spectrum, I don't get it.

Gee, I dunno, let’s ask them. Or maybe yet, why don’t we leave them alone?

How about you? At what age did you first realize you were “normal?” How did it manifest itself? Did you find yourself wanting to caress your classmates? Just feel them up? When did you first realize you liked girls instead of guys? Have you ever thought about caressing other guys? Do you masturbate? How often? What do you think about when you do it? When’s the first time you had sex? Was it good?

Since I opened the question and put myself up for inspection, I suppose I’m obligated to give some kind of response. So I’ll just say this: I first saw Star Wars when I was 6, and I knew I liked Han Solo better than Princess Leia. That’s the most you’re going to get out of me.

Plausible as long as you choose to ignore the overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary. The fact that many, if not most homosexuals are the only one of their siblings to be gay. The cases of twins with one gay and one straight sibling. The cases of homosexual parents raising straight children. The fact that there are thousands of homosexuals around the world with completely divergent backgrounds – single parents, two parents, no parents, religious, atheist, conservative, liberal, suburban, urban, whatever, in every single society in the world throughout history. It would be very convenient if you could wrap it all up and “blame” it on the parents, but you simply can’t.

But I regret giving too much attention to the “what causes homosexuality?” and “is it a choice?” questions, because they’re completely irrelevant. The question isn’t “what makes people gay?” The question is “why do you have a problem with it?”

Sol, I’m surprised. I thought the SDMB existed to shed light on questions such as the determinants of human sexuality.

Regarding twins, I would be interested to know if any identical twins have comprised one homosexual and one heterosexual.

Regarding my own experience, I had a curiosity in girls from quite an early age (perhaps 7 or 8). My first experience was being kissed by a help in the house when I was about 12. I felt shocked but not unhappy. But I was too young to bve turned on by the experience.

Yes. The partner of one of my old teachers is a twin. An identical twin. He is gay, is twin brother is a definite ladies man.

That would be, his twin brother is a ladies man.

We HAVE discussed it. Ad nauseum. It got old.

I remember admiring older girls when I was little-but it was mostly, “Wow-she’s so pretty-when I grow up I want to be pretty and wear pretty dresses and have long hair just like her!”

But when I was eight years old, I would watch Family Ties and my face would get all hot whenever Michael J. Fox was on the screen.

It wasn’t something I CHOSE. It just happened.

Heh, yeah. But I wasn’t eight, and Family Ties was in reruns. :slight_smile:

bodswood,

We’ve discussed issues like these over and over. Check out the “Ask the Gay Guy!”, “Ask the Gay Guy II!”, "Ask the Gay Guy III!, and Ask the Gay Guy IV threads. Perhaps many of your questions are already answered there.

I had a very unmistakably homosexual fantasy at the age of 5. And about a year or two later, I remember feeling aroused at the sight of a naked neighborhood boy (I also saw a naked girl around the same time, but only felt curiosity). I had absolutely no knowlege or experience of anything sexual at that age; the feelings just seemed to materialize in my brain, out of the blue. And in the following years, before puberty, I always had the feeling that I was in some sense fundamentally “different” than the other kids, though I had no idea what that difference was. And I honestly can’t attribute this feeling of “difference” to any factor in my environment; it was always simply an integral part of my identity.

Of course, a five-year-old is incapable of identifying a feeling as sexual in nature; it’s only years later that he looks back and says, “Aha! So **that’s **what that was about!”

I used to watch Ron Ely as Tarzan on Saturday mornings and get this funny little feeling in my tummy. I was five.

I must have been a really early chooser!

Okay, you all want to know why I get mad? Why I act like a jerk? Why I fly off the handle?

Because even here, on this Board, this bastion of liberalism in George Bush’s shithole America, this sort of shit is tolerated. In “Great Debates” no less. Apparently, on this board, it’s okay for someone to call gays “corrupt,” to imply that we’re unfit to be parents, to say that we’re disease carriers, to claim that we are wrong and need to be fixed.

I don’t know who this guy’s mother is, but I wish she’d had an abortion. I don’t know who his father is, but chances are he fought in a war, and it’s too damn bad he never took a grenade to the crotch. This subhuman shitstain is allowed to argue these things, and the moderators don’t stop him. This is allowed as a FUCKING DEBATE!

No other group has their very humanity maligned in such a manner in Great Debates. No other group is torn through the mud while the moderators fucking yawn. Even here, our every humanity is considered A REASONABLE TOPIC FOR A DEBATE. This is fucking bullshit!

BULLSHIT!

I am a god damn human being, I am not a suitable topic for debate! I am not a topic for debate, you motherfuckers, but you let the debates go on anyway! You let them say these things about every gay person here, and you don’t stop them! You let them call us sinners, you let them call us diseased, you let them call us child molesters and biological mistakes, and you call it a fucking debate!

No, you call it a Great Debate.

Even here. A place I really respect. The question of whether or not I’m even a functional, worthwhile human being is considered an acceptable topic for debate.

And people wonder why I’m a jerk.

They wonder why I hate this country.

They wonder why I hate myself.

He’s allowed to say all those things about gays, and it’s an “acceptable” debate on this Board. What the fuck does that say about our culture?

Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, this is pot. :wally

I hope someday you get to suffer the utter, crushing indignity of having people debate whether you deserve to be considered an equal citizen, you sanctimonious piece of shit, Moto.

How is it sanctimony, to point out that you are equally guilty of the fault you’re accusing another of possessing?

You’re a damn hypocrite. It’s there in black and white.

Ooh, I used the term “subhuman” to chastize that piece of shit (whom you’re probably a fan of). The moment I start actually debating whether shit like him, or you, should be denied rights, then you can accuse me of trying to do to him what he’s doing to me – trying to define the law so that I’m not a real person.

Get over it, spectrum. You lose the right to whine over someone treating you as less than human the second you throw the subhuman label around yourself.

This is the point you keep missing. You cannot claim the high point in any argument on these boards. I will stop short of saying it’s because you’re a low, corrupt human being yourself. But your conduct, etiquette, and rhetoric is certainly low and corrupt, and by this alone can we judge you. This is an anonymous board, after all.

Oh, fuck off, Moto. I was trying to make a valid point, trying to vent just a touch of the pain this vulgar, evil society we call America has caused me, just on this board, just in one night.

But you wanna jump all over me, go right the fuck ahead. It’s not like the opinion of a fucking Catholic gay-hating bigot matters one whit to me.

Well, maybe the mods will have something to say about you, if you continue to skirt around the “wishing death on someone else” rule. I mean, I don’t know if this statement would qualify, but if not, it’s really, really close. Wishing his mother terminated him in the womb? Wishing dire injury to his dad? Yikes!

Not cool man, not cool. You’ve just reinforced the OP (waaaay back on page 1) was saying about you.

There are a lot of gay Dopers on this board. I’m sure many of them have suffered dearly, and are heartily justified at feeling rage and exasperation and acute pain over the hatred in the world. So, why is it that it’s mostly you that comes up with this over-the-top stuff, and not them? Why just you? Think about that for a moment. Why is it that the rest of them can express their rage and distress in a far more constructive manner, while you, apparently, cannot?

AWE… spectrum come here guy…
{{{HUGS}}}
Seriously dude if I could go to the pole tomarrow and vote for gay marriage I would vote yes. I think I already conceeded that in your linked thread. I think your problem is your so blinded by anger you lose grip of what’s really going on.

Go fuck yourself.

As someone who’s been nuked by Spectrum, I can say a) that I lived to tell the tale and b) that he is someone I respect for his honesty.

I’m not saying I equate honesty with swearing and cursing; it goes a bit deeper than that. With Spectrum I get the feeling that he’s not adopting an Internet persona, and I like that.

He doesn’t seem to trust people easily, but again that’s no fault; it also makes him similar to people like me. Perhaps he’s right to think (as he seems to) that everyone who believes homosexuality is wrong is his enemy; perhaps he’s right to refuse to engage them.

On a board like this it’s very difficult to assess people and their “heart”. For all he knows, SHAKES and I are both dangerous and vile, me more so for being able to retain a courteous front under fire.

I don’t have a problem with Spectrum. Rather the opposite. I look out for his posts. At least there’s no effluent to wade through.