It's not exactly my area of expertise or nothin', but from what I've seen, bastidge, the more time and research that goes on, the less plausible the idea of a "gay gene" becomes.
Not that I've ever seen how it really mattered. Would anyone, and I mean literally anyone, change their opinion about gays based on whether it's nature or nurture?
The issue at hand isn't really about the gay/lesbian and hetero dichotomy, but the struggle of the collectivists versus the individual, and the ownership of ones children, as you've touched on.
Can't imagine that Jeff or ZD would be of substantially different minds than what you've expanded upon, here.
Oh, and yeah, FUCK THAT NOISE, too, and yes, I'm sharpening my favorites as well. My patience has worn thin.
Over the years, I've noticed one meme pervading almost everything produced by Disney. (This does not include entertainment distributed by Disney, with Pixar films being a notable example.) This meme can be summarized—and usually is, verbatim—in three words: "Follow your heart". They've been pounding this into kids for decades now. The idea is simple, when push comes to shove, everything you learned is wrong, so just follow your emotions/instincts/inclinations. Whatever you decide is right.
Has anyone else noticed this? It seems to me that it has been effective too. What do you think?
And directly on topic: So how do they account for "heteronormativity" in the years before television, or radio, or even the printing press?
So, if homosexual parents wanted to raise their children to be homosexual, they shouldn't let them watch Disney shows? Seems like it would take monitoring/controlling many, many more influences in their lives... but it's a start.
Funny thing, Ed, is that I just watched a pretty neat special on the intelligence of members of the great ape family (namely bonobos, chimps, and humans), and the fact that humans have the ability to suppress emotion and control impulses turns out to be a main reason we've developed higher intelligence.
So these people ("educators") must simply be genetic degenerates. So, let's start funding all that stem cell research they love so much so we can find a way to cure modern liberalism!
"Would anyone, and I mean literally anyone, change their opinion about gays based on whether it's nature or nurture?"
Yes. The entire moral equivalency argument for homosexuality is based on the idea that it is genetic and not a conscious choice. It's hard to argue with someone if it's how they're made and they didn't pick it. You can if it is once again classified as a developmental disorder.
Sometimes I just wonder about people. Gays can't naturally have kids. If the gay lifestyle ever becomes a majority or even a significant minority then you're looking at the slow death of that civilization through population decline. And that has nothing to do with morality, it's just painful math.
Jeff, the biggest threat to a civilisation vis-a-vis population decline is a first world standard of living. And it's not because the gays aren't having kids, it's because the straights stop having so many kids.
Which also sidesteps the fact that just because gays don't enjoy sex which is capable of producing children, doesn't mean they don't want them. I personally know three lesbian couples who have had children, going through the entire pregnancy phase of the operation. Yes, they had some technological assistance with the conception, but they still did it.
So, that's at least three homosexual couples in the world who have way more children than my heterosexual marriage will ever produce.
In short, your thesis: Gays can't naturally have kids. If the gay lifestyle ever becomes a majority or even a significant minority then you're looking at the slow death of that civilization through population decline[.] is non sequitur.
For one thing, I find it highly doubtful that homosexuality is "a conscious choice" - I know for a fact that I could not choose to be physically attracted to another male. Whether the "cause" of homosexuality is genetic or psychological or some combination is immaterial to me, really, but that's another topic entirely.
As to reproduction, many cultures are currently on the path to slow death without significant gay populations - the heterosexuals aren't reproducing at anywhere near replacement rates - Japan, Italy, and many others are in this position.
Having been recently accused of harboring commenters "little different" from Al Qaeda members, particularly on the topic of homosexuality, I thought I'd offer a preliminary brief comment on something I found via AR15.com today.
I'm actually surprised someone would make such an accusation against you and your commenters. I know I comment rarely but I find the accusation to be grossly offensive.
Over the years, I've noticed one meme pervading almost everything produced by Disney.
In general I agree, Ed, but there is at least one conspicuous exception that I can think of: the first Lion King movie.
In that one, the "follow your heart" philosophy of the comic relief characters was shown to be nothing more than evading responsibility for your actions. Altogether a satisfying story.
While not genetic, the whole gay bit is probably a physiological mechanism with nurture having little to do with it. And if we ever figure out the exact mechanism, I say we turn future generations bisexual. I figure it'll stop the arguing for at least ten minutes.
"...This meme can be summarized—and usually is, verbatim—in three words: "Follow your heart". They've been pounding this into kids for decades now. The idea is simple, when push comes to shove, everything you learned is wrong, so just follow your emotions/instincts/inclinations..."
Soon they'll be listening to British voices telling them to switch off their targeting computers and go with their feelings!
Excellent post; really enjoy your blog, it's one of the few that's on my desktop. I'm going to guess that these two rocket scientists are a couple of angry lesbians. So now my family which includes my wife and two heterosexual children isn't normal? Unbelievable!
From Jeff the Baptist: The entire moral equivalency argument for homosexuality is based on the idea that it is genetic and not a conscious choice. It's hard to argue with someone if it's how they're made and they didn't pick it. You can if it is once again classified as a developmental disorder.
I know why there's an argument. I know why it's an issue. I just doubt the consequences a definitive answer would have.
Ask yourself honestly how much your views on homosexuality are based on how much of a choice it is. If it turns out there WERE a gay gene, and it were no more possible to stop being gay than it were to stop being Asian, would you approach the subject any differently?
Contrariwise, what about the other side? If it could be proven definitively that it was all about upbringing and life exposure--or hell, even if it were a total free-will CHOICE!--how many minds would that change? I honestly don't think it should; the analogy I'd draw is to free speech, where you DO get to consciously choose what you say, but it's still protected from government censorship no matter its ideology.
I just think the whole issue is almost entirely about how the answer would make the other side look.
"And it's not because the gays aren't having kids, it's because the straights stop having so many kids."
Agreed, we do not have a declining birthrate because being gay is (for lack of a better word) too popular. As for there rest, your logic does not follow. Just because the straight population is having trouble meeting replacement birth rates does not mean this isn't a bigger and more fundamental problem within the gay population. I can counter your anecdote with a lot of gay men who never had kids.
Kevin's definition of normal as "approximately average" in a statistical sense would require double digit percentages within the population. Do you really think that large of a subpopulation isn't going to cause serious birthrate issues in and of itself? It certainly isn't going to make things better.
Worked in Theater for a number of years and known and worked with a lot of gays and lesbians - so...if it *is* genetic and not a conscious choice, why have many/most of my gay friends initially sought to convert me to their lifestyle despite my protest that for me NOT being gay was genetic and not a conscious choice? Why were they so convinced and determined the I could simply change my spots and be gay with them? ;-)
There is an insidious plot by Disney, and it's in every movie they make. They transmit a subliminal message to all children. "Get your parents to buy our stuff!"
The entire argument for homosexuals NOT being mentally ill is based on a finding by a committee that edited the DSM-IV in the late 1960's or early 1970's.
Prior to that time, homosexuality had been treated as a mental or emotional illness, and THAT had been an act of kindness, since before that meme was adopted, homosexuality was criminalized.
At any rate, the point is that we are supposed to accept that homosexuality is not some form of illness on the say-so of a relatively anonymous group of psychiatrists and/or psychologists 40-some years ago, who turned what psychiatry had previously held on the subject on it's head.
If you REALLY want to upset a homosexual, suggest that that finding be revisited and reviewed.
The aim of the Gay Lobby is to normalize homosexuality so that they can openly work in the schools to perverert the young and thereby recruit sexual partners.
Since homosexuals do not reproduce genetically, they MUST proselytize their perverted nature to others, or else become extinct.
Note the dismissiveness in his tone and his flat refusal to even consider that the DSM might need revisions in this, (as well as other areas), and then realize that Goy had specifically invited me over to discuss this precise subject.
Goy's a pretty good egg, and I was rather shocked and not a bit offended to have him show me the door so brusquely after inviting me in.
"The aim of the Gay Lobby is to normalize homosexuality so that they can openly work in the schools to perverert the young and thereby recruit sexual partners."
Wow. Just wow.
Has it not occurred to you that *maybe*, just *maybe*, these people earnestly believe that homosexuality is normal, based in love, and that they wish to change the public zeitgeist to reflect that?
"Since homosexuals do not reproduce genetically, they MUST proselytize their perverted nature to others, or else become extinct."
Except homosexuality isn't an isolated disease spreading around and requiring infection of new hosts. It occurs without provocation in many societies independent of outside homosexual interjection.
Just when I think Mark can't be topped for being the asshat of the week, you go and say something stupid like this.
Mental defect, genetic abnormality, or choice, once someone has decided who they are attracted to and who they can love, that's all I need.
What could be more natural than to act on one's impulses? I'm not going to conflate natural with good or evil, but I have no doubt that at least a fair number of homosexuals are doing what comes naturally for them.
I'll (be forced) to cover this topic in more detail in the Überpost, but no, I don't think homosexuality is "unnatural." (I expect LabRat to weigh in on this at some point with a biology thesis.) But it is also not "normal" as defined by "approximately average."
Is it a psychological illness? Oy vey! I think it can be, just as some variations of heterosexualitycan be, but it is not (in and of itself) necessarily an illness.
Humans as a group have a broad spectrum of sexual behaviors, and the fringes of that spectrum are definitely pathological. And that spectrum isn't two-dimensional, either.
If you want to delve deeper into my thoughts on the topic of homosexuality, read this.
First, I have to disagree that homosexuality is not "normal". It's been around for thousands of years. It's mentioned in historical texts going back to Greeks and Egyptians. There are documented examples among animals where homosexual behavior occurs. It's not prevalent, certainly; it's not the "average" behavior, no. But it is "normal".
That said, I do believe that the "problem" occurs when this "not-average" group of people start trying to claim that they are in fact average, or that they require equivalent treatment as the "average" person by the culture. Since culture is determined by what's "average", not what's "normal", those folks certainly are fighting an uphill battle.
And the Liberals "get it". When they say "If educators and other cultural workers are to include the culture of children as an important site of contestation and struggle", they really are trying to make homosexuality seem "average" to the children. And every time a TV show introduces a homosexual relationship to the script, it's another battle that they have won.
That said, I do believe that the "problem" occurs when this "not-average" group of people start trying to claim that they are in fact average, or that they require equivalent treatment as the "average" person by the culture. - Dean
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand
Aaaaaand once again, we are confronted by the question "what is a RIGHT?"
Yeah, I will, but right now... de-rageify. Apologies in advance if I wind up disappearing- things have been high-stress around here and I really don't see that changing until either Stingray gets another job or his boss is wiped out by a freak meteor.
Here's a problem with the rights question. Every right that I have, by definition, imposes an obligation on everyone around to respect that right (if the right is negative), or to actually secure that right for me (if the right is positive, or in some cases even when it is negative—for example, if someone else is abusing my right). (Thomas Paine actually agrees, it's somewhere in Rights of Man.)
I may have mentioned this before, but it seems to me that we can cut out the middleman and stick to talking about obligations from the get-go. I suspect that one can work out a more consistent rationale for which obligations are necessary and which would be pernicious, than we've managed to do with rights today.
So for example, do we have an obligation to view homosexuality positively? Or do we "only" have an obligation not to curb-stomp gays? And why is one a better formulation than the other?
Far as I'm aware I as a private citizen am free from obligations concerning YOUR negative rights. I could censor you if I wanted. I could bar you from my privately-owned place of business just because I didn't like your face. I could let you in, in spite of your face (which I'm sure is quite lovely and likable, excuse my hypothetical hyperbole [hypotherbole?]), and decide not to sell you any arms.
What I couldn't do is get elected and make any of those actions law.
Adam:
"Has it not occurred to you that *maybe*, just *maybe*, these people earnestly believe that homosexuality is normal, based in love, and that they wish to change the public zeitgeist to reflect that?"
The same could be said for Marxists and pedophiles.
And I've got a problem with "normalizing" their belief systems/genetic predispositions also.
So deal.
"Except homosexuality isn't an isolated disease spreading around and requiring infection of new hosts."
Sez you,(and the shrinks who deleted the inclusion of homosexuality as a pathology in the DSM-IV), but PRIOR to that decision, that is exactly what it was viewed as.
"It occurs without provocation in many societies independent of outside homosexual interjection."
So does cancer,and eating disorders, but we treat them as illnesses, do we not?
"Mental defect, genetic abnormality, or choice, once someone has decided who they are attracted to and who they can love, that's all I need."
Yessss. And the ramifications of that attitude is EXACTLY why your lifestyle choice/sexual orientation is suspect in the extreme, (psychologically speaking), let me lay something else on your psyche, while it may have already been bruised by my earlier post...
it also isn't "normal" ro fetishize your notions of "non-judgmentalism" to the extent that you've stated here.
Although I notice that your "non-judgmentalism" does not extend as far as my supicions that there's an arguable chance that "Gay" people may actually be psychologically ill, and untreated for their condition:
"Just when I think Mark can't be topped for being the asshat of the week, you go and say something stupid like this."
and:
"You should probably go practice your stoning."
I'd be offended, but I keep in mind that it might just be the illness talking, and i understand that it's a terrifying thing to confront.
Prior to that time, homosexuality had been treated as a mental or emotional illness, and THAT had been an act of kindness, since before that meme was adopted, homosexuality was criminalized.
By this culture. There are others wherein that has not been the case.
If you REALLY want to upset a homosexual, suggest that that finding be revisited and reviewed.
I'm having a hard time imagining why people might object to being classified as mentally ill, with the attendant loss of rights that entails, and potential for all sorts of interesting legalised abuse under the guise of treatment that can ensue afterwards.
I bet most gun owners would object strenuously to the DSM being "revisited and reviewed" to classify "fascination with weapons" as a mental illness, too.
I don't understand why some people are so determined to dictate to others how to live their own lives.
Robert Heinlein had a thought on that:
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws - always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
"I'm having a hard time imagining why people might object to being classified as mentally ill, with the attendant loss of rights that entails, and potential for all sorts of interesting legalised abuse under the guise of treatment that can ensue afterwards."
Do you know many alcoholics?
I know more than my share,(although not as many as you might expect in the course of over two decades at sea), and the hardest part for an alky is getting over his or her denial that they HAVE a problem.
There's also a parallel to the possible pathology of homosexuality among drunkards...they HATE to practice their pathology alone.
See, if an alcoholic has a group of other people around him who are ALSO drinking, he then can more easily buttress his self-deception, if even only for a few fleeting hours, that he isn't the ill soul that he really is.
"By this culture. There are others wherein that has not been the case."
Bilgeman, your alcoholics = homosexuals analogy falls remarkably flat.
You have a sexual partner if you're doing it right.
And the "American Culture" is, as all cultures are and have been, in a constant state of change. We are not now what we were fifty years ago. And the point of the paper I'm objecting to in this piece is to push that change in a certain direction, as you are well aware. "The American Culture" isn't some static thing you can use as a benchmark.
I'd like to point out that it's a question of more than just time, Kev. Geography plays a big, extra-chunky role in what "American Culture" looks like.
I forget where I read/heard it, but someone once pointed out that, however you try to portray Americans, you will be EXACTLY right, EXACTLY wrong, and everything in between, depending on what zip code you're in.
Hell, we've got rolling hills, windswept flatlands, expansive deserts, and craggy mountains, some with people's FACES on 'em, all in one country. Any wonder why Americans don't tend to bother with passports? Everything's right here!
Breaking this up into two because otherwise it's got too many links to get past the spam filter...
Okay, I guess I'll start with biology. I've written a much longer post on the topic of homosexuality and potential biological bases thereof before; it's a long post because it's a complex subject, as most things in biology that are less straightforward than "blue eyes or brown" are. (Ever notice how the high school genetics lecture never goes into green or hazel? That's because it all gets a lot more complicated even for something as simple as eye color.)
The upshot is that it's not so much that it's difficult to find a biological explanation for homosexuality as that there are actually several possible ways to explain it that fit just fine into current evolutionary theory, none of which are "proven" as such as they are perfectly plausible and inherently difficult to prove.
First up, the "not natural" thing: sorry, but this is just plain flat out wrong. It's difficult to apply a word as loaded as "homosexual" to animal species if only because it implicitly enfolds a lot of things inherent to human mating systems that don't necessarily apply to other animal groups. Suffice it to say, however, that homosexual sexual behaviors, preferential or even exclusive homosexual pair-bonding, and all sorts of other gender-bending things are found broadly across vertebrates and are even enshrined features of the mating systems of some creatures.
To condense something wide enough that a seven hundred plus page doorstopper has been written on the subject, I'll focus on two specific observations of homosexual behavior and bonding in nonhuman animals.
One, in intelligent social species where sex has acquired a social meaning that is as strong or even stronger than its reproductive function (and this applies to some degree to humans), you'll find a lot of same-sex diddling. This applies to bonobos, where homosexual sex over a lifetime may well exceed heterosexual, and dolphins, which also may form lifelong partnerships that involve sex with members of their own sex that they don't bother with for members of the opposite. The animals aren't "gay"- they still mate with the opposite sex- and even using the word "bisexual" doesn't properly apply; it's just that, in their species, what we would call homosexual behavior (and group sex and a whole bunch of other things) is just as much a part of life as meeting a potential partner over coffee is to us.
Two, among animals that broadly speaking DO have a mating system somewhat similar to ours- namely birds, which the majority of form mated pair bonds either over a season or over a lifetime to raise young, something much closer to what we would call homosexuality is observed- animals that not only have sexual contacts with their own sex, but show active preference or even exclusive preference for their own sex, and form the same kind of pair bonds as "heterosexual" birds, even raising young together if they get the opportunity.
The really interesting thing about the avian cases (widespread across the group- penguins, flamingos, mallard ducks, etc. etc.) is not that they have something akin to what we would call "gay", but that rates of apparent homosexuality within these species are actually HIGHER than they appear to be among humans. If you have a roughly 5% chance to be gay if you're a human, it's about double that if you're a mallard.
The reason I'm going out of my way to make this point is that it puts several underlines on the pointlessness of treating "gayness" like we would a genetic disease and looking for either cause or cure that way. That large a percentage of people aren't type 1 diabetics, or have cystic fibrosis, or Tay-Sachs- those numbers are more like one in thousands. Even sickle cell anemia, which is a classic teaching case of heterozygote advantage- a disease-causing allele that is preserved because people with only one copy have an advantage- is only 1/400 or so, though much more common in areas where malaria is still a real problem.
The problem with looking for a "gay gene" is that it contains the assumption that genes in general only do one thing and that they do so in all contexts, which just ain't so. Your phenotype- the actual physical living result- is more like an emergent property of your genotype plus a healthy dose of environment than it is like the inevitable result of a blueprint. Between epigenetics, genomic imprinting, and the way individual alleles may simply do different things depending on the age and sex of the genome's owner and what other alleles are in the mix, it makes it very difficult to call something an anything gene because it probably does several different things depending on context.
If homosexuality is so incredibly common next to things we recognize unequivocally as genetic diseases, it's probably because whatever genetic underpinnings it has do something highly adaptive in most contexts, ones we wouldn't recognize as having anything to do with homosexuality. One model that's been tried and found to be mathematically sound- and believe me that's hard to do in biology- is an allele that enhanced female fecundity but also gave a chance at homosexuality for male carriers. It's only a guess that would work, and several others are possible, but my overall point is that there's almost certainly some mechanism of high advantage keeping such things in populations where homosexuality occurs to keep it at such a relatively high rate despite the obvious fitness disadvantage for those in whom it expresses as actual homosexuality.
If I were to extend back out into the realm of pure speculation, I'd even wonder if it's not an adaptation that has to do with pair-bonding, given how much more common "gayness" is in bird species that are more biologically committed to monogamy than humans- but again, that's pure speculation. Read the post I linked if you're still confused- like I said, it's a very complex subject and trying to address it in a comment box is hard.
Anyway, that's nature. As others have observed, whether something is natural or not has no moral ramifications at all in and of itself; it does change the framing when trying to develop an ethical approach, especially as distinct from pure choice, but science itself can't have a moral dimension. Moral I'll cover in another comment when I'm not supposed to be making up the grocery list and doing a bunch of other stuff. >_
"Bilgeman, your alcoholics = homosexuals analogy falls remarkably flat."
It does if you try making a "stem to stern" congruence of the two, but as an observed parallel of group dynamic behaviors, I think it stands up well enough.
"You have a sexual partner if you're doing it right."
Really? So even if one of those partners is a child, then is that "doing it right"?
(Sorry Kev, but I think that that crack deserved you a rhetorical shot to the gut).
"We are not now what we were fifty years ago."
Quite, and in more ways than we might care to realize, we have BEEN changed, rather than simply changing.
Especially in this issue, there are people who are advancing their own agenda, and for their own purposes, to impose their will upon us all.
"Cultural Workers" and all that rot...
Swell, I have an agenda of my own, as do you. And the harder that I get hectored to celebrate those who may be mentally ill on the one hand or who indulge in behaviors that are a perversion and deviation of the normal human sex drive, the more I will push back to have that one single deletion from the DSM-IV reviewed.
If the Gay Lobby can try changing the windage, I'm certainly free to change the elevation.
In my exchange with Goy, I was also struck by how, when all was said and done, he was funamentally arguing that he was an initiate to a Revealed Truth on the matter, and that I was not.
Fair enough. I have my own Revealed Truth also, and it has some things to say about homosexuality.
On the DSM-IV and the psychological definition of "disease" versus "not a disease"- the entire reason there are periodic conferences to revise the DSM and that we're on an edition IV at all is that the definition of a "mental illness" usually doesn't have many or any clear bright lines as long as the subject in question isn't trying to kill themself or anyone else, or hallucinating. One of the cardinal distinctions in psychology between something being a pathology and a quirk is, in fact, whether the condition is actively fucking up the patient's life. For serious- not in those terms, but that IS the only clear line used to distinguish, say, being an extremely neat and ordered person versus being obsessive-compulsive, or being a hard drinker versus being an alcoholic, or being unhappy and being depressed. Mental illnesses are usually extreme expressions of normal conditions and behaviors, sometimes cases in which the extremity is accompanied by neurochemical imbalance. (And even then it's often a chicken and egg case about which set off the other.) So if you're unhappy about the definitions of mental illnesses being able to be rewritten by a handful of professionals... sorry dude, it's always been this way, with ALL conditions, and it always will be, just because "mental illness" resists neat categorization.
Homosexuality was dropped from the DSM because the consensus was reached that being gay does not, in and of itself, necessarily fuck up someone's life. Indiscriminately screwing around and spreading diseases will fuck up your life, but you can fuck it up just as efficiently doing that with the opposite sex as you can with your own. Diddling children will fuck up your life (and theirs), but as the majority of straight male little-girl diddlers attests, it's just as easy to do this heterosexually. Living a lie and cheating on your spouse with the person you do meth with while you preach the virtues of family values in public is likewise equally possible with either gender arrangement. If you can have a stable relationship with a consenting adult partner and be pretty happy with this... and it's possible to do this with someone of the same sex... then homosexuality is therefore not defined psychiatrically as a pathology.
Scientifically speaking I'd be perfectly happy to revisit the question because if anything I think much more evidence has been accumulated to support this point of view, and the consensus would therefore be even stronger this time. Personally speaking I'm with perlhaqr, and for the same reasons.
LabRat:
"Mental illnesses are usually extreme expressions of normal conditions and behaviors, sometimes cases in which the extremity is accompanied by neurochemical imbalance."
It certainly seems that way to my layman's understanding.
Could we not also refer to them, then as a perversion or deviation of normal human quirks of behaviors to the point of abnormality?
If that's not too far off the course track, then we're more than halfway through the voyage.
"If you can have a stable relationship with a consenting adult partner and be pretty happy with this... and it's possible to do this with someone of the same sex... then homosexuality is therefore not defined psychiatrically as a pathology."
I'd agree with this, and it may surprise Kevin, but after reading his 2004 piece I think him and I are in broad agreement.
There are those who are born "wired for AC"...and they, in all probability, likely are the ones to quietly pair up and settle down.
And then there are the others, I suspect the vast majority of the Gay community, who have been recruited to it...perverted. Whole different kettle of fish.
"One of the cardinal distinctions in psychology between something being a pathology and a quirk is, in fact, whether the condition is actively fucking up the patient's life."
One of the very first arguments I ever got into online was over Clinton's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" initiative. As a veteran Marine Infantryman, I had no end of tiffs with Gays and their dupes,(most of whom had never served),who thought that they were perfectly within their "rights" to openly inflict themselves upon a squad or platoon of grunts, and that should they get their way, there would be absolutely no dire and life-threatening consequences to this,(as though the US Armed Forces would henceforth employ "Diversity Compliance Supervisors", analogous to Soviet Political Commissars at platoon and squad level to ensure that the Gay troops were not walking more than their share of the point).
Repeatedly injecting your sexuality where it properly has no place is a form of "fucking up one's life", (and other's).
"Diddling children will fuck up your life (and theirs), but as the majority of straight male little-girl diddlers attests, it's just as easy to do this heterosexually."
Quite so. I note that the vast majority of cases of pedophilia reported of the Catholic Clergy recently has not been heterosexual, though, has it?
But I bring this up because the other hallmark of homosexuality is it's propensity to recruit among children.
SF schoolchildren field-tripped to their teacher's Lesbian wedding, the "Heather has Two Mommies" New York City fiasco of the 1980's...
I suspect that these were largely the work of those who were themselves deviated into homosexuality.
Here again, an area where one's private sexuality, hetero OR homo, should be irrelevant, but it seems that they can't NOT leave it at home and in the closet.
Certainly, the attacks by the Gay Lobby on the Boy Scouts for the Scouts' refusal to endorse and promote the Gay agenda send a very loud message.
These are not necessarily stupid people, and I don't believe that they are not aware of how dangerous a "game" they are playing in trying to cozy up to peoples' children...but they do it anyway, and repeatedly so.
In this they seem akin to bucks during the rut, they KNOW it's hunting season upon them, but they are compelled to make their presences known.
"Scientifically speaking I'd be perfectly happy to revisit the question because if anything I think much more evidence has been accumulated to support this point of view, and the consensus would therefore be even stronger this time."
Good. I think it should be revisited also.
And who knows, if the evidence is there, maybe it is heterosexuality that can be consensualized as a pathology... I'm game.
I know more than my share,(although not as many as you might expect in the course of over two decades at sea), and the hardest part for a gun nut is getting over his or her denial that they HAVE a problem.
There's also a parallel to the possible pathology of homosexuality among gun nuts...they HATE to practice their pathology alone.
See, if a gun nut has a group of other people around him who are ALSO obsessing over tools of destruction, he then can more easily buttress his self-deception, if even only for a few fleeting hours, that he isn't the ill soul that he really is.
----
See, here's the thing. Unlike Marxism and paedophilia, plain old homosexuality between consenting adults doesn't magically harm you any more than me owning 17 different flavours of 1911 does. You might think it's icky, in much the same way that my mother refuses to even acknowledge that I own "those wicked guns", but beyond that, it neither breaks your arm nor steals your car.
You want to bitch about homosexuals petitioning Congress for things which actually do material harm to you, and I'll be right there beside you, same as I am for anyone in that position, but "I don't like it so it's a mental illness" doesn't fly.
----
I live in the American Culture.
Do you live in another?
No, but I am capable of recognizing the possibility that maybe we don't always get everything right. The Brits really do consider interest in armament to be a mental illness (not officially, yet, but culturally) and I would consider that mistaken, even if I lived there.
And, actually, given that I live in New Mexico, and the Navajo culture is one of those who have a traditional place for homosexuals, I suppose in some sense I do live in one of those places.
You want to bitch about homosexuals petitioning Congress for things which actually do material harm to you, and I'll be right there beside you, same as I am for anyone in that position, but "I don't like it so it's a mental illness" doesn't fly.
I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm inclined to believe that it isn't just because he "don't like it," it's because his religion tells him it's a mortal sin. Anyone willing to engage in a mortal sin must, therefore, be mentally ill.
Didn't think so. So how successful could they be at "recruitment," or are you suggesting that others are more pliable than you when it comes to their sexual orientation?
perlhaqr:
"And, actually, given that I live in New Mexico, and the Navajo culture is one of those who have a traditional place for homosexuals, I suppose in some sense I do live in one of those places."
Well then, there's the answer to all our troubles.
We just have to become Navajo then.
I was going to bring up Afghanistan, but on the whole, I think we'd probably be more succesful at turning ourselves into Navajos.
Okay, think I've got time for "moral/social" before hitting the rest of the day's chores...
There are those who make the point that, morally speaking, it actually shouldn't matter whether biological destiny or choice determines sexuality; the question is whether or not it's inherently wrong or unethical to have sex or partner with persons of the same sex. I'd say no, because what two consenting adults do with each other that harms neither them nor anyone else isn't morally wrong- but as Bilgeman and his "revealed truth" demonstrate, that doesn't actually get the larger debate much of anywhere because there are plenty of people who are going to argue that it's inherently wrong because their scripture of choice says so. Any further argument must be made primarily from social utility.
If homosexuality is heavily rooted in nature instead of or as well as nurture- and I think the prevalence of varying forms of it across vast groups of vertebrates AND history and very diverse human cultures argues heavily for that- then I think the problem then becomes finding a healthy way to deal with it and them as a society.
Yes, statistically speaking, you are more likely to be depressed, have a substance abuse problem, or have a sexually transmitted disease if you are gay*. You're also more likely to have any of these problems if you were abused as a child, if you're a certain racial minority in certain areas of the world, or if you're poor- it's not the sexuality, melanin content, or income level that predispose to the problem, it's the higher likelihood of stress, trauma, and an overall disordered environment that cause the problems. Having a fairly central part of who you are be a reason for your parents to kick you out, your religion to reject you (even if you're a firm believer), potential partners either ostracizing you or beating you up for admitting attraction, and generally being a social joke is DEPRESSING- it shouldn't be a shock that gay people have a higher rate. Nor should it be a shock that, faced with an overall cultural value system that actively rejects them, the resultant counterculture de-emphasizes or rejects those same values that keep straights relatively freer of disease, more sober, and overall more stable. The surprise here isn't that these problems are more prevalent in the gay community, it should be that they're not much worse.
Or if you want another "gay problem", take one that the "go back in the closet" mindset makes actively worse- gay people marrying straight people. The determinative word in "gay person" when it comes to values, goals, and dreams isn't "gay", it's "person"- and just as some people want to screw around and party until they're too old or dead to get away with it anymore, some people want a family more than they want anything else. Some gay people want it badly enough that they'll exercise that right so many people point out they have- they marry someone of the opposite sex. They get the family, but it's a shitty as hell situation- even leaving aside the one partner stuck with either cheating or never getting sex they actually enjoy, the other one is stuck in a self-esteem and trust-destroying marriage with someone who isn't actually attracted to them at all and may well one day blow the marriage sky-high when the human libido does what it does.
The thing about "heteronormativity" and the endless models out there of straight relationships and straight sexuality isn't that it shouldn't be considered the norm (clearly, it is), but that it's giving straight children models for what they should expect and how to go about it. Sometimes these aren't such great models- another valid complaint about Disney is that the model it most often gives for little girls is that passivity and a pretty face will win you a fabulous man and a wonderful life- but the fact is that the models are there. This is a great thing that culture overall does- give children who might not have a healthy background an idea of what healthy actually looks like. Neither of my parents ever showed me what a healthy relationship looks like- neither of them ever had one. My relationship of ten years is doing fine, though, because I had endless available models to compare my experiences to and choose over the destructive patterns that were my first ones.
Right now the overall cultural "family" message being sent is that the stable, sexually exclusive, drug-free relationships are for straight people and a drunken promiscuous party model is for gay people**. I don't think "heteronormativity" should be changed- it is, after all, the norm- but I do think that if we want fewer pathologies in our society, that gay people need healthy models as well. People are complicated and easy to screw up, and cultures are essentially gigantic generation-spanning devices for shaping them into stable, productive members of society; if we can't get rid of gay people, then enfolding them into the same cultural structures that produce stable, productive straight people makes a hell of a lot more sense then shoving them off onto the margins and saying of the result, "See, that's what being gay gets you!"
Does that mean including depictions of gay relationships in fiction? Well, um, yeah. Do I think that what I have in mind is the same thing as the sociologists? No. Do I think that even someone who actually DID want to turn more children gay would have more of a shot than the people who want all children to turn out straight? Not really, so I'm not terribly worried so much as mildly annoyed.
*On the last item, though, not if you're a lesbian. If we're going to judge the moral value of relationship based on statistics- disease, length of relationship, faithfulness- every woman should be eating muff.
**Gay men, anyway. Those poor lesbians again. Their only model is "the L-word"- I shudder.
Kevin:
"Didn't think so. So how successful could they be at "recruitment," or are you suggesting that others are more pliable than you when it comes to their sexual orientation?"
Certainly.
I should disclose here that my first full-bore sexual experience was at the age of 13, and with a 22-year-old woman, (this was not in the United States, so it may have culturally been "okay", but I rather think not, since it was a Muslim country, and she was herself a Muslim), ergo, I was already fully-versed in the pleasures of womanhood by the time the male deviants came sniffing around.
So I was able to confine my interaction with homosexual pedophiles to sticking a gas pump nozzle into their cars' gas tanks, with little bother.
But I've never forgotten how they tried.
I was NOT, however, able to resist the allure of tobacco, (which I started about the same time and continue to abuse to this day), while others were able to successfully resist the sweetleaf.
I should also point out that at that time and (especially), in that state, smoking cigarettes by students on school grounds was tolerated as a normal and accepted state of affairs.
Which kinda also speaks to the point of the effort to "normalize" homosexuality, yes?
I wonder that you ask such a question, were you not the guy who wrote:
"Fuck THAT noise!"?
I think that it would be educational in the extreme to canvass open Gays' "coming out testimonies" to find out how many of their first homosexual experiences were at what age, and how many of them were with an older, or adult partner.
Kevin wrote: "...I know for a fact that I could not choose to be physically attracted to another male."
This is one of those situations of whether you believe it to be so or not you are correct. It also speaks volumes about what a young person thinking they may be homosexual believes about themselves. Not feeling worthy, or valuable enough that someone will actually love YOU. Unstable family upbringing is a definite contributing factor to whether or not you feel self-worth. If you don't find this self-worth by the time you enter puberty, (still long for closeness from your same-sex parent or whatever else might be holding you back), you will BELIEVE you are different therefore you WILL be different.
There is a reason to "indoctrinate" the young into the gun-loving, freedom/liberty community in the same way.
If I believe I am sexually attracted to sticking my thing in a horse, (and I dwell on it, fantasize and visualize about it), it becomes true. Same with foot-fetish, cross-dressing, homo- and hetero- sexual, dominatrix, etc. Think about it, no one came out of the womb with a gene saying that they would be sexually turned-on by high-heels, (or a gerbil in their ass), but IT HAPPENS. What you visualize yourself to be IS dangerous. I don't believe this should be used as reason to "blame" a young Richard Gere, (or who/whatever). The formative adolescent years are too difficult as it is without also dealing with these overwhelming feelings of being different, (unloved/able), with the strongest desire you have is just to be loved, (not sexually), as you are. (Great time to indoctrinate, by the way). Neither should parents be "blamed" as there are many, many other influences in a child's life that contribute to sexual directions. (Unless those influences have been limited or virtually removed -- for instance, homosexuals raising children without any heterosexual interactions for the children to be exposed to.)
"If we're going to judge the moral value of relationship based on statistics- disease, length of relationship, faithfulness- every woman should be eating muff."
Oh, really??? Maybe this is the case for your relationship, but as for the facts:
In general, lesbian and bisexual women report more experiences of victimization than their heterosexual counterparts in their adult relationships (Balsam, Rothblum & Beauchaine, 2005; Tjaden, Thoennes & Allison, 1999). {*Many therapists suggest that the hostility and aggression inherent to many lesbian relationship arise out of the stressors and social pressures unique to gay and lesbian people.} It is possible that over 50% of lesbian women have been victims of physical abuse or used violence within their same-sex relationship. {*See Brand & Kidd (1986); Coleman (1990); :Lie&Gentlewarrior (1991); Lie, Schilit, Bush, Montagne & Reyes (1991); Renzetti (1992).} Verbal, emotional and psychological violence are the most common form. {*Lie et al. (1991); Lockhart, White, Causby & Isaac (1994); Renzetti (1988).} So severe is the abuse and overt control in some relationships that many women literally have to escape from the relationship. {*Researchers have also found that women who have been abused within their family of origin or witnessed family violence were more likely to be a victim or a batterer to their intimate same-sex relationships.}
There are more paragraphs I could type out but lets move on to the longevity claim:
Laumann, Gagnon, Michael and Michaels, found that women, similar to homosexual men, have a "higher average numbers of parners" (p.314). Other researchers have confirmed that lesbian relationships, in general, have less durability than heterosexual relationships and promote within each woman a persistent feeling of impermanence. {*See Blumstein & Schwartz (1983); Rothblum, Balsam & Mickey (2004); Rothblum &Factor (2001)}
The aim of the Gay Lobby is to normalize homosexuality so that they can openly work in the schools to perverert the young and thereby recruit sexual partners.
Sweet Jaysus Bilgerman, you've actually managed to push me into agreeing with Markadaffya. Please don't ever do that again.
"Didn't think so. So how successful could they be at "recruitment," or are you suggesting that others are more pliable than you when it comes to their sexual orientation?"
Certainly.
Wow - the nanny-statist mentality in a Markadaffya size nutshell. Of course it doesn't effect me, it must be done to save all of those weaker souls.
juris:
"Sweet Jaysus Bilgerman, you've actually managed to push me into agreeing with Markadaffya. Please don't ever do that again."
Uh-huh. But Mark is quite correct in his assertion, (if it's the one about us being little different than Al-Qaeda that you're referring to).
Al-Qaeda lives by a doctrine of faith, and is ready to do violence to defend and promote it,as do many, if not most, of us.
What I don't think mark is ready to face is that he does,too.
But this isn't about the wonderful world or howling wilderness inside of Markadelphia's cranium. is it?
This is from the article at LifeSiteNews that Kevin first linked to.
What does this statement mean to you?
"The SWS press release concluded: "President Obama may have declared June to be Gay Pride Month, but entertainment for children therefore continues to perpetuate a less inclusive message, leaving those outside its confines with little to build their own dreams of happily ever after.""
What would a "more inclusive message" actually entail?
Positive depictions of openly Gay cartoon characters aimed at Disney's usual target audience, right?
And to what end? To be inclusive to help the childrens' self esteem?
Or to psychologically prepare them to accept the advances of deviants as "normal", (and perhaps even awaited for with longing),when their turn comes?
Do you have a more cogent motive for their making such a statement?
LabRat:
"People are complicated and easy to screw up, and cultures are essentially gigantic generation-spanning devices for shaping them into stable, productive members of society; if we can't get rid of gay people, then enfolding them into the same cultural structures that produce stable, productive straight people makes a hell of a lot more sense then shoving them off onto the margins and saying of the result, "See, that's what being gay gets you!""
I didn't want to let this go by without commenting on how strange it is that the thought of curing them just never seemed to enter your mind as you wrote this.
I suppose that in YOUR chosen scripture,(the DSM-IV?) "The Elders", as you put it earlier:
"So if you're unhappy about the definitions of mental illnesses being able to be rewritten by a handful of professionals... sorry dude, it's always been this way, with ALL conditions, and it always will be"
...stated that homosexuals are not ill, and thus it is unthinkable to contemplate the possibility of curing them..."getting rid of them", (whatever you meant by that term), however, does seem to at least be on the table...somewhere...somehow.
Can I observe that this paragraph of yours is as good an example of doctrinally pure dogmatic "Science" as I've seen today?
Perhaps the host of ills that are more prevalent among Gays are symptoms of their Gay illness.
Of course, if you are forbidden to look by slavish adherence to doctrine, you'll never find a cure, will you?
And thus, you inescapably will blame the pathologies of Gay people upon the attitudes of society at large.
But that runs you headfirst right into the "social utility" argument that you, yourself advanced.
A "heteronormative" society is that which does the best for the most of it's members...that is precisely WHY it IS the norm.
I'll leave you there upon the horns of the dilemna you forged for yourself.
If the government were abusing my rights, do you have an obligation to resist that government?
What sort of obligation? Moral, ethical, legal? Other?
It'd be the same sort of "obligation" that voters have to know what they're voting for. You could call it that, but do we still let pig-ignorant voters in the booths when all they know is who belongs to what party? If that much? So yeah, you could argue that that's how people oughta react, but look at who's dancing on The Hill these days and tell me how much of an "obligation" it is.
Kevin:
"I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm inclined to believe that it isn't just because he "don't like it," it's because his religion tells him it's a mortal sin. Anyone willing to engage in a mortal sin must, therefore, be mentally ill."
Nope.
The truly mentally ill, being unable to determine right from wrong, are as children, and are therefore incapable of Sin, (both Mortal and Venal).
The whole point behind the Sacrament of Communion is that you realize, acknowledge, confess and abjure your sins, that you do penance as an Act of Contrition, and are thereby purified and in a State of Grace to receive the Transubstantiated Host.
Those who are mentally ill are to be pitied and prayed for, hopefully to be cured. But they are not to be coddled in their illness, and nor are they to be allowed to infect others.
Jesus walked among and healed lepers, but he did NOT invite them among the healthy. And neither did he exhort his disciples to ignore their illness,which would have been rather difficult in any event, when the leprosy had eaten away their faces.
Willfully indulging in that which you KNOW to be Sin is not an illness, but rather a condition of being human, it is inescapable. That's what all the business about the Sacrament of Baptism is about for Catholics.
The sins are often their own punishment, and we are taught to hate the sins, but love the sinner.
We don't 'throw them out of the Church" as some here have alleged, but until they repent of their sins, there are parts of the Mass in which they cannot partake.
I want to make it clear here that I am probably the world's worst Catholic, so don't take my imperfect perception of the Church's doctrine as having the "Nihil Obstat" imprimatur.
Bilgerman, on a recent thread I wondered, somewhat disparagingly, if lefties in general aren't the sincerest disciples of Skinner - believing man is a tabula rasa upon which the proper programming is to be written.
And here you pop up, no leftie at all, and assert that at least concerning human sexuality, again we simply await the proper programming - all the while denying that you could possibly be subject to such yourself.
What anyone does with their genitals for their jollies doesn't matter to me as long as they do so in privacy and only with consenting adults. Nor does why matter (i.e. nature or nurture - they ended up in the same place either way). I'm not sure which is the sadder - that you are threatened by them, or they by you.
I didn't want to let this go by without commenting on how strange it is that the thought of curing them just never seemed to enter your mind as you wrote this.
Uh, no. It's not that it never entered my head, it's that I made the assumption that you might have some idea what you're talking about with such authority and therefore might be familiar with the history and track record of "curing" homosexuality- which is utterly abysmal. One of the reasons the DSM was revised in the first place was that psychology was having basically no results "curing" homosexuality but were getting much better outcomes for their patients if they treated for their actual problems.
The biggest success rate any "reparative therapy" program- or "ex-gay" if you like- has ever self-reported is thirty percent. More honest practictioners admit that only a very small percentage of their clients are successful in the long run. A lot more of the "successes" admit their orientation never really changed, but they are living in heterosexual relationships.
The people that go through these programs desperately do not want to be gay and the ones that "succeed" at this seem to be the ones with the most white-knuckle willpower to live as though they were straight anyway. These samples and these numbers- as well as the historical persistence and natural presence of homosexuality in nature- tell me that gayness isn't a treatable mental illness, it's a trait.
"Curing" lefthandedness would be easier- and historically, it has been.
I suppose that in YOUR chosen scripture,(the DSM-IV?) "The Elders", as you put it earlier:
I don't have a chosen scripture. Don't put words in my mouth. I do recognize the people who study and treat mental illness for a reason as experts- but not gods. Science is sometimes political because people are political and science is practiced by people- but I still give respect where it's due to people who have put in the time, effort, and experience to becoming expert in their field.
"getting rid of them", (whatever you meant by that term), however, does seem to at least be on the table...somewhere...somehow.
"Curing" them, which doesn't seem to work. Iran and Afghanistan have their own method, but somehow no matter how many they execute they still seem to have gay people. Trying to culturally pressure them to stay in the closet. My point is that even the most extreme methods don't work, therapy almost always doesn't work and even when it does the results are questionable, maybe we ought to try something other than trying to get rid of them one way or another, because that doesn't work.
Can I observe that this paragraph of yours is as good an example of doctrinally pure dogmatic "Science" as I've seen today?
What doctrine, why the scare quotes around science, and why the capital letter? I base my conclusions on a combination of everything I've ever been able to read on the subject in biology, in psychology, and in sociological history. You can try to frame that as equivalent to your faith in dogmatic scripture- now there's a vocabulary word, dogma, I wonder what the etymological history there is- but you're going to have to do a bit better than "YOU AGREE WITH SCIENCE, YOU SHEEP".
Perhaps the host of ills that are more prevalent among Gays are symptoms of their Gay illness.
Like this. Psychiatry as a professional body spends decades treating homosexuality as a mental illness, observes that doesn't work, then tries treating the various problems on their own independently as if they had nothing intrinsic to do with homosexuality. Observing that this works a lot better, they then finalize the DSM revision process- this was by no means the reason for the progression between DSM-III, DSM-IIIR, and DSM-IV, but it was part of that series of changes.
Your response: "YEAH WELL MAYBE IT'S JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE SICK GAYS!"
What's your next searing logical riposte to a point made going to be? "NO, U!"?
"Of course, if you are forbidden to look by slavish adherence to doctrine, you'll never find a cure, will you?"
Ah, I was wrong. It's "SHEEPLE".
So are you arguing that being the butt of massive social and religious pressure, condemnation, and mockery is not stressful or that stress creates the exact same pathologies in a broad variety of other situations?
A "heteronormative" society is that which does the best for the most of it's members...that is precisely WHY it IS the norm.
No, normal is just the parameters most folks fall under. By human global population standards, it is normal to have enough melanin to handle sunny days without chemicals and to lose the ability to digest lactose by adulthood. Stick me in the sun for a few hours without a layer of SPF 50 thick enough to hide your car keys in and I'll burn to a crisp, but on the other hand I could probably live on dairy products without a single digestive hiccup. Sticking me in the sun and taking away my milk isn't good for me even though it's the "norm".
Know what else is normal? Variation through any given biological population. I could swear there's even an important scientific concept based on that.
I'll leave you there upon the horns of the dilemna you forged for yourself.
The scary part here is I have absolutely no idea what dilemma you think I have.
Oh, really??? Maybe this is the case for your relationship
Why does everyone assume that anybody defending homosexuality as not being the icky gay plague of immoral doom must be gay themselves? Sadly, my unique phenotype includes a preference for cock and I am unable to enjoy the statistical relationship benefits of being a lesbian. (Yes, my tongue is quite firmly in my cheek here.)
As for your assertion that lesbian women are more likely to be beaten, there's also a major problem of that word reported- basically all domestic-violence data is infected with underreporting skewing the results one way or another. One of the reasons domestic violence is of particular interest in research at all is that there's a growing awareness in the field that domestic violence committed by women in general is drastically underreported- and women who've been beaten by their female lovers are more likely to report than men who have been. Given that men also have a far longer track record of killing their partners as the endpoint of abuse, heterosexual women also may be underreporting violence as compared to lesbian and bisexual women.
As for longevity, I was speaking based on older research- but given that most of the research in the field is agenda-driven from one angle or another and all of it is pretty new, I could believe either result. Given that I was making a tongue-in-cheek point about how people talk about the pathologies of "homosexuality" while ignoring lesbians completely, I really don't care if I'm wrong on both scores- it was about the silliness of defining what's the "best" kind of relationship by statistics.
Lastly, Bilgeman, your thing about the GAY AGENDA being that THEY WANT OUR CHILDREN seems as odd and ridiculous to me as an anti-gunner saying that the GUN AGENDA is to get more inner-city teenagers killed. I've been interested in gay rights for fifteen years and never once when dealing with actual gay people have I ever gotten the impression they wanted to turn kids gay. (I don't think the idea occurred to them, since, in their experience sexuality can't be changed just like that. That goes BOTH ways, you know.) And, like the vast majority of adult heterosexuals, the vast majority of them aren't sexually interested in children and don't think of them that way until they're, y'know, adults. Pedophiles of all bends belong in the same creepy little box together.
Why would they want images of gay people in the media or to get children used to the idea? Why would people with dark skin like the idea of images in the media including them, too? (Just like Real Life!) Children identify with those who are like them and it's lonely if you never see anyone else in the experience you're absorbing as "normal" that's like you. The suicide rate of gay teenagers is astronomical- they think reducing the isolation and apparent bleakness of their future would help with that.
Oh, and there's also the part where kids are horrid little tribal beasts that fear and loathe difference they have no exposure to and they'd like to change that, too.
"Nor does why matter (i.e. nature or nurture - they ended up in the same place either way). I'm not sure which is the sadder - that you are threatened by them, or they by you."
The fact that they are trying to indoctrinate children, (going after Disney), into believing the ones with unmet self-worth, unmet same-sex attunement needs and identity issues are "just gay" does have an effect on all of society, (and I believe that affect is negative). Nature vs. nurture does certainly matter when the belief that "I am gay" is all it takes to make it so. Young impressionable, open minds looking for answers to the difficult question of "who am I?" & "does anyone care about me?". There is a reason Hilter focused so much energy on youth recruitment
Nature vs. nurture does certainly matter when the belief that "I am gay" is all it takes to make it so.
This is the second time you have made this assertion, assuming you're the same anon. (Seriously, a handle or something would be nice, doesn't have to be your real name.)
Care to provide some support other than just "gay people are like foot fetishists and horse-fuckers because I said so"?
juris imprudent:
"I'm not sure which is the sadder - that you are threatened by them, or they by you."
Or that I aasked you a direct question, and you have no answer to it?
"And here you pop up, no leftie at all, and assert that at least concerning human sexuality, again we simply await the proper programming"
I suspect, that like sister LabRat, you are indulging in an either/or fallacy.
While we are less and less the "tabula rasa" that certain 18th and 19th century French philosophers,(not to mention other assorted latter-day scoundrels), fantasized about, there is certainly the capacity for learning...or training, which seems more apropos a term in this context.
Otherwise why would we build and staff churches,schools and prisons, if not to train incipient members of our society in what is expected of them?
"...all the while denying that you could possibly be subject to such yourself."
You did yourself and me a disservice by not reading my full reply to Kevin. While I was able to easily resist the advances of homosexuals, there were other influences that I was not prepared to overcome.
I didn't "catch AIDS" from teenaged foolishness,(and it would have been "prime time" to have been infected in the first wave), I probably will have caught the cancer from them though. And in the environment and attitudes that I ensnared myself in one form of self-destructive vice is a lesson perhaps to prevent the youngsters from being recruited into another.
If you care.
"What anyone does with their genitals for their jollies doesn't matter to me as long as they do so in privacy and only with consenting adults."
I hear in your words the sound of a retreat from an earlier position...but what makes you think that your new "line in the sand" will be one that you will be able to hold?
Retreating from a position gets to be habit-forming, in case you didn't realize it.
IOTW, and to be blunt, if a pair of homosexuals, ten years from now, decided to "get it on" onstage at your childrens' or grandchildrens' school stage-play as a "celebration of sexuality"...what makes you think that you'd be then willing to do anything about it?
Mark well the arguments made against me here today, as the exact same slurs might be made against you then.
So, do you want to take a crack at that question I posed you earlier?
I jump into this thread, having barely lightly skimmed it, to respond to the baseline post.
Simply put, I note that there is a serious and fundamental difference between tolerating a condition that is outside the norm, and redefining the norm to include the divergent condition.
Attempting to redefine a norm is to reject reality wholesale and substitute your own broken concoction, and nothing good ever comes of that. (This massively understates the havoc such attempts cause.)
Tolerating a condition that is outside the usual parameters is an entirely different proposition. It is the secret sauce that makes a free society free, because freedom to adhere to the uncontroversial norm is a joke in awful taste.
I submit that the number of things a truly free society really cannot tolerate is actually quite small, and that most of those fall into the categories of "swinging your fist into my nose", and "working to undermine the security of my life, liberty and property".
Frankly, homosexuality doesn't fall into either of those categories, and attempts to demonstrate that it does really strains more credulity than should ever be considered as factor in a matter of law and public policy.
Honestly, I'd rather have a discrete 24/7 gay clown orgy going on in the house next door than have Markadelphia ever again exercise his right to vote, because gay clowns privately having at each other in a heaping CF does much less damage to my life, liberty and pursuit than the sorts of votes Markadelphia is likely to cast.
So, to sum up: toleration of gay clown orgies: recommended. You don't have to like them, but rejecting them leads to a less free society for everyone, with the side effects of driving them into the Leftist camp, which then exploits their plight for their own purposes, to the hindrance of all.
Well, you would have to get away from the belief therapy doesn't work to "cure" homosexuals. But when therapy has taken place, (whether with a gay-affirmative therapist or not), the biggest factor in whether or not a person comes away from therapy "cured" is whether or not the homosexual BELIEVES that they can achieve opposite-sex attraction.
Please allow me a few paragraphs on this subject:
This was written by Janelle Hallman.
"In the preface of her book Female Homosexuality, Dr. Elaine Siegel, a supervising and training analyst at the New York Center for Psychoanalytical Training, tells the story of how she simultaneously treated 12 homosexual women within her private counseling practice. All of her clients viewed homosexuality as liberating and not one of them, at the outset of therapy, had a conscious desire to change. Since Dr. Siegel did not interpret homosexuality as an illness, she "did not set out to 'cure' them or to dissuade them from their lifestyle" (1988, p. xi). She merely prepared herself to listen as she would to any client and made herself emotionally available.
She reports that as her clients resolved and distanced themselves from inner conflicts, their anxiety decreased and life in general became more joyful and productive. Further, "With the attainment of firmer inner structures," their "interpersonal relationships also solidified and became more permanent" (p. xi). In other words, as these women began to root themselves within their unique stories, their true authentic and feminine self, and assume ownership of their personal needs, feelings and desires, they established the foundation upon which healthy and long-lasting relationships could be sustained. Through solidifying a self, they created the avenue through which to solidify intimacy. Needless to say, her clients, as a whole, reached extremely satisfactory conclusions to their years of psychoanalytic treatment.
But something else happened. During the course of treatment, more than half of her clients began to experience other-sex attractions and romantic desires, ultimately becoming, as Siegel puts it, "fully heterosexual" (p. xii). She admits that this profound change within her clients was partially due to her willingness to remain open to their deeper issues and "often heavy developmental needs" (p. xii) rather than simply affirming their homosexuality as normative. It was also due to her client's willingness to address their developmental needs and to continue to grow as individuals and women, allowing internal and external change, including the transformation of their sexual preferences and identity.
Since the advent of psychotherapy, women in conflict with same-sex attractions and behaviors have sought out professional help. Many women who were NOT IN CONFLICT with same-sex attraction have experienced profound change. Counseling practitioners and new counseling students have not heard much about these women. Yet for decades, women and their therapists have reported appreciable reductions in their same-sex struggles. They have a story to tell."
If you would like more the PDF is available for free download off the authors website, here: http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3429 I ended on page 40.
But there is plenty more, such as,
"Dr. Harvey Kaye of the New York Medical College observed that 50% of the homosexual women with whom he had been working had shifted toward the heterosexual end of the spectrum. "This indicates a substantial positive treatment potential in homosexual women, a potential which should not be lost sight of in evaluating the treatability of female homosexuals who present themselves for therapy" (Kaye et al., 1967, p. 633).
The practitioners working with homosexual women typically went about their work quietly and conscientiously. They did not operate from a moral basis about homosexuality, but from a psychoanalytic framework and an ethical basis, believing it was the patient's right to seek treatment for any inner conflict or lack of a sense of well-being. They were respected within their field and often served on official subcommittees of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) established for the ongoing study and treatment of homosexuality and transgender issues. Their professional papers were regularly accepted and presented at the annual APA conventions.
But behind the scenes, a pressure cooker was brewing. In 1970, gay rights groups stormed the APA annual convention held in San Francisco. Ronald Bayer, in his book Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis, reviews the history of this monumental moment. "Guerrilla theater tactics and more straightforward shouting matches characterized" the gay rights groups' presence (p. 102). The activists essentially accused psychiatry of harming homosexuals be asserting that homosexuals can be "treated" or "helped." Their disruption of the convention became so intense that some of the psychiatrists in attendance "demanded that their air fares to San Fransisco be refunded" (p. 103). Many heard "their professional denounced as an instrument of oppression and torture" (p. 103). The APA had surprisingly become a target for social change.
To stave off another protest, in 1971 the APA decided to host the first panel of active homosexuals where NONprofessionals could openly speak to psychiatrists about homosexuality as a normal identity. Yet, even with this invitation, gay activists again stormed the convention, demanding that homosexuality be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). They argued that homosexuals were unjustly discriminated against because society at large believed homosexuals had a "mental illness."
By 1972, practicing homosexual psychiatrists joined forces with the gay activist groups. Early in 1973, Dr. Robert Spitzer, a member of the APA Nomenclature Committee (the committee responsible for publishing the DSM), arranged a meeting between the activists and the committee to discuss the request to eliminate homosexuality as a diagnostic category. A political agenda was now penetrating and weaving itself into the very fabric of this scientific community. At the 1973 annual convention, the core group of psychiatrists now seeking to eliminate homosexuality from the DSM reprimanded the psychiatrists who had for decades successfully worked with homosexual patients. They implied that patients had been forced to "change" by moralizing practitioners. To the contrary, the patients of these practitioners chose to enter therapy because they were in distress about their homosexuality. Their dignity and right to self-determination had been respected by these psychoanalysts.
In Dec. of 1973, a small group of psychiatrists (members of the board of trustees of the APA) made a final decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM and replaced it with the phrase "sexual orientation disturbance." Implicit to this new nomenclature is the assertion that homosexuality is not a mental disorder but in fact a normal variation of human sexuality and therefore, in and of itself, not a treatable condition. The only treatable "problem" is the inner conflict or disturbance within a man or woman with respect to their homosexual feelings or behaviors."
The PDF is informative if this peeks your interest. And yes, the APA did have homosexuality categorized wrong under Sociopathic Personality Disturbance, which it wasn't and still isn't. But the change to "normalcy" should have required overwhelming scientific evidence. Yet little if any was given and only 13 of 15 board members voted for the change without ANY scientific evidence presented or analyzed to prove that homosexuality was inborn or unchangeable, refuting previous findings or experiences of clinicians specializing in the treatment of homosexuality, or proving that the mental health or overall psychological well-being of homosexuals was the same as nonhomosexuals.
Luckily treatment is still semi-possible and continues to achieve favorable results, (I'm not talking "cured" either, although that continues to happen surprisingly often). Wanna have a freedom issued discussion? Why can't a homosexual SEEKING CHANGE get advice and treatment from the vast majority of APA members? Besides just the standard, "YOU'RE NORMAL, it's the rest of society that has the mental disorder".
LabRat:
"Psychiatry as a professional body spends decades treating homosexuality as a mental illness, observes that doesn't work, then tries treating the various problems on their own independently as if they had nothing intrinsic to do with homosexuality"
And this with the methods and protocols of the 1950s and 60's, correct?
So, by the same thinking, any disease that could not be cured with the medicine of earlier eras is then placed off-limits and never to be revisited, is that it?
Even you had to offer an example that the best results obtained,(using ice-water jets and electro-convulsive therapies we might presume), was reported at %30. But then you immediately launched an attack to question the validity of the example you offered and thereby denigrate the credibility of the strawman you dragged in and served up, without giving us linky-love so that we could examine the data for ourselves.
"Observing that this works a lot better, they then finalize the DSM revision process- this was by no means the reason for the progression between DSM-III, DSM-IIIR, and DSM-IV, but it was part of that series of changes."
Not according to Brother Anonymous, who even cited us a book title, wherein this "revision process" was distilled down to opinions of 13 out of 15 APA board members after being subjected to the Gay equivalent of Marxist street politics at the height of its' powers in the US...caved.
And here you are, hotly and rather nastily defending it tooth and nail.
(But you don't have a Scripture to defend, right?).
"So are you arguing that being the butt of massive social and religious pressure, condemnation, and mockery is not stressful or that stress creates the exact same pathologies in a broad variety of other situations?"
As I predicted earlier, you have now transferred the source of the pathologies found in higher numbers among the Gay population to the society at large.
You even go so far as to blame suicidal Gay teens at the feet of straight children:
"The suicide rate of gay teenagers is astronomical- they think reducing the isolation and apparent bleakness of their future would help with that.
Oh, and there's also the part where kids are horrid little tribal beasts that fear and loathe difference they have no exposure to and they'd like to change that, too."
Look around you LabRat, look at how many states have changed their constitutions to ban Gay marriage. The citizens have rebuked the opinions of judges, your 13 APA Elders, and their legislatures to formally place homosexuality beyond the pale.
You claim that you've been "interested" (is that a euphemism for "advocate"?), in "Gay Rights" for 15 years. Are you quite sure you wish to to keep on this course track? Because it seems to me that you're rapidly losing whatever ground you might have gained.
Did you learn nothing from Prop 8?
"Lastly, Bilgeman, your thing about the GAY AGENDA being that THEY WANT OUR CHILDREN seems as odd and ridiculous to me"
That's not at all surprising. If you've taken up the cause of your selected victims, as you assert that you have in this context for over a decade and a half, it's rather expected that, like Nelson at Copenhagen, you raise your spyglass to your blind eye when something heaves to about them that you do not wish to see. I have offered my own testimony, the evidence of homosexual pedophilia in my own Church's clergy, the SF field trip, the NYC schools' books, and the pressure campaign against the Scouts and Disney to show that there is certainly at least a subset of the gay community that shows a markedly keen interest in children, and this sub-set is given cover and support within the wider gay community, and all you can offer in response is the lame old "self-esteem" reasoning?
Lady, that gag's now so old it's got whiskers growing off it.
Let me challenge you with this, then:
if homosexuality is succesfully normalized, would you expect homosexuals to ignore the fact that they now have an entire new crop of potential bed-mates in the offing?
Remember that my own first experience was with what was, by strictly applied definition, a pedophilic adult female.
Shall we thereby double the vulnerabilities of our children in this regard by this campaign of homonormalization?
I say not. I do not have the faith in the 13 APA board members of December 1973 that you do, and I believe it is high time to honestly revisit the evidence they used to reach the decision that they did.
IOTW, and to be blunt, if a pair of homosexuals, ten years from now, decided to "get it on" onstage at your childrens' or grandchildrens' school stage-play as a "celebration of sexuality"...what makes you think that you'd be then willing to do anything about it?
The same civil standards we have that today prohibit such a display of heterosexuality, you imbecile. Sheesh, you must be extraordinarily insecure of your own sexuality that it need be guarded so zealously.
That you are so ashamed of the other vices in your life is Catholicism, lapsed or not, writ large. Jerking off used to be a big one too in the Roman tradition. Do you indulge guiltily or would you cut off your hand lest it offend thee?
I asked you:
"So, do you want to take a crack at that question I posed you earlier?"
And you ducked it AGAIN.
It's getting so glaring a silence on your part that even you must recognize how damaging your standing mute on the matter is. Is this not why you would prefer to change the subject by launching ad hominem attacks on me and my faith?
I'll give you the opportunity to respond to my challenge again a little later.
"The same civil standards we have that today prohibit such a display of heterosexuality, you imbecile"
The civil standards we have today are not the same ones we had even 10 years ago, so what makes you think that they, like the APA, will be stuck in this contemporary cultural mode for the next ten...heck, even the next five years?
If the the good folks at the SWS get their way, people may have to start issuing apologies for their heterosexuality.
"Sheesh, you must be extraordinarily insecure of your own sexuality that it need be guarded so zealously."
I've been waiting for THAT one...what was the response LabRat gave Anonymous:
"Why does everyone assume that anybody defending homosexuality as not being the icky gay plague of immoral doom must be gay themselves?"
And here you've provided the opposite corollary to the shopworn cliche that LabRat lamented, to wit:
That if I am perceived as attacking homosexuality, I must be a closeted homosexual myself.
There should be some parallel to Godwin's Law when discussing homosexuality.
What you've just told me, (and anyone else still following this discussion),is that you've run out of any cogent arguments and are now reduced to just flinging poo-poo in a high dudgeon of a snit.
And when all is said and done, all I've REALLY done to merit your ire is wonder if the APA did not act precipitously when they declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, and suggest that it might be wise to review that conclusion.
See,ANY decision reached by a small and largely self-selected group is suspect, and a decision by such a group made in a room that was surrounded by a mob of hostile protesters with an agenda that matches the decision the group reached, is, or should be, automatically placed under suspicion of being bogus.
Except when it agrees with your own prejudices, apparently.
What was it I told Kevin:
"If you REALLY want to upset a homosexual, suggest that that finding be revisited and reviewed."
and lo, here's LabRat, who claims to be ready to give it a go, but for some reason seems to be truculently reticent to actually see it happen; and yourself, who seems to a be a few posts shy of a patented Bilge- induced double-Hindu shit-fit.
I'd ask you what you could be so scared of, but your record on answering direct questions posed to you hasn't been the most sterling in this comment thread, has it?
So, keeping things simple and linear, and for a third try:
Do you have a more cogent motive for their making such a statement?
If the the good folks at the SWS get their way, people may have to start issuing apologies for their heterosexuality.
Do you have a more cogent motive for their making such a statement?
I'm going to give about as much credence to that crowd of idiots as I would the racist numbnuts of the world or any other merry band of lunatics. There are plenty of strange and/or stupid people out at the fringes in or out of academia; that some get published and tenured does not make them more credible. Really. I don't expect to ever establish a cogent motive for someone with wacky views - especially in a field where stupid is the norm.
Are you as credulous with EVERYTHING you read, or only when you have a particular bone to pick?
That if I am perceived as attacking homosexuality, I must be a closeted homosexual myself.
Nope, but it does seem you fear that you (or if not you, all the weaker souls in the world) could catch "teh gay" with too much contact (so to speak). That and your assumption that every last gay person is a moral degenerate. Sorry bub, but I know gay people that I respect a helluva lot more than you at the moment. They much better exemplify a live and let live viewpoint.
And it would have been quite rare to accuse a racist of being a self loathing closeted member of the group he objected to. You can be a bigot without any extra psychological baggage.
if the APA did not act precipitously when they declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder
I believe LabRat disposed of your objections simply enough - they followed the science and the science told them it wasn't what they originally thought. You might just as easily ask, did they act precipitously adding homosexuality in the first place. I seriously suspect that the weaker scientific justification came for addition rather than deletion. Now for those who fall back on the book of ancient superstition you don't have to worry about changes like that - you stick to what the Lord has told you.
As LabRat noted, your argument sounds not that dissimilar to what the scientifically and rationally immune anti-gunner would say, or I might add the justifications propping up Jim Crow. After all, you can't allow "those people" to mingle with decent folk, right?
Lastly, you have worked assiduously to prove Markadaffya right. That in and of itself ought to give one pause to ponder.
juris:
"There are plenty of strange and/or stupid people out at the fringes in or out of academia; that some get published and tenured does not make them more credible."
Hmmm, y'know, I was thinking the exact same thing, only my own "circle of skepticism" also extends to APA Board Members of 1973, while yours apparently does not.
I guess that's your particular bone that you have consciously chosen NOT to pick.
(A neat sidetep rather than an answer, but a sidestep nevertheless).
Although NOW you'll no doubt have to defend yourself from charges that you're a bigoted homophobe yourself for labeling the initiative of trying to force entertainment media conglomerates to provide children with positive Gay role models to enhance their self-esteem, 9should they happen to be Gay), as idiotic, lunatic, stupid, and wacky.
Welcome to the club, Mr. J-I! ...coffeepot's in the corner, if you take the last cup, make a fresh pot.
"That and your assumption that every last gay person is a moral degenerate. "
'Scuse me, but where did I say that?
Here's what I stated to LabRat:
"There are those who are born "wired for AC"...and they, in all probability, likely are the ones to quietly pair up and settle down.
And then there are the others, I suspect the vast majority of the Gay community, who have been recruited to it...perverted. Whole different kettle of fish."
and here's what I posted to Kevin:
"The truly mentally ill, being unable to determine right from wrong, are as children, and are therefore incapable of Sin, (both Mortal and Venal)."
and:
"Willfully indulging in that which you KNOW to be Sin is not an illness, but rather a condition of being human, it is inescapable. That's what all the business about the Sacrament of Baptism is about for Catholics.
The sins are often their own punishment, and we are taught to hate the sins, but love the sinner.
We don't "throw them out of the Church" as some here have alleged, but until they repent of their sins, there are parts of the Mass in which they cannot partake."
Where you read an automatic verdict of moral degeneracy delivered on "on every last gay person" on my part from that must be something hateful that you brought with you...the hob-goblin that bedevils your own mind, perhaps.
"Sorry bub, but I know gay people that I respect a helluva lot more than you at the moment. They much better exemplify a live and let live viewpoint."
I can live with that.
"I believe LabRat disposed of your objections simply enough"
Oh, she TRIED, droning the "Scientific Method Creed" or "Confiteor of the Church of Scientific Dogma",(if you will), but then along came Anonymous who actually cited the circumstances of the decision, and Lab had to backpedal and admit that "Science IS political", (did you note that defensive tone in that passage? It came through her copy pretty clearly.)
You can repeat her boilerplate all you like, but she offered no cite, and Anonymous did...and after he/she did, she had to eat her own words, because it was evidently anything BUT the cool and rational dispassionate processwhich the "Church of Science" likes to project to the rubes in it's pews. (For the record, I know of more than a few organizations that "represent" thusly).
"I seriously suspect that the weaker scientific justification came for addition rather than deletion."
That may be indeed be the case, and I am quite prepared to revisit THAT decision as well. I think I pointed out that prior to it's inclusion as a mental disorder, homosexuals were simply clapped into prison for their sexual acts. So, seeing how the status quo ante was outright criminalization, the inclusion may quite possibly have been done as an act of mercy. I'm not sure that a 1930's-40's booby hatch was all that preferable to a contemporary hoosegow, but I reckon some folks were trying to do the best they could with what they had.
"After all, you can't allow "those people" to mingle with decent folk, right?"
Not with children, not from my experiences with their predatory ways when I was a lad. That is simply asking too much for me to trust their word that they are NOT actively harboring leering pederasts.
There was a lot more to the Catholic clerical hierarchy's cover-up of their pedophilia scandals than the simple monetary damages vulnerabilities to the affected dioceses that were placed front and center. More than a few of the bishops who are Princes of the Church and ran their dioceses as they saw fit were themselves queer. In a very real sense, the cover-ups were as much a function of the "Clerical Gay Mafia" protecting itself as it was of the Vatican protecting its' ducats.
That's a bit of "Inside Baseball" that I'm pretty sure someone with your attitude towards people of faith wouldn't usually have the opportunity to hear.
If you're interested in that rather untold, or unpublicized story, the book is "Good-bye Good Men".
"Now for those who fall back on the book of ancient superstition you don't have to worry about changes like that - you stick to what the Lord has told you."
And this is a bad thing?
I note that in what has been a heated and vigorous discussion, you have called into question my sexuality, my morals, intimated that I am a bigot who at the very least uses racist and hoplophobic arguments, and insulted my Faith...twice now.
I realize that I've taken a hard stance and made some rather harsh charges about suspected motives of the Gay Lobby,(but backed these up with some pretty powerful circumstantial evidence, as well as my own personal experiences tangential to the matter), and called for a controversial, but scientifically valid, review of what became a cultural sea-changing decision from days past, and I've managed to do this without the heated personal invective that you can't seem to do without.
Which one of us, to an observer would appear the Perez Hilton, and which one the Carrie Prejean?
"Lastly, you have worked assiduously to prove Markadaffya right. That in and of itself ought to give one pause to ponder."
I told you before that in his own peculiar left-handed and upside down way, he WAS right. Where he may have been wrong was in the matter of degree to which we are willing to suffer,die and kill for our belief systems...and which belief systems we would sacrifice for, but as the punchline to an old joke goes:
once we have established what one is, all that is really left is negotiating over what price and for what act...
I stand corrected Bilgerman, you only believe that most gay people are morally degenerate. [sound of one hand clapping]
I will also admit that you seem to hold several incongruous positions as to why people are homosexual. Forgive for me not keeping track.
I make no apology for the messiness of scientific knowledge development. Mostly because humans are at the heart of it, one can hardly expect it to be perfect. I imagine that we would agree that the APA at any time is suspect in it's application of the methodology in comparison to group-think and politics. If sociology is a field where stupid is the norm, psych may only be one step above that.
However, I find your apprehension about gays and children all too reminiscent of another common attitude of the 30s and 40s - about minority men and white women. Just as any idiotic statement about blacks could be justified because we had to protect our white women, these days the rallying cry is "for the children" and is all but irrefutable.
You know what? This is going to show a great deal of intellectual dishonesty and laziness here, but I was going to argue Bilgeman. I stepped away for a day or so before I saw his first counterpoint.
Then I went through here and read his responses.
I'm not going to argue. I'm not going to bother. I think he's fucking nuts.
All right, I spent all day out and about and the spouse would probably like it if I spent time with him on a Saturday evening rather than ranting at people on the internet, so substantive reply will have to wait.
In the meantime, Jesus Haploid Christ on a buttered cracker, Bilgeman. You came into this thread complaining about how rudely you were treated at someone else's site, and aside from implying that homosexuals are sick baby-rapers repeatedly, you've insulted MY objectivity, ability to think critically, knowledge of the subject at hand, and now you're up in Juris's face bitching him out for behaving exactly as you have been, which is exactly why people are getting testy with you? Now I don't need my daily irony supplement.
You know, truthfully, I could care less what folks believe about being gay. But it becomes sad for the gays THEMSELVES, (the ones that would like to change especially -- or for that matter, anyone with a sexual proclivity they would rather not have). The possibility for change is real, "treatment" for desires, (especially impulse desires), is "proven" with as much scientific proof as can be made about anything involving the human will.
One of the biggest factors in winning ANY battle is the belief that you can succeed. Without that positive belief the battle is truly daunting if not impossible. Homosexuals that have no desire for change may still have certain identity disorders, (an extremely common trait in younger homosexuals -- so much so that research may well eventually show these identity issues came even before their sexual development). These identity issues are also likely the main reason for depression and suicide. This means no amount of waving a wand to call homosexual feelings normal is going to help them. They are in fact being thrown under the bus for the politics behind the gay rights agenda. Yet they are not being helped and they are continuing to commit suicide in numbers that should never be allowed. (Actually, the more suicides the more the gay rights agenda crusades for society to change. So maybe the ends justify the means for some.)
Let's see... Markadelphia thinks conservatives are "little different from Al-Qaeda" because of their attitudes about gays.
Affirmative Action has demanded that businesses treat white males as "lesser citizens", denying them equality as a matter of law and public policy for right around 4
And who is it that demanded this government enforced inequality for the last 40 years? Who is it that demands this deliberate refusal to grant equal treatment under the law be continued? Why it's the Democrat Party, including their leaders and senior statesmen.
So, if some in the conservative base are "little different from Al-Qaeda" because they think a given group should face consequences for their behavior, is the core and the leadership of the Democrat Party likewise "little different from Al-Qaeda" because they think a given group should be denied equal treatment under the law based on gender and skin color?
Anonymous:
"But it becomes sad for the gays THEMSELVES, (the ones that would like to change especially -- or for that matter, anyone with a sexual proclivity they would rather not have). The possibility for change is real, "treatment" for desires, (especially impulse desires), is "proven" with as much scientific proof as can be made about anything involving the human will."
Oh, but OF COURSE the Gender Identity Issue is "One-Way to Gay"...everyone KNOWS this!
But they'll jump and try to claim "Science!", (channel Thomas Dolby),to silence the wee little voices that suggest that it might just be a two-way street.
Doesn't jibe with the agenda, y'see.
It's like Islam...once you're in, you're NEVER getting out alive.
Once you pick a monikker, you and I should have an exploration of the Gay lobby's role back in the '80's, (via ACT-UP), in human drug testing and approvalat the FDA, and the apparent rise in approved drugs since being pulled off the market AFTER unwanted side-effects are found.
Yes...Gay people are quite useful politically, if you know where and how to "load and aim" them.
Okay LabRat:
"you've insulted MY objectivity, ability to think critically, knowledge of the subject at hand, and now you're up in Juris's face bitching him out for behaving exactly as you have been."
I haven't leveled any personal invective at either you or Juris.
If you can't take professional criticism, then maybe you should find another field to work in.
You wanna claim objectivity?
Who said this:
"I've been interested in gay rights for fifteen years..."?
You did. But now you want to pretend that you're an honest broker and impartially weighing all the evidence?
It is to laugh.
Maybe you want to claim clear thinking?
Who said this:
"Perl: Yeah, I’m not as patient as I’m coming off. So far today I’ve mostly been staring at the thread with my teeth clenched and a popped vein. I’ll get around to replying by evening hopefully."?
You did. So, is it a normal reaction for you to clench your teeth and pop your vein when you're thinking clearly?
And you've been patient, huh?
Like a lot of other things, that's a two-way street.
"Knowledge of the subject at hand"?
Then why did we have to rely on Anonymous to relate the nuts n' bolts details of how and when the APA made it's decision? Since you knew that already and all...where was YOUR testimony about it?
Now, you and the rest of the pro-Gay Agenda mafia can go on sending back-channel e-mails trying to censor my viewpoint, and you may even succeed at it.
In fact, all Kevin has to do is ask me to go away, and I won't darken his blog ever again. It's that simple.
But you'd better listen to this:
Just who the hell do you people think you ARE?
You are going to stand there and demand that the entirety of American culture and society change,basically overnight,(and use the power of the State to dictate and enforce that change), to suit what you THINK is in the best interests of your own personal selected group of designated victims?
You're not even a homosexual, LabRat, but you just KNOW what's in their best interest, eh?
And you REALLY think that you can pull this off?
The arrogance is utterly jaw-dropping.
I prophesy that if you keep to this course, you will "lose your ship".
Now go on back to the closed circle of your "pro-homo" echo-chamber and reinforce how correct you all are, and how wrong I am. If you repeat it to each other often enough, maybe you'll ALL believe it some day.
Maybe every day but Election Day...even in California.
Because advocating cultural change, or preservation is also a two-way street...and since your crew apparently has no qualms about going "Perez Hilton" to demonize your opponents,(as you've done here with me), don't whine and snivel when you get return fire in kind.
KB sez Oh, hey, Markadelphia? No more comments about how we all march in lockstep and you get treated to a different set of rules, capische?
Are you kidding? As much as I disagree with Bilgerman right now (and particularly because he thinks Markadaffya correct in the instance), I know I am in a discussion with an adult who can actually think. While I imagine that M is a pleasant enough person, he does not rise to the level of adult with active capability for intelligent discourse. He won't get that Bilgerman is the smallest minority at TSM - he'll just grab that B said he was right and therefore everything he said (and ever will say) is right.
Bilgerman, I opened my commentary on this thread with what certainly should have been seen as a bit of humor, and secondly with a direct challenge to nanny-state advocacy. How odd on a libertarian blog, eh?
I absolutely oppose the use of the state to forcibly "normalize" gay depictions in the media, just as much as I oppose the use of the state to lock away an adult for doing something that does not harm another. And just because alkys and dopers and queers get under YOUR skin is no reason to prove C.S. Lewis so right.
You want to rally under the banner of "for the children", fine. I will be content in my own knowledge that you are merely acting in the finest tradition of Ambrose Bierce.
Juris:
"He won't get that Bilgerman is the smallest minority at TSM - he'll just grab that B said he was right and therefore everything he said (and ever will say) is right."
All part of the "Master Plan", chum.
Remember what happened when Gollum finally got the Ring of Power back?
Because advocating cultural change, or preservation is also a two-way street...and since your crew apparently has no qualms about going "Perez Hilton" to demonize your opponents,(as you've done here with me), don't whine and snivel when you get return fire in kind.
OH MY GOD YOU CAN READ WHAT I WRITE ON THE INTERNET?! THAT'S CHEATING! I'M GOING TO GO TELL THE COOL KIDS ABOUT YOU AND NOBODY WILL EVER TALK TO YOU AGAIN!
Calm down, dude. I'm not trying to "censor" you, I'm a human being, which means I find arguing with belligerent people personally frustrating, in part just because it would be easier emotionally- and the important part, would take a lot less time- to yell back in kind rather than doing what I should, which includes, as you've been hopping up and down all weekend making the point, sourcing more carefully and responding to individual points. If you bothered to track me down on my blog to see what I was doing, then you might have gotten some faint impression that I've been slightly busy, which I usually am on the weekends. Weekends are when things that *can't* be accomplished sitting in front of the computer must be done- including spending some downtime with my better half. Seeing as how I'm not attempting to win the culture war in Kevin Baker's comments section, that does come first.
I'm not a robot. Yes, that means I get annoyed when you get in my face even if I think I'm right and I can demonstrate it. *gasp* It also means I'm less than a hundred percent objective and some of my position is based on opinion, which is based on personal experience! You are the one who's claimed that I'm arguing totally from a Vulcan-like position of Science Says, not me.
What I'm confused about is where you seem so convinced that this means said position is now disposed of. Just as when I acknowledged earlier that science is indeed influenced by politics- that doesn't mean that science is *worthless*, it just means that a process undertaken by human beings will be influenced by human factors, which do include politics- from all directions. Kind of like religion- if it weren't for human beings and politics there wouldn't be so many different flavors of Christianity.
So, if you consider proof that you can annoy me proof that YOU ARE THE WINNAR then I guess you win. Take your "arguing on the internet" trophy and on your merry way.
You are going to stand there and demand that the entirety of American culture and society change,basically overnight,(and use the power of the State to dictate and enforce that change), to suit what you THINK is in the best interests of your own personal selected group of designated victims?
You're not even a homosexual, LabRat, but you just KNOW what's in their best interest, eh?
And this would be why you're successfully annoying me- you keep putting words in my mouth, and you keep stretching my positions into these epic all-or-nothing battles that bear no resemblance to the original. It really doesn't feel like you're arguing with me so much as the Gay Agenda that's in your head, which is frustrating just because it bogs down the argument. Again: this is why I view substantive reply on this thread as something that needs time and me not in a mood where I'd rather just lash back and mock you instead of arguing with you.
I don't demand that, nor do I claim I know what's best for "homosexuals". Way back in the thread, you essentially laid down the gauntlet for how the authors of the original piece- and, like Kevin, I disagree with what they want to do- could have any intentions other than de-sensitizing children to turn them gay. My two central counter points were these: one, that it's likely sexuality isn't shallowly rooted in culture and what kids are "exposed" to in formats like Disney and they couldn't turn the youth of America gay even if they wanted to, and two, that here were the ethical motives I could see for theoretically wanting more models for children who are already going to wind up gay in culture. That's a hugely different thing than wanting to forcibly IMPOSE that- just like I think it would be better for Americans not to smoke cigarettes but regard antismoking laws as a disgrace. If the culture is going to change- and I think it is changing- then it needs to do so on its own, not with people trying to engineer solutions. I can talk about what I'd consider change for the better, but it's beyond my right to enforce it in any way.
Aside from those two points we got onto the DSM changes and whether or not gayness is a mental illness all on its own, which is where sourcing- which again takes time and energy- needs to come in. Seeing as how you are so very interested in an inventory of my time and extra-curricular activities, after I finish previewing and posting this, I intend to go get started on what I plan to make for dinner, and after that there's a podcast, and at some point I might bitch about the REALLY INTENSE WORLD-ENDING ARGUMENT I seem to be involved in with some guy on the internet to friends you may or may not know. I can't see working in getting right-thinking Americans nationwide to ignore you until at least Tuesday, so you can relax about that.
I HOPE I can get back in here Monday and hold up my end of the stick on the parts that require more time than just saying "that's not my position, stop distorting it dammit", and I'll be personally embarassed and chagrined if I don't. If I can't, then so much the worse for "my side". I'll be sure to personally apologize to the next GLBT cabal meeting I go to.
Is all that okay with you, or do you want to hop back up on your cross and motor it on out of here?
Juris:
"I absolutely oppose the use of the state to forcibly "normalize" gay depictions in the media, just as much as I oppose the use of the state to lock away an adult for doing something that does not harm another."
I'm afraid that we have crossed some invisible line on our nation's voyage, (and I was looking hard for the stripe painted on the ocean's surface), where there is now very little discernible difference between the media and the state.
Certainly the media seems to be operating under this model. And with the election of the fellow who claims to have been born in Hawaii, who can blame them?
Probably the one thing that keeps people from becoming insurrectionists or mutineers...we'd all sit around befuddling ourselves with heated arguments like this one over which set of bastards to shoot first.
"You wanna claim objectivity?
Who said this:
"I've been interested in gay rights for fifteen years..."?
You did. But now you want to pretend that you're an honest broker and impartially weighing all the evidence?
It is to laugh."
You belong to a church that holds (and you seem to share the opinion) that homosexuality is a depraved state of mind and that homosexual conduct is a gravely evil act. Looks like you fail at objectivity too.
Just to be clear, it's not just the GENDER Identity that some children/adolescents are dealing with. Many homosexuals, (women especially), report that they never felt they EXISTED until their first same-sex sexual relationship. No one every saw them, entered their world, acknowledged they existed, and loved them for who they are until that first same-sex sexual relationship, (or so they FELT that way).
Society should consider this issue closely, teenage suicide rate is rather dismal even when the homosexual suicide numbers are removed from the mix.
I'm afraid that we have crossed some invisible line on our nation's voyage, (and I was looking hard for the stripe painted on the ocean's surface), where there is now very little discernible difference between the media and the state.
Perhaps in your mind we've reached the place on the old maps labeled "here be dragons". Bilge fumes must be something like LSD. Or should I ask what port did we depart, and where were we ever bound and when did we expect to arrive?
Certainly the media seems to be operating under this model. And with the election of the fellow who claims to have been born in Hawaii, who can blame them?
You are a bit closer here, for now we could talk about the cult of personality and how the media is susceptible to that (or better, facilitates it). Then again, there's not much new about bread and circuses, is there?
The victim was only five years old, and an orphan.
God have Mercy!
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Early learning experiences as an influence behind homosexual behaviour would seem to contradict the "born gay" hypothesis, wouldn't it?
Clayton Cramer weighed in on a tangentially related topic the other day.
It's not exactly my area of expertise or nothin', but from what I've seen, bastidge, the more time and research that goes on, the less plausible the idea of a "gay gene" becomes.
Not that I've ever seen how it really mattered. Would anyone, and I mean literally anyone, change their opinion about gays based on whether it's nature or nurture?
The issue at hand isn't really about the gay/lesbian and hetero dichotomy, but the struggle of the collectivists versus the individual, and the ownership of ones children, as you've touched on.
Can't imagine that Jeff or ZD would be of substantially different minds than what you've expanded upon, here.
Oh, and yeah, FUCK THAT NOISE, too, and yes, I'm sharpening my favorites as well. My patience has worn thin.
Over the years, I've noticed one meme pervading almost everything produced by Disney. (This does not include entertainment distributed by Disney, with Pixar films being a notable example.) This meme can be summarized—and usually is, verbatim—in three words: "Follow your heart". They've been pounding this into kids for decades now. The idea is simple, when push comes to shove, everything you learned is wrong, so just follow your emotions/instincts/inclinations. Whatever you decide is right.
Has anyone else noticed this? It seems to me that it has been effective too. What do you think?
And directly on topic: So how do they account for "heteronormativity" in the years before television, or radio, or even the printing press?
So, if homosexual parents wanted to raise their children to be homosexual, they shouldn't let them watch Disney shows? Seems like it would take monitoring/controlling many, many more influences in their lives... but it's a start.
Funny thing, Ed, is that I just watched a pretty neat special on the intelligence of members of the great ape family (namely bonobos, chimps, and humans), and the fact that humans have the ability to suppress emotion and control impulses turns out to be a main reason we've developed higher intelligence.
So these people ("educators") must simply be genetic degenerates. So, let's start funding all that stem cell research they love so much so we can find a way to cure modern liberalism!
"Would anyone, and I mean literally anyone, change their opinion about gays based on whether it's nature or nurture?"
Yes. The entire moral equivalency argument for homosexuality is based on the idea that it is genetic and not a conscious choice. It's hard to argue with someone if it's how they're made and they didn't pick it. You can if it is once again classified as a developmental disorder.
Sometimes I just wonder about people. Gays can't naturally have kids. If the gay lifestyle ever becomes a majority or even a significant minority then you're looking at the slow death of that civilization through population decline. And that has nothing to do with morality, it's just painful math.
Jeff, the biggest threat to a civilisation vis-a-vis population decline is a first world standard of living. And it's not because the gays aren't having kids, it's because the straights stop having so many kids.
Which also sidesteps the fact that just because gays don't enjoy sex which is capable of producing children, doesn't mean they don't want them. I personally know three lesbian couples who have had children, going through the entire pregnancy phase of the operation. Yes, they had some technological assistance with the conception, but they still did it.
So, that's at least three homosexual couples in the world who have way more children than my heterosexual marriage will ever produce.
In short, your thesis: Gays can't naturally have kids. If the gay lifestyle ever becomes a majority or even a significant minority then you're looking at the slow death of that civilization through population decline[.] is non sequitur.
For one thing, I find it highly doubtful that homosexuality is "a conscious choice" - I know for a fact that I could not choose to be physically attracted to another male. Whether the "cause" of homosexuality is genetic or psychological or some combination is immaterial to me, really, but that's another topic entirely.
As to reproduction, many cultures are currently on the path to slow death without significant gay populations - the heterosexuals aren't reproducing at anywhere near replacement rates - Japan, Italy, and many others are in this position.
Having been recently accused of harboring commenters "little different" from Al Qaeda members, particularly on the topic of homosexuality, I thought I'd offer a preliminary brief comment on something I found via AR15.com today.
I'm actually surprised someone would make such an accusation against you and your commenters. I know I comment rarely but I find the accusation to be grossly offensive.
We did.
Over the years, I've noticed one meme pervading almost everything produced by Disney.
In general I agree, Ed, but there is at least one conspicuous exception that I can think of: the first Lion King movie.
In that one, the "follow your heart" philosophy of the comic relief characters was shown to be nothing more than evading responsibility for your actions. Altogether a satisfying story.
While not genetic, the whole gay bit is probably a physiological mechanism with nurture having little to do with it. And if we ever figure out the exact mechanism, I say we turn future generations bisexual. I figure it'll stop the arguing for at least ten minutes.
"I say we turn future generations bisexual. I figure it'll stop the arguing for at least ten minutes."
Have you ever seen a bisexual relationship (two bisexuals dating)?
My god, the DRAMA. Of course, I'm generalizing, but I had an ex who had friends, almost all of which were bi.
They were jealous of everything. I swear to god if one of them looked at a chair the partner was getting jealous.
I wish I knew the source of the quote, "The rebel often ends up wearing the robes of the tyrannt he deposes." OK, that was a paraphrase too.
Yay! For the most part homosexuals have thrown off the yoke of bigotry and oppression. Now they get to play "hate the straight".
"...This meme can be summarized—and usually is, verbatim—in three words: "Follow your heart". They've been pounding this into kids for decades now. The idea is simple, when push comes to shove, everything you learned is wrong, so just follow your emotions/instincts/inclinations..."
Soon they'll be listening to British voices telling them to switch off their targeting computers and go with their feelings!
Excellent post; really enjoy your blog, it's one of the few that's on my desktop. I'm going to guess that these two rocket scientists are a couple of angry lesbians. So now my family which includes my wife and two heterosexual children isn't normal? Unbelievable!
HankH
So now my family which includes my wife and two heterosexual children isn't normal?
No, no! It IS normal! That's what they want to change!
From Jeff the Baptist:
The entire moral equivalency argument for homosexuality is based on the idea that it is genetic and not a conscious choice. It's hard to argue with someone if it's how they're made and they didn't pick it. You can if it is once again classified as a developmental disorder.
I know why there's an argument. I know why it's an issue. I just doubt the consequences a definitive answer would have.
Ask yourself honestly how much your views on homosexuality are based on how much of a choice it is. If it turns out there WERE a gay gene, and it were no more possible to stop being gay than it were to stop being Asian, would you approach the subject any differently?
Contrariwise, what about the other side? If it could be proven definitively that it was all about upbringing and life exposure--or hell, even if it were a total free-will CHOICE!--how many minds would that change? I honestly don't think it should; the analogy I'd draw is to free speech, where you DO get to consciously choose what you say, but it's still protected from government censorship no matter its ideology.
I just think the whole issue is almost entirely about how the answer would make the other side look.
"And it's not because the gays aren't having kids, it's because the straights stop having so many kids."
Agreed, we do not have a declining birthrate because being gay is (for lack of a better word) too popular. As for there rest, your logic does not follow. Just because the straight population is having trouble meeting replacement birth rates does not mean this isn't a bigger and more fundamental problem within the gay population. I can counter your anecdote with a lot of gay men who never had kids.
Kevin's definition of normal as "approximately average" in a statistical sense would require double digit percentages within the population. Do you really think that large of a subpopulation isn't going to cause serious birthrate issues in and of itself? It certainly isn't going to make things better.
Worked in Theater for a number of years and known and worked with a lot of gays and lesbians - so...if it *is* genetic and not a conscious choice, why have many/most of my gay friends initially sought to convert me to their lifestyle despite my protest that for me NOT being gay was genetic and not a conscious choice? Why were they so convinced and determined the I could simply change my spots and be gay with them? ;-)
Darth Sidious was insidious. Pixar movies are cute and fluffy and should not explore the issue one way or another.
"Cute and fluffy"? Pixar treats us more like grown-ups than, say, your Seltzers and your Friedbergs!
The troll returns! Haven't had enough yet, little boy?
Now your IP address is AT&T from Richardson, TX? Using an anonymizer? That's OK, I'll edit each and every post you spew here.
Edited By Siteowner
There is an insidious plot by Disney, and it's in every movie they make. They transmit a subliminal message to all children. "Get your parents to buy our stuff!"
Kevin;
The entire argument for homosexuals NOT being mentally ill is based on a finding by a committee that edited the DSM-IV in the late 1960's or early 1970's.
Prior to that time, homosexuality had been treated as a mental or emotional illness, and THAT had been an act of kindness, since before that meme was adopted, homosexuality was criminalized.
At any rate, the point is that we are supposed to accept that homosexuality is not some form of illness on the say-so of a relatively anonymous group of psychiatrists and/or psychologists 40-some years ago, who turned what psychiatry had previously held on the subject on it's head.
If you REALLY want to upset a homosexual, suggest that that finding be revisited and reviewed.
The aim of the Gay Lobby is to normalize homosexuality so that they can openly work in the schools to perverert the young and thereby recruit sexual partners.
Since homosexuals do not reproduce genetically, they MUST proselytize their perverted nature to others, or else become extinct.
Kevin:
You might want to check the exchange I had with Goy from "a goy and his blog":
http://www.agoyandhisblog.com/wip-thoughts-on-gender-and-sexuality/
Note the dismissiveness in his tone and his flat refusal to even consider that the DSM might need revisions in this, (as well as other areas), and then realize that Goy had specifically invited me over to discuss this precise subject.
Goy's a pretty good egg, and I was rather shocked and not a bit offended to have him show me the door so brusquely after inviting me in.
Kevin, those must be pretty bad posts if you're completely erasing them like that. It actually makes me a little curious.
"The aim of the Gay Lobby is to normalize homosexuality so that they can openly work in the schools to perverert the young and thereby recruit sexual partners."
Wow. Just wow.
Has it not occurred to you that *maybe*, just *maybe*, these people earnestly believe that homosexuality is normal, based in love, and that they wish to change the public zeitgeist to reflect that?
"Since homosexuals do not reproduce genetically, they MUST proselytize their perverted nature to others, or else become extinct."
Except homosexuality isn't an isolated disease spreading around and requiring infection of new hosts. It occurs without provocation in many societies independent of outside homosexual interjection.
Just when I think Mark can't be topped for being the asshat of the week, you go and say something stupid like this.
Mental defect, genetic abnormality, or choice, once someone has decided who they are attracted to and who they can love, that's all I need.
You should probably go practice your stoning.
Everyone needs a hobby - if doing strange things to your reproductive organs (or others) that is not reproductive, then so be it.
Just do not call it 'natural'.
What could be more natural than to act on one's impulses? I'm not going to conflate natural with good or evil, but I have no doubt that at least a fair number of homosexuals are doing what comes naturally for them.
Lust is natural, OK.
So is greed, envy, and sloth. And propensity towards violence.
So one may have an impulse to slice off others heads and deficate down their necks...
I was thinking it is charitable to write it off such more tolerable penchants as a hobbies.
As said, do not call it 'natural'. Nor more or less so than an O scale train in one's basement.
SO basically to them, straight is the new gay... sigh...
Oy vey!
I'll (be forced) to cover this topic in more detail in the Überpost, but no, I don't think homosexuality is "unnatural." (I expect LabRat to weigh in on this at some point with a biology thesis.) But it is also not "normal" as defined by "approximately average."
Is it a psychological illness? Oy vey! I think it can be, just as some variations of heterosexuality can be, but it is not (in and of itself) necessarily an illness.
Humans as a group have a broad spectrum of sexual behaviors, and the fringes of that spectrum are definitely pathological. And that spectrum isn't two-dimensional, either.
If you want to delve deeper into my thoughts on the topic of homosexuality, read this.
Couple points.
First, I have to disagree that homosexuality is not "normal". It's been around for thousands of years. It's mentioned in historical texts going back to Greeks and Egyptians. There are documented examples among animals where homosexual behavior occurs. It's not prevalent, certainly; it's not the "average" behavior, no. But it is "normal".
That said, I do believe that the "problem" occurs when this "not-average" group of people start trying to claim that they are in fact average, or that they require equivalent treatment as the "average" person by the culture. Since culture is determined by what's "average", not what's "normal", those folks certainly are fighting an uphill battle.
And the Liberals "get it". When they say "If educators and other cultural workers are to include the culture of children as an important site of contestation and struggle", they really are trying to make homosexuality seem "average" to the children. And every time a TV show introduces a homosexual relationship to the script, it's another battle that they have won.
That said, I do believe that the "problem" occurs when this "not-average" group of people start trying to claim that they are in fact average, or that they require equivalent treatment as the "average" person by the culture. - Dean
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand
Aaaaaand once again, we are confronted by the question "what is a RIGHT?"
Yeah, I will, but right now... de-rageify. Apologies in advance if I wind up disappearing- things have been high-stress around here and I really don't see that changing until either Stingray gets another job or his boss is wiped out by a freak meteor.
Here's a problem with the rights question. Every right that I have, by definition, imposes an obligation on everyone around to respect that right (if the right is negative), or to actually secure that right for me (if the right is positive, or in some cases even when it is negative—for example, if someone else is abusing my right). (Thomas Paine actually agrees, it's somewhere in Rights of Man.)
I may have mentioned this before, but it seems to me that we can cut out the middleman and stick to talking about obligations from the get-go. I suspect that one can work out a more consistent rationale for which obligations are necessary and which would be pernicious, than we've managed to do with rights today.
Haven't done it yet, but I will someday.
So for example, do we have an obligation to view homosexuality positively? Or do we "only" have an obligation not to curb-stomp gays? And why is one a better formulation than the other?
Well, one is a better formulation for gays.
Mastiff:
Far as I'm aware I as a private citizen am free from obligations concerning YOUR negative rights. I could censor you if I wanted. I could bar you from my privately-owned place of business just because I didn't like your face. I could let you in, in spite of your face (which I'm sure is quite lovely and likable, excuse my hypothetical hyperbole [hypotherbole?]), and decide not to sell you any arms.
What I couldn't do is get elected and make any of those actions law.
Uh, except for the last one.
Don't like this? Consider opposing the "UN Convention on the Rights of the Child".
And, you could support a move to pass The Parental Rights Ammendment - over one hundred co-sponsers and growing.
Adam:
"Has it not occurred to you that *maybe*, just *maybe*, these people earnestly believe that homosexuality is normal, based in love, and that they wish to change the public zeitgeist to reflect that?"
The same could be said for Marxists and pedophiles.
And I've got a problem with "normalizing" their belief systems/genetic predispositions also.
So deal.
"Except homosexuality isn't an isolated disease spreading around and requiring infection of new hosts."
Sez you,(and the shrinks who deleted the inclusion of homosexuality as a pathology in the DSM-IV), but PRIOR to that decision, that is exactly what it was viewed as.
"It occurs without provocation in many societies independent of outside homosexual interjection."
So does cancer,and eating disorders, but we treat them as illnesses, do we not?
"Mental defect, genetic abnormality, or choice, once someone has decided who they are attracted to and who they can love, that's all I need."
Yessss. And the ramifications of that attitude is EXACTLY why your lifestyle choice/sexual orientation is suspect in the extreme, (psychologically speaking), let me lay something else on your psyche, while it may have already been bruised by my earlier post...
it also isn't "normal" ro fetishize your notions of "non-judgmentalism" to the extent that you've stated here.
Although I notice that your "non-judgmentalism" does not extend as far as my supicions that there's an arguable chance that "Gay" people may actually be psychologically ill, and untreated for their condition:
"Just when I think Mark can't be topped for being the asshat of the week, you go and say something stupid like this."
and:
"You should probably go practice your stoning."
I'd be offended, but I keep in mind that it might just be the illness talking, and i understand that it's a terrifying thing to confront.
Prior to that time, homosexuality had been treated as a mental or emotional illness, and THAT had been an act of kindness, since before that meme was adopted, homosexuality was criminalized.
By this culture. There are others wherein that has not been the case.
If you REALLY want to upset a homosexual, suggest that that finding be revisited and reviewed.
I'm having a hard time imagining why people might object to being classified as mentally ill, with the attendant loss of rights that entails, and potential for all sorts of interesting legalised abuse under the guise of treatment that can ensue afterwards.
I bet most gun owners would object strenuously to the DSM being "revisited and reviewed" to classify "fascination with weapons" as a mental illness, too.
Perlhaqr shoots, . . . HE SCORES!
Think about the Adorno study, the ongoing attempts to validate it, and all that those efforts imply.
I don't understand why some people are so determined to dictate to others how to live their own lives. I suppose that's unlikely to change, though.
I don't understand why some people are so determined to dictate to others how to live their own lives.
Robert Heinlein had a thought on that:
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws - always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
perlhaqr:
"I'm having a hard time imagining why people might object to being classified as mentally ill, with the attendant loss of rights that entails, and potential for all sorts of interesting legalised abuse under the guise of treatment that can ensue afterwards."
Do you know many alcoholics?
I know more than my share,(although not as many as you might expect in the course of over two decades at sea), and the hardest part for an alky is getting over his or her denial that they HAVE a problem.
There's also a parallel to the possible pathology of homosexuality among drunkards...they HATE to practice their pathology alone.
See, if an alcoholic has a group of other people around him who are ALSO drinking, he then can more easily buttress his self-deception, if even only for a few fleeting hours, that he isn't the ill soul that he really is.
"By this culture. There are others wherein that has not been the case."
I live in the American Culture.
Do you live in another?
Bilgeman, your alcoholics = homosexuals analogy falls remarkably flat.
You have a sexual partner if you're doing it right.
And the "American Culture" is, as all cultures are and have been, in a constant state of change. We are not now what we were fifty years ago. And the point of the paper I'm objecting to in this piece is to push that change in a certain direction, as you are well aware. "The American Culture" isn't some static thing you can use as a benchmark.
I'd like to point out that it's a question of more than just time, Kev. Geography plays a big, extra-chunky role in what "American Culture" looks like.
I forget where I read/heard it, but someone once pointed out that, however you try to portray Americans, you will be EXACTLY right, EXACTLY wrong, and everything in between, depending on what zip code you're in.
Hell, we've got rolling hills, windswept flatlands, expansive deserts, and craggy mountains, some with people's FACES on 'em, all in one country. Any wonder why Americans don't tend to bother with passports? Everything's right here!
Breaking this up into two because otherwise it's got too many links to get past the spam filter...
Okay, I guess I'll start with biology. I've written a much longer post on the topic of homosexuality and potential biological bases thereof before; it's a long post because it's a complex subject, as most things in biology that are less straightforward than "blue eyes or brown" are. (Ever notice how the high school genetics lecture never goes into green or hazel? That's because it all gets a lot more complicated even for something as simple as eye color.)
The upshot is that it's not so much that it's difficult to find a biological explanation for homosexuality as that there are actually several possible ways to explain it that fit just fine into current evolutionary theory, none of which are "proven" as such as they are perfectly plausible and inherently difficult to prove.
First up, the "not natural" thing: sorry, but this is just plain flat out wrong. It's difficult to apply a word as loaded as "homosexual" to animal species if only because it implicitly enfolds a lot of things inherent to human mating systems that don't necessarily apply to other animal groups. Suffice it to say, however, that homosexual sexual behaviors, preferential or even exclusive homosexual pair-bonding, and all sorts of other gender-bending things are found broadly across vertebrates and are even enshrined features of the mating systems of some creatures.
To condense something wide enough that a seven hundred plus page doorstopper has been written on the subject, I'll focus on two specific observations of homosexual behavior and bonding in nonhuman animals.
One, in intelligent social species where sex has acquired a social meaning that is as strong or even stronger than its reproductive function (and this applies to some degree to humans), you'll find a lot of same-sex diddling. This applies to bonobos, where homosexual sex over a lifetime may well exceed heterosexual, and dolphins, which also may form lifelong partnerships that involve sex with members of their own sex that they don't bother with for members of the opposite. The animals aren't "gay"- they still mate with the opposite sex- and even using the word "bisexual" doesn't properly apply; it's just that, in their species, what we would call homosexual behavior (and group sex and a whole bunch of other things) is just as much a part of life as meeting a potential partner over coffee is to us.
Two, among animals that broadly speaking DO have a mating system somewhat similar to ours- namely birds, which the majority of form mated pair bonds either over a season or over a lifetime to raise young, something much closer to what we would call homosexuality is observed- animals that not only have sexual contacts with their own sex, but show active preference or even exclusive preference for their own sex, and form the same kind of pair bonds as "heterosexual" birds, even raising young together if they get the opportunity.
The really interesting thing about the avian cases (widespread across the group- penguins, flamingos, mallard ducks, etc. etc.) is not that they have something akin to what we would call "gay", but that rates of apparent homosexuality within these species are actually HIGHER than they appear to be among humans. If you have a roughly 5% chance to be gay if you're a human, it's about double that if you're a mallard.
The reason I'm going out of my way to make this point is that it puts several underlines on the pointlessness of treating "gayness" like we would a genetic disease and looking for either cause or cure that way. That large a percentage of people aren't type 1 diabetics, or have cystic fibrosis, or Tay-Sachs- those numbers are more like one in thousands. Even sickle cell anemia, which is a classic teaching case of heterozygote advantage- a disease-causing allele that is preserved because people with only one copy have an advantage- is only 1/400 or so, though much more common in areas where malaria is still a real problem.
The problem with looking for a "gay gene" is that it contains the assumption that genes in general only do one thing and that they do so in all contexts, which just ain't so. Your phenotype- the actual physical living result- is more like an emergent property of your genotype plus a healthy dose of environment than it is like the inevitable result of a blueprint. Between epigenetics, genomic imprinting, and the way individual alleles may simply do different things depending on the age and sex of the genome's owner and what other alleles are in the mix, it makes it very difficult to call something an anything gene because it probably does several different things depending on context.
If homosexuality is so incredibly common next to things we recognize unequivocally as genetic diseases, it's probably because whatever genetic underpinnings it has do something highly adaptive in most contexts, ones we wouldn't recognize as having anything to do with homosexuality. One model that's been tried and found to be mathematically sound- and believe me that's hard to do in biology- is an allele that enhanced female fecundity but also gave a chance at homosexuality for male carriers. It's only a guess that would work, and several others are possible, but my overall point is that there's almost certainly some mechanism of high advantage keeping such things in populations where homosexuality occurs to keep it at such a relatively high rate despite the obvious fitness disadvantage for those in whom it expresses as actual homosexuality.
If I were to extend back out into the realm of pure speculation, I'd even wonder if it's not an adaptation that has to do with pair-bonding, given how much more common "gayness" is in bird species that are more biologically committed to monogamy than humans- but again, that's pure speculation. Read the post I linked if you're still confused- like I said, it's a very complex subject and trying to address it in a comment box is hard.
Anyway, that's nature. As others have observed, whether something is natural or not has no moral ramifications at all in and of itself; it does change the framing when trying to develop an ethical approach, especially as distinct from pure choice, but science itself can't have a moral dimension. Moral I'll cover in another comment when I'm not supposed to be making up the grocery list and doing a bunch of other stuff. >_
Kevin:
"Bilgeman, your alcoholics = homosexuals analogy falls remarkably flat."
It does if you try making a "stem to stern" congruence of the two, but as an observed parallel of group dynamic behaviors, I think it stands up well enough.
"You have a sexual partner if you're doing it right."
Really? So even if one of those partners is a child, then is that "doing it right"?
(Sorry Kev, but I think that that crack deserved you a rhetorical shot to the gut).
"We are not now what we were fifty years ago."
Quite, and in more ways than we might care to realize, we have BEEN changed, rather than simply changing.
Especially in this issue, there are people who are advancing their own agenda, and for their own purposes, to impose their will upon us all.
"Cultural Workers" and all that rot...
Swell, I have an agenda of my own, as do you. And the harder that I get hectored to celebrate those who may be mentally ill on the one hand or who indulge in behaviors that are a perversion and deviation of the normal human sex drive, the more I will push back to have that one single deletion from the DSM-IV reviewed.
If the Gay Lobby can try changing the windage, I'm certainly free to change the elevation.
In my exchange with Goy, I was also struck by how, when all was said and done, he was funamentally arguing that he was an initiate to a Revealed Truth on the matter, and that I was not.
Fair enough. I have my own Revealed Truth also, and it has some things to say about homosexuality.
On the DSM-IV and the psychological definition of "disease" versus "not a disease"- the entire reason there are periodic conferences to revise the DSM and that we're on an edition IV at all is that the definition of a "mental illness" usually doesn't have many or any clear bright lines as long as the subject in question isn't trying to kill themself or anyone else, or hallucinating. One of the cardinal distinctions in psychology between something being a pathology and a quirk is, in fact, whether the condition is actively fucking up the patient's life. For serious- not in those terms, but that IS the only clear line used to distinguish, say, being an extremely neat and ordered person versus being obsessive-compulsive, or being a hard drinker versus being an alcoholic, or being unhappy and being depressed. Mental illnesses are usually extreme expressions of normal conditions and behaviors, sometimes cases in which the extremity is accompanied by neurochemical imbalance. (And even then it's often a chicken and egg case about which set off the other.) So if you're unhappy about the definitions of mental illnesses being able to be rewritten by a handful of professionals... sorry dude, it's always been this way, with ALL conditions, and it always will be, just because "mental illness" resists neat categorization.
Homosexuality was dropped from the DSM because the consensus was reached that being gay does not, in and of itself, necessarily fuck up someone's life. Indiscriminately screwing around and spreading diseases will fuck up your life, but you can fuck it up just as efficiently doing that with the opposite sex as you can with your own. Diddling children will fuck up your life (and theirs), but as the majority of straight male little-girl diddlers attests, it's just as easy to do this heterosexually. Living a lie and cheating on your spouse with the person you do meth with while you preach the virtues of family values in public is likewise equally possible with either gender arrangement. If you can have a stable relationship with a consenting adult partner and be pretty happy with this... and it's possible to do this with someone of the same sex... then homosexuality is therefore not defined psychiatrically as a pathology.
Scientifically speaking I'd be perfectly happy to revisit the question because if anything I think much more evidence has been accumulated to support this point of view, and the consensus would therefore be even stronger this time. Personally speaking I'm with perlhaqr, and for the same reasons.
I'm still curious how we got from "contestation and struggle" to homosexuality.
Anyhoo...
Eric,
Far as I'm aware I as a private citizen am free from obligations concerning YOUR negative rights.
If the government were abusing my rights, do you have an obligation to resist that government?
"You have a sexual partner if you're doing it right."
Really? So even if one of those partners is a child, then is that "doing it right"?
A child is not - by definition - a "partner," Bilgeman, and you know that very well, too.
LabRat:
"Mental illnesses are usually extreme expressions of normal conditions and behaviors, sometimes cases in which the extremity is accompanied by neurochemical imbalance."
It certainly seems that way to my layman's understanding.
Could we not also refer to them, then as a perversion or deviation of normal human quirks of behaviors to the point of abnormality?
If that's not too far off the course track, then we're more than halfway through the voyage.
"If you can have a stable relationship with a consenting adult partner and be pretty happy with this... and it's possible to do this with someone of the same sex... then homosexuality is therefore not defined psychiatrically as a pathology."
I'd agree with this, and it may surprise Kevin, but after reading his 2004 piece I think him and I are in broad agreement.
There are those who are born "wired for AC"...and they, in all probability, likely are the ones to quietly pair up and settle down.
And then there are the others, I suspect the vast majority of the Gay community, who have been recruited to it...perverted. Whole different kettle of fish.
"One of the cardinal distinctions in psychology between something being a pathology and a quirk is, in fact, whether the condition is actively fucking up the patient's life."
One of the very first arguments I ever got into online was over Clinton's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" initiative. As a veteran Marine Infantryman, I had no end of tiffs with Gays and their dupes,(most of whom had never served),who thought that they were perfectly within their "rights" to openly inflict themselves upon a squad or platoon of grunts, and that should they get their way, there would be absolutely no dire and life-threatening consequences to this,(as though the US Armed Forces would henceforth employ "Diversity Compliance Supervisors", analogous to Soviet Political Commissars at platoon and squad level to ensure that the Gay troops were not walking more than their share of the point).
Repeatedly injecting your sexuality where it properly has no place is a form of "fucking up one's life", (and other's).
"Diddling children will fuck up your life (and theirs), but as the majority of straight male little-girl diddlers attests, it's just as easy to do this heterosexually."
Quite so. I note that the vast majority of cases of pedophilia reported of the Catholic Clergy recently has not been heterosexual, though, has it?
But I bring this up because the other hallmark of homosexuality is it's propensity to recruit among children.
SF schoolchildren field-tripped to their teacher's Lesbian wedding, the "Heather has Two Mommies" New York City fiasco of the 1980's...
I suspect that these were largely the work of those who were themselves deviated into homosexuality.
Here again, an area where one's private sexuality, hetero OR homo, should be irrelevant, but it seems that they can't NOT leave it at home and in the closet.
Certainly, the attacks by the Gay Lobby on the Boy Scouts for the Scouts' refusal to endorse and promote the Gay agenda send a very loud message.
These are not necessarily stupid people, and I don't believe that they are not aware of how dangerous a "game" they are playing in trying to cozy up to peoples' children...but they do it anyway, and repeatedly so.
In this they seem akin to bucks during the rut, they KNOW it's hunting season upon them, but they are compelled to make their presences known.
"Scientifically speaking I'd be perfectly happy to revisit the question because if anything I think much more evidence has been accumulated to support this point of view, and the consensus would therefore be even stronger this time."
Good. I think it should be revisited also.
And who knows, if the evidence is there, maybe it is heterosexuality that can be consensualized as a pathology... I'm game.
Kevin:
"A child is not - by definition - a "partner," Bilgeman, and you know that very well, too."
Still using the 10th edition of the Newspeak Dictionary?
To some...people...a child IS.
And to some people, a child is a soon-to-be "partner".
When I was a teenager, I worked at as a gas jockey back in the days when there were full-service islands.
Want to guess how many anonymous calls I collected from adult homsexual men asking for pedophilic sex?
You think I argue this position from an abstract academic point of view, Kevin?
Want to guess how many anonymous calls I collected from adult homsexual men asking for pedophilic sex?
I ask this in all seriousness: Were you interested in the invitations at all? (This bears on the "recruitment" question.)
Do you know many gun nuts?
I know more than my share,(although not as many as you might expect in the course of over two decades at sea), and the hardest part for a gun nut is getting over his or her denial that they HAVE a problem.
There's also a parallel to the possible pathology of homosexuality among gun nuts...they HATE to practice their pathology alone.
See, if a gun nut has a group of other people around him who are ALSO obsessing over tools of destruction, he then can more easily buttress his self-deception, if even only for a few fleeting hours, that he isn't the ill soul that he really is.
----
See, here's the thing. Unlike Marxism and paedophilia, plain old homosexuality between consenting adults doesn't magically harm you any more than me owning 17 different flavours of 1911 does. You might think it's icky, in much the same way that my mother refuses to even acknowledge that I own "those wicked guns", but beyond that, it neither breaks your arm nor steals your car.
You want to bitch about homosexuals petitioning Congress for things which actually do material harm to you, and I'll be right there beside you, same as I am for anyone in that position, but "I don't like it so it's a mental illness" doesn't fly.
----
I live in the American Culture.
Do you live in another?
No, but I am capable of recognizing the possibility that maybe we don't always get everything right. The Brits really do consider interest in armament to be a mental illness (not officially, yet, but culturally) and I would consider that mistaken, even if I lived there.
And, actually, given that I live in New Mexico, and the Navajo culture is one of those who have a traditional place for homosexuals, I suppose in some sense I do live in one of those places.
Kevin:
"I ask this in all seriousness: Were you interested in the invitations at all? (This bears on the "recruitment" question.)"
Nope.
You want to bitch about homosexuals petitioning Congress for things which actually do material harm to you, and I'll be right there beside you, same as I am for anyone in that position, but "I don't like it so it's a mental illness" doesn't fly.
I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm inclined to believe that it isn't just because he "don't like it," it's because his religion tells him it's a mortal sin. Anyone willing to engage in a mortal sin must, therefore, be mentally ill.
Nope. - Bilgeman
Didn't think so. So how successful could they be at "recruitment," or are you suggesting that others are more pliable than you when it comes to their sexual orientation?
perlhaqr:
"And, actually, given that I live in New Mexico, and the Navajo culture is one of those who have a traditional place for homosexuals, I suppose in some sense I do live in one of those places."
Well then, there's the answer to all our troubles.
We just have to become Navajo then.
I was going to bring up Afghanistan, but on the whole, I think we'd probably be more succesful at turning ourselves into Navajos.
Okay, think I've got time for "moral/social" before hitting the rest of the day's chores...
There are those who make the point that, morally speaking, it actually shouldn't matter whether biological destiny or choice determines sexuality; the question is whether or not it's inherently wrong or unethical to have sex or partner with persons of the same sex. I'd say no, because what two consenting adults do with each other that harms neither them nor anyone else isn't morally wrong- but as Bilgeman and his "revealed truth" demonstrate, that doesn't actually get the larger debate much of anywhere because there are plenty of people who are going to argue that it's inherently wrong because their scripture of choice says so. Any further argument must be made primarily from social utility.
If homosexuality is heavily rooted in nature instead of or as well as nurture- and I think the prevalence of varying forms of it across vast groups of vertebrates AND history and very diverse human cultures argues heavily for that- then I think the problem then becomes finding a healthy way to deal with it and them as a society.
Yes, statistically speaking, you are more likely to be depressed, have a substance abuse problem, or have a sexually transmitted disease if you are gay*. You're also more likely to have any of these problems if you were abused as a child, if you're a certain racial minority in certain areas of the world, or if you're poor- it's not the sexuality, melanin content, or income level that predispose to the problem, it's the higher likelihood of stress, trauma, and an overall disordered environment that cause the problems. Having a fairly central part of who you are be a reason for your parents to kick you out, your religion to reject you (even if you're a firm believer), potential partners either ostracizing you or beating you up for admitting attraction, and generally being a social joke is DEPRESSING- it shouldn't be a shock that gay people have a higher rate. Nor should it be a shock that, faced with an overall cultural value system that actively rejects them, the resultant counterculture de-emphasizes or rejects those same values that keep straights relatively freer of disease, more sober, and overall more stable. The surprise here isn't that these problems are more prevalent in the gay community, it should be that they're not much worse.
Or if you want another "gay problem", take one that the "go back in the closet" mindset makes actively worse- gay people marrying straight people. The determinative word in "gay person" when it comes to values, goals, and dreams isn't "gay", it's "person"- and just as some people want to screw around and party until they're too old or dead to get away with it anymore, some people want a family more than they want anything else. Some gay people want it badly enough that they'll exercise that right so many people point out they have- they marry someone of the opposite sex. They get the family, but it's a shitty as hell situation- even leaving aside the one partner stuck with either cheating or never getting sex they actually enjoy, the other one is stuck in a self-esteem and trust-destroying marriage with someone who isn't actually attracted to them at all and may well one day blow the marriage sky-high when the human libido does what it does.
The thing about "heteronormativity" and the endless models out there of straight relationships and straight sexuality isn't that it shouldn't be considered the norm (clearly, it is), but that it's giving straight children models for what they should expect and how to go about it. Sometimes these aren't such great models- another valid complaint about Disney is that the model it most often gives for little girls is that passivity and a pretty face will win you a fabulous man and a wonderful life- but the fact is that the models are there. This is a great thing that culture overall does- give children who might not have a healthy background an idea of what healthy actually looks like. Neither of my parents ever showed me what a healthy relationship looks like- neither of them ever had one. My relationship of ten years is doing fine, though, because I had endless available models to compare my experiences to and choose over the destructive patterns that were my first ones.
Right now the overall cultural "family" message being sent is that the stable, sexually exclusive, drug-free relationships are for straight people and a drunken promiscuous party model is for gay people**. I don't think "heteronormativity" should be changed- it is, after all, the norm- but I do think that if we want fewer pathologies in our society, that gay people need healthy models as well. People are complicated and easy to screw up, and cultures are essentially gigantic generation-spanning devices for shaping them into stable, productive members of society; if we can't get rid of gay people, then enfolding them into the same cultural structures that produce stable, productive straight people makes a hell of a lot more sense then shoving them off onto the margins and saying of the result, "See, that's what being gay gets you!"
Does that mean including depictions of gay relationships in fiction? Well, um, yeah. Do I think that what I have in mind is the same thing as the sociologists? No. Do I think that even someone who actually DID want to turn more children gay would have more of a shot than the people who want all children to turn out straight? Not really, so I'm not terribly worried so much as mildly annoyed.
*On the last item, though, not if you're a lesbian. If we're going to judge the moral value of relationship based on statistics- disease, length of relationship, faithfulness- every woman should be eating muff.
**Gay men, anyway. Those poor lesbians again. Their only model is "the L-word"- I shudder.
Kevin:
"Didn't think so. So how successful could they be at "recruitment," or are you suggesting that others are more pliable than you when it comes to their sexual orientation?"
Certainly.
I should disclose here that my first full-bore sexual experience was at the age of 13, and with a 22-year-old woman, (this was not in the United States, so it may have culturally been "okay", but I rather think not, since it was a Muslim country, and she was herself a Muslim), ergo, I was already fully-versed in the pleasures of womanhood by the time the male deviants came sniffing around.
So I was able to confine my interaction with homosexual pedophiles to sticking a gas pump nozzle into their cars' gas tanks, with little bother.
But I've never forgotten how they tried.
I was NOT, however, able to resist the allure of tobacco, (which I started about the same time and continue to abuse to this day), while others were able to successfully resist the sweetleaf.
I should also point out that at that time and (especially), in that state, smoking cigarettes by students on school grounds was tolerated as a normal and accepted state of affairs.
Which kinda also speaks to the point of the effort to "normalize" homosexuality, yes?
I wonder that you ask such a question, were you not the guy who wrote:
"Fuck THAT noise!"?
I think that it would be educational in the extreme to canvass open Gays' "coming out testimonies" to find out how many of their first homosexual experiences were at what age, and how many of them were with an older, or adult partner.
Kevin wrote: "...I know for a fact that I could not choose to be physically attracted to another male."
This is one of those situations of whether you believe it to be so or not you are correct. It also speaks volumes about what a young person thinking they may be homosexual believes about themselves. Not feeling worthy, or valuable enough that someone will actually love YOU. Unstable family upbringing is a definite contributing factor to whether or not you feel self-worth. If you don't find this self-worth by the time you enter puberty, (still long for closeness from your same-sex parent or whatever else might be holding you back), you will BELIEVE you are different therefore you WILL be different.
There is a reason to "indoctrinate" the young into the gun-loving, freedom/liberty community in the same way.
If I believe I am sexually attracted to sticking my thing in a horse, (and I dwell on it, fantasize and visualize about it), it becomes true. Same with foot-fetish, cross-dressing, homo- and hetero- sexual, dominatrix, etc. Think about it, no one came out of the womb with a gene saying that they would be sexually turned-on by high-heels, (or a gerbil in their ass), but IT HAPPENS. What you visualize yourself to be IS dangerous. I don't believe this should be used as reason to "blame" a young Richard Gere, (or who/whatever). The formative adolescent years are too difficult as it is without also dealing with these overwhelming feelings of being different, (unloved/able), with the strongest desire you have is just to be loved, (not sexually), as you are. (Great time to indoctrinate, by the way). Neither should parents be "blamed" as there are many, many other influences in a child's life that contribute to sexual directions. (Unless those influences have been limited or virtually removed -- for instance, homosexuals raising children without any heterosexual interactions for the children to be exposed to.)
I can see this next essay getting reeeeeally long - and farther into the future.
"If we're going to judge the moral value of relationship based on statistics- disease, length of relationship, faithfulness- every woman should be eating muff."
Oh, really??? Maybe this is the case for your relationship, but as for the facts:
In general, lesbian and bisexual women report more experiences of victimization than their heterosexual counterparts in their adult relationships (Balsam, Rothblum & Beauchaine, 2005; Tjaden, Thoennes & Allison, 1999). {*Many therapists suggest that the hostility and aggression inherent to many lesbian relationship arise out of the stressors and social pressures unique to gay and lesbian people.} It is possible that over 50% of lesbian women have been victims of physical abuse or used violence within their same-sex relationship. {*See Brand & Kidd (1986); Coleman (1990); :Lie&Gentlewarrior (1991); Lie, Schilit, Bush, Montagne & Reyes (1991); Renzetti (1992).} Verbal, emotional and psychological violence are the most common form. {*Lie et al. (1991); Lockhart, White, Causby & Isaac (1994); Renzetti (1988).} So severe is the abuse and overt control in some relationships that many women literally have to escape from the relationship. {*Researchers have also found that women who have been abused within their family of origin or witnessed family violence were more likely to be a victim or a batterer to their intimate same-sex relationships.}
There are more paragraphs I could type out but lets move on to the longevity claim:
Laumann, Gagnon, Michael and Michaels, found that women, similar to homosexual men, have a "higher average numbers of parners" (p.314). Other researchers have confirmed that lesbian relationships, in general, have less durability than heterosexual relationships and promote within each woman a persistent feeling of impermanence. {*See Blumstein & Schwartz (1983); Rothblum, Balsam & Mickey (2004); Rothblum &Factor (2001)}
I take it you were speaking anecdotal?
Kevin:
"I can see this next essay getting reeeeeally long - and farther into the future."
One of these days someone may option the rights and make themselves a mini-series outta it.
The aim of the Gay Lobby is to normalize homosexuality so that they can openly work in the schools to perverert the young and thereby recruit sexual partners.
Sweet Jaysus Bilgerman, you've actually managed to push me into agreeing with Markadaffya. Please don't ever do that again.
"Didn't think so. So how successful could they be at "recruitment," or are you suggesting that others are more pliable than you when it comes to their sexual orientation?"
Certainly.
Wow - the nanny-statist mentality in a Markadaffya size nutshell. Of course it doesn't effect me, it must be done to save all of those weaker souls.
And as the man sez FUCK THAT NOISE.
juris:
"Sweet Jaysus Bilgerman, you've actually managed to push me into agreeing with Markadaffya. Please don't ever do that again."
Uh-huh. But Mark is quite correct in his assertion, (if it's the one about us being little different than Al-Qaeda that you're referring to).
Al-Qaeda lives by a doctrine of faith, and is ready to do violence to defend and promote it,as do many, if not most, of us.
What I don't think mark is ready to face is that he does,too.
But this isn't about the wonderful world or howling wilderness inside of Markadelphia's cranium. is it?
This is from the article at LifeSiteNews that Kevin first linked to.
What does this statement mean to you?
"The SWS press release concluded: "President Obama may have declared June to be Gay Pride Month, but entertainment for children therefore continues to perpetuate a less inclusive message, leaving those outside its confines with little to build their own dreams of happily ever after.""
What would a "more inclusive message" actually entail?
Positive depictions of openly Gay cartoon characters aimed at Disney's usual target audience, right?
And to what end? To be inclusive to help the childrens' self esteem?
Or to psychologically prepare them to accept the advances of deviants as "normal", (and perhaps even awaited for with longing),when their turn comes?
Do you have a more cogent motive for their making such a statement?
LabRat:
"People are complicated and easy to screw up, and cultures are essentially gigantic generation-spanning devices for shaping them into stable, productive members of society; if we can't get rid of gay people, then enfolding them into the same cultural structures that produce stable, productive straight people makes a hell of a lot more sense then shoving them off onto the margins and saying of the result, "See, that's what being gay gets you!""
I didn't want to let this go by without commenting on how strange it is that the thought of curing them just never seemed to enter your mind as you wrote this.
I suppose that in YOUR chosen scripture,(the DSM-IV?) "The Elders", as you put it earlier:
"So if you're unhappy about the definitions of mental illnesses being able to be rewritten by a handful of professionals... sorry dude, it's always been this way, with ALL conditions, and it always will be"
...stated that homosexuals are not ill, and thus it is unthinkable to contemplate the possibility of curing them..."getting rid of them", (whatever you meant by that term), however, does seem to at least be on the table...somewhere...somehow.
Can I observe that this paragraph of yours is as good an example of doctrinally pure dogmatic "Science" as I've seen today?
Perhaps the host of ills that are more prevalent among Gays are symptoms of their Gay illness.
Of course, if you are forbidden to look by slavish adherence to doctrine, you'll never find a cure, will you?
And thus, you inescapably will blame the pathologies of Gay people upon the attitudes of society at large.
But that runs you headfirst right into the "social utility" argument that you, yourself advanced.
A "heteronormative" society is that which does the best for the most of it's members...that is precisely WHY it IS the norm.
I'll leave you there upon the horns of the dilemna you forged for yourself.
Mastiff:
If the government were abusing my rights, do you have an obligation to resist that government?
What sort of obligation? Moral, ethical, legal? Other?
It'd be the same sort of "obligation" that voters have to know what they're voting for. You could call it that, but do we still let pig-ignorant voters in the booths when all they know is who belongs to what party? If that much? So yeah, you could argue that that's how people oughta react, but look at who's dancing on The Hill these days and tell me how much of an "obligation" it is.
Kevin:
"I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm inclined to believe that it isn't just because he "don't like it," it's because his religion tells him it's a mortal sin. Anyone willing to engage in a mortal sin must, therefore, be mentally ill."
Nope.
The truly mentally ill, being unable to determine right from wrong, are as children, and are therefore incapable of Sin, (both Mortal and Venal).
The whole point behind the Sacrament of Communion is that you realize, acknowledge, confess and abjure your sins, that you do penance as an Act of Contrition, and are thereby purified and in a State of Grace to receive the Transubstantiated Host.
The Confiteor:
http://www.catholicdoors.com/prayers/english/p00186.htm
Those who are mentally ill are to be pitied and prayed for, hopefully to be cured. But they are not to be coddled in their illness, and nor are they to be allowed to infect others.
Jesus walked among and healed lepers, but he did NOT invite them among the healthy. And neither did he exhort his disciples to ignore their illness,which would have been rather difficult in any event, when the leprosy had eaten away their faces.
Willfully indulging in that which you KNOW to be Sin is not an illness, but rather a condition of being human, it is inescapable. That's what all the business about the Sacrament of Baptism is about for Catholics.
The sins are often their own punishment, and we are taught to hate the sins, but love the sinner.
We don't 'throw them out of the Church" as some here have alleged, but until they repent of their sins, there are parts of the Mass in which they cannot partake.
I want to make it clear here that I am probably the world's worst Catholic, so don't take my imperfect perception of the Church's doctrine as having the "Nihil Obstat" imprimatur.
Bilgerman, on a recent thread I wondered, somewhat disparagingly, if lefties in general aren't the sincerest disciples of Skinner - believing man is a tabula rasa upon which the proper programming is to be written.
And here you pop up, no leftie at all, and assert that at least concerning human sexuality, again we simply await the proper programming - all the while denying that you could possibly be subject to such yourself.
What anyone does with their genitals for their jollies doesn't matter to me as long as they do so in privacy and only with consenting adults. Nor does why matter (i.e. nature or nurture - they ended up in the same place either way). I'm not sure which is the sadder - that you are threatened by them, or they by you.
I didn't want to let this go by without commenting on how strange it is that the thought of curing them just never seemed to enter your mind as you wrote this.
Uh, no. It's not that it never entered my head, it's that I made the assumption that you might have some idea what you're talking about with such authority and therefore might be familiar with the history and track record of "curing" homosexuality- which is utterly abysmal. One of the reasons the DSM was revised in the first place was that psychology was having basically no results "curing" homosexuality but were getting much better outcomes for their patients if they treated for their actual problems.
The biggest success rate any "reparative therapy" program- or "ex-gay" if you like- has ever self-reported is thirty percent. More honest practictioners admit that only a very small percentage of their clients are successful in the long run. A lot more of the "successes" admit their orientation never really changed, but they are living in heterosexual relationships.
The people that go through these programs desperately do not want to be gay and the ones that "succeed" at this seem to be the ones with the most white-knuckle willpower to live as though they were straight anyway. These samples and these numbers- as well as the historical persistence and natural presence of homosexuality in nature- tell me that gayness isn't a treatable mental illness, it's a trait.
"Curing" lefthandedness would be easier- and historically, it has been.
I suppose that in YOUR chosen scripture,(the DSM-IV?) "The Elders", as you put it earlier:
I don't have a chosen scripture. Don't put words in my mouth. I do recognize the people who study and treat mental illness for a reason as experts- but not gods. Science is sometimes political because people are political and science is practiced by people- but I still give respect where it's due to people who have put in the time, effort, and experience to becoming expert in their field.
"getting rid of them", (whatever you meant by that term), however, does seem to at least be on the table...somewhere...somehow.
"Curing" them, which doesn't seem to work. Iran and Afghanistan have their own method, but somehow no matter how many they execute they still seem to have gay people. Trying to culturally pressure them to stay in the closet. My point is that even the most extreme methods don't work, therapy almost always doesn't work and even when it does the results are questionable, maybe we ought to try something other than trying to get rid of them one way or another, because that doesn't work.
Can I observe that this paragraph of yours is as good an example of doctrinally pure dogmatic "Science" as I've seen today?
What doctrine, why the scare quotes around science, and why the capital letter? I base my conclusions on a combination of everything I've ever been able to read on the subject in biology, in psychology, and in sociological history. You can try to frame that as equivalent to your faith in dogmatic scripture- now there's a vocabulary word, dogma, I wonder what the etymological history there is- but you're going to have to do a bit better than "YOU AGREE WITH SCIENCE, YOU SHEEP".
Perhaps the host of ills that are more prevalent among Gays are symptoms of their Gay illness.
Like this. Psychiatry as a professional body spends decades treating homosexuality as a mental illness, observes that doesn't work, then tries treating the various problems on their own independently as if they had nothing intrinsic to do with homosexuality. Observing that this works a lot better, they then finalize the DSM revision process- this was by no means the reason for the progression between DSM-III, DSM-IIIR, and DSM-IV, but it was part of that series of changes.
Your response: "YEAH WELL MAYBE IT'S JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE SICK GAYS!"
What's your next searing logical riposte to a point made going to be? "NO, U!"?
"Of course, if you are forbidden to look by slavish adherence to doctrine, you'll never find a cure, will you?"
Ah, I was wrong. It's "SHEEPLE".
So are you arguing that being the butt of massive social and religious pressure, condemnation, and mockery is not stressful or that stress creates the exact same pathologies in a broad variety of other situations?
A "heteronormative" society is that which does the best for the most of it's members...that is precisely WHY it IS the norm.
No, normal is just the parameters most folks fall under. By human global population standards, it is normal to have enough melanin to handle sunny days without chemicals and to lose the ability to digest lactose by adulthood. Stick me in the sun for a few hours without a layer of SPF 50 thick enough to hide your car keys in and I'll burn to a crisp, but on the other hand I could probably live on dairy products without a single digestive hiccup. Sticking me in the sun and taking away my milk isn't good for me even though it's the "norm".
Know what else is normal? Variation through any given biological population. I could swear there's even an important scientific concept based on that.
I'll leave you there upon the horns of the dilemna you forged for yourself.
The scary part here is I have absolutely no idea what dilemma you think I have.
That should be "or that stress does NOT create", sorry. My typing has gone to hell today.
Oh, really??? Maybe this is the case for your relationship
Why does everyone assume that anybody defending homosexuality as not being the icky gay plague of immoral doom must be gay themselves? Sadly, my unique phenotype includes a preference for cock and I am unable to enjoy the statistical relationship benefits of being a lesbian. (Yes, my tongue is quite firmly in my cheek here.)
As for your assertion that lesbian women are more likely to be beaten, there's also a major problem of that word reported- basically all domestic-violence data is infected with underreporting skewing the results one way or another. One of the reasons domestic violence is of particular interest in research at all is that there's a growing awareness in the field that domestic violence committed by women in general is drastically underreported- and women who've been beaten by their female lovers are more likely to report than men who have been. Given that men also have a far longer track record of killing their partners as the endpoint of abuse, heterosexual women also may be underreporting violence as compared to lesbian and bisexual women.
As for longevity, I was speaking based on older research- but given that most of the research in the field is agenda-driven from one angle or another and all of it is pretty new, I could believe either result. Given that I was making a tongue-in-cheek point about how people talk about the pathologies of "homosexuality" while ignoring lesbians completely, I really don't care if I'm wrong on both scores- it was about the silliness of defining what's the "best" kind of relationship by statistics.
Lastly, Bilgeman, your thing about the GAY AGENDA being that THEY WANT OUR CHILDREN seems as odd and ridiculous to me as an anti-gunner saying that the GUN AGENDA is to get more inner-city teenagers killed. I've been interested in gay rights for fifteen years and never once when dealing with actual gay people have I ever gotten the impression they wanted to turn kids gay. (I don't think the idea occurred to them, since, in their experience sexuality can't be changed just like that. That goes BOTH ways, you know.) And, like the vast majority of adult heterosexuals, the vast majority of them aren't sexually interested in children and don't think of them that way until they're, y'know, adults. Pedophiles of all bends belong in the same creepy little box together.
Why would they want images of gay people in the media or to get children used to the idea? Why would people with dark skin like the idea of images in the media including them, too? (Just like Real Life!) Children identify with those who are like them and it's lonely if you never see anyone else in the experience you're absorbing as "normal" that's like you. The suicide rate of gay teenagers is astronomical- they think reducing the isolation and apparent bleakness of their future would help with that.
Oh, and there's also the part where kids are horrid little tribal beasts that fear and loathe difference they have no exposure to and they'd like to change that, too.
"Nor does why matter (i.e. nature or nurture - they ended up in the same place either way). I'm not sure which is the sadder - that you are threatened by them, or they by you."
The fact that they are trying to indoctrinate children, (going after Disney), into believing the ones with unmet self-worth, unmet same-sex attunement needs and identity issues are "just gay" does have an effect on all of society, (and I believe that affect is negative). Nature vs. nurture does certainly matter when the belief that "I am gay" is all it takes to make it so. Young impressionable, open minds looking for answers to the difficult question of "who am I?" & "does anyone care about me?". There is a reason Hilter focused so much energy on youth recruitment
Nature vs. nurture does certainly matter when the belief that "I am gay" is all it takes to make it so.
This is the second time you have made this assertion, assuming you're the same anon. (Seriously, a handle or something would be nice, doesn't have to be your real name.)
Care to provide some support other than just "gay people are like foot fetishists and horse-fuckers because I said so"?
juris imprudent:
"I'm not sure which is the sadder - that you are threatened by them, or they by you."
Or that I aasked you a direct question, and you have no answer to it?
"And here you pop up, no leftie at all, and assert that at least concerning human sexuality, again we simply await the proper programming"
I suspect, that like sister LabRat, you are indulging in an either/or fallacy.
While we are less and less the "tabula rasa" that certain 18th and 19th century French philosophers,(not to mention other assorted latter-day scoundrels), fantasized about, there is certainly the capacity for learning...or training, which seems more apropos a term in this context.
Otherwise why would we build and staff churches,schools and prisons, if not to train incipient members of our society in what is expected of them?
"...all the while denying that you could possibly be subject to such yourself."
You did yourself and me a disservice by not reading my full reply to Kevin. While I was able to easily resist the advances of homosexuals, there were other influences that I was not prepared to overcome.
I didn't "catch AIDS" from teenaged foolishness,(and it would have been "prime time" to have been infected in the first wave), I probably will have caught the cancer from them though. And in the environment and attitudes that I ensnared myself in one form of self-destructive vice is a lesson perhaps to prevent the youngsters from being recruited into another.
If you care.
"What anyone does with their genitals for their jollies doesn't matter to me as long as they do so in privacy and only with consenting adults."
I hear in your words the sound of a retreat from an earlier position...but what makes you think that your new "line in the sand" will be one that you will be able to hold?
Retreating from a position gets to be habit-forming, in case you didn't realize it.
IOTW, and to be blunt, if a pair of homosexuals, ten years from now, decided to "get it on" onstage at your childrens' or grandchildrens' school stage-play as a "celebration of sexuality"...what makes you think that you'd be then willing to do anything about it?
Mark well the arguments made against me here today, as the exact same slurs might be made against you then.
So, do you want to take a crack at that question I posed you earlier?
I jump into this thread, having barely lightly skimmed it, to respond to the baseline post.
Simply put, I note that there is a serious and fundamental difference between tolerating a condition that is outside the norm, and redefining the norm to include the divergent condition.
Attempting to redefine a norm is to reject reality wholesale and substitute your own broken concoction, and nothing good ever comes of that. (This massively understates the havoc such attempts cause.)
Tolerating a condition that is outside the usual parameters is an entirely different proposition. It is the secret sauce that makes a free society free, because freedom to adhere to the uncontroversial norm is a joke in awful taste.
I submit that the number of things a truly free society really cannot tolerate is actually quite small, and that most of those fall into the categories of "swinging your fist into my nose", and "working to undermine the security of my life, liberty and property".
Frankly, homosexuality doesn't fall into either of those categories, and attempts to demonstrate that it does really strains more credulity than should ever be considered as factor in a matter of law and public policy.
Honestly, I'd rather have a discrete 24/7 gay clown orgy going on in the house next door than have Markadelphia ever again exercise his right to vote, because gay clowns privately having at each other in a heaping CF does much less damage to my life, liberty and pursuit than the sorts of votes Markadelphia is likely to cast.
So, to sum up: toleration of gay clown orgies: recommended. You don't have to like them, but rejecting them leads to a less free society for everyone, with the side effects of driving them into the Leftist camp, which then exploits their plight for their own purposes, to the hindrance of all.
Well, you would have to get away from the belief therapy doesn't work to "cure" homosexuals. But when therapy has taken place, (whether with a gay-affirmative therapist or not), the biggest factor in whether or not a person comes away from therapy "cured" is whether or not the homosexual BELIEVES that they can achieve opposite-sex attraction.
Please allow me a few paragraphs on this subject:
This was written by Janelle Hallman.
"In the preface of her book Female Homosexuality, Dr. Elaine Siegel, a supervising and training analyst at the New York Center for Psychoanalytical Training, tells the story of how she simultaneously treated 12 homosexual women within her private counseling practice. All of her clients viewed homosexuality as liberating and not one of them, at the outset of therapy, had a conscious desire to change. Since Dr. Siegel did not interpret homosexuality as an illness, she "did not set out to 'cure' them or to dissuade them from their lifestyle" (1988, p. xi). She merely prepared herself to listen as she would to any client and made herself emotionally available.
She reports that as her clients resolved and distanced themselves from inner conflicts, their anxiety decreased and life in general became more joyful and productive. Further, "With the attainment of firmer inner structures," their "interpersonal relationships also solidified and became more permanent" (p. xi). In other words, as these women began to root themselves within their unique stories, their true authentic and feminine self, and assume ownership of their personal needs, feelings and desires, they established the foundation upon which healthy and long-lasting relationships could be sustained. Through solidifying a self, they created the avenue through which to solidify intimacy. Needless to say, her clients, as a whole, reached extremely satisfactory conclusions to their years of psychoanalytic treatment.
But something else happened. During the course of treatment, more than half of her clients began to experience other-sex attractions and romantic desires, ultimately becoming, as Siegel puts it, "fully heterosexual" (p. xii). She admits that this profound change within her clients was partially due to her willingness to remain open to their deeper issues and "often heavy developmental needs" (p. xii) rather than simply affirming their homosexuality as normative. It was also due to her client's willingness to address their developmental needs and to continue to grow as individuals and women, allowing internal and external change, including the transformation of their sexual preferences and identity.
Since the advent of psychotherapy, women in conflict with same-sex attractions and behaviors have sought out professional help. Many women who were NOT IN CONFLICT with same-sex attraction have experienced profound change. Counseling practitioners and new counseling students have not heard much about these women. Yet for decades, women and their therapists have reported appreciable reductions in their same-sex struggles. They have a story to tell."
If you would like more the PDF is available for free download off the authors website, here: http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3429 I ended on page 40.
But there is plenty more, such as,
"Dr. Harvey Kaye of the New York Medical College observed that 50% of the homosexual women with whom he had been working had shifted toward the heterosexual end of the spectrum. "This indicates a substantial positive treatment potential in homosexual women, a potential which should not be lost sight of in evaluating the treatability of female homosexuals who present themselves for therapy" (Kaye et al., 1967, p. 633).
The practitioners working with homosexual women typically went about their work quietly and conscientiously. They did not operate from a moral basis about homosexuality, but from a psychoanalytic framework and an ethical basis, believing it was the patient's right to seek treatment for any inner conflict or lack of a sense of well-being. They were respected within their field and often served on official subcommittees of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) established for the ongoing study and treatment of homosexuality and transgender issues. Their professional papers were regularly accepted and presented at the annual APA conventions.
But behind the scenes, a pressure cooker was brewing. In 1970, gay rights groups stormed the APA annual convention held in San Francisco. Ronald Bayer, in his book Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis, reviews the history of this monumental moment. "Guerrilla theater tactics and more straightforward shouting matches characterized" the gay rights groups' presence (p. 102). The activists essentially accused psychiatry of harming homosexuals be asserting that homosexuals can be "treated" or "helped." Their disruption of the convention became so intense that some of the psychiatrists in attendance "demanded that their air fares to San Fransisco be refunded" (p. 103). Many heard "their professional denounced as an instrument of oppression and torture" (p. 103). The APA had surprisingly become a target for social change.
To stave off another protest, in 1971 the APA decided to host the first panel of active homosexuals where NONprofessionals could openly speak to psychiatrists about homosexuality as a normal identity. Yet, even with this invitation, gay activists again stormed the convention, demanding that homosexuality be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). They argued that homosexuals were unjustly discriminated against because society at large believed homosexuals had a "mental illness."
By 1972, practicing homosexual psychiatrists joined forces with the gay activist groups. Early in 1973, Dr. Robert Spitzer, a member of the APA Nomenclature Committee (the committee responsible for publishing the DSM), arranged a meeting between the activists and the committee to discuss the request to eliminate homosexuality as a diagnostic category. A political agenda was now penetrating and weaving itself into the very fabric of this scientific community. At the 1973 annual convention, the core group of psychiatrists now seeking to eliminate homosexuality from the DSM reprimanded the psychiatrists who had for decades successfully worked with homosexual patients. They implied that patients had been forced to "change" by moralizing practitioners. To the contrary, the patients of these practitioners chose to enter therapy because they were in distress about their homosexuality. Their dignity and right to self-determination had been respected by these psychoanalysts.
In Dec. of 1973, a small group of psychiatrists (members of the board of trustees of the APA) made a final decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM and replaced it with the phrase "sexual orientation disturbance." Implicit to this new nomenclature is the assertion that homosexuality is not a mental disorder but in fact a normal variation of human sexuality and therefore, in and of itself, not a treatable condition. The only treatable "problem" is the inner conflict or disturbance within a man or woman with respect to their homosexual feelings or behaviors."
The PDF is informative if this peeks your interest. And yes, the APA did have homosexuality categorized wrong under Sociopathic Personality Disturbance, which it wasn't and still isn't. But the change to "normalcy" should have required overwhelming scientific evidence. Yet little if any was given and only 13 of 15 board members voted for the change without ANY scientific evidence presented or analyzed to prove that homosexuality was inborn or unchangeable, refuting previous findings or experiences of clinicians specializing in the treatment of homosexuality, or proving that the mental health or overall psychological well-being of homosexuals was the same as nonhomosexuals.
Luckily treatment is still semi-possible and continues to achieve favorable results, (I'm not talking "cured" either, although that continues to happen surprisingly often). Wanna have a freedom issued discussion? Why can't a homosexual SEEKING CHANGE get advice and treatment from the vast majority of APA members? Besides just the standard, "YOU'RE NORMAL, it's the rest of society that has the mental disorder".
LabRat:
"Psychiatry as a professional body spends decades treating homosexuality as a mental illness, observes that doesn't work, then tries treating the various problems on their own independently as if they had nothing intrinsic to do with homosexuality"
And this with the methods and protocols of the 1950s and 60's, correct?
So, by the same thinking, any disease that could not be cured with the medicine of earlier eras is then placed off-limits and never to be revisited, is that it?
Even you had to offer an example that the best results obtained,(using ice-water jets and electro-convulsive therapies we might presume), was reported at %30. But then you immediately launched an attack to question the validity of the example you offered and thereby denigrate the credibility of the strawman you dragged in and served up, without giving us linky-love so that we could examine the data for ourselves.
"Observing that this works a lot better, they then finalize the DSM revision process- this was by no means the reason for the progression between DSM-III, DSM-IIIR, and DSM-IV, but it was part of that series of changes."
Not according to Brother Anonymous, who even cited us a book title, wherein this "revision process" was distilled down to opinions of 13 out of 15 APA board members after being subjected to the Gay equivalent of Marxist street politics at the height of its' powers in the US...caved.
And here you are, hotly and rather nastily defending it tooth and nail.
(But you don't have a Scripture to defend, right?).
"So are you arguing that being the butt of massive social and religious pressure, condemnation, and mockery is not stressful or that stress creates the exact same pathologies in a broad variety of other situations?"
As I predicted earlier, you have now transferred the source of the pathologies found in higher numbers among the Gay population to the society at large.
You even go so far as to blame suicidal Gay teens at the feet of straight children:
"The suicide rate of gay teenagers is astronomical- they think reducing the isolation and apparent bleakness of their future would help with that.
Oh, and there's also the part where kids are horrid little tribal beasts that fear and loathe difference they have no exposure to and they'd like to change that, too."
Look around you LabRat, look at how many states have changed their constitutions to ban Gay marriage. The citizens have rebuked the opinions of judges, your 13 APA Elders, and their legislatures to formally place homosexuality beyond the pale.
You claim that you've been "interested" (is that a euphemism for "advocate"?), in "Gay Rights" for 15 years. Are you quite sure you wish to to keep on this course track? Because it seems to me that you're rapidly losing whatever ground you might have gained.
Did you learn nothing from Prop 8?
"Lastly, Bilgeman, your thing about the GAY AGENDA being that THEY WANT OUR CHILDREN seems as odd and ridiculous to me"
That's not at all surprising. If you've taken up the cause of your selected victims, as you assert that you have in this context for over a decade and a half, it's rather expected that, like Nelson at Copenhagen, you raise your spyglass to your blind eye when something heaves to about them that you do not wish to see. I have offered my own testimony, the evidence of homosexual pedophilia in my own Church's clergy, the SF field trip, the NYC schools' books, and the pressure campaign against the Scouts and Disney to show that there is certainly at least a subset of the gay community that shows a markedly keen interest in children, and this sub-set is given cover and support within the wider gay community, and all you can offer in response is the lame old "self-esteem" reasoning?
Lady, that gag's now so old it's got whiskers growing off it.
Let me challenge you with this, then:
if homosexuality is succesfully normalized, would you expect homosexuals to ignore the fact that they now have an entire new crop of potential bed-mates in the offing?
Remember that my own first experience was with what was, by strictly applied definition, a pedophilic adult female.
Shall we thereby double the vulnerabilities of our children in this regard by this campaign of homonormalization?
I say not. I do not have the faith in the 13 APA board members of December 1973 that you do, and I believe it is high time to honestly revisit the evidence they used to reach the decision that they did.
IOTW, and to be blunt, if a pair of homosexuals, ten years from now, decided to "get it on" onstage at your childrens' or grandchildrens' school stage-play as a "celebration of sexuality"...what makes you think that you'd be then willing to do anything about it?
The same civil standards we have that today prohibit such a display of heterosexuality, you imbecile. Sheesh, you must be extraordinarily insecure of your own sexuality that it need be guarded so zealously.
That you are so ashamed of the other vices in your life is Catholicism, lapsed or not, writ large. Jerking off used to be a big one too in the Roman tradition. Do you indulge guiltily or would you cut off your hand lest it offend thee?
juris imprudent:
I asked you:
"So, do you want to take a crack at that question I posed you earlier?"
And you ducked it AGAIN.
It's getting so glaring a silence on your part that even you must recognize how damaging your standing mute on the matter is. Is this not why you would prefer to change the subject by launching ad hominem attacks on me and my faith?
I'll give you the opportunity to respond to my challenge again a little later.
"The same civil standards we have that today prohibit such a display of heterosexuality, you imbecile"
The civil standards we have today are not the same ones we had even 10 years ago, so what makes you think that they, like the APA, will be stuck in this contemporary cultural mode for the next ten...heck, even the next five years?
If the the good folks at the SWS get their way, people may have to start issuing apologies for their heterosexuality.
"Sheesh, you must be extraordinarily insecure of your own sexuality that it need be guarded so zealously."
I've been waiting for THAT one...what was the response LabRat gave Anonymous:
"Why does everyone assume that anybody defending homosexuality as not being the icky gay plague of immoral doom must be gay themselves?"
And here you've provided the opposite corollary to the shopworn cliche that LabRat lamented, to wit:
That if I am perceived as attacking homosexuality, I must be a closeted homosexual myself.
There should be some parallel to Godwin's Law when discussing homosexuality.
What you've just told me, (and anyone else still following this discussion),is that you've run out of any cogent arguments and are now reduced to just flinging poo-poo in a high dudgeon of a snit.
And when all is said and done, all I've REALLY done to merit your ire is wonder if the APA did not act precipitously when they declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, and suggest that it might be wise to review that conclusion.
See,ANY decision reached by a small and largely self-selected group is suspect, and a decision by such a group made in a room that was surrounded by a mob of hostile protesters with an agenda that matches the decision the group reached, is, or should be, automatically placed under suspicion of being bogus.
Except when it agrees with your own prejudices, apparently.
What was it I told Kevin:
"If you REALLY want to upset a homosexual, suggest that that finding be revisited and reviewed."
and lo, here's LabRat, who claims to be ready to give it a go, but for some reason seems to be truculently reticent to actually see it happen; and yourself, who seems to a be a few posts shy of a patented Bilge- induced double-Hindu shit-fit.
I'd ask you what you could be so scared of, but your record on answering direct questions posed to you hasn't been the most sterling in this comment thread, has it?
So, keeping things simple and linear, and for a third try:
Do you have a more cogent motive for their making such a statement?
If the the good folks at the SWS get their way, people may have to start issuing apologies for their heterosexuality.
Do you have a more cogent motive for their making such a statement?
I'm going to give about as much credence to that crowd of idiots as I would the racist numbnuts of the world or any other merry band of lunatics. There are plenty of strange and/or stupid people out at the fringes in or out of academia; that some get published and tenured does not make them more credible. Really. I don't expect to ever establish a cogent motive for someone with wacky views - especially in a field where stupid is the norm.
Are you as credulous with EVERYTHING you read, or only when you have a particular bone to pick?
That if I am perceived as attacking homosexuality, I must be a closeted homosexual myself.
Nope, but it does seem you fear that you (or if not you, all the weaker souls in the world) could catch "teh gay" with too much contact (so to speak). That and your assumption that every last gay person is a moral degenerate. Sorry bub, but I know gay people that I respect a helluva lot more than you at the moment. They much better exemplify a live and let live viewpoint.
And it would have been quite rare to accuse a racist of being a self loathing closeted member of the group he objected to. You can be a bigot without any extra psychological baggage.
if the APA did not act precipitously when they declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder
I believe LabRat disposed of your objections simply enough - they followed the science and the science told them it wasn't what they originally thought. You might just as easily ask, did they act precipitously adding homosexuality in the first place. I seriously suspect that the weaker scientific justification came for addition rather than deletion. Now for those who fall back on the book of ancient superstition you don't have to worry about changes like that - you stick to what the Lord has told you.
As LabRat noted, your argument sounds not that dissimilar to what the scientifically and rationally immune anti-gunner would say, or I might add the justifications propping up Jim Crow. After all, you can't allow "those people" to mingle with decent folk, right?
Lastly, you have worked assiduously to prove Markadaffya right. That in and of itself ought to give one pause to ponder.
juris:
"There are plenty of strange and/or stupid people out at the fringes in or out of academia; that some get published and tenured does not make them more credible."
Hmmm, y'know, I was thinking the exact same thing, only my own "circle of skepticism" also extends to APA Board Members of 1973, while yours apparently does not.
I guess that's your particular bone that you have consciously chosen NOT to pick.
(A neat sidetep rather than an answer, but a sidestep nevertheless).
Although NOW you'll no doubt have to defend yourself from charges that you're a bigoted homophobe yourself for labeling the initiative of trying to force entertainment media conglomerates to provide children with positive Gay role models to enhance their self-esteem, 9should they happen to be Gay), as idiotic, lunatic, stupid, and wacky.
Welcome to the club, Mr. J-I! ...coffeepot's in the corner, if you take the last cup, make a fresh pot.
"That and your assumption that every last gay person is a moral degenerate. "
'Scuse me, but where did I say that?
Here's what I stated to LabRat:
"There are those who are born "wired for AC"...and they, in all probability, likely are the ones to quietly pair up and settle down.
And then there are the others, I suspect the vast majority of the Gay community, who have been recruited to it...perverted. Whole different kettle of fish."
and here's what I posted to Kevin:
"The truly mentally ill, being unable to determine right from wrong, are as children, and are therefore incapable of Sin, (both Mortal and Venal)."
and:
"Willfully indulging in that which you KNOW to be Sin is not an illness, but rather a condition of being human, it is inescapable. That's what all the business about the Sacrament of Baptism is about for Catholics.
The sins are often their own punishment, and we are taught to hate the sins, but love the sinner.
We don't "throw them out of the Church" as some here have alleged, but until they repent of their sins, there are parts of the Mass in which they cannot partake."
Where you read an automatic verdict of moral degeneracy delivered on "on every last gay person" on my part from that must be something hateful that you brought with you...the hob-goblin that bedevils your own mind, perhaps.
"Sorry bub, but I know gay people that I respect a helluva lot more than you at the moment. They much better exemplify a live and let live viewpoint."
I can live with that.
"I believe LabRat disposed of your objections simply enough"
Oh, she TRIED, droning the "Scientific Method Creed" or "Confiteor of the Church of Scientific Dogma",(if you will), but then along came Anonymous who actually cited the circumstances of the decision, and Lab had to backpedal and admit that "Science IS political", (did you note that defensive tone in that passage? It came through her copy pretty clearly.)
You can repeat her boilerplate all you like, but she offered no cite, and Anonymous did...and after he/she did, she had to eat her own words, because it was evidently anything BUT the cool and rational dispassionate processwhich the "Church of Science" likes to project to the rubes in it's pews. (For the record, I know of more than a few organizations that "represent" thusly).
See Part 2
"I seriously suspect that the weaker scientific justification came for addition rather than deletion."
That may be indeed be the case, and I am quite prepared to revisit THAT decision as well. I think I pointed out that prior to it's inclusion as a mental disorder, homosexuals were simply clapped into prison for their sexual acts. So, seeing how the status quo ante was outright criminalization, the inclusion may quite possibly have been done as an act of mercy. I'm not sure that a 1930's-40's booby hatch was all that preferable to a contemporary hoosegow, but I reckon some folks were trying to do the best they could with what they had.
"After all, you can't allow "those people" to mingle with decent folk, right?"
Not with children, not from my experiences with their predatory ways when I was a lad. That is simply asking too much for me to trust their word that they are NOT actively harboring leering pederasts.
There was a lot more to the Catholic clerical hierarchy's cover-up of their pedophilia scandals than the simple monetary damages vulnerabilities to the affected dioceses that were placed front and center. More than a few of the bishops who are Princes of the Church and ran their dioceses as they saw fit were themselves queer. In a very real sense, the cover-ups were as much a function of the "Clerical Gay Mafia" protecting itself as it was of the Vatican protecting its' ducats.
That's a bit of "Inside Baseball" that I'm pretty sure someone with your attitude towards people of faith wouldn't usually have the opportunity to hear.
If you're interested in that rather untold, or unpublicized story, the book is "Good-bye Good Men".
"Now for those who fall back on the book of ancient superstition you don't have to worry about changes like that - you stick to what the Lord has told you."
And this is a bad thing?
I note that in what has been a heated and vigorous discussion, you have called into question my sexuality, my morals, intimated that I am a bigot who at the very least uses racist and hoplophobic arguments, and insulted my Faith...twice now.
I realize that I've taken a hard stance and made some rather harsh charges about suspected motives of the Gay Lobby,(but backed these up with some pretty powerful circumstantial evidence, as well as my own personal experiences tangential to the matter), and called for a controversial, but scientifically valid, review of what became a cultural sea-changing decision from days past, and I've managed to do this without the heated personal invective that you can't seem to do without.
Which one of us, to an observer would appear the Perez Hilton, and which one the Carrie Prejean?
"Lastly, you have worked assiduously to prove Markadaffya right. That in and of itself ought to give one pause to ponder."
I told you before that in his own peculiar left-handed and upside down way, he WAS right. Where he may have been wrong was in the matter of degree to which we are willing to suffer,die and kill for our belief systems...and which belief systems we would sacrifice for, but as the punchline to an old joke goes:
once we have established what one is, all that is really left is negotiating over what price and for what act...
OK, it now looks like the next Überpost will be next weekend at the earliest.
Damn, there's a lot of stuff here to wade through, including emails that I've received.
There are also a lot of exposed nerves. I'd like to ask y'all to think a bit more before putting fingers to keyboard. Thank you.
I stand corrected Bilgerman, you only believe that most gay people are morally degenerate. [sound of one hand clapping]
I will also admit that you seem to hold several incongruous positions as to why people are homosexual. Forgive for me not keeping track.
I make no apology for the messiness of scientific knowledge development. Mostly because humans are at the heart of it, one can hardly expect it to be perfect. I imagine that we would agree that the APA at any time is suspect in it's application of the methodology in comparison to group-think and politics. If sociology is a field where stupid is the norm, psych may only be one step above that.
However, I find your apprehension about gays and children all too reminiscent of another common attitude of the 30s and 40s - about minority men and white women. Just as any idiotic statement about blacks could be justified because we had to protect our white women, these days the rallying cry is "for the children" and is all but irrefutable.
You know what? This is going to show a great deal of intellectual dishonesty and laziness here, but I was going to argue Bilgeman. I stepped away for a day or so before I saw his first counterpoint.
Then I went through here and read his responses.
I'm not going to argue. I'm not going to bother. I think he's fucking nuts.
All right, I spent all day out and about and the spouse would probably like it if I spent time with him on a Saturday evening rather than ranting at people on the internet, so substantive reply will have to wait.
In the meantime, Jesus Haploid Christ on a buttered cracker, Bilgeman. You came into this thread complaining about how rudely you were treated at someone else's site, and aside from implying that homosexuals are sick baby-rapers repeatedly, you've insulted MY objectivity, ability to think critically, knowledge of the subject at hand, and now you're up in Juris's face bitching him out for behaving exactly as you have been, which is exactly why people are getting testy with you? Now I don't need my daily irony supplement.
There, see? Isn't that much better?[rollseyes]
Oh, hey, Markadelphia? No more comments about how we all march in lockstep and you get treated to a different set of rules, capische?
You know, truthfully, I could care less what folks believe about being gay. But it becomes sad for the gays THEMSELVES, (the ones that would like to change especially -- or for that matter, anyone with a sexual proclivity they would rather not have). The possibility for change is real, "treatment" for desires, (especially impulse desires), is "proven" with as much scientific proof as can be made about anything involving the human will.
One of the biggest factors in winning ANY battle is the belief that you can succeed. Without that positive belief the battle is truly daunting if not impossible. Homosexuals that have no desire for change may still have certain identity disorders, (an extremely common trait in younger homosexuals -- so much so that research may well eventually show these identity issues came even before their sexual development). These identity issues are also likely the main reason for depression and suicide. This means no amount of waving a wand to call homosexual feelings normal is going to help them. They are in fact being thrown under the bus for the politics behind the gay rights agenda. Yet they are not being helped and they are continuing to commit suicide in numbers that should never be allowed. (Actually, the more suicides the more the gay rights agenda crusades for society to change. So maybe the ends justify the means for some.)
Kevin:
"There are also a lot of exposed nerves. I'd like to ask y'all to think a bit more before putting fingers to keyboard. Thank you."
Can we all agree that this is comment # 100?
Let's see... Markadelphia thinks conservatives are "little different from Al-Qaeda" because of their attitudes about gays.
Affirmative Action has demanded that businesses treat white males as "lesser citizens", denying them equality as a matter of law and public policy for right around 4
Damn...
...right around 4 decades.
And who is it that demanded this government enforced inequality for the last 40 years? Who is it that demands this deliberate refusal to grant equal treatment under the law be continued? Why it's the Democrat Party, including their leaders and senior statesmen.
So, if some in the conservative base are "little different from Al-Qaeda" because they think a given group should face consequences for their behavior, is the core and the leadership of the Democrat Party likewise "little different from Al-Qaeda" because they think a given group should be denied equal treatment under the law based on gender and skin color?
Anonymous:
"But it becomes sad for the gays THEMSELVES, (the ones that would like to change especially -- or for that matter, anyone with a sexual proclivity they would rather not have). The possibility for change is real, "treatment" for desires, (especially impulse desires), is "proven" with as much scientific proof as can be made about anything involving the human will."
Oh, but OF COURSE the Gender Identity Issue is "One-Way to Gay"...everyone KNOWS this!
But they'll jump and try to claim "Science!", (channel Thomas Dolby),to silence the wee little voices that suggest that it might just be a two-way street.
Doesn't jibe with the agenda, y'see.
It's like Islam...once you're in, you're NEVER getting out alive.
Once you pick a monikker, you and I should have an exploration of the Gay lobby's role back in the '80's, (via ACT-UP), in human drug testing and approvalat the FDA, and the apparent rise in approved drugs since being pulled off the market AFTER unwanted side-effects are found.
Yes...Gay people are quite useful politically, if you know where and how to "load and aim" them.
Since Dick Cheney's position re: gays is to the left of Barack Obama's, does that mean Obama is more like Al-Qaeda than Dick Cheney is?
Hmmm...
Okay LabRat:
"you've insulted MY objectivity, ability to think critically, knowledge of the subject at hand, and now you're up in Juris's face bitching him out for behaving exactly as you have been."
I haven't leveled any personal invective at either you or Juris.
If you can't take professional criticism, then maybe you should find another field to work in.
You wanna claim objectivity?
Who said this:
"I've been interested in gay rights for fifteen years..."?
You did. But now you want to pretend that you're an honest broker and impartially weighing all the evidence?
It is to laugh.
Maybe you want to claim clear thinking?
Who said this:
"Perl: Yeah, I’m not as patient as I’m coming off. So far today I’ve mostly been staring at the thread with my teeth clenched and a popped vein. I’ll get around to replying by evening hopefully."?
You did. So, is it a normal reaction for you to clench your teeth and pop your vein when you're thinking clearly?
And you've been patient, huh?
Like a lot of other things, that's a two-way street.
"Knowledge of the subject at hand"?
Then why did we have to rely on Anonymous to relate the nuts n' bolts details of how and when the APA made it's decision? Since you knew that already and all...where was YOUR testimony about it?
Now, you and the rest of the pro-Gay Agenda mafia can go on sending back-channel e-mails trying to censor my viewpoint, and you may even succeed at it.
In fact, all Kevin has to do is ask me to go away, and I won't darken his blog ever again. It's that simple.
But you'd better listen to this:
Just who the hell do you people think you ARE?
You are going to stand there and demand that the entirety of American culture and society change,basically overnight,(and use the power of the State to dictate and enforce that change), to suit what you THINK is in the best interests of your own personal selected group of designated victims?
You're not even a homosexual, LabRat, but you just KNOW what's in their best interest, eh?
And you REALLY think that you can pull this off?
The arrogance is utterly jaw-dropping.
I prophesy that if you keep to this course, you will "lose your ship".
Now go on back to the closed circle of your "pro-homo" echo-chamber and reinforce how correct you all are, and how wrong I am. If you repeat it to each other often enough, maybe you'll ALL believe it some day.
Maybe every day but Election Day...even in California.
Because advocating cultural change, or preservation is also a two-way street...and since your crew apparently has no qualms about going "Perez Hilton" to demonize your opponents,(as you've done here with me), don't whine and snivel when you get return fire in kind.
In fact, all Kevin has to do is ask me to go away, and I won't darken his blog ever again.
And I won't do that. I just reserve the right to disagree with you, and debate why - or not.
KB sez Oh, hey, Markadelphia? No more comments about how we all march in lockstep and you get treated to a different set of rules, capische?
Are you kidding? As much as I disagree with Bilgerman right now (and particularly because he thinks Markadaffya correct in the instance), I know I am in a discussion with an adult who can actually think. While I imagine that M is a pleasant enough person, he does not rise to the level of adult with active capability for intelligent discourse. He won't get that Bilgerman is the smallest minority at TSM - he'll just grab that B said he was right and therefore everything he said (and ever will say) is right.
Blech.
Bilgerman, I opened my commentary on this thread with what certainly should have been seen as a bit of humor, and secondly with a direct challenge to nanny-state advocacy. How odd on a libertarian blog, eh?
I absolutely oppose the use of the state to forcibly "normalize" gay depictions in the media, just as much as I oppose the use of the state to lock away an adult for doing something that does not harm another. And just because alkys and dopers and queers get under YOUR skin is no reason to prove C.S. Lewis so right.
You want to rally under the banner of "for the children", fine. I will be content in my own knowledge that you are merely acting in the finest tradition of Ambrose Bierce.
Juris:
"He won't get that Bilgerman is the smallest minority at TSM - he'll just grab that B said he was right and therefore everything he said (and ever will say) is right."
All part of the "Master Plan", chum.
Remember what happened when Gollum finally got the Ring of Power back?
God, too, will have his little jokes...
All part of the "Master Plan", chum.
And Markdaffya thinks Rove is a sick, twisted genius. You are an evil bastard.
God, too, will have his little jokes...
Quite possibly, but his audience probably won't get the punchline.
[Just had a flash of God as Larry the Cable Guy: "Now that's funny I don't care who you are"]
Because advocating cultural change, or preservation is also a two-way street...and since your crew apparently has no qualms about going "Perez Hilton" to demonize your opponents,(as you've done here with me), don't whine and snivel when you get return fire in kind.
OH MY GOD YOU CAN READ WHAT I WRITE ON THE INTERNET?! THAT'S CHEATING! I'M GOING TO GO TELL THE COOL KIDS ABOUT YOU AND NOBODY WILL EVER TALK TO YOU AGAIN!
Calm down, dude. I'm not trying to "censor" you, I'm a human being, which means I find arguing with belligerent people personally frustrating, in part just because it would be easier emotionally- and the important part, would take a lot less time- to yell back in kind rather than doing what I should, which includes, as you've been hopping up and down all weekend making the point, sourcing more carefully and responding to individual points. If you bothered to track me down on my blog to see what I was doing, then you might have gotten some faint impression that I've been slightly busy, which I usually am on the weekends. Weekends are when things that *can't* be accomplished sitting in front of the computer must be done- including spending some downtime with my better half. Seeing as how I'm not attempting to win the culture war in Kevin Baker's comments section, that does come first.
I'm not a robot. Yes, that means I get annoyed when you get in my face even if I think I'm right and I can demonstrate it. *gasp* It also means I'm less than a hundred percent objective and some of my position is based on opinion, which is based on personal experience! You are the one who's claimed that I'm arguing totally from a Vulcan-like position of Science Says, not me.
What I'm confused about is where you seem so convinced that this means said position is now disposed of. Just as when I acknowledged earlier that science is indeed influenced by politics- that doesn't mean that science is *worthless*, it just means that a process undertaken by human beings will be influenced by human factors, which do include politics- from all directions. Kind of like religion- if it weren't for human beings and politics there wouldn't be so many different flavors of Christianity.
So, if you consider proof that you can annoy me proof that YOU ARE THE WINNAR then I guess you win. Take your "arguing on the internet" trophy and on your merry way.
You are going to stand there and demand that the entirety of American culture and society change,basically overnight,(and use the power of the State to dictate and enforce that change), to suit what you THINK is in the best interests of your own personal selected group of designated victims?
You're not even a homosexual, LabRat, but you just KNOW what's in their best interest, eh?
And this would be why you're successfully annoying me- you keep putting words in my mouth, and you keep stretching my positions into these epic all-or-nothing battles that bear no resemblance to the original. It really doesn't feel like you're arguing with me so much as the Gay Agenda that's in your head, which is frustrating just because it bogs down the argument. Again: this is why I view substantive reply on this thread as something that needs time and me not in a mood where I'd rather just lash back and mock you instead of arguing with you.
I don't demand that, nor do I claim I know what's best for "homosexuals". Way back in the thread, you essentially laid down the gauntlet for how the authors of the original piece- and, like Kevin, I disagree with what they want to do- could have any intentions other than de-sensitizing children to turn them gay. My two central counter points were these: one, that it's likely sexuality isn't shallowly rooted in culture and what kids are "exposed" to in formats like Disney and they couldn't turn the youth of America gay even if they wanted to, and two, that here were the ethical motives I could see for theoretically wanting more models for children who are already going to wind up gay in culture. That's a hugely different thing than wanting to forcibly IMPOSE that- just like I think it would be better for Americans not to smoke cigarettes but regard antismoking laws as a disgrace. If the culture is going to change- and I think it is changing- then it needs to do so on its own, not with people trying to engineer solutions. I can talk about what I'd consider change for the better, but it's beyond my right to enforce it in any way.
Aside from those two points we got onto the DSM changes and whether or not gayness is a mental illness all on its own, which is where sourcing- which again takes time and energy- needs to come in. Seeing as how you are so very interested in an inventory of my time and extra-curricular activities, after I finish previewing and posting this, I intend to go get started on what I plan to make for dinner, and after that there's a podcast, and at some point I might bitch about the REALLY INTENSE WORLD-ENDING ARGUMENT I seem to be involved in with some guy on the internet to friends you may or may not know. I can't see working in getting right-thinking Americans nationwide to ignore you until at least Tuesday, so you can relax about that.
I HOPE I can get back in here Monday and hold up my end of the stick on the parts that require more time than just saying "that's not my position, stop distorting it dammit", and I'll be personally embarassed and chagrined if I don't. If I can't, then so much the worse for "my side". I'll be sure to personally apologize to the next GLBT cabal meeting I go to.
Is all that okay with you, or do you want to hop back up on your cross and motor it on out of here?
I cannot WAIT for the next Vicious Circle.
Juris:
"I absolutely oppose the use of the state to forcibly "normalize" gay depictions in the media, just as much as I oppose the use of the state to lock away an adult for doing something that does not harm another."
I'm afraid that we have crossed some invisible line on our nation's voyage, (and I was looking hard for the stripe painted on the ocean's surface), where there is now very little discernible difference between the media and the state.
Certainly the media seems to be operating under this model. And with the election of the fellow who claims to have been born in Hawaii, who can blame them?
Probably the one thing that keeps people from becoming insurrectionists or mutineers...we'd all sit around befuddling ourselves with heated arguments like this one over which set of bastards to shoot first.
LabRat:
"Is all that okay with you, or do you want to hop back up on your cross and motor it on out of here?"
Awww, gee. That would be swell.
Say, I've got a hammer and three nails around here somewhere, if you're not too busy,would you mind putting me up for the trip?
"You wanna claim objectivity?
Who said this:
"I've been interested in gay rights for fifteen years..."?
You did. But now you want to pretend that you're an honest broker and impartially weighing all the evidence?
It is to laugh."
You belong to a church that holds (and you seem to share the opinion) that homosexuality is a depraved state of mind and that homosexual conduct is a gravely evil act. Looks like you fail at objectivity too.
Anonymous here again.
Just to be clear, it's not just the GENDER Identity that some children/adolescents are dealing with. Many homosexuals, (women especially), report that they never felt they EXISTED until their first same-sex sexual relationship. No one every saw them, entered their world, acknowledged they existed, and loved them for who they are until that first same-sex sexual relationship, (or so they FELT that way).
Society should consider this issue closely, teenage suicide rate is rather dismal even when the homosexual suicide numbers are removed from the mix.
I'm afraid that we have crossed some invisible line on our nation's voyage, (and I was looking hard for the stripe painted on the ocean's surface), where there is now very little discernible difference between the media and the state.
Perhaps in your mind we've reached the place on the old maps labeled "here be dragons". Bilge fumes must be something like LSD. Or should I ask what port did we depart, and where were we ever bound and when did we expect to arrive?
Certainly the media seems to be operating under this model. And with the election of the fellow who claims to have been born in Hawaii, who can blame them?
You are a bit closer here, for now we could talk about the cult of personality and how the media is susceptible to that (or better, facilitates it). Then again, there's not much new about bread and circuses, is there?
Media nervous on new Duke U. rape case
Little Boy Blue Devil
Hey LabRat:
A little "bird-dogging" for you in your research:
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=3640
Yep...same DSM-IV, same APA. Oughtta save you a modicum of time.
Ed:
The victim was only five years old, and an orphan.
God have Mercy!
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