#5: Miss Ogilvy again (see below):

It seems to me that to win over the naysayers, you really ought to emphasize the “gay is a genre” point: how, for example, might the historical shifts in understanding sexuality speak to the question of renewing same-sex friendship-blessing? One could make a case that renewing this tradition would encourage skepticism about our culture’s primary way of understanding “the tangle of experiences we’ve decided to call being gay” (as you put it in a post about Lillian Faderman). Chaste same-sex vowed friendship would be a way, not just of redeeming particular instances of same-sex attraction, but of changing (restoring?) the meaning of sexuality.

Eve says: Oh, this is so fascinating! I wish I had something useful to say about it! I know that gay is a genre but have a hard time cashing out what I mean by that. So if any of you all have thoughts on this question, I would really, really love to hear them!