I will quote from A Requiem for Friendship: Why Boys Will Not Be Boys & Other Consequences of the Sexual Revolution, a thought-provoking article showing how the sexual revolution in general, and homosexual liberation in particular, have been harmful for men, boys, and male relationships.

“What is more, those who will suffer most from this movement [i.e., the sexual revolution and its concomitant homosexual liberation] are precisely those whom our society, stupidly considering them little more than pests or dolts, has ignored. I mean boys.

“How is this so? Return to the example of Lincoln. His age was surely not more tolerant of homosexuality or of sexual deviancy generally than is ours: Accounts of the Civil War show young men brought to the brink of blackest despair by their inability to break the habit of self-abuse. How, then, if deviancy was such a reproach, could Lincoln risk sharing a bed with a man and having the fact be publicly known? But that is precisely the point. Only in such a case is the bed-sharing possible.

“I am sorry to have to use strong language, but only when sodomy is treated as a matter of course for everyone (as in the institutionalized buggery of boys and young men in ancient Sparta) or when it is met with such opprobrium that nobody would assume that a good man would engage in it, could Lincoln and his friend share that bed without suffering ridicule. The stigma against sodomy cleared away ample space for an emotionally powerful friendship that did not involve sexual intercourse, exactly as the stigma against incest allows for the physical and emotional freedom of a family.

“…The libertinism of our day thrusts boys and girls together long before they are intellectually and emotionally ready for it, and at the same time the defiant promotion of homosexuality makes the natural and once powerful friendships among boys virtually impossible.”

“I Love You, Man” makes it cool to tell your friends that you love them, although it is still a weird thing to hear or say. But having two of my oldest friends in town this weekend made the movie so much more than just a comedy.

Also, my unit had a number of gays and it was not so much a matter of “Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell” as it was of Don’t Give A Flipin Shit. I clearly remember holding and comforting a gay military comrade whose long-time lover had just died in a freakish accident during a field training exercise. The entire unit, officers and enlisted, deeply mourned the deceased, who had long held the reputation as the finest soldier among us.

Please know that I am also gratified at the civil, genteel and often erudite comments on this blog. It is a quite refreshing change from the boorish juvenility evidenced elsewhere.