The Taste of Eve
It was at a private British boarding school in the outskirts of Nakuru, a lazy city situated in Kenya's Rift Valley, that I fulfilled before understanding the most forbidden of amorous and carnal desires. At night the older girls would take my hand, lead the way into Eden and pluck from ripe trees ambrosia which we'd gently devour. We weren't yet at the age when sexual mores are commonly instilled but we were already inculcated into gender performance. In the day we'd engage in male-female courtship rituals, and play hop-scotch and double dutch. Taking shade from the Savannah sun, we'd sit under imported Willow trees and gossip about the boarding school staff. During the evening communal baths we'd pretend that our stares at each others bodies was just innocent pubescent curiosity about maturing. One day we'd be women who took instead twilight liaisons with dark, handsome husbands. Our current after hours reveries would be a distant memory that we'd excuse as youthful play.
Sadly, I lost touch with those girls as I soon afterwards transferred to a day school in the capital city then moved yet again, this time to another continent. Whether the girls were able to transition successfully out of their juvenile dalliances would remain a mystery. All that I could ascertain was that at 25, I hadn't.
Social construction theorists would argue that early exposure to female homosexuality provided a congenial environment for the development and expression of same-gender interest. Religious homophobes would add a twist to this and say my adolescent sexuality is proof that homosexuals are perverts who aim to steer their children from the path of righteousness. Had God intended for same sex, sexual orientation they'd argue, he would have made us all one sex. As an agnostic atheist I do not believe in the God of the existing monotheistic religions, but if there was a God he certainly intended that there exist some degree of homosexuality in nature.
Same sex, sexual activity has been recorded in more than 500 species. Scientific research has discovered biological factors that predispose people to homosexuality such as hormonal imbalance during fetal neural development and carrying particular X chromosomal DNA markers designated Xq28. Nearly half of all women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition, in which masculine characteristics such as androgenized genitalia are pronounced, are lesbians. Evolutionists posit that people who themselves do not have children may nonetheless increase the prevalence of their family's genes in future generations by providing resources to the offspring of their closest relatives. Thus countering the argument that homosexuality is maladaptive to evolution.
The science on homosexuality though is incomplete. What can be deduced however is that homosexuality occurs due to a complex combination of polygenetics, fetal environment, and culture. All the same had homosexuality been a choice, I'd gladly forgo heterosexuality and bite the forbidden fruit to be once again in Eden. Rather than condemn me, the religious should support my efforts to seek just as they do transcendental experiences.
