Are they born that way?
I know I was. And if someone “self identifies” as straight, but shows signs of arousal by the same sex, they’re not straight, they’re bi. I don’t understand why the concept of a spectrum, a distribution from pure homosexual through bisexual to pure heterosexual, skewed toward the latter, is such a hard concept for people to get their heads around.
It’s a failure of education. Many people don’t understand science or the concept of distributions and/or they treat scientific theories as political constructs. They rely on authority rather than reason and evidence. So they repeat dogmas and treat reframing of the issue as a transgression. I suggested to an acquaintance of mine that there is a distribution of human sexual orientations and that people who are on the margin between hetero- and homosexuality might have better lives if they functioned as heterosexuals. My acquaintance’s response was that homosexuality is immutable and I was a homophobe. I suspect you’ve had similar experiences.
Is your acquaintance homosexual?
What I’ve noticed is that most people tend to project their own sexuality on to others. Since many are bisexual to one degree or another, they assume that everyone is like them, and thus “has a choice,” not understanding that many, either het or homo, don’t. Some embrace their bisexuality, since it doubles their opportunities (more than that in the case of males) and others (generally for religious reasons, but also because it’s just easier) “choose” the straight life and condemn anyone show doesn’t, even if they don’t have a “choice.”
Is your acquaintance homosexual?
Heterosexual woman who spends a lot of time in PC social and professional environments.
It’s important to note that homosexuality as we use the term today is entirely a modern idea, with no historical standing whatsoever. The word itself is only a little over a century old, having been coined by Karoly Maria Benkert in the late 19th century as part of his effort to destigmatize the practice. Before the rise of the idea of being “gay”, there was simply the sin of sodomy (which just means misuse of the sexual faculties, regardless of sex) and the attendant civil crime of buggery.
My own position with regard to this issue is defined by the teaching of the Catholic Church, for which please see the Catechism.
You’ve also almost exactly described the germ theory of disease. Biology has come a long way since the 19th century.
B. Lewis,
I got that same teaching, use the same reference often in this discussion.
I’ve argued with Christian friends about non-hetero people being no different than someone who is predisposed to be a drunk or a thief. It is quite often how they are ‘wired’. I’ve met people from good homes who simply can’t NOT break the law, even when it isn’t necessary. They just ‘see’ the world through a different lens, a lens that doesn’t see societal norms or morals as applying to them, IMO.
But, many of the Christians I know will ‘forgive’ drunks, druggies, thieves and even murderers.
But gays is a line in the sand; they just can’t find it in themselves to forgive them. That I don’t get. But I wonder if it’s not because of militant nature of gay rights people today? There really isn’t any other militancy like it. What other human behavior has a ‘GLAAD’ style cheering section / legal wing equivalent?
Personally, I don’t want to know what ANYONE’S sexual ‘acts’ are, be they hetero or gay. I know few people who do need a constant reminder. And that’s what I get tired of. That constant reminder in every magazine, TV show, movie or ???, that HEY WE’RE GAY, and we ain’t GOIN’ AWAY!
I just don’t care where ‘they’ are.
So long as some dude isn’t trying to wash my…back…at the gym or the pool. So quit reminding me that it’s happening every chance you get! And just for the tally books, I’m not in the mode to be looking for any women in my shower either!
That’s a recurring theme:
“It’s our nature, so back off!”
While simultaneously shrieking:
“But we want -nurture- to trump nature in this case!”
Better food education, better reproductive choices, better energy usage, better exercise, better entertainment choices, better ….
I don’t think Christians have any problem forgiving gays but forgiving is not the same as acceptance.
I agree with Wodun. Our Lord forgave the sexual sinners who repented. He also told them to stop doing what they were repenting for.
MANY of the Christians I know, are unforgiving of gays who stay in that life and who are militant about pushing their lifestyle as ‘normal’. I won’t even say all, but I will stand by my use of ‘many’.
As B. Lewis said, Jesus forgave sexual indiscretion but He added STOP doing it.
The spectrum idea always made the most sense to me. It helps explain why people can get married and have kids and later come out as gay. At some point, people in that situation get tired of dealing with the other sex and decide to explore their latent same-sex attraction as an alternative. Many gay activists, though, try to deny the idea of a spectrum of sexuality because it is more politically useful to claim that sexuality is fixed and immutable instead of something more fluid. It’s yet another case of trying to impose their ideology on the world at large rather than trying to understand the complexity of the world as it exists.
Along that spectrum is terminology. It’s all demeaning outside their ‘club’. Much like minorities openly using disparaging terms for WASPS, it’s also OK for the GLAAD crowd to use terms like ‘breeders’ or ‘straights’, for heterosexuals.
Try standing on a corner and yelling, “HOMO”! or “LESBO! “at the top of your lungs.
You’ll make the news. That’s the part of this dynamic that truly gets on my nerves. I hate any dual standard(s).
They cannot fully control the dialectic – epistemology is much more practical than that. To wit, insults like “breeders” or “straights” have gained no purchase outside the highly insular LGBTOMBWTFBBQ community despite a generation of effort – mostly because there is obvious value in perpetuating mankind and being morally straight.
In contrast, racial minorities only ever use racial epithets to denote members of their groups who behave in morally reprehensible fashion, young men still use “gay” as a slur, etc.
As an aside, though, I should also note that in the gay world, bisexuality is most commonly understood to be code for a married person who has same-sex relationships on the side.
The “spectrum” idea is intellectually appealing, but is there any actual, non-anecdotal, evidence to back it up? We don’t have a “spectrum” of sexes, why should we have a “spectrum” of sexual preferences? Yes, there are some people born with ambiguous genitalia, but that’s generally recognized as a birth defect, not part of a normal spectrum of sexual expression.
The “spectrum” idea is intellectually appealing, but is there any actual, non-anecdotal, evidence to back it up?
Do you mean besides the fact that, empirically, the world seems to be filled with straight people, bi people and gay people?
Yes, I mean besides that fact that the world is filled with straight people and a few gays and some people who play both sides of the fence. Do you have any actual statistics? The numbers I’ve heard for gays is 1-3% of the population (Kinsey used “any homosexual encounter, ever, equals gay” to get his 10% figure). I haven’t heard or read any numbers for committed bisexuals. I have heard of studies indicating that people viewing porn and hooked up to EEGs react as either gay or straight, but never as both.
Why do you need precise statistics to believe that there’s a spectrum? Did you read the linked article?
I hadn’t read the article, I was just responding to your comment. “Spectrum” implies an equal distribution of all groups, which strikes me as patent nonsense. Now that I have read the article I see lots of speculation and no hard numbers. It appears to be an opinion piece.
“Spectrum” implies an equal distribution of all groups…
Ummmm…No.
If that’s your problem, it was not what I implied at all.
Look at the words “distribution” and “skewed.” Those do not “imply equal distribution of all groups.” They not only don’t imply that, but they explicitly mean that the groups are unequal. This is basic statistics.
I would reply to your comment about spectra, but there’s no “reply” button in it.
If any variation from the mean constitutes a “spectrum”, then sure, there’s a “spectrum” of sexuality. Just like there’s a “spectrum” of sexual organs, sensory capacity, etc. But calling the odd birth defect part of a “spectrum” makes it sound like something normal and harmless and common. Like the variations in the color spectrum. Seems misleading to me.
Anyway, the article is still just an opinion piece that’s trying to morally equate marriage with same-sex unions. Without numbers it’s not science IMO.
If any variation from the mean constitutes a “spectrum”, then sure, there’s a “spectrum” of sexuality.
OK, there still seems to be some confusion. The word “spectrum” has nothing whatsoever to do with statistics. I don’t understand why you think it does.
Last week, I read somewhere that the results in the survey of California judges’ sexuality was released: approximately 60% or 1000 answered, and about 15 each male and female said they were gay, which gives you ~3% of an admittedly somewhat self-selected sample.
I would’ve posted more, but Rand’s software seems to think I’m a spammer. Not sure why:-(.
The same thing happened to me when I tried to post here. I had to severely truncate my post to get past the spamblocker.
This conversation puzzles me somewhat. What difference does it make whether someone is born with an attraction to the opposite sex, the same sex, or both sexes? Whether one’s orientation is innate or chosen, I can’t see that it has any moral content at all, provided that everyone participating has freely chosen to do so. Nor is it, fundamentally, anyone’s business. To me, it’s a distinction without a difference.
To me, the fundamental question about any sexual orientation other than essentially straight is: how does it survive in evolutionary terms? If it’s genetic (which is a subset of “born that way”), then just like altruism, you need to postulate some mechanism how the gene(s) that contribute to non-straight orientation confer a survival advantage on some holders of those genes.
But maybe it’s not necessarily genetic after all – there is research indicating that the probability of one’s being male gay increases significantly the more older brothers you have; something about being gestated in a womb that has housed other males seems to be at work. Ain’t the origins of human nature fascinating?
Is everyone who has masturbated homophilic and gay, being that they are sexually attracted, at least, to themselves?
Is autoerotica simply love of cars?
If one is persistently morose, is it possible to be simultaneously gay?
Q: What fools we mortals be?
A: Just look around you and into a mirror.