Society's Need for a Queer Solution

This essay was about how far we've come in accepting homosexuality. Even though we'd like to think we've come along way in doing so, it seems that we still have a ways to go. We're still trying to figure out where our sexual identities come from. There are a couple of different views that try to answer the "why" people are homosexual, the essentialist interpretation and the constructionist interpretation. It's the whole nature vs nurture argument, were you born with it or were you fashioned that way in your lifetime?

Essentialists believe that identity is natural, that people are born as homosexuals. I have to mention pyschoneuroendocrinology, because not only is is a ridiculously long word that I can pronounce (^_^), but scientists dealing with this area believe that attraction for the opposite sex is due to biological factors, like genes and whatnot. Constructionists believe that identity is changeable and totally culture-dependent. According to Micheal Foucault, a constructionist, homosexuality wasn't even a term until 1870. Now it's not only existing as just a behavior, it's been created into a label, a definition of who you are.

I could go on about characteristics and gender roles but the identity theories strike me as the most interesting. I don't know, I'm just sick of people treating homosexuals as a whole different species, that heterosexuals are superior and normal and should look down upon all others. I'm not really sure if people are born with it or if they sort of develop feelings for the same sex because there is evidence for both sides. I think we should just accept people for who they are, no matter their sexual preference, it's nobody's business anyway. I used to believe that heterosexual was the only way to go, but as I've grown I've learned that homosexuals are not dirty sinful people just because they have a different "identity." It's so narrow-minded to think that and I wish we really could accept homosexuality as another norm in society and on television.