What you are essentially asking is can two people of the opposite sex be "just friends" without being sexually intimate. Is that it? Assuming it is, let me say that it seems quite sexist to hold that persons of opposite genders cannot be friends without having the hots for each other. Quite sexist. Typically, I find that men have this sexist view more than women. As a result of this, women generally have more male friends than men do female friends.
I do want to say that you men who cannot see beyond a woman's sex to a potential good friend are cheating yourself out of friends.