Oh, I'll agree with you there. I'd never insist on essential definitions of sexuality (indeed, I'm aware that the notion of categorisation based on sexual identity is a historically recent construction). I'm just caught on your mention of "individual definitions". If I define "gay" as attraction to the same sex - let's just say a woman attracted to a woman (avoiding for now the debate re: gender and sex) - and you don't think it is necessarily defined by attraction to the same sex, then you and I will not understand each other. You will say that you are gay in conditions in which I will deny your gayness. My point is just that there is an inherent problem in asserting that you are gay if there is no criterion at all for gayness.
Yes, as I say above, that was one point in Del's comment that I had specific problems with. If, as he says, "You don't need to be sexually attracted to men to be gay" -- then I'm not sure what his gayness is based on - possibly other factors, as there is a whole associated lifestyle. Let me add that you don't need to be believe in God to be Jewish. (Hitler certainly didn't care what your belief was.) I suspect you also don't need to accept Jesus as your personal savious to consider yourself Christian. You may not need to support Obama to be a Democrat..... and so on. Labels are convenient ways of categorizing people and I think Del was showing how REDUCTIONIST all these labels were --- but for myself, I think I would have to be attracted to my gender to call myself gay or bi. On the whole I liked his comment but I agree that minimally one should have some attraction to the same sex to consider yourself gayish.