California Proposition 8

[Dawkinsrocks]

You are building an argument on the foundation that homosexuality is learned.

As you have not proved this your argument is not supported.

If homosexuality was proven to be genetic, would you object to gay marriage?

 

[Sihouette]

If homosexuality was proven to be genetic, would you object to gay marriage?

Yes, because of monkey see, monkey do and the cumulative effect on a society that can have: read : Gay By The Bay to understand that in more depth..Current civil unions suffice.

And you continue to ignore the fact that I had many years of counseling before changing my gender presentation, the psychologists, psychiatrists, and the medical doctors all agreed that I was a classic example of a MtF transsexual.~Mare

Yes, well...as far as they understood it... Take topgun's stance for instance. S/he is adamant that humans and animals have NOTHING in common when it comes to behavioral psychology. Even sexual behavioral psychology which is about the most animal drive that I can think of...but nope...not in Topgun's book.

In my bonehead psych class at University, my professor and I went round and round and round about this exact issue. He, even though he admitted that animals seemed to behave differently even among closely related genomes, and had something "that resembled a personality" (like people)...and he acknowledged that some of them using tools to do things suggested they had reasoning powers, adamantly refused to acknowledge likenesses between animals and people. It's the opposite argument...that animals could not possibly be like humans... etc.

We fought so long and so hard about this issue that when grading time came I shuddered at the thought of what my GPA would be after averaging in the grade for HIS class!

Long story short, he gave me an A++...a 4.5 and it boosted me up to the honor roll that semester. The gist of it was though that I came away realizing that in the halls of acedemia where human psychology is taught, many "professionals" share his and Topgun's exact sentiments about the human animal...(or NOT animal as they insist in spite of the entire field of anthropology located just down the hall.. )

My experience with animals for decades now tells me that they are quite like us and we like them. Anthropologists and AI techs agree. We WANT to think we're these special priveleged "angel beings", but I'll tell you that my golden retriever has more altruistic empathy than most people I meet. (She eats exactly half a bowl of food, leaving a half-moon formation in her bowl so her buddy can have the other half..) After all, if we eat animals and wear their hides, we HAVE to keep them very separate from us in order to stomach the guilt of literally, eating our friends..

Think about it..

Native americans had a saner philosophy that mended this schism of thought. They believed that if you prayed and thanked the animal's spirit, promising that one day your body would also sustain others, that it allowed that animals could be like people and people like animals (which they are). They considered animals their brothers and it was part of their everyday reality. It isn't some mystical hoo-ha either. They found a logical and sane way to acknowledge the truth that we are like our animal family and we must also use their bodies to survive.

Back to psychologists...

The majority of them that I've spoken to, even my own sister who has a major in both psychology and anthropology, insist that animal sexual behavior and imprinting cannot possibly be compared with human!

It's just mind boggling how fearsome the halls of acedemia and the status quo hang in the backs of their minds like an angry schoolmaster armed with a splintered ruler to slap them back into line should they dare to have a thought outside the "accepted ilk". For all my arguing with my professor, there were 29 other students sitting there obediently copying down his every thought on the matter and internalizing it as "the final say: God's word" on human psychology. Many of them went on to major and counsel people in psychology. I think that's why I got the A++. He liked the fact that I questioned the status quo. Maybe because he never found the nerve to do so himself...like the majority of my schoolmates in that class..

And these are, more likely than not, the very "psychologists" that handled your therapy Mare. The inner voice should tell you that if psychologists are giving you the thumbs-up on chopping your penis off...maybe you shouldn't get the choir to preach to... A dissenting view would've been quite a lot more healthy for you..

And thus is my gift to you..even if a bit too late..but not for your mind at least..

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

You would still object to gay marriage even if it were proven to be genetic because of 'monkey see monkey do'?

You are homophobic and you sound like those people who used to write articles claiming to have proven that blacks are less intelligent than whites.

 

[Sihouette]

Yes, you are correct in a sense. I am "homophobic" not for my own sexuality, but for future generations. I believe in keeping the human body for the function it is designed for sexually and otherwise. I also understand hypocrisy and the keen slueth of youth's ability to sniff it out.For these reasons I am "homophobic" for our future as a society. And therefore my objections to making homosexuality mainstream via marriage.

If you misquote me to just "I am homophobic" with a soundbite and not in context., I will report you to the moderators as I should've done long ago. I've about had it with your abuse and evasive tactics in lieu of good debating skills. In other words, the entirety of the first paragraph of this post must be included if you intend to quote me of any part of it...

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Please attempt to stick to the topic and rebut only with substance geared towards same. And occasionally, back up your stance with sources...not too much to ask really..

What's the point in sources? You have not yet looked at either of the ones I've posted, have you?

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

And these are, more likely than not, the very "psychologists" that handled your therapy Mare. The inner voice should tell you that if psychologists are giving you the thumbs-up on chopping your penis off...maybe you shouldn't get the choir to preach to... A dissenting view would've been quite a lot more healthy for you..

And thus is my gift to you..even if a bit too late..but not for your mind at least..

You talk about Dawks debating skills yet you have set yourself up as the final arbiter of human sexual behavior in complete opposition to the world of science and the experiences of the people actually living with these issues.

I write long, thoughtful posts with many questions to you which you don't even bother to acknowledge. This is debating? No, it's not, you just keep repeating the same mantra over and over. At least you admit to being homophobic based on your imaginings rather than any empirical evidence or proof.

Why are you employed twisting the sexual psyches of animals, making them do things that they would not do in nature? If the learned behavior that you always talk about was so compelling, then you could train a few poor bastard critters and then the process would be self-perpetuating, but it's not is it? Homosexual behaviors in nature are self-limiting because most animals are not programmed that way genetically, the same applies to people. Your homophobic imaginings have never been played out in human history even in the cultures that completely accepted or advocated homosexual behaviors.

Your homo-fear boogey-man is just a shadow on the wall and you lash out at me in your terror despite the fact that you know almost nothing about me or my condition. While you claim not to be Christian, you certainly have a religious belief in your own infallibility that shreds your credibility. In this way you are a good foil, in that people who actually want to learn something can see the vacuous and vapid nature of your arguments.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Silo - you are homophobic for future generations???

Are you really this stupid?

The human species is too successful with homosexuality.

Good points, Dawks, and it's not often that one gets to use the word "buffoon" is it?

There is good research showing that homosexuality in males is a side effect of a gene complex that increases female fertility. A woman with one gay son will statistically have a greater likelyhood of having more children than a woman who does not have a gay son. This holds true around the world in all cultures without respect to cultural differences in the acceptance of homosexuality.

The female immune system response to a male fetus also appears to play a role in the development of male homosexuals in that the female body sees the male fetus as "other" and tries to femininize it, this effect increases in strength with successive male offspring--the more sons a woman has the higher the chances are of her having a gay son. This varies of course from woman to woman based on individual immune system responses, but statistically there is a correlation.

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

Mare, there is just too much reason in that argument.

Gays originally learned to be homosexual from heterosexuals by erm erm well by something

They thought, ''this straight life is just too easy. I know, I will choose a life that is beset by suffering the intense bigotry of religious lunatics, closet homosexuals and retards in the hope of being denied rights that are available to the straight people that taught me homosexuality in the first place''.

I have to go now.

I have to get to college to learn some homosexuality.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Mare, there is just too much reason in that argument.

Gays originally learned to be homosexual from heterosexuals by erm erm well by something

They thought, ''this straight life is just too easy. I know, I will choose a life that is beset by suffering the intense bigotry of religious lunatics, closet homosexuals and retards in the hope of being denied rights that are available to the straight people that taught me homosexuality in the first place''.

I have to go now.

I have to get to college to learn some homosexuality.

Well, good luck with that, Dawks, it's "hard" but if you can get it "straight" you will have a "deep" understanding.

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

I am hoping to enlarge the circle of my friends

 

[Sihouette]

For clarity, here's what I said:

Yes, you are correct in a sense. I am "homophobic" not for my own sexuality, but for future generations. I believe in keeping the human body for the function it is designed for sexually and otherwise. I also understand hypocrisy and the keen slueth of youth's ability to sniff it out.For these reasons I am "homophobic" for our future as a society. And therefore my objections to making homosexuality mainstream via marriage.

I'm not dumb, but instead have studied anthropology and primate learning. And I've recently read the excerpt, sanctioned by The International Gay And Lesbian Review, of "Gay By The Bay"...where they admit just exactly what I've asserted above: that homosexuality in San Francisco was born of deviant conditions, and did grow to become pervasive and "contagious" within that community that chose to normalize it.

Shall I post the excerpt again? Why not..

”'Queer' has come to stand for the wide range of marginalized sexual identities, practices and communities sometimes excluded by the words ‘lesbian' and ‘gay,' yet which also lie beyond the pale of normative society and share a rich history with homosexuality as it is currently understood” (125)...

..Early San Francisco was predominately male, and up to ninety percent during the 1850s. This led to such curious practices as all-male square dancing. In these gatherings, the man taking the woman's part wore a red hankerchief around his arm. This was the precursor for the modern hankerchief code among gay men. GAY BY THE BAY is filled with dozens of such tales, all of which help explain how queer culture has been handed down from one generation to the next.

As far back as the 1800s San Francisco was known as “Sodom by the Sea.” Stryker and Van Buskirk reason that same-sex involvement must have occured during this period, primarily between men. They base their assumption upon modern research that has been done on all, or mostly-male communities.. [as with prisons, sexual frustration, even after the formative stage, can result in environmental homosexuality, italics Sil's]..

..The war swelled San Francisco's navy population, which only added to the city's burgeoning gay culture. [navy men all cramped on a ship with no women..."burgeoning gay culture"...anyone seeing that gayness once 'normalized' can be socially contagious? I am..]..

..The 1950s also saw the rise of the “butch”/”fem” roles among lesbians. Women were becoming freer to live their own lives, which included being in same-sex relationships. In 1955 the Daughters of Bilitis organization was founded in San Francisco. One of this organization's main goals was to get women to give up their butch/fem roles, which the Daughters viewed as an aproximation of man/woman roles...[ they are still very intact today]..

..By the 1960s fissures had erupted in many of these organizations between men and women, as well as between whites and minorities. The 1970s saw an avalance of new splinter groups that catered to more and more specific groups. One of the largest new groups emerging was the lesbian separatist movement, which advocated the complete overthrow of the entire gender system.

[IG&LR wrapup:]
"GAY BY THE BAY is must reading for anyone at all interested in their queer history. While it is directed at uncovering the hidden past of gays and lesbians in San Francisco, the stories it tells are applicable to anywhere. The authors have succeeded in their goal of making the past come alive ."
Source:http://gaybookreviews.info/review/2738/585

I'm not the only one who recognizes that once homosexuality becomes mainstream, it has the potential to affect its prevalence within otherwise normal heterosexual human populations in the area it is "normalized" in.

Again, straight from the horse's mouth. And before you ask again, in another attempt to divert the subject at hand to an ad hominem festival, yes, I DO think the INTERNATIONAL Gay And Lesbian Review speaks, uncontestedly apparently from the fact that the article still remains on their website, for the mainstream of gay culture.

Here you go mare, let me revist a quote from the above to explain also why I think your therapy was misguided, counselling you to remove your penis (remember, this is an admittance from gay culture itself

"..homosexuality as it is currently understood.."

What if the "understanding" that is merely "current", turned out, as is sometimes the case with other shakey areas of psychology to instead be "misunderstanding"? That's what the word "current" allows leeway for my friend..

What if your therapists were wrong and misguided when they counselled you to remove your penis and forego deeper psychotherapy instead? Are you saying your therapists are the definitive experts on the final word of a subject that is currently not fully understood?

 

[top gun]

Sihouette;80744]For the purposes of staying with the legal description we can say that a person born with external male genitalia is male. A person born with external female genitalia is female. In those cases it would be legal to marry the opposite gender. In the case of true hermaphroditism, with both sets of genitals present the individual may marry whichever gender is the opposite of how they have lived their life as being.

I just want to state the obvious... You are WAY too hung up on running other people's personal lives and worse yet WAY WAY to interested in other people's junk! There's something in your background that you're not telling us that has you so desperate.

And why would there be an "as they have lived clause"? They could obviously go either way and back and forth.

The purpose of "marriage" is really a matter of semantics, isn't it? Society holding up two people as "married" is just a fancy way of saying "here's what we agree is normal sexuality between two people".

Nooooooo it's a binding legal contract between 2 adults which provides certain rights and responsibilities to the couple such as being monogamous.

Normalcy has nothing to do with it as long as it's legal. Heterosexual S&M and bondage and a whole wide range of bizarre fetishes aren't really all that normal... but couples enjoying these get married every single day.

We have the right to uphold a framework for future generations to aspire to: the semantics of who constitutes "condoned sexual partners". Step outside the norm if that is what suits you. But don't teach it by example or otherwise to our future generations as "normal". Because it isn't. Sex is for creating offspring.

Wrong on so many levels. The "recognized framework" is that adult gay sex is 100% legal identical to straight sex.

And this line is the MOST TELLING line Silo has printed. When she says being straight has to be upheld or future generations won't "aspire" to it. How sexually weak minded is someone who would think this is an issue? I'll ask every straight person on this board... Does the fact there are gay people all around make you secretly crave to be GAY! OF COURSE NOT!!! Because a straight person is not attracted to the same sex.

This goes back to Silo thinking gay people are like horses... the guys have just been into anal sex and the women just tricked into going down on each other.


Let me say this... SILO MUST BE A LOT EASIER TRICKED THAN I'LL EVER BE!

And once again... animals go into heat to reproduce. PEOPLE (I KNOW THIS IS GROUNDBREAKING INFORMATION SILO) also have sex for FUN! You must have just one terrible sex life.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

And I've recently read the excerpt, sanctioned by The International Gay And Lesbian Review, of "Gay By The Bay"..."..homosexuality as it is currently understood.."

Your source is a popular magazine, and in no way speaks for the entire gay community, but more importantly it does not speak for the scientific community. What will you quote next? The National Enquirer?

What if the "understanding" that is merely "current", turned out, as is sometimes the case with other shakey areas of psychology to instead be "misunderstanding"? That's what the word "current" allows leeway for my friend..

What if your therapists were wrong and misguided when they counselled you to remove your penis and forego deeper psychotherapy instead? Are you saying your therapists are the definitive experts on the final word of a subject that is currently not fully understood?

So your position is that I should listen to you and popular magazines instead of the medical community that has been treating transsexuals successfully for more than 35 years using the Benjamin Standards of Care?

You can postulate anything you can imagine--maybe I was kidnapped by aliens, maybe Osama bin Laden is hiding in my attic, but when the day is done you have no scientific support for your imagined horrors. In all of human history even the cultures that embraced homosexuality didn't get taken over by them because most people are simply not wired that way. If your "learning" argument had any basis we should see huge swings in the number of gay people in different cultures based on how persecuted or accepted the gays were/are. Such is not the case, gays have represented a few percent of the population in all cultures and all times for which we have records.

One of the things that tends to give you away is that you have not even been able to encompass the difference between homosexual and transsexual yet. One is about who you are attracted to and the other is about a discontinuity between one's body and one's own internal sense of gender. Sex is between your legs, gender is between your ears.

But giving credit where credit is due, you are giving me a lot of opportunity to give information to the others on this site. Thank you.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

I just want to state the obvious... You are WAY too hung up on running other people's personal lives and worse yet WAY WAY to interested in other people's junk! There's something in your background that you're not telling us that has you so desperate.

And why would there be an "as they have lived clause"? They could obviously go either way and back and forth.



Nooooooo it's a binding legal contract between 2 adults which provides certain rights and responsibilities to the couple such as being monogamous.

Normalcy has nothing to do with it as long as it's legal. Heterosexual S&M and bondage and a whole wide range of bizarre fetishes aren't really all that normal... but couples enjoying these get married every single day.




Wrong on so many levels. The "recognized framework" is that adult gay sex is 100% legal identical to straight sex.

And this line is the MOST TELLING line Silo has printed. When she says being straight has to be upheld or future generations won't "aspire" to it. How sexually weak minded is someone who would think this is an issue? I'll ask every straight person on this board... Does the fact there are gay people all around make you secretly crave to be GAY! OF COURSE NOT!!! Because a straight person is not attracted to the same sex.

This goes back to Silo thinking gay people are like horses... the guys have just been into anal sex and the women just tricked into going down on each other.


Let me say this... SILO MUST BE A LOT EASIER TRICKED THAN I'LL EVER BE!

And once again... animals go into heat to reproduce. PEOPLE (I KNOW THIS IS GROUNDBREAKING INFORMATION SILO) also have sex for FUN! You must have just one terrible sex life.

Can't green you yet, but you deserve one for this post! Thanks. Maybe you have hit the nail on the head with your thought that Siho maybe more easily tricked into perversion than other people and feels a desperate need to protect herself and the new generation. Something is sure going on her that she's not telling us.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

I find it odd, Siho, that you don't think that things/people can be better, that you have a defeatist attitude about the condition of the world. It would seem that if our sexual proclivities could so easily be manipulated that we should be able to train people to be better too--less violent, less dishonest, more compassionate, more forgiving.

Or is it just sexual things that are malleable? Are all our other attributes set in stone, unchangeable for all time, is it our natures that are bad? If the second strongest drive that people have, after survival, is so simple to mold, then it would seem that all the other drives could be taught even more easily.

If being abused, raped, molested or whatever by gay people makes people gay, then are you postulating that little girls raped or molested by men become heterosexual? Or do they become gay too? Explain please, are you saying that all abuse result in a gay outcome?

You've been pushing an idea, so let's look at it and see if it makes any logical sense. How does this work, Siho, and I don't mean for the poor animals you abuse either, I mean how does this work in human families? Is it true that all gay people were molested or raped or some such? Flesh out the process for us, give us the details, tell us what happened to you.