In the final analysis, this issue will not be decided by reading academic studies or consulting professional organization resolutions nor by reading debates in magazines, newspapers, and on websites.
Ultimately, the American Family will decide this issue on a much more personal level and often their decision will be based upon face-to-face contact with gay and bisexual individuals they know as neighbors, family members, friends, co-workers, and even famous personalities.
Gays are everywhere. They always have been. They always will be.
They are in families that teach conservative Christian values (examples: Cheney, Gingrich, Schmitz, Schlafly, Bauman).
They are in families that teach liberal, secular or religious values.
As Americans consider what decision to make, they will consider the contributions that gay or bisexual men and women have made in every field of endeavor. Some examples appear below.
In addition, there are many famous persons known within the gay community to be gay, but whom have not yet publicly acknowledged their sexual preference. Some of them are of jaw-dropping quality for people like you.
(singers and other musical performers): Joan Baez, Johnny Mathis, Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, K.D. Lang, Josephine Baker, Nell Carter, Janis Joplin, Bessie Smith, Janis Ian, Nathan Lane, Van Cliburn, Liberace, Barbara Cook, Michael Feinstein
(composers) Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Handel
(fashion): Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Halston, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Gianni Versace
(actors and actresses): Sir Alec Guiness, Charles Laughton, Sir John Gielgud, Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, James Dean, Sal Mineo, Clifton Webb, Montgomery Clift, Richard Chamberlain, Raymond Burr, Anthony Perkins, Dame Judith Anderson, Tallulah Bankhead, Jodie Foster, Rudolph Valentino, Keanu Reeves, Dirk Bogarde, Mae West, Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, Roddy McDowell
(authors, poets, and playwrights): Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Thornton Wilder, E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, John Cheever, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Gore Vidal, Lillian Hellman, Edward Albee, James Baldwin, Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Walt Whitman, William S. Maugham, Christopher Isherwood, William Inge
(comedians): Lily Tomlin, Margaret Cho, Paul Lynde, Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell
(sports): Marina Navratilova, Greg Louganis, Brian Orser, David Kopay, Ben Tilden, Tom Waddell, Billy Jean King, Rudy Galindo, Billy Dean
(political figures, philosophers, pundits): Roy Cohn, Barney Frank, Andrew Sullivan, Jim Kolbe, Steve May, Sumner Welles, John M. Keynes, Socrates, Barbara Jordan, David Mixner, Mark Leno.
(gay businessmen, millionaires): John Hormel, David Geffen
(others): Margaret Mead, Rudolf Nureyev, Michelangelo
ANSWER THE QUESTION ERNIE!
Ultimately, the American Family will decide this issue on a much more personal level and often their decision will be based upon face-to-face contact with gay and bisexual individuals they know as neighbors, family members, friends, co-workers, and even famous personalities.
That's certainly part of it. Still, you are forgetting some key points.
You can try to deny their existence, but the tens of thousands of former homosexuals also have a say and their numbers are growing. You say "Gays are everywhere" and I say Ex-gays are everywhere. Yes, former homosexuals exist.
You can try to change our cultures definition of perversion and you can try to ignore the dictionary definition, yet homosexuality (behavior) is perversion, both morally and physiologically. That's not an attack on a group of people, it's a fact based on our culture and the dictionary.
Knowing homosexuals and having contact with homosexuals face-to-face changes nothing as we know they exist. Knowing former homosexuals and having contact with former homosexuals face-to-face changes everything, despite the fact that so many people try to deny their existence.
Former homosexuals exist and their numbers are growing!