Asking how and why is not asking for purpose. Asking how something works or why something turns out the way it does is the pursuit of science. It doesn't have to mean that there's purpose, design, or intent behind it. I understand that perfectly well. What I'm asking is what happens in the human embryo to produce what we have before us (homosexuality)? Well, it turns out that there is quite a lot!

If you go up the page a little further, watch that video I posted about epigenetics. It pretty clearly sums up most of what modern science is saying about the developmental processes resulting in homosexuality.

I'm not sure what your arguments are really demanding. The point is simple and it goes like this:

sex=reproduction
sometimes doesn't always work, either by human design (condoms, pulling out) or by accident (infertilization, homosexuality)
these 'accidents' can be explained by science via cause and effect, not reasons, purposes, or design

Surely we can agree to the same principles explained like that. We use terms like "the penis is FOR reproduction" but that's not what we mean. What we're really saying is, "The penis is an instrument which, when inserted into a female's vagina, may result in reproduction." And this is the form that natural selection rewards (by passing on genes).

Yes, ok, I was reading your "why" in a different manner. Your video was great info, and sure, there are a lot of scientific achievements in here which are fascinating.

What I am "demanding" is an alternative speech, a new narrative of things in which homosexuality is not seen as a "malfunction" or a "birth deficit", as if the homosexual is "lacking" something that the "ideal" human being has and he doesn't, mainly because the "ideal" human being doesn't exist, really.

This has the advantage of embracing homosexuality within our society in a more natural way. Homosexuality is an accident. Granted. But so is Heterosexuality. And we should be aware that we are all trying to get along in this quick life, we are no different from one another in any qualitative way... well my 2 cents anyway.

I like your way of thinking, Luis. PS We share the same first name...yours in Spanish mine in English...what do u suppose THAT means? lol

Does anyone know of information on religous demographics of gay people? I've frequently run into assertions that 'most' gays are atheists, which I find difficult to find credible.

lewis.breland wrote:

Loren Michael wrote:Have you considered that confronting people, particularly when in a bar, is going to make them get defensive and hyperbolic, staking out positions that may be extreme even for them?

It wasn't a confrontation, but a discussion. It started as a discussion with one other person and many others joined. I will admit to my mischeif in entertaining the conversation and people's views. It was fun.

Perceptions can easily differ.

Loren Michael wrote:Have you considered that confronting people, particularly when in a bar, is going to make them get defensive and hyperbolic, staking out positions that may be extreme even for them?

If you actively seek to get people to think about their beliefs, conversations in which people become defensive and hyperbolic, or even angry, are par for the course. Moreover, I take the view that it's good for individuals and society in general for people to be regularly exposed to other points of view with which they disagree. I certainly do not take the view that one should 'respect' other people's beliefs, if that it taken to mean, as some people seem to think, that one should not challenge those beliefs with which one disagrees.

We should not shy away from challenging beliefs due to fear of an emotional response to the 'shock' of someone having their views challenged. People can be 'innoculated' against this response by frequent exposure to having their views challenged such that they can expect to have to defend their position. It can be normalized. For this to happen it would be necessary to change our attitude towards beliefs, from something that demands automatic respect to something that one must expect to defend in a competitive marketplace of ideas. This is good for society; bad ideas struggle to flourish in such an environment, and people within it are more likely to cast off, or at least feel less inclined to promulgate such ideas.

Moreover, the ability to present a persuasive case for one's own point of view, and against those with which one disagrees, can only be developed through practice. The more one is challenged by or exposed to such views the better, and more, tools one develops to aid in discriminating between points of view. The skills required for rationally defending or challenging a point of view are of enormous personal benefit to the individual as well as being fundamental tools for life in modern society.

I can see why an LGBT would want to go to church and why it might be a good thing. It is a community center and it is where people think they get their morals from. If a straight person sees a LGB or T couple in church every week, they are probably more likely to see LGBT issues in a more personal light. They might not think the next gay joke they hear is quite as funny. Also, seeing an LGBT couple staying together as straight couples break up might do a great deal to undermine


Also, before we call homosexuality a malfunction, we should be sure that a gene for homosexuality would not be an advantage if it only expressed itself in a small percentage of the bodies it found itself in.

It is possible that an individual might do better reproductively if there was a non-reproductive person or two in the family group. All that needs happen is that the individual be at more of a reproductive advantage than the chances that they end up being non-reproductive themselves.

lewis.breland wrote:I like your way of thinking, Luis. PS We share the same first name...yours in Spanish mine in English...what do u suppose THAT means? lol

Aw fuck. Not even the flag at the bottom of my avatar erases this error... hey, my name is not Luiz Diaz. It's Luís Dias, and it's not spanish.... about its meaning well I'll leave that to the last apes to ponder and create

Tbickle wrote:I see no difference between homosexuals disregarding certain parts of the bible to coincide with their worldview and heterosexuals doing the same with different parts. Fear of death and desire to have a personal relationship with a god is not only limited to heterosexuals.

Jef wrote:

Loren Michael wrote:Have you considered that confronting people, particularly when in a bar, is going to make them get defensive and hyperbolic, staking out positions that may be extreme even for them?

If you actively seek to get people to think about their beliefs, conversations in which people become defensive and hyperbolic, or even angry, are par for the course. Moreover, I take the view that it's good for individuals and society in general for people to be regularly exposed to other points of view with which they disagree. I certainly do not take the view that one should 'respect' other people's beliefs, if that it taken to mean, as some people seem to think, that one should not challenge those beliefs with which one disagrees.

We should not shy away from challenging beliefs due to fear of an emotional response to the 'shock' of someone having their views challenged.

There are appropriate times and places and methods. You do it other times and places and ways, you appear as someone who doesn't get social convention, and that's the mark of a shitty salesman, and you're going to be less than productive.

Loren Michael wrote:

Jef wrote:

Loren Michael wrote:Have you considered that confronting people, particularly when in a bar, is going to make them get defensive and hyperbolic, staking out positions that may be extreme even for them?

If you actively seek to get people to think about their beliefs, conversations in which people become defensive and hyperbolic, or even angry, are par for the course. Moreover, I take the view that it's good for individuals and society in general for people to be regularly exposed to other points of view with which they disagree. I certainly do not take the view that one should 'respect' other people's beliefs, if that it taken to mean, as some people seem to think, that one should not challenge those beliefs with which one disagrees.

We should not shy away from challenging beliefs due to fear of an emotional response to the 'shock' of someone having their views challenged.

There are appropriate times and places and methods. You do it other times and places and ways, you appear as someone who doesn't get social convention, and that's the mark of a shitty salesman, and you're going to be less than productive.

I don't think there's any better place to socialize people than the places people go to in order to socialize.

Indeed, if I thought my evenings out were going to involve nothing but the same sorry safe topics of people talking about their cars, jobs, DIY, children, where they've been on their holidays, what happened on some TV show or pretty much anything of that ilk, I probably wouldn't bother leaving the house. They might be 'safe' topics, unlikely to cause any offence, but frankly they bore the tits off me and, thankfully, just about everyone I know.

Homosexuals are welcomed in the big family of Christ, as long as they have the honest intention to live a life of chastity, serving Christ. Homosexuals who have no intention to do so should not call themselves Christians.

thedistillers wrote:Homosexuals are welcomed in the big family of Christ, as long as they have the honest intention to live a life of chastity, serving Christ. Homosexuals who have no intention to do so should not call themselves Christians.

Why would an omnipotent deity give a monkey's toss where a man puts his penis?

Jef wrote:

thedistillers wrote:Homosexuals are welcomed in the big family of Christ, as long as they have the honest intention to live a life of chastity, serving Christ. Homosexuals who have no intention to do so should not call themselves Christians.

Why would an omnipotent deity give a monkey's toss where a man puts his penis?

If God wouldn't care about His creation, He would not create a universe in the first place.

thedistillers wrote:

Jef wrote:

thedistillers wrote:Homosexuals are welcomed in the big family of Christ, as long as they have the honest intention to live a life of chastity, serving Christ. Homosexuals who have no intention to do so should not call themselves Christians.

Why would an omnipotent deity give a monkey's toss where a man puts his penis?

If God wouldn't care about His creation, He would not create a universe in the first place.

If god cared about his creation, why would he make a person homosexual if it would send them to hell?

Tbickle wrote:

thedistillers wrote:

Jef wrote:

thedistillers wrote:Homosexuals are welcomed in the big family of Christ, as long as they have the honest intention to live a life of chastity, serving Christ. Homosexuals who have no intention to do so should not call themselves Christians.

Why would an omnipotent deity give a monkey's toss where a man puts his penis?

If God wouldn't care about His creation, He would not create a universe in the first place.

If god cared about his creation, why would he make a person homosexual if it would send them to hell?

When we are raised in a religious home and taught that everything in the Bible is true, we are being brainwashed into a poisonous doctrine of hatred, guilt, and irrationality. We are taught that faith in something without supporting evidence is a virtue and the less evidence there is to support your beliefs makes your faith all the better. Whereas it may be perfectly harmless to tell one’s children about Jonah living inside a fish or a child being born of a virgin, a literal teaching of these things as certain historical facts is abusive. It not only sullies the child’s intelect, but it paves the way for something much darker and hurtful.
As gay people, we are forced at a certain point in our understanding of ourselves and our nature to ask certain questions. The first and most essential question that we are made to ask ourselves is If the Bible is the literal word of God, who considers homosexuals to be abominations, and I’m a homosexual, I’m a sinner. The next thought we have is How can I change myself to be good in God’s eyes? Or Why did God make me this way?
Both questions are assuming that there is something wrong with the questioner. If the Bible is the literal word of God, then gays are abominations in the eyes of the Lord. This is what you’re teaching your children when you tell them that everything in the Bible is God’s word and is not to be questioned. So, now our questioner has an issue to settle with themselves. How did I fall into this trap? How do I get out?
My personal option was to pray about it. I prayed in earnest for three years after I realized what my sexual orientation was. To be a Christian, you have to believe that when I was every night kneeling, crying, prostrate before my God, I got nothing in response to my earnest prayers. If you believe in a personal God who can answer prayers, you also have to believe that in this case, God stood there listening, arms crossed for three years and haven watched this with complete indifference. The unanswered begging of a child who believed he was condemned to hell for all of eternity is not only cruel. This is an evil doctrine. There can be no one above, listening, who would not intervene in all His power to save a child who was doing everything his power to obey the Lord his God.
Whereas I grew angry and impatient, not all people do after only three years. Many people continue this way throughout their entire lives, living in complete and utter disappointment, believing that there is something wrong with them because a book written in the Bronze Age by people who didn’t even understand that the Earth was round, went round a star, and was part of an expanding universe said so.
Science is making great advances in the study of what causes homosexuality and heterosexuality. All of the current theories point to embryology, which means in the womb; before we’re born into this world. This only supports what gay people already know about themselves – that there was never any conscious decision to be attracted to members of their own sex. The same could be said for heterosexuals in that they never once looked at a member of the same sex and thought they might like to fornicate with them. There is no decision and without decision, there can be no sin. All sins are based on decision. Something that is wrong is done, not felt. A sin is committed, but you can not commit a feeling. And that’s all homosexuality is; a feeling.
So, children feel guilty when they start to develop sexual feelings for other people because their religions tell them that sex, and especially gay sex, is sinful before marriage. Even thinking about it can seal your pact with Satan. So, sexual repression and the bottling-up of perfectly natural human instincts follows directly from these beliefs. And when a child wants those feelings erased, they pray to God, the one who wrote the rules, to help them be rid of them. There is no further evidence required for me to discard God from my life. So, even if a God could have been found, I would have wanted nothing to do with him because of his indifference.
But again, there are those people who refuse to accept that there probably is no God and continue to see their sexuality as a war between God and Satan. Firstly, the fact that these restrictions are in place on human behavior and the fate of the cosmos depends on our sexual habits is complete and utter nonsense. It is a testament to the man-made nature of religion. Why so local? Why so human-bound? Nonetheless, the people who cannot break free from the spell of biblical accuracy can do one of two things. First, they can try to live their lives as celibates or married closet cases while all the while believing that they are sexually deviant for their thoughts. Secondly, they can continue to beg and plead with God to alter their feelings. As report after scientific report shows, God has no interest in these people. Believers must wonder why, after so many people trying to live by His standards, there’s been no answer from above in any case.
If anyone at this point thinks that I may be overreacting or putting a religious spin on internalized homophobia, I offer you a tragic example of where this sort of belief, this faith, this irrational dogma drilled into children has taken many a young gay person. Meet Bobby Griffith. Bobby Griffith was a young gay man with his entire life ahead of him. Like so many other gay children raised in fundamentalist America today, Bobby felt extremely guilty when he noticed the dissonance between his faith and his sexuality. Bobby expressed his frustration in a journal entry which never ceases to move me to tears upon each and every reading:
“January 4, 1983. At times my feeling is that my behavior and thoughts are regarded as grossly unacceptable. Everyone around here is under the impression that all I have to do is surrender my life to Jesus Christ. It’s that simple. But they can’t see that it’s not…It’s an awful feeling to believe that one is headed straight to the fires of hell. What makes everything worse is having all these people around you telling you how simple the solution is when it doesn’t really seem to be at all. They will never know what it is to be in my shoes and I don’t think I’ll ever know what theirs are like.”
Bobby’s mother added fuel to the fire raging inside of him, telling her son how his ways were the work of Satan.
“I really hate being damned. It’s always for the same reason, my sexuality. ‘Even the animals know who to do it with,” that’s my mother’s logic. Well, Mother dear, you don’t know the half of it. Why am I the way that I am? If I only knew. “You can change if you really want to,” they say, “Don’t underestimate the Lord’s power.” God damnit, how in the hell do any of them know? What gives them the right to tell me I’m going to burn in eternal hellfire and damnation? They account my “deviation” to an inherent sinful nature. Well, then, if God gave it to me, I’m gonna keep it! They think I’m so blind and stupid, well they’re the ones who are wrong. I feel good about my rebellion.”
The remainder of Bobby’s journal entries are swathed in rhetoric of self-loathing and frequently mention sin and God. Sadly, they only get worse the later the entries get. It’s a tortured world into which Bobby Griffith was delivered by his family and community. Eventually he could no longer take the discord between faith and his reality. Bobby killed himself because of his inability to meet God’s standards. In the end, he hated every minute on earth, feeling like a “leper”.
When I first heard this story, I thought, “No, Bobby! You’ve got it all wrong! Just tell them you’re normal! Just realize that being gay is not evil and the Bible isn’t really God’s word.” But it isn’t that simple. His mind had been poisoned with religion and its lethal contents took his life. This is why I am hostile towards the Abrahamic religions which portray homosexuals as sexual perverts.
Belief without evidence is the definition of faith. With faith, we can do anything! We can even think we’re sick and demented for normal human behavior and human thoughts, feelings, emotions. We can believe in these things so strongly that we jump off an overpass into oncoming traffic to stop the madness and expedite our hell bound souls to their proper place. That’s why I’m hostile to those who would tell their children that there is a Hell into which they will be cast if they don’t obey the word of God. The lack of critical thinking required to believe in religious nonsense is an affront to humanity and all of its many accomplishments. But stories like Bobby’s are not unique. And that is why belief in the supernatural should not be granted any respect whatsoever. If we can explain natural phenomena without invoking the supernatural or miracles, why rely on ancient myths and legends? Certainly not for comfort! Bobby certainly never found comfort in those dangerous, vile, ghastly beliefs.
Again, if you’re a Christian, you have to believe that God sat there watching while Bobby screamed and cried and begged for Him to intervene. And there are those who would – indeed do – argue that the Lord works in mysterious ways and God has a plan for everything. Very well. What was God’s plan for the holocaust then? If you believe that God had a plan for the holocaust, and that you should do his will, can I assume that you would have flipped the switches at the gas chamber, ushering those poor people to their death saying, “God works in mysterious ways,” as they passed like a demented Monty Python skit? This is, at its core, a disgusting notion which makes not one bit of sense when given a second’s thought.
I know that the next example of anti-gay hate is an extreme case and I wouldn’t dare try to identify the majority of believers with the group I highlight in it. So, before I get criticized for ‘labeling’ or ‘over generalizing’ I want to express that I am using this group as an extreme example of hatred directed at gays from the outside. Bobby Griffith was an extreme case of internalized hatred and repression and now I want to equate that sort of loathing with pressure from the outside since they both make the same claims: the Bible is the word of God.
At the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a group of religious fuck-nuts of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas arrived in Laramie, Wyoming to protest. Matt was murdered because he was gay. He was beaten unconscious by two boys from the town who then tied him to a fence and left him for dead. The group which arrived to protest this young man’s funeral held signs which read, “God Hates Fags” and “Matt in Hell”. This sort of behavior is extremist, admittedly, but are these people not simply reiterating what the Bible already tells gay people. This is taking a really literal reading of the Bible. For gay people who take a literal reading of the Bible, they can turn out like Bobby Griffith. What I’m trying to get at is that in both cases, a literal reading of the Bible was the source of these actions. And it continues to fuel the fires of hatred and judgment when it comes to gay people.
In early 2010, the news was stocked full with stories about Uganda. Christian leaders from the United States had overtly pushed their authority in Uganda to gather support for a bill to be passed through the Parliament there which would make being gay a crime punishable by death. Not only did you have to be a homosexual to be killed, but an ‘accomplice’ or someone who knows a gay person and doesn’t report them. What is the source of this explicit call to genocide? You guessed it! A fundamental, literal reading of the Holy scriptures! Do you realize what this would mean for gay people in Uganda who have been out their entire lives? You would expect to see trucks and buses full of gay people being carted off to trial and execution. Uganda is a member of the British Commonwealth and if this could happen in a state which is the protectorate of a modern, global, world power, it can happen here. Indeed, there are those same Christian nationalists who would love nothing more than to see homosexuals and our ilk disappear without an earthly trace.
The Evangelical Christian politically-oriented right wing movement is the closest thing the United States has to a totalitarian party. I remember going to an Evangelical conference in Ohio with my preacher when I was about thirteen or so and what struck me the hardest was their incessant call to arms to fight their oppressors and keep gay people from getting married. Who, I wondered to my little self, were these oppressors? One speaker after the next claimed that there was a need to ‘fight back,’ and almost warlike cry over the slow guitar chords from the auditorium stage to ‘take back the government.’ This surprised me immensely, this need to feel as though they are under attack .
But it doesn’t end there. We haven’t even identified who’s doing the besieging. Michelle Goldberg did such a marvelous job of describing how the religious right in America has declared war on homosexuals in her book, Kingdom Coming, that I really can’t improve on her beautiful, frightening style.
“Needing to see their foe as equal to their hatred, they exaggerate its strength. So gay people became a threat to the most important thing conservatives have – their families. In standing up to that threat, they see themselves as heroes. Their loathing is transformed into virtue.” (Goldberg, 2006)
These are the people who raise a stink every time they see a rainbow flag, the ones responsible for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the ones who brought us George W. Bush, and fly off the wall every time the word evolution is mentioned in a science classroom. Michelle Goldberg has coined a term for them which I think is quite fitting, Christian Nationalists. It suits them so well because their policies would make gay sex illegal – not to mention the impossibility of same-sex unions – and if they had their way, the Ten Commandments would be posted in every classroom, court room, and office building from San Diego to Washington D.C. without questions. Abortion wouldn’t be a word in the English language and homeschooling would be the preferred method of educating America’s children. Women, of course, would stay home and make/raise the children, and all without so much as a word of insult to their husbands. What we have here is hell on Earth for any sane gay person, or any feminist and paradise for the football-watching, hamburger sloshing, wife-beating redneck macho male. And this is precisely the world these Christian Nationalists would deliver us into. A world where the government can control what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom with another consenting adult. You don’t have to be gay for that to scare the absolute piss out of you.
But I digress. I can hear the accusations in opposition to my statements above. “I’m a Christian, but I don’t believe in that sort of literal reading of the Bible,” or “My God isn’t like that at all. He accepts everyone and He is a just and loving God.” We atheists are usually accused of criticizing the worst of religion. And perhaps we do. It is to this, and the criticism of the best in moderate, gentle religion that I release my broadside in the next post.

The video...in case you were too tired or lazy to read:

http://www.youtube.com/user/lewisbrelan ... ldsKtYRYYM

Jef wrote:

Loren Michael wrote:

Jef wrote:

Loren Michael wrote:Have you considered that confronting people, particularly when in a bar, is going to make them get defensive and hyperbolic, staking out positions that may be extreme even for them?

If you actively seek to get people to think about their beliefs, conversations in which people become defensive and hyperbolic, or even angry, are par for the course. Moreover, I take the view that it's good for individuals and society in general for people to be regularly exposed to other points of view with which they disagree. I certainly do not take the view that one should 'respect' other people's beliefs, if that it taken to mean, as some people seem to think, that one should not challenge those beliefs with which one disagrees.

We should not shy away from challenging beliefs due to fear of an emotional response to the 'shock' of someone having their views challenged.

There are appropriate times and places and methods. You do it other times and places and ways, you appear as someone who doesn't get social convention, and that's the mark of a shitty salesman, and you're going to be less than productive.

I don't think there's any better place to socialize people than the places people go to in order to socialize.

Indeed, if I thought my evenings out were going to involve nothing but the same sorry safe topics of people talking about their cars, jobs, DIY, children, where they've been on their holidays, what happened on some TV show or pretty much anything of that ilk, I probably wouldn't bother leaving the house. They might be 'safe' topics, unlikely to cause any offence, but frankly they bore the tits off me and, thankfully, just about everyone I know.

The group of friends you have selected is more open to discussing certain things than others. They probably tend to agree with you on a variety of issues as well, so even if there's a disagreement, you have a commonality to keep you friendly. Walking into a bar and proselytizing people and/or telling them that they're wrong or incoherent in their beliefs isn't something I would put a high estimate of success rate on.

Loren Michael wrote:

Jef wrote:

Loren Michael wrote:

Jef wrote:

Loren Michael wrote:Have you considered that confronting people, particularly when in a bar, is going to make them get defensive and hyperbolic, staking out positions that may be extreme even for them?

If you actively seek to get people to think about their beliefs, conversations in which people become defensive and hyperbolic, or even angry, are par for the course. Moreover, I take the view that it's good for individuals and society in general for people to be regularly exposed to other points of view with which they disagree. I certainly do not take the view that one should 'respect' other people's beliefs, if that it taken to mean, as some people seem to think, that one should not challenge those beliefs with which one disagrees.

We should not shy away from challenging beliefs due to fear of an emotional response to the 'shock' of someone having their views challenged.

There are appropriate times and places and methods. You do it other times and places and ways, you appear as someone who doesn't get social convention, and that's the mark of a shitty salesman, and you're going to be less than productive.

I don't think there's any better place to socialize people than the places people go to in order to socialize.

Indeed, if I thought my evenings out were going to involve nothing but the same sorry safe topics of people talking about their cars, jobs, DIY, children, where they've been on their holidays, what happened on some TV show or pretty much anything of that ilk, I probably wouldn't bother leaving the house. They might be 'safe' topics, unlikely to cause any offence, but frankly they bore the tits off me and, thankfully, just about everyone I know.

The group of friends you have selected is more open to discussing certain things than others. They probably tend to agree with you on a variety of issues as well, so even if there's a disagreement, you have a commonality to keep you friendly. Walking into a bar and proselytizing people and/or telling them that they're wrong or incoherent in their beliefs isn't something I would put a high estimate of success rate on.

Sure we have things in common, but our views on religion aren't really one of them. Most of my close friends are practicing or cultural Catholics. There's also couple of Protestants, one or two atheists and a deist former Mormon. And of course I tell them they're wrong or that their religious beliefs are incoherent. I do the same even when talking to complete strangers. I do the same if someone is wrong on politics or aspects of the law. I do the same with racists, xenophobes and homophobes. I do the same pretty much whenever and wherever I think someone is wrong on any topic we happen to be discussing. My friends are kind enough to correct me when I'm wrong. People are not their beliefs, you can respect a person while thoroughly disrespecting their beliefs.

And no, no-one expects anyone to have a mid-conversation epiphany. That's not how it works. The best you can expect is that someone gives some more thought to their position. Pretty much invariably this has a tendency towards the moderation of their beliefs.

thedistillers wrote:Homosexuals are welcomed in the big family of Christ, as long as they have the honest intention to live a life of chastity, serving Christ. Homosexuals who have no intention to do so should not call themselves Christians.

Quite, this is indeed what the majority of branches of Christianity believe.

Which is one of many reasons why I don't understand why any self respecting gay person, or anyone else for that matter, would want to be a Christian, now or at any time in the last 60 years or so.

(Before say 1950, society was so much different that it would be mistaken to apply many of today's social attitudes to back then.)