[Billthedrill]

If a "strong normative preference for heterosexuality" is antithetical to U.S. goals in the area, whatever they are, then maybe those goals ought to be what is under scrutiny here.

Words have meanings. "Norm" is heterosexual by so far a margin that it is scarcely worth pointing out except to people who want the word to mean something else. Neither does the word "deviate" carry a cachet of "gender" bigotry - that which deviates from the norm, is, well, deviate. That's it. That's what the word means.

It does not surprise me that an administration this taken with life in Fantasyland should indulge itself in this sort of semantic juggling act. However, let me make a simple observation: if health problems result from one sticking one's generative organ into someone else's rectal channel, perhaps the cause of those problems isn't bigotry. Just a thought.

[tanknetter]

Words have meanings. "Norm" is heterosexual by so far a margin that it is scarcely worth pointing out except to people who want the word to mean something else. Neither does the word "deviate" carry a cachet of "gender" bigotry - that which deviates from the norm, is, well, deviate. That's it. That's what the word means.

In looking at the statement "conservative gender norms related to sexuality and strong normative preference for heterosexuality," people may missing the real point here. It's not in the use of "norm" that really matters, but in "normative".

In analysis, "normative" is the companion of "positive". Positive means objective and based in fact. It must be testable and provable.

Normative means values-driven and opinion-based. It's subjective in nature.

So looking at the statement again, the proper way to interpret it is as saying that a societal preference for heterosexuality isn't rooted in provable, objective facts - it's opinion and values based.

In doing so it essentially tosses the notion that human sexuality is based on the biological drive and need to procreate/reproduce in order to perpetuate the species right out the window. "Heterosexuality" is simply a preference that society has chosen to adopt as a values-based standard. Not something that is hard-wired into (most of) us out of biological necessity.