Homosexuality - Nature or Nurture?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by Cellar_Door, Jul 10, 2009.

  1. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    72,825
    Uh no, its a matter of social contsructs

    http://www.nickyee.com/ponder/social_construction.html
     
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  3. superstring01 Moderator

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    I didn't ask you about your society, SAM. You made this statement: "Homosexuality as sexual orientation is an invention of western Christian societies. Sexual orientation as a homosexual has not existed culturally in any other society." History didn't start when books started being written. This didn't start with Islam. South/Southwest Asia is especially noted for its homophobic history, so it's no big surprise that there is little written history of gay men.

    I want to see you back up the claim that homosexuality has not existed in any other society on earth other than in Christian society. You're either blatantly lying or laughably ignorant.

    ~String
     
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  5. superstring01 Moderator

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    Wow. So gay people existed, but the oppression of it is rather new. Then you should have stated it that way.

    ~String
     
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  7. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    13,105
    SAM,
    You would be completely incorrect in suggesting that it's Socially created. I'm pretty sure it's very similar to Colour blindness in the sense that the eyes and mind interpret the colours incorrectly, much like how hormones and various chemicals are misinterpreted by those that are homosexual who feel for the same gender, or by those that don't accept homosexuality. (After all it's again a chemical mechanism that generates disgust.)
     
  8. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    72,825
    Feel free to support that with evidence. There is plenty of evidence for my conclusions, based on historical information from societies where homosexuality was not defined nor considered lifelong.
     
  9. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    13,105
    If anything same your evidence just proves that homosexuals were removed from society by being culled off by those that saw it as different.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology
    This entry in wiki touches upon how Homosexuality was originally classed as a Psychological Disorder at least in the US.

    http://www.planetsappho.com/lesbian-writing/a-perception-of-homosexuality.html
    Meh... apparently over here in the UK it was classed like that for longer.

    Why was it changed? well for the most part it's possible that some people in government contracted the disorder and didn't want to get ousted from power through their disease. (At least thats how it would of interpreted)

    Incidentally same, have you ever heard of the Karma Sutra, I'm pretty sure there was one particular entry where there was a guy with six women being sexually entertained. I wouldn't think it would all just be down to him though.
     
  10. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    7,913
    Yeah, because every time two consenting adults have gay sex, a child dies. (SARCASM)

    Myself and others have made this point countless times. Quit choosing to be such a damned moron. You know better.
     
  11. Slysoon Registered Senior Member

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    155
    The Kingdom of Israel, which predates Christianity (especially Christianity's prevalence in Europe), had strict definitions on sexual orientation and punished the act of homosexuality severely. The pagan Vikings, to mention another example, considered it immensely insulting to be called a homosexual (especially a receptive homosexual), which indicates their defining of homosexuality as a sexual orientation and the negative connotations they associated with said sexual orientation.

    In fairness, Western Christian cultures did popularize the concept of rigid sexualities, but the concept itself predates such cultures significantly.
     
  12. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    What String said, and other notes

    What String said.

    And, I would also like to point out a very important part of the phrase, boldfaced below:

    At present, I'm watching what would appear to be a young homosexual—or, perhaps, transsexual—grow and develop, and it's hard to say the situation was created by any act or accident of will on the part of his parents.​

    The confluence of factors String mentioned can be a bit hard to pin down in any one case. Watching the boy respond to feminine fashion, for instance. How much of that is simply misogynistic stereotype? That is to say, is he "acting like a girl", or is he acting like an unfair stereotype of a girl or feminized male? One infamous episode involved a trip to the mall. The boy had seen a shiny pink princess dress at the Disney Store, and kept asking his parents if he could have it. And they kept saying no. When it came time to leave the mall, he dropped even my mother's jaw when he blurted, on the verge of tears, "Can't we just go back so I can just touch it?" He was ... absolutely ... in love with that dress. The father, to his credit, braved up, circled 'round the next day, and bought the dress as a Christmas present.

    When my daughter was four she took a trip to Mexico with my mom and that side of the family. The boy, who was also four, absolutely adored this one grass-colored dress Em was wearing, so she gave it to him.

    Given a choice between playing football with the boys or getting his nails done with the girls?

    I'll do anything I can to help his dad deal with what comes, but it's very hard to simply assert myself because my mother's side of the family is very much caught up in post-Edwardian sexual mores. The result is that the father won't specifically admit what he's dealing with, and nobody will come right out and say it. In putting off the inevitable, we're only setting up the boy for more trouble.

    One of my favorite media stories—and also one of my most embarrassing, since it involves watching Oprah—involves a panel of gay men telling Oprah Winfrey their stories of realization and coming out. Carson Kressley, of the Queer Eye crew, talked about coming home, two weeks before the show aired, and in his thirties, finally coming out to his mother. And as he stumbled into the discussion, she stopped the car—on the way home from the airport—and said, "We know, dear. We've known." And why wouldn't they? He majored in management and fine art, set up as a stylist, and then went to work for Ralph Lauren. Combined with his ... er ... um ... disposition, who couldn't have put two and two together and got a three dollar bill out of it?

    Kressley said he knew he was gay when he was in first grade, and in the middle of his discussion, they showed a picture taken when he was four or five, wearing heels, a skirt, a blouse, and carrying a purse. And yes, you could tell. It was in the way he stood and posed, the delight in his eyes, and that flashy smile. He was, even at that age, the living definition of the word queermo.

    What is my cousin's son to me? We just call him my nephew, but I would think there would be a special term for it. At any rate, my nephew is hardly Carson Kressley at this point, but the phenomenon is so strong that my Missouri Synod Lutheran aunt is undergoing a steady readjustment of her perspective on homosexuality. She will probably wait to figure out what she should say, in terms of how her faith shapes what guidance she will give him, until she absolutely must face up to it—e.g., the boy becomes sexually active—but this is her grandson, I can nearly bank on the prospect that she will fall back on Christ's forgiveness if she doesn't rebuke him or cast him out for being such a sinner. It's rather an amazing transformation, considering that this is a woman who once threatened to throw one of her daughters out of the house for watching The Last Temptation of Christ. Time and wisdom, indeed. She need not understand God, as such, but simply love her fellow human beings.

    Perhaps this is something she came to understand earlier, but I didn't see it until a couple of years ago when the family retreated to Sunriver for a week in the brutal, scorching heat. When she didn't flinch at the sight of the boy in a red and white checkered sundress, but rather told him—and genuinely, at that—how good he looked in it, I was genuinely stunned.

    Everybody in the family sees it. But nobody will come out and say it. Except my brother, my mom's boyfriend (who has raised a gay son), and myself. Or maybe that's not fair. Maybe others in the family will whisper it when the kids aren't around and the bedroom door is locked.
     
  13. Dr Mabuse Percipient Thaumaturgist Registered Senior Member

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    714
    There has never been study that showed a genetic or biological cause of homosexual behavior in humans that stood up under peer review.

    Homosexuality is a psychosocial condition. The most common finding in studies is the major cause appears to be familial. Especially the role of the mother in male homosexuality.

    But beyond the simple facts of this:

    Anyone who has even a basic grasp of the functioning of evolution would realize that a genetic traits that caused no/much less reproduction would have eliminated itself millennia ago.

    Therefore the remaining of homosexual behavior in the human being makes a rather clear point about it. Though studies have tried and tried again to come up with theories to overcome the most obvious evolutional consideration of a genetic cause of homosexuality.

    A recent study, that is so laughably thin on it's premise, theorizing about this is:

    B. Zietsch, K. Morley, S. Shekar, K. Verweij, M. Keller, S. Macgregor, M. Wright, J. Bailey, N. Martin. 2008. "Genetic factors predisposing to homosexuality may increase mating success in heterosexuals." Evolution and Human Behavior: 29 424-33
     
  14. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

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    4,955
    Only if you have a simplistically outdated understanding of evolution.

    * Genes for homosexuality could be beneficial on the whole. In bonobo chimpanzees, homosexual interactions are a form of social cement. It is possible that homosexuality evolved to serve social functions in humans, too (Kirkpatrick 2000). After all, social cohesion is still a main function of sex in humans.

    The genetic etiology of homosexuality may come from a collection of traits that, when expressed strongly and in concert, result in homosexuality; expressed less strongly or without supporting traits, these traits contribute to the robust nature of our species. The genes for these traits persist because they usually combine to make us better at survival and reproduction.

    Genetic factors linked to homosexuality in men apparently boost fertility in women. Female relatives of gay men, on their mother's side of the family, had more children than female relatives of heterosexual men. (Corna et al. 2004)


    It should be noted that the question of explaining homosexuality is not limited to humans. Homosexuality exists in hundreds of animal species (Bagemihl 1998).

    http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB403.html
     
  15. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    15,396

    You don't know that.



    You apparently missed something of evolution & genetic traits.
    Some genes exist in most or all of the population yet are turned off & on in different people thus sometimes producing the traits & sometimes not.
     
  16. ripleofdeath Registered Senior Member

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    2,762

    how did those whom were doing the study locate the adopted homosexuals and at what age were they adopted ?

    a hole soo large you could drive a convoy of merkins through sideways

    no coments about adopted daughters ?

    sounds sus

    what percentage female homosexuals did they survey ?

    sounds like extremist propaganda to me
     
  17. ripleofdeath Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,762

    quite obviousely the devil must have made those animals just to insult god and god botherers are expected to flog them torture them in other ways then stone them to death.
    then force them to repent just before they kill them and then pray for days at their burial site for god to forgive the evil homosexual animals.

    :crazy:
     
  18. Dr Mabuse Percipient Thaumaturgist Registered Senior Member

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    714
    Well, what a surprise.

    Lightweights putting forth 'complicated sounding' theory as fact on this forum.

    The American Psychiatric Association says: "To date there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality."

    Evan S. Balaban, a neurobiologist at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, notes:

    "The search for the biological underpinnings of complex human traits has a sorry history of late. In recent years, researchers and the media have proclaimed the “discovery” of genes linked to alcoholism and mental illness as well as to homosexuality. None of the claims...has been confirmed"

    Yale researcher Dr. Joel Gelernter said in Science magazine:

    "Time and time again, scientists have claimed that particular genes or chromosomal regions are associated with behavioral traits, only to withdraw their findings when they were not replicated. Unfortunately," says Yale's [Dr. Joel] Gelernter, "it's hard to come up with many findings linking specific genes to complex human behaviors that have been replicated. ... All were announced with great fanfare; all were greeted unskeptically in the popular press; all are now in disrepute."

    There has never been a study that showed a genetic or other biological cause of homosexuality that stood up under peer review.

    If you have such an embarrassingly superficial understanding of this issue as to delve into animal behavior to put forth a premise for an equivalent human behavior?

    Animals quite often eat their own feces. Knock yourself out on that. Animals kills and eat their own young quite often. Have fun with that.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    What a bunch of lightweights.
     
  19. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

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    4,955
    Hey Mabuse, how about a link to the issue of Science Magazine where Gelernter said this? All I can find are right wing blogs (and you ) using the quote; but no links to the source.

    The parallels between human and other animal's behavior aren't perfect, but they are useful.

    You are attacking the others as "lightweights", yet bringing precious little to the table in the way of facts and evidence.
     
  20. ripleofdeath Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,762
    after all that bullshit you come up with this

    "Animals quite often eat their own feces. Knock yourself out on that. Animals kills and eat their own young quite often. Have fun with that."


    animals eat their own feces to replace stomach bacteria so they do not die.
    elephants have been filmed doing this.
    human mothers and fathers kill their own babies but like many other animals species do not eat their young even if they are suffering from some type of psychiatric condition.

    lions eat baby lions to bring the females on to heat again for gene survival.
    tadpoles... self preservation for best possible chance for the species

    i could go on but your just piling a whole lot of crap together to try and use as some pseudo type of science when in reality your post is the type of rhetoric spiced bullshit that loony ministers shout at their fellow loony nutbar parishioners all through the bible belt in the usa and in a different language with a different book in the middle east and asia.


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophagia#Coprophagia_in_animals

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_(zoology)

    there ya go
    some actual material for people to read should they wish to look at the actual "facts".


    but what you will always find is that those who define themselves as religious and oppose homosexuality will never actually read anything to educate themselves on the subject.
    they will only read church authorised material that has been handed from another of their church members to them or by their own church leader.
    they will skip and skim and avoid books that give supporting evidence while claiming such literature is evil etc...
    OTHERWISE KNOWN AS FUNDAMENTALISM
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2009
  21. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    15,396
    -=-

    When did you choose to be heterosexual?



    They once said it's a mental illness. Now they don't.
     
  22. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    43,184
    It might help to address the members you consider lightweights..
     
  23. ripleofdeath Registered Senior Member

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    2,762

    this raises an excellent point which seems to be completely run over by shouting chanting hate preaching time and time again...

    sexuality by way of what you choose is no one elses business other than the consenting adults you choose to have it with.

    the very fact that these radical extremists think they can try and come into peoples private homes and dictate what they can and cant do in their bedrooms is no more extremist than hearing tali-ban saying they intend to turn the usa into a Muslim extremist enslaved country at the point of a sword.
     

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