Famous Lesbians

Homosexuality is not normal. On the contrary it is a challenge to the norm...Nature exists whether academics like it or not. And in nature, procreation is the single relentless rule. That is the norm...Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction...No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous...homosexuality is an adaptation, not an inborn trait.

Is the gay identity so fragile that it cannot bear the thought that some people may not wish to be gay? Sexuality is highly fluid, and reversals are theoretically possible. However, habit is refractory, once sensory pathways have been blazed and deepened by repetition-a phenomenon obvious with obesity, smoking, alcoholism or drug addiction--helping gays to learn how to function heterosexually, if they wish is a perfectly worthy aim. We should be honest enough to consider whether or not homosexuality may not indeed, be a pausing at the prepubescent stage where children band together by gender....Current gay cant insists that homosexuality is not a choice; that no one would choose to be gay in a homophobic society. But there is an element of choice in all behavior, sexual or otherwise. It takes an effort to deal with the opposite sex; it is safer with your own kind. The issue is one of challenge versus comfort.

Camille Paglia, Vamps and Tramps, (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 70, 72, 76, 77, 78, 91.

Dr. Rust

Self-identified lesbian Dr. Paula Rust is a sociology professor at Hamilton College in New York. She did a study on lesbian attractions and concluded that “women who identify as lesbian and those who identify as bisexual really aren’t all that different in terms of their experience or in their feelings.”

Surprisingly, Rust reports that two-thirds of the lesbians in her study admitted that they had attractions to men. The gay magazine Frontiers, which has reported on Dr. Rust’s research, notes that “Dr. Rust warns against using categories, even pluralistic ones, to describe human sexuality.” (Frontiers, Nov. 17, 1995, pg. 50)

A Newsweek cover story examines this phenomenon of sexual fluidity. They also cite the study of lesbian professor Rust that “…a 1992 survey of women who identified themselves as lesbians, found that two-thirds of them said they were attracted to men, and 90 per-cent had been in sexual relationships with men.” (Newsweek, July 17, 1995, p.50)

Have Newsweek, or Dr. Rust, or Frontiers caused hatred and violence against gays, or gay suicide, because it has discussed the fact that people can change their orientation? Not one single gay organization has complained, because they know that such charges are bogus!

Off Our Backs, the venerable lesbian/feminist magazine, confirms Dr. Rust’s study. This magazine has published an analysis of a study of 1,086 lesbian and bisexual women. Two assumptions were examined. One, that lesbians do not have sex with men and are thus at low risk for HIV infection, and two, that “women do not easily transmit HIV.” The study’s intention was “to examine sexual experiences and current behavior, injection drug use (IDU), safer-sex behavior, HIV-risk perception, and HIV testing practices among lesbians and bisexual women.”

Self-defined lesbians made up 85 percent of the sample and 53 percent of them reported having had sex with men since 1978. (Off Our Backs, Oct. 1995, pg. 12; this article is an analysis of a study published in the scientific journal AIDS Education and Prevention, June 6, 1995, pgs. 514-523. Lena Einhorn, one of the study’s original investigators, also did this analysis for Off Our Backs).

Mimi=Freed

Another woman, lesbian comedienne Mimi Freed, explains her transformation:

“I wasn’t born gay; I chose it. Eyes open and mind wide I saw the potential and decided...” (The Advocate, 6-1-93, pg. 5)

Later, in this column, entitled “A Dangerous Choice,” she adds:

“...lesbianism saved my life by presenting me with a vision of myself as an individual, separate from the breeding agenda.” (Ibid.)

Those who say, “Nobody would ever choose to be gay” is suffering from basic ignorance of homosexuality; they are ignorant of what the gay community privately admits.

Janis Ian

Pop singer Janis Ian declares, “I’m a lesbian.” She was “outed” as a lesbian by The Village Voice in 1976 and felt the pressure of being “gay” in that era:

“So when I fell in love with my ex-husband—and I emphasize that I fell in love with him—it was a great relief to me.” (The Advocate, 6-13-95, pgs. 44, 49)

However, the man she loved and married turned out to be psychotic and violently abusive after a few years. The marriage ended after he threatened to, and almost did, kill her. The Advocate interviewer asks her:

“Since you stayed with him seven years, do you think this was your last-ditch attempt to be a heterosexual?”

But Janis retorts:

“Absolutely not. I don’t think that it is out of the realm of possibility that someone who is gay can fall in love with the opposite sex.”

Janis adds that in her straight marriage:

“We had a wonderful physical relationship. Sex was great. Lesbians are going to hate reading that, but it’s true.” (Ibid., pg. 51)

Janis is right. In an article for the British lesbian magazine, Diva, Toni Miller tells of her transformation from heterosexual to lesbian in “Confessions of an Ex-Heterosexual:”

“Some of my girlfriends have pressured me very heavily into denying my past heterosexual relationships…the only thing they want to hear about my het past is how tragic it was. It is as if the fact that I enjoyed my relationships with men contravenes some unwritten lesbian law.” (Diva, June/July 1996, pg. 66)

Toni says she “didn’t take refuge in lesbianism just because things ‘didn’t work out with men.’”(Ibid.)