Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them.
Interpretation
Gore Vidal challenges the labels of sexual orientation, suggesting they are merely descriptors of behavior rather than defining characteristics of individuals.
Gore Vidal's quote emphasizes that sexual orientation labels like 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual' are insufficient to fully define a person. Instead, he argues that these terms refer to specific sexual acts, and that engaging in such acts is a normal aspect of human behavior that shouldn't carry stigma. By framing sexuality in this way, he encourages a more nuanced understanding of identity as complex and multifaceted, resisting simplistic categorization.
In practice
In a discussion about sexual diversity at a community event.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. _x000D_ A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.
I am truly horrified by modern man. Such absence of feeling, such narrowness of outlook, such lack of passion and information, such feebleness of thought.
Physicians think they are doing something for you by labeling what you have as a disease
The world is mere change, and this life, opinion.
If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.
Between the dreams of night and day there is not so great a difference.
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