A hundred years ago, Russia didn’t like Jews. Hokay? No problems with that, people had it tough all over. Right?
As civilization learns and grows, we become less tolerant of any intolerance, since when one group is attacked we are all diminished.
Oh, gimme a break… 2000 years ago, the Incans performed live sacrifices of their own people. How far back would you like to extend the “injustice”? There’s no reason to extend special rights to homos anymore than the dope head who gets a medical-marijuana card because he’s got “tennis elbow”.
That said, the Jews have been picked on, beat up and killed for the last 4000 years, and despite that history of pure misery and the search for equality, I doubt you’ll find a single Rabbi that would perform a homosexual marrIage.
Nu?
Noted, but I’m enjoyIng my annoyance. Carry on. 
Well then I guess you don’t know much about Judaism. But since you’re just trolling anyway, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says.
Um, no. None of the Reformed congregations in Connecticut have had a problem performing “homosexual marriages” for the past few years. Please try again. And I actually don’t know a single rabbi; every one I know is married.
Oh please… Tell me a about Judaism. I’m dying to know…
And why is a contrary opinion defined as being a “troll”?
I’ve made my posits, you’ve done nothing but dismiss me as a troublemaker.
Tell me, why am I a troll?
Show me where I’m wrong.
Funny that the usual dismissive tactics should be used here.
“oh, you don’t agree with the general PC circle jerk opinion?” Then you must be a troll."
OK, I’ll try to remember that.
It’s not your opinion that is relevant here but your means of expressing it.
Well, usually people saying this is a consistent indicator:
But I’m sure you’ll be the exception to the rule.
Anyhoo, back to the OP. The most reliable figure I’ve seen for homosexuals in the US is 3.5%, which seems to neatly split the difference between the more conservative estimates of 1-1.5% and the more broad ones of 5-7%. I’d have to dig up the source for that number if you need more details. The real mess comes in trying to count bisexuals who are often more closeted than the gay population (in that they are often willing to be assumed to be either straight or gay, depending on which side of the fence they’ve partnered-up on). But that’s another thread.
As for other countries, I’m trying to find the story I read somewhere (probably on this board) about an Indian official announcing that “There are no homosexuals in India”. As the story went, a journalist in the crowd piped up “I’m Indian and I’m homosexual”, upon which the same official, with a completely straight face, announced “There is one homosexual in India”.
Hard data? Oh, honey, let me tell you about those hot gay Russians studboys…
Then why did you bring it up…
You probably don’t know this but the different forums here have differ rules.
General Questions is for factual answers. You came into a General Questions thread and took it off course with your opinion that had nothing to do with the topic. That’s kind of considered trolling around here
As already pointed out, no one is asking for “special privileges”, just to be treated equally. You even agreed to it when you said “Visitation as well as survivor rights are A-OK with me” No one is asking to be treated better just equally.
Even in a relatively tolerant society like North America, where the pro-gay side is voluble enough that some people have a bilious reaction, there are a decent number of society that for whatever reason - family pressure, small town politics, teen bullying, personal insecurity, fear of ridicule or rejection - they are afraid to admit to others or maybe even to themselves they are gay. So it’s pretty much impossible to get accurate numbers.
The fact that even in the most repressive societies there is a gay underground suggests that some people are driven by something other than conscious choice. (As the fellow says in Mambo Italiano, a very funny movie - “You think I chose to be gay? You mean like, hmmm, what’s a way to get beat up even more in high school?”
The OP question, of course, goes basically to the heart of the question - what causes gayness?
Best guess, and my personal opinion, we have recognizers for hot woman, hot man, what turns me on, whatever… Once in a while these get misconnected when the brain is developing, the gender development fails to do the right job and things are misconnected.
Why doesn’t this get “bred out” if it is a problem? You’ll hear all sorts of guesses. Probably, the system that causes a 2% to 7% or so misconnection rate also results in a strong sex drive, which when properly connected results in better reproduction numbers.
Also consider that for a lot of societies in years gone by, whether women liked men or other women, they basically popped out the babies every year because they had no choice about who owned their breeding rights.
Someone would likely trot out the old saying about, “when they came for the Jews, I did not protest because I was not a Jew, …” etc. The point is, a repressive society is repressive. It was not long ago in most western societies, that you could forget about that nice job if you were the wrong religion, if you did not attend church regularly, if you were the wrong gender or colour; you could be fired if the boss did not like what you said about the government, or your bumper sticker, or your election lawn sign… Screenwriters were blacklisted by Hollywood not long ago, not for being communist (many had quit the party long ago) but for failing to tell the authorities who else was communist - rat on your friends or go work fast food.
If there are some in the LGBT movement that sound fanatical - well, in some states yes you still cannot visit your partner in hospital, his nephew who hasn’t seen him in 50 years can boot you out of your house when your partner dies, a pension you both were living on stops when he dies… whereas a bimbo that lives with a guy for 6 months may have better rights. If you’d rather call it civil union than marriage, fine - it’s still not happening in many states. When nutbars picket (straight) soldiers’ funerals with signs “God hates fags”, are you surprised that said targets are a bit loud in fighting back?
Thanks md2000, that was a very well-written and compelling response.
I don’t believe there’s a reason to assume that the prevalence of homosexuality really would vary from one society to another. The only thing that survey data can really tell us is how many gays and lesbians are willing to be truthful about their sexuality when asked about it by a stranger.
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Do not use the word “homo” to refer to anyone (well, unless you’re speaking Latin). It is offensive, and there is no need to offend people if you can easily avoid it, right?
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Equal rights are not “special rights.” Nobody is asking for special rights, only equal rights. This has been pointed out to you before, so I have little hope that you will learn the distinction.
If you mean hard data in the sense of data obtained through some sort of objective test or measurement, I don’t think there is a way to collect such data on the prevalence of homosexuality. I mean, there’s not a blood test or brain scan that will clearly and conclusively identify homosexuals. The only way to find out is to ask, and even on an anonymous survey some people probably won’t be totally honest.
For the US, I’d consider something like the CDC National Center for Health Statistics’ report on sexual behavior and attraction (PDF) to be pretty reliable in the sense that they know how to conduct a study properly and presumably don’t have an agenda one way or the other with regard to gay rights, but their research does depend on people being willing to share information about their sexuality with the government.
This particular study also found that people who report having had sex with a same-sex partner outnumber, by a large margin, people who report being mostly or exclusively attracted to people of the same sex.* So the prevalence of homosexual behavior could be quite different from the prevalence of a homosexual orientation or identity.
*The graph on page 9 shows that about 9% of Americans ages 25-44 (6% of men, 12% of women) have engaged in sex with a same-sex partner at least once in their lives. However, the table on page 28 shows that less than 2% of the respondents identified themselves as being mostly or only attracted to people of the same sex.
“Homo” is a slur, but “homosexual” is acceptable? How do the extra three syllables make everything OK?
So, I’m confused. You want to protect the sacrament of marriage from homosexuals? Is it because you’re Christian? Because…
- Taking the Lord’s name in vain breaks a Commandment and is objectively evil…
- A good Christian knows that a government can not do whatever it wants to its citizens…
- Furthermore…
And people who are (or are thought to be) gay are bullied, beaten, tortured, imprisoned, and executed for being gay. Kinda in the same league as your other big ticket issues, no?
Hey Buffalo Bilious, why don’t you take your off-topic screed to the Pit where it belongs?
Regardless of the real or imagined travails of people talking things you don’t feel like hearing about, it’s going to keep happening. If you want to limit how much of it you’re exposed to, the most obvious solution to your problem is to not click on the link where they’re going to talk about it
That was absolutely lame. You managed to mix a straw man, a red herring and unfounded assumptions into a slurry that would make a locomotive take a gravel road.
Try harder. Better yet, don’t try so hard. I’ve got no prob with you or your choice of living, best of luck to you… just stop waving it in my face.
They’d love to not have to try so hard, but people like you keep on insisting that they must have special status. You don’t want gay people to have special status, stop forcing it on them.
It’s exactly the same as Jap vs. Japanese, or Paki vs. Pakistani. It’s a form of expressing contempt through unwonted familiarity. So: stop it, please.