This 'gender as a construct' thing is really making the rounds.
The simple fact is, each culture has it's own way of delinating who is a man and who is not a man.
In India the line seems to be drawn between fathers and non-fathers, specifically between fathers of sons and every man who can't or hasn't been able to father a son.
In Japan the line appears to be obscure. I think it may just be between people who have penises and people who don't.
In Latin and Middle-Eastern cultures(and some subgroups within our own society) the line is functional, between the penetrated and men who do the penetrating.
In Western cultures it's between men who don't desire other men, and those who do. For a lot of guys that translates, in practical terms to, desiring any intimate contact with a man, including platonic affection.
It's simple observation. I suppose you could get gender constructivism out of that. But I've spent six months arguing with a bunch of feminists that gender isn't a social construct, even if each society has a different dividing lines between man/non-man. It's still an _interpretation_ of the same essential nature.
Edit: I can add to that another way of explaining the distinction between sodomite/homosexual.
There is no sodomite who has not committed sodomy. The dividing line between a non-sodomite and a sodomite is the act of sodomy, nothing else.
There are homosexuals who are not sodomites, because they have never committed sodomy. They have never had sex with a man. The key difference between a homosexual and a non-homosexual is _desire for men_. It's not a behavioral distinction, it's an issue of personal desire. It's abstract, amorphous, thought-crime type distinction that is very hard to pin down. It easily expands from sexual desire to emotional desire to desire for any kind of intimacy with a man. Thus 'men's friendships == gay'.
The notion of homosexuals 'recruiting' is a holdover from the Church's original belief that sodomy, like masturbation, was a sin that could tempt ANY man, not a particular class of man. Same thing with the belief that homosexuality 'flourishes' among the lesuired class.
If homosexuality appeals to a set, genetically determined number of people, it cannot flourish and it cannot recruit.
BTW, the Romans thought adulterous men were flamers too. Men who held their desire for a woman above their honor and respect of her husband.
