The point I’ve made to Debaser before, in the thread linked on page one, is that it’s foolish and self-deceptive to come up with a way that you think the world should be that makes nice, simple sense, then to apply it to the world and see if the world fits it.
It’s a simple, easy-to understand, flawless model that all people follow these rules:
- Are born male or female
- Develop attraction to a single member of the opposite gender
- Pair with that person for the rest of their lives
- Produce children
- GOTO 10
And there are many, many extrapolations that are made from this model. The problem is, as simple as it is, it doesn’t fit. People ARE NOT like this. Some fit the model, but many do not. But because we’ve placed social, habitual, religious, and ‘moral’ importance on this model, we declare the elements of reality that don’t fit it to be abnormal.
When we study the behaviour of primates or penguins or butterflies, we’re open to the idea that the models we’ve built don’t fit. As we learn more about these animals, as we watch them do what comes naturally, we modify our conclusions and come up with better, if less simple descriptions of “The Way Things Are”.
But with people, it’s very common for us to choose the conclusions, and then try to fit the subject of our study into it.
It’s a game of fundamentalism, really. But subtle and disguised.
When Debaser or others declare, as upthread a bit, that such-and-such a human trait or characteristic is “Not what nature intended”, this is what they are doing. They are studying an animal, seeing unexpected behaiour, and declaring it to be aberrant, rather than considering that it might actually be the way these animals behave.
What I want to know is, who told you what nature intended? Who told you nature has preferred outcomes for what it does, but nonetheless occasioanlly makes mistakes? The same mistakes over and over again, no less.
Is it easier to think that people can fall in love with each other, or to think that people can only fall in love in this and that specific way? Or is it more sensible to assume that only this and that are proper, and individuals exhibiting other behaviour are defective?
Remember, after all, that ‘homosexuality’ is characterised by an ability to fall in love with and be physically attracted to members of one’s own gender. It is not characterised by an inability or lack of desire to have children, as people like Homebrew can attest. And since there exist individuals with orientations most everywhere in between the ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ ends of the scale, it seems simpler to imagine that, like eye colour, this is an example of continuous variation of a trait, rather than a genetic/chemical error in phenotype expression.
By the way, I to eagerly await UnuMondo’s “simple truth”. I
