I noticed The invention of "heterosexuality" on the BBC News App. "A century ago, people had a very different idea of what it means to be heterosexual. Understanding that shift in thinking can tell us a lot about fluid sexual identities today." My first reaction was "This is the biggest load of codswallop I've ever read on the news!" Just curious what you thought! -- K.L.
[Guest reply by Guy Hammond of Strength in Weakness.]The article is written by Brandon Ambrosino, a well-known gay activist and columnist. Actually, he’s most known for his surprisingly right-of-center views, for instance being against gay pride parades, which is unusual. That said, the book he reviews, The Invention of Heterosexuality (by Jonathan Katz) is itself, hogwash. The review you saw at BBC isn't much better.
The article claims, "Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals. Neither were there homosexuals. It hadn’t yet occurred to humans that they might be 'differentiated from one another by the kinds of love or sexual desire they experienced.'"
This is silly. While language may have given opposite-gender attraction a name (heterosexuality), mankind has always been able to differentiate between opposite-gender sexual attraction and same-gender attraction. Not only does scripture make this distinction, but so do multiple secular writings and even art -- for thousands of years. In 1983-84 I lived with the aborigines in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. They were illiterate, and lived in almost stone age conditions. No one had ever taught them the difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality. They took no classes, read no articles, had no dictionaries -- yet not only did they know the difference, they knew instinctively that homosexuality was both immoral and unnatural.
