SHAKES, nature does not “intend”. Nature does not have a “biological purpose”. We are what we are by virtue of the accidents of our birth, and these accidents carry no moral or fitness-for-use connotations other than what people ascribe to them.
Why do you insist that gay people justify their suitability for biological purposes? Why do you not insist on the same stringent requirements for left-handers? Tea-totalers?
Why the hang up?
The American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, and American Psycholological Asociation, however, disagree with your opinion. And they do have scientific data.
So what, exactly, is the difference between disease and wrong in your mind? What do you mean by wrong? Evil? Mistaken? Perverted? Unnatural? Personally distateful?
1: nature does not intend. Nature is, basically, “shit happens”.
2: homosexuality has been documented in many species besides humans. If “natural” means “happens in nature” (which is more or less how I define it) then homosexuality is natural.
Here’s a few cites (2 out of 118,000 google hits for "homosexuality in animals):
Salon article
Another link
Nope. I learned a lot from your response. You have clearly learned that a well written and reasonabe response is the best way to persuade someone of the opposite opinion. Not that I opposed your stance, but I would not have read your whole post if it wasn’t so well written. Your patience shines.
I, too, thought that Shakes should have given your post(s) more consideration.
That’s true. But there’s being obsequious, and then there’s knowing where your battles are. You’re not going to get a total 180 out of this guy just by making a few (or even a few dozen) posts to a message board. That almost never happens.
The best you’re going to be able to get is to speak your mind and vent, and maybe, maybe, get him to rethink the most offensive misconceptions he’s got about it and start thinking about the issues on his own. Personally, I think just getting somebody to concede that he needs to rethink his point of view is a victory. I know that it took me years to get comfortable with the idea of homosexuality, and I’m gay – I would be a hypocrite if I expected some straight guy to recant everything all at once, just because a bunch of strangers on a message board told him to.
And I’ll tell you right now, it’s only because of this environment and this forum that you got such a relatively calm reaction out of me. If I’d have met you in person and you were spewing out the bullshit you were saying in the other thread, I would’ve told you to go fuck yourself and never had anything to do with you.
I made a real effort to see through the offensive stuff you were saying, SHAKES, and get at the heart of what you really meant. I still think that you’re wrong about a lot of stuff, obviously, but at this point we’re getting into “live and let live” territory. But I’d just about given up completely, and I think a lot of people are going to have (and have had) the same reaction, and they’re going to be entitled. It’s not a case of “if more of you gay people were like SolGrundy, then I wouldn’t have this opinion.”
And yeah, I’ll say it – I get kind of annoyed when I read people saying stuff like “why can’t you be more like SolGrundy?” Because it comes off making me sound like an Uncle Tom, having people patting me on the head like a nice, well-behaved little faggot, and then I get called “obsequious” from the other side.
Sol, as a member of the foam-at-the-mouth set, I’d have to say that I really, really respect you and in no way consider you an Uncle Tom.
Let me get this straight: I wanted to compromise to achieve goals, which is something you claim is good. Yet, because of that, you call me Fred Phelps; a word on par with the n,k,c,f…etc, words. You illustrate this by saying that the man advocates death and suffering for people that disagree with him, and that he is less than human.
I’d also like to point out that ignorance has been fought pretty damn well in this thread (big HOORAH! for the biology cites) and you did absolutely nothing to contribute to it.
Fuck you again, asshole.
Do not dispair, Cisco. There are many here who believe, as I do, that you are a man of honor. And I would like to go on record as saying that comparing you to Fred Phelps is the single most intellectually dishonest metaphor that I have ever seen. The brain that used it is empty of ideas. Don’t be suckered into contests with fools.
Well, thanks. And I’ll say that you shouldn’t get discouraged about your post earlier or think that it’s a waste of time – the best you can do is respond to what people are saying, and put it out there to make of what they will. Sometimes it helps you more than anyone else, just to be able to organize your thoughts.
You’ve written great, persuasive stuff here - please don’t think I was referring to you when I used the word “obsequious”. I wasn’t targetting anyone in particular; it was basic free-form ranting.
Hey, even if SHAKES doesn’t get it, it doesn’t mean that someone else reading the thread didn’t start thinking things over. I thought you did a great job with that post, and I for one was glad you wrote it.
I don’t know if you’re a bigot or not, SHAKES, but I’d feel better if I thought you were interested in reconsidering your positions. Right now, I’m getting the sense that you’re willing to make some concessions so people will stop calling you names, but no sense at all that you’ll ever change your mind. Will you please reread some of the posts, and read some of the articles that people have linked to, and sincerely ask yourself whether you’re right or wrong in this?
Well, there’s obviously something to be said for diplomacy-I would hope, that if you’re speaking to Congress on gay rights, you wouldn’t jump all over, say-Rick Santorum and start screaming “FUCKING CUNT!”
But supporting civil rights shouldn’t have jackshit to do with how “nice” someone is-it should be done because it’s the right thing to do.
See, now anybody who wants to do that, I’d have no problem with at all.
Although I’d be more impressed if they could use all the synonyms for “Anal Sex Residue” that TeaElle came up with.
Hey, considering that the man is one of my senators, I’d LOVE to get the chance to do just that.
I just mean, that if you DID do that, at an official meeting, you’d most likely screw yourself and whatever cause you were speaking for.
Or, I suppose, you COULD always argue that hey-Cheney did it!
I doubt anyone here would give Santorum the pleasure of living down to his expectations. I wouldn’t waste my saliva to spit on him.
And I believe that diabetes is caused by malignant gnomes. Anyone who suffers from this disease, forget that insulin crap and invest in a sturdy gnome-hammer!
See, the thing is, there are some areas where what you “believe” just don’t mean shit. Medicine, and science in general, being one of them. You might as well personally believe that the Sun orbits the Earth, for all that your belief reflects any sort of objective reality.
Shit, that’s simple: the fact that they exsist is proof in and of itself that there is some biological purpose to being gay. If there weren’t, they’d have been bred out of the gene pool centuries ago. Nature doesn’t diferentiate between “right” and “wrong,” it differentiates between what works, and what doesn’t work. Since gays have been around at least as long as recorded history, and almost certainly longer, then having gay people as part of your “tribe” works. How? Fuck if I know. But homosexuality, at the very least, does not detract from the survivability of a group, or it would have been selected against and eliminated from the gene pool millenia ago.
The idea that homosexuality is “bad wiring” relies on the assumption that there’s a proper way to wire a human brain. Not the case. Insanity, in general, is a social concept, not a biological one. The definition of mental illness is how well the afflicted person is able to function in society. Nature itself does not differentiate between the genius and the psychopath. Both are survival traits. Sure, in the here-and-now, genius is more valuable than psychopathy. But ten thousand years ago, having the crazy guy who likes fight sabre-toothed tigers in your tribe was better than having the guy who likes sit in the cave drawing bird wings. In a modern society, however, that much unchecked aggression is dangerous, and so psychopaths are considered “crazy.” We still have psychopaths, because once nature finds something that works, it takes forever to get rid of it. And who knows? In a hundred years, we might all be living like in The Road Warrior, and being a crazy, murderous sumbitch is exactly the sort of edge you need to get ahead in the world. On the other hand, in a hundred years (well, probably a lot more than a hundred…), we might be living in an enviroment where being gay is beneficial. Gays don’t often experience unexpected pregnancies. With an increasing population struggling for a static amount of resources, that sort of genetically-imposed family planning might be a stronger survival trait than heterosexuality. That’s the way evolution works: it keeps trying shit until it finds something that works better than what it was doing before. The key to this process is difference. If everyone is the same, then no new traits are being tested out, and nothing ever changes. That’s your proof that homosexuals are part of nature’s “plan:” they are different, and they are here.
At the risk of sounding like I’m doing nothing more than drive-by posting, I’d like to say that, if Shakes, et al blow any more smoke up my ass, my colon’s going to sue Phillip Morris.
I’m staying an active reader in this thread, but I’m refraining from doing a lot of commenting for various reasons. One, it’s a rather hot-blooded topic on both sides.
Two, I can’t promise to be as…polite…as some others have been.
Three, I come from a family of bigots. My grandfather, his son (my father), and my oldest brother[sup]#[/sup] all hate (hated…both my father and grandfather have passed away) blacks, homosexuals, and, essentially, anyone who’s not their specific make-up[sup]*[/sup].
That said, this issue seems to me to be a no-brainer. Irrespective of one’s personal feelings regarding homosexuality (including our hopefully-soon-to-be-ousted Commander-in-Chief), the “Founding Fathers” wrote a document that proclaimed that ALL men were equal, and, as such, were endowed by their Creator (whether that be God, Allah, Vishnu, or one’s parents) with the right to the pursuit of happiness.
Let’s simplify this. 200 years ago, a bunch of people had the foresight to realize that each and every person is at least subtly different from every other person, and that, even though that is the case, NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON should be denied the same rights as everyone else. Whether they had homosexuality in mind is irrelevant; it certainly existed then. It’s not “new.”
(As I said, I’ve simplified. I’m omitting slavery, which also seemed a no-brainer)
It befuddles me to think that the people in control of things now can’t be as far-sighted as the people were when the documents that essentially became the backbone of this country were written.
I mean, let’s be honest. The gay rights issue. Isn’t about GAY rights. It’s about HUMAN rights. Gay, straight, bisexual, trisexual, whatever. Each person deserves to be happy. And NO ONE has the right to deprive another of that right.
Is homosexuality a choice? No. No more than being left-handed or buck-toothed is. Is it a disease? No. Not even remotely.
I’m a straight male. But I don’t care if someone else isn’t. Why should I? Essentially, it’s none of my business.
People are going to find love where they find it. If that love is with a person of the other gender, okay. If it’s with someone of the same gender, wonderful.
As long as people really CARE whether someone’s gay, the issue won’t go away. If I share a stage with someone who’s gay (and I have…several times), it doesn’t affect my judgement of that person, or of their abilities.
What goes on in the bedroom doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. If someone is gay, big deal. It doesn’t change my opinion of them. And it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t make a bit of difference in ANYONE’S assessment of anyone else.
However, it does. I’d be a fool not to realize it, and it bothers me that others discriminate based on something that no one has control over.
The entire issue should be a non-issue. Why should people be denied basic rights (NOT special rights. Gay rights advocates only want to be treated as EQUALS. Let’s remember that) simply because of who they have sex with?
It’s simply mind-boggling to me. The Declaration of Independence says that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL. Not “All Men Are Created Equal, Unless They Have Sex With Other Men.”
Why do people care so much? Live and let live. If you’re not gay, cool. If you are, cool. It makes no difference to me.
[sup]*[/sup]For what it’s worth, I’m fairly ostracized on that side of my family because I don’t think and feel the same way as they do.
[sup]#[/sup]To illustrate exactly how bigoted that side of my family is, let me offer two anecdotes: 1) My father told me that Christopher Reeve DESERVED to be paralyzed because he once made a movie where he kissed Michael Caine, and 2) My brother refuses to watch Philadelphia - or ANY SUBSEQUENT Tom Hanks movie - because he played “a fag.” (His word, not mine)
Finally, an answer that makes sense!
By the way, my delightful lawfully-wedded wife and I are off to Hawaii for good clean same-sex psychologist fun and a honeymoon at American Psychological Association.
I know everything I need to know about you, cupcake.
Now do us all a favor and shut your glistening cumhole.
Congratulations on your wedding and that they’re actually recording them now.
I love Oregon and only hope that here in Corvallis and the rest of the state that equal marriage laws become the norm.