Bugger thy neighbour

Is it 'nature' or 'nurture' that has something to do with the reason a person becomes gay.
Notice I say becomes, because we seem these days to rule out any genetic condition.
For a person of my years it's astonishing the number of people who claim to be gay, lesbian or homosexual and that equally mystifying group who change their sexual proclivity,the transgender folk.
I was listening the other day to the claims made, that being the younger of older brothers leaves one open to some sort of nurture change in the phycology of the child, whilst twins carried in the same fluid sack have a propensity to become statistically accountable for changes in the hormonal attraction to one of ones own gender.
It's a rum old world from the one I grew up in where being "straight" was being normal and you never doubted where your attractions lay.
Of course the closset gay was confined to silence, believing there was something wrong with them because of their urges. Of course society was prescriptive in those days as it disciplined itself in so many ways to counteract the hard social setting which constrained the people like a Presbyterian sermon.
The stricture regarding sex and its place in the religious hierarchies of good and bad made things both simple and hard. The transgressors were the black sheep, cast out from the flock, marked and stigmatised like the Jews in Poland. Not with the same disregard for their humanity but never the less placed in quarantine, as if their plight, and it was considered a plight, was contagious.
Today in our rush to free society from any constraint, in our encouragement of freedom and unanimity, anything and everything goes, irrespective of custom or tradition, irrespective of the ancient rules which were set in place to guide society in what was considered its best interest.
I was drawn to write this piece after popping into the pub close to the supermarket I walk to from home.

It was a Saturday.  I fancied a half pint and a quick excursion into the world of football, the pub has a lot of TV screens and is popular for its sport.

I hadn't been in more than a couple of minutes when the place erupted, the final score line, West Bromwich Albion 1, West Ham 2. The crucial win meant the West Ham stayed in the 'Premier League' for another season. The place was in uproar " I'm forever blowing bubbles" the club signature tune was sung as people hugged and kissed each other. Wait on. kissed each other, what was going on.
The non so subtle glances, the overt signals between what I had always taken to be a pub for the building trade, the ubiquitous  "painter and the bricky", now seemed transmuted from darkest Soho. What had been a rough and ready meeting spot for the trade had turned into a pub celebrating the gay fraternity and, as the scales fell away from my eyes, I saw elements of the licentious performance which had driven me to say, after seeing  the outrageous groping that went on in the pubs of Soho, never again.
I suppose like moths to a flame they are drawn to their own camaraderie, their own club. their own predilection. I felt like a wall flower, not wishing to be plucked (yes I said plucked) I downed my drink and wandered on home to my Horlicks and a current bun thinking, is nothing sacred in this world of "bugger thy neighbour" !!!