As we experience it today, the romantic fallacy is a transparent curtain of ingenious weave with a warp of rationality and a woof of sensation that hangs between ourselves and reality.  So transparent is its quality that we cannot perceive its presence.  So bright in outline do men and affairs appear beyond the curtain that we cannot doubt but that reality is what we observe.  Yet in truth every color has been distorted.  And rare is the conclusion based on such observations that would not bear re-inspection if the curtain were lifted.

-Robert Ardrey, African Genesis

Ardrey’s talking there of what he called elsewhere, the illusion of original goodness.  That being his shorthand for the enlightenment notions of human nature which influenced thinkers as diverse as Marx and Rousseau and Jefferson.  In it, the default human nature is assumed to be peaceful and good, and the simpler agrarian past from which we emerged is our natural condition.  In this view, civilization has separated us from the circle of life and all the plagues which befall us, violence, poverty, sickness and war, are the result of our being divorced from our natural state by this artificial construct we live our daily lives in.  If we could only return to our agrarian roots again, live more as nature intended us to live, then the default human nature which is peaceful and good would once more reassert itself and all would be well.  It is the secular flavor of the much older banishment from Eden story, and it is just as poisonous. 

Steven Pinker would some decades later debunk The Blank Slate model of the human identity…that human kind is so distinct and apart from the rest of the animal kingdom that its ancient tides pull and tug on us not at all.  We are, for all intent and purpose, what we are taught to be.  A human being is all rational mind, and our emotional state is simply the logical end result of how our rational mind processes the world around us.  For humankind there is no nature, only nurture.    Ayn Rand thought of human nature in exactly this way, and it is just as false as the romantic fallacy.  In Fact, the false premise of both the Romantic Fallacy and the Blank Slate model is one and the same.  Back when I was a teenager, this passage from the beginning of Ardrey’s book, African Genesis, opened my eyes…

We are not so unique as we would like to believe.  And if man in a time of need seeks deeper knowledge concerning himself, then he must explore those animal horizons from which we have made our quick little march.

Ardrey was much criticized later for, among other things, the overwrought image of the "killer ape" that arose from his writings.  But he was a dramatist by trade when he took up the search for our ancient origins.  If the bloodthristy image he served up of our not-yet-human forbears was a tad emphatic, you can argue that it had to be to jolt the popular culture into rethinking it’s model of human behavior.  We are not fallen angels.  Neither are we blank slates.  We are humans.

We are still in a process of learning what that really is.  Perhaps, like any individual journey of self discovery, that learning will be an endless process.  I would like to propose the existence of another self destructive popular fallacy.  Call it, The Heterosexual Premise.  In it’s simplest form, it states that since heterosexual sex is necessary to continue the human species, heterosexuality is the natural condition of our kind.  Let me paraphrase Ardrey here…

The Heterosexual Premise stands in relation to the entire human species as the conviction of central position stands in relation to the individual human being.   Both in their most naked aspects rest on assumptions of special creation, of special blessedness, of unique destiny and innate sovereignty; and both are false…

As we experience it today, the heterosexual premise is a transparent curtain of ingenious weave with a warp of rationality and a woof of sensation that hangs between ourselves and reality.  So transparent is its quality that we cannot perceive its presence.  So bright in outline do men and affairs appear beyond the curtain that we cannot doubt but that reality is what we observe.  Yet in truth every color has been distorted.  And rare is the conclusion based on such observations that would not bear re-inspection if the curtain were lifted.

Obviously in any species that reproduces sexually, via opposite sex pairs, opposite sex pair bonding is necessary for reproduction.  But it does not follow then that sex serves only that one single purpose, vital though it is.  Nor does it follow that everyone born of a heterosexual relationship must therefore be heterosexual themselves, any more then that right-handed people must be the result of right-handed parents.

An entire cosmos of conclusions follow from the heterosexual premise, which all seem perfectly reasonable, yet are utterly false.  That homosexuality amounts to some sort of damage to our nature…a biological mistake as the talk radio host Laural Schlessinger once averred.  That homosexuals experience neither desire nor love as fully as heterosexuals do.   That homosexuals must be, can only be miserable deep down inside, frustrated, angry at the world, resentful toward normal heterosexuals, because of their condition.  If homosexuality is a kind of mental damage, then homosexuals may well be mentally damaged in other ways too…possibly dangerous ones.  Since humans don’t reproduce homosexually, homosexuals must reproduce in some other way, more like a disease then by natural reproduction.  Homosexuality must be a kind of perdition.  Homosexuals then don’t so much seek out partners, as prey.  And every person turned away from heterosexuality is one less to carry on the species.  So homosexuality damages the species ability to reproduce.  It must be contained or else the human race will die out.  Homosexuals prey on heterosexuals, and in doing so make war on humanity itself.

Add religion into the mix, and you have gay people waging war on God almighty too.  If God created the human race, then homosexuals are attacking God’s own creation and God himself.  By…being homosexual…obviously.  But even among people who reject out of hand the notion that gay people represent any sort of threat to the survival of the species, the heterosexual premise nonetheless prevents them from seeing us as being quite as human as they.  We are still damaged goods.  Because the natural condition of a human being is heterosexual.  Yes, we should treat the gays with decency and respect.  But there is something wrong with them.  There must be.  They are not heterosexual, and heterosexual is the natural state of a human being.

Larry Niven, author of the Ringworld and Known Space stories, with that effortless self assuredness granted by the heterosexual premise, once wrote that giving the homosexuals what they want would be a good way of breeding it out of the species.  Yet it exists in all sexually reproducing species that have been studied.  Why has it not already been bred out of those then?  The heterosexual premise has no answer, only a requirement that whatever the answer is it must fit the premise.  Perhaps it is because humans are crowding the rest of animal kind out of their natural habitats.  Perhaps homosexuality spreads from species to species.  Perhaps homosexuality is such a gross distortion of nature that it’s impact cannot be confined to just the humans.  Perhaps the other animals who engage in homosexuality are a warning sign that our own dalliance with it as gone too far and now we have polluted the rest of nature with it like we have with our greenhouse gases.  Nature is not telling us we’re wrong about sexuality and sexual orientation.  Nature is telling us how bad our own behavior is.  See how easy that is?

Heterosexual sex is what makes babies.  Therefore heterosexuality is the natural condition of our kind.  Therefore something must be wrong with homosexuals.  But it is not so simple.  The two-legged thinking creature that stands before you asking for directions with a smile, or ringing up your purchase behind the checkout counter, or delivering your newspaper in the morning, carries with them every moment of their day, in their blood and bones, the entire history of life on earth.  As do you.  Ironically, the ex-gay gurus are right about one thing; we are more then our genitals.  On the other hand, there they are.  And if sex is simply for reproduction and nothing more, then why does every human male alive today have an erogenous zone up their ass?  For maybe nine-tenths of the male population that makes no sense at all.  But there it is. 

It wasn’t civilization that did that.  It wasn’t godlessness.  Somewhere back in our distant, probably pre-human past, possibly even well before that, same sex pair bonding among some individuals began making enough sense that our bodies adapted to it.  If it was destructive it would have been bred out.  If it had no benefit whatsoever that erogenous zone probably would not be.  There had to have been some selection For it.  But what?  I give my own hypothesis Here.  Others may have better ones.  The point is you make your model of human behavior fit the evidence, not make the evidence fit the model, which is what the heterosexual premise demands.  Our bodies are adapted to both opposite-sex and same-sex pair bonding.  So heterosexuality cannot be the natural state.  It is just the most likely one.

Yet in truth every color has been distorted.  And rare is the conclusion based on such observations that would not bear re-inspection if the curtain were lifted.  Lift the curtain.  Look at us as we are, not as what your conceits tell you we must be.  We are your neighbors.  We are your sons and daughters, your parents, aunts and uncles.  Look at us.  We are as human as you.  We bear within us the same story of life on earth you do.  The ancient tides pull and tug at as just as they do you.  The exaltation of love and desire burns within us as it does you.  We love.  We cherish.  We long.  We need.  There is nothing wrong with us.  Look at us.