do you think I'm sexy?
Chandler Burr is the author of A Separate Creation, which discusses the search for the biological origins of homosexuality. He is also my former housemate. We shared a bathroom which he left for me to clean, the bastard.

You told me that in college you slept with women. Were you trying to be "normal"?
Normal in the sense of "with the majority." I never entertained any delusions that I was not gay. I can get an erection with a woman, but there's no passion involved.

When did you lose your virginity?
When I played around with a neighbor who was straight. We were 12 or 13. We had sex for about three years, until he got interested in girls. That happens a lot. I have a straight friend who had sex with a gay man for two years.

How did that work?
Some straight people have the capacity for same-sex sex. For instance, sleeping with a woman gave me pleasure; I ejaculated. But I could never fall in love with a woman. I never wanted to wake up next to a woman, or hold a woman in my arms, or walk in a rainstorm holding hands.

Many straights don't understand why sexuality is so important that a gay person needs to shout it on the streets. Is there something besides sex that makes you gay?
Gay men have different sensibilities. There's a theory of sexual orientation development that involves pre-natal hormonal masculization. You probably didn't know this, but each infant is born with a full set of internal male and female sexual organs plus the genetic equipment to create the glands that create the hormones that determine the outer genitals. With the creation of a male, you have to have testosterone to create your organs and other characteristics. But you also need MIH, a hormone that prevents the female organs from developing.
The theory is that gay men not only masculize, they also feminize, so that you have a person with both male and female psychosexual characteristics. Gay males get the outer sexual organs but the MIH doesn't quite kick in. So you have males born with male genitals but with brains that have strong female components, although that's tricky to define. Is it being more caring, is it putting on nail polish? The female components in your brain have been wiped out; maybe mine haven't. What's more, for every 100 female conceptions, there are 150 male conceptions — yet males and females are born at the same rate. So it appears males are more vulnerable to variations in development.

What about bisexuality?
A bisexual is someone who is 100 percent attracted to both genders. I've never met anyone like that. My friend who had sex with this gay man, he enjoys the guy's company and the sex in a physical way, but he's straight. He doesn't look at men when he walks down the street, or wait by the phone for his male lover to call.

Are there more gay people now?
We've always been about 10 percent of the population, just like 12 percent of the population is left-handed.

Why are so many gay men effeminate?
Some straight men are effeminate, some aren't. Some men play sports, some don't. There are all kinds of gay people. In my running club, Bill is really masculine and muscular, while Rick is a queen, a fairy. He's got this squeaky voice. So they're opposites, but they're both gay.

So what determines, since they're both gay, the differences?
What determines the difference between your behavior and that of another straight man? Personality is also biochemically determined. I have a straight friend who's like Rick. And God, my friend Donna, she is a dyke who looks likes Attila the Hun. But this other lesbian I know, she's drop-dead gorgeous and very feminine.

Can you introduce us? She might change.
She would, for you.

Tell me about when you told your parents you were gay. Had they suspected?
No. They had been taught that homosexuals were perverts and monsters and deviants and sickos and weirdos. In other words, not like their son.

How did you break it to them?
I cornered my mother one morning. She went through the typical reactions: "It's just a phase." "You'll grow out of it." "You just want a political cause to march under." "It's my fault." "Who did this to you?" My father understands better.

When you hear people like Pat Buchanan attack gays, or someone express their aversion to homosexuality, do you sympathize in any way?
In the way you sympathize with anyone who's ignorant. When I was in Japan at age 22, I had a friend who called once and said she couldn't go out because she had to cook dinner for her father and brother. I said, Why don't I just come over? And she about had a heart attack. No, no!, my father doesn't like white people because they're dirty and ugly and so forth. [Shrugs.] How was I supposed to feel about that?

In a former life, I was told that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin.
It also says we shouldn't eat pork. It also says that women should not speak in public. If you believe that the Bible is the word of God, the conversation ends there.

I'm curious about why gay men have this reputation for being promiscuous.
This is an argument that has been used against us, but it has a biological explanation. There's a story about President Coolidge, that he was visiting a farm when a rooster came out and jumped on a hen. The First Lady asked, "Does he do that every day?" And the farmer said, "Sometimes three or four times." She said, "Tell that to the President." And then Coolidge asked, "Does he always do it with the same hen?" And the farmer said, "No." The president said, "Tell that to the First Lady." The expression of the sex drive in males is to have sex more often with a greater number of partners. Women want less sex with a single partner over a longer period. Gay men could be said to be lucky, in that sense, because we're interested in someone with the same sex drive.

That must be great. So you don't have any desire to be straight?
If I were straight, do you know how much I would not understand, having gone through all the pain I have?

If bigots want to get rid of gays, shouldn't they create an environment where gays feel comfortable, form non-reproductive relationships and doom themselves?
Sure, Chip.

Thanks a million, Chandler.