Are we STILL debating this?

[DVS]

I guess I understand that humans are inquisitive by their nature and so if they don't understand something, they want to understand it. But, there are some things being "investigated" that just don't make sense to me. I thought it was widely known that a gay embryo has no more choice than a heterosexual embryo, because it is decided within the mother's womb. So, why is money STILL being spent on it?

I've added a link to the primary news story below, as well as the "related" stories that the web site had included beneath it. Of all of these stories, I guess I can understand a couple, but I don't understand the others. It seems to me that the world is still very polar and very confused.


Sexual preference chemical found in mice


Scans see 'gay brain differences'


How homosexuality is 'inherited'


Therapists offer gay 'treatment'

 

[seela]

I say it's spent, because a lot of people want to believe otherwise. And the more evidence there is supporting nature over nurture, the more difficult it will be for the nurture people to say it's a choice or a trauma or whatever. And of course there's always new information to be found, even if there is a general consensus on how it works.

There was just last week a huge debacle here, when some kind of a religious youth media started a support campaign for bi/gay kids who want to become straight. Or at least to let bi/gay kids know there is a choice in the matter. They had made a video where they interviewed a christian bi-sexual girl, who had, with lots of praying and Lord's help and support, made a happy transition into a straight kid.

The video was chock full of stereotypes, like the girl was never able to be friends with other girls before, because she was sexually attracted to them. And she was never fully a woman before, but now that she has a boyfriend, she can embrace her inner femininity and just be herself.

The catchphrase of the campaign was something about making your own decisions and not going along with what other people tell you is normal. I actually found the juxtaposition between the catch phrase and the message to be hilarious in all its banality.

The CEO or some such of the religious media group was banned by the channel owners from talking in public after he had told the journalists a story about how the world is full of gay propaganda. He had changed the channel on TV after seeing two women kiss on some show, only to land on a channel with a movie about gays. And that, my friends, is rock solid evidence of gay propaganda. Yeah, my heart really goes out to him...

Normally the religious groups here aren't very nutty, but every now and again something like this rises to the headlines and it makes me a sad panda.

 

[catalina_francisco]

It is sickening. I had a dear friend who is now dead because he caved into family pressure to try and rid himself of his gayness through their church. He was going through some rough times in general, and he just couldn't cope with them treating him like he was to be pitied and kept away from children in the family because he was obviously a bad influence and might turn them gay too. He went to the church like they wanted, he even pretended to be cured for a time, then he killed himself. What makes me even angrier is I was talking to his brother a few weeks ago and mentioned how I felt about his being pressured to get help by the family and how that made him feel as a human being, and the twit went into denial claiming his mother and himself were 100% tolerant and supportive of him being gay....what BS.

Catalina

 

[midwestyankee]

Until people stop believing that hatred of homosexuals is acceptable, then I think it's not only pertinent but valuable to continue adding to the scientific understanding of homosexuality.

Until people stop believing that they can stone someone who allegedly made homosexual advances toward them, in other words.

 

[Chiara_searches]

Until people stop believing that hatred of homosexuals is acceptable, then I think it's not only pertinent but valuable to continue adding to the scientific understanding of homosexuality.

Until people stop believing that they can stone someone who allegedly made homosexual advances toward them, in other words.

QFT

These kinds of stories, and ones like what Catalina shared, break my heart. Sure, I've been judgmental at times; but tolerance and moving toward understanding is necessary for this world. The alternative is we keep killing each other off. I am not religious but I really wish more people would practice "do unto others."

 

[DVS]

Until people stop believing that hatred of homosexuals is acceptable, then I think it's not only pertinent but valuable to continue adding to the scientific understanding of homosexuality.

Until people stop believing that they can stone someone who allegedly made homosexual advances toward them, in other words.

28 year old Thomas was just looking for a way to get Seidman's money. He lived with him and was the sole executor of Seidman's will, so it seems Seidman trusted him.

So what if Seidman made sexual advances to him. You just say sorry, but I'm not that way. You don't kill the guy. I don't care what the Bible says. Thomas is just looking for a way out of murder.

I don't want to think about how many other people might take such actions against someone just for being a certain way. And I don't want to say Seidman even made advances towards Thomas, just because he said so. Maybe Thomas was the one making advances to Seidman and was rejected. Who knows what kind of relationship these two shared. But no mater what, nothing was enough of a motive for murder.

To me, as it looks right now, Thomas killed Seidman, for money. Maybe Thomas needed money in a hurry and knew Seidman had it. Maybe he asked him for some and Seidman turned him down. From reading the story, it seems like Thomas doesn't think things through. The Bible didn't have any passages where you can kill someone because they won't give you money. But, if someone is gay...

I'm being a little flippant with this, because no matter why Seidman was killed, it was a sad and senseless act. Did he actually make advances towards Thomas? Right now, only Thomas knows, for sure. I just hope that Thomas doesn't get off with some stupid temporary insanity plea, saying God spoke to him in his dreams and told him to do it.

"Until people stop believing that" will never happen. There will always be those who feel that way, and they will give birth to kids who feel that way. Hopefully, time will change that, but people do senseless things to each other. That's a fact of life. Until they find something in the human mind that can be corrected, we'll be reading sad stories like this.

 

[midwestyankee]

28 year old Thomas was just looking for a way to get Seidman's money. He lived with him and was the sole executor of Seidman's will, so it seems Seidman trusted him.

So what if Seidman made sexual advances to him. You just say sorry, but I'm not that way. You don't kill the guy. I don't care what the Bible says. Thomas is just looking for a way out of murder.

I don't want to think about how many other people might take such actions against someone just for being a certain way. And I don't want to say Seidman even made advances towards Thomas, just because he said so. Maybe Thomas was the one making advances to Seidman and was rejected. Who knows what kind of relationship these two shared. But no mater what, nothing was enough of a motive for murder.

To me, as it looks right now, Thomas killed Seidman, for money. Maybe Thomas needed money in a hurry and knew Seidman had it. Maybe he asked him for some and Seidman turned him down. From reading the story, it seems like Thomas doesn't think things through. The Bible didn't have any passages where you can kill someone because they won't give you money. But, if someone is gay...

I'm being a little flippant with this, because no matter why Seidman was killed, it was a sad and senseless act. Did he actually make advances towards Thomas? Right now, only Thomas knows, for sure. I just hope that Thomas doesn't get off with some stupid temporary insanity plea, saying God spoke to him in his dreams and told him to do it.

"Until people stop believing that" will never happen. There will always be those who feel that way, and they will give birth to kids who feel that way. Hopefully, time will change that, but people do senseless things to each other. That's a fact of life. Until they find something in the human mind that can be corrected, we'll be reading sad stories like this.

Oh, you're probably quite right about the young man's motive. However, until people stop thinking that such an alibi as "the Bible says this is what we're supposed to do" might hold water, we have a problem and should continue working toward a solution from every possible angle.

Yes, perhaps you are being a bit flippant about this. After all, the killer could have used any number of alibis and yet he chose this one, thinking that it might actually help his case.

 

[DVS]

It is sickening. I had a dear friend who is now dead because he caved into family pressure to try and rid himself of his gayness through their church. He was going through some rough times in general, and he just couldn't cope with them treating him like he was to be pitied and kept away from children in the family because he was obviously a bad influence and might turn them gay too. He went to the church like they wanted, he even pretended to be cured for a time, then he killed himself. What makes me even angrier is I was talking to his brother a few weeks ago and mentioned how I felt about his being pressured to get help by the family and how that made him feel as a human being, and the twit went into denial claiming his mother and himself were 100% tolerant and supportive of him being gay....what BS.

Catalina

When I was growing up, the kids in our family were friends with the kids in another family. I don't know if it makes any difference, but their father was a minister in a local church. The whole family seemed to be very nice people.

After getting into high school, I understood more about social and sexual differences and found out that all of the kids in that family were either bi-sexual or lesbians, except for the oldest girl. There are three siblings. The youngest is a couple of years older that me. The boy is bi-sexual, with mostly gay leanings. The middle girl is a lesbian.

The oldest girl? As far as I know, she is heterosexual, but she met this Iranian guy and decided she would move with him back to Iran. This was not long after the Iranian hostage crisis, so nobody could figure out her reasoning. But, she left and that was that.

Both parents are dead now, and I've only heard about the boy in recent years. He's doing quite well, actually. He's now a well known professor in a large college and seems quite happy. I think he's about 60 years old, now. What I know of these kids in their evolving years is that they all had friends and were all well liked in school. Maybe that was partly because we lived in a small town. Maybe it was because it was back in the 60s and 70s.

Oh, something I forgot to add. All of these people are damn smart...every one of them. Does that say anything about the gay and lesbians of the world? This is only a small snippet of the population, but you just never know. Food for thought?

 

[FurryFury]

As the mother of a gay child I find the condemning due to "choice" ridiculous. Scratch that, as a human being, I've always found the condemning due to "choice" ridiculous. I'm intolerant of intolerance on this and many more issues.

FF

 

[JamieJ424]

People have a natural, instinctive mistrust of those who are different. If you watch kids play (and I do, often...not I'm not weird just a parent), you see it play itself out over and over. The girls play together. The boys play together. The athletic kids play together. The nerds play together. The smart kids play together. The dumb kids play together. There's a lot of grouping by ethnicity too. There are exceptions of course...speaking in generalities is always risky. These are just my general observations.

We surround ourselves with people who are like us. No getting around it...I do it, you do it, everyone does it. Some people unfortunately use that as a reason to judge and hate people unlike themselves.

However, as the world evolves, there seems to be more and more acceptance of inconsequential differences like sexual orientation and religion.

I was talking to my 8 year old son about the Holocaust, Hitler, the concentration camps, the gas chambers, and he stopped me to ask what a Jew was. I told him "Ben and David are Jews, and so is their dad." And he looked shocked and said "But they're just regular people!"

So there's hope.

J

 

[Stella_Omega]

Same old same old.

Yes, we are still debating this. As much as we'd like to have set a time limit, there is none on hatred and poo-flinging. there are new poo-flingers being born every minute of every hour and enthusiastically taught to embrace that shitty poo and fling it on whichever hated class of people their parents hate.

We'll continue to suffer through "debates" like this for several more generations, IMO. Homophobia is so useful to community leaders!

 

[Kojote]

Thinking back I never gave a damn.
In my early opinions sexual orientation was a matter of choice.
I chose to make my first experiences with a boy the same age. I would have preferred a girl as a matter of taste, but things worked out the way they did and I never regretted.
I wasn’t aware of ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ that time. I lived in a pretty small village and didn’t think about it.

A little later I asked a friend of mine who had his ‘coming out’ about being gay.
He told me that he always found men more attractive than women. And that made perfect sense to me.
I never ever questioned it again, because I understand it.
I prefer women, he prefers men. And other people prefer whatever.
I don’t have to stick my nose into turn on’s I personally find disgusting. That’s a matter of choice also.

It doesn’t matter to me if it is genetic, physical or psychological, because it’s ultimately a matter of personal choice.
Physically I was born with the disposition of a weight lifter. Mentally I was born with the disposition of a thinker.
I chose the brains and never spent much time or energy on the physical side. My choice.
Sexually I think I’m basically bisexual. I’m not repulsed by the thought of gay sex and enjoyed it at times.
I am however more attracted to women. As I said somewhere else around here I absolutely adore women in some ways and I also love their physique. So I ended up living straight most of my live.
Another choice.

I think it’s all about how our brain works.
We get born physically with instincts related to picking up stones to work with, clubbing adversaries into submission and dragging our mating partners into the den holding their hair.
But our brain is able to lead us to much more and it opens up the doors to incredibly much more choices.
Whatever one chooses to embrace is fine with me as long as consent is given.


Regarding the ‘group building’ issue:
Don’t we build a group here which looks down upon the homophobia?
We also make a ‘they versus us’ comparison, don’t we?
This one seems to be utterly human. We clutch together in like minded groups and tolerance only goes as far as one is comfortable with. There are always those who are ‘outside’ and therefore disdained.
I have no idea how to undo this one, as it seems to be a very basic part of human nature …

 

[wicked woman]

I'm reminded of a conversation that I had many years ago, with a lesbian friend. My comment, which I thought and meant to be as accepting, was that it never mattered to me what a person's sexual orientation was....unless I was hoping to have sex with them.

She told me that wasn't good enough.

I thought about it and had to agree with her point.

 

[Cattypuss]

I blame God in all this.

If people didn't feel the need for an imaginary friend (a.k.a. "God"), the world would be a much more humane place to live.

 

[Kojote]

I'm reminded of a conversation that I had many years ago, with a lesbian friend. My comment, which I thought and meant to be as accepting, was that it never mattered to me what a person's sexual orientation was....unless I was hoping to have sex with them.

She told me that wasn't good enough.

I thought about it and had to agree with her point.

Can you explain to me why this 'isn't good enough'?
I don't understand what more can be expected.
What matters to me is what kind of person somebody is. The sexual orientation is only of importance when there is attraction which could lead to sex. How can it be of importance above this?

I blame God in all this.

If people didn't feel the need for an imaginary friend (a.k.a. "God"), the world would be a much more humane place to live.

I agree with that.
But would that purge the 'group building' issue?

 

[wicked woman]

Can you explain to me why this 'isn't good enough'?
I don't understand what more can be expected.
What matters to me is what kind of person somebody is. The sexual orientation is only of importance when there is attraction which could lead to sex. How can it be of importance above this?

She meant that I was only looking at it from how it affected me. I knew that she lived in a world where she was in constant hiding about being a lesbian...for fear of her parents' rejection, for fear of losing her job, for fear of losing her housing just for starters. That if she ever became very ill. that her partner wouldn't be considered immediate family and her parents would keep her partner away.

She expected me, if I truly was supportive of homosexuality, to show it and make it known that society's treatment of homosexuality at that time, was wrong. She was right.

 

[Kojote]

She meant that I was only looking at it from how it affected me. I knew that she lived in a world where she was in constant hiding about being a lesbian...for fear of her parents' rejection, for fear of losing her job, for fear of losing her housing just for starters. That if she ever became very ill. that her partner wouldn't be considered immediate family and her parents would keep her partner away.

She expected me, if I truly was supportive of homosexuality, to show it and make it known that society's treatment of homosexuality at that time, was wrong. She was right.

Got it.
And I agree on that.

 

[DVS]

I blame God in all this.

If people didn't feel the need for an imaginary friend (a.k.a. "God"), the world would be a much more humane place to live.

I don't blame God for any of this. God didn't write the Bible. I don't believe that God hates gays, as the Westboro church members say. It's people like that who look at the words in the Bible in a contorted way and put things into people's minds that normally wouldn't be there.

Religious zealots! They've been around us for years, and will always be around us. They use the Bible as their "tool" to control their flock of followers. People who are searching for something to believe in will sometimes be caught up in these cults and get brainwashed. Some can handle the whole thing, and understand it as over the top rhetoric. But some can't, and those are the ones who are truly brainwashed. I believe the zealots and those who blindly follow them are the people who misquote and misuse the words in the Bible.

 

[Netzach]

It's not just religion, that's common but takes a bum rap. You can find persecution of teh gay in atheist marxist contexts. It boils down to paranoia about masculinity and male privilege and enforcing gender. We're always finding some new reason to kill one another.

I question the need to reiterate a million ways that it's heredeitary, versus LEAVE EVERYONE ELSE THE FUCK ALONE, PERIOD. Even if it's not hereditary, guess what, if you live in a secular mainstream, your goofy inability to get along with other people is YOUR problem, not theirs. Get over it.

 

[Cattypuss]

I don't blame God for any of this. God didn't write the Bible. I don't believe that God hates gays.

Sorry - my point must not have been clear. I believe there is no god - therefore by blaming god I am actually blaming the humans who invented and, now, believe in a god.

Sorry that that wasn't clear.