The Homosexual Agenda, The aclu, And Your Children...

[Larkinn]

The study I named was apropos and made my point. Which you don't know because you didn't look at it. Or bother to read the opinions of the true scientific community (not the psychology nuts) who state, one and all, that the studies don't back up the claims that homosexuality is caused by biology or genetics.

For the simple minded:
No, there's no evidence to support homosexuality is not a choice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation

From your own article.

Overall, data appear to indicate that genetic factors may play some part in the development of sexual orientation, even if only a modest part. Further work is needed to more precisely quantify any genetic contribution to sexuality and to elucidate its mechanism

By the way...the claim you made wasn't that there is "no evidence to support homosexuality is not a choice" (which is also wrong...but you have a habit of that). It was that homosexuality IS a choice. Which geneticists and scientists definitely don't believe, that much is completely obvious.

 

[Larkinn]

I'm about the kindest, sweetest, most understanding-of-liberals conservative with whom you'll ever argue. If you get upset by any observations of mine about your posts, other than their content, you must be mighty thin-skinned indeed.

If the "kindest, sweetest, most understanding of liberals" refers to the "totalitarian left" then what exactly do the meanest do?

Sorry Doug, you aren't understanding of liberals at all. You generalize wayyyyy too much.

And PS...you were right about having posted that before. My bad.

 

[Shogun]

The study I named was apropos and made my point. Which you don't know because you didn't look at it. Or bother to read the opinions of the true scientific community (not the psychology nuts) who state, one and all, that the studies don't back up the claims that homosexuality is caused by biology or genetics.

For the simple minded:
No, there's no evidence to support homosexuality is not a choice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation

Most scientists today agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors.[1] Although homosexuality does not appear to be adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint, because homosexual sex does not produce children, there is evidence that it has existed in all times and in all known human cultures and civilizations.[2]

Although a number of biological factors have been considered by scientists, such as prenatal hormones, chromosomes, polygenetic effects, brain structure and viral influences, no scientific consensus exists as to how biology influences sexual orientation.

Most scientists agree that it is unlikely that there is a single "gay gene" that determines something as complex as sexual orientation, and that it is more likely to be the result of an interaction of genetic, biological and environmental/cultural factors. However, in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, mutant alleles of the fruitless gene were found to cause male flies to court and attempt to mate exclusively with other males.


from your own source, sparky...


damn.. thats gotta sting!


But, continue insisting that you have a firm grasp on evidence!

 

[Doug]

If the "kindest, sweetest, most understanding of liberals" refers to the "totalitarian left" then what exactly do the meanest do?

Sorry Doug, you aren't understanding of liberals at all. You generalize wayyyyy too much.

And PS...you were right about having posted that before. My bad.

No problem. And I salute your integrity in acknowledging the error, which is, of course, the kind of mistake everyone posting here including myself has probably made more than once.

And my quote has been mis-parsed: I meant understanding-of-liberals to refer to me, as a sweet and kind conservative who is understanding of liberals, i.e. who understands them. It works in my native language but does not translate so well into English.

 

[Larkinn]

And my quote has been mis-parsed: I meant understanding-of-liberals to refer to me, as a sweet and kind conservative who is understanding of liberals, i.e. who understands them. It works in my native language but does not translate so well into English.

Maybe I am missing something, but it makes no sense at all to me. And what is your native language?

 

[Doug]

Larkinn: You're not missing anything. It's just a clumsy construction, or at least, is in the wrong register for an internet debate.

It's similar to "the whisky-swilling barman" "the fast-running horse", so, "the liberal-understanding Doug" -- but with the order of the verb and object reversed :"understanding-of-liberals Doug" -- see? I don't know what the grammatical construction is called in English -- maybe someone who knows English grammar better than I do can help -- a gerundal adjectival phrase?

I may be wrong, but I think that in the past tense, it, or a near-cousin, is a common construction in ancient Greek. Where we might say, "the sea, swarming with fishes" Homer would write (in Greek, obviously) "the fish-swarming sea" (I have seen the translation, "the fish-infested sea" but that sounds like a poor choice of words to me). Or at least this construction is similar to mine.

Never mind. It didn't work.

My native language is Loglan.

 

[Shogun]

Loglan, eh?

 

[Doug]

Just teasing. My second language. I raised all my children to speak Loglan, though, as part of our homeschooling. They didn't learn English until they were about ten. They prefer to speak Loglan among themselves now. They think English is impossibly vague. They say it's like talking to people in doggy-speak: Good Boy! Fetch! etc.

 

[Dr Grump]

Hey

Where'd Allie go??

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Hey

Where'd Allie go??

Probably the same place you go when your not posting. Off to do something else. What? You think she lives on the board 24/7. That if she does not respond in 5 seconds to some post she has run away?

 

[AllieBaba]

From your own article.



By the way...the claim you made wasn't that there is "no evidence to support homosexuality is not a choice" (which is also wrong...but you have a habit of that). It was that homosexuality IS a choice. Which geneticists and scientists definitely don't believe, that much is completely obvious.

Did you miss the "seems to" and the other language that says if it plays any part (which they can't prove) it's a SMALL part.

It's a choice, padre. You're letting the ambiguous language of the left befuddle you. This is the crux of the matter:
"no scientific consensus exists as to how biology influences sexual orientation."

Believe me, it's not for want of trying.

 

[Larkinn]

Did you miss the "seems to" and the other language that says if it plays any part (which they can't prove) it's a SMALL part.

Yes I saw it. Please explain how that is compatible with your statement of "
No, there's no evidence to support homosexuality is not a choice." Obviously there is some evidence since the consensus seems to be that it, at minimum, plays a part in it.

It's a choice, padre. You're letting the ambiguous language of the left befuddle you. This is the crux of the matter:
"no scientific consensus exists as to how biology influences sexual orientation."

Believe me, it's not for want of trying.

If no scientific consensus exists, then please explain to us all how you feel confident in arriving at a conclusion?

 

[AllieBaba]

Yes I saw it. Please explain how that is compatible with your statement of "
No, there's no evidence to support homosexuality is not a choice." Obviously there is some evidence since the consensus seems to be that it, at minimum, plays a part in it.



If no scientific consensus exists, then please explain to us all how you feel confident in arriving at a conclusion?

There's NO EVIDENCE, Larkinn. That's what all this mumbo jumbo says. It says, "although we want to be able to say homosexuality is caused by genetics, or biology, there's really nothing to prove it. Despite the millions spent on studies attempting to prove it. We THINK there might be a connection, but if there is, it's tiny and we just can't put our finger on it."

 

[Larkinn]

There's NO EVIDENCE, Larkinn. That's what all this mumbo jumbo says. It says, "although we want to be able to say homosexuality is caused by genetics, or biology, there's really nothing to prove it. Despite the millions spent on studies attempting to prove it. We THINK there might be a connection, but if there is, it's tiny and we just can't put our finger on it."

Mumbo jumbo? Actually its quite clear what it says. It says that it is likely partially caused by genes, although more research is needed. Reading into their motives and other factors is purely speculative...no actually thats too kind. You are making shit up, and badly. Learn to read without a complete and obvious bias, and then come back to me.

 

[doniston]

Yes I saw it. Please explain how that is compatible with your statement of "
No, there's no evidence to support homosexuality is not a choice." Obviously there is some evidence since the consensus seems to be that it, at minimum, plays a part in it.



If no scientific consensus exists, then please explain to us all how you feel confident in arriving at a conclusion?

I LIKE YOUR LAST QUESTION. heh heh

 

[Doug]

Perhaps some clarity can be brought to this issue by asking:

Is Sex a choice?

Now, I would reckon that 99.99% of the straight people reading this will know that the sex drive -- the desire, on occasion (said occasions varying in frequency depending on the individual and the opportunity), or,better, the urge to mate with a member of the opposite sex, is not something you can choose.

You've got it, starting from around the age of 12 or 13, and it obviously is biological in origin. You're here because a long tree of ancestors had that urge and acted on it. Those contemporaries of your ancestors who didn't have that urge, or, rather, didn't successfully express it, didn't leave descendants.

What is a "choice" is whether or not you carry through on that urge.

Of course, it's not a choice made outside the pressures of that urge. I can choose to pick up the pen on my desk, or to leave it there. There is no temptation either way. But the choice of whether to initiate (or to respond to) the pursuit that will lead to mating is taken under the pressure of that powerful urge. (Expressed differently for men and women, I believe, and obviously distributed over all human beings in varying strengths.)

Now, homosexuality is just a particular expression -- deviation if you like -- of that urge. The homosexual experiences the urge to mate with his own sex.

He has a "choice", of course. He can remain celibate. This is not impossible to do, as members of celibate religious orders demonstrate (although even here, the force of that urge provides continual material for salacious newspapers.)

But people who condemn homosexuality as immoral should ponder on the fact that they are asking these people to never have sex -- would you be able to adhere to such a requirement?

We can argue about what causes the homosexual manifestation of the sexual urge. Psychiatrists -- some of them -- once thought that they had found it: a "CBI" mother: Close, Binding and Intimate. But plentiful counter-examples shot that theory down. Every possible other hypothesis has been examined: birth order, father-absence, you name it. No one has found the cause, yet.

At the moment, we do not know what "causes" homosexuality. In fact, we are only a little more knowledgeable about the sex drive in general. Neurology is still in the Middle Ages, developmental biology the same.

 

[jillian]

Jillian: Thank you for having the fortitude to read my dissertation-posts.

Yes, I believe that men and women have some fundamental, but subtle, differences in the way they think, the things that motivate them, and so on.

How much, in any given society, these are due to nature, and how much to nurture, is one of the most interesting questions of our time, given that the purely social constraints on women are rapidly dissolving: an inadvertent experiment in weakening one of two otherwise-intangled factors.

I think you're correct. But I also think the dissolution of social restraints on women is a good thing. And but for the "radical feminists" of the '60's and on, women would still be forced to live lives that may not have been of their choosing. I think, ideally, feminism means having choices. I very much admire the women who stay home with their children. On the other hand, I was always taught that children grow up. They leave to live their own lives. So, ultimately, it's our responsibility to try to balance parenthood and whatever else it is that leaves us fulfilled.

And I am sure you are right about the differences between liberals and conservatives, with regard to the unspoken world-view each group has.

A study of human history, especially that of the last five hundred years, provides unlimited material to support the views of both sides.

Agreed, once again. I think we should always strive, though, to move forward and try to make the world a better place than we found it. Interestingly, I went to a Bar Mitzvah on Saturday night. The Torah passage the Bar Mitzvah boy read was about Noah and the flood. Afterwards, the Rabbi gave a bit of a sermon on it. What he said resonated for me. He asked, "If Noah saved the world, why isn't he one of our 'Jewish heroes'? Why don't we say 'G-d of Abraham, G-d of Isaac, G-d of Noah' in our prayers?" His answer was that it was because although Noah was righteous, he saved only his own skin and that of his family... he didn't show righteous indignation to G-d and fight against the rest of humanity being destroyed, as Moses did when G-d said he would destroy the Israelites for worshipping the golden calf. I think that, ultimately, is the difference between an extreme (and I mean close to anarchist) libertarian and a 'bleeding heart' liberal. The difference is that of "I'm saving myself, just don't get in the way" and "we need to save the world". Somewhere in between on a continuum, is where most of us lie.

It's ironic that with respect to Iraq, the two groups have exchanged places: conservatives (at least some of them) optimistically believing that all hearts yearn for freedom, etc, liberals believing that Iraqis are incorrigibly committed to living in a world where family and tribe and brute force should trump the rule of law.

I think it's more that we think they don't want us there. They want safety and stability, but like anyone else, they don't want to be occupied. I think it also has to do with what we see as nefarious motivation for the commencement of the entire nightmare.

As for the alleged hedonism at the heart of liberal philosophy ... yes, I exaggerate. This was the view of the Sixties generation (ask me how I know), and I believe that they brought it, subconsciously, into the liberal movement, insofar as one can speak of a liberal movement. There it blended well with the old-fashioned liberal tendency to look to the state for remedies to social problems, which implies a diminished role for personal resonsibility.

Again, I don't think that liberals are hedonistic any more than 'conservatives'. I think we think we don't belong butting into the business of others. Part of this is that we all think we're correct. But that doesn't necessarily mean we are. And your conservative view, since you're clearly a thinking and articulate and well-reasoned conservative, is no more or less likely of being correct than my (also thinking and articulate and well-reasoned) social liberalism (though I think I'm moderate where it's called for). Therefore, that being the case, why should one presume to impose their particular view on others. If one wants to belong to a church that doesn't accept gays, for example, that is their choice... campaigning against others' accepting them... well, that's where the line gets crossed. I hope I'm being clear.. .I know there are a lot of words here.

I also think conservatives see the world as more Hobbesian.. government exists for security because people are dangerous and cruel and life is nasty, brutish and short... etc. People who like a bit more from their government see government as a more Lockeian (sp?) enterprise. So, again, it has to do with the respectively pessimistic and optimistic world views of both groups.

But I know there are all kinds of liberals, and some have a fairly well work-out theory of community, and the responsibilities of individuals within it, for example. (But I notice that on this Board, nuances and acknowlegement of exceptions to the rule are not appreciated. So I shall stick to unfair, sweeping generalizations.)

Well, I, for one, really hate the generalizations, and I think I rise above them on most occassions, but if you must...

And many conservatives would instinctively agree with your libertarian social philosophy: An it hurt no one, do what thou wilt. The arguments begin over where social harm, perhaps initially very subtle in effect, can result from what are logically individual choices.

And who decides what is "social harm" and what changes benefit society? You? Me? Some "leader"?

Thus the only argument I can see against legalizing drugs -- which I support -- is the one that says that it will, in fact, result in widespread misery as people find it much easier to acquire and use and then ab-use them -- and you can be sure the capitalist market will bring drugs to them at very low prices and packaged most attractively.

But they're already being used. Perhaps sometimes we should look at what's pragmatic... The "war on drugs" has filled our prisons and cost us billions... with little to no result. So, if someone's to make a profit, I'd prefer it being government, which can maybe use the tax money to do good, than drug lords and street gangs.

The libertarian focusses on the individual, in the privacy of her own home, making a rational choice as to how and to what extent to alter her consciousness by chemical means for a few hours. The non-libertarian looks at the big picture and the effect on society as a whole. (My own guess is that it can't get much worse, and that legalization would have such enormous good effects in other fields -- destroying the financial base of drug gangs and removing a powerful source of judicial and police corruption -- that it is worth taking the risk.

See above... we're agreed. But I think given that the libertarian view is also, govern your own behavior, this view suits both the libertarian and 'liberal' mindset. It is only the people who feel they have to be everyone else's moral compass who would be troubled.

 

[AllieBaba]

Mumbo jumbo? Actually its quite clear what it says. It says that it is likely partially caused by genes, although more research is needed. Reading into their motives and other factors is purely speculative...no actually thats too kind. You are making shit up, and badly. Learn to read without a complete and obvious bias, and then come back to me.

Yeah. In other words, there's no EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT the statement it's caused by genetics or biology.

Gee, isn't that what I've been saying? Why yes, so it is! It's like, you're arguing with the fact that I'm saying it...but at the same time, agreeing with what I'm saying.

Crazy.

 

[doniston]

No, there's no evidence to support homosexuality is not a choice.

Nor is thereany proof that it is not always "simply a choice", Of course ACTING in a homosexual manner is likely a choice.

 

[roomy]

Nor is thereany proof that it is not always "simply a choice", Of course ACTING in a homosexual manner is likely a choice.

I agree, why all the tight buttocked mincing, limp wrists and lispy high pitched voices?It's as if they are trying to create a gender, the trouble is, most gays aren't stereotypical and can't stand the flamboyant gays that give them a bad name.On the other hand some may say they are glad to be able to differentiate.