California Proposition 8

[Sihouette]

The findings of Pfaus, Kippin and Centeno (2001) reflect exactly what I've been talking about all along with learned sexual preference.

They have found http://www-psychology.concordia.ca/fac/pfaus/Pfaus-Kippin-Centeno(2001).pdf that sexual preference has classical pavlovian conditioning in its makeup. This conditioning is set up as the animal/person receives the reward (sexual release/orgasm) associated with a complex set of conditions in the environment when the award is received. This conditions the animal/person to seek out those same conditions in order to "receive" its "reward" (orgasm).

From Conditioning And Sexual Behavior: A Review by Pfaus, Kippin and Centeno

"Such experience makes sexual behavior appear "competant" and automated. Thus the development of successful sexual behavior involves not only important neuroendocrine changes that begin at puberty, but also psychological and social influences that occur both before and after puberty...

..These observations beg several questions: How much of what is considered "normal" about human sexual behavior is likewise reinforced by genital gratification?..

[in their concluding statement after a lengthy comprehensive article and study which is a must-read for Prop 8 people on either side of the fence is as follows]

"The features of fantasized partners could be composed of culturally valued characteristics such that when these are paired with sexual reward, preferences would be established or strengthened. Thus cultural values may also determine what features will be preferred in a mate. This can explain not only the status quo of physical preferences within a culture, but also how those cultural preferences can change from era to era.

..classically conditioned stimuli paired with sexual reward are likely to be excellent predictors of receptivity. Moreover the relative impact of imprinted and conditioned stimuli in sexual preferences may be magnified [in humans vs rats/other animals]..because sexual status is masked in women...

Their findings indicated that first ejaculatory or orgasmic experiences (in males) were strongly tied via conditioning to environmental stimuli present during those episodes. Indeed they found significance in the very first ejaculation with strong preference to future ones. They found that this was a learned experience, a learned preference, which is exactly what the AI people have known with pubescent stud animals they train to prefer dummies and other male mounts to ejaculate to instead of estrus females.

In other words, all that is needed, intially in learned sexuality appears to be the scent or idea of an estrus female, then whatever stimulates the male to his first ejaculations at that time is what he will "prefer" from that point on for sexual release. (reward)

And further they found that social pressures can mold what a fledgling male will seek out as an intial stimulus for natural sexual drives.

If this isn't an argument for not making deviant sexuality mainstream, then an argument simply doesn't exist and we should give sexual deviants the right to do anything they want without a second thought about it.

It certainly gives the parties they throw, advertising on adolescent-pitched radio stations for "bi-curious" to attend their events (and get "lucky" afterwards?) a new twist. If these events aren't recruitment drives for youth, I'll eat my hat. And if this plea for deviant sexuality to become mainstream via marriage isn't a recruitment drive, I'll eat my hat.

 

[top gun]

Sihouette;90839]Actually, until deviants tried to get marital status I had no real vehemence about them one way or another. I sort of off-handedly pitied their entrenched denial. I've had some as great friends and many hetero friends as well. It was when this issue threatened to make their tweak mainstream and my knowledge of their learned deviance that set off alarm bells in my head. I never hated gays. In fact I was in love with a bisexual man once. He later died of AIDs and I was quite saddened about it. It was many years after we had parted ways but it still twisted up my guts to hear about it.

See I'm pretty darn insightful for just reading your posts. You have personal abandoment issues that you have yet to reconcile from a past lover who turned out to be Bi/gay.

You wish that you were right about me. That's part of the hypnotic recruitment. Your assertions about me are like this: "look deeply into the pendulum...you're getting sleepy...you have hidden homosexual tendencies....when I snap my fingers, you will awake, become gay and start lusting after the same gender..." The overt recruitment is "hey kids, come to our GLBT parties. We encourage bi-curious people to come too!" Or, "you don't have to be homosexual, you can be cool being metrosexual. Once your comfortable with that, you can slide right over into bisexual and from there right into homo plate."

Your overzealousness now appears to be one more of hurt and abandonment by a person who followed a gay lifestyle over you... and not that you yourself are necessarily closeted.

One can only read someone rather generally from just reading posts alone... but I could tell your issues were deep seated and bordering irrational for some reason.

Like I said, homosexuals do and will always exist. We agree on that point. They are fixated in their preference once it is set or learned. We agree there too.

Well we don't really agree on that. While some do choose the "gay lifestyle" because to them it is more pleasing or satisfying... millions of others document as small children way before they even really understood what sex even was felt totally that they were of the opposite gender.

So that's obviously not learned behavior. It's the way certain individuals are mentally wired at birth. Now I suppose you could argue that's a "birth defect" but I would argue that it's more like being left handed.

They are deserving of compassion and understanding. Another agreement. They deserve to form unions where they aren't penalized for their set behavioral condition. Still another agreement.

Where we diverge is giving the stamp of "normal" to the deviant phenomenon. For normal is what they are not.

It kinda appears to me too that they deserve compassion and understanding... but not self righteous patronizing.

If you agree (as the above appears) that they should be granted equal rights as far as the actual legal benefits of marriage... just not called marriage... then on that I could see a possible compromise.

The thing that matters is that any adult couple can have the same "legal couple" rights whether straight or gay. If you call a drivers license an operators permit and they do the exact same thing... then it's just grammar and not a different & unequal set of circumstances.

I could live with that...

 

[Sihouette]

Yeah, either all that or I just happen to have hit the nail on the head and found scientific studies to back it up.

One or the other...

 

[Sihouette]

Those scientists back in 2001 may not have realized what they stumbled upon in those findings, but what they say in essence is the same thing people who support Prop 8 sensed at a gut level all along: that deviant sexuality is learned. People know more specifically that any deviant behavior in general can be "transmitted" socially via "monkey-see, monkey-do" [that's why the phrase "monkey see, monkey do" exists in the first place]. Indeed, many scientific studies are first launched on a "hunch" like this and then tested in laboratory conditions to see how the hunch pans out.

There have been books written by people seriously stumped over why Germany as a nation decided to follow the nazi-party lead. There really is not a huge mystery. Their silverbacks decided that persecuting and killing jews was "normal". They put up whistles and bells, wore arm bands and taught the youth how to, sang the songs and normalized it for the masses. From there, the tribal mechanisms made it take on a life of its own and spread.

That's how we can also explain weird trends in the past that no one would consider "normal" today. We can talk about ritual infanticide. We can talk about mutilation of female genitalia. We can talk about putting rings on one's neck until the collar bone is shoved so far down that removing the rings would break the neck. We can talk about bloodletting, sacrafice and any other number of "socially-accepted" practices, some going on to this day. And all of them fit under the umbrella of "monkey see, monkey do". Somewhere along the line, some feared or respected silverback or dominant female decided to normalize a deviant behavior until it became part of the culture.

Did I just suck all the fun out of social studies or what?

People are funny creatures. On that we all can agree. And we are the most social-learning of all the animals we know of. To say that mainstreaming deviant sexuality will have no consequences over time is to be grossly ignorant of human behavior. Or wilfully in denial about it. Ignorance or denial either one are not an excellent platform to legislate from though..

 

[laymen]

In regard to the comparison of human sexuality to that of animals......Remember that your largest sex organ is between your ears and the last time I checked I dont believe there have been any significant findings to indicate that farm animals have an Imagination.

 

[Sihouette]

Precisely. If you read the findings in their study, you find that one of the components, the most compelling in my mind, is the ingredient of mental perception and how it ties classical conditioning to a perceived "socially-acceptable" sexual fixation.

That illustrates how social mores and norms can affect a person's thinking when they then use first ejaculatory experiences to fixate themselves in a certain preference.

I'll try to give you a neutral example of the complex ways higher mental thinking combined with lower animal impulses can be haywired to a person's demise within heterosexual parameters: An adult male in a prepubescent girl's life, let's say and uncle, father or grandfather, stimulates that girl sexually and her first orgasmic experiences are crosswired to those in her life that are supposed to love and protect her. So she grows up confusing orgasms with "love". Then she becomes quite naturally promiscuous in her search for "love". This may even lead to prostitution as the fragile mental state degrades, predictably other males use her "search for love" for their own fleeting physical gratification, then cast her aside, further butchering her self-esteem until eventually she dies of an STD or some other malise of the almost certain poverty she'll be in due to her having social standing inadvertently bankrupted by the perp. The sexual drive is a powerful one and shouldn't be trifled with. Some biologists have argued that the sexual drive may even be more powerful than the will to live, citing how some males will risk life and limb to impress estrus females. That might explain the highest accidental-death rate among adolescent boys in our populations.

We are mind, but we are also reflexive animals. Otherwise we would cease to breath, react to hot things when we touch them and so on. If you care to debate that humans have a host of animal reflexes we have no mental control over, your debate is lost before you start. For as compelling as the argument for classical conditioning is, we have volumes more on our quirky animal side that ...well....good luck anyway!

Knock yourself out..


When making crucial decisions that might adversely affect a population of living beings, it makes good sense to understand those beings in every possible facet before the decision is made. Some like to rely on trendy social pressures instead. I say that's a mistake.

 

[laymen]

While the sientific finding you speak of can be substaniated in fact. It's my opinion that individuals with any sense of personal responsibility at some point in life become aware of enviormental influences during development that definatly can propel ones insticts twords curiosity, lust or just plane sheepishness, and then impose their own will in order to gain control of themselfs and not blame enviorment and or mom and dad for their own acctions..... In that sense my prejiduce shines thru. That maybe we'r not all created equal and some people are just to stupid or lazy to control them selfs. Here is were I draw the destinction between humans and dumb animals.

 

[Sihouette]

It's my opinion that individuals with any sense of personal responsibility at some point in life become aware of enviormental influences during development that definatly can propel ones insticts twords curiosity, lust or just plane sheepishness, and then impose their own will in order to gain control of themselfs

If that were the case then we wouldn't have need for any more psychologists or psychiatrists. The simple fact is that ignoring our animal quirks and pretending to have a cap on them doesn't make them or their influence on our "higher thinking" go away..

And do I really need to point out examples of this denial-gone-haywire to illustrate my point? We have some very fine examples of that right in this thread. One in particular that I can think of right off the top of my head.

 

[laymen]

I'am down with that. Soon there will be a pill for any disorder identified by the facists and a mear chemical adjustment in the brain will fix everyone. thus no need for head shrinks.

 

[laymen]

I love devirsity and I hate asparagas. The debate here is about prop 8. I'v stated that I think the supreme court should remove the word marriage from any gov. issued lic. Yet I dont belive homosexuality is an evelotionary trend that will jeopardize the human race. The fact remains that it takes a man and a woman to creat offspring.

 

[Sihouette]

Well it is up to the voters how we ourselves are governed. Having an institution of marriage as a defined relationship for the begetting or adopted rearing of children is our right to determine. If you understand that children are malleable and that we govern ourselves, then you understand our right to set up conditions wherein those children will be at least attempted to be molded according to our majority wishes.

Deviants contend that it doesn't matter if society mainstreams them by granting them [just them, not bigamists] inclusion in the word "normal", that kids are "born with a certian sexual preference and no adult influence via society or otherwise can change that". Which is total horse-apples. Of course children are influenced by their environment! Studies that demonstrate this like the one I cited last page http://www-psychology.concordia.ca/fac/pfaus/Pfaus-Kippin-Centeno(2001).pdf "Conditioning And Sexual Behavior: A Review" are evidence in support of why Prop 8 should be left up to the people to decide. You'd better believe it has huge impact on our futures, collectively, so collectively CA voters decided, in majority, to clearly define the language of "normal" sexual unions [implied by the word "marriage"] to mean "between one man and one woman".

I still am mystified a bit as to why the GLBT community doesn't include bigamists in their argument? [actually I'm not. I know for a fact why they aren't and so do they. But it is fun to play dumb, no?]

 

[laymen]

Clearly the GLBT comunity is not a majority. They are the squeeky wheel. I believe in a system of majority rules. Yet I'm all to aware of how political correctness distortes the system of majority rule. To site one example...The proposition to refuse public services to elegal imigrants that was passed during Pete Wilsons term as Governor, and then over turned by the Supreme Court, clearly flies in the face of majority rules. For now prop 8 will stand. I dont feel thretend by the gay comunity, I am teaching my son to consider the consiquinces of his desicion based on the reality of our society when it comes to just such issues and to reflect on all that I have taught him. Yet at some point he will have to make his own desisions about the lifestyle he chooses and the company he keeps. for in the end thear are only two who will know the truth about whats in your heart....Yourself and God. For if I am to have any faith I must believe that people posess the inate ability to seek what is true in thier own heart and not be led astray thruout life by some enviormental imprenting that happend in thier adolesents. This philosophy is my own, not anything I'v gatherd from the Bible. Hold strong to what you believe and be tolerent towards others with which you disagree and beware, don't tred on me!

 

[Sihouette]

I'm not threatened personally by the gay community because I am set in my heterosexual ways..lol.. It's the impressionable youth and the fact that the GLBT community is already preying on them by having these GLBT parties and conspicuously advertising on teen radio stations for "bi-curious" to attend. They're putting out lures...parties are lures for teens and then inviting them to explore deviant sexuality at their parties!

To me this marriage thing is another way deviants are "inviting" new generations to join their ranks by "normalizing" their deviations. After all, if society puts its stamp on their deviant unions, then the kids will accept deviant sexuality as normal. It just stands to reason..

And from there I suppose more naturally-experimental teens will be tempted to attend "bi-curious" events and cross the threshold into deviant sexuality.

I personally would like to see God and religion left out of this debate. It is a separate issue. For my money, God loves and accepts all his/her/its children no matter what was done to them in puberty. It's the social-science and human behavioral aspects of mainstreaming gross deviations from normal bodily functions that I have issue with. There will always be deviants and we must always try to show them compassion, but it is a mistake to grant them equality in the realm of "normality". Normal and deviant are two diametrically opposed terms. They are mutually exclusive. We would be bending language itself among other things..

"We're queer and we're here" is actually the most accurate battle-cry of the GLBT crowd I've heard to date.

 

[top gun]

Well it is up to the voters how we ourselves are governed. Having an institution of marriage as a defined relationship for the begetting or adopted rearing of children is our right to determine. If you understand that children are malleable and that we govern ourselves, then you understand our right to set up conditions wherein those children will be at least attempted to be molded according to our majority wishes.

Deviants contend that it doesn't matter if society mainstreams them by granting them [just them, not bigamists] inclusion in the word "normal", that kids are "born with a certian sexual preference and no adult influence via society or otherwise can change that". Which is total horse-apples. Of course children are influenced by their environment! Studies that demonstrate this like the one I cited last page http://www-psychology.concordia.ca/fac/pfaus/Pfaus-Kippin-Centeno(2001).pdf "Conditioning And Sexual Behavior: A Review" are evidence in support of why Prop 8 should be left up to the people to decide. You'd better believe it has huge impact on our futures, collectively, so collectively CA voters decided, in majority, to clearly define the language of "normal" sexual unions [implied by the word "marriage"] to mean "between one man and one woman".

I still am mystified a bit as to why the GLBT community doesn't include bigamists in their argument? [actually I'm not. I know for a fact why they aren't and so do they. But it is fun to play dumb, no?]

But once again Siho you already know (because I've already posted study after study) the fact is gays legally can and do currently raise perfectly adjusted healthy children all over America.

And there are millions of straight parents that have perfectly normal well adjusted gay children. Sonny & Cher and the former Vice President Dick & Lynne Cheney. And that brings up another interesting take on your "being gay is set up by sexual training or trauma" rants. What exactly was the Cheney's daughter's perverted sexual training or trauma?

Because I've heard her speak on the subject numerous times and she says you're theory is complete and total BS!

So all Prop 8 does is say to those very children... It's perfectly fine and legal to be gay and live together as a couple... but your parents that you love more than anything can't get a marriage license because some small minded stranger is blocking it.

That's how kids think Siho and in your heart you know it.

Kids love parents that are good to them... that take care of them... that protect them. All you're really achieving is alienating a future generation because of what they're sure to see as an unjust bias.

This isn't about the kids... this is about you.

As far as the people's vote. We'll see if it holds up Constitutionally (I don't think it is myself). And that in itself may even be a mute point because I believe the people of California will re-vote the issue in fairly short order and come to a different conclusion.

It will be interesting to see if it's overturned by a re-vote will you still stand with your current statement that if it's what the majority wants... then it's correct. But I'm guessin' you'll continue to complain...

 

[Sihouette]

gays legally can and do currently raise perfectly adjusted healthy children all over America

.
Au contraire. I've seen numerous kids raised by gays and they are some of the most confused individuals as adults I can think of. Certainly being raised in a heterosexual home isn't an automatic guarantee of sanity, but why add fuel to the fire?

Sexual deviance is deviance. Deviance from normal bodily functions made "normal" is crazymaking for children trying to sort out their reality. There's enough crazy carp in this world, why add more?

You know it, instinctively and otherwise that deviant sexuality has no place being labelled or sanctioned as normal. That's what is being asked for with the pleas to overturn Prop 8.

Deviant sexuals need compassion and they need to understand the exact semantics of their own battlecry "we're queer and we're here." [and I quote word for word] You see? They know their deviant status and freely admit to it. Why in the world would we want to replace the word normal sexuality[marriage] with deviant sexuality in the dictionary?