# Acceptance of Homosexuality leads to the Collapse of Civilization? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 7, 2012, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716 "2012-01-07T09:19:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/101 "2012-01-16T15:20:27Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’m just not accepting these arguments. Even if you have a society in which there is complete acceptance of homosexuality, the majority of people are going to be heterosexual by choice. So heterosexuality will never be overwhelmed by homosexuality. The explanation of homophobia lies in people seeing a problem with a homosexual minority. Did you miss the memo about The Homosexual agenda, and how exposure to gay lifestyle being acceptable will turn all kiddies into gays, too? Won’t somebody think of the children? /irony ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/102 "2012-01-16T15:23:30Z")
Homosexual warrior-gods, eh? Descended from Hercules? We can’t all be Spartans, nor should we. I don’t think that way of life is worthy of emulation anywhere outside of Frank Miller comics. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/103 "2012-01-16T15:23:56Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > You seem pretty certain of that. What makes you so certain that the survival of the family is immaterial to the survival of civilization? I still can’t help but think you are _grossly underestimating_ the importance of family. If the family would be so important, then it would be the old family that our ancestors were used to - 20 odd people in a clan-like family, not the modern family. Trying to imagine living in one house with all my uncles and aunts and sisters and father, I can see much more internal problems (spousal and child abuse, murder from anger) than with the modern family and the ability to move away. Simply mandating people to move together into big families again won’t magically transform them into the simpler and happier people of past idyllic times who got along with each other. The problems that make people glad to move away will still exist. ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/104 "2012-01-16T15:25:13Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Did you miss the memo about The Homosexual agenda, and how exposure to gay lifestyle being acceptable will turn all kiddies into gays, too? Won’t somebody think of the children? /irony Gay couples do, when they want to adopt them. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/105 "2012-01-16T15:26:16Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > I don’t think the survival of the family is in jeopardy at all. Family is what holds us all together despite all the sickness and dysfunction and evil. Except that all serious studies (outside those “Family” groups that are anti-real families in support of ideal non-existing Families) show that most abuse is generated in families and not by strangers, whether rape, sexual abuse, physical or psychological violence. ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/106 "2012-01-16T15:27:20Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > If the family would be so important, then it would be the old family that our ancestors were used to - 20 odd people in a clan-like family, not the modern family. > > Trying to imagine living in one house with all my uncles and aunts and sisters and father, I can see much more internal problems (spousal and child abuse, murder from anger) than with the modern family and the ability to move away. > > Simply mandating people to move together into big families again won’t magically transform them into the simpler and happier people of past idyllic times who got along with each other. The problems that make people glad to move away will still exist. Do you have a family? ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/107 "2012-01-16T15:33:27Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > Gay couples do, when they want to adopt them. You know, I would really like to know: did somebody in the Fundie scene that regularly spouts this nonsense go to all the trouble to write some fake Homosexual Agenda (like the fake Protocols of Elders of Zion) - or is it enough to assert that Gay couples want to adopt children for political purposes / to corrupt them to their deviant ways? Because many real-life gays adopt children from patchwork families - one partner was married to a woman first time, then divorced, now marries a man and takes the children into the new marriage, and the partner adopts them to make everyday legal life easier. The other common case is a young lesbian couple wanting to adopt because they like children and want to help those who need a home. Of course, banning adoption doesn’t prevent gays or lesbians from raising kids - it just means they go the roundabout route (gays asking lesbians to carry a child for them, just as hetero couples who can’t conceive sometimes ask a very good friend to be surrogate mother, although officially rent-a-mother is not legal). ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/108 "2012-01-16T15:34:27Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Except that all serious studies (outside those “Family” groups that are anti-real families in support of ideal non-existing Families) show that most abuse is generated in families and not by strangers, whether rape, sexual abuse, physical or psychological violence. So what you’re saying is, Children are better off conceived in test tubes and raised in state orphanages than with their mothers and fathers? Like in _Brave New World?_ ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/109 "2012-01-16T15:34:28Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > Do you have a family? 😕 No, I sprang from the head of my father when it was cleaved with an axe because he got a headache. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/110 "2012-01-16T15:36:10Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > So what you’re saying is, Children are better off conceived in test tubes and raised in state orphanages than with their mothers and fathers? Like in _Brave New World?_ I don’t like discussions where people twist my words. Goodbye. ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2012, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/111 "2012-01-16T15:37:59Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > You know, I would really like to know: did somebody in the Fundie scene that regularly spouts this nonsense go to all the trouble to write some fake Homosexual Agenda (like the fake Protocols of Elders of Zion) - or is it enough to assert that Gay couples want to adopt children for political purposes / to corrupt them to their deviant ways? > > Because many real-life gays adopt children from patchwork families - one partner was married to a woman first time, then divorced, now marries a man and takes the children into the new marriage, and the partner adopts them to make everyday legal life easier. > > The other common case is a young lesbian couple wanting to adopt because they like children and want to help those who need a home. Of course, banning adoption doesn’t prevent gays or lesbians from raising kids - it just means they go the roundabout route (gays asking lesbians to carry a child for them, just as hetero couples who can’t conceive sometimes ask a very good friend to be surrogate mother, although officially rent-a-mother is not legal). I actually don’t have a problem with gay adoption. Not at all. If two men or two women can provide a safe, loving, and viable home for a displaced child, it’s **infinitelty** preferable to what Child Services and the foster-care system will do to them. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/112 "2012-01-17T20:53:02Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > I actually don’t have a problem with gay adoption. Not at all. If two men or two women can provide a safe, loving, and viable home for a displaced child, it’s **infinitelty** preferable to what Child Services and the foster-care system will do to them. This! I disagree with a lot of what you have said, but here, at least, we have common ground. Our morals have, at least, this degree of overlap. The last I’ve heard, all studies show that children of gay parents exhibit no statistical shortcomings in comparison with children of mixed-sex parents. Other considerations (money being one of the biggest) have far more effect on the children’s well-being. ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/113 "2012-01-17T21:46:44Z")
Families come in all shapes & sizes and it’s important to take note of how the tradional nuclear family is no guarantee of anything good. No family configuragtion is infallible. Wouldn’t it be just as awkward for a gay couple to have a kid with heterosexual tendencies than it would for a hetero couple whose kid had gay tendencies? ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/114 "2012-01-17T21:51:13Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > Wouldn’t it be just as awkward for a gay couple to have a kid with heterosexual tendencies than it would for a hetero couple whose kid had gay tendencies? I was unaware that this was awkward. It’s awkward having to deal with sexuality at all sometimes, when the child was previously uninterested in it, and the parent might not know the best way to start a conversation, but there’ no reason it should depend on the teen’s sexuality. ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/115 "2012-01-17T22:59:17Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > I was unaware that this was awkward. It’s awkward having to deal with sexuality at all sometimes, when the child was previously uninterested in it, and the parent might not know the best way to start a conversation, but there’ no reason it should depend on the teen’s sexuality. I’m thinking more about the parent’s sexuality. About homosexual parents with a heterosexual kid, and the potential for awkwardness. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/116 "2012-01-17T23:23:30Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > I’m thinking more about the parent’s sexuality. About homosexual parents with a heterosexual kid, and the potential for awkwardness. Isn’t parenting in general an awkward, worrying, stressful roller-coaster process? But no, I don’t see this particular flavour being a problem. It’s not like the gay parents are going to have to contend with their straight child being beaten up at school for _being_ straight. What are you assuming the gay parents will be unable to deal with? Do you think they’re utterly baffled by the mechanics of heterosexual sex? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/117 "2012-01-17T23:27:31Z")
> [@dorsk188](#): > > ``` > If the latter, any idea where such a wrong idea originated? > > ``` From complete ignorance about subjects like economics, history, sociology, antropology and basically any other form of learnin’? My WAG is that the idea originated from the modern perception of homosexuality being synonymous with weakness, effeminance and general "girly-man"ism. (As opposed to the ancient Greek image of nude jacked-up dudes wrestling each other and punching lions in the face). As such, it is an extension of the conservative blue-collar ethic that real men are rugged and tough, gut instinct and common sense are superior to ivory tower book smarts and the only meaningful work is dirty, dangerous work performed with your hands. So by logical conclusion, the more a society embraced homosexuality as an acceptible lifestyle, the more it embraced a way of life that resulted in a society that was too weak to defend itself and too soft to do the necessary work needed to keep it running properly. > [@Theophane](#): > > Do you have a family? I do. And I would litterally murder every single one of them if I had to live with them for any length of time. And I actually LIKE most of them. But I think we are in agreement that what is more important is that people are better off belonging to small, supportive family-like structures, even if they are not biologically related. ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/118 "2012-01-17T23:32:54Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Isn’t parenting in general an awkward, worrying, stressful roller-coaster process? > > But no, I don’t see this particular flavour being a problem. It’s not like the gay parents are going to have to contend with their straight child being beaten up at school for _being_ straight. What are you assuming the gay parents will be unable to deal with? Do you think they’re utterly baffled by the mechanics of heterosexual sex? Dan Savage thinks vaginas are icky. :rolleyes: In my eyes he’s as bad as Santorum, and I have no use than for Rick Santorum! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/119 "2012-01-17T23:33:54Z")
Heh, just picturing a scene in the life of a particular family: Little Jimmy: I’m thinking about asking Suzie to the dance. [his parents Adam and Steve suffer instant simultaneous head-explosions at the unfathomability of such a concept] ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716/120 "2012-01-17T23:37:13Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Heh, just picturing a scene in the life of a particular family: > Little Jimmy: I’m thinking about asking Suzie to the dance. > [his parents Adam and Steve suffer instant simultaneous head-explosions at the unfathomability of such a concept] You can joke about it, but it’s a very serious concern. It’s the equivalent of Little Jimmy expressing a desire to ask another boy to the dance. What are Mom and Dad supposed to say to that? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceptance-of-homosexuality-leads-to-the-collapse-of-civilization/608716.md?page=7)