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To me, humans seem to be sort of omni-sexual. There are people who desire sex with children, with animals, with inaminate objects, and with nothing at all but their own hands. And many other things I haven’t thought of or heard of.
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Additionally, humans seem to have a hugely complex psychology, so much so that we don’t have an adequate psychological explanation for many of the things we observe in ourselves. And desires, needs, and drives may all be partially psychological.
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So maybe the question is not “Why is there so much deviance from the norm of heterosexuality?” but “Why is there so much heterosexuality?” (I’ve always suspected that humans are primarily bisexual, myself.)
Snopes is designed to confirm, deny, or just bring to light urban legends. Whether pigs have sex for pleasure could be considered a UL but not whether humans do. We’re humans! We can confirm or deny that ourselves, can’t we?
I’m not going to argue about the truthfulness or accuracy of the information contained in the link. I’m just saying that when I saw the sentence “according to Snopes, humans have sex for pleasure” my first reaction was “according to Snopes? who cares what they have to say? There are probably 100 other places on the internet alone with more authority on human sexuality than Snopes will ever have.”
Who the hell cares where it comes from, who thinks its right or wrong. You like guys? Go get you a guy. You like girls? Go get you a girl. Funny, My views have changed as I get older.
What does bother me is generalizations.
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People don’t chose to become homosexual. They are born that way. It may seem like they chose to become gay, but that only means they were already gay from the start and were trying to hide/deny it.
Im sorry but, as someone else already said, you can’t put humans in a nice little package. It is my opinon that some people are born gay. Otherwise why on earth would you have a kid who commits suicide because he is gay and doesnt want to be. I also feel that some people choose to be gay. But then again these people are probably born with a predisposition to be attracted to both sexes. Just like a people are born to like the oposite sex. I know I didn’t wake up one morning with a choice. I have just always liked women.
They did not choose to be rabidly homophobic, they too were born that way. Seriously, I hate that staement right there. Its not about someone being guy so they question why others are, IMO, but it is about a person brought up with steriotypes that says being gay is wrong, evil and icky. When you see a “flaw” in someone, don’t you wonder why it is like that? Thats all it is, theses people have been tought that being gay is wrong, something that can be fixed and they want to know why.
Just my opinon, I’m usually wrong. Just ask my wife.
I’ve reviewed the literature for a journal article I wrote, and there’s no evidence that sexual abuse causes homosexuality. There is some evidence that children who don’t fit their gender role stereotype may be more abused than kids who do, though, so it may be that homosexuality causes abuse rather than the other way around.
Sexual abuse is highly correlated with mental illness and poor adjustment. Homosexuals do not score any differently on psychological tests than do matched samples of heterosexuals. This argues against homosexuality as psychologically aberrant.
To tell you the truth, I was going to write something like all animals do it for pleasure, but I couldn’t find it and had to make a hasty change. I could’ve sworn that Cecil wrote a column stating that almost all animals do it for pleasure.
Well, I happen to believe that homosexuality is not normal(in the sense of being a statistical anomily, such as a warm, sunny day in Stockholm), but for the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would choose to be homosexual. To those who respond with, their are a lot of crazy people out there, I say, well, most homosexuals I know tend to be more sane than most, so what about them?
According to a book I skimmed over a few months ago (I don’t remember what is was called, though it was about the differences between men and women. As such, I cannot at present provide a cite, and will submit to any corrections you may have), Homosexuals happen when in the womb, a male baby develops, but something gets mixed up, and a female brain is developed rather than a male one. For Lesbians, a male brain develops. So a gay guy is a male body with a female brain.
Now, This seems to me to be a description of transvestites rather than gays, but I suppose you could work out environmental influences that could affect how these people act.
Final (ugh) disclaimer: Maybe the book WAS talking about transvestites. I don’t remember. Please take the above two paragraphs with a grain or two of salt.
Thanks.
Even if orientation is not set at birth, but developed later, it doesn’t mean it is a choice. I’m a hetero guy, and I don’t even choose which women I’m attracted to, let alone that it is women at all.
There’s “no point in it”?! Perhaps you feel this way (from a male perspective) because you’ve never had the “point” in “it”.
I used to work at a bar that attracted a lot of strippers; they considered it a “low key” after work hangout. (Which gave me a great front-row seat in the minds and lives of strippers.)
And what interested me is that most of the strippers I encountered were, if not lesbians, then at least bisexual. They had a pathological dislike of men, based on the men they danced for, and seemed to think women were a much safer alternative.
None of the strippers I met were lesbians before they began dancing.
Which leads me to my theory that more people would be gay if the situation arose where they felt emboldened enough to try it. In other words, people are afraid to try it because they might, like these strippers, end up liking it as much as, or more than, heterosexual sex…and that once this barrier is eroded–by the opposite sex, by opportunity, by simple curiosity–you will end up with a much wider scope of sexuality than you had before.
I do also think that there were psychological factors at work here…human sexuality is based on such a wide range of factors that it’s difficult to pinpoint the “why.” Ever.
Well, if the Raelians have done what they claim, a cloned baby will be born any moment to a lesbian couple.
If the baby turns out to be gay, will this support the “nature” argument, or will people say that it was “nurture,” in that the lesbian parents nudged the baby in the direction of being gay?
If the baby is straight, would this totally defeat the “nature” argument?
It could turn out to be very interesting.
Being gay a choice? Not in my experience.
I grew up in a very “Victorian” family. Or to be more precise, my mother and her parents were very “old school” in their views. They were open about sex (for instance, I recall once asking my mother whether she enjoyed oral sex and getting a very honest answer). However, in their view, homosexuality was abnormal, immoral and ranked along with child molestation. I was brought up with this, even before I really knew what sex was.
My environment was likewise very homophobic, even though in my high school years, I discovered that a lot of the boys my age were “fooling around”. Through this all, I was struggling with my realization that I was one of them, one of those “horrible perverts” who prefered boys over girls. For several years I tried to fool myself into believing that I was attracted to girls just as much. But in the end, I had to stop kidding myself. There were signals everywhere… like when dancing a slow dance with a girl, all I wanted to do was move away, to stop feeling her breasts on my chest.
I finally came out to myself at age 19. I came out to my mother about a month later, which was a big mistake since she could not deal with it, and nor could I yet. It took me about a year before I was able to say words like, “I am no different than I was, just because I am attracted to men.”
I am now nearly 40, and I still have huge self esteem issues which stem from my difficulty, in adolescence, in accepting myself as being gay.
A choice? I think not. I would never have made such a choice.
Personally, I am convinced that genetics or hormone exposure in the womb play the main role in forming sexual orientation for most people, but I doubt it is the only factor–or that
everyone is influenced to the same extent.
Even if it were shown that people have some degree of choice in their sexuality, that doesn’t mean that being gay is wrong. There are some gay people who feel they were able to “choose” their orientation to some degree. Check out http://www.queerbychoice.com/ for their reasoning…which I think is a very intriguing new defense of gay rights.
Their argument is that choosing to be gay is no worse than choosing a different religion. Now, personally, I’m not sure if it’s truly possible to become “queer by choice”, but I definitely agree with the view that even if it is a choice, that doesn’t make it okay to discriminate against gays.
A choice? No. The only choice that I’ve made was to tell people that I’m a lesbian.
I first realized that I liked girls when I was about 9. It wasn’t really a conscience choice, I really didn’t even know what the concept of homosexuality was. All that I knew was that I liked girls more than boys. It isn’t a matter of choice, but a matter of realizing who you are.
No cite but I heard a theory on a religious show not long ago I really liked:
If there is a gay gene the only reason why it is still in the gene pool is because it has been too hard throughout history for gays to be out so they have been forced into situations of passing on their genes so as to cover their shame. So many gay men and lesbians have hidden their whole lives in unhappy marriages because that is just what you did. Grew up, got married, had a family. If you didn’t there was something very wrong with you.
Of course now western society has changed so much we can have kids becuse we want them, not just because we should so there is no way we will be dying out soon.
I do love the idea that the Godhatefags and exodus type folks are possibly just causing more of us to be created 
- So maybe the question is not “Why is there so much deviance from the norm of heterosexuality?” but “Why is there so much heterosexuality?” (I’ve always suspected that humans are primarily bisexual, myself.) **
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Religion. Most people are actually bisexual. If you look at societies where homosexuals are accepted, you will find that most people have homosexual experiences in their lives.
“During this great age of discovery, travellers returned from their voyages to report that homosexuality was “rife” on every continent and among many indigenous peoples. Repeatedly in the chronicals the shock of the Europeans is due not simply to the fact that homosexuality was tolerated and unashamedly practiced, but that is was practiced by great numbers of people.”
“It has been estimated that as much as 30 percent of the male population in modern Brazil are predominantly homosexual.”
-The Myth of the Modern Homosexual. Rictor Norton.
I never thought of that. This will be interesting.
Another possible argument will be that maybe ‘gayness’ skips a generation, if the child doesn’t turn out to be gay. I guess we’ll see…
Oh, boy. Where do I start with this?
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The first known case of AIDS, as we know it, was logged was a flight attendant who was extremely promiscuous, thus starting the rapid spread of the disease. This part you are correct about.
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However, there is absolutely no evidence, other than conspriracy theorist mumbo-jumbo, that his sexual preference included both man and beast.
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You posit that he made a rapid career jump from lab tech to flight attendant? And the airline did not look with askance at his termination for monkey-fucking? Surely, there must have been more qualified applicants.
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Monkeys are just too difficult to screw. Ever seen how fast those monkeys can move? The little buggers are strong, and they bite! I sincerely doubt that no matter how many banannas you offered it, a monkey would allow you to have sex with it.
Wow, Rebelman, that’s a big heap of misinformation you have there. Let me take that off your hands.
First of all, you got a cite for the AIDS origin story? 'Cause, from what I’ve researched, the first recorded victim was a norwegian merchant seaman, some ten years before the flight attendant was recognized as having an immonodeficient disease. From this site:
Yep. Straight sailor. And he probably picked up the disease from a woman in Douala. The page goes on to theorize that the disease was active in that area for around forty years at that time, and that the slaughter of chimpanzees and a monkey known as the sooty mangabey by hunters was probably responsible for the first transmission from animals to humans.
But even so, I don’t blame the straight community for the disease; it’s not like they manufactured it, or decided to transmit it. I’m pretty sure that if you’d asked them, they’d have been pretty adamant about not getting it at all. Even if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be right to blame them, since nobody in their right mind wants a potentially fatal disease.
Thank you so much for this incisive, cogent psychological analysis. I’ll be sure to advise the American Psychological Associationthat your careful research has invalidated every study they’ve done on homosexuality, and that you’ll be happy to take over leadership of the organization posthaste. Their stance on homosexuality reads a bit differently than yours:
So, have you got any data to back up your claims? Any reliable sources, any cites?
The kind of ignorance you displayed in your post, fortunately, isn’t gentic. It is curable, through education. And maybe by teaching people like you, we can turn this world around, and can eliminate this sort of hateful ignorance forever.
Leaving aside your use of the word “normal” to mean “everybody but gay people”–You’re talking about the first US case of HIV. There was plenty of HIV in Africa–among “normal” people.
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Oh, please provide a reputable citation for this nasty idiocy.
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Even if it were true, which it’s not, please explain how a man having sex with a monkey has anything to do with gay people. I would interpret your data to say that MEN WHO HAVE SEX WITH MONKEYS are the problem.
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Which people are those? People who have sex with monkeys?
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Citation? The American Medical Association, The American Psychiatric Association, The American Psychological Association, and many other reputable organizations studying human behavior dispute you.
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Citation? Are you a psychologist? A doctor? A scientist? A researcher? Search the SDMB archives and you will find plenty of citations that nobody knows what causes people’s sexual orientations, and that it is impossible to tell gay people from straight people on psychological tests.
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Don’t do us any favors.:smack:
Well, everybody knows that if you tell young people that something is wrong, they will immediately cease to do it. Witness the glorious success of the War on Drugs, not to mention the various abstinence and anti-smoking movements.