Medical science has failed utterly to discover a way to determine the "sexual orientation" of an infant at birth. No journal or school of medicine has ever reported the discovery of any sort of "homosexual gene" (See refutation of "innateness" theory of homosexual orientation under Criterion #2 of this paper).

No parent has ever been able to say, when a child is born, "I've just given birth to a healthy little homosexual." No parent looks at a newborn baby and says, "What a lovely lesbian infant!" No doctor can tell the parents of a new-born child, "You're parents of a bouncing baby bisexual!" These classifications can only be made much later, and not even for certain on the basis of observed behavior.

On grounds this tenuous, why not grant protected status to other alleged sharers or cravers of pleasurable physical behaviors? Why not protected status for beer drinkers, who share a pleasurable, sometimes dangerous, physical behavior? Or smokers, whose behavior is, in fact, discriminated against by many who don't share it? Or football fans, who evidence a distinct subculture built around their shared spectating behavior? Or prostitutes, who share the practice of "divergent" sexual behavior for profit? Or anyone merely claiming a desire to engage in these behaviors?

Or, as homosexual author Marshall Kirk has in fact suggested, why not protected class status for left-handed people? Left-handers' physically innate behavior is discriminated against by nearly every mechanical device ever invented and in current use.

(A recently-released study in The New England Journal of Medicine presented statistical evidence that left-handed individuals live an average of nine years less than right-handed people. Left-handers are forced to endure lifetimes as objects of epithets like "southpaw" and "lefty." "Left-wing" is a term with highly sinister connotations. The word "sinister" itself derives from a Latin word for left-handedness. Left-handed people may well outnumber homosexuals in our society. Does it follow that society should feel compelled to make left-handers a specially protected class? Or that left-handers should launch a left- handers' liberation movement?)

As Dr. David Willis of Corvallis, Oregon, has observed, regulating behavior is the very heart of America's legal system. Even behaviors that are not illegal are subject to legal sanctions when engaged in to excess or in a manner that is distressing to others. Willis gives as examples abuse of alcohol, obscene speech, failure to pay one's bills, smoking in enclosed public places and even gross neglect of personal cleanliness.

Even sexual behaviors involving "mutual consent" are subject to society's sanctions. A prime example is adultery, which, however widely practiced, is generally considered socially undesirable and detrimental to family stability.

To say that the "homosexual rights" agenda should be legally immune from criticism under "gay rights" laws is, as Willis concludes, "to subvert the essential nature of civil rights legislation and, indeed to provide `special [status]' for only one type of behavior" (July, 1992 newsletter, First Baptist Church, Corvallis, Oregon).

(Willis' point is underscored by the realization that, as we shall see, gays are not a true minority class, but a powerful special interest group attempting to advance its agenda under the cloak of civil rights rhetoric.)

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