As Glenn Reynolds pointed out, it was "gay day" at the Volokh Conspiracy the other day, and I was quite fascinated to read about the idea of conversion. (Eugene Volokh takes issue with the idea that gays converting straights is a myth. Well, sort of.)

But I'm -- really and truly -- too damned tired to post about it now. I don't know what the hell is wrong with my energy levels lately. I think I'll drink some Korean voodoo juice and go running. Maybe that'll convert my energy levels.

40 minutes later, and back from running, I'll give it a try. Perhaps writing will restore my lost impotent rage. . . Yes, I think if I try hard enough to offend myself, I might be able to coax out a little more adrenaline. (The problem involves a hopeless conflict between my need for sleep and my inability to meet my need.)

Anyway, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what the word "conversion" means, so I should probably begin by trying to define it in the sexual sense. Maybe begin and end -- as I don't know if I can.

I'll start with what Eugene Volokh said:

I know that if I were a heterosexual in some hypothetical future overwhelmingly homosexual society, and I were asked similar questions about "converting" people who were open to heterosexuality but had so far had only engaged in homosexual behavior into practicing bisexuals or heterosexuals, I'd say "yes." If you think some behavior can be proper and, for some group, very rewarding, you would naturally want people who aren't sure whether they fall into that group to try it out.

And if that's true, then gays and lesbians (though not necessarily each gay and lesbian) are trying to get others who have been behaviorally heterosexual, but who might be open to homosexual behavior, to try homosexual behavior. They almost certainly don't see all heterosexuals as likely converts. But they probably do think (with good reason) that some fraction — a substantial fraction compared to the number of pure homosexuals — might well be willing to change behaviors, especially if they are made to feel right and welcome in doing so. And, yes, that would include teenagers as well as fully grown adults. If most people think the age of sexual consent should be around 16 (the legal norm in the country), then I doubt that most gays and lesbians would think that it's wrong to encourage 16-year-old boys and girls who have some same-sex attraction to experiment with that attraction.

Now, as I've suggested, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about such attempt to convert people away from purely heterosexual behavior, if they are interested in homosexual behavior, and of course if the "conversion" is done without force, imposition on those who are genuinely too young to decide, and so on. If it weren't for the disproportionate and grave health danger from male homosexual activity, I'd think such encouragement to explore which relationships give people the most happiness would be positively quite good.

A bunch of commenters think I shouldn't use the word "convert," for various reasons. The reason I'm using it is that I'm responding to an alleged "myth": People claim that it's a "myth" that gays and lesbians try to convert or recruit others, and I am arguing that this "myth" claim is "likely itself something of a myth, or at least quite incomplete." If you prefer to describe this not as "converting," but as something else (e.g., "influencing the person to change his practices"), that's fine. But if my analysis above is right, then one still shouldn't deride claims of conversion as "myth," even if one thinks that the word is slightly imprecise or has a bad connotation.

I say this because I don't think truly consensual sex can be said to be a conversion. If you do something for the first time with another person, and you do it voluntarily, how can that person be said to have "converted" you unless influence or pressure was applied?

I am in no way arguing that there are not people who have converted (or attempted to convert) the sexuality of others, either for political or for personal reasons. Nor do I mind the analogy to religious conversion, because a number of people have attempted to convert me to their view of religion, and I am sure that were I sexually naive, people would attempt to convert me to new things that I had never done before. (In this sense, experimenting with things like S&M at the urging of the more sophisticated must also be said to be a form of conversion.) There are degrees of this, and my analysis is further complicated by my strong belief in free will. I think that if someone does something absent force or duress, that he should not be heard to complain. I have previously touched upon the issue of sexually "tricking" someone into sex under false pretenses (a man pretending to be a woman to score with another man), but that is a very different issue, and even there, it's neither voluntary, nor a "conversion" to anything.

I'm not saying that no one ever attempted to convert me. In my youth I was approached by older males a number of times without my reciprocating, and I have no doubt that "conversion" may have been the intent of these individuals. But as to my first sexual experiences -- with teens my age, male and female -- I can honestly say that there never was any conversion, as I tried to keep an open mind about what I was doing, and I think -- I hope -- that others did too. This was a long time ago, and it was the age of Free Love -- when sex and drugs ruled.

I can state more confidently that I was never converted to anything than I can state that I never converted anyone else, because as to the latter I can only say it was never my goal.

I hope it never happened, and I'll explain what I mean.

A major problem with me is that I cannot handle having responsibility for the actions of other people, because I can't control them, and it just isn't a fair thing to expect of me. If I thought I had "converted" anyone, it would be a bit like having a child. I would always feel responsible. And I run like hell from such responsibilities.

But there's a real world out there, and when you're young, hot and horny, and there are other people running around, there are naturally going to be occasions when one of them is naive, yet willing.

Looking to be converted -- to put it in Volokhian terms.

Such types -- apparently heterosexual, but what you might call "bi-curious" -- used to regularly come on to me, and they'd scare the hell out of me, because I could not have handled the responsibility. Fortunately, I had a house full of openly gay men which I used to use as a "dumping ground" for the wannabe converts. All I needed to do was get them into the house, sneak out the back door, and drive away. The rest was not up to me.

Am I guilty? If so, what am I guilty of? Putting person A in contact with person B has always been one of my specialties, and I don't see how I bear any blame. Especially considering my rejection of the gay straight dichotomy. The problem was that I felt guilty anyway, because my flippant attitude was often what had activated the "bi-curious" phenomenon. I felt even guiltier to see some of the people I had unloaded contract AIDS (they'd run amok in orgies with the people I had introduced them to), but if I never had sex with them and never had the virus, was it my "fault"? Anyway, I've been plagued with guilt for years, but that's just a feeling. A feeling that never quite goes away. (Imagine, if you can, feeling responsible for the deaths of others, and being told -- as I was -- that you were.)

My fierce belief in libertarianism, in individualism, helped get me through some of this guilt, but when you watch people die, the rational side is not enough to stanch the emotional bleeding.

No matter how I look at it, the word "conversion" evokes responsibility of the communitarian sort. The type that the rational side of me must reject resolutely.

If I am to live with myself.

As a defense to the arguments which others might raise, what is wrong with allowing individuals to make up their own minds about what they do, without moralists accusing them of converting each other? At some point in the life of most human beings, a time will come when they will want to have sex. With someone. If that someone is a member of the opposite sex, why would that be a conversion any more than if the someone were of the same sex?

Why does the argument only seem to be about "straight to gay" conversions? What about gay to straight? Couldn't that be a conversion too? Seen this way, not only would the Exodus people be seen as trying to "convert" homosexuals to heterosexuality, but the first heterosexual experience of any virgin individual would have to be every bit as much of a conversion as it would were his first experience a homosexual one. I see no way to limit the word "conversion" to homosexuality alone.

But what this would means of course, is that all people who have had sex were at some point converted.

If that's the case, then the word "conversion" has no meaning -- which is why I tried to stick to the Volokh definition of the word as meaning heterosexual to homosexual only.

This discussion is, I admit, very frustrating, as it touches on my abhorrence and avoidance of responsibility, and it is very personal. I mean, here I am, saying I don't believe in "conversion," yet I admit to have gone out of my way trying to avoid converting people because I didn't want the responsibility that rationally speaking I wouldn't have had anyway.

It's a hopeless contradiction, I know. I wish I could find an easier example.

Hey, how about conversion to Islam? Unlike the cowardly homos (who deny that they'd ever convert anyone), Muslims really know how to convert a guy! Why, it's even stated in their holy book to be a religious obligation. Unlike the craven homosexuals, Muslims need not feel any guilt over the fate of the converted. They are converts for life. If they try to go back the other way, there's this thing called the death penalty. For apostasy. I know of no homosexual equivalant. Gays who join Exodus can freely return to the joys of penile-vaginal intercourse, and no one will kill them for it.

Which lifestyle is more dangerous?

Hell, don't ask me. I never converted anyone to Islam either.

(But suppose I meet someone who's Islam-curious. And suppose there's a mosque right around the corner . . .)