Stepping back from Flatland

Now that I've posted "Sex in Flatland", I feel the need to elaborate on some of my own opinions that wormed their way into what I meant to be a lighthearted satire-- good fun for all, you know?-- but never would have found a place in their entirety. Specifically, I'd like to address the second-to-last paragraph, in which The Good Doctor dismisses the idea of Gay Pride.

I fully realize my position on the issue might warrant me my share of hisses and thrown tomatoes by many, but I must make it known: I agree with Dr. Pentagon.

Homosexuality is a normal variation on human sexual behavior, no different than left-handedness as opposed to right-handedness, as I see it. Sure, the majority of people are right-handed, and our culture reflects this (why do we shake with our right hands? why are a guitar's strings to the right of the guitarist?). But in the same vein, much of human culture reflects the more common occurance of heterosexuality.

Social conservatism and religious fundamentalism have much maligned homosexuals; this oppressed minority is beginning to gain the rights denied to it in the past, either by law or by cultural attitudes. But for some reason, many gays and lesbians feel the need to "separate themselves from the sexual norm", an attitude that reinforces harmful stereotypes. When flocks of men and women gather to expose their sex lives to the world, I cannot help but wonder what would happen if a straight man stood on a street corner and loudly proclaimed: "I like to have sex with women and I'm proud!"

In an ideal world, somewhat manifested in my essay about Flatland, gay people would find no need to form communities and adopt symbols for themselves, because they are not, in reality, "in any way fundamentally different." In my opinion, society's image of them as such is outdated and unfair.

I thought it ironic that if in Flatland, a two-dimensional-- both geometrically and ideologically-- society, gays had reached a level of equality we can only hope for in our own supposedly three-dimensional one.