Well, if they both had no reaction, then technically they had the same reaction 
Even if you remove the political issues from the argument, there is no reason not to assume that sexual orientation is innate. You’ve used the term “100% genetic”, and now backed off to discuss whether it’s “100% innate”.
But look at it this way: are you straight? If so, when did you choose to be straight? If you didn’t choose your orientation, what factors can you point to which influenced it?
Even if you don’t agree with the weight of evidence- which based on this thread, appears to be strong, if not conclusive- that sexuality is innate, you should accept that this should be the default assumption based on your own experience.
What I think is underlying the issue here is that many conservatives have invested a great deal in a belief system that, among other things, regards homosexuality as a corruptive form of behavior. If a scientific smoking gun were to emerge absolutely confirming that homosexuality is genetic or otherwise entirely innate, i.e., “they’re born that way”, it would imply that gays are a legitimate minority group and gayness is a civil right.
This would in turn officially repudiate the Bible’s admonitions against homosexuality and thus imply that just about any other passage in the Bible is open to repudiation and therefore it’s not a reliable guide for ordering society and therefore “Judeo-Christians” are wrong for maintaining that it is.
So any scientific claims of innateness are relentlessly set upon by those trying maintain a few shreds of doubt, a few cracks of wiggle room within which they can continue to assert their beliefs.
Is this what’s going on with this thread? NojNoj, do you agree that the Bible and Christians are wrong? Are you simply applying due diligence in getting at an accurate scientific explanation for homosexuality even while agreeing that gays are a legitimate minority group entitled to civil rights?
I applaud Noj for persevering despite everyone disagreeing with him for 110% purely political reasons.
Right. Contrary to what the OP might assume about all of us here, I am straight white male and fairly conservative with an academic background in sexual differentiation in general (just the science of how it works biologically,no social agenda). I am completely straight as far as I know and didn’t have any say in the matter any more than I chose to be right-handed over left-handed.
Why would anyone choose be gay? It appears to be difficult enough now let alone in the past. That is so completely obvious to someone like me that I am not sure what is going on in other people’s minds when they think otherwise.
I am not making any claims about the motivations or thought processes of the OP but there are a number of conservative white males who were raised in an environment where being gay is not tolerated yet they are gay or bisexual and have to fight those urges to maintain their place in society. They think that everyone goes through the same conscious choice to ‘fight the temptation’ when it doesn’t exist for most people in the first place.
I admit that I still haven’t figured out the real for this thread however. That is the biggest mystery of all.
Well, just to play devil’s advocate here… just because something isn’t innate doesn’t mean it has to be a choice. People can develop phobias or other psychotic behaviors in response to some trauma. Those behaviors are neither innate nor chosen. And they can be treated.
I’m interested in how science gets twisted for political purposes and seeking more input on that issue. I don’t think I’ve said anything that could remotely be interpreted as not believing gays are entitled to full civil rights and full respect, so that’s not part of this at all. (And I’m not a Christian, so don’t really care what the bible has to say. Even if I did, since we don’t stone adulterers or smash the heads of our enemy’s children anymore, not sure why people care what bible has to say about gays.)
And the twisting of science seems so prevalent, I’m surprised others can’t see it. Look at what happened 7 or 8 years ago with Dean Hamer. If this was then, the same posters would be saying “Renowned scientist Dean Hamer of the prestigious National Institutes of Health has said he’s 99.5% sure it’s genetic. Case closed.”
I think this does get to semantic issue of what “choice” is. And it’s a silly argument for others to say no one would choose homosexuality since it has such negative consequences in society. So does “choosing” a lot of things…
No, we didn’t mean negative consequences for society. That isn’t the issue and who cares what someone does in their bedroom? Straight people do some freaky stuff too and the marriage stats aren’t that good. They are negative consequences for the person engaging in a gay lifestyle very directly like shunning from loved ones.
“Choosing” in your terms seems to be equated with things like excessive gambling, drug abuse, or other things that are destructive but still have mass appeal. That is a false analogy because it doesn’t work that way for truly straight people. It is like the choice of being offered $100 cash or slamming your head into a wall. There is a choice there but who would take it unless there other reasons to?
You lost me in your arguments unless you are gay or bisexual yourself and just don’t know it much like a colorblind person can never completely relate to other people’s perceptions. There was no choice for me involved even as a toddler. I knew instinctively that the female body was a treasure chest and that males are useless at best and always repulsive sexually. That is the way it works for true straight males.
Do you think you could make yourself gay if you tried hard enough? I mean the whole package. $1 million dollars to date gay men exclusively and eventually marry with shared property all the way into late adulthood with no heterosexual relations at all. Would you do it?
Then the better option for this thread would have been to ask or to assert that science “gets twisted” with several disparate examples rather than going off on a poorly formulated assertion regarding homosexuality.
I’m not sure whether you would have better luck, since the only example of that that you have thus far provided was nothing more than some yelling from the sidelines that had no affect on actual science, but at least we would have been discussing the topic you now claim was your intent from the beginning of this thread.
You really have no idea how this message board works, do you? This board has been around for quite a few years. Do a search on “Hamer” and notice how he is not slavishly applauded in any thread. Even the earliest references to him vary between “flawed study” and “crackpot.” Telling us how we would react to a specific situation when we have the actual evidence that we behaved differently is a good way to have your own reputation consigned to the “nutcase” bin on this board.
Back off. Slow down. Take a deep breath. Then take the time to figure out what you want to really discuss and then do sufficient research to come to the discussion armed with some facts and logic.
I am actually quite sure that science does get twisted in the political arena. However, arguing against the notion that homosexuality is “100% genetic” and then having to back off to arguing that it is not “100% innate” and then having to back away from that assertion is probably not the best place to try to make that separate argument.
I’m replying before reading any replies.
It’s obviously not the case that sexual preference is entirely genetic. It’s almost certainly not the case that it’s entirely biological, although that’s at least sort of vaguely plausible. From a perspective of equal rights, it’s irrelevant what the ‘cause’ is. From a perspective of biology, it’s almost certain that the ‘cause’ is really complicated.
The “gay gene” argument, which people still throw around as though it were somehow relevant, may actually be useful in terms of getting support for gay rights, I guess, but it’s not a defensible biological argument. I’d be happier if everyone dropped it.
I have never run into any such claim before. Is there any evidence at all that this is true? I’m not averse to such information, but I have never run into any reason to believe that gay folks are equally prevalent in every society.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
I’m not even sure if ‘congenital’ is exactly the right term - I mean sexuality appears to be nearly-immutable once established, but are we even sure it’s completely established at birth (as opposed to being still somewhat malleable (somehow) in early years.
[/QUOTE]
This is a good point. There’s no real evidence that sexual orientation is set at birth, rather than at some point in childhood. Like you say, it’s hard to change later, but there’s no reason to believe that every screaming baby that is born already has a sexual orientation.
[QUOTE=NojNoj]
Besides being wrong, this theory also led to the famous tragedy of David Reimer (David Reimer - Wikipedia)
[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes: David Reimer’s life and what was done to him had nothing to do with sexual orientation. He was forcibly assigned a gender that wasn’t his own; that doesn’t relate to sexual orientation.
[QUOTE=NojNoj]
Camille Paglia has said she doesn’t know any gay person for whom she didn’t have a sense that family dynamics played a role in their sexual orientation.
[/QUOTE]
(ouch I think I sprained my eyes from rolling them so hard!)
[QUOTE=NojNoj]
Fine, then don’t waste time quoting “researchers in the field” who hypothesize about “prenatal hormone environment changes.” The evidence for that appears pretty thin and speculative, and the reason for increased likelihood of homosexuality the farther down in the birth order could just as easily be due to family dynamics.
[/QUOTE]
Wrong-o. This is one of the most robust findings in the study of sexual orientation, and it’s been clearly shown that it doesn’t relate to family dynamics, in multiple studies. Boys with older step- or adoptive brothers don’t have any increased likelihood of being gay; boys born to women who have previously given birth to boys are more likely to be gay, even if their biological brothers are not part of their family.
[QUOTE=NojNoj]
I’m a scientist.
[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes: Aren’t we all. Too bad you know so little about the science you’re arguing.
I know it’s genetic in my case. I very clearly remember watching an episode of Red Skelton in 1962. I was 8 years old, and knew absolutely nothing about sex (I was ten before I found out what “fuck” meant). But Jayne Mansfield was the guest star, and she sang a song while wearing a very tight dress, and I got a feeling in my nether regions that I had never experienced before.
Which gene made that happen?
Are you seriously asserting that if I can’t tell you, it’s not genetic? I guess my hair color isn’t genetic, because I don’t know which gene causes that, either.
I’m asserting that either you know something about genetics that nobody else does or (more likely) you made a mistake we’ve been discussing throughout the entire thread. You said it’s genetic when you meant it was innate, and they’re not the same thing.
I’m a little confused, and the thread is getting into TL;DR territory. I tried, but didn’t find any answers. I thought gay people were mostly born that way, and were unable to choose who they’re attracted to. If it’s not genes, then how is sexuality determined? In the nature/nurture way of framing, if it isn’t nature, is it nurture? And if it’s nature, what is there if not genes?
(as must be evident, I speak from a position of ignorance here, not for/against the debate topic)
Oh. I guess I should read the thread.
The answer was actually provided on the first page, so you should not have to read very much.
However, to recap:
First, we do not yet know how sexual orientation develops. Recognizing that orientation is not a choice only gets us so far, but does not solve the puzzle.
Among several different possible explanations:
genetics;
placental hormones;
other pre-natal nutrients;
environmental triggers that could be either physical or psychological;
some really messy combination of some or all of the above.
The whole point of the original opposition to the OP was that there are very few people who actually hold that it is purely genetics. Genetics may be involved, but it also might be a matter of the physical conditions in which a fetus develops that are not directly tied to the DNA of the fetus. A lot happens between insemination and birth and a lot more happens following birth. At this point we have a number of tantalizing clues in the way that certain known phenomena correlate with later sexual orientation, but correlation is not causation and we have not yet discovered the actual chain of events, (or reactions of chemicals), that lead to specific outcomes.
My personal feeling is that most of us start out, say, 80% heterosexual and 20% homosexual, and our eventual choices are then encoded by nurture, society, and environment.
For instance, consider how big boobs were viewed so favorably in the 1940s-mid 1960s (we even elected one! rim shot). The switch to viewing slimness as the ultimate in “sexy” happened pretty fast, as it had switched to boobiness equally quickly after the flapper era (maybe because being buxom equated to being fed and healthy, something important during the Great Depression?). Anyway, it seems to me that what is sexually attractive is largely encoded by society rather than imprinted by genetics: look at those African tribes where impaling both cheeks with a sharpened gazelle bone, or wearing a dead snake in your belly button, is the ultimate in “sexy.”
Insofar as what we call sexual “orientation,” I think there’s no real difference between finding the same sex sexy and finding, say, redheads sexy. It’s what we learn, from both society and experience. The default setting is to prefer to fuck people of the opposite sex and certain bodily characteristics (like a large hips-to-waist ratio in women), but that’s just the initial setting, and can be monkeyed with to a huge extent.
So don’t throw rocks at me, but I think that if we become homosexual, we are just indulging that 20% of our sexual psyche that is attracted to the same sex, and if the experiences gained thereby are correlated with positive emotions, then we will seek them out more and more. In other words, I reject the “genetics” theory, because it is my impression that most human sexual behavior is learned.