Let’s leave the word “homosexual” out of the debate for a moment, Huerta. Di you concede that an individual has no ability to choose or change which gender he/she is sexually attracted to?
Sorry if you misunderstood me.
The joke (and it was a joke, albeit a childish one) about your being a moron, law student, or English major was an aside. Totally unrelated to the topic. It was not intended as an ad hominem argument (or any type of argument related to the OP) but simply an admittedly juvenile dig at your tremendously flawed logic.
However, post #56 is definitely on topic.
Btw, I never claimed to be tolerant, never invoked numerology.
Actually, I do apologize (and I’m being serious here) for insulting you. My manners were indeed tacky.
My thinking, however, is perfectly clear. I’m not the one citing dictionaries and making up straw man arguments.
This is not a difference of opinion. Your reasoning is faulty.
Sexual preference/orientation can indeed be measured. The behavior-based definition of homosexuality fails for that reason.
Appeals to law are totally irrelevant. There is no mechanism by which passage of law could affect the question of whether homosexuality is a choice.
Dictionary definitions are also irrelevant. There is no mechanism which would allow editors of dictionaries to affect this issue.
As I explained above, positing a dichotomy between free choice and immutable nature is a false dilemma.
Back on track (and thanks, btw). I re-read the OP (which I originally, many posts ago, actually answered on point, unlike my recent linguistic digressions). You mis-understood my use of cites (which were, suffice to say, never based on the premise that anything biological could be proven by a dictionary or a law – even my 88 IQ doesn’t work that way; the idea was rather that because law sanctions behavior, not essence, we had to work with behavioral defintions, not because they’re “true” but because law can’t deal with “essence” --but trust me, I realize that’s a philosophical inquiry not worth the candle and not germane to the OP).
Because it gets us back to the OP, I’ll revisit or re-cast my earlier answer:
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Most simply put: no, not that clearly.
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More qualified answer: I might have to distinguish between “choose” and “change.” Even the APA guidelines (I’m hardly treating them as gospel authority) seem to have a somewhat dichotomous view that contemplates formation of sex preference attraction being subject to . . . subjective, non-pre-existing, not-totally-innate factors. I hesitate to characterize these factors as “choice” per se because that flips people out. “Who would choose life as an outcast?!?!” My view is that a sexual identity is partially shaped over time, by an aggregate of subjective factors, some of which the actor chooses in the customary sense, some of which are imposed on him. It could be that the composite sexual preference identity at which one arrives is unexpected (potentially unwelcome), to him or outsiders, vis a vis any one of the individual choices or influences that led to that preference. We all seem to agree that it’s not a simple on-off switch or binary moment of choice. But yeah, this gibes with my experience that events in my life have shaped my preference, and that different events could have shaped a different preference; anecdotally, I can’t rule out similar paths for the homosexuals I’ve known. Is this “choice?” I don’t know; I’ve had forks in the road where I did or didn’t pursue various sub-forms of romantic curiosity, and I can see those forks forking other ways if I’d decided differently. Someone said my current mild Latina obsession (which I definitely chose to cultivate, and in a fairly base, lascivious way at that) wasn’t comparable to same-sex attraction. But I’d respond physiologically to a lissome Latina quite perceptibly on that arouse-o-meter. So I’m not sure if we agree on which aspects of preference can be shaped, which can’t. I suspect many/most can evolve.
The APA takes a starkly different approach to “change” vs. “choice” (they call choice ‘environmental factors,’ but the point it, they agree “preference” is not present ab initio). They say a preference, once formed, can’t change, ever. That seems suspiciously doctrinaire, but I suspect it is true that there is a cementing point at which preferences, fetishes, what have you become less-mutable. I don’t know if they become totally immutable. Is there a theory for why “gender” preference would be more (or less) immutable than “Latina preference” or “pain preference?”
- Are there any other “preferences” that you think are less/more “learnable” and less/more “mutable?” I noted with some shock, but because I was trying to avoid being inflammatory, intentionally did not even touch, Sample reference to pedophilia. You’re not supposed to even mention pedophilia or other “bad” preferences in the same breath as homosexuality, and I’m not going to do much more than say that what follows is not a crude syllogism to prove “homo=pedophile=evil.” Believe it or don’t.
a. Are pedophile, or bestiality, preferences/attractions “more learned” or “more innate” than homosexual attraction preferences, in your estimation? Are they more or less “changeable?”
I ask because I agree that once someone has arrived at a given state of preference/fetish/call it what you will, his reaction in that moment is visceral and probably quantifiable. I just don’t know if this ultimately has much to tell us about the origin or first cause of such undeniable attractive reaction, or whether (and when) it can properly be constrained/dis-favored by society.
b. Assuming an attractive urge can be shown to be, if not wholly innate, largely unchangeable in the short, when are societal dis-preferences or granting of disparate levels of validity to such urge sensible/fair?
c. Much of the argument over whether particular behavior is "chosen" is based on the unspoken assumption that behavior or impulses over which the actor has no current control should not ever be punished or dis-favored. But when is that assumption true, and when not? I don't have to inflame things by getting to, say, bestiality (an activity as to which most people across the spectrum would say, "I may fully believe that you're powerless to stop yourself from wanting to do that by this point, but tough luck, we're just not going to put up with it, and it sucks to be you."). I just suspect that ultimately society will in some cases say (and has to be permitted the latitude to say): Regardless of how much choice you had in wanting to do X, you can't do X. The debate then reduces not to the source of the actor's desires to do X, but to whether X is awful, or kind of bad, or not that bad at all, in the eyes of the actor's fellow citizens.Have you ever been attracted to men?
A preference for a “type” is not anywhere in the same ballpark as basic orientation.
Environmental factors are still not chosen, even if they do contribute to the formation of sexual orientation for some.
There is good evidence that for at least some individuals, a homosexual orientation is genetic.
They say that for good reason…because that’s what all the empirical evidence shows.
Not at all. Science does not strangle itself with doctrine and it does not make pronouncements that can’t be confirmed with evidence. Science does not have a preconceived agenda. You’re thinking of religion.
Fetishism (defined as sexual arousal from an object or part of the body) and orientation are two separate phenomena. Fetishism is actually not well understood but generally it is thought that it is caused by an association of sexual arousal and the object or activity in question at an early age.
A preference for a “type” is probably caused by some other mild form of conditioning but it is not related to sexual orientation.
Oh…and no, neither fetishes nor physical type “preferences” are chosen. So what?
Pedophilia, along with some other paraphilias like zoophilia or necrophilia is a sexual pathology caused by early childhood trauma. It’s not an innate orienation, but it’s generally not mutable either. Pedophiles will always be pedophiles. Their brain chemistry was permanently changed by trauma.
I’m glad you recognize there is no relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia, but to put it more broadly, there is no relationship between sexual orientation and sexual paraphilia. They are different phenomena.
When acting on the urge will hurt somebody else or infringe on another person’s rights or cause some sort of demonstrable harm to society.
The question is only whether behavior will hurt anybody else. If the government cannot show that a particular human relationship or behavior does harm to society then it cannot deprive those individuals of their civil rights. There are a lot of bent arrows out there with bizarre fetishes that most of us might find distirbing or icky or gross (scat fetishes, crush fetishes, infantalism, etc.) but the COTUS does not allow state governments to say that piss freaks can’t get married to each other or raise children or deprive them of any rights at all.
The question of whether sexual orientation is chosen (and I think you know that it isn’t) is really not germane to whether rights can be taken away because of that orientation.
There are a lot of bent arrows out there with bizarre fetishes that most of us might find distirbing or icky or gross (scat fetishes, crush fetishes, infantalism, etc.) but the COTUS does not allow state governments to say that piss freaks can’t get married to each other or raise children or deprive them of any rights at all.
The question of whether sexual orientation is chosen (and I think you know that it isn’t) is really not germane to whether rights can be taken away because of that orientation.
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I disagree with your first statement. I think it highly unlikely that the Constitution we currently have clearly forbids a state in all circumstances from taking action against, or depriving a person of some desideratum, based on that person’s sexual preference/activity, or even that the state can only take such action if it shows a “compelling need” (this is the constitutional principle closest to your reference to “harm to society” – which I hope you recognize by itself opens the door to at least some regulation). Neither has any court ever adopted your broad reading of the inviolability of all conduct arising out of or related to non-life-threatening sexual conduct/preference. But I am not going argue constitutional points further because it has become clear that for you the Constitution is a talisman or shorthand for what rights a decent society ought to (in your view) guarantee, whereas my understanding of legal process is substantially more mundane and history-based, and doesn’t argue for the existence of a new constitutional right by virtue of the pre-existence of that right. Your conviction that the Constitution ought to say something won’t, in itself, cause any court or army to enforce that right, whereupon you’ll be much disappointed.
I don’t follow, and won’t debate, a lot of your distinctions between “paraphilias” and “orientations,” and I have no idea what proof if any exists for sorting particular behaviors into particular labeled shoeboxes, except to say that some of your ultimate arguments seem to depend pretty heavily on the labels staying affixed to those shoeboxes. I strongly suspect that your labels and assurances as to certain sexual attractions being “wholly genetic” and others being based on “mild conditioning” are, at best, rather, er, simplified versions of any definite empirically-proven data that may exist to back them up. It’s of a piece with your touching faith in “science” (I use the term loosely in connection with psychology) as never being influenced by politics, and moving steadily toward infallible Truth. Except for all those decades, until the homosexual lobbyists begain bombarding them, when the very same APA and AMA were basically delivering the verdict homo=sicko.
Your last admission is interesting. You agree that the choice issue is a bit of a red herring – and it is. I believe that essentially no one’s sexual persona and preferences, including their same-sex preference, can be definitively stated to be inborn or ultimately immutable. You disagree. But we both agree that’s not the issue. We’re back to the same old fundamental argument: What rights (and whose) is society willing to expend its effort recognizing and enforcing?
It’s never recognized and enforced a right to “gay marriage.” Sorry, that’s historical fact. It may one day, but not till you do more than repeating “deprivation of my existing rights” as a mantra – first you have to persuade someone why they should grant and enforce those particular rights, which don’t currently exist in any way that matters. Good luck.
It recognizes a fundamental right for inviduals to marry who they choose, and any attempt to regulate what sort of genitalia a chosen partner must have is a longstanding violation of equal protection.
It is a violation so “longstanding” that not a single court has ever recognized it. Seriously, are they really ALL that (1) blind (2) stupid (3) corrupt?
You sound really, really arrogant when you state this so simplistically. The “right to marry” (if any) simply cannot be, in any legal sense, anywhere near as clear and absolute as you characterize it, or some consensus as to such right would have coalesced among a group greater than you and your friends. The “longstanding violation” is not yet shown to be a violation in any way that the legal profession can give cognizance to.
Here’s your problem: You desperately want a class of persons (judges) to validate (create) what you think is an absolute and clear and self-evident “right.” You thereupon want this “right” to be recognized as even more absolute, irreversible, immutable, and never-to-be-questioned-again, and would most certainly point to the judges’ endorsement/invention of the “right” as apodictic proof that it was beyond question.
Yet this same class of arbiter persons, who has long had before it all the evidence and texts upon which you base your assertion of a clear and absolute right, has not only failed to find such a right beyond question, but has on multiple occasiton denied the existence of this and allied “rights.” That’s a pretty big blind spot.
If they had a blind spot big enough to allow them to miss such an inarguable right for 140 years . . . why should we be confident that when they do finally reach the nirvana of legal understanding that you’ve long enjoyed, and recognize the “right,” that anybody should or will treat this holding as the Truth From On High? Won’t they just think “Diogenes just got through telling me they screwed the pooch for 140 years, and I believe him; this latest holding is almost certainly just more random drunken buffoonery, and doesn’t add a bit of incremental proof to the case for a ‘gay marriage’ right?”
Or should a “pro gay marriage” S.C. holding be regarded as having huge incremental evidentiary value, at the same time prior “anti sodomy” S.C. holdings are regarded as having no evidentiary value, on the grounds that the former represents the “true constitutional principle” and the latter is “definitely wrong and unconstitutional?”
Then why do we need judges or a SC, and what incremental proof do they add to your case? If it’s that obvious which principles are “truly constitutional” and which are clearly unconstitutional, why do you place so much reliance and hope on Supreme Court victories, real and hypothetical, in your favor?
Isn’t a Supreme Court verdict reaching the “correct and obvious constitutional result” redundant in view of your assurance that the result was always correct and obvious? Isn’t a verdict reaching the “clearly unconstitutional result” also pointless, because you could have told us it was full of B.S. before they started?
Hey, let’s skip the S.C. and go straight to the Constitution – its guarantees are unambiguous, right. Wait, you say they’re more than a little hard to apply to each and every case? That’s okay, we can skip the text too, and go to the Platonic ideal of what the Constitution ought to mean or meant to mean – Diogenes’s personal opinions.
And we’re back to arguing simple policy, now that we’ve neutralized the big guns of “My arguments are so much better, they’re, like, way CONSTITUTIONAL and BY DEFINITION you can never prevail because you’re like wicked UNCONSTITUTIONAL”
You see the traps in relying on the S.C. as your infallible savior while denigrating its performance at every phase of history up through now?
The legal argument is off topic in this thread. This is only supposed to about whether orientation can be chosen.