[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

And one could equally argue - if one accepted that M-e was intended to be our world in some ancient epoch, that homosexuality didn't exist at that time & arose later.

One could, but not particularly convincingly.

Originally Posted by davem

Either that, or he created a world where homosexuals were ostracised or had to lie about their true nature.

Given that these events are recorded primarily by Hobbits and given the 'model' used for Hobbit society, that is quite possible. It is, however, not the only alternative. Indeed, the more likely explanation, as others have noted, is that it was not mentioned because it was simply not relevant to the story.

Originally Posted by davem

I could list a whole lot of things that I would have no problem existing in M-e, but that doesn't tell us anything about whether they did exist there or not.

But, as you have pointed out on a number of occasions, M-e is a fictional world. Nothing exists there save in the imagination of the author and the reader. And we have little, if any, evidence of authorial intent on this matter.