Thom, I appreciate you discussing homophobia and how pervasive it is in the United States. I agree that it is indeed tragic that many closeted gay men are living in sexless marriages because they feel they have no other choice. At the same time, I urge you not to fall into the trap of biphobia. I've known I was bi since I was a child (now in my 40s). I've also known many gay men and several bi men. I think that homophobia contributes to confusion among all of us (inlcuding heterosexuals) in terms of understanding, realizing and acknowledging our sexuality. However, I also think that biphobia is part of the oppression of GLBT people. When I came out 30 years ago, I was urged by a lesbian counselor not to openly identify as such because of the community's hostility towards it. While things have thankfully improved for bi people since then, there is still a pervasive notion in dominant society that we "should choose a side" (ie, to be with either men or women, but not both). I think bisexuality is just one of many possible human characteristics and is as normal as all other orientations.

Thom: I'm listening to the podcast here in my car, and I was frankly a little shocked that you would express, even perhaps in jest such biphobic ideas. Bisexuality may not be as well understood as monosexuality, abd certainly not as talked about. I wish I were at my computer, I'd cite some recent literature. Nevertheless, as a male Kinsey 2, i can attest that attraction to men does not mean you are exclusively Homosexual. I'm thirty years old, Im almost more liberal than you are (I'd have no problem saying I'm homosexual if I were) and I'm bisexual. It doesn't make me a closeted gay man, anymore than it would make a bisexual woman a closet lesbian. Why are we still having this conversation sixty years after Kinsey? I've had partners of both genders, never been closeted, or ashamed of it, and fallen in love with men and women both over the years, though more women. I am in a long term relationship with a women for the last three years.. Does that make me secretly straight? I respect Thom Hartmann a lot, but seriously, get on This. Bi-erasure is a big problem in the gay and straight monosexual communities, and I really think you could do a little research on this. Im all for calling out the closeted right wingers that you often do, I'm right there with you. But, we in the bi "community" (such that it is) get it from both sides. (no pun intended) I've had gay men call me closeted and straights call me confused. I'm neither.

I'm baffled. I started a blog on this topic of gayness and choice, and finished it, and, late at night and spaced out, closed Firefox. I logged back in, and now I can't find where I put the blog. Fortunately, I made a copy, so I'll put it here. I hope there isn't a limit of length.

I got cut off in the middle of a couple of points I was trying to make on the radio about gayness. Thom took my call just before the news break. Yes, I was one of those unlucky people. So I've come here to complete what I was trying to say!

Thom said that he has a new insight that men who are so insistent that gayness is a choice are probably gay themselves! This is based on what he learned from talking to a married fellow in his sixties who has been gay all his life but who married a woman. He told Thom that although he had been attracted to men all his life, he assumed that all man were the same way that he is, and just dealt with it!! He thought ALL men were more attracted to other men than women, but, as he had, had all chosen to be with a woman because being with a man would be wrong. Thom was saying that he can understand now that these other men who know with such surety that homosexuality is a choice, know that because they experienced making that choice—and that is proof to them that it is a choice—which is why they can talk with such vehement condemnation of those openly gay men who "should" have made that choice, too. These very vocal and opinionated men do not realize that they really didn't make any choice at all except in their behavior. They are still gay! This is a valuable new wrinkle on a belief I was exposed to in the psychiatric community years ago—that the men who speak with the most hatred about gays (and this was before the word "gay" was in use!) are homophobic because they are gay themselves, and fighting their urges. (As for the idea that all men who believe homosexuality is a choice are gay, I am sure that there are many heterosexual ("Sheeple") men who think homosexuality is a choice simply because that's what they were always taught.)
What I wanted to share with Thom and the listening audience is my thought about why society teaches us that homosexuality is wrong. It may have come from long ago when the population of mankind on the Earth was small, and it may have been part of our survival instinct (or a prompting from God, for those who believe) that we had to increase in numbers in order to survive as a species. Any sex that we had, needed to be for the purpose of procreation. (Masturbation, also, may have been forbidden for the same reason.)
I started off by trying to explain my more recent theory of how morality became part of religion in early man, and the importance of it. First of all, my assumption is that religion is found in all of mankind's societies, from the very oldest hunting/gathering groups to the current day, and that one of the important aspects of religion to human survival is that religion is the carrier of morals. Morals are essential to our operating as a group and our survival, as it is only in groups that mankind can survive. Thom interrupted me by stating that morality is older than religion, and mentioned studies of indigenous people. I started to express my understanding that all human groups have had religions of some kind—certainly beliefs in the existence of non-material and spiritual phenomena—and that is where my call got ended so the news could start. I shall have to look into what Thom meant when he said that early man did not have religions—because this is contradictory to what I've learned from anthropological studies both of current indigenous societies and of ancient indigenous societies, using found artifacts, burial sites, etc. Perhaps someone will contribute to this comment and explain—is this something new? Or did Thom mean that humans did not always have large organized religions, the ones with Names that sometimes end in "-ism"??)

Anyway, following my own understandings, my thought is this: that very early on, before primates started evolving a brain large enough to make personal decisions and have free will, the behavior of our further-back ancestors was determined by genetic programming. Even now, each individual non-human animal that is born carries within its genes all the knowledge that their species has acquired so far, through its evolution. If an animal is born with a mutation in the genes, and if that mutation causes it and its offspring to survive more successfully, the other pre-mutated animals die out, leaving the "new and improved" (however so slightly) animal to carry and pass on the new gene and the new behavior or characteristic. ( This is my understanding of how evolution works. Parenthetically speaking, I am of the camp that believes that "God" or "our Creator" has something to do with what mutations take place, but I realize that people with this belief are in a minority. There's no proof. And it is not germane to my point.)
My point is that when our ancestors came to the point where they had free will and could think of behavior they might like to do other than what their genes were prompting them to do, there may have come a problem of morality. Previous animals were not used to having to make big decisions—they just "knew" what to do and did it. But now, more and more, humans did not know what to do. So they acted based on what they "felt like" doing—as they always had. But now they could act according to free will, and we don't know whether there were groups of humans who did not survive because they did not develop ways to act in co-operation with the others in the group. We had to survive, and our survival depended on the behaviors of the group members. If we didn't act in a unified way, we were less likely to survive—being conquered by other tribes, animals, disease, and by murdering/hurting/stealing from each other, or failure to catch enough animals in our hunting expeditions or not developing an effective way to organize our little societies in terms of sharing behavior, set-up of domiciles for protection from the weather—on and on. How morality came to exist at this time is unknown, but it is my belief that it was carried by spiritual lessons, or religions. Man may have had free will, but he could still be controlled though the limbic system—the emotional center—and the worship of gods stirs up our feelings of awe, and because of that, we are willing to follow the lessons being promoted by the spiritual teachings. (My belief is that this is because there is truly a Creator, and there are real spiritual lessons for us to learn, and these really contain effective guidance toward more successful survival. However, it is not necessary to believe this in order to understand my point that morality was carried primarily by religion—not any more—but back towards our beginning.)
Getting back to homosexuality—since the most procreation possible may have been necessary for our survival as a species on Earth, the most effective way to make sure people paid attention to this was by having homosexuality be of the "sins" of religion. And due to high human mortality rates on the Earth—up until the age of technology and information—an undercurrent of a felt need to keep humans focussed on increasing our population may have persisted. Or at least on not falling behind, as happened during the great plagues, when half or more of some cities were wiped out. However, now we are living in an era of great change. We have hospitals, medicine (and ObamaCare, lol) to keep us alive now, we have food distribution so that in the winter here in New England, anyway, we don't have to survive solely on the indigenous foods that will keep through the winter. We have plenty of people! Too many, it is said! We certainly no longer need, if we ever really did, to discourage sexual behavior that doesn't lead to procreation. But the problem is that these teachings became part of religions, and people who follow religions are not encouraged by the leaders of the stricter of the religions to pick out and eliminate certain teachings that have been shown to be mistaken or misleading (think "Creation in seven days" and "Adam and Eve." etc as well as the taboo against homosexuality, thoughts about which I began this blog entry.)
Possible answers to a solution for this dilemma may come in the form of religious and educational reform. It seems, given what people are focussing on nowadays, that this is quite a distance down the road. Before it even begins, we need to be devising theories on which to base plans for how a development in such a direction could take place. Thom talks of need for this.
Generating ideas, as I, and others, are doing regarding how we came to be these problem-ridden beings that we are (wishing for world peace? when we can't even get along in our own families?) is very important—but it is not new. What can we do? that will make a difference?
P.S. Long ago, I became familiar with an idea proposed by Alexander Lowen, I think it was, that sexual taboos were installed in religions by their powerful leaders to keep the independent and creative energies of humans in check, so that they could be more easily controlled by these religious leaders. However, no matter how these currently unrealistic and sometimes harmful sexual taboos made their way into religions—they are there—and we that are the modern believers feel quite sure that it is not the will of our Creator for them to remain within religion. But the problem remains of how to dissuade the rigid members of old fashioned religions that they will not be full of sin or damned to an eternal afterlife of hell-fire if they should wish to disregard these old strictures and follow their inborn tendencies. (This is also complicated by the fact that it does seem that some sexual religious teachings are helpful, such as those of monogamy and faithfulness.)

Yes, I see a very slow development of change in regard to prejudice and the condemnation of differences and of behavior that religion preaches against. People are full of fear and eager to stay out of trouble in the eyes of the law, of their neighbors, and of whatever they believe is God. Today I saw a shocking documentary on "Global Voices" called "In The Shadow of the Sun." It is about the treatment of Albino people in Tanzania—modern Tanzania. Albinos are considered to be evil ghosts, and they are thought to be a sign that the family is cursed. You are encouraged to kill your Albino baby as soon as it is born. Another belief had started somehow—that if you could possess the limb of an Albino, you could become rich, immediately, without doing any work. For example, if you were a fisherman, when you next went out in your boat, fish would suddenly jump in your boat with you, day after day. The murders of Albinos had started, as well as their dismemberment. One Albino man had taken it upon himself to go from village to village, speaking to crowds, trying to educate them. When he would ask them WHY they had their beliefs, they seemed to have no regard for logic as they stated their opinions. In these answers, these emotional, illogical answers, I saw our religious Americans, believing so certainly in their poisonous anti-human beliefs that they held just because they were told they were true. To be gay is wrong. A sin. You will go to hell. To be gay is a choice. Do the right thing. Make that choice—or you will go to hell. This is just as shocking to me in light of "In The Shadow of the Sun," watching two small cloth covered bodies being buried in a deep grave, with cement poured over it, so that no one will come and dig up these Albino baby's bodies to cut off their limbs, keep one so they can be rich, and sell the others to the witch doctor. How primitive we still are. What a long way we have to travel.