Homosexuality And The Media
...like our own), approximately 10% of the student population is gay and lesbian (Besner and Spungin 142). A little different perspective: one out of every ten people you know is a homosexual. So what is a homosexual exactly? According to www.dictionary.com, the definition of homosexual is: Of, relating to, or having a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex. In more subjective tests, homosexual is often defined as any person who has had sexual desire or participated in sexual activity with another person of the same sex more than once. No matter how it is defined, homosexuality has become a hot topic nearly everywhere in America.
Issues concerning homosexuality have been plastered throughout the media during the past two years. People practicing this alternate lifestyle are now the hosts of popular television shows, the stars of great movies, and the focus of many American media sources. The popularity of some recent media issues, such as the consecration of Bishop V. Gene Robinson and the success of new television shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, are showing that most Americans between 18 and 40 years of age are changing their attitudes toward homosexuality.
However, it is important to understand some of the basis and origins of the idea of homosexuality we have come to know today. In a famous Greek story called Symposium, Plato, the most well-known of the Greek philosophers, wrote that humanity once consisted of three sexes instead of two: its partners were joined in pairs of two men, two women, or a man and a woman. Zeus cut each pair apart to diminish their power and to teach them to fear the gods. Humans spend their time on Earth by searching for their other half, with whom they can find true love (Byne 52).
On a more biological based note, some researchers have suggested that prenatal hormones influence which sex the person...
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