Just like anybody else

A popular conspiracy theory is to look at U.S. Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, and find all the similarities between them.  Both last names have the same number of letters.  Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy had one named Lincoln.  And there are loads of other similarities.  But when you start to think about it more deeply, what we're really doing is cherry-picking the similarities out from the differences.  How many secretaries does a president have?  How many of those secretaries had entirely unexciting names that would obscure the amazing coincidences if they were listed, and so are not mentioned?

It's an easy game to play.  A horoscope might say that something exciting will happen today.  Well, in any day there would be a most exciting thing, and if you focus on that, it will seem that the horoscope was right.  Or it could say that something will make you sad.  Again, each day has a saddest incident, and so by ignoring the rest of the day's incidents, the horoscope seems verified.

I often wonder how often this happens when stereotyping homosexually oriented people.  It seems that when a guy comes out as gay, friends or family look at their lives and find aspects that seem to indicate that they were gay -- they play a musical instrument or they dislike football -- and they say, "well of course, we should have seen it."  However, all the competing attributes that aren't associated with homosexuality are conveniently forgotten.  I suspect that if you examine any heterosexual's life, you will be able to find something that could identify them as gay.  Perhaps they like Broadway musicals, or they keep their hair well coiffed.  But they aren't gay.

In fact, I suspect that if we were to do a blind study, and have a bunch of guys fill out a questionnaire that asked about hobbies and habits, it would be virtually impossible to distinguish the orientation of the individuals from their survey answers.  (The only exceptions might be those that have absorbed the gay culture and have conformed their lives to its expectations -- they might be easier to identify.)

I really think that most males who are attracted to other males are just typical guys with typical interests and preferences, and most of their friends would be surprised to find out their orientation.  Many of these guys wouldn't even "identify" as gay, preferring to live their life by other choices than the common stereotypes they might believe about gay people.

All of this comes from my puny viewpoint, my sample size of one.  I have no face-to-face friends who share my orientation (at least that have confided in me).  So I haven't really discussed this with anyone, as I'm very deeply in the closet myself.  But I find it hard to believe that I'm really some strange, unique, special case.  I think I'm just like anybody else, and that there are lots of people who who share many of my traits.