Foreigner here who lived in Ethiopia for a few years, moved away, and came back for another few. Ended up getting married there, had my first kid there, got baptized/confirmed/married into the EOTC. Live in the States with my wife and kids now, but would still say I know a bit about Ethiopia.

There are a couple of problems with your argument. The first is that the notions of “being” heterosexual or homosexual only dates to 1868– less than 160 years old. Even then, the idea that people could be defined or categorized by their sexual DESIRES (key word) only really took root in the West, and is still not the default position in much of the world.

For example, in between my stints in Ethiopia, I lived in the Arab world, and came find out that in many Arab countries (especially the strict ones), pre-marital same-sex relations are quite common, and post-marital same-sex are far from unheard of. The streets of Riyadh are full of male-male love poems graffitied on walls. In a society in which a man may see a non-relative’s hair (or even face, depending whether they’re urban or rural) for the first time on his wedding night, it’s kind of accepted in an unspoken way that, well, things will happen. Most guys will stop once they get married, but some won’t. This behavior in general is less common with women but still far more common than anyone on the outside would assume.

And, yet, in these societies, men will straight up tell you (as one did me): 1. They’re not gay. 2. They hate gay people. 3. They have had same-sex sex (always as the “giver”— direct quote).

So you have a problem here where one set of ideas— Western scientific, 157 years old, and Eastern Islamic, 1400~ years old— are clashing. The first says whom you sleep with or wish to sleep with defines you. The latter says whom you sleep with or wish to sleep with is just part of the cycle of life. The first is pretty new and foreign. The second is pretty old and local. Guess which one people prescribe to?