And what an excellent opportunity for a Word From the Master
Stop, you’re turning me on.
Just kidding. Whether or not I would ever make the attempt (let alone succeed at it) is abso-fuckin-lutely irrelevant. Whether any or all of Hamish’s friends offed themselves in their own attempts is irrelevant. If throughout history, fifty million people had tried and failed to change their orientations, this would also have zero relevance. This particular guy who is writing the blog is hinting that he wants to try, and even though empirical evidence suggests the odds are hugely against him, I’d like to see him succeed simply because I respect what human determination can do. Heck, I’d like to see Christopher Reeve walk again, too.
Heck, is there a real-world chance a ten year-old could write a symphony? The odds are indeed long, as evidenced by the shortage of Mozarts, but we did have one. Maybe the blogger can succeed at his quest.
So you admit the odds aren’t zero? Well, heck, that’s good enough for me. Go, blogger, go!
Cecil concluded that SHC was nonsense, and I take his word for it. On matter of human will, though, I’m not inclined to speak in absolutes.
By the way, yours is a pretty ridiculous ploy. Did you think I was some kind of homophobe who would be grossed out by the idea of getting cuddly with Brawny? Ah, you silly silly goof. If the blogger was straight and wanted to make himself gay, I’d still cheer him on, just to be against all the people who’d say it was impossible.
Come here and get your kiss you irrepressible cheerleading boy! Stop struggling, it only makes me want you more!
While Mozart was near the pinnacle of human genius and potential, and the epitome of Classical European Civilization; I fail to see how his achievements are comparable to one man’s quest to like vaginas.
Sexuality is not a “pattern of behavior,” it is a core, unchangeable trait like gender or eye color.
Their only similarity is how incredibly unlikely each is. Mozart pulled it off, why can’t the blogger?
I’ve already addressed my incorrect use of the word “behaviour”, and I see no reason to equate sexuality with something anatomically permanent as gender or eye colour, or at least not until a lot more research into brain chemistry and structure is completed.
Heck, I’ll stipulate the odds of the blogger succeeding are no more than one in fifty billion, but as long as it costs me nothing to cheer him on, why shouldn’t I?
Go, Bloggy! Chase them wimmin!
You’ll have to buy me dinner first. And no damn McDonald’s, either.
I guess for the same reason you shouldn’t cheer on an eighteen-year-old girl who’s trying to weigh ninety pounds.
Such girls do exist, though. Some are gymnasts and some are midgets. If you were suggesting girls in the self-destructive grip of anorexia, though, I don’t quite see the analogy between them and the blogger, since what the blogger is attempting won’t systematically destroy his physical health.
It might destroy his psychological health, but I’m hoping it won’t. Call me an optimist.
It will. Ask the APA or any REPUTABLE authority – what this poor kid is doing is tragic and self-loathing, self-destructive and will come to no good end. He needs psychological treatment to help come to terms with who he is, and the religious leaders who push this shit need to be shot.
Ugh, that blog makes me feel really sad. I don’t know, just a kind of heaviness or something. Some book, and moreso, most probably, the people on TV and in magazines, etc. have convinced this guy that he’s not himself. Damn. What did God do for him that justifies this in response? (Don’t answer that). I think I’ll go find some squirrels to watch or something.
You know, someone, somewhere, must have come up with the idea that homosexuality was wrong, completely independent of anyone else. That belief has survived for all time. Isn’t it possible that this guy came to that conclusion completely independent of anyone else? Or do you really think that the vast majority of people in the world are being gulled into believing that it’s wrong because the Pope says so? If so, you’re not giving people any credit for even the teensiest bit of intelligence.
I’ve always wondered what the answer to that question is. I guess I’ll find out now. For my part, what you do in your bedroom is your own business, who you love is your own business, and you have my support for equality for those reasons, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have always found homosexuality just a bit oogy, and that certainly didn’t come from anyone else, least of all the “Religious Right”.
I don’t know, Airman. You think the kid would have independently concluded that he himself was an abomination, unfit to serve the Lord because of the gender of the people to whom he is naturally attracted? I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to assume that somebody else has had a hand in sculpting this guy into the self-loathing wretch that he is. I mean, would you feel oogy about yourself if you were gay?
Well, I don’t know. I was really just throwing that out for discussion, because I refuse to believe that so many people become anti-homosexual simply because someone tells them that it’s bad. Take murder for example. Nobody needed to tell you that killing somone was bad, right? You just knew. Why is there such a perceived contrast in the case of homosexuality? That shows such a limited capacity for thinking that it simply doesn’t make sense.
In other words, is there something other than learned behaviors that makes people think that homosexuality is bad? If not, I’m afraid that I’m about to lose serious faith in humanity.
I disagree that people “naturally” know that murder is bad. If that were the case, why would it need to be included in (for example) the Ten Commandments? The fact that it needs to be spelled out implies that respect for human life needs to be taught, and is not in any way ingrained in the human psyche. I mean, there’s no commandment against poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick, because that pretty much goes without saying. Not poking each other in the eye seems to be much less intuitive.
How are we defining ‘oogy’? Like, personally distasteful? That I can see. I find mushrooms oogy, too, and nobody made me develop that belief.
However, if I loved mushrooms, and felt intense self-loathing as a result of that… while at the same time much of the culture around me was telling me in myriad ways subtle and gross that mycophagy is disgusting and wrong… it would be a bit of a strain to say I came to hate myself based on some kind of innate distaste for something I loved.
1: I think a few thousand years of Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition hardly qualiifes as “all time”, expecially given the high likelihood that a lot of the priestly heavy lifting over the centuries in the western church has been done by (mostly) celibate gays. The fear and hatred of homosexuals in modernity is quite narrowly focused within this JCI range. The majority of other cultures and belief systems on earth have quite different takes on the issue of the relative morality of homosexual behavior.
2: I can’t think of a single social more that anyone in a civilized society has come up with “independent of anyone else”. The notion is logcally absurd in and of itself. “Ideas” re mores and the the social appropriateness of specific actions are a result of social interactions with other people and cannot by their nature be “independent”.
Well, here’s the difference as I see it, notwithstanding the fact that I think murder is kind of a lousy comparison- I get your point anyway. To me, homosexuality isn’t something that strikes an innate moral chord in the sense that it’s something that nobody *else * should do; rather, it makes me personally uncomfortable. I don’t want to pork another guy, but the act itself, in a general sense, seems OK. The discomfort comes from putting myself into the equation. All other things being equal, it doesn’t matter if two men are having sex somewhere, despite the fact that watching might make me a little uncomfortable.
Now, murder or stealing somebody’s car seems like an immoral thing to do no matter if I envision myself watching or committing the crime or not. All other things being equal, I do care that somebody is getting their car stolen.
Obviously, a gay man’s natural state being, well, gay, it seems pretty likely that they’d be even more OK with homosexuality than I am. They just wouldn’t have that natural aversion- the mushroom aversion, so to speak- making them uncomfortable. (Possibly, and maybe someone else could clear this up, possibly a gay man could have that mushroom aversion to the idea of having sex with a woman). Absent of that aversion, doesn’t it seem very unlikely that if this guy was born on an island somewhere, he would develop this same hatred of his own natural inclinations? Where could it come from, other than external pressures? I can’t imagine, and maybe that’s the difference. Maybe you’re right about the last bit of your post, and you just have a faith in humanity’s goodness that I don’t share.
I agree completely with that, and cannot for the life of me understand why it is not patently obvious. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, it is sufficient to establish whether a man is or is not reasonable by asking him that question. If his answer is, “No, I couldn’t become gay but they could become straight,” then he is an idiot.
And I’d respectfully say that you’re mistaken. Your finding homosexuality “oogy” did come from someone else, or more accurately, a lot of someone elses, over a very long time. One person didn’t come up with the idea that homosexuality was not such a great idea, any more than one person came up with the idea that fire is probably a useful thing to have around.
It’s not that difficult a concept. Homosexuality makes absolutely no sense, biologically speaking. Two people of the same sex can’t produce offspring, so if they get together and go at it, it’s bad for the evolution of the species. That’s the kind of idea that sticks with people, so over time, we developed rules against it. In that sense, yes, it is the same mechanism that convinced us that murder isn’t a good thing to be doing.
You’ve got to understand that what makes it “oogy” for you, but pretty appealing for me, is something more fundamental than anybody’s got a handle on yet. I’m highly skeptical it’s just biological, to be honest; I think it’s more likely one of those super-complicated butterfly effect chaos theory combinations of biology, sociology, psychology, and environment. But whatever the cause, the wiring somewhere is fundamentally different. As much as I appreciate how impossibly hot Beyonce Knowles is, if I saw a nude picture of her, you wouldn’t see a rise out of Grundy Jr. But, as dumb as it sounds, simply reading astro’s ridiculous little Brawny guy passage above did manage to get a little “huh? what’s going on? is it time?” out of him. Weird, huh? Ah well, I’m stuck with it.
But even though we don’t know what causes the “oogy,” it’s plenty apparent what caused the idea that it’s “wrong.” That’s society. It’s not just one person, it’s not even as simple as the “religious right.” It’s a huge, complicated, long-running network. It’s the exact same society that I grew up in, the same society that taught me to think it was wrong even after I stopped thinking it was gross. And the idea that it’s wrong is a hold-over from the basic fact that it’s rare (which is selected against) and it does nothing to make more people.
What I’m hoping for is that society will grow to realize that we’ve got a good supply of people going as it is, and now we can start thinking that what’s good for the individual can be as valid as what’s good for the species. Your “who you love is your own business” idea will become more commonplace, and it will stop being considered “wrong” to a majority of the people, and will go back to just being “oogy.”