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Exactly. It's just like you can't choose not to see David Bowie as the magnificent bastard that he is. You're just predisposed to.

Shadowbrand wrote:I'm getting two of my ribs removed....Guess why.

To have the most awkward post bbq announcement ever?

I introduce to you...The Kinsey Scale!

Ahtman wrote:

Shadowbrand wrote:I'm getting two of my ribs removed....Guess why.

To have the most awkward post bbq announcement ever?

Can I put in an order for baby back ribs?

Ahtman wrote:

Shadowbrand wrote:I'm getting two of my ribs removed....Guess why.

To have the most awkward post bbq announcement ever?

I introduce to you...The Kinsey Scale!

I would say 0 and 6 don't really exist apart from people "defining" themselves as something and sticking to it due to social norms.

In fact, I'd think that 99% of the population falls in 2-4 if they're really honest with themselves.

Grakmar wrote:I would say 0 and 6 don't really exist apart from people "defining" themselves as something and sticking to it due to social norms.

I think you're right about that. As I said, these absolutist terms are only really useful for bigots, activists, and politicians.

No thanks !

Grakmar wrote:I would say 0 and 6 don't really exist apart from people "defining" themselves as something and sticking to it due to social norms.

I have to imagine that the people who spent their life studying the subject didn't accidentally put those on there, or did so as a lark. You'll notice that it doesn't give percentages of those who make up each different section, and like most things, I imagine the absolutes make up a very small amount, and those that do aren't there becuase they are pretending for society. The scale isn't based on what people pretend to be. It also isn't an absolute, like the Dragonball power meter, but a ephemeral chart that people move around in from one degree to another over the course of their life. It doesn't say "you are in this column and it defines you entirely".

I would hazard a guess that the amount of pure heterosexuals is probably equal to the amount who are purely homosexual (IE ~4% of the population), with everyone else somewhere in between.

Melissia wrote:

generalgrog wrote:The scientific idea that people are born with a gay gene is a relatively new thing and people in good conscience can choose to not believe in shaky science.

... it's not shaky. You refuse to understand the science, but it's actually quite good. In fact the very term "gay gene" itself shows your ignorance, because something so complicated as sexual attraction is not decided by a single gene. Indeed, science actually proposes sexuality exists on a scale rather than a yes/no/other, a sort of scale hetween heterosexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality, and everyone falls somewhere on the scale (tendinbg closer towards bisexuality than many people would readily admit).

Melissia can you link me your "Best shot" at something that explains the science that is quite good? I'm genuinely curious.

thanks,
GG


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Howard A Treesong wrote:..... The fact is that you have a stance on homosexuality based on your upbringing.....

You don't know anything at all about my upbringing. I wasn't raised in a religious household, in fact my parents still are not religious. Most of my younger thought was influenced by public school education and star trek. I grew up an athiest. You could say that I am the ying to dogmas yang.

GG

generalgrog wrote:
Wrong....

Being black and of African descent is an obvious characteristic, and there is a legacy of slavery(400 years) to contend with. The scientific idea that people are born with a gay gene is a relatively new thing and people in good conscience can choose to not believe in shaky science. That does not make them a bigot.

Whether or not something is obvious has not bearing on whether or not its intrinsic, and whether or not something is intrinsic has no bearing on whether or not its genetic.

And you're right, not believing in shaky science doesn't make you a bigot. However, when you start going on about how a particular intrinsic characteristic is deviant in the moral sense, that makes you a bigot.

generalgrog wrote:
And you would continue to go on being wrong. Peter Gomes married homosexuals before it was legalized..

http://www.atoast2wealth.com/2011/03/02/gay-minister-of-harvard-supported-by-cogic-bishop-charles-blake-died/

Note that I was speculating as to why Blake invited him to speak, not specifically claiming that those reasons were tied to the actual decision. And your article doesn't really refute any of those possibilities, save for the one regarding Gomes' views on homosexuality. It simply, and broadly, claimed that Blake support Gomes without any significant evidence.

generalgrog wrote:
Missed the point again....the word bigot is such a "firebrand" and so full of stigmatic baggage for Americans that no one wants to be labeled a bigot..so it's an emotional tactic to throw that at people to get them realing back on their heals... Whoooaa whooaaa am I really a bigot?

I doubt anyone really wanted to be labeled a bigot before the Civil Rights Movement either. Generally people aren't fond of being considered irrational or obstinate regarding anything, let alone something related to intolerance.

generalgrog wrote:
It's what I would call a "low blow". In the context of homosexual marriage, and religious beliefs thereof, It's not fair to the people that get bombarded with it and it cheapens the usage. This is why African Americans like Blake are offended by it's usage in this context.

Its a word that is often misused, sure, but that doesn't mean it can't be used accurately. Simply holding a religious belief regarding something doesn't absolve you of criticism for holding that belief.

BaronIveagh wrote:
I might point out that your idea of atheism is very different then some atheists ideas of atheism, which were and are very active indeed. As in the 'renounce faith or we will execute you' sense of being active. I personally liked the People's Socialist Republic of Albania burning the Franciscan monks alive in the name of atheism. It has such delicious religious overtones. Just being caught with a bible or other religious object was an automatic and very long prison sentence.

Oh, and then there's Pol Pot, who took atheism beyond even that,with upwards of 60,000 Buddhist monks alone executed for their faith. Numbers for Christianity and Islam were unavailable at the time of my posting, but I do know they went even further against those faiths as they were viewed as 'pro-western'.

We can play Persecution Chess all day long if you really want to, but it doesn't prove much.

Also, you're not actually addressing my point; it's perfectly possible for someone to persecute someone else for their faith without having any faith of their own.

Further, I'd suggest that unless you consider Europe, the US, and China to be developing countries, religion is gaining ground. Just not necessarily Catholicism.

The fastest-growing 'religious affiliation' in the United States is "none." It holds a larger share than it ever has, and since that pie's not getting bigger, well...

Pew does a poll on it yearly, it's easy to find.

Europe's also dropping, lead from the top down by the Scandinavian countries. I don't know about China's numbers, but yes, I'd say they're developing.

generalgrog wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Howard A Treesong wrote:..... The fact is that you have a stance on homosexuality based on your upbringing.....

You don't know anything at all about my upbringing. I wasn't raised in a religious household, in fact my parents still are not religious. Most of my younger thought was influenced by public school education and star trek. I grew up an athiest. You could say that I am the ying to dogmas yang.

GG

What the hell went wrong then, how did you get sucked into all this rather extreme christian values stuff?

Still though, can you *choose* who you are attracted to and who you fall in love with? That was the main point of my post.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

What the hell went wrong then,.......

How Ironic.

Not going to even respond to you when you start off with that premise, Howard.

GG

I'm sorry, I just assumed you were the hateful way you are because you were indoctrinated from young childhood. That's the usual explanation.

But I've given you an easy excuse to excuse yourself from answering a very simple point, lucky you don't have to address that eh? Can you choose who you fall in love with? If not, then homosexuality isn't a choice. Whether or not you can prove the existence of gay genes is a bit moot after that.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Can you choose who you fall in love with?

Yes. Marry anyway. I don't think your argument is especially good using that example.

I'm talking about falling in love, not marriage. You don't choose who you fall in love with, it just happens.

That's certainly one experience of what love is about.

generalgrog wrote:I'm genuinely curious.

I don't believe for an instant that you're actually curious. Be that as it may:

Is homosexuality familial? A review, some data, and a suggestion
Richard C. Pillard, Jeannette Poumadere and Ruth A. Carretta

This report summarizes evidence that sexual orientation is familial. Family studies report that homosexual subjects have more homosexual siblings than do heterosexual subjects and more than would be expected given population frequencies. Twin studies find in general a higher concordance in sexual orientation among monozygotic than among dizygotic twins.

A 1981 study which determines that genetically similar siblings tend to also have similar sexualities, especially twins.

Yes, they had growing proof of homosexuality as influenced by genetic traits even as early as thirty years ago.

No behavior is entirely genetic. Quite a bit of it is developed through the chemistry of the body in the early age, for example.

Again, I still don't believe for an instant that it matters to you.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Relapse wrote:

nomsheep wrote:

Ouze wrote:

nomsheep wrote:@ ouze: yes but smallpox kills, personal faith not so much.

Nom

My point was in rebuttal to your post that "true faith would survive the internet age, because it's survived over 3,000 years". Smallpox is substantially older than 3,000 years old and has been eradicated.

The argument "since it's been around a long time, it will therefore be around forever" is not very compelling to me.

My point wasnt phrased very well or at all tbh.
Smallpox kills therefore lots of people work to destroy it. My personal faith harms no one hence less people will try and destroy it so it will last longer.

Nom

Edit: on a larger scale organized religon can be harmful but most peoples personal faith/creed or religon is not.

To be honest, even when people work to destroy someone's personal faith in an obvious way, such as Persecution of various levels, from mockery up to and including death, it somehow ends up boomranging many times and adding to the base of people that subscribe to a faith.
Christianity is a prime example of something where the Romans went into overdrive to eradicate. It went on to outlast the Empire and become a driving force in the world.

It was the Emperor Constantine who confirmed Christianity as the official state religion and set up the Council of Nicaea that resulted in the establishment of the Nicene Creed as the fundamental statement of faith that has persisted in mainstream Christianity even since.

I call your attention to 300 years of Christians being persecuted in Italy and Roman territories up to the time of Constantine. There was a reason they took to hiding out in the catacombs.

Manchu wrote:Melissia and Mannahnin, you may be interested in this, too:

American Catholics are more tolerant than Americans in general and members of other Christian denominations on a variety of issues concerning homosexuals and same-sex couples, according to a study issued March 22 by the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute.

http://www.uscatholic.org/news/2011/03/study-catholics-more-tolerant-other-christians-same-sex-issues

...a brief night's sleep, a day's work and five pages later...

Just wanted to pop in to say that I did see this, and that it's no surprise to me at all. I'm aware that Catholics are one of the most progressive and socially-progressive branches of American Christianity, and I appreciate it. It's no wonder that Santorum (despite being a Catholic) gets slaughtered by Romney among Catholic Republican primary voters every time. It's because he's way out there and way more socially-conservative than they are.

Melissia wrote:

generalgrog wrote:I'm genuinely curious.

I don't believe for an instant that you're actually curious. Be that as it may:

Is homosexuality familial? A review, some data, and a suggestion
Richard C. Pillard, Jeannette Poumadere and Ruth A. Carretta.

I did a google search and can't seem to get his report without having to pay money. I saw some in the american psychiatric review on google books but it only had snippets. I suppose I could try the library here but really I'm a bit too lazy for that. Do you have a .pdf or something? Also is this report from 30 years ago the best?

GG

But we can't just throw out the consequences of our core beliefs because they don't square with what is possible and even for many of us preferable in civil society more generally. Santorum's pitch is to people who are confused the other way around and want to improperly impose the Catholic worldview on everyone else via the law.

generalgrog wrote:Also is this report from 30 years ago the best?

GG

No it's not the best. It's just the first thing that popped up in my search.

Don't know why you think I'd give some random religious fundy on the internet my "best" when, as I stated before, I don't really believe that it matters what I send you. Sometimes I barely even give my own teachers my best (distracted, busy, etc), and I actually care what they think

Melissia wrote:

generalgrog wrote:Also is this report from 30 years ago the best?

GG

No it's not the best. It's just the first thing that popped up in my search.

Don't know why you think I'd give some random religious fundy on the internet my "best" when, as I stated before, I don't really believe that it matters what I send you. Sometimes I barely even give my own teachers my best (distracted, busy, etc), and I actually care what they think

I hope everyone is taking notice here ^^^^^^^


GG

Why? It's not like you are. I've given you sources in the past, you've basically ignored them.

I have no inclination to believe you'd act any different now..

GG, maybe try Searching Melissia's past posts for "gay" or "study"? Or Sebster's? I know this stuff has been posted before.

generalgrog wrote: The scientific idea that people are born with a gay gene is a relatively new thing and people in good conscience can choose to not believe in shaky science.

Yet those same people often insist on believing that a holy ghost exists sight unseen and that his father created the universe and expects people to folllow the words in an old book of dubious/contested origin open to varied interpretations.

I can't think of anything much more "shakey" to base one's life beliefs on then that...

Reaches out hand.......hand gets slapped.....I think we're done here.

GG

Trying to sound indignant does nothing to support your poor argument.

Howard A Treesong wrote:I'm talking about falling in love, not marriage. You don't choose who you fall in love with, it just happens.

When you're older, you're learn thats called "lust."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

generalgrog wrote:Reaches out hand.......hand gets slapped.....I think we're done here.

GG

I'd be interested in these studies as well, but I'm not going to wade through Melissia's previous anti Christian posts to find it.

For the record I am a friend of homosexuals by trying to save them from the horrors of marriage. Run Forrest Run!