The columnist's English sounds (just) OK to me, except for the misspelling of "transsexual" and its run-on wordiness.

His assumptions are what's troublesome: He assumes that a man who has had a sex-change operation is still a man, that a man who has sex with such a person is having "homosexual" sex, and that the whole thing is "strange."

He also may not know the difference between a U.S. senator (that is, one of the 100 members of the United States Senate) and a member of a state senate in one of the 50 U.S. states. There are probably thousands of such former state senators, if the man in Phuket was actually one of them; but few if any former U.S. senators would be found in a Phuket bar--they're generally too distinguished for that.

The mention of Karr is noteworthy. When the Karr story broke last week, I tried to post an inquiry about whether anyone on the list knew of anything that might be used by sensationalist U.S. media to construct a supposed gay link to Karr. For some reason, my post didn't appear. Considered off-topic? Meanwhile, the U.S. media have started to do exactly what I suggested we ought to be prepared for.

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