There always seem to be people asking questions. They are always searching for explanations of things: why are some people gay and some not? What kind of gender do gay men have?

The gender issue is particularly confusing. In any case the question is not limited to any particular culture nor even to human beings. The question is much more complicated than simply gay vs. straight.

As the son of a missionary in Polynesia. I learned the Polynesian way to view gay and straight relationships. Such views are cultural even though gender and orientation are universal. In old times in Polynesia, the committed gay men were called "mahu." They were the equivalent of the native American Two-Sspirits, the berdaches. But, since same-sex sex is (or was in the 1930's and before) fully acceptable, there were others who regularly had sex with other men. They were called "aikane." They did not display the same gay orientation that the mahu did. Many of them, but not all, were bisexual while. Rather few of the mahu were bisexual. If there were gender differences, then the mahu were different from the aikane who, in turn, were different from straight men. The gay culture in Polynesia is, or was, vastly different from the gay culture here.

In our culture, because of homophobia, there are far fewer adult men who behave as aikane. It is not too uncommon among horny teenagers, however. Later, when they grow up, if they are bisexual they often insist that they are straight. They do not want to be called gay. Here both mahu and aikane are lumped together and called gay.

A theory that I like to call the "High-Low Theory" offers one of the most intriguing explanations that I ever heard of for gender differences. Before we get to the theory, however, please understand that the word, "gender," has to do with behavior. It does not mean biological sex, the way the word is commonly used today.

The "High-Low Theory" is this: If a biological male has high male gender, then he is straight. Likewise, a female with high female gender is straight. Now it sometimes happens that a male will have high female gender. Then he is gay. If a person has both high male and high female genders, then he or she is androgynous, or bisexual. People who are low in both genders are undifferentiated. This is the only theory I know of that makes such neat distinctions or that explains bisexuality so well.

I adamantly defended the "High-Low Theory" for years. Then I began reflecting back on people whom I have met or known over my life time. There were some exceptional cases. I recall one log truck driver, a real husky brute, who was really a woman. In spite of rumors it was not until I happened (by accident, of course) to see that hunk naked that I was certain that she was a woman. She was very masculine. She was straight, too, in terms of sexual activity. Anyone who suggested that she might be lesbian might get his "lights punched out."

The "High-Low Theory" has other faults as well. It does not explain where the male and female genders come from. Obviously they could not be mandated, as is commonly supposed, by biological sex. Nor is the difference between the mahu and the aikane recognized or explained unless the aikane happen to be bisexual, which was commonly the case.

When I was growing up in the 1930's and 40's gay people were often called inverts or perverts. People said that they were just awful. They were sick. You would not believe the things that I was.told they would do. I was not just awful like one of them so I knew that I was not an invert or a pervert. Sure, I liked to be naked and mess around with my friends. They were the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen. But were we perverts? No!

My family left Polynesia and moved to California in the 1930's before the war. I made new friends. Then came the time, in my teen years, when like most boys I began sleeping over with my friends. I loved to do that.

There were some special friends whom I was especially fond of sleeping over with. I remember times when a friend and I would lie naked on his or my bed. We had slept over together the night before. We would caress and hold each other. We felt no need or desire to restrain our feelings for each other. I would drink his semen as it spurted from his body. I would savor his musky aroma and find delight in his ecstasy.

Such feelings are wonderful. I always felt as though I had just been served holy communion. God does live in everyone. I am convinced of that. The communion served to me on those delightful occasions came from the deities within my friends. We would hold and caress each other some more. I would take my turn in the opposite role.

It is very sad that today one must use condoms for protection against the plague. The touch and taste of naked genitals, the taste of semen, the pure aroma of sexual musk, all of those things add to the experience. Still, there are many other wild things that a person can do that are safe and that harm no one.

But what made us suck each other? Most of my friends were masculine boys. We grew up rough. We went to war--most of us as medics--where one of my best friends was killed. Later I rode Brahma bulls in rodeos. After college I became a professional forester. Still later I excelled in master's sports. Before I became a vegetarian I use to hunt big game. Neither my friends nor I were particularly effeminate. But we loved each other and delighted in having sex together. We all had a lot of teenage spunk and lust. At least some of us were true mahu. But many of my teenage friends proved, over time, to be more of the aikane orientation. Later they became bisexual and still later they would insist that they were totally straight. Those of us who were mahu saw the world differently than most boys did. We knew that we were different. We also knew that we were not just awful--not one of those.

What, then, is the constitution of a mahu that is so different from a non-mahu? It is not sex. The aikane have sex with each other but otherwise are more straight than gay. True gayness means more than sex. Even within our gay culture there are common misconceptions about that. I believe that it is largely gay culture, not gender, that causes us to be gentle, to take a different approach to roughness, to life, and to its problems. Gay gender has often been described as fitting into the gay culture of cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam. There is a distinct gay culture in the big cities. Since gayness creates minority culture subjected to discrimination by the majority, a sense of community is evident there.

Being gay does not mean that a man will not be rough, however. I have known gay cowboys, gay loggers, and gay mountain men. They were committed to being gay but did not fit into the urban gay culture at all. They showed little interest in drag shows, gay bars, baths, or any other of the urban gay scenes. They were not part of that community.

This brings up the question of psychological types. The gay Jungian analyst, Graham Jackson, wrote two fascinating books on that subject: The Secret Lore of Gardening, Patterns of Male Intimacy and The Living Room Mysteries, Patterns of Male Intimacy Book 2 (both available from Inner City Books, Box 1271, Station Q, Toronto, Canada M4T 2P4). The first of these deals with these differences in type. There is the "green" type, earth centered. The rural gay cowboys that I knew tended to be of the "green" type. And there is the "yellow" type, sky centered. These types behave differently and have different affinities.

The evidence, then, is that much that is commonly perceived as typically gay is typical of only the urban portion of the gay population. Those people tend to have a disproportionately high percentage of the "yellow" type. Groups that claim to be rural, such as the Radical Fairies, are often composed largely of people from urban areas who have moved out of town to form their own communities. They bring their urban culture with them. It is the urban gay population that produces the gay media. Writers tend to be of the "yellow" type. Consequently the gay media is inadvertently biased.

What I am getting at here is that neither the urban gay culture, nor any other culture, is predicted by a population being gay. There are questions of psychological type and of the parent culture. Still, there do seem to be traits characteristic of most gay men, but often for explainable reasons.

Alexander the Great was a famous historic gay general. One of his tactics was to hide some of his troops, and then fall back. The enemy would follow him as he falsely retreated. Then the hidden troops would then come out of hiding and surround the enemy. Often the enemy would surrender with little or no fighting. His was a gay approach to doing battle. Some people might call it effeminate. He avoided violence. But he won his battles. It is hard to imagine the macho generals of the Pentagon behaving that way today.

Perhaps there was a reason for Alexander's avoidance of violence. Perhaps it was for the same reason that gay men often choose to be medics rather than to go into the infantry. Is it because they do not wish to kill beautiful men? How many straight men would want to slaughter an army made up of sexy pin-up girls?

One might also consider the martial arts. In the soft arts, such as judo and jujitsu, when someone pulls, you push. When someone pushes, you pull. Perhaps gay men sometimes prefer the soft arts so that they can touch and hold another man. And who were the "soft" people who developed those arts? It is well known that some of the early Samurai who developed those arts were gay. The soft arts contrast vividly with the kick-and-punch hard arts, such as karate, which seem to be more popular with straight people.

Body building is popular with gay men. There are well-known gay athletes. The commonly offered belief that gay men do not like sports is false. Consider the Gay Games, for instance. There we have a beautiful exhibit of well-tuned bodies working to perfection. There is a celebration of health and vigor. The exuberance and joie de vivre is wonderful to behold. All of this is accompanied with camp humor and laughter (and some, yes, some cruising). It is a delight for a gay man to participate in such an event. My feeling, now, is that neither science nor gay men have accurately described a gay gender. Much that has been attributed to gender is really culture.

There are different theories that I have not mentioned, of course. Karl Ulrich proposed, many years ago, that gay men comprise a third sex, a third gender, which he referred to as Urnings. Since then several other thinkers have suggested the same thing. Modern science seems to reject those ideas.

Possibly we are a third gender. But if we are, then how can we explain the androgynous, the bisexuals, the aikane, and the other variations? There are quite a number of sexual orientations and paraphilias. Are they other genders, too? How many genders are there? Such an explanation creates more questions than it answers.

It is human nature--our nature--to seek answers. We ask questions. We follow the ancient admonition: "Know thyself." Fun, isn't it?

As for sexual orientations, I see them as spiritual. Our gayness is a spiritual gift. It is a gift that, by setting us apart, gives us wonderful insights and opportunities. Sharing sex with gay friends can be spiritual acts. I still like to think of sex, especially oral sex, as holy communion. It comes from God, the Gods within our partners.

Regardless of the gender-culture question I give thanks to God, the God within each one of us, that helping another person into ecstasy is a possibility. It is a possibility that we can find delight in.