Treacle Worshipper

Originally posted by yguy
http://www.actupny.org/

Hmm. An organisation of people who want to find a cure for AIDS and educate so that fewer people catch AIDS. Why is this a problem? Worldwide more hets than gays have AIDS; young girls are raped in Africa because of the myth than a man can cure himself of AIDS by having sex with a virgin. I would've thought finding a cure & educating such ignorant people was to be supported, even by those who dislike gays.

http://www.queernation.com/

And a web comic that proclaims itself to be satirical on the main page. Surely you're aware of the meaning and use of satire? If not, I suggest you read "Gulliver's Travels" - the original uncut version, not the kiddies' book.

Are these really the "worst" you can find?

Lobstrosity:
...a vast gay conspiracy that thrives on throwing HIV at children?
"Get your HIV snowballs over here! One for 50p, three for a pound! With extra splat!"
(Okay, that was in truly bad taste. I should really keep my sense of humour to myself.)
TW

yguy

My apologies, ma'am. Those groups are evidently going - or have gone - the way of NAMBLA. They were much in the news years ago, but the QN site hasn't been updated in 2 years.

However, though I cannot point to an organization or two which is the focal point of the more repulsive aspects of "gay culture", it is evident that the mentality which spawned ActUp and QN has not died:

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31116

The only reason all that money was needed in the first place was that so many male homosexuals were irresponsibly promiscuous. They have quite a bit of chutzpah demanding that mainstream America solve a problem they created for themselves.

Salmon of Doubt

Oh, and like none of America's problems were created by some of the same Americans that were affected by the problems? I hardly think that is a convincing argument. You can apply that to almost anything. Giving money to stop AIDS and educate people is a good thing, period.

And as male promiscuity is such a problem, why don't we give all men drugs to stop them feeling sexual impulses? Would you see a problem with that?

That other link does highlight a problem, in that the university did nothing to combat it, and that people wanted to do it in the first place. But I think that promiscuity in men, gay and straight, is something that will always be a problem in this sort of situation, and it will only be remedied by educating people, not sticking our heads in the sand and banning the activity, as people will just go ahead and do it anyway if we take that route.

But if no-one is willing to admit that teenagers can be gay, the gay ones will either get unbelievably depressed, of go ahead and be gay anyway behind closed doors where we can't see how many diseases they are getting.

If you do tell kids people can be gay, then more of them will admit to it. And you may percieve an increase in some 'gay problems'

But if you go one step further and educate people from a younger age about all the aspects of sex, and how to do it in a loving relationship, or at least with protection, then we should see the numbers of happy gay people rise, and the numbers of STDs fall.

yguy

I'm not arguing that point so much. What I object to is groups like Actup blaming others for problems which resulted from their own irresponsibility. I didn't tell anybody that promiscuous sex - "gay" or otherwise - is cool; they did.

I wouldn't favor drugging anybody. I think people of all sexual dispositions should be held responsible for their actions.

Ma'am, "education" along these lines has been going on about as long as you've been alive. It doesn't work because people aren't allowed to feel the pain their foolishness causes.

Look, I don't advocate taunting homosexuals, harassing them, or anything like that. You've probably heard of the Stonewall riot that happened in the 60's. If the account I heard is correct, it was triggered by some slimeball cop who started taunting and groping this one lesbian who fought back, after which all hell broke lose. It empowered radical homosexuals by giving them an object of justified hatred; so those of us on my side of the issue need to make sure what was in that cop isn't in us.

That said, it is wrong to cast anyone as a bigot who merely voices any negative opinion about homosexuality, and I think you would do yourself a favor to distance yourself from those types.

Salmon of Doubt

I don't really see the relevance of that statement. My personal values of monogamy weren't just in me from birth, they had to be taught. So you can't say that education never works. Or can I not possibly know what I'm talking about because I haven't yet felt any damage from having tons of sex with loads of people?

Although I do agree that people should be able to have views opposing homosexuality without being discriminated against or called homophobic. It's just when people put those views into action by trying to infringe on other people's rights and lives that there's a problem. Having said that, I can understand how people can be quick to label people as homophobic. To people who just don't see anything wrong with being gay, anyone who does is going to seem extrmely odd. But yes, the issue shouldn't be turned round to discriminate on anyone.

Rain Dog

What a godsend AIDS/HIV has been for gay-bashing bigots. One wonders what they got on about before it came along.

yguy

I was speaking in a general sense. Obviously there are those like yourself who try to be responsible, but the the "queer" website at UC Berkeley obviously caters to those who are not. People like that are screwing it up for the rest of you, so you guys need to draw a line between yourselves and them just the way most homosexual groups did with NAMBLA. If you coddle them, they'll just drag you down with them.

Nowhere357

I'm wondering, yguy, what you make of this:

The Natural "Crime Against Nature"
A Brief Survey of Homosexual Behaviors In Animals
An essay in hypertext by Scott Bidstrup
"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
--J.B.S. Haldane, evolutionary biologist

The "Crime Against Nature"
Sodomy has been stigmatized for century upon century, and in many cultures across the world and through time, mostly seeking to stigmatize relationships between members of the same sex. Almost invariably, when it is criminalized, those who criminalize it (or would do so) refer to it as the "crime against nature" or the "sin against nature." The presumption is that homosexual behavior is a perversion, and a uniquely human perversion, engaged in as the result of what is presumed to be a learned attraction to members of the same sex.
There's only one problem with that assumption: None of it is true.

J.B.S. Haldane may not have had homosexuality in mind when he uttered his famous quote about a queer universe, but it has proven to be far more prescient than he could ever have imagined. In the approximately 1,000 to 3,000 species whose behavior has been well researched and described in the literature, approximately 450 have been shown to have clear homosexual behaviors. As we'll learn in this essay, homosexuality is not at all exclusively a western, European cultural pattern as some Christian and Muslim fundamentalists and Afrocentrists (and even some African politicians) have long maintained. It's not even unique to humans. And any homosexual behavior you care to name - anal sex, same sex kissing, long-term pair bonding between members of the same sex, courtship rituals unique to homosexual couples, all these and many more are all commonly found in the animal kingdom.

The Depth and Breadth of Human and Animal Homosexuality
Homosexuality, for the purposes of this essay, can be defined as pair bonding and sex occuring between two or more members of the same sex in the same species.
The depth and breadth of human homosexual experience is far more broad than most heterosexuals realize. Far more than just a quick romp in bed, homosexuality often, even usually, involves pair bonding as deep and as long-lasting as between members of heterosexual couples. Homosexual couples have been surveyed to determine just how pair-bonding compares to heterosexual couples, and it has been found that they tend to bond between pairs (though bonded groups of more than two are not unknown), and those bonds tend to compare to those of heterosexual couples for longevity and depth of bonding. How often does this occur? The figures vary depending on how the question is asked, but homosexuality runs between 3.5% and 10.1% of the population. These numbers are surpisingly consistent across cultures and across time. The percentage of gays who form pair bonds? While I haven't seen numbers, the number has to be quite high. Among my gay acquaintences, most are in long term relationships, and only a couple of them are single. Most of those that are single have recently left relationships and are actively looking for partners. Judging from the content of the personals column, this has to be the norm.

This is not to say that all gays are tending to pair-bond. Some elect to have promiscuous, anonymous sex and don't want to be involved in relationships. Yet it's been my experience that this is usually the case with younger gay men, and often reflects a lack of emotional maturity. By the time such men are about thirty years of age, they begin to long for the emotional involvement and commitment that long term relationships offer. And they then look to settle into such relationships.

In terms of breadth of experience, it runs the gamut from mutual masturbation to anal and oral sex, petting, kissing and caressing, and such sex frequently involving fetishes.

Homosexual behavior across the animal kingdom runs the gamut too. We don't know if there are any fetishes involved, since we can't ask, and most animals don't make tools, but we do know that every other sexual behavior engaged in by human homosexuals has been observed in homosexual animals, right up to and including the fabrication and use of sexual appliances. Among dolphins, use of the blowhole as a receptive orofice has even been observed!

Same-Sex Pair Bonding in Animals
Just as in humans, animals often form long-term same-sex relationships. In species in which this normally occurs in heterosexual couples, that shouldn't come as a great surprise, but it does come as a surprise in species where heterosexual pair-bonds don't normally form for long if at all. This is true of bottlenose dolphins, which are not known to form heterosexual pair bonds, but which do in fact form homosexual pair bonds, including sex, and often lasting for life.
In animals in which "bachelor groups" form, such as bison, gazelles, antelope, sage grouse and Guinean cocks-of-the-rock, it is not uncommon for same sex pair bonds to form and last until one or the other member of the pair departs the relationship and breeds. It is also not uncommon for homosexual preference to form among members of such bachelor groups; when offered the opportunity to breed unencumbered with members of the opposite sex or the same sex, they choose the same sex.

The human pattern of bisexuality also appears in animals. In some cases, animals prefer same sex at one point in their lives, and change preference later. They may even change back and forth. In some cases, animals may seek sex with partners of either sex at random.

In animals with a seasonal breeding pattern, homosexuality can even be seasonal. Male walruses, for example, often form homosexual pair bonds and have sex with each other outside of the breeding season, but will revert to a heterosexual pattern during the normal breeding season.

Not At All Unusual
Lest you are tempted to believe that all of this is highly unusual and well out of the ordinary, you're in for quite a surprise. Homosexual behavior is not only common, but even more common in other species than in humans. While numbers are hard to come by, there are a few that present some interesting patterns. In ostriches, male homosexuality is much more common than bisexuality, but among mule deer, bisexuality is more common than homosexuality. Among our closest living relatives, the bonobo chimpanzees, few if any are either exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. Indeed, all that have been observed are exclusively permanently bisexual.
As for numbers, here are a few:


species % homosexual % bisexual % heterosexual
silver gulls (females) 10 11 79
black headed gulls (both sexes) 22 15 63
Japanese macaques (both sexes) 9 56 35
bonobo chimpanzees (both sexes) 0 100 0
galahs (both sexes) 44 11 44
source: Bruce Bahemihl, Ph.D., Biological Exhuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, St. Martin's Press, 2000, page 35

The occurence of homosexuality doesn't seem to be correlated with the predominance of a sex within a species. Some species show skewed sex ratios, but among them, homosexuality is not more common than in other species. For example, giant cowbirds and redwing blackbirds show male to female ratios as high as four to one, and in boat-tailed grackles and sparrow hawks, females predominate, but homosexuality has not been demonstrated in either species. Why is a mystery.

Homosexuality in the animal kingdom is an undeniable fact. It is as natural as can be. Since it is so common, it is therefore logical for the opponents of gay rights to try to explain it away.


Trying To Explain Away Animal Homosexuality
"Pseudo-heterosexuality." This is the favorite explanation of gay rights opponents. They claim that homosexuality in animals is the result of a shortage of, or unavailability of, heterosexual mates. There are a number of problems with this hypothesis.
First, in many species with skewed sex ratios, homosexuality is often seen more frequently in the sex which is in shorter supply rather than in the sex with a surplus of individuals.

Second, in some species where homosexual bonds form in a surplus sex, the other sex does not form homosexual bonds when it is in surplus. Humboldt penguins are an example. Males form homosexual bonds when there is a surplus of males, but females do not do so when they are in surplus.

Third, in other species, homosexual mountings occur with the same frequency regardless of whether there is a surplus, and sometimes even more frequently among balanced populations than skewed ones. Indeed, among yellow baboons, between 17% and 24% of younger individuals engage in same-sex mountings, when their sexes are roughly equal in their population, but among older yellow baboons, the males eventually outnumber the females by two-to-one, but homosexual mountings occur in only about 10% of such older individuals.

The "deprived of heterosexuality" argument. A variation on the pseudo-heterosexuality argument, this argument postulates that lower ranked males are deprived of the opportunity to mate and therefore turn to other males for sexual satisfaction.

The problem with this argument is that in many species in which harem-guarding occurs, there is no difference between higher ranking males and lower ranking ones as to the frequency of their homosexual mountings. This has been demonstrated in musk oxen, American bison, and New Zealand sea lions among others.

Among female homosexual pairs of Japanese macaques and Hanuman langurs engaging in homosexual behaviors, males approaching the pair may be threatened or even attacked.

When homosexual bonding does occur in the absence of opposite sex pairs, members of such a pair often resist attempts to 'convert' them back into heterosexual relationships. Even when deprived of their bonded partner, white-fronted Amazon parrots will not revert, and long-eared hedgehogs have refused heterosexual partners for as long as two and a half years, much of their natural lifetime. In the case of Stellar's sea eagles and female barn owls, both housed without opposite sexed members of their species, homosexual pair bonds among females were strong enough that when inseminated, they coparented the chicks that resulted.

Homosexual bonds can be tight. Among male rhesus macaques, crab-eating macaques, bottlenosed dolphins, cheetahs and black-headed gulls with homosexual bonded partners, the members of the pair exhibited considerable distress at being separated from their partners. In all cases, the individuals ignored opposite sex partners offered them, and showed considerable joy and exhuberance at the reintroduction of their partners.

The "Mistaken Identity" hypothesis. This one seeks to explain animal homosexuality by claiming that the same sex partner is 'confused' and unable to identify a member of the opposite sex.

The problem here is that in some animals, the difference between sexes are obvious. Vastly different body color, shape or size are an obvious clue, yet in these species, homosexual bonds still form, even when body shape precludes easy homosexual mounting.

Another problem with this hypothesis is the fact that homosexual couples often engage in very different courtship rituals than do heterosexual couples. If it were a case of mistaken identity, how would this happen? In the case of bisexual animals, it has been seen that one set of courtship rituals are used by the same individual when courting homosexual versus heterosexual partners. This would not happen if the problem were a case of mistaken identity.

The "Gross Abnormalities of Behavior" hypothesis. The assumption here is that the behavior is a manifestation of a disease process.

Scientists looking into this hypothesis often examine animals for genital abnormalities, on the assumption that there is some kind of hormonal imbalance. The fact is that they rarely ever find abnormalities, never with enough frequency for it to be statistically meaningful. That's because of the mistaken assumption by some scientists that homosexuality is some sort of hermaphroditic condition. It's not, and that's why they never find what they're looking for.

If homosexuality were a manifestation of a disease process, why is homosexuality observed in roughly the same degree in captive populations versus wild populations, or in diverse wild populations? Whatever would be causing the disease cannot be equally present in all cases, both in the field and in the wild, so differences in occurrence should show up. But they rarely do. Why?

The "population control" hypothesis. The problem with this one is that field observations directly counter it. It has been observed in ochre-bellied flycatchers and ruffed grouse populations among others, that even when opposite sex partners, territories and breeding grounds are all available, some individuals still form homosexual bonds, and the ratio by which they do rarely differs even when the population is under stress.


Something's Not Quite Right At The Zoo
Critics of this research like to point out that if homosexuality actually existed in animals, it would have been observed in zoos. Well, it has been, and for as long as zoos have been kept.
Zoo keepers who have observed this behavior historically ascribed it to the presence of stressors that exist in zoos that are not present in the wild. That was always the assumption. Such factors as same-sex isolation. Lack of stimulating activities. Unnatural living quarters. Unnatural diet. Then when field reports of similar behaviors started coming in, the existence of homosexuality in animals became to great to ignore. Today, animal behaviorists are unanimous in accepting the fact of animal homosexuality.


Conclusion
There's clearly a wide range of homosexual behaviors in the animal kingdom. It's widespread, common and impossible to deny or explain away any longer. Homosexuality is natural as green grass in summer, and it's high time we accepted that fact.
The birds do it. It's been described in 130 species of birds. The southeastern blueberry bees do it. Same sex pairs of animals kiss and caress each other with obvious affection and tenderness. Male pairs and female pairs form long-lasting pair-bonds and reject, threaten, even fight off potential opposite sex partners when they are presented with them. Same sex partners engage in almost every conceivable means of sexual expression throughout the animal kingdom.

It's high time we quit criminalizing something that is so normal, so natural, so harmless and so common among animals and recognize that what we call "sodomy" is really quite natural after all.

We're animals. And being animals, we should quit trying to pretend that we're not. What we call a "crime against nature" isn't unnatural, and it shouldn't be a crime.

dk

Salmon of Doubt: dk, that reads like a muddled confused rant from an hysterical person determined to waffle on about anything that may even sound like it helps his point of view. Quilt of deniability? What rubbish. So no, it's not any clearer, but please don't explain further.
dk: Have I really, now. A quick review or this thread lays that dog to rest. The denial of gay culture, gay agenda, gay promiscuity, gay rights movement and even a gay propensity for anal sex dominates this thread.

Salmon of Doubt: I originally wrote a paragraph here explaining my response, but I figure it's not worth it as you've already made up your mind and I know this discussion is going nowhere.
dk: If this discussion has gone nowhere then it is because proponents of SSM devote themselves to quilt of deniability. In 1986 Dr. Coop asked for compulsory identification of virus carriers, and acknowledged that compulsory testing would drive many sick people from seeking treatment. But Its now 2003 and there has been no backlash against homosexuals. If gays were worried about a backlash they certainly would not lobby for gay unions, gay adoption, or for gay job benefits for their partners. Its time to drop the pretense and move forward. I’m all for education about hiv/aids in public schools, but only if accompanied by compulsory testing and accountability. This is a public health issue not a privacy issue. 14-19 year old high schools students don’t have jobs, so their need for treatment supersedes privacy. What’s clear is that sex education has failed for the last 20 years because young people have been victimized by politics. From my perspective the pro gay marriage (PGM) crowd has put up a stone wall precisely because they fear visibility and accountability. With power comes responsibility. Its time to deliver.

• ”In a 1980 interview with a NYC gay magazine, Christopher Street, Dan Williams noted, “One affect of gay liberation is that sex has been institutionalized and franchised. Twenty years ago there might have been a 1,000 men on any night having sex in baths and parks. Now there are 10-20,000 men having sex at baths, back room bars, bookstores, porno theatres, the Rambles, and a wide range of other places as well. The plethora of new opportunities poses a public health problem that’s growing with every new bath in town.” ----- [1]
• “Risky Social Venues
  The social structure of gay culture is another factor supporting high-risk behavior. In many cities, gay bars and public sex areas are the only gathering sites for gay men. Even in San Francisco, where there are more social options available to gay men, the context in which gay men can be together is often one that does not promote safer sex.
  "When I go to a bar, I'm amazed at the ability of young gay people to have a phenomenal time," says Romero. "Conversely, I think, my God, what are we doing to ourselves? I'm watching us practice unsafe and unhealthy behaviors, like drinking, drug abuse, sex abuse. I think how sad it is that this is the only place where we can be together."
  ----- [2]

1. page 20; As the Band Played On, and the AIDs Epidemic ©, by Randy Shilts. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hai/news.../fall98-3.html

yguy

I don't suppose rape and infanticide are unnatural either.

I've never argued against homosexuality on the grounds that it's a "crime against nature", as I find the concept incomprhenisble on its face; and I don't remember anyone else doing it in the last 20 years.