Dr Rick

The internet and clothing aren't natural.

Though a minority behavior, homosexuality is more natural than either of those two things. Homosexual behavior has been observed in numerous animal species, but clothing and use of the internet have only been observed in one.

You just contradicted yourself.

Neither is what you are doing right now, reading this text on your computer, and it is not even sex.

That interpretation helps to explain how you can so easily dismiss your self-contradictions with "whatever."

Hows that done? Is it chosen in the same way people chose their handedness?

Most men don't look like Pierce Brosnan or Tom Cruise, either. By the way, your looking at and then jerking-off to Hustler or the internet isn't exactly "natural,"

So what if we feel the same way about you?

First of all, the vast majority of children are not molested by anyone.

Second of all, those that are are usually molested by men who practice heterosexual, not homosexual sex. The majority of child-molesters are not homosexuals.

scigirl

I did. I'll repeat myself because I love sounding like a broken record.

Note I think you are confusing this thread with my debate with geotheo. Don't. I"m not limiting this thread to christians - as our Chinese libertarian on the next page shows, homobigotry is not limited to Christianity. This thread is specifically for debunking common homobigoted arguments, whether they come from Christians, or not. OK??

scigirl

Vylo

But not until the end. Christians are in a great position of power now, as the protestant denomination holds a great amount of influence and power, and it seems the Catholic church has been on the rise for the past few years as well. Our entire economy is based upon the protestant ethic (there is a book that goes by this title explaining this situation as well if you are interested.

What about the successful, respectful ones?

What about programs to give them equal rights?

Guess that answers that.

There is nothing to show that the COMMON (not drug addicts etc.) homosexual lifestyle does anything to undermine family values. I have not seen a study yet that says that there is any adverse effect to being raised as a child by homosexual parents. You "love" gays because they are a group of people you can subjugate and exploit. You visit the most desolate areas they live in so that you can satisfy your own ego and try to justify your beliefs, and whenever one of them might get as many rights as you, whenever they might become your equal and challenge your ideology, you attack them, so as to try to preserve your ideological superiority.

For itself and the members of that particular group or sect. Others have had to fight to obtain what little resources they have, and in the rare cases where individuals in groups have been given power, it is so there is a method of causing resignation. Example: Colon Powell is a successful black man. Since he "made it" so can every other black person. Black people aren't "making it". There must be something wrong with them because Colon Powell was able to do it. This diverts attention from any means of oppression by placing the blame on the victim. The victims then become resigned to the fact there is something wrong with them and they will not "make it" as a result. The government has now managed to suppress millions of people without drawing large scale attention to societal barriers placed in the path of those people. And they managed to do it by promoting only a handful of people from that group.

Funny I have seen homosexual animals. If you are going to try to say that homosexuality is some type of biological flaw, then what about people who wear glasses?

I have seen nothing that shows this too be true.

Same can be said for heterosexuals. Think about what changes in the body during puberty. You connect a supposed "choice" to a period of intense biological change. That would only seem to strengthen an argument for being born gay.

Basicly you are saying "homosexuality causes increased chance of suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse". This is a miscorrelation. If you were in a group of people that was constantly being shunned, treated as freaks, and even being beaten to death, you might have some pyshological issues as well.

So is picking your nose.

I actually hear about this far more in heterosexual circles then anything else. Anyone listen to opie and anthony? I can't count the number of times this type of thing was discussed. They even did it at least once on the air.

The world was once considered to be flat as well. That doesn't make it true today. As for mental illness, Christianity was once a cult, of people who were thought to be mad. Of course one can imagine why when they start harping about some guy who got nailed to a piece of wood and say he was the creator of the universe.

JamesKrieger

Actually, I would claim that the comments in your post were "truly irrational, dangerous, and stupid."

Claiming something is true, doesn't make it true.



Fallacy of the appeal to nature.

Actually, homosexuality is natural...it has been observed in other species other than humans.

Even if it wasn't, that doesn't make it wrong. If doing something that isn't natural is wrong, then I suggest you go dig a hole in your backyard and start taking shits back there rather than in the toilet.

The human heart wasn't designed to have metal objects inserted inside of it. I guess that means it's immoral to have a pacemaker?

Call it what you want. Gays have sex, or they "mutually masturbate" each other. Either way, it doesn't make being a homosexual wrong.

There is no scientific evidence that homosexuality is a choice. A homosexual no more chooses to be attracted to people of the same sex than a heterosexual chooses to be attracted to people of the opposite sex.

Did you choose to be attracted to your significant other (if you have one)?

So, is being attracted to people of the opposite sex also an addiction?

Evidence, please.

I'll make it easy for you. There is no evidence to support that statement.

Actually, there is evidence that alcoholism may have a genetic component.

Second, you are comparing apples to oranges. Drug addiction and sexual orientation are completely different things.

Evidence, please.

Again, I'll make it easy for you. There is no evidence that it is a choice.

Another unsupported assertion.

Do you actually know any gay people? If you were to talk to them, you would realize that they knew they were different from others before puberty. I knew a homosexual in high school, and I knew him before puberty, and he had homosexual tendencies before he hit puberty.

Actually, you want to perpetuate the lie that it's not normal and not genetic.

This is an ad hoc explanation for the homosexual movement, with no evidence to support it.

The homosexual movement wants homosexuals to be treated as equals...nothing more.

Evidence for these statistics? Where is your source?

Bullshit. My girlfriend actually has a higher sex drive than me.

It is known that heterosexuals have many multiple partners over a lifetime. So what?

Another assertion with no evidence to support it.

Oh, you "feel" that this is the reason they were lesbians. Yet you have no evidence.

Well, I feel that you are a bigot. I guess that means that you are?

Ummm, women in general don't consume porn to the same extent that men do.

How many heterosexuals are overweight, drink, and smoke too much and live depressed lives?

Where is your evidence for these statistics?

Even if these stats are true, wouldn't you tend to have these problems if society at large was oppressive towards you?

So is picking your nose.

Fallacy of the slippery slope.

The other things wont' happen, because they don't involve consenting adults.

People once thought the earth was flat, too. But that doesn't make it so.

Homosexuality is not a mental illness, which is why it is no longer classified as such.

By your religious beliefs. So don't marry homosexuals in your church. Problem solved. Quit trying to push your religious beliefs on everyone else.

Only by your religious beliefs.

SENOR,

You have offered nothing but unsupported assertions that have been thoroughly debunked. There is no rational reason to make gay marriage illegal.

scigirl

Hey everyone - the following post may be somewhat redundant since I composed it then noticed some new replies. So sorry to repeat what my lovely colleauges have addressed. But well I"m too lazy to edit mine, plus I have references!!

Hello senor boogie woogie. All the way from China, huh?

On to your homo-bigotry commments.

Yes let’s.
Please tell me how you personally define natural. Here’s how dictionary.com defines the term:

Natural: Present in or produced by nature

Does homosexuality occur in nature? Yes, yes it does.

Homosexual behavior in wild Sumatran orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus abelii).
Homosexuality looks natural to me.

Also, you didn’t explain why un-natural things are inherently wrong simply because they are un-natural. As my colleagues previously pointed out, humans do a plethora of activities which we weren’t designed for. We weren’t designed to live to be 90, we weren’t designed to type at a computer (hence lots of carpal tunnel syndrome) we weren’t designed to go into space (so astronauts get sarcopenia), et cetera. Please explain to me why the specific act of homosexuality is immoral because it is “un-natural” and thus homosexuals should be denied basic human rights, yet other un-natural acts are ok.
Well not really. I encourage you to read up on the fetal development of our sex organs – it isn’t as clean-cut and separate as religious people would like. Here’s a thread about it with some cool embryology links:

Introductory Anatomy: Excretory & Reproductive Systems

Comparative Anatomy Topic 14: The Urogenital System

Many people are born both male and female, or a weird hybrid of the two. Why does this happen? Well during development, both “operating systems” develop in every embryo. Then, depending on the level of testosterone as determined by a complex genetic program set up by the presence or absence of the Y chromosome, one of the tubes stays, one atrophies. What is the clitoris? Simply a penis that started growing, then shrank. Problem is – this is not a very good system if you are really concerned about keeping the male and female gender completely different. Our biology indicates that our “creator” wasn’t that concerned with keeping male and female anatomy completely separate and different. Here’s some examples:

• XX males
  A sex reversal disorder occurring in 1 in 20,000 births. Genetically the child is female, but contain a piece of the Y chromosome stuck onto another chromosome. Develops testes and external male genitalia.
• XY females
  The other sex reversal disorder occurring in 1 in 20,000 births. Genetically child is male, but part of the Y chromosome is deleted or mutated, thus develops ovaries and female genitalia.
• Pseudohermaphriditism
  Can occur in XX or XY genotypes. Includes masculinized females who often have a large clitoris and labial fusion to form a scrotum-like structure. The most common cause of female pseudohermaphriditism occurs in 1 in 12,500 births. Males have underdeveloped or ambiguous genitalia. One cause, a deficit of 5-alpha reductase, results in a small penis and a blind vaginal pouch, making gender assignment difficult. Another example is androgen insensitivity, occurring in 1 in 20,000 live births. The patient is genotypically a male (XY) but has female external genitalia, a blind vaginal pouch, but no uterus or uterine tubes. Testes are present but often are mistaken for hernias.
• Klinefelter Syndrome
  Occurrence is at least 1 in 1000 male live births. Child has 47, XXY. Develops as a male but has small gonads, and are nearly always infertile. Many patients have a difficult time fitting into society, apparently because of poor body image.
• Turner Syndrome
  A female with only one X chromosome (or has two X chromosomes but part of one of the chromosomes is missing). Occurs in 1 in 4000 female live births. Patients have faulty ovaries, a broad chest with highly spaced nipples, and no or underdeveloped breasts. Patients, similar to Klinefelter patients, often have a tough time with social adjustment, and are often sterile.

So no we really aren’t made to be just male and female.
So what? I don’t plan on procreating – so should I be banned from getting married? Oh and by the way – gay people can and do procreate.

Ok so sex should be for procreation because this is the “crux” of the natural world. And you freely admit that all other sex acts that aren’t penile/vagina are equally un-natural. Yet – you are ok with those. You are being inconsistent. If non-procreative sex acts are immoral, then they are all equally wrong.
Did you read my description of old people having sex? Older folks sometimes lose the biological ability to have sex. A young gay man is more “fit” biologically to have sex than an older man who can’t even get it up, wouldn’t you agree? So let’s ban sex between old people.
See – you proved my point again. By your own definition of natural, many heterosexual sex acts are unnatural. Yet you only choose to use your definition to ban specifically homosexual acts. That is why you are a bigot.
So did you choose to be hetero? I would love to hear your testimony about how both men and women appealed to you, yet you chose to be attracted to the opposite gender.
Again you show your bigotry. You compare being gay to being an alcoholic or a drug addict. You could have just has easily said, “People are not born gay, or tour de france winners, or marathon runners, they CHOOSE to be gay or marathon runners.”

Another thing I should add to my list of homobigotry – defining gay people only by their sexual positions. How would you like to be defined soley by where your penis or vagina goes (I think you are a man but won’t assume)? Aren’t you a human with a job, interests, etc? Well so are gay people –they work, they drive, they go camping. They don’t just have anal sex all day long, so stop defining them only by that.
How do you know this? This is scigirl, not your libertarian buddies. I actually need proof of claims, ok? But – even if it’s true, so what? Don’t we all start really defining our sexual orientation around puberty? That’s when it happens for everybody – it’s called hormones.
The lie that it is normal? Well isn’t “normal” a matter of opinion? Just because they disagree with you doesn’t make them liars.
Well it is partly genetic. Let’s address this issue further. How does one determine whether behavior X is genetic? Well you do a twin study. You look at rates of homosexuality in identical twins, and if the concordance is one (if one twin is gay, the other is always gay) than it is clearly mendelian. If it is, say, .5 (half the time, when one twin is gay, the other is also gay), than genetics accounts for 50% of the behavior. Then you look at rates in fraternal twins to factor out uterine environment.

Etiology of homosexuality.
Human sexual orientation has a heritable component.
Heritable factors influence sexual orientation in women.
From the above studies, it looks like homosexuality is half genetic, half environmental (concordance rates were around 50 percent). So I guess we should only deny them half the rights that heterosexuals have.
Again, you need to provide me with sources if you want me to respect anything you have to say. But assuming those stats are true – why should the solution be to deny them rights? Why not educate them on sexual practices? Why not encourage them to get married and be monogamous so they don’t spread as much disease?
Sources please.

And so what? I wasn’t aware that we started rating the morality of people based on their median death age. By your own rationale, women are better than men because they live longer. And people who have devastating diseases such as cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy are really immoral because they die at a very young age. So if we cure HIV and suicide, and gays live to be as long as straights, will you be ok with gay people getting married then?

Maybe gays do have a higher suicide rate and are more promiscuous. This is not surprising, since they are told that they are bad, sinful, evil, wicked, and unrighteous, just for having certain feelings. I’d want to kill myself too. If you are so freaking worried about the suicide rate of gays, senor, why don’t you join the gay rights movement and help them feel better about themselves?

Since you can’t seem to support your own claims, I’ll help you out. Here’s an article that highlights the problems that gay adolescents have. What I found interesting was the author’s suggestion on how to deal with it. It wasn’t to continue to marginalize and condemn the gay teens, it was to support and accept them:
Adolescent homosexuality and concerns regarding disclosure.
So according to you, lesbians are more moral and less risky than even heterosexual couples. Can lesbians get married then?
I don’t doubt that, although it would help if you provided sources or links to back up your statements.

But how is that related to denying them the right to marry? I would think that if we accepted gays for who they were, and encouraged them to be in monogamous relationships, this would happen less. In addition, I fail to see how denying those men who finally DID want to settle down and be with only one other partner is a valid solution to this problem. Your claim makes allowing gay marriage even MORE important, not less.
Sources please. I don’t care how you feel – I care about what the facts actually are. My name isn’t feelgirl.
Who gives a shit? We should start discriminating based on looks now?
Nope that is not what I am saying. I was trying to illustrate the hypocrisy of homobigots. They quote health statistics (actually they rarely quote anything but their own opinion) and say, “homosexuality is bad because it spreads disease, therefore we should make it illegal.” Yet if public health was actually their concern, wouldn’t they also be making smoking and over-eating illegal? Smoking and over-eating cause way more health problems than gay sex. That’s a fact. Yet the apparently “concerned citizens” are only worried about the gay sex (and other really really important issues like banning Harry Potter). Why is that, if they really are only concerned about public health? It’s because – they are bigoted.
Sources please. And I still don’t understand why, even if these facts are true, we should use them to deny gays the right to get married. We let heterosexual alcoholics and drug addicts get married.
I think you are disgusting. But I still think you should have the right to walk down the street, get married, and do whatever you want in the privacy of your own bedroom without being harassed or denied health insurance for it.
Do you have experience with this activity then? Here’s a hint – gay porn isn’t necessarily indicative of what all gay men do. But it’s ok if you watch gay porn – I won’t tell anyone.

Also, lesbians don’t necessarily have anal sex.
Yes you mentioned it but you didn’t prove it.
Nope not true. See these articles:

Are children at risk for sexual abuse by homosexuals?
Adult sexual orientation and attraction to underage persons.
Homosexual behavior and child molestation: a review of the evidence.

I challenge you, senor, to find one study in PubMed which substantiates your claim that pedophiles are more likely to be homosexual than heterosexual. I will even go to the library and make a copy of it and send it to you.

Also – even if it was true (which it’s not), would that automatically make all gays pedophiles? Would you agree with this statement:

Nearly all rapists are heterosexual males.

If so, than why aren’t you trying to lock up all heterosexual males because they might rape someone?

You are once again showing your bigotry, not to mention about 3 or 4 logical fallacies. Not sure which is worse.

Why do homobigots like you always compare gay sex to screwing a dog or a child? I don’t get it.

Senor, are you married or in a relationship? Why can’t you stick to a comparison which makes sense – i.e. you and your partner? Or maybe you are afraid to. You don’t want to think that gay love can be as meaningful and wonderful as your relationships, because that might eventually lead to tolerance and understanding of how they feel. God forbid.

Have you ever stopped to think about what your life would be like if your love with your partner was condemned by society? If you couldn’t talk about her at work? If you couldn’t go out in public and simply hold her hand? If you had to hide your relationship, your feelings, your love from your families? Have you ever thought about it that way? Or are you just grossed out that men put dicks in other men’s anuses, and so you feel justified in your bigotry?

Besides, what are you doing thinking about how they have sex, anyway?
That’s gross and wrong. Don’t you have better things to do with your time? Do you want people sitting around all day thinking about where you put your penis, and then judging you for it?

Think about it.
Well let’s look at the data.

Gay and lesbian adoptive and foster care placements: can they meet the needs of waiting children?

Sexual orientation of parents and Dutch family law
Technical report: coparent or second-parent adoption by same-sex parents.

I want you to notice that these studies came from journals such as Pediatrics, Medical Law, and Social work, not from the Journal of Homosexuality. In other words, the agenda of the researchers was the welfare of children, not to promote homosexuality. In addition, the only consistent harm that I could find to children in gay families was from homobigots who made fun of the children, disapproved of the family, etc. So homobigotry should be make illegal, not homosexuality, if you are going by harm to children.

So you still want kids to live in an orphanage instead of being adopted by two loving gay parents who have been shown in several studies to be fine as parents? Sounds very cruel and anti-family to me.

So why isn’t it classified anymore as a mental illness? Were they wrong then, or wrong now? How do you define mental illness?

Besides, homosexual sex acts were illegal in certain U.S. states until this year. What does this prove? That fundamentalist Christianity makes a very poor basis for science and law (and morality, but that’s a whole nother thread)

I don’t believe in a floating sky fairy. And nature must have intended for some homosexuality, since homosexual sex is found in lots of species from ants to chimps, and it is clear that in humans, homosexuality is 50% genetic.

Repeating unsupported assertions does not make them true.

scigirl

lpetrich

I'll try to keep it short; dk likes to drag in lots of irrelevant stuff.

dk: I read somewhere there are conservatively 20,000+ Christian sects, and clearly their have been unscrupulous people that subvert religious institutions to pursue secular ends. Arianism, Nestorian and Monophysite schisms have been a pox on Christian history.

lp: However, where the Gnostics, Arians, Albigensians, etc. failed, the Protestants succeeded.

(a lot of stuff about those evil wars of the 20th cy.)

However, there has been plenty of death and destruction in previous centuries -- the absolute numbers are smaller simply because there had been fewer people available for killing and less property to destroy. But the relative numbers were sometimes high -- the Thirty Years War killed something like 1/5 to 1/3 the people in Germany, the main battleground.

(a lot of moaning and groaning about our public schools....)

lpetrich: And I note that dk never addressed the subject of homobigotry.
dk: Please note that scigirl also feels definitions a prerequisite to a fruitful discussion. I'd like to engage the discussion, but not by by slandering Christians. ... To label certain Christians from certain churches as one dimensional fanatics dehumanizes all Christians. Clearly Christians represent a diverse group of people whether they belong to the Moral Majority or not, so the definition scigirl gave needs a little work.

lp:
Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo (sarcasm).
Cry me a river.

First, dk issues sweeping condemnations of this or that, then when someone criticizes some people who are on dk's side, dk moans and groans about what sweeping condemnations they are.

DK, what's sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.

mecca777

*churns the butter*

Go scigirl! Go scigirl!

:notworthy

lpetrich

Here is some more on gender-bending in the Earth's biota:

Some fish are "serial hermaphrodites" or sex changers; they change their sex to whatever is convenient for them.

Land snails and earthworms are hermaphroditic, having organs of both sexes.

Likewise, most flowers are hermaphroditic, having both stamens and pistils. However, some plants have separate sexes of flowers -- in some cases, a plant grows both sexes of flower, and in other cases, the individual plants have only one sex of flower.

Protists, algae, and fungi often practice "isogamy", in which the sexes are alike -- except for some recognition protein. And some of these have large numbers of different "mating types" or sexes.

Aria

That was fantastic, scigirl.

Bialar Crais

Scigirl...That was frelling beautiful... What a slaughter.

I do not think senor boogie woogie will show his bigoted face here again.