How would you respond to the following argument against tolerating gay athletes on sports teams. The problem with gay athletes is that they may be attracted to their teammates. Even if a particular athlete is not attracted to his teammates, or does not act on his attraction, the mere possibility of such an attraction is enough to create a distressing environment. Heterosexual players may reasonably feel uncomfortable undressing and showering in the presence of someone that might view them with sexual interest. To put this another way: gay athletes should be kept out of locker rooms for just the same reason that we do not allow men to be present in women's locker rooms. What matters is not that we separate different sexes, but rather that we separate groups that are liable to sexually objectify each other.

This argument seems to be one against tolerating gay athletes in locker rooms (not on sports teams). And if the argument is correct, we'd need a lot of locker rooms....two for avowed heterosexuals (with some cutoff for bisexual attraction) and one each for everyone else! I think it is far more comfortable and respectful for us to simply tolerate any discomfort one might feel undressing and showering in front of someone who might view them with sexual interest. Or perhaps those who experience the discomfort can have their own private locker rooms. In any case, the reasons for having separate sex locker rooms is not (merely?) to separate groups that are likely to be sexually attracted to one another; it may be in part because of fears of rape (sexual violence). People don't get as upset about women being in men's locker rooms as they do about men being in women's locker rooms. Students who live in dorms with co-ed bathrooms manage their various sexual attractions just fine.

In this question, I'm going to assume there are strictly two human biological sexes, male and female. That assumption isn't exactly true (chromosomal variations), but it's a close enough approximation to ask the question. At restaurants such as "Hooters," provocatively-clad females serve food to patrons. There are no male waiters. No one seems to think too much about it. I think, however, that many people would be appalled if we had restaurants whose theme was to have provocatively-clad Jewish people serve food, or provocatively-clad African Americans serve food, or provocatively clad [insert religious or ethnic or national group] serve food. There are, of course, ethnic restaurants. So we might think of Hooters as nothing more and nothing less than another type of ethnic restaurant, this one peculiar to sex instead of ethnicity. Is this good reasoning? Maybe that reasoning is not valid. Women have a sex (female) and men have a sex (male). There can't be anything intrinsically more sexual about...

The questions that you are asking are terrific! They can also be taken further. E.g. is it necessary for you to assume that there are strictly two biological sexes? (I don't think so). Or e.g. What is wrong (if anything) with sexualization of a group? What is wrong with sexualization of a subordinate group? It is not difficult to turn up inconsistencies in what society considers to be socially normative.

Is the definition of marriage changing?

There never was a "definition of marriage." Marriage is an ancient human institution that occurs in multiple forms (temporary, permanent, monogamous or open, polygamous or polyandrous) with several possible functions (parenting, property rights, companionship, politics, possession). I don't think that even in our (pluralistic) society, at this time, it has a single meaning, function or definition. One of the things about marriage that does seem to be changing right now is the idea that it has to be between a woman and a man (this idea has been stable in Western society for some time, although it is probably not a human universal). One of the benefits of this wide range of possibilities is that individuals have some freedom to create their own meanings of marriage (whether or not they marry).