that made me laugh so hard, but only because I used to be such a sold out Christian boy
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Homosexuality
- Thread starter obi
- Start date
- Status
that made me laugh so hard, but only because I used to be such a sold out Christian boy
Interestingly enough, a study in the UK I think just found that there is something significantly different about the minds of pedophiles. They showed 'stimulating' material and different parts of their brains lit up than people who are 'uninterested' in the material. Infact, I think some of the areas of the brain that lit up actually don't light up with normal sexual stimulation. This study concluded that pedophilia should be listed as a mental condition and therefore raises morality questions about imprisonment for those that don't necessarily abuse this.
WTF how does this impact this thread, majesty?
Glad you asked. A logical segway (though NOT politically correct) from pedophilia would be to look in other areas of 'abnormal sexual conduct'. I don't mean this to be offensive in any way, keep that in mind. Now, if studies were to be conducted on homosexuals in a similar manor, I'd bet a crapload of money that they would show differences. This isn't a bad thing, it's just rather interested. Naturally, someone will no doubt try to come up with a pill to 'cure' this 'problem' but that's a ball of wax I'd rather not touch. Sort of makes you think about this whole topic a little differently, doesn't it?
As an interesting sidenote on this, from my biological background- various mammal species (often the case studies are wild rodent populations) have shown increasing amounts of homosexuality, it some extreme cases up to like 75% of the population, when they are heavily overpopulated for too long...usually populations go in cycles where a prey will bloom, then a predator/controlling factor will bloom, then the prey crashes and the predator crashes. In these instances, the controlling factor doesn't step it up, so the population actually controls itself. Interesting, isn't it?
Just cause I'm into herpetology and since this IS homosexuality...there's certain lizards, called 'night lizards' where only females exist in certain species. The way they get pregnant/gravid is quite strange...one female mounts another one as if it were male, the female acting as the female goes through parthenogenesis (which is common in lizards) or 'virgin birth'. Only the female acting as the female in this homosexual display actually becomes gravid/pregnent. Neat, isn't it?
So what does all this bring? Well it certainly clears up one of the causes of homosexuality, at least from a biological standpoint. Definately gives some perspective on how widespread it actually is. If you consider the rising rates of homosexuality in our own population, no matter what you think or believe about it, these observations show a stunning example of the actual place for homosexuality within even genetic populations that aren't as...I'll say this politely...polluted as our own. This clearly demonstrates that it is a natural occurence and isn't just a 'sin', 'disgusting habit' or any other negative connotation you want to make with it. With all this in mind, it's a wonder that governments are fighting it...especially governments that claim right in their constitution the be 'free of religion'. Aside from religion, just why do we hate it so much? Cowardace.
Note that I am straight, I just happen to be educated.
EDIT: forgot this part. If they wanna get married, call it something else. A marriage has a clearly set definition that isn't gonna change anytime soon...so...call it something else. They get the status of being together and religious people can stop fucking the bed about it.
WTF how does this impact this thread, majesty?
Glad you asked. A logical segway (though NOT politically correct) from pedophilia would be to look in other areas of 'abnormal sexual conduct'. I don't mean this to be offensive in any way, keep that in mind. Now, if studies were to be conducted on homosexuals in a similar manor, I'd bet a crapload of money that they would show differences. This isn't a bad thing, it's just rather interested. Naturally, someone will no doubt try to come up with a pill to 'cure' this 'problem' but that's a ball of wax I'd rather not touch. Sort of makes you think about this whole topic a little differently, doesn't it?
As an interesting sidenote on this, from my biological background- various mammal species (often the case studies are wild rodent populations) have shown increasing amounts of homosexuality, it some extreme cases up to like 75% of the population, when they are heavily overpopulated for too long...usually populations go in cycles where a prey will bloom, then a predator/controlling factor will bloom, then the prey crashes and the predator crashes. In these instances, the controlling factor doesn't step it up, so the population actually controls itself. Interesting, isn't it?
Just cause I'm into herpetology and since this IS homosexuality...there's certain lizards, called 'night lizards' where only females exist in certain species. The way they get pregnant/gravid is quite strange...one female mounts another one as if it were male, the female acting as the female goes through parthenogenesis (which is common in lizards) or 'virgin birth'. Only the female acting as the female in this homosexual display actually becomes gravid/pregnent. Neat, isn't it?
So what does all this bring? Well it certainly clears up one of the causes of homosexuality, at least from a biological standpoint. Definately gives some perspective on how widespread it actually is. If you consider the rising rates of homosexuality in our own population, no matter what you think or believe about it, these observations show a stunning example of the actual place for homosexuality within even genetic populations that aren't as...I'll say this politely...polluted as our own. This clearly demonstrates that it is a natural occurence and isn't just a 'sin', 'disgusting habit' or any other negative connotation you want to make with it. With all this in mind, it's a wonder that governments are fighting it...especially governments that claim right in their constitution the be 'free of religion'. Aside from religion, just why do we hate it so much? Cowardace.
Note that I am straight, I just happen to be educated.
EDIT: forgot this part. If they wanna get married, call it something else. A marriage has a clearly set definition that isn't gonna change anytime soon...so...call it something else. They get the status of being together and religious people can stop fucking the bed about it.
This will be good for starters.
Marriage:
The foundation of every single society is the nuclear family. A nuclear family consists of one father, one mother, and any number of children.
Extended family provides an important support mechanism, but the mother and father do the heavy lifting.
Marriage in the most basic sense exists to reinforce the nuclear family.
Insofar as Church Teaching, from The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt2sect2chpt3art7.htm
1601
"The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."
So yes, the Church does in fact teach marriage is primarily for the purposes of doing good for God and procreation. The secular institution is merely a litany of statutes that amounts to a glorified contract intended to provide backing for the more important sacred meaning.
Marriage is about the protection and support of children, not "what two consenting adults" want. If gay parents want the provisions given a married couple to tend to their children, I see no problem with granting a civil union that confers these rights and benefits. A child who does not have both a mother and a father is already disadvantaged in life, and the system should take that into account and not handicap them further.
"But Deck, 50% of Marriages fail! That mean's marriage is pretty worthless IMO."
I have actually had this said to me in person. It's full of crock.
The reasons marriage has weakened:
1: No fault divorce.
No fault divorce is the primary reason 50% of marriages fail. I should note that the 50% number also includes multiple marriages. First marriages have a much lower failure rate. When there are no strings attached, people just view marriage as a fancy way to say you're boyfriend/girlfriend. Religions still try and maintain no fault divorce statutes in a religious sense, but it has fallen out of favor with the Justice of the Peace.
2: Secular marriage theory.
When people view marriage as more of a glorified secular contract than a sacred institution which binds two persons together inseperably forever for the purpose of raising and supporting children, they fail to give it the moral weight it requires. Las Vegas is emblematic of this assault on marriage.
3: (Global) The legalization of gay marriage:
In every nation where gay marriage has been legalized, the overall number of marriages has declined. When marriage means anything it means nothing. Add this to the declining populations in Europe and you can understand why gay marriage would be a well-liked option. When your society is stagnant and dying, you don't tend to care much for preserving the key insitution which maintains it.
Anywhere gay marriage goes, regular marriage crumbles, so the argument "gay marriage doesn't affect regular marriage" doesn't pan out.
Homosexuality:
As early as 50 years ago, the APA classified Homosexuality as a mental disorder. Apparently the hippes and junkies of the 60's and 70's were more enlightened than all of their forebares. Or the APA just fell to political correctness.
The fact is that the gay lifestyle, as displayed at the Folsom Street Fair, is base and animalstic. Here's a link to a amatuer photojournalist who covered the event. This link goes to the warning page, so don't worry about your eyes bulging out as if it were goatse.
http://www.zombietime.com/folsom_sf_2007_part_1/
Fact is, this depravity is part and parcel to the gay community. This is their big event in San Franscisco, and more interesting still is how the advertised it: with a Last Supper scene where the food and other items were replaced by sacriligious dildos, among other things. I eagerly await the gay community's condemnation of this insensitivity. Good thing I'm not holding my breath though, I'd be dead already.
The following link provides details about STD's and/or AIDS and young gay men:
(Note: Don't even start with the holy roller bullcrap, this site is about as socialist and pro-gay as you can get without running into a propaganda site like HRC.)
http://www.avert.org/aidsyounggaymen.htm
"In the USA, it is estimated that nearly 300,000 men were living with AIDS at the end of 2002, and another 420,000 had died. Almost 60% of men diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the USA were probably exposed to the virus through male-to-male sexual contact."
http://www.avert.org/hsexu6.htm
"In Britain, in the United States, in Australia, and in European countries such as Norway, the Netherlands and Germany, gay and bisexual men were among the first to be affected by HIV. For many people in Britain the reporting of HIV and the prevailing climate towards gay people only served to reinforce assumptions about gay men and their sex lives."
"Homosexual men remain the group at the greatest risk of getting infected with HIV in the UK. Throughout the 1990s, there were modest falls in the number of new diagnoses among homosexual men, except in 1996 when antiretroviral therapy first became widely available and the advantages of early diagnoses became clearer. Estimation of current HIV incidence rate among men who have sex with men is difficult. The often long period of time between the infection and diagnoses can make predicting the incidence rates hard. Also, some of the new infections will have occurred abroad either in the course of travel or before moving abroad. The great majority of new infections in this risk group will, however, have been acquired in the UK, and there are indications of rises in behaviours associated with increased risk among men who have sex between men in the UK. As the end of September 2004, 32,412 men who have sex with men in the UK have been diagnosed with HIV."
Here are CDC reports on new cases of AIDS:
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/reports/2002report/table8.htm
Note that Male-to-Male Sexual contact is 270-300% larger than the next largest category (injection drug use).
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/reports/2002report/table9.htm
This lists data for the end of 2002 based on race/ethnicity. What is valuable here is the percent. 61% of AIDS cases were transmitted by Male-to-Male sexual contact.
So what's the point?
First that AIDS does in fact discriminate, and second that homosexual activity is inherently dangerous for it's practictioners. Since AIDS is a reliable indicator for other sexually transmitted diseases, one can infer other diseases are also transmitted.
Which is why in the chat I compared it to alchoholism.
Similarities between the two:
Some people are genetically predisposed to be alcholohics.
When alchoholics give into their temptation, it affects them and often their families negatively.
It often leads to other pathologies such as drug abuse (gambling moreso in alchoholism's case, although those two are often chicken-and-egg scenarios).
It is a self-destructive behavior that can only be managed, never cured.
It is not contagious, but it is possible to become an alchoholic through excessive exposure to the stimulating agent.
The point is that these people are slowly destroying themselves and they need help and support. It isn't compassionaite to give an alchoholic a 30-pack to make them feel better about alchoholism, just as it isn't compassionaite to say "gay is OK" and start handing out extra-thick condoms.
Fallacies regularly employed by the Gay Movement:
Anyone who opposes gay marriage wants to kill gays.
This one actually came out in the chat. Aside from a select few fringe elements, nobody advocates a 'final solution' to the 'gay problem'.
What two people do in the privacy of their own homes is nobody's business.
As a conservative, I agree with this statement. However, legalizing gay marriage is giving government benefits and therefore public acceptance and approval to the practice of homosexuality and any resulting relationships. This means that gay marriage has nothing to do with what people do in their own homes and everything to do with a legal system that applies to and affects everyone everyone.
If homosexuals want to get a marriage ceremony they can certainly find someone willing to take their money for the event. What they want is the public recognition of the validity of their arrangement, as well as the assorted government benefits granted to the married. Civil unions solve the latter problem without compromising the sanctity of marriage. Marriage is and always will be superior to a civil union, married couples in nearly all healthy instances can bear and raise children and thereby continue society. A gay civil union is a conference of benefits recognizing only that two men or two women are getting it on and they want to call it love in public. The state only has a vested interest in these civil unions if there are children involved.
Homophobe!
This isn't an argument, it's a proof of the modified Godwin's Law: As any discussion of homosexuality or gay marriage continues, the probability of someone being called a homophobe approaches 1. Few people fear or have an intense dislike of homosexuals, what they do fear or intensely dislike is the damage people do to themselves while calling their behavior normal.
Marriage:
The foundation of every single society is the nuclear family. A nuclear family consists of one father, one mother, and any number of children.
Extended family provides an important support mechanism, but the mother and father do the heavy lifting.
Marriage in the most basic sense exists to reinforce the nuclear family.
Insofar as Church Teaching, from The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt2sect2chpt3art7.htm
1601
"The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."
So yes, the Church does in fact teach marriage is primarily for the purposes of doing good for God and procreation. The secular institution is merely a litany of statutes that amounts to a glorified contract intended to provide backing for the more important sacred meaning.
Marriage is about the protection and support of children, not "what two consenting adults" want. If gay parents want the provisions given a married couple to tend to their children, I see no problem with granting a civil union that confers these rights and benefits. A child who does not have both a mother and a father is already disadvantaged in life, and the system should take that into account and not handicap them further.
"But Deck, 50% of Marriages fail! That mean's marriage is pretty worthless IMO."
I have actually had this said to me in person. It's full of crock.
The reasons marriage has weakened:
1: No fault divorce.
No fault divorce is the primary reason 50% of marriages fail. I should note that the 50% number also includes multiple marriages. First marriages have a much lower failure rate. When there are no strings attached, people just view marriage as a fancy way to say you're boyfriend/girlfriend. Religions still try and maintain no fault divorce statutes in a religious sense, but it has fallen out of favor with the Justice of the Peace.
2: Secular marriage theory.
When people view marriage as more of a glorified secular contract than a sacred institution which binds two persons together inseperably forever for the purpose of raising and supporting children, they fail to give it the moral weight it requires. Las Vegas is emblematic of this assault on marriage.
3: (Global) The legalization of gay marriage:
In every nation where gay marriage has been legalized, the overall number of marriages has declined. When marriage means anything it means nothing. Add this to the declining populations in Europe and you can understand why gay marriage would be a well-liked option. When your society is stagnant and dying, you don't tend to care much for preserving the key insitution which maintains it.
Anywhere gay marriage goes, regular marriage crumbles, so the argument "gay marriage doesn't affect regular marriage" doesn't pan out.
Homosexuality:
As early as 50 years ago, the APA classified Homosexuality as a mental disorder. Apparently the hippes and junkies of the 60's and 70's were more enlightened than all of their forebares. Or the APA just fell to political correctness.
The fact is that the gay lifestyle, as displayed at the Folsom Street Fair, is base and animalstic. Here's a link to a amatuer photojournalist who covered the event. This link goes to the warning page, so don't worry about your eyes bulging out as if it were goatse.
http://www.zombietime.com/folsom_sf_2007_part_1/
Fact is, this depravity is part and parcel to the gay community. This is their big event in San Franscisco, and more interesting still is how the advertised it: with a Last Supper scene where the food and other items were replaced by sacriligious dildos, among other things. I eagerly await the gay community's condemnation of this insensitivity. Good thing I'm not holding my breath though, I'd be dead already.
The following link provides details about STD's and/or AIDS and young gay men:
(Note: Don't even start with the holy roller bullcrap, this site is about as socialist and pro-gay as you can get without running into a propaganda site like HRC.)
http://www.avert.org/aidsyounggaymen.htm
"In the USA, it is estimated that nearly 300,000 men were living with AIDS at the end of 2002, and another 420,000 had died. Almost 60% of men diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the USA were probably exposed to the virus through male-to-male sexual contact."
http://www.avert.org/hsexu6.htm
"In Britain, in the United States, in Australia, and in European countries such as Norway, the Netherlands and Germany, gay and bisexual men were among the first to be affected by HIV. For many people in Britain the reporting of HIV and the prevailing climate towards gay people only served to reinforce assumptions about gay men and their sex lives."
"Homosexual men remain the group at the greatest risk of getting infected with HIV in the UK. Throughout the 1990s, there were modest falls in the number of new diagnoses among homosexual men, except in 1996 when antiretroviral therapy first became widely available and the advantages of early diagnoses became clearer. Estimation of current HIV incidence rate among men who have sex with men is difficult. The often long period of time between the infection and diagnoses can make predicting the incidence rates hard. Also, some of the new infections will have occurred abroad either in the course of travel or before moving abroad. The great majority of new infections in this risk group will, however, have been acquired in the UK, and there are indications of rises in behaviours associated with increased risk among men who have sex between men in the UK. As the end of September 2004, 32,412 men who have sex with men in the UK have been diagnosed with HIV."
Here are CDC reports on new cases of AIDS:
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/reports/2002report/table8.htm
Note that Male-to-Male Sexual contact is 270-300% larger than the next largest category (injection drug use).
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/reports/2002report/table9.htm
This lists data for the end of 2002 based on race/ethnicity. What is valuable here is the percent. 61% of AIDS cases were transmitted by Male-to-Male sexual contact.
So what's the point?
First that AIDS does in fact discriminate, and second that homosexual activity is inherently dangerous for it's practictioners. Since AIDS is a reliable indicator for other sexually transmitted diseases, one can infer other diseases are also transmitted.
Which is why in the chat I compared it to alchoholism.
Similarities between the two:
Some people are genetically predisposed to be alcholohics.
When alchoholics give into their temptation, it affects them and often their families negatively.
It often leads to other pathologies such as drug abuse (gambling moreso in alchoholism's case, although those two are often chicken-and-egg scenarios).
It is a self-destructive behavior that can only be managed, never cured.
It is not contagious, but it is possible to become an alchoholic through excessive exposure to the stimulating agent.
The point is that these people are slowly destroying themselves and they need help and support. It isn't compassionaite to give an alchoholic a 30-pack to make them feel better about alchoholism, just as it isn't compassionaite to say "gay is OK" and start handing out extra-thick condoms.
Fallacies regularly employed by the Gay Movement:
Anyone who opposes gay marriage wants to kill gays.
This one actually came out in the chat. Aside from a select few fringe elements, nobody advocates a 'final solution' to the 'gay problem'.
What two people do in the privacy of their own homes is nobody's business.
As a conservative, I agree with this statement. However, legalizing gay marriage is giving government benefits and therefore public acceptance and approval to the practice of homosexuality and any resulting relationships. This means that gay marriage has nothing to do with what people do in their own homes and everything to do with a legal system that applies to and affects everyone everyone.
If homosexuals want to get a marriage ceremony they can certainly find someone willing to take their money for the event. What they want is the public recognition of the validity of their arrangement, as well as the assorted government benefits granted to the married. Civil unions solve the latter problem without compromising the sanctity of marriage. Marriage is and always will be superior to a civil union, married couples in nearly all healthy instances can bear and raise children and thereby continue society. A gay civil union is a conference of benefits recognizing only that two men or two women are getting it on and they want to call it love in public. The state only has a vested interest in these civil unions if there are children involved.
Homophobe!
This isn't an argument, it's a proof of the modified Godwin's Law: As any discussion of homosexuality or gay marriage continues, the probability of someone being called a homophobe approaches 1. Few people fear or have an intense dislike of homosexuals, what they do fear or intensely dislike is the damage people do to themselves while calling their behavior normal.
Anyway before I actually comment on the post, I don't think there are too many people who would actually use the 'gay marriage' system that would really care what it is called. It's not about defiling your marriages, it's about the legal rights... it is completely irrelevant what it is called as long as the legal advantages are there. I think that a lot of your argument is sort of unnecessary because of this. I'll be using the term 'gay marriage' for this post but for all intents and purposes it can also be read 'civil union.'
I agree completely on this - I was talking with one of my co-workers last summer who was telling a story about one of her friends who was getting married, and she mentioned her saying something about how the guy she was marrying 'would make a great first husband.' We spent about fifteen minutes discussing the various things wrong with that line of logic, and I still find it almost unbelievable. Maybe I just have an odd stance considering other factors due to being raised Catholic, but I find it kinda disheartening that it's become as trivial to most people as it has. As far as the legal standing of marriage I can understand why people would exploit it, but for those who are devout something is seriously wrong with how they perceive this marriage thing, at least by my perception.
I would absolutely love to see some sort of evidence that really any major European country is declining to the point it's going to die out at any time in the foreseeable future, because that sure seems like hyperbole to me. As a race humans are having a lot more problems with overpopulation than underpopulation either way, but I don't buy the argument that gay marriage is has any real effect on procreation. I'm almost positive people who are entering gay marriages are rather unlikely to be having children or entering conventional marriages either way, due to that whole thing where they aren't attracted to the opposite sex. Your argument, then, is based on the idea that fewer people have children because gays are allowed to marry, which is absolutely ridiculous. Additionally, as I'm sure you're perfectly aware even if it did cause fewer people to marry which I would love to see proof of, people seem to be able to have children without being in marriages due to some sinful flaw in the system.
Yes, that must be it, that's the only explanation for the fact that since then it's been discovered that there are numerous physical differences between gay me and women and their straight counterparts, as well as the discovery that sexuality is unchanging and most likely determined at birth. You can obviously turn a blind eye to whatever you want, but there's overwhelming evidence that homosexuality is not a mental disorder that has accumulated since then, a small bit of which has been referenced previously in this thread.
While it's truly unfortunate you haven't been holding your breath, it's pretty ridiculous that you're trying to pass off a group of fetishists as an accurate representative for all gays and lesbians. If you honestly believe that sort of thing is appealing(or okay) to all of those people I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue but regardless of that there are plenty of equally disturbing acts straights have done with various fetishes.
That fair is about as representative of gays as necrophiliacs are of straights.
I'm not exactly sure who you think the 'gay community' is(perhaps the 10%~ of the population that it is made up of should all write the other 90%~ of the population hand written apologies?), but I'd love for the 'straight community' to apologize for victims like Rebecca Wight, James Zappalorti, Michelle Abdill, Matthew Shepard, Steen Fenrich, and Fannyann Eddy, but I guess the various murders don't really compare.
I find this kind of amusing. Were you asleep when you learned about AIDS in whatever sexual education class you might have had? If so, can you tell me what happens when you sleep with someone who has AIDS?
If you guessed 'AIDS is transmitted', you were right. There's nothing discriminating about that - if you sleep with someone who has the disease, you will almost definitely get it. Being gay or straight has nothing to do with that - the only only argument you have here is that more gay gays are fools and chose to have sex without being certain their partners were not HIV positive.
I suppose I'd agree with this, as long as the same was applied to the 'god says gays are going to hell so you're a bunch of sinners' argument that shows up equally as often, but I see that it has occurred already.
I would disagree that few people have an intense dislike of homosexuals however, although the fear thing is certainly ridiculous.
I agree completely on this - I was talking with one of my co-workers last summer who was telling a story about one of her friends who was getting married, and she mentioned her saying something about how the guy she was marrying 'would make a great first husband.' We spent about fifteen minutes discussing the various things wrong with that line of logic, and I still find it almost unbelievable. Maybe I just have an odd stance considering other factors due to being raised Catholic, but I find it kinda disheartening that it's become as trivial to most people as it has. As far as the legal standing of marriage I can understand why people would exploit it, but for those who are devout something is seriously wrong with how they perceive this marriage thing, at least by my perception.
Deck Knight said:
I would absolutely love to see some sort of evidence that really any major European country is declining to the point it's going to die out at any time in the foreseeable future, because that sure seems like hyperbole to me. As a race humans are having a lot more problems with overpopulation than underpopulation either way, but I don't buy the argument that gay marriage is has any real effect on procreation. I'm almost positive people who are entering gay marriages are rather unlikely to be having children or entering conventional marriages either way, due to that whole thing where they aren't attracted to the opposite sex. Your argument, then, is based on the idea that fewer people have children because gays are allowed to marry, which is absolutely ridiculous. Additionally, as I'm sure you're perfectly aware even if it did cause fewer people to marry which I would love to see proof of, people seem to be able to have children without being in marriages due to some sinful flaw in the system.
Deck Knight said:
Yes, that must be it, that's the only explanation for the fact that since then it's been discovered that there are numerous physical differences between gay me and women and their straight counterparts, as well as the discovery that sexuality is unchanging and most likely determined at birth. You can obviously turn a blind eye to whatever you want, but there's overwhelming evidence that homosexuality is not a mental disorder that has accumulated since then, a small bit of which has been referenced previously in this thread.
Deck Knight said:
While it's truly unfortunate you haven't been holding your breath, it's pretty ridiculous that you're trying to pass off a group of fetishists as an accurate representative for all gays and lesbians. If you honestly believe that sort of thing is appealing(or okay) to all of those people I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue but regardless of that there are plenty of equally disturbing acts straights have done with various fetishes.
That fair is about as representative of gays as necrophiliacs are of straights.
I'm not exactly sure who you think the 'gay community' is(perhaps the 10%~ of the population that it is made up of should all write the other 90%~ of the population hand written apologies?), but I'd love for the 'straight community' to apologize for victims like Rebecca Wight, James Zappalorti, Michelle Abdill, Matthew Shepard, Steen Fenrich, and Fannyann Eddy, but I guess the various murders don't really compare.
Deck Knight said:
I find this kind of amusing. Were you asleep when you learned about AIDS in whatever sexual education class you might have had? If so, can you tell me what happens when you sleep with someone who has AIDS?
If you guessed 'AIDS is transmitted', you were right. There's nothing discriminating about that - if you sleep with someone who has the disease, you will almost definitely get it. Being gay or straight has nothing to do with that - the only only argument you have here is that more gay gays are fools and chose to have sex without being certain their partners were not HIV positive.
Deck Knight said:
I suppose I'd agree with this, as long as the same was applied to the 'god says gays are going to hell so you're a bunch of sinners' argument that shows up equally as often, but I see that it has occurred already.
I would disagree that few people have an intense dislike of homosexuals however, although the fear thing is certainly ridiculous.
This argument doesn't make sense to me. It's not
Legalization of gay marriage ->
Loss of "holiness" and purpose surrounding marriage ->
Loss of the value of marriage ->
Higher divorce rate/lower marriage rate.
Rather, it's
Loss of "holiness" and purpose surrounding marriage ->
Loss of the value of marriage ->
Higher divorce rate ->
Legalization of gay marriage.
Example: Someone tells you that when people eat more ice cream, they're more likely to get attacked by a shark. Of course this doesn't make sense and isn't true, but go ahead, look at the numbers: sure enough, when ice cream sales are higher, that's when there are more shark attacks.
Of course, the real reason behind such a thing is that people go to the ocean more often during the times of the year when people eat more ice cream - warmer months. This is a silly example, but I think you might be doing the same kind of thing here.
...Hopefully this post makes sense.
Hahaha, oh wow. Yes, because shit like this is done out of concern for the other person, who is just such a victim of their horrible disease. I'm sure the maker of that video will be in those guys' prayers, right? The rest of your post was at least well-written and I'd even agree with some of it, but that part is such bullshit. The number of people who fear and hate gays is staggering; the people who simply see the their lifestyle as harmful to them and disapprove for that reason are the few ones.
You're kidding, right? You're really giving that as an example that the entire gay community is the same way? "This is their big event in San Fransisco"? That's a fetishist convention, not "THE BIG GAY GET-TOGETHER OF 2007". Please, don't generalize like that. That kind of claim is absolutely ridiculous and false.
Hey, how about this. I post a set of photos taken at a some huge yearly KKK convention. That means Christians are violent and hateful, right? That's their big event in Alabama, after all!
Your reasoning is a Logical fallacy. In formal logic, what I said was evil implies choice, homosexuality is not a choice. By modus tolens, it is appropriate for me to then conclude homosexuality is not evil.
If homosexuality is not a choice, then I can conclude nothing.
In the most general case...
A->B (evil == A, choice == B)
X is not B. (X is homosexuality)
Therefore, X is not A.
If we had instead...
A->B
X is B
We can't conclude anything about X's relationship with A at all. Nonetheless, you make an interesting point I'd like to debate about.
Unless you can prove that he will kill someone, he is innocent. If he is premeditating murder, then arrest him. But until he commits a crime, he has done nothing wrong. What you say also connects with the "Is Homosexality a disease" thing... but more on that later.
As I noted before: unless you actually do an evil action, you cannot be considered evil. There are many people who are genetically predisposed to become alcoholics that never become an alcoholic.
As for the rest of that... meh. Now to the disease argument.
There are people who can live sucessful and happy lives as a schizophrinic, but that does not make their condition a non-disease. Not all forms of schizophrinia are the same either, most are just dellusions.
A person can live with a great many psychological diseases, many of them uncurable and still live sucessful and happy lives. ADD, Hyperthyrodism, and so forth. Hell, the DSM IV lists Jet Lag as a psychological sleep disorder, and numerous disorders related to caffine.
Maybe it is too far to say homosexuality is a disease, but I can't really see why it can't be considered one (it was considered a disorder IIRC in DSM III). I don't consider it deragatory at all, its simply an abnormal condition. At least significantly more abnormal than say, depression or AD(H)D.
Teifu said:
Yes, we're moving into an interesting discussion :-)
Elaborate, please. I'm all ears.
I should note my stance on this issue is neutral. Expect me to swing wildly in terms of my stance on "homosexuality is a disease" in this debate.
The difference is the reception to the term, I think.
Even it isn't derogatory(and I would definitely say it is), I think when most people think of disease they think of something bad that if possibly, should be cured. Even stuff like AD(H)D is definitely considered negative, and I don't think too many gays would appreciate that connotation. I think the reasoning for this is that sexuality is more similar to something like race than something like ADD - it's just too much of who you are, too entwined with the person's psyche for it to be acceptable for it to be a negative trait, I guess. To some extent I am proven wrong by the existing gays who would prefer to be straight for reasons other than social convenience but I'd say the vast majority of gays would agree with me that it's not a problem or something they are ashamed of.
The other thing too is that there are physical differences in addition to psychological ones - it's not an exclusively mental thing, although obviously that's the vast majority of it. Either way though, when you classify it as a disease or a mental disorder(which it has repeatedly been proven not to be in the last few decades) the definite implication is that it is something that ideally would be changed(which is a lot of why it was originally considered a disorder, in addition to general lack of knowledge).
Dragontamer said:
My bookmarks got wiped out a few days ago or I'd have more interesting stuff built up to link to here, but the wiki article on homosexuality(and more importantly for something like wiki, it's sources) are pretty good. As far as what you quoted I'd read http://www.apa.org/topics/orientation.html
Ok, I have a few things to say about this thread.
I'm a christian guy, but I honestly just don't believe that homosexuality can be a sin. If it's not our choice to choose our sexuality, then why would god make anyone homosexual? That doesn't make any sense to me, god isn't stupid, and if he didn't want anyone to be like that, then simply, he wouldn't have made them like that. Seriously, that just sounds like a totally flawed argument to me.
Dragontamer, I really don't believe that homosexuality can be a disease. Your example of schizophrenia is true, but schizophrenia is actually a mental hindrance, and it has been proven so. Homosexuality on the other hand is not a hindrance, it just determines which sex(es) people have feelings for, it doesn't hinder anyone in any way, physically or mentally, so therefore it can't really be seen as a disease IMO.
I'm a christian guy, but I honestly just don't believe that homosexuality can be a sin. If it's not our choice to choose our sexuality, then why would god make anyone homosexual? That doesn't make any sense to me, god isn't stupid, and if he didn't want anyone to be like that, then simply, he wouldn't have made them like that. Seriously, that just sounds like a totally flawed argument to me.
Dragontamer, I really don't believe that homosexuality can be a disease. Your example of schizophrenia is true, but schizophrenia is actually a mental hindrance, and it has been proven so. Homosexuality on the other hand is not a hindrance, it just determines which sex(es) people have feelings for, it doesn't hinder anyone in any way, physically or mentally, so therefore it can't really be seen as a disease IMO.
DSM IV I think points out that Sado / Masochism is a disorder. Sado / Masochism is a very strange fetish, but as long as people don't kill or hurt each other while doing it... erm... that way... it is not a hindrance either.
I have a hard time making out what makes Sado / Masochism a disorder while homosexuality isn't.
EDIT: Where I'm getting this information
If someone has a real copy of DSM IV with them who can back check this, I'd be very glad :-)
EDITEDIT: How wonderful. Denmark abolished Sado / Masochism as a disorder in 1995.
Still classified as a disorder in DSM IV however. So this makes the debate more interesting >_>
I don't know that it changes the debate at all - the only real connection is that the Sado / Masochists are trying to use the fact the APA(as seen in my previous link) does not consider homosexuality a disorder as leverage for Sado / Masochism to not be a disorder, as far as I can tell from the part of the wiki article on that link. BDSM really isn't my thing and I have limited knowledge about how it's been studied so I don't really have anything more useful than that to say, unfortunately.
I don't think there's really anything about it that changes whether or not homosexuality is a mental disorder.
I don't think there's really anything about it that changes whether or not homosexuality is a mental disorder.
Deck Knight said:
Giving legal recognition to gay marriages has no effect on the ability of heterosexual couples to marry and raise children, both of which can be performed with absolutely no involvement of religious dogma.
Deck Knight said:
In order to buy into this argument one has to assume...
- A decline in marriage rates is undesirable without exception
- Declining marriage rates are never caused by anything other than legal recognition of gay marriages
- Unrestrained population growth is a desirable condition for humanity
- European society is 'stagnant and dying'
Deck Knight said:
Aren't mental illnesses caused by an imbalance of blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm? Apparently the hippies and junkies are more enlightened than Hippocrates, or maybe those Greeks just fell to political correctness.
Deck Knight said:
Just out of curiosity, how has the Folsom Street Fair ever negatively impacted anyone's life apart from creating a vague sense of 'moral offense' through a satirical painting with dildos in it?
Deck Knight said:
Do you believe marriages between black people should not be legally recognized because they are statistically more likely to be infected with HIV than other ethnic groups?
Deck Knight said:
Who said this? No one is arguing that here, but this is a nice straw man.
Deck Knight said:
In that case, why isn't the Republican party actively trying to repeal legal benefits for married heterosexuals with no children? This part of your argument still presupposes dogmatic belief that homosexuality is immoral, so no one who doesn't agree with your other points is going to buy this one as it is.
Deck Knight said:
Godwin's law is essentially a variation of the infinite monkey theorem. It says nothing about the accuracy of the comparison to Hitler being made. Using it in this context to defend yourself makes about as much sense as using the infinite monkey theorem to argue that Shakespeare was a talentless playwright because monkeys could have written his plays.
Gay people are very rare in the place where i live, i personally haven't meet any, or maybe i had, but i think homosexuality also depends on the place were you live
Well, it is a weaker argument now than it used to... so I might as well find another argument in this respect. I too don't really know much about BDSM...
Anyway, I was going to say that most arguments that state that "homosexuality isn't a disorder" can be used with "BDSM isn't a disorder". Then I thought of a few arguments that can work for either side depending on what the latest research is.
Nonetheless, schizophrinics have a different brain configuration, but that does not stop it from being a disorder. I don't think a valid argument in this thread has been made yet that classifies whether or not homosexuality is a disorder or not, aside from a political correctness issue a bit back. I mean, we have snappy retorts like
But really, these don't go anywhere in terms of discovering the truth of this issue. (it is a good retort however :-p). Anyway, I'd like to focus the discussion towards this direction:
What in the past 50ish years have caused the APA to drop the classification of homosexuality as a disorder? How does this compare to other disorders that are in the same catagory (Fetishism, BDSM, etc. etc.), and what makes homosexuality different?
Between 1% and 37% of people are gay (depending on who you ask >_> Damn politics getting in the way of science... ) Chances are, you know a gay person. Not everyone comes out of the closet. Considering the worst case scenario, 1 in ~100 people are gay, making them more common than identical twins (1 in ~300+). If the upper bound is right... more than 1 in 3 people are gay, which is far too high in my personal experience ...
Quote from wikipedia:
Meh, so all we know is that the truth is probably between 1% and 10%.
My question is: if Homosexuality or BDSM actually were diseases, lets say they were even caused by a virus! Who cares? What relevance does it have?
This is semantics at its worst, the only thing likely to come of it is causing offence to someone.
[edit] -hmm.. should have refreshed before replying to this thread I guess..
Have a nice day.
This is semantics at its worst, the only thing likely to come of it is causing offence to someone.
[edit] -hmm.. should have refreshed before replying to this thread I guess..
Have a nice day.
But what I said was not actually a reasoning. It was, as evidenced by the question mark, a question. I was asking you what your stance on homosexuality would be if it was in fact a choice, which of course requires more reasoning and more premises than what you used so far, but is a lot more solid than a grounding in "choice" (it doesn't help that I deny that the word "choice" can be meaningfully used to support or define anything).
It was implied that he had already killed people.
But I'm talking about people who are genetically predisposed to something AND act upon it.
Sure, but they would be in better condition if they were cured. My point is that a disease pretty much implies that there is at least one clear disadvantage associated to it, when compared to a normal condition. I see no inherent disadvantage to homosexuality as compared to heterosexuality.
SSBM Roy said:
1: Fact. There are negligible or irrelevant negatives regarding marriage. Since children will be born with or without marriages, a decline in marriage will always lead to a negative result. Children born out of wedlock have decreased life opportunities, are more likely to be poor, are more likely to succumb to disease, and otherwise have many other afflictions that children born under marriage are not as susceptible to.
2: Non sequiter; I gave several reasons for the decline of marriage, and gay marriage has statistically done nothing to improve the marriage rate and is correlated with declining marriage rates wherever it has been accepted. Gay marriage decreases the value of marriage overall by expanding its definition to focus on the desires of adults rather than the needs of children.
3: Non sequiter; marriage has nothing to do with unrestrained population growth, and in any case homosexuality has an insignificant effect on population.
4: Fact. Every European nation is reproducing below replacement rate and the only reason their populations remain stable is an inflow of immigrants from the Middle East and other Muslim nations. Their culture and values are slowly being supplanted by a demonstrably inferior ones, or would you like to argue about the moral, ethical, and technological advancement found in Muslim nations relative to Western ones?
Play Devil's advocate all you want, but those aren't arguments.
The Greeks had limited scientific capacity to understand disease at that point in history. What amazing marvels in psychological research have occurred in the last 50 years that lend credence to the idea homosexuality is not a disorder, especially given its propensity to encourage negative behaviors? Only politics have changed in the past 50 years, and politics isn't science.
Well I suppose grown men fucking each other in the streets doesn't impact anyone's life. Would you like to live in a country where people fuck in the streets on a daily basis though? Would you like that to be your neighborhood, where men could be fucking in broad daylight, possibly in front of children? One of the depraved loons brought one of their children to a Folsom Street Fair a previous year. They were actually castigated by another participant.
As evidenced here: http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/news/004352.html
Now I grant you, San Fransisco is such a modern day Sodom that most of the people don't let their children walk around in it unsupervised anyway, but you can't stop some people.
Take it from John Kruse:
"Father of two, John Kruse said it is an educational experience for children. He said there were conservative parents against having kids at the event."
So remember kiddies, if you don't support men masturbating and fucking in the streets, you're a close-minded bigot!
Non-sequiter: Black people do not self-identify by their desire to have sex with anyone of a particular gender. Saying you are homosexual implies you enjoy homosexual sex, since male-to-male sexual contact is the leading cause of AIDS infection, your retort falls on its face.
Moreover, Black people can still have children should they marry someone of the opposite gender, meaning their marriages have full moral meaning and weight. When you find two homosexuals that can form offspring between themselves, call me. Otherwise this is completely irrelevant. Gays have never been treated like blacks. In fact, you can't even tell who is gay and who isn't unless they tell you, there are no outward markings of gayness like there are outward markings of blackness. The best you can do is speculate.
I'm hardly an agent for the Republican Party, why don't you call them up?
Moreover, since my argument for marriage comes from a scriptural definition, and that while procreation is a vital part of living fully in marriage, it also exists to bind a husband and wife to each other eternally. Even if parents happen not to be blessed with children, their marriage serves as what an example of what proper adults should be doing, and aids society in that way. Heterosexual marriages serve as a guidepost for what is right and proper. Homosexual marriages, if recognized, would pervert that purpose and give implied approval for more self-destructive paths of behavior.
Once again, Homosexual marriages are done entirely for the purpose of glorifying the life choices of two adults. They have no other value to society and the negative lifestyle choices they reinforce by approving them can do no good. Homosexual marriage is vanity; Heterosexual marriage is purposeful and useful to society. That moral difference can never be erased and should never be forgotten.
What I gathered from this thread in the first two pages: I agree with pretty much 100% with all of X-Act's posts, and user "quinnydinny" is an idiot. Also, I always believed that homosexual people were born that way (or at least they would be more likely to be a homosexual) but I never realized there was fact to back it up. Oh, and I really can't say one way or the other on the subject of homosexual couples having children. I could understand if they wanted to but they would have to be prepared for all the shit that the kid would get from people.
Ah, I see. Personally speaking, my first grounding for evil is a choice, because that is the easiest to define case for evil. For example, I can say that a man who murders people is evil, but as soon as we put him on the front lines of the army, and he defends "my country", he ain't so evil anymore.
I would argue that the concept of choice is the most clearly defined word when it relates to evil, and thus I rely on it. There are clear cut cases when something isn't a choice, like homosexuality. It is clear that homosexuality is NOT a choice, as poorly as choice is defined.
But this is key, they acted on it, meaning a choice was made.
I would assume medical or technical disadvantage. Because being ugly is definitly a disadvantage in the workplace and in society in general, although it is totally unrelated to diseases.
Anyway, I'm sorry for playing mad libs, but I can just subsitute BDSM into homosexuality and it seems like it would work just fine as well.
On a somewhat strange sidenote: DSM-IV classifies premature ejaculation as a disorder. Clearly, premature ejaculation is not really a "disadvantage" in day to day life, and it only makes sense to talk about it as such in a sexual context. Similarly, in the sexual context, I somehow doubt that homosexual male can have the same relationship with a woman as a heterosexual male.
However, outside of sexuality, I don't think any of these "matter". I admit however there will be difficulty in classifying what is and what isn't normal in a sexual context. But it just seems like a lot of people here feel that homosexuality is definitly not a disorder, even though very little is really known about this subject at all. The psychology of sex is really an unexplored subject in comparison to even the very young field of say... the rest of psychology. My high school teacher gave a good reason... most of psychology gets funding, but as soon as a senator starts a bill funding sexual studies, then some other politician will frame him for "paying for sex", which obviously isn't good politics >_>
Homosexual marriage has plenty of value to society.
"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." - Earl Warren
Marriage reduces promiscuity, reducing the chance of contracting HIV, which was one of your main arguments against homosexuality.
It also requires a greater level of commitment to a relationship, therefore it improves the stability of the personal lives of the people involved.
This is also beneficial should the couple in question be raising any children (possibly adopted or from previous relationships, or artificial insemination or blah blah) stability at home is clearly an advantage.
I cant find any reliable statistics on it, but I am pretty sure married people consistently report lower levels of depression or stress and better health than unmarried people. I seem to recall these also counted for people who had been divorced, which isnt really relevant, but was interesting!
As for arguments that Marriage is a Christian concept and therefore Gay unions need a different title is bullshit. Marriage exists in all sorts of non-christian cultures around the world. Even if it didnt Christ died a long time ago, there is no copyright on his work. The idea of calling gay unions by anything other than marriage is condescending and pointless. Nobody should be endorsing that.
Have a nice day.
This rules apply for the united states, in mexico there its also a gay populace, but not as high as in the united states, i think the US has the highest rate of homosexuality, a friend thinks that gay people are and idea given by the government to control the population of a country, in my opinion i dont care; if someone wants to be homosexual let it be >_<
Being homosexual is not strictly wrong but gays have a choice whether or not to stick their penis up someone's arse, the Bible makes it perfectly clear that active gay relations are wrong.
So God is messing with their heads? Sounds like something an asshole would do. If God makes people gay at birth then why the fuck would he make it a sin to act on their sexuality? It's like if God made some child crippled and then made it so that being crippled is a sin. That would be a horrible thing to do since he was the one that made the child crippled in the first place.
the bible also makes it clear that anal sex between a man and a woman is wrong. so is oral sex, for that matter. so is anything that doesnt involve you ejaculating into a woman.
but of course, no one pays attention to things like that because they LIKE getting head from a girl and they LIKE sticking it in her pooper and they LIKE masturbating. they dont like the idea of a guy fucking another guy in the ass, so thats the one that gets attention.
so really, dont use the bible as an argument unless you actively refuse to ejaculate anywhere except inside a woman's vagina. and i mean actively, not getting any action doesnt count.
I think gays shouldn't allow to have children on the grounds that they will raise gay children. You know, like how straight people only raise straight children.
- Status