Dear Abby

DEAR ABBY: In a recent column you advised the mother of a girl who had confided that she is gay and wants to come out, that homosexuality has "nothing to do with parenting and everything to do with genetics." You need to retract that statement. If you do not publicly admit your error, I will know you are a mouthpiece for the gay and lesbian crowd. -- LEONARD IN LYNCHBURG

DEAR LEONARD: If I did not believe with all my heart that what I wrote is true, I wouldn't have put my thoughts on paper. Homosexuality is simply a variant of sexual orientation. Those who claim it is "unnatural" should direct their attention to Dr. Joan Roughgarden, a biologist at Stanford University with a Ph.D. from Harvard, who states that more than 300 vertebrate species have been found to practice homosexuality. (A visit to any zoo might confirm it.) And while one gene may not be responsible for this variant, Italian researcher Andrea Camperio-Ciani of the University of Padua notes that research findings point to there being more than one "gay gene," and that the genetic factors linked to homosexuality in men are also linked to increased fertility in women.

------------------

That is the crux of the issue, isn't it? Right wingers (and associated Christian freaks) will insist that being gay is a "choice". You'll hear it all the time.

It has been scientifically proven that it is not a choice, and it simply is. The wingers cannot allow that explanation because it makes being gay no more a choice then a persons skin color. And since the right wingers (and again their associated Christian freaks) were forced to admit that racism is bad - so will it go with homophobia.

The question then becomes, what will they hate next? They won't be allowed to subjugate women, won't be able to enslave black people, won't be able to harass gay people... Then what? What other group will they turn their hate on?

By now - we know that hate is what drives them, right? If there is nothing to hate, there is no reason to go to church, and no reason to drop money in the collection plate. There is no church without the money. There is no church without the hate.

I'm really curious to see what it will be. We must have a domestic hatred and a foreign hatred. The foreign one will be available for a number of years. We have the "war to resubjugate the brown people", as Jesus' General likes to call it.

How about illegal immigrants for the domestic hatred? Lou Dobbs rants about them every night, but so far I haven't seen Focus on the Family claim that the last big hurricane was caused by illegal immigration. They are fresh meat.. sort of..