Homosexuality is as old as all of mankind. It is also known in the animal kingdom. Lots of people are still very xenophobic though. I think that ho-mosexuals are normal people and therefore, they should be treated equally in society and have equal rights, such as to get married or adopt children.
Some people think that homosexuality is some kind of sexual deviation. They consider gays and lesbians not normal and immoral.

I totally disagree with this view of homosexual people. I think that gay people are normal; the only difference is their sexual orientation. As heterosexuals fancy the opposite sex, homosexuals simply fancy the same sex. They can feel the same love, excitement and also hatred and jealousy. Some of them are promiscuous and prefer one-night stands and some of them seek a stable relationship and faithfulness. Many people still do not know how to em-brace gay people, they still expect them to behave in a strange way, e.g. they expect gays to fancy and want all men so they are sometimes worried of sexual harassment and molesting. This is again a big misunderstanding of the nature of homosexuality. I do not expect a normal heterosexual man to fancy all women and even if he fancies some woman I do not expect him to “jump” on her senselessly. And it works exactly in the same way with a homosexual man, just the object of the attraction is man.

There are also many people who like homosexuals as a target of their jokes. That is caused by social prejudices. As well as some people think that all blondes are stupid, they think that gays must behave like women with all the feminine movements and funny talking. Lesbians are than con-sidered to be half-men. I find these jokes to be silly and stupid. Of course, that some gay people behave in this way, but it is not a rule, I do not even see this kind of behaviour to be something to be made fun of.

It is interesting that lesbians are more acceptable than gays for some people. Seeing two women making love is quite a common sexual fantasy of men. So why are they usually disgusted by the image of two men having sex? They think that seeing two men being gentle to each other is kind of an insult or a humiliation of the traditional masculinity. Men should be strong and have the macho ego. I do not agree with sexist opinions.

I do not like distinguishing between male and female sexuality in general and quite frankly, we should not care what two people are doing in their bedroom and how, because it is none of our business.
How are homosexuals really treated in the heterosexual society? Until the last century they were persecuted, sodomy was illegal and homosexu-als were forced underground. There are still a lot of people who do not like homosexuals even if they do not admit it openly. It is the xenophobia that has lived in people for ages. People usually do not like those who are different from the majority. The situation is getting better though and homosexuality is not a taboo any more.
This more tolerant social environment causes that gay people do not have to fear that much to admit their sexual orientation.

However, lot of homo-sexuals do worry about the reaction of their parents, friends and neighbourhood in general. Parents sometimes consider their offspring’s homosexuality a failure of their education. I think they should be proud that their son or daughter has the bravery to say openly: “Look, I am ho-mosexual. Deal with it.” They should be happy that their child lives in a time when he or she does not have to pretend heterosexuality and ended up in a relationship in which he or she would be unsatisfied.

There are also people who seem to be tolerant, but when they have to face homosexuality in their neighbourhood, suddenly, they cannot handle it. In my opinion, gay people should not care about people like this. If your friend turns his back to you after you told him about your sexual orienta-tion, he was not a good friend of yours.
Another topic that is closely related to homosexuality is registered part-nership or gay marriage. Unfortunately, members of Czech parliament re-fused to pass it and also many people do not like this proposal at all. For some, marriage is considered something untouchable. They think that ele-vating the status of gay relationships to that of heterosexual marriage would decrease the importance of marriage. They think that homosexuals do not need to get married. But registered partnership would provide ho-mosexual relationships with legal guarantees. For example, the registered partnership bill would legally specify the issue of mutual possessions. The bill would also deal with cases like the death of one partners or a divorcee.

Some people support registered partnership, but they do not want homo-sexuals to adopt children. Their point is that children who would grow up in a homosexual environment will be homosexual as well. They say that the child would lack the opposite sex’s influence in a homosexual family. How-ever, it has not been proved that a child that is brought up in a homosex-ual family must necessarily be homosexual. I think that homosexuals should have a chance to adopt children.

There are loads of lonesome children out there. Thousands of children are longing to have a family, or want to be loved. For a child, it is better to have some family than no family at all. Of course, in a family like that there would be only male or female parents. On the other hand, single mothers are allowed to adopt children. There is also a large number of di-vorced marriages where children live with only one parent and no one seems to be bothered by that.
To sum up, even though lots of things have improved for homosexuals we should still fight against the intolerance and xenophobia of many people. Registered partnership and allowance to adopt children is definitely a good way to help homosexual community to have equal rights with the het-erosexual majority. I think they deserve it.

Some research shows that 26 percent of teenagers with other than heterosex-ual orientation were forced to leave home in consequence of committing himself to his parents (Ivana Červenková, Dôsledky homofóbie a heterosexizmu, Nevidi-teľná menšina, 2002)