to modify something): the word ‘homosexual’ describes an attribute of an entity, specifically the property of a human being that they are attracted to others of the same gender. Without an associated entity, the term is meaningless. The noun constructed from it, ‘homosexuality’, keeps the theta role; the word ‘homosexuality’ refers to a property of some associated entity. You can use the term by itself without specifying the associated entity, but the entity is still there, and can be filled in by inference from context, whether explicit or implicit. This is why when you say “I dislike homosexuality”, it can be interpreted multiple ways if you haven’t specified *whose* homosexuality it is that you dislike.

On the other hand, “vanilla ice cream” starts out as a noun phrase consisting of two nouns (you may have been taught that “vanilla” is an adjective in this context; it makes more sense as a noun that modifies a noun phrase, but even if treated as an adjective, its theta role is satisfied by “ice cream” and isn’t left open to interpretation — also, “ice cream” is one noun, not two: you can tell by the primary stress on “ice” and not “cream”; compare “black board” and “blackboard”). There is no open theta role left hanging here: “vanilla ice cream” does not refer to the vanilla ice cream-ness of some unspecified entity. So when you say “I dislike vanilla ice cream”, it means precisely that. You yourself dislike the stuff referred to as “vanilla ice cream”.

And that’s the difference. If you find this interesting, I recommend taking some linguistics courses (start with 24.900). Linguistics is fun, and unfortunately, too many people think they’re experts on matters of grammar and language usage when they have no clue how language works … and even more unfortunately, too many people are willing to be bossed around by the so-called “experts” without realizing that their own intuition is usually correct and that the “experts” are dead wrong.

One other thing: You claim same-sex attraction is biologically disadvantageous as it disfavors reproduction and passing on one’s genetic information. On the surface, this is true — but to end the argument here is really oversimplifying things. Yes, it is generally an advantage to reproduce and ensure that your offspring survive and perpetuate the species. But it is not necessarily an advantage that *every* individual in a species must do so. And reproducing too much *can* be a bad thing. Resources are limited; if there are not enough resources to support a population, it dies out. And it’s often not a matter of gradually adjusting to limited resources; quite often a population shoots far above its capacity and dies out dramatically, its numbers dropping to far below the original capacity. You can observe population trends over time between predator and prey species and see back-and-forth quasi-periodic size fluctuations. In some cases, these population changes are so dramatic they kill off a species altogether. And all because it reproduced too much and exhausted its resources.

So it makes sense that species that are likely to survive in the long run develop alternative methods to keep their populations in check. One adaptation could be the increased likelihood of certain qualities in individuals (such as homosexuality or asexuality or sterility) whenever a population becomes crowded and overpopulated, induced through environmental factors combined with genetic factors that may predispose some individuals to exhibiting these qualities. I think there have been studies on the incidence of same-sex attraction in animal populations in densely populated versus sparsely populated areas, though I don’t have any figures off hand. The human species is very overpopulated right now: It’s not exactly surprising that 5-10% of the population express strong sexual attraction toward members of their own gender.

Just some food for thought.

What’s wrong with being funny? I personally would take it as a compliment to be called funny.

I agree with MIT ‘12. The way you were presenting yourself made it sound like you meant you hated homosexuals, etc. It’s a touchy subject indeed, and not as easy as saying “I dislike vanilla ice cream”. ;)

I must say I am still a tad confuzzled over your stance. It’s like “It’s not for me, and I’m not interested in seeing it nor do I think you should do it, but do it if you must and I won’t hate you for it”, perhaps? Ha ha ha.

You don’t feel as strongly about homosexuality being “nasty” as damentz does, do you?

“Gay people are funny.”

I find this extremely offensive. This is different than simply stating, “I dislike homosexuality”. You are accusing all homosexuals of being ‘funny’ and come off as close-minded.

End of story.

Yeah, I agree with what you said about how getting hit on (by guys or girls) when you’ve made it clear that the advance is unwanted is creepy to the max. I live in a big city, believe me, I am familiar with that situation lol.

Anyway, I really like reading your blog entries, and I’m sure we’ll meet come august :)

Then why should we waste our money trying to find cures for cancer? Bother trying to save the life of someone who was just in a car accident? We should just leave them be. It’s their bad luck, let them die from natural selection. There should be no doctors! Only the strongest survive!

“Homosexuals could also be controlled by natural selection but they still get benefits.”

What benefits? Besides, even if you were to adopt the cold vision that everything can be controlled by natural selection, your statement is incorrect. If homosexuality is a choice, then no amount of natural selection will make homosexuality extinct. If you believe it is biological, then clearly natural selection has no affect since there were gay people long before artificial insemination was invented.

“Homosexual agendas are a NON-ISSUE. People are just disgusted by their sexual preferences and their public displays of said desires. This isn’t a prejudice since you don’t grow up liking gay people, they’re just nasty if you’re not gay too.”

Maybe you should be more tolerant, and try to accept that fact that just because someone isn’t the same as you, doesn’t mean that he or she is “nasty.” Think outside of yourself, about the feelings of others perhaps?

My entry, perhaps, was too ambiguous; I was attempting to advocate for a shift to a slightly more literal response to the statement “I dislike homosexuality”. I don’t wish to -force- my ideas on people, persay, but I admit I would find it nice if we did away with the idea of injecting implied ideas into a simple statement of preference. Likewise, many of the misunderstandings and hurt feelings that are prevalent both in the present world and throughout history could have been eliminated had the offended reassessed their reactions to various statements - perhaps if they had not assumed too much from what they heard and/or hadn’t attached negative emotions from a statement (such as mine), they would find that much of the general hate for the lifestyle is not directed at them, but is merely an extreme display of personal preference.

In a perfectly literal world, you could say “I dislike homosexuality,” and people would translate it to, “I am a straight woman, and I like men,” just as people translate “I dislike vanilla ice cream” literally as a personal preference. It’s not that people find your personal preferences as a straight female offensive. I suppose the reason why I was taken aback by the statement “I dislike homosexuality,” is because of all the underlying questions that come with it. Homosexuality is such a hot-button issue in today’s world, that it is hard to know if someone who proclaims his or her dislike for homosexuality simply means that they are straight (the literal meaning), or if they mean that they dislike homosexuality because they themselves are straight, and additionally they also think it is immoral/wrong and thus view it as something that should be changed.

People don’t take the literal, cut-and-dry meaning of disliking homosexuality because it is such a divisive issue. Hate crimes are very prevalent, and a lot of people don’t have your attitude of to each his own. But the fact is, that homosexuality is NOT accepted by our society as a whole, and so people don’t take your literal meaning and are on the defensive when you express your personal preference (albeit, in my opinion, in an ambiguous manner).