Here’s an astonishing thing:

I have purchased Brokeback and plan to watch it with my mum and youngest sister in a couple of weeks when SO goes off for training in another town. We’re going to make a night of it with fattening food and booze, and they’ll stay round.

Now, my second sister (next down from me) was round last night, heard me talking about the planned jollity and asked me if she could join in. I hemmed and hawed ‘well, I don’t think you’ll like the film’ etc and finally just told her outright that I didn’t think she would be able to keep herself from making ‘eww that’s gross’ comments wrt the content of the film. A discussion ensued, with her telling me that homosexuality is unnatural and me using every example and explanation I know to show her that it IS natural. I told her about the male emperor penguins who pair up and raise chicks. I told her about the fact that rats in crowded conditions are more likely to exhibit homosexual behaviour than rats in open spaces, indicating that it is a natural restraint on population growth. I explained that you are BORN gay or straight, and that as she could not choose to be gay, gay people could not choose to be straight.

Her answer was, ‘well, I don’t believe it’s inborn. It’s sick and unnatural’. To which I said, ‘well, that’s why you aren’t invited.’