The news coming out of California signals a dark and horrible chapter in American history. One of my favorite friends and heroes is Robert A. J. Gagnon, who published not one but two essays recently in the Federalist. The dangerous law that is surely to pass in California will ban any promotion, sale, or endorsement of "efforts" to change sexual orientation. As Gagnon points out, the language of the bill does not focus on minors or people forced into the therapy, as past laws against so-called "conversion therapy" have (including a 2011 ban on conversion therapy already in place in California). The language of the bill does not affect only licensed medical professionals.

The California law will lead to countless lawsuits. Conservatives, always eager to swallow camels and strain out gnats, are strictly focused on whether the Bible will be banned. The far-reaching, litigious impact of the California law will be enormous far past the domains of religion. It will turn ex-gays into second-class citizens and subject them to massive policing on a scale people can scarcely visualize.

People like me, who simply have the life story of "I was gay and now I am straight" will be cast as enemies of the state, liars by default, and basically criminals. Even if we are not explicitly targeted, people who associate with us will be punished for supporting us. A sexual police state will be born.

But lately I have been in the mood to feel positive. So the first entry in this series will be about good stuff. Specifically, what is so great about heterosexuality from a man's point of view.

I am writing from a completely personal vantage point, acknowledging from the start that many people including a lot of ex-gay man will probably dispute what I say here. I don't care about formalities anymore. People have been pussyfooting around the issues and bowing to idiotic "experts" and their bogus statistics for years. It has gotten us nowhere.

You can absolutely become heterosexual, whenever you want. Say the words and it will happen. I will get to that in this blog.

But first, let me speak as someone who has been intimate with both men and women. I have only had full sexual intercourse with one woman, my wife, though I kissed and played around with a few girls in my youth. I had full sexual contact with quite a few guys. I want to address a key question we do not ask enough:

Why be heterosexual?

Is it just because the Bible says so? Well, the Bible's instructions are important, but there are reasons that are clear without having to cite a Bible reference.

I can think of ten excellent reasons from the male perspective to choose heterosexuality and dump homosexuality. Here we go.

1. THE ACT FEELS SO MUCH BETTER WITH WOMEN

From a purely crass and selfish standpoint, the female body is much better suited to pleasure a male body than a male body is.

(This is adult material, but it is important to state.) Women are lighter in body weight, usually, and slighter in build. As a result, during intercourse, they can move rhythmically in a way that allows her entire body to rub against yours. Her sensitive area lubricates naturally and has soft, delicate flesh that feels very good against your sensitive area. Because her body can be entered from the front, it is very easy to wrap her legs around you or position yourself so that you are closely pressed against her.

2. YOU GET TO SEE SOMEONE ENJOY SEX MUCH MORE FULLY

For some reason we have the stereotype that men lust for sex and women are not as interested in it. Once you are past the early twenties, that stereotype becomes less and less illustrative.

Women can have very high sex drives especially when they feel safe in a relationship. Women's bodies are in fact amazingly capable of experiencing sexual pleasure in ways men are not, because they have so many sensitive parts of their bodies and multiple ways to reach intense pleasure.

Women are usually louder and more expressive during sex, and you can provoke very joyful reactions sometimes with the slightest touch or tickle. As you get to know a woman, you get better at giving her pleasure because you discover more parts of her that excite her and you figure out ways to make her feel good.

Feeling in control while she is losing herself in happiness is really a lot of fun. And it does wonders for the male ego to see the incredible effect you can have on someone else's body just by being playful. In my experience, men approach sex more as a familiar, unchanging sequence. It is not the same.

3. YOU DON'T NEED A LOT OF ACCESSORIES.

I am sorry to take this to some uncomfortable places, but we are all adults here. If you have ever had gay sex, you are familiar with the host of objects that become necessary just to achieve anything sexual.

You need a lot of lubricant because the anus is dangerously dry and easily injured without it. You also always need a condom.

Nobody, even gay men in long-term relationships, can risk doing anything without a condom because of the high prevalence of open relationships and low amount of trust. Even if you are not worried that your partner has HIV, you do not want a lot of feces or mucus in your private parts, so it is sensible to put a condom on either way.

Supposedly there are men who say they do not mind having sex with a condom but do not believe them. Obviously no man wants to have a piece of latex wrapped around him when he is trying to have a pleasurable moment.

Between men the condom becomes a huge obstacle and the cause of other problems. You have to stop and try to get the condom on while keeping the man still aroused and ready. This is not very romantic. If anal sex is the goal, the condom requires more lubricant and then becomes a foul, soiled object after the act. If one breaks you have to start the process over again.

The wrapper is lying around, the lube is lying around, and then stains start to multiply on the sheets around you, causing some gay couples to lay down towels or make sure they have a trash can close by--which creates more clutter and kills the moment even more.

Obviously straight couples use condoms sometimes too to prevent pregnancy but as you get further in your relationship they just vanish because you are no longer scared of having kids and you trust each other. The male and female bodies fit together very nicely without needing so many accessories. Any man who says he likes condoms is lying.

Gay sex does not end with only condoms. Because of the fact that condoms are clumsy and time-consuming, there is a constant risk of impotence for the man who has to play the dominant role.

A host of other objects become necessary to address that issue, such as certain things that man coil around their private parts to prevent impotence (we won't go there). But at least gay men are not lesbians, who have to find multiple objects to replace the male appendage.

4. YOU CAN USUALLY HAVE SEX WITHOUT DRUGS.

Partly because of the items listed above, men who have sex with men often need drugs to get through sex.

The most common drug is poppers, or nitrates that people sniff. These fumes cause a momentary increase in heartbeat, which heats up the body and makes the guy who has to assume a passive role less physically resistant to, let's just say, a foreign object.

Poppers essentially loosen up a man's body beyond what is natural, in order to engage in sex that the man's body will naturally reject. Poppers come in small, usually brown bottles, and you have to screw a lid on them.

Poppers involve an annoying ritual of "unscrew the lid, sniff the right nostril, sniff the left nostril, screw the lid back on" that has to be repeated over and over again during sex because the high only lasts about half a minute.

Aside from adding to the clutter and clumsiness, poppers cause a host of other problems. They often suppress people's judgment and make sensitive parts of your bodies more flush with blood, therefore more likely to bruise and bleed. They can cause sex to take too long or not long enough. They also give people headaches, diarrhea, and general illness the following day. Because poppers affect the heart, people risk death if they take poppers with Viagra, another drug popular among homosexuals because of how easy it is for a man to lose his arousal in the clumsy preparations for anal sex.

Some gay couples need drugs that are more serious than poppers to supplement their sex lives because their bodies do not take to the strain of the sex act, so they resort to meth, cocaine, or party drugs. All of these are bad.

Generally when making love to a woman, it is fairly easy to get her ready for sex simply by caressing her, kissing her, and speaking romantically to her. If she is not physically ready for sex, you know you need to get her more in the mood. Men are never biologically ready for sex with men so drugs play a much bigger and necessary role.

5. THAT FEELING OF MASCULINE ACCOMPLISHMENT

Whether you want to accept it or not, you are a man. Some of the miracles that go along with this are firm muscles, greater strength, a larger body mass, more stamina, and a fiercer competitive spirit. I suspect that most men feel, intuitively, that these physical advantages over women should point to something productive. Men like to feel like they have applied themselves and done something great (scored or built something).

Call it vanity or ego bluster, or whatever. When you have finished making love to a woman, and you know you have given her a life-changing experience, a unique feeling ensues. A little voice inside your head says, "I am a stud."

This goes especially if you have gotten better at sex and you see the results in how long you last, how much pleasure she gets, or how much pleasure you feel. I know it's sexist to say that women are passive during sex but...sex is a vacation for woman. It's a playing field for men. When men are having sex, they are physically engaged and concentrated, they do not get to "relax" completely. It's fun but it takes physical exertion, which is why men with heart problems are not supposed to have sex.

Life is set up so guys deal with lots of disappointments at work, school, in sports, and in many parts of their lives. When you make love and you do a great job, you feel the opposite of disappointment. More often than not, she really builds up your confidence because she loves what you just did for her.

When a guy has sex with a guy, there just is not a sense of accomplishment. Generally you have engaged in some kind of contact that feels really contrived, and you did not get to be "da man" because there is no woman in the bedroom and there is another man who really doesn't need you to get pleasure. Sex between two men feels often like mutually assisted masturbation.

6. THE POWER OF DISPENSING THE LOVE DRUG

With experience, most men slowly realize that they have a powerful drug, whose effects are uniquely felt by women. If a woman is angry, upset, anxious, irritable, or argumentative, you can buy her flowers or chocolate and that may help. But nothing restores her mental well-being like you making wild, passionate love to her until she forgets whatever was bothering her.

If you are fortunate, one fantastic act of love can put her in a better mood for days. If she works outside the home, it can be embarrassing because the sudden change in her mood might be noticed by others at the office and become the subject of speculation.

But there is no doubt about it, men are medicine to women. Scientists actually found that the male body produces proteins that have an anti-depressant effect on women and can boost women's immune system, as long as they do not use condoms (and the male has to reach completion.)

This trend does not really hold between gay men, and I am not sure why. In my relations with other men I never felt that I had the power to transform their health or emotional well-being. My sexual involvement with them was never hugely transformative. Part of this is undoubtedly the different physiology of males and females.

7. IT'S CLEAN

I will keep this brief and classy, I hope. Sex between men is really foul in an objective sense because of the omnipresence of feces. Gay men will often retort that straight people also practice anal sex. This argument stems from the fact that gay men know straight sex from watching porn, and straight porn is made by perverts, many trans or bisexual, who are fixated with anal sex.

I have never engaged in the perverted form of sex with a woman, simply because why would I, if I can just have clean sex?

When two men are involved, options are severely limited. Constant attempts to avoid the dirty forms of sex will eventually strain the relationship because there is no act that feels like the glorious consummation corresponding to the act of love between a man and a woman.

With the pollution of dirty sex come the contamination of bedsheets, bacterial infections, and a host of general illnesses. Also, the filth of gay sex rises to the level that requires thorough cleaning, and people can't really stop and sterilize their hands and surroundings several times during a sex act.

8. IT MAKES BABIES

While not all straight couples want to have children or can have children, sexual intercourse is the natural way that children are conceived.

If you can have children by making love, you do not need the expensive and mettlesome assistance of drugs, doctors, lawyers, and gamete donors--complications that cause serious anxiety and distress to infertile couples.

There is nothing blameworthy about people who struggle with infertility, but still, no infertile couple would say their inability to conceive children through sex was an easy issue for them.

During pregnancy, a woman needs so much help and attention. We are infinitely more eager to give her that attention because we know that a part of ourselves is inside her. The act of sex between a man and woman makes their bodies one and parenting flows from that fact. There is something magical about watching a woman give birth to a child who looks like you. The completeness of the cycle of love and tenderness from the act of intercourse to the moment of birth is something irreplaceable.

Gay men can say they do okay as parents but there is no bond between the lovemaking and the joint care of the child that comes from lovemaking.

Even straight couples who adopt are sexually mirroring the lovemaking act that produces children. When a man makes love to a woman, without words or fancy theories, he confirms the wisdom of the ages and the majesty of God's design for the creation of life.

9. THE TIMING IS EXQUISITE

Probably the most tragic secret of gay male sex is that it is mostly masturbation. We do not need to get into the mechanics of this, but just think about it for a few seconds and then we can move on.

Mechanically speaking it is close to impossible for two men to finish their sex act in a way that satisfies both of them in synch, without one of the men simply masturbating himself while the other is doing something for his own pleasure. This is embarrassing and often even humiliating.

It makes the sex act feel like something completely off kilter, poorly timed. It increases the chance that one man will reach completion and the other will not. It never feels like an even exchange of love.

Between a man and woman, timing is not always perfect, but the reality is that a woman reaches her climax through the same motions that cause a man to reach his climax. They can both arrive at the wonderful moment of consummation without the awkward phase of one person engaging in masturbation in front of the other.

10. VIVE LA DIFFERENCE!

Since I am in an interracial marriage, I have always favored the spice of difference in love. But even if you are not in an interracial marriage, there is so much wonderment and excitement you get from the mystery of the other sex in bed with you.

I once discomforted quite a few people by remarking that I found sex with men to be like a trip to the gas station, while making love to a woman was like walking through a maze. When you are having sex with someone who has a body just like yours, you have few surprises, so it is like filling up the tank at Exxon. (Now this happens, next this happens, boom, let's hit the showers.)

The person you are with has been to all the restrooms you have been to, has hung out at all the guy places you have been to, and has been socialized entirely within the same gender system that you know.

Women have body parts that are an ongoing enigma to us, endlessly fascinating and never fully comprehensible. For heaven's sake, they have an entirely alien experience several days a month that causes mental and hormonal fluctuations I will never understand for the life of me. They have spent years of their lives around women sharing secrets we never heard. And women are, I still believe, inherently different from us, much more emotional and unpredictable.

I relish the moment when my wife and I are getting ready to go somewhere together, and she stands at the mirror with her long hair, fiddling with her dress and picking out which heels to wear, while I tie a Windsor knot. During all the years that I was in the gay world, that small bit of difference felt like a massive loss, because there was no way to recapture it.

When I dated men, one thing always made me feel I was not going to stay in the gay world. When guys would want to "cuddle" in front of the TV, the sameness of him and me provoked nausea. I felt the need to vomit and sometimes a violent revulsion at what we were doing.

Cuddling is much better when one person is big and strong, the other gentle and delicate. I like the fact that my wife is smaller, and she curls up in my arms, and drapes herself against my chest, which feels as big and bear-like to her, as her slender curves and light frame feel graceful and dainty to me. When I cuddle, I want to feel the difference between me, the tree, and her, the flowery graceful vine.

Heterosexuality is a lot better, and worth pursuing. I am sure some gays will say, "no, it's not just about the physical," but this is disingenuous. The entire LGBT identity is based on genitals and what people want to do with them. So the question of what happens between same-sex and heterosexual couples when it is time for pleasure is a major issue worth considering. Having dedicated this column to why it's better, in the next, I will give my ten tips for guys who want to get out of gay life and start dating women.

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