After hearing all weekend on tv how “brave”:rolleyes: Rosie O’Donnel is, I was wondering:
What if everyone were gay? What if everyone on the planet would rather have sex with their own sex? How would we reproduce? Would there be enough gays willing to cross over, briefly, for the purpose of procreation? Would there be legally mandated rapes? Would some be forced to donate their eggs/sperm? Would there be enough donated sperm/eggs to populate the Earth enough to continue the human race? What if not just all humans were gay, but every animal also. Could humans produce enough animals in the lab via cloning or artificial insemination, as to produce enough food from meat, and keep the animal kingdom gayness from really scrwing up the planets ecosystem.
What I’m asking is, if being gay is “normal” like so many of you insist, would it be possible for EVERY creature on Earth to be gay without the circle of life on the planet being really screwed up.
And if not, then how is homosexuality normal? How can an activity be o.k. if everyone participated in it would screw things up?
Accusations of “that’ll never happen”, “you’re a bigot/homophobe”, etc., will be ignored, at least by me.
Well, if everyone had a white collar job that would screw things up pretty royally. Nobody would work in the farms, factories, etc.
Also, you’re criticizing homosexuality because if everyone were gay it’d destroy humanity. Would you criticize entering the clergy for the same reason?
What I’m asking is, if being gay is “normal” like so many of you insist, would it be possible for EVERY creature on Earth to be gay without the circle of life on the planet being really screwed up.**
You’re assuming that sexuality is strictly a black/white issue. You’re either homosexual or heterosexual. In reality, human sexual expression is a continuum between strict desire for a person of the opposite sex to strict desire for a person of the same sex.
Therefore, being gay isn’t a matter of being “normal” or “abnormal” but simply one of many ways that we humans can express ourselves in a sexual manner. Heterosexuality isn’t normal, it’s merely the most common way people express themselves sexually.
And if not, then how is homosexuality normal? How can an activity be o.k. if everyone participated in it would screw things up?
Given that human sexuality isn’t something that’s absolute (as stated above) your situation of a strictly homosexual enviroment wouldn’t/couldn’t arise. Essentially, you’re setting up a strawman argument.
Accusations of “that’ll never happen”, “you’re a bigot/homophobe”, etc., will be ignored, at least by me.
If you’re not willing to listen to the answers, why did you bother asking the question?
Yes, but I’ll get to the absurdness of that in another thread.
(I’m in a Catholic school right now, so I think I’ll have at least some right to criticise Catholicism)
As for the “that will never happen” answer, I know this. It’s a “what if” question.
Speaking from a strictly biological sense, this question is absurd. The instinct of males and females to seek each other out for the purposes of procreation is firmly engrained in the several hundred million year evolution of sexual reproduction. Perhaps under these circumstances, homosexuality could be considered “abnormal”; sex without procreation does not bode well for “survival of the fit”. However, just as this applies to gays, it also applies a much larger, birth control using, heterosexual population. Honestly, it really doesn’t matter who’s fooling around with who for the vast majority of their sexual encounters; so long as an individual male successfully procreates with a female sex twice in his lifetime, their genetic line is preserved and the population remains stable.
Perhaps it would be easier to think about it if you flipped around the circumstances… imagine if you woke up one morning, and suddenly males could only bear offspring with males, females with females- a speciation of the sexes, if you will.
Would the desire for children push heterosexual couples towards adoption or artificial insemination? Would less-wealthy individuals be inclined to “cross-over” for the purposes of having offspring? What kind of impact would all of this have on the existing gay and heterosexual social communities, once the identities of breeder and non-breeder were switched?
The answer to your first question (Can everyone be gay without changing the “circle of life”) is, of course, no. Duh.
Your question, “How can something be ok if the world would be screwed up if everyone did it” is also silly, in a silly sort of way. Think about it this way: Using your reasoning, a heterosexual married couple that decides against children would be not “ok”, because if every couple decided against having children “it would screw things up”. Would you criticize such a couple, the way you criticize homosexuals and the clergy?
You also want to be careful that you distinguish between what is biologically “ok” and what is morally “ok”. We don’t consider everything that helps us reproduce moral, and don’t consider everything that hurts our reproduction immoral. For example, men raping women, or having sex with girls who have just begun menstrating makes some biological sense, but we don’t accept that morally.
On the other hand, our culture thinks it’s a moral idea not to have sex until you’re married, and then after you’re married, only to have sex with your wife/husband. It’s also considered perfectly ok, after you’re widowed, not to remarry. All of these things are counterproductive from a biological standpoint, but are morally approved of, and praised, in fact.
So, it’s important not to confuse what’s biologically beneficial with what’s right.
If everyone were gay, we’d still reproduce, it just wouldn’t be as fun for everyone as it used to be. We’re smart enough to recognize the need to procreate without having sexual attraction to catalyze it. Fish don’t even touch at all when they mate, the female lays eggs and the male comes along and drops his milt on them. Thus, breeding can occur without sexual satisfaction.
There’s a lot of things that would screw things up if everybody did them.
What if everybody wanted to have as many children as biologically possible?
What if everybody took off work on Christmas? How many people in hospitals would die?
What if everybody decided to be a firefighter?
And if everybody was gay, and we had always been gay, then we would know how the species survives, because we would have a million years of gay history to examine.
If you’re asking, “What if we all woke up gay tomorrow?”, I for one would be very confused. But, unfortunately my sex life has been hovering at zilch for some time, so there would be very little external change. The conversations around the office would be spiced up for years to come.
If everyone were gay, there would be less overpopulation, since every child would be a wanted child. (There might be the occasional unintended pregnancy because there would probably be one or two thrillseekers who would experiment with the opposite sex without intending to create a pregnancy. Since everyone would be gay, birth control would not be as widely available, with the possible exception of condoms, if we are assuming that HIV still exists. At any rate,finding adoptive parents for the few “oops babies” which would still occur would certainly not be difficult.) If you’ve paid any attention whatsoever to the struggle gay people have had to have or adopt children, you know that a constititional preference for homosexual activity would certainly not prevent peoplw who wanted children from arranging for procreation.
Were it not for the fact that I am an open minded sort and happen to enjoy the company of (most) heterosexuals, I would find an all gay world to have much to recommend it. .
As far as widespread rape of women goes, I suppose it could happen, but it seems unlikely. Most heterosexual men who want sex do not rape women. Why should we assume that most gay men who wanted children would do so?
As far as your concern for “the ecosystem” goes, I don’t think there’s too much doubt that human overpopulation is the biggest threat to it. If animals evolved to be gay, that would necessarily mean that they survived long enough to work out the mechanics of reproduction despite their orientation. By definition, it would not be a problem.
So – how can heterosexuality be “normal” if it leads to overpopulation, unwanted pregnancies, rape and child abuse by people who don’t really want children?
What if every food were cheese? - Where would the bread be? - How can cheese therefore be ‘normal’?
What if every printed word was ‘Snail’? - how would we communicate? - How can the word ‘Snail’ therefore be normal?
What if… OK you get the idea.
Variety, my friend, is the spice of life, being a different person, with your own set of unique desires, hopes, tastes, etc. from everyone else on the planet, is ‘normal’.
This sort of argument–“Well, what if everybody did it all the time?”–is a major part of the moral theory of Immanuel Kant. An awful lot of people fall for it, but it’s bad logic.
Remember this: Toxicity is a matter of degree. Even water & oxygen can be fatal in sufficient purity. All things, all actions, etc., require a sensible level of moderation. If you don’t eat, you die. If you constantly eat, you die. To everything there is a season, & a time to every purpose under heaven.
Furthermore, as the seminary dropout told me, we can’t all be priests. Or rock stars. Or restauranteurs. It doesn’t mean no one should be. Meditate upon this wisdom. Now!
OK, then. So your argument is a load of Kantian nonsense. You sound like a fool. None of which proves that homosexuality is morally acceptable. It’s just that you’re using very very bad logic in your argument.
Go back to Start. Try again. Better questions might be, “Is it harmful to society if some small proportion of people are practicing homosexuals?”, & “Is it helpful to society if some small proportion of people are practicing homosexuals?”
You’re saying the fish don’t enjoy it? - I’m not so sure about that; notice the male’s jaw quivering as it opens and closes; if a fish’s eyes could roll, they would.
(OK, I’m not sure if fish ‘feel’ in anything like the same way that mammals do, but it’s absurd to assume that touching has anything to do with inbuilt rewards for following the procreative urge)
This is a major hijack but I just couldn’t let this pass. Did you mean really mean “purity” or did you mean “quantity”. Pure water is not fatal! Where do people get this idea? Cecil even did a column on this.
There’s no need to put quotes around normal. Gays are unquestionably abnormal.
But the key is in understanding that abnormal does not mean immoral. Abnormal is not wrong, merely different.
Anyway, if 100% of the population woke up gay tomorrow and there was no way to reverse the process, the human population as a whole would significantly decrease, if not cease to be completely, within the next 100 years.
But that still wouldn’t make any individual’s choice on who to have sex with wrong. Or immoral.
