When It Rains, It Pours: The Umbrella of Normalcy

Alfred Kinsey, during his controversial studies on human sexuality in the late forties and fifties, concluded that it is impossible to determine the number of people who are "homosexual" "heterosexual"; instead, one can only determine behavior at any given time (Kinsey). When people are open and honest, especially to themselves, about their sexuality, it is easy to see there is nothing "pure and simple" about it. Human sexuality is less like a series of categories (straight, gay, bi, etc.) and more like a spectrum or continuum, such as the 1 to 7 chart Kinsey constructed. Yet, much like race, religion or other methods of labeling a person, many people simply choose not to think about it and would rather continue hailing whatever is most common as "natural" and everything else as "unnatural". Thus heterosexuality became a stronghold of a political institution. Government is charged with guarding the fabric of society, which is held together by the nuclear, heterosexual family; therefore the government must protect society from the gays and their "anti-family" tendencies. This sentiment perpetuates individual prejudice in the name of normalcy, in turn forming a group of "outsiders" with which the campaign for heterosexual superiority can be validated in the eyes of the fearful and misinformed. The sole advantage those of "other" sexual orientations can attest to is a "sensitivity to ambiguity... a natural conviction that difference exists but does not matter, that there is no such thing as normal even when the majority of people think so" (Poniewozik). I wonder though, what visible changes might take place in society, immediately or eventually, if homosexuals are finally included under the umbrella of normalcy?