ABSTRACT
Homosexuality has been called among other things a sin, an illness, a way of life, a normal variant of sexual behavior, a behavior disturbance, and a crime. In going public, homosexuals undoubtedly risk creating a backlash, particularly if a hostile and uninformed public assumes that homosexuality is growing, threatening to undermine the family and traditional values. Sigmund Freud regarded homoerotic behavior as a normal part of growing up. Most individuals moved beyond this stage into adult heterosexuality, and so by implication, adult homosexuality was a distortion of natural development. “Homosexuality,” a philologically awkward hybrid of Greek and Latin elements, came to be the term applied to people who love those of the same sex, while “heterosexuality,” equally philologically impure, came to be applied to those who gained pleasure from the opposite sex. Homosexuality undoubtedly exists in a significant proportion of the population, but only recently have we been able to investigate the topic and to try to get answers.
