Comments

I feel for your brother, I can't imagine how hard it must be to come out in (most) desi families. I congratulate him for being courageous enough to do it. It sounds like you really want to be there for your brother, which is wonderful. As so many people have been saying lately, it DOES get better, and it will get better for him. The parents may or may not be able to accept him, but I have no doubt that your brother will find some peace and happiness in this world. I wish you and your brother the very best, and I hope that your parents do find a way to accept your brother for who he is, and now who they think he should be.

It takes a lot of courage to do that - kudos to your brother. I bet it's a huge relief to him regardless of the family's reactions :-). It's great you want to be there for your bro, like Desidoll said. I hope one day it'll be more accepted in our community, we have to make sure we're the generation that is tolerant so that we can create a new positive cycle :-). Cheers and best of luck!

All love and support to you and your brother! You're right, the drama was completely unneeded. But all you two can do now is do all you can to eliminate as much chance for drama by keeping your heads high and staying proud of each other, which I'm sure you will. I'm very proud of both of you! Good luck and keep going!

Homosexuality is not accepted as per Biblical Law. It is all in your brother's head, no one is born a homosexual. Help him get over it.

@ Anees: not everybody follows Biblical law. In fact, many people don't even think that "god" exists (myself included). Biblical law might be your law and the way you live your life, but that's not how it works for everybody else. (Thankfully, biblical law isn't even the law of the US, UK, or Canada.) Do you have proof that homosexuality is something a person isn't born with? Scientific, verifiable evidence? If you think homosexuality is a choice, that implies that you think heterosexuality is a choice. I'm curious, when did you make the choice to be a heterosexual? Homosexual acts and heterosexual acts might be a matter of choice, but the question of whether the underlying sexual AND emotional attraction is a choice has not been resolved yet. Homosexuality has been observed in other animal species as well as in human beings, FYI. Homosexuality is also not some sort of mental defect that is in somebody's head, the APA removed homosexuality as being some sort of mental disorder in the 1970s. He has NOTHING to "get over". You cannot "pray the gay away". The OP's brother is JUST FINE the way he is. You may not think its okay according to your moral code, but your moral code does NOT apply to everybody else.

Careful, Miss D.D., you're safer sticking to that first statement, 'The question has not been resolved yet.' Science has a ways to go. Recall Dr. LeVay's findings of some twenty years back ('A difference in hypothalamic structure between heterosexual and homosexual men'). LeVay himself insisted that he had not shown at all that homosexuality is genetic, but only that he had identified something unusual in the brain that is consistently associated with it. That had lots of people upset -what if male homosexual behaviour turns out to be a matter for the neuropsychiatrist after all, as it was assumed back in the bad old days? Even if it could be clearly shown to be so for some cases (for example, for the men whose brains LeVay had the opportunity to slice up), that could not possibly be the whole story. History shows that homosexuality was indeed a choice, a deliberate and carefully rationalised choice, for many men in many very different cultures and sub-cultures, for a variety of reasons, some aesthetic, some 'male chavinist', and some even oddly theological. Add to that the well-known 'faute de mieux' (='for want of better') type of behaviour, observed in prisons, lumber-camps, remote mining compounds, and in our very own Old Far West, where the Break-Butt Mountain scenario has been recorded time and again for posterity through etchings and anecdotes (and through a variety of joke about 'whose turn it is tonight in the barrel' ...but I digress). Surely, those Greek aesthetes, Buddhist and Catholic monks, jail-birds, motorcycle gangsters and gay caballeros couldn't ALL have had malformed INAH3 ? They had reasons that they believed in: sex with women is merely for reproduction, and women are there merely for child-rearing. Real men should seek love and gratification from the beautiful beardless youth. Various Old World belief systems (when twisted hard enough by the ignorant and the self-serving) support this way of thinking. Where homosexuality is opportunistic or merely expedient, as in prisons and boarding-houses, it is promptly justified by the popular claim that sexual gratification is as important as food and water. It seems to me that there must be different kinds of homosexuals, and that various factors may come together to lead a man to this behaviour. To say that the poster's brother 'is just fine as is' really is beside the point, and .... oops.... fire alarm over here, sorry

@ Fettslaab: The point I was trying to make, and what you are trying to get at, are actually similar (I think). Science hasn't resolved the issue yet, there is still a lot to learn. It may well be a variety of different factors that contribute to sexual orientation. Honestly I think sexuality might be fluid in some people. I agree that there are different kinds of homosexuals, because there are different kinds of heterosexuals as well. I don't think that some difference in the brain structures of homosexual and heterosexual men is enough to say that the homosexual man (or woman, for that matter) must have a mental disorder. Why would such a difference mean that the person is mentally ill? Again, I think this is something for science to figure out. As for history showing that homosexuality is a "Carefully rationalized choice", once again I think the act itself is a choice, I don't know that the underlying sexual attraction is. Even if it were a choice, why can't a person make that choice? what business is it of anybody else's to tell them they cannot make the choice to engage in homosexual acts with another consenting adult? Bottom line, it just grates my nerves when somebody makes a blanket statement like "no one is born a homosexual". I have 2 very dear friends who have known from middle school (and possibly before then) that they were homosexuals. They didn't just think it over one day and decide to be homosexual, it is a part of who they have always been. Coming out for both of them was very, very difficult. I admit I didn't state my points very well in my post, but 1) not as much time to complete my thoughts, 2) coffee hadn't kicked in yet :) Anyhoo, hope you're doing well, Fettslaab :)

I agree with Anees and Fettslaab.

To the faithful sibling: your lucidity is impressive, and I am sorry about all of the pointless crying and dying and smoting of bosom in your home. Your people may have no other way at the moment of dealing with this major disruption of their life program. They can't very well go talk it over with their friends and relatives, can they.

@ fettslaab there are many articles that suggest no one is born heterosexual/homosexual and that our preferences are a result of the culture we are socialized into (Alfred Kinsey for example). Regardless of whether homosexuality is nature or nurture comments like Anees are ridiculous - @ Anees I wish someone would help you get over your intolerance.

Hello, Mr. Dilj, The position you refer to is no longer tenable, although after all these years, it remains popular. DiMasio and associates have produced mountains of evidence for the profoundly different organizational principles underlying the architecture of the male and the female brain. The nervous systems of boys and girls are thoroughly differentiated before birth. Cultures do indeed mold their boys and girls in some ...remarkable ways, but they all have to start with the same basic, given contrast: MALE vs. FEMALE. I'm aware that even after so many years, this is unwelcome news to many, but it is hardly an hypothesis or a viewpoint -it is a well-established fact. The claim that male and female identities and thought patterns are the invention of culture does still pop out now and again, but that may be in knee-jerk obeisance to political correctness, the sort of dogmatic conformism I suppose you would reject out of hand. ...I am sorry about some of the other posters' lack of compassion for the poster's homosexual brother. No one has untangled the mess of biological and other factors that lead some people this way. There something to the glib statement that 'it is all in the young man's head', but that is unhelpful and calloused.

...There may* be... etc.

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