Reply #55: In this matter, though, they reflect America's profound conservatism.

[Orsino]

Or prudery. Or schoolyardishness, or whatever it is.

If more Americans were live-and-let-live, more of our politicians would be, too. I'm afraid that our love of guns and bluster is of a piece with our fear of not being goddamned mahnly enough. We have internalized the conservative sense of entitlement without ever being secure in it. We require, or are amused by, constant reinforcement of the myth of the ten-foot-tall Anglo-Saxon American male, in coonskin cap and totin' automatic weapons, who takes giant strides across the globe, kicking women and minorities of all stripes with a rebel yell and whiskey-drool, leaving a trail of radioactive mine tailings, ash and mass graves wherever he goes.

We can't get our heads around the fuzzy concept of men who like sleeping with other men, however often it happens in our most macho of communities: soldiering, cowpunching and incarceration. We'd prefer to believe every case an aberration rather than a fact of life, to be snickered at--and bloodily avenged--rather than accepted.