Sentiment vs Semantics

A friend recently commented on Facebook that he'd realized that love is nothing to do with gender. I interpreted the sentiment to be one I agree with: support for treating loving relationships as equal regardless of the gender of the participants.

What about trying to ascribe a literal meaning to the comment? In my experience, most individuals use gender as a primary filter for candidates for romantic relationships.  People also use age, intelligence, status and many other filters, albeit perhaps unconsciously, when they judge people as attractive or not. So on that level, gender does have something to do with erotic love for most people in contrast with other forms of loving companionship or friendship. Perhaps it would be good if we returned to using words like 'agape' to distinguish different kinds of love.