and led to the federal legislation is an indication of how volatile the issue of sexual preference continues to be. Historically, despite societal efforts to suppress, ignore, or eradicate it, a small percentage of the population of every culture on earth has been verifiably homosexual. In some cultures, such as the Greeks and certain native American tribes, homosexual behavior has been accepted and acknowledged. In most, however, mainstream society has vilified it and attempted to legislate it out of existence (or worse; eradicating homosexuals from the population was included in the Third Reich's "final solution").
Nevertheless, homosexuality continues to be part of the scale of human sexual response, and recent scientific studies have begun to support the hypothesis that it is primarily genetic in origin. A recent exhaustive study observes, "Sexual preference is likely to be established quite early in life . . . Childhood and adolescent sexual expression by and large reflect rather than determine a person's underlying sexual preference" (Bell 113). Andrew Sullivan describes human sexuality:
It is bound up in that emotional and unstable area where sexual desire and emotional longing meet; it reaches into the core of what makes a human being who he or she is. The origins of homosexuality are remarkably mysterious, and probably are due to a mixture of some genetic factors and very early childhood development (before the ages of five or six) (17).
As scientific study begins to pinpoint the biological determinants of sexual orientation, the fact remains that a certain number of individuals within any given population have an erotic attraction primarily to members of their own gender, and this fact upsets a certain number of other individuals who consider such attraction unnatural or immoral. Sullivan's estimate of the numbers of people involved is conservative: "My own experience suggests that somewhere between two and...