I find it both funny and ironic that people want to now move away from natural/unnatural, normal/abnormal as metrics. That has been the foundation of the argument for acceptance of homosexuality.
This focuses on a crucial point. As I’ve said, it’s easy to see how homosexuality is easily classified as natural. Especially when referring to a homosexual act. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to the “naturalness” of long-term exclusively homosexual relationships.
I would argue that long-term exclusive relationships haven’t been established as natural, regardless if they’re homosexual or heterosexual.
It is neither funny nor ironic. If people are going to argue their prejudices based on a claim that something is unnatural, the fact that it is not unnatural will be the reply. The argument that homosexuality is unnatural is, indeed, the oldest and most longstanding argument against it.
When people attacking homosexuality decide that they have lost the natural/unnatural debate and decide to take a different path in order to enforce their prejudices, then those who defend gay people will adjust their arguments accordingly.
No it hasn’t.
And whats so natural about long-term exclusively heterosexual relationships?
I’m more of a “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” guy, actually.
We have many laws based soley on what is considered normal behavior.
All of them. You’ve posted words that are routinely worked both ways in sexual behavior.
Behavior: the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially toward others.
Penmanship is a skill. Writing a threatening letter is a behavior.
nm - duplicate post
No we don’t.
What are you trying to say here? “Routinely worked both ways”? What the hell does that mean?
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Penmanship is what you do with a pen, how you write. But sure, let’s call it “writing a letter” instead. Do we use words like “normal” or “natural” as our benchmarks for writing a letter?
and we’re done.
That’s hot.
Indeed we are. The closest you can come to provided support for your ridiculous assertions is a semirelevant Google Define result. Your argument fails even to get started.
Magiver might be talking about antiquated laws that happen to still be on the books in many places. A dozen states still have (unconstitutional) anti-sodomy laws, plus there’s no doubt a bunch of blue laws hanging around.
He might be–but even if he is, the rationale for them was not, to the best of my understanding, that they got rid of unusual behavior. If that were the explanation, there’d equally be laws against people learning to juggle chainsaws, against people writing novels without the letter “e”, against people painting their houses in stripes. The rationale for the laws was that the behavior was not merely unusual or unnatural, but a “crime against nature,” an active violation of what God intended. He’s simply wrong.
Sex is definitely a skill, one that many would be well served to master. 
I’ll get this out of the way first, since I’m going to be saying “natural” and “unnatural” a lot throughout the upcoming wall of text.
I disagree. I think you’re not considering that the word “natural” can have multiple meanings, and hence multiple antonyms, depending on the context. “Deep” is an antonym of “shallow”, despite the fact that “steep” claims the same title. The way I see it, “unnatural” is an umbrella term meaning “not natural” (:eek:) that can be further narrowed down, depending on how the word “natural” is being used, to “artificial”, “supernatural”, etc. Sometimes we use “natural” to mean “not artificial”, but I addressed that when I said that we can either use a definition of natural that assumes humans are a part of nature, or one that doesn’t, but we can’t say some human actions are natural and some aren’t. Your tool example isn’t great because it’s easy to resolve any confusion there: making tools is natural human behaviour; the products of that behaviour are artificial. But what about something like homosexuality, where there is no product, just behaviour?
I’m not insisting on any particular definition; I’ve clearly suggested two. But in this context, most people seem to switch between both, arbitrarily deciding some things are natural and some are unnatural. I’d like people to be clear about how they’re using the word “natural” and to mentally put it to the test to determine whether their statements really fit a given defintion of “natural”, or if they’re just feeling their way through using Schroedinger’s Definition.
Because context made it clear they were using one of the definitions of “natural” I’ve explicitly accepted: “not artificial”.
If someone believes that homosexuality is against God’s order such that no non-human animals would ever do such a thing, perhaps examples of animal “homosexuality” (the individuals largely appear bisexual, right?) would help convince them. But wouldn’t it be better to focus on the congenital nature of homosexuality in humans? It seems like it to me, but I’m quite ignorant of homophobes’ ignorance, so I don’t know. I’ve heard people say that realizing being gay is not a “lifestyle choice” has changed their attitudes, but never ethology.
That’s a misrepresentation. I don’t disagree with the majority just to be interesting; I disagree because, well, I disagree. And I didn’t state my disagreement just to be interesting; I did so because (among other reasons) it makes the debate more interesting. Let’s not pretend we’re not here for our own amusement. And I think after the first requests for clarification I made it pretty clear that I was saying it’s meaningless to call homosexuality either natural or unnatural.
What is it about playing World of Warcraft, legislating against/in defence of gay people, and eating Moon Pies that’s unnatural? Playing games, making rules and eating are all natural for humans, if anything is. I think the main difference between your “natural” list and your “unnatural” list is the latter was a lot more specific and the limitation is often not human desire but the potential to actually engage in those activities. Having fun playing World of Warcraft may be more universal than many activities you consider natural, but many people have either not had the chance to play it, or have effectively had it crowded out by other possibilities - I’ve never played it myself, but almost certainly would have done if I didn’t have thousands of other games to pick from. Is reading scripture more natural than reading War and Peace?
That’s actually a good point I hadn’t really considered (although Miller also said something similar). But I still think we can do better on this board than “it’s natural, and here’s the proof, the end”, which seems to me to be conscious simplification for the sake of making it more convenient to argue with fools. And I still think pointing out that homosexuality exists and existed in all human cultures would be a better way to demonstrate that culture is not the cause of homosexuality.
I’m not sure how you can think that, considering that the part of the post you just quoted is explicitly describing multiple ways the word “natural” can be used.
It’s exactly the same. Homosexuality is completely natural. Gay bars, cock-rings, and Grindr are artificial tools we invented to facilitate the natural behavior.
Which people, specifically, in this thread, are doing this? Because I don’t think it’s a thing that’s actually happening here - at least, not on the pro-gay rights side. I agree that it’s a common feature of homophobic arguments to throw around the words “natural” and “unnatural” with little thought as to whether it makes sense in the circumstances, but you’ve made a point of specifically attacking the pro-gay side of the argument for doing this.
I’m not familiar with the term “Schroedinger’s Defintion.” Is this mean to be an oblique reference to “Schroedinger’s Cat?” Because that doesn’t really make any sense in this context.
You seem to think we can only do one thing at a time. It is possible to make more than one argument for gay rights at the same time, and making one argument does nothing to disparage any of the other potential arguments in favor of gay rights. Now, you may (or may not) have noticed that this thread was created for the specific purpose of examining one specific argument against gay rights, which explains why, in this thread, other arguments in favor of gay rights are in relative short supply. But just because those arguments aren’t being made in this thread, does not mean they are not being made at all, or that the “natural/unnatural” argument has any particular pride of place in the pro-gay argument.
He just said what the difference is, explicitly: “any behavior engaged in universally can be considered natural, whereas behavior existing in some cultures but not others can be considered unnatural.” Everybody eats: not everybody eats Moon Pies. Everybody is interested in social rules: not everybody things there should be rules regarding homosexuality. Everybody engages in play, not everybody play World of Warcraft.
Honestly, this conversation is going to go a lot smoother if you start actually reading posts before you reply to them.
Again, this was a thread created to specifically discuss one aspect of the debate about homosexuality. If you want to discuss the other aspect of the debate about homosexuality, start a new fucking thread, already.
Can you give an example of such a law?
Well, I assume Jude Law was created in the quote normal unquote manner.