yguy

No, because their obedience to the 10C's was mechanical and rigid, a means of justifying the sense of superiority they had over others.

yguy

Obviously, the specific legislation wouldn't, but those who did so would be subject to the same villificaitons as Dr Laura, Rick Santorum and others have been.

Yes.

yguy

I think this question would be better directed at keyser-soze.

yguy

Hey - I grew up with a single, psychologically abusive mom. Never been in jail. Ted Bundy, to hear him tell it, had good parents. From this we might conclude that parenting from a single, abusive parent is as good as that from traditional, non-abusive parents, by your reasoning.

Dr Rick

That's okay; there are many different ways to interpret the same data. I can respect your opinion.

Not imo; I don't believe that the origins of a behavour determine its morality. Whether it causes benefit or harm is much more important to me.

Plumbing aside, it's obvious that there are many more similarities than differences. Both men and women can love, hate, learn, talk, embrace, sympathize, tolerate, attack, and accomplish.

Humans, more than any other creatures, can learn. What evidence is there that way "a husband and wife relate to each other in a positive way" isn't learned, or that two husbands or two wives can't learn to relate to each other, or that a child couldn't learn respect and love for a spouse from such couples?

Neither can many straights.

Many masculine men have, and they aren't so easy to classify as gay. A study in 1992 showed that while only 3% of men consider themselves gay, over 9% of them have engaged in same-sex behavour at least once since puberty. The numbers may be even more dramatic for women. Just as engaging in heterosexual sex doesn't automatically make a person straight, having same-sex doesn't mean that one is gay, or that not having any same-sex means that a person is not a homosexual.

That's the problem with these labels that attempt to divide people into an either/or category based upon behavour and belief; they are abstractions that don't account for the many shades of gray in the complex behavours of humans.


Be nice; no one here has said that they pity your son.

While you have every right to demand that we respect your opinion, there's no reason we should tolerate that kind of meanness.

yguy

Swell, but if we focus on the similarities at the expense of the awareness of the differences, we're doomed.

It would seem patent that it is learned by example, as most skills are. To ask a child to re-invent the wheel is a bit much, IMO.

Look, Doc - let's not get all sucky-faced here just because I backed off on a point. I ain't here to be anyone's buddy. I'm here for the same reason you are - to intellectually kick the asses of people whom I think need it. While I try to be fair, nice just aint the y-man. I just fake it enough to get by the rules.

I've never demanded that. All I care about is that you don't put words in my mouth, and spell my name right.

I don't see it as mean, I see it as honest. You want meanness, I would suggest Fr. Andrew is a far better example of it than I am.

Dr Rick

When do you plan to start?

Fr.Andrew

(Fr Andrew): Why? It sounds very much like you're bemoaning the possibility that it may become as socially unacceptable in the future to express contempt for pedophiles, as it is socially unacceptable now to express contempt for blacks.
Did I read you wrong?

I'm sorry that you find me "mean", yguy. I suppose that's because I don't love you and said that you were my enemy, pretty much.

"I don't see it as mean, I see it as honest."

NHGH

OK, I've had a chance to look over the materials you cited, and I have a few comments:

I hesitate to draw any firm conclusions from this snippet; I would have preferred an actual quote from Seligman himself, with relevant context provided. Still, the paper you cite does seem to be sympathetic to Seligman's viewpoint; so I'll assume for the sake of argument that he is not being too badly misrepresented here.

That said, I don't think that your quote, placed in context, can be reliably interpreted as "acceptance of pedophilia". As far as I can tell, the point of the paper is that:

1) Not every single instance of adult/child sexual contact results in actual harm, though of course many do (and when he "concluded ... that mental health researchers have vastly overstated the harmful potential of CSA [child sexual abuse]," it's important to keep in mind that this statement was in response to the view, which borders on self-caricature, that CSA invariably causes deep and lasting harm, with essentially no variation among individuals)

2) The likely effect of a hysterical reaction to the discovery that a child has been sexually exploited by a pedophile is to exacerbate rather than alleviate any harm done.

This is a topic that could be discussed at some length, but we're getting far afield here, so I'll confine myself to pointing out that a) rejection of extreme claims about CSA in no way constitutes "acceptance of pedophilia" and b) none of this, as far as I can tell has anything to do with gay marriage.

For that reason, if you still want to pursue this line of discussion, I'd suggest taking it up in a separate thread.

Nope, sure don't. As I pointed out previously, there's a difference between asserting that a particular type of conduct is not symptomatic of mental illness, and asserting that said conduct is morally acceptable. I think you'd find that most criminal behavior is not classified as mental illness (and indeed, if mental illness rises to the level of legal insanity, it excludes the conduct in question from the realm of the criminal.

As for the document you cite here, I note that it comes from a source which seems to have an axe to grind, so I'd be very careful about accepting its contents uncritically. I might get around to actually examining the issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior discussed in this article sometime next week, to see what it actually says, but frankly I doubt I'll have the time.

Autonemesis

You forgot to mention that many of them are homosexuals, too.

Then go have some kids, or you're a hypocrite. But then, you're probably not even married, so there's that hurdle to leap first.

As a gay-baiting troll, I give you a 4 out of 10. Not bad, but lots more work is needed to bolster your style and put some fake substance into your sound bites (that you don't have any children helps a lot - I suggest you remain childless for best effect). You are getting more laughs than you are getting people hot under the collar. If you want to be famous for hating gays, take some lessons from the master: Clayton Cramer. There's a cottage industry of FAQs, blogs and websites flaming this guy. He is truly the master. You're a hack, but there's some potential there, some real natural talent that just needs to be shaped by the master troll's touch.