Strap-On Mood Lighting

For some reason, the news outlets (especially CNN) have spent this week obsessing about gay issues and theory. I’m not going to worry about why that might be. (Although maybe I should.) Rather, I’d like to take a few moments to prattle on about the nonsense being discussed.

Did you see this one? http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/26/sexuality/index.html
Apparently, a grad student at my local university of choice has been strapping little light bulbs onto people, turning them loose in dark rooms, turning on some video cameras, and asking anonymous strangers to figure out if the people walking around in them are gay or straight.

Funny, I have some friends who do the same thing all weekend (every weekend) without the bling. They never get any grant funding for it though. The secret must be in that strap-on mood lighting.

I’m obviously doing research for the wrong department. Never before have I considered testing for “swish in his step” to help solve some sort of engineering problem. Apparently, if I were working for the Psych labs, I could get away with passing off any or all of the following as groundbreaking research:
--Are gay people really fruity? Monitor their diets and compare to a control group to find out!
--Are gay guys better at packing fudge than straight guys? And do they prefer the same recipes?
--Can you tell the difference between gay and straight people by the quality of their haircutting skills?
--Are gay guys attracted to Disney movies slightly more, or slightly less than flies are to honey?
--Can you spot gay guys by their ugly shoes alone, or do you have to check their manicures to be sure?
--Does this shirt make me look gay? Ok, does it make that other guy actually gay?

I’m hoping that most people who read this thing (if any) find all of those questions funny or retarded (as opposed to serious).

What scares me is that apparently a huge slice of the population would not. At the time of this writing a CNN poll has an even third of the responding public answering a question in such a way as to indicate that homosexuality is a choice. And this is CNN. I have to imagine that if Fox had this thing up it’d be twice that.

This has me a tad confused. Why do so many people apparently think that this reasoning does not work both ways? It would logically follow that people could and would start being randomly gay at will. This theory does not seem to have the same backing as the “be straight at will” theory.

Or does it? I occurs to me that there would be very little reason for most straight guys to go around telling people that they figured they could go gay pretty much any time they wanted to. It would make a poor pickup line with the ladies.

Clearly, the aggressive move would be for an army of gay guys to take to the streets as spies, trying to secretly seduce as many straight guys as possible. Oh wait, they already do. Oh wait, that’s exactly what most gay guys want to scientifically disprove as possible, even if they’re occasionally participating.

So where does that leave us?
--Straight people (esp. guys) would seem to have strong social pressures to maintain an image of strict heterosexuality. This would be true even if the occasional homo might actually be able to turn some of their cranks just fine.
--Gay guys would have strong social-standing reasons to find scientific proofs of inherent homosexuality. This would be true even if some of them really have proven they can sexually handle the occasional women just fine.
--Gay women are invisible, except in pornography. They can say or do anything, but no one will notice.
--Everybody hates bi people, but that’s ok, because almost everyone agrees that they couldn’t possibly exist.

My conclusion?
People need to have more experimental sex before they’re allowed to pretend to be authorities on the subject. Even if they’re really good at dressing people up in strap-on lights in dark rooms.