homosexual

Definitions

someone that loves another person of the same sex.

---

form of sexuality

---

(Noun) Love may have nothing to do with homosexuality. We can define several words often used under the umbrella of 'homosexual' - one who has sexual desire for another of the same sex or one who loves a person of the same sex. Generally, someone whose soul is one sex and whose body is another (See the Mae West quote) are called transgender and they consider themselves straight because their soul, however they define it, is attracted to someone of the opposite sex. So a man who believes he has the soul of a woman trapped in a man's body, a transgender, is attracted to men which is, for her, the opposite sex.
Many fundamentally religious people believe that one is not homosexual until one has actually had sex with someone of the same sex, that otherwise, they are heterosexuals who have sinned only in their thoughts, that the mere presence of desire does not make one a homosexual.
Most gay people believe that a person is gay simply if s/he says s/he is, that self-definition is the only accurate way to label people.
This is supported by the research of Kinsey in the 1940s.

---

1. Relating to or characterized by a sexual orientation (love or desire) for people of the same sex.

2. A person who is sexually or romantically attracted only to people of the same gender.
ETYMOLOGY: Coined in 1869 by a Hungarian physician named Karoly Maria Benkert from the Greek homos and the Latin sexus, meaning same sex. It entered the English language in 1892 through C. G. Chaddocks translation of Krafft-Ebings Psychopathia Sexualis. The term first appeared in US medical journals in the 1890s, and began appearing in general usage in the 1920s. Historical trivia: In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
Usage: Homosexual(ity) has long been regarded as etymologically incorrect and confusing being based on the Greek homos , meaning same as, and the Latin homo , meaning man, in which case it excluses women. For this reason but also because of the prejudice attached to it, many terms have been suggested as gender-neutral substitutes for homosexuality including: controsexual, herosexual, homogenic, homoism, homophile, homophylophilia, intermediate sex, intersexual, isosexual, simulsexual. Other words are gender-specific: androtrope (male homosexual), gyneotrope / gynaeocotrope (a female homosexual), feminosexual (a lesbian, as opposed to homosexual , male homosexual).SEE ALSO: hypothalamus.

QUOTES:

(1) Mae West: ' A homosexual is a female soul in a male body.'

(2) Gay slogan: ' Homosexuality is not a four-letter word.'

(3) Boris Grushenko (Woody Allen) in Love and Death (1975): ' Some men are heterosexual, and some men are homosexual, and some men don't think about sex at all. They become lawyers.'

(4) Russell (Harold Ramis) to the recruiting sergeant in Stripes (1981): ' No, we're not homosexuals, but we're willing to learn.'

(5) Opal Gilstrap (Raye Dowell), a lesbian in She's Gotta Have It (1986): ' You're not born a lesbian or heterosexual. Both traits are within us. We all have the potential to go either way.'

(6) Murray (Donald Faison) to Cher Hamilton (Alicia Silverstone) about her friend in Clueless (1995): ' Your man Christian is a cake-boy. (...) He's a disco-dancing, Oscar Wilde-reading, Streisand ticket-holder friend of Dorothy. Know what I'm saying? '