The biological determinist Left takes in on the chin again..

[_Droopy]

If homosexuality exists in the animal kingdom (and it does), then I don't really see how it can be purely a "lifestyle choice."

No, homosexuality quite patently does not exist in the animal kingdom. Instinctually driven homosexual behavior, including random sexual acts driven by powerful biological forces do occur, but not homosexuality. The entire animal kingdom is heterosexual in nature, requiring the pairing of male/female elements for the passing on of DNA to future generations - the sole purpose of sex in the animal kingdom.

If your going to use instinctual, biologically programmed animal behavior as an argument for human homosexual feelings and attraction, then you are going to have to follow your argument to its logical conclusion. A number of animals also kill and cannibalize their young (bears), leave their young to die after being crippled or injured, and live in rigid, severe dominance/submission relationships (wolves). Lemmings leap to their deaths in large numbers.

Should we use the animal world as a guide to our own?

I think not.

[_Mister Scratch]

If homosexuality exists in the animal kingdom (and it does), then I don't really see how it can be purely a "lifestyle choice."

No, homosexuality quite patently does not exist in the animal kingdom. Instinctually driven homosexual behavior, including random sexual acts driven by powerful biological forces do occur, but not homosexuality. The entire animal kingdom is heterosexual in nature, requiring the pairing of male/female elements for the passing on of DNA to future generations - the sole purpose of sex in the animal kingdom.

Then how do you explain the "random sexual acts driven by powerful biological forces"? What is the purpose of those acts?

[_antishock8]

I guess Bonobo monkeys sucking each other off should be dismissed as "conditioning".

Pfft.

Droopy is a fag.

[_Droopy]

The possibility that sexual orientation may be predisposed before birth gained new support in a research project being published this week that tested how women respond to sound.

Predisposition is not cause. This poses no problem for the Church's position.

Scientists at the University of Texas, Austin, say they have found the first strong evidence of a physical difference between lesbians and straight women -- a finding that the inner ears of gay women work more like those of men.

Here's what Dennis McFadden, the scientist responsible for the inner ear studies has said regarding homosexual origins:

"Any human behavior is going to be the result of complex intermingling of genetics and environment. It would be astonishing if it were not true for homosexuality."

Here's an interesting paper on the matter:

http://www.narth.com/docs/FemaleHomosex ... opment.pdf

Previous research has found that two parts of the brain are different in gay and heterosexual men. Other studies have found that some genes differ between gay and straight men.

Previous and long discredited as any indication of the substantive origin of homosexuality. What Beastie fails to mention here (as she so consistently just fails to mention so many inconvenient facts and evidences in many of her arguments) is that most homosexuals do not show these genetic differences, only a small subset. Further, this is a chicken and egg problem, as there is no way to determine whether the genetic differences are causal of homosexuality or whether homosexual behavior alters brain biology and physiology.

Why would someone "choose" to be gay, when society behaves in a discriminatory fashion against them? This is even more illogical for a member of a conservative religion like Mormonism.

An old homosexual lobby hobby horse. Why would anyone choose to have an affair when they know perfectly well its likely to wreck their families, destroy their relationships with their children, and ruin their lives? Yet, they go ahead and do so.

Why do people drink excessively, use Marijuana, Cocaine, and Heroin knowing perfectly well the potentially serious negative consequences? Why do human beings do any number of crazy, self destructive, self negating things? its not critics of homosexuality who have the problem with logical thought here.

Maybe the people who think others "choose" to be gay came to some sexual crossroads in their own lives, perhaps due to bisexual inclinations, and had to "choose" themselves, and hence, assume everyone has to "choose".

Maybe those who think there is no choice regarding homosexual, and other perversions of normative, healthy human sexuality, are really so morally confused and spiritually empty that even the flimsiest biological determinism in the service of the shallowest value relativism will be pressed into service in the name of justifying whatever human behavior and desires present to us at a particular cultural or personal moment.

Besides, even if it were conclusively show that homosexuality is not a choice, people like droopy wouldn't care. They'd just pick up Card's argument that it doesn't matter, people are still supposed to overcome it because God said so.

You have a long, long way to go before you will be able to participate intelligently in this argument Beastie. As with your Book of Mormon work, you don't really seem to have the careful, fluid intellectual temperament or the broad educational background with which to work. You pick far to many cherries and spend to little time in the garden proper.

Ah yes, that was Satan's plan, wasn't it. No choice...

[_Droopy]

What Droopy doesn't seem to grasp, as illustrated on a previous thread, is that inherited genetic determinism is not the only form of biological determinism (though the two are sometimes used interchangeably). There are many, many biological mechanisms which may alter the phenotype of an organism after fertilization has occurred, such as epigenetic effects, hormonal effects, nutrition, the presence or absence of various toxins and morphogens, and even the presence or absence of other organisms and their proximity. Such factors alter the way in which genes are expressed and the effects of their expression on the organism.

What Thama doesn't seem to grasp is that there is a world of difference between inheritance and heritability. Homosexuality (as are many behaviors, attitudes and characterological features), is, without doubt, heritable. Gene linkage and other similar studies are only useful in approaching attributes that are directly inheritable, like eye color or, say, lactose intolerance. Its of no use with heritable traits because of the complex interaction of other, non biological factors in creating the conditions for the formation of the attribute, one of the most important of these being that of human free will in determining the nature and extent to which genetic or biological predispositions will be followed, if followed at all (and if consciously apprehended at all).

[_Droopy]

I guess Bonobo monkeys sucking each other off should be dismissed as "conditioning".

It should be understood for what it is: instinctual programming and/or learned behavior the monkeys find pleasurable and so...do.

The Monkeys, however, not having the intellectual capacity to make choices between alternatives, and having no conception of concepts like "sexual orientation" or "sexual identity' or "gender", are not relevant to this discussion.

In other words, human homosexuality has no relation to animal homosexual behavior.

And believe me shock, you set yourself up with this post big time, but I resisted the fiery darts of the Adversary and I forebear (but it was almost to tempting to pass up).

[_Droopy]

Then how do you explain the "random sexual acts driven by powerful biological forces"? What is the purpose of those acts?

What, you are asking, is the purpose of a dog's engaging in simulated sex with a pillow, or a person's leg? I've seen dogs, when a female is in heat in the vicinity, mount and begin sexual movements upon another male dog. Is this "homosexuality"? Think clearly and seriously about this for a minute.

Homosexuality produces no offspring. Evolution, and many behaviors within that context (indeed, most) are implicated in the overriding directive of survival of the species. This raises the question of why male bears kill and eat their own children, why certain female insects and Arachnids kill and eat the male after mating, and why lemmings, for example, kill themselves in mass quantities.

Why do my dogs like to stick their heads out the window in a fast moving car and let the air flap their ears around? Because they like it. Its a learned behavior. They don't choose it, in the way humans choose; they just do it because they have learned it.

Interesting - endlessly interesting - how so many of these arguments on the Left, regardless of the issue, involve bringing human beings into closer moral and psychological coincidence with animals.

We've been there before, no?

[_Droopy]

Now, he's gonna hold this against me in the future. Yet, if he actually could make cohesive arguments instead of just posting things I'd probably take the time to read his material. Yet, as it stands, I have better things to do with my time.... :)

I'm done with you. Your intellectual honesty has just joined your credibility in the same crumbling, abandoned mine shaft known as Mormondiscussions.com that some of the best apologists here have had the sense to recuse themselves from and whose example I should probably follow.

I think you'd have to recognize a "cohesive argument" Moniker, before you could respond to one. You refuse, in most cases, to respond to mine, and from that I conclude difficulties in recognition.

[_Droopy]

Again, as a commie pinko I think people can do whatever the hell they want to do as long as they don't infringe on others ability to do what they want to do. I don't care if it's genetic, choice, or alien infestation.

Typical shallow libertarian dismissal of the issue while serious thought on the subject remains in the shadows. The idea that much of what we do in a free society does not, in fact, "infringe" upon others doing what they want to do, is philosophically facile. The fact that we do not perceive the linkages directly (at least, until certain behaviors reach a critical mass) is superfluous.

[_Droopy]

The author Droopy quoted can only be found on conservative Christian anti-gay websites, like NARTH. Droopy almost certainly is just quoting NARTH here, despite not referencing it.

Ad hominem circumstantial; the first refuge of a secular humanist in full retreat from stubborn realities.

NARTH is a clearinghouse for scientific and philosophical criticism of the homosexual lobby and its enablers in the brain science community. Its contributors are all experts in the relevant fields and more than qualified to expound on the issue.

What E just cannot stand is the fact that not a particle of evidence exists supporting a direct genetic "cause' of homosexual behavior and certainly not "Gay" identity.

Run little liberals, run...

I didn't look into the referenced study myself. Given what is reported here, which admittedly comes from a dubious source, you'd be looking at a new large-scale study that puts the correlation effects at from the high-low/low-moderate range, which would be contrary to the usual findings I'm familiar with being somewhat higher. It doesn't really matter for the points mentioned in the thread.

Isn't it fascinating how this person poses as an expert on every subject when all he is is a credentialist looking for yet another ad hominem circumstantial (his above criticism is only valid if one considers Christian anti-homosexual rights movement websites a bad thing) with which to avoid the substance of the debate?

Yet he has no specific credentials by which he can judge the material himself (though he demands it of others).

Yup, homosexuality is biological, no question about it. The same is true of bisexuality, transsexuality, transvestitism, BDSM, Pedophilia, Beastiality, Necrophilia, cannibalism, serial killing, all forms of addiction, and whether one prefers Madonna or Mozart.

You will keep tightening the noose around the neck of western civilization until it chokes to death. But you know, as the body thrashes around in its death throes, it could do a great deal of damage - including to its executioners.



He who lives by the gene, dies by the same.