Reading your post left me with great concern for your well being.  I registered with this site, just so that I can give you a reply and some advise.  First, a little about me; I am a 68 year old white male.  I work as a tugboat captain, a job I love.  I am married to a man, whom I love as well, tho he is not my first.  I am a happy man.  I often say that if I were to keel over dead right now I would die a happy man.  It seems to me a good measure of the quality of life.  However, from the time of puberty until I was 23 years old I was miserable.  Eventually, I became reclusive, negative, and morose.  Some of my friends, and even my mother, had made anti-gay statements that served to make my hate my feelings even more.  Furthermore, I lived in a small city and the only gay people I knew of were very flamboyant ‘queens’ and I knew I was not like that.  After my best friend expressed a fear that I was suicidal ( I wasn’t – yet ) I realized that I had a serious problem that I had to face up to.  Otherwise, the downward spiral would take me down.  So, I sat myself down and admitted to myself that I was gay.  I did not act on that knowledge for a year, but in that time I told my friends, thinking they would find out anyway and preferring to make a clean cut if that was to be the result.  You should know this: I never lost a single friend as a result of them finding out I was gay. In fact, that was 45 years ago and the people who were my best friends then are still my friends.  I was not ostracized by my family either, tho many people are.  Also, I am ‘out’ at work, which doesn’t cause my any problems or discomfort, even tho I work in what would undoubted by considered a ‘macho’ occupation.

You ask if homosexuality is a perversion and if gay people can love.  Of course, I am biased.  Furthermore, one might ask what ‘true love’ is, and how would one know if he is experiencing it?  I cannot answer that except to say that I have most definitely been ‘heartbroken’ as a result of being dumped by a man I loved.  I don’t recommend it, but it’s part of life, I guess.  Homosexuality exists in every culture ( I know, I travel a lot ), in every age, and in other animals as well.  I estimate that it occurs in 4-5% of the male population and I have read that it occurs in 8% of male sheep, for example.  Whatever it is, it is NOT a perversion.  The worst part of being gay is not what is in you, it’s the intolerance of others who are incapable of understanding the beautiful diversity of human experience.

So, here is my advise to you: stop fighting it.  Nobody has ever succeeded in doing so, although there a few screwed up people who make that claim, often being caught in their hypocrisies.  Don’t believe the criticisms people lay against the “gay lifestyle.”  There is no such thing.  You make your lifestyle, nobody else does.  But being gay is not the same as being strait, so you should also not fall into the trap of trying to live a “strait lifestyle.”  Be true to yourself; there is nobody else in the world whose acceptance of you is as important than your own.

Your decision regarding how to view your sexual orientation is going to be the prime determinant of your future happiness.  I urge you to choose happiness.

Scott