Enquiring minds may wonder what one might learn about homosexuality from patients. Gagdad Bob had a good post on this in relation to 'perpetrators.' Homosexuality may be a more common issue in therapy than in life generally because of what might be called a rule of abstinence in therapy and traditionally, in general, for physicians. This promotes unburdening so to speak. However I am talking here about someone who identifies himself, and reasonably so, as homosexual. One of my patients grew up in a loving household, seemed not traumatized by his mother, and had homosexual feelings as, at least in retrospect, his primary sexual feelings from adolescence. The military was in a way no different that ordinary life where he didn't advertise his sexuality and got along. He was castigated however later in his nonmilitary career as homosexual, ceased gainful employment and, for a while, drank excessively. Later, after something of a depression, he talked to me about his experiences, seemed to look for a comforting mirror. For myself I came away from the experience thinking something of the standard liberal view that for some people sexual excitement is going to go in that direction. One 'fact of life' he told me was that homosexuals tend to have a particular sexual practice that they will engage in. Among his group, the people who did not get AIDS were those whose practice was fellatio. He thought the word 'gay' was traceable back to the 'gay nineties.' A subtext of that title was that the people characterizing the time were sexually uninhibited, without decisively countervailing moral constraint;... so free to express homosexuality. Those latter stayed in the 'gay' period while some other facet of self expression became most prominent in the general society with the passage of time.

In part what brings me to this post is the recent gay expressivity on the right. I guess this is to put in perspective every Democrats favorite congressman, "Howdy" Foley. Also known, not so anonymously, by the introduction, "Hello! My name is Mark Foley and I have been alcoholic 2-3 days now." A good Catholic girl is celebrating her fellatio and cunnilingus; I'll let you check with her about the spelling of the latter. Interesting comment there about the Samuel Pepys diary and mine, 34, at 10:36 AM; #37 wondered if this wasn't 'WAAAY too much information.' It may be that the various revelations and Foley's conduct are a part of attempting to gain, as my patient, a sympathetic mirror, perhaps in Foley's case because of feelings of conflict over his thoughts. So far there is smoke but no fire.

On the weightier topic of North Korea, Instapundit reports a view that NK may have been testing an Iranian nuke. An author on the Michael Medved show said that if the South Koreans will withdraw their support from NK then the Chinese will join the consensus. Similarly, the Russians and the Chinese oppose action against Iran; but, 'if the Russians can be bought off,' the Chinese again will join a consensus. All in all, an interesting hypothesis about 'the mind of the East.'